How much protein can one absorb per meal; Thru hiking, backpacking, and paleo/ketogenic diet; Keto Masterclass – Recalculate Macros; Pregnant or breastfeeding metabolic health; No issues
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Show Notes:
News topic du jour:
A giant solar farm sounds perfect, right? Not quite.
1. How much protein can one absorb per meal? [20:09]
Leslie says:
I am a 70-year-old female. Paleo and low carb for many years. Avid podcast listener and book buyer – love all of yours! Don’t want any more sarcopenia than I already have. Followed your advice and went on the Ketogains macro calculator that recommends about 100 gm protein per day. But I’m also working on lowering insulin by only eating 2 meals per day. Searching tells me that bodybuilders think they can only absorb 30 gm per meal. I eat berries, collagen, protein powder (grassfed!), goat kefir and powdered multi vitamins mixed together along with 4 oz meat and 2 eggs for breakfast around 11 am. For dinner I eat 4 oz meat with some Amy’s organic soup and sometimes a salad. I am not aiming for ketosis, just low carb. I could stand to lose a few pounds, but at 5’4″ and 135 at my age I am OK but would like more muscle or at least not lose any more. Should I add a third meal for some of the protein or perhaps redistribute the protein amounts? Thanks!
I do this workout about once a week, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBbPsJKq9uM 1 hour of Zumba about 3-times per week and miscellaneous other exercises. Before Covid I did more, including some blood-flow restriction which seems to work on the same principle as the video I linked. I feel like it takes about a week for me to recover enough to want to do the video workout again. I don’t do the lifting-the-bag part of the workout – my back isn’t perfect. I also recently added Esther Gokhale’s daily workout (1,2,3 move) and should add the associated weight workout as well. I liked Doug McGuff’s concepts and have listened to the IHMC podcasts as well as Peter Attia’s stuff. Like I said, I am an avid podcast listener!!
2. Thru hiking, backpacking, and paleo/ketogenic diet [25:08]
Matt says:
I have been following a paleo diet for 5-6 years now, and transitioned to a ketogenic approach at the beginning of this year. Since then I’ve been able to maintain a much lower body weight than ever before in my adult life and my endurance and fitness levels (and to a lesser degree strength levels) have been better than ever before. These past couple years I have gotten more into thru hiking and backpacking and have been planning some longer hikes and a long term goal of doing the entire appalachian trail. My question is; to your knowledge is there anyone developing programs or templates on planning long hikes primarily utilizing ketogenic and paleo foods? Everywhere you look when planning thru hikes the advice is largely the same (granola, oatmeal, instant mashed potatoes, and candy for ‘energy’), but it seems obvious that 6 months on a trail requires primarily oxidative phosphorylation, and KD or paleo seems to be an obvious choice. Information on the topic seems pretty slim, especially when it comes to planning and packing for at least a weeks worth of sustenance that would be necessary when out in the wilderness. With as many ultra runners and endurance athletes beginning to tout the benefits of KD, I am wondering if there are any thru hikers doing the same thing? I don’t know if you have addressed this in podcasts or blog posts in the past and I just missed it. Seems like it could be an interesting topic, and maybe another area where some thought leaders can emerge.
https://robbwolf.com/2020/08/17/fat-fueled-sheep-hunting-with-gina-shively-salty-talk-019-thrr/
3. Keto Masterclass – Recalculate Macros? [28:59]
Kyle says:
Hello,
I’m hoping to ask a quick question about the Keto Masterclass. I’m into my fourth week and feel I’m doing relatively well. I’ve got a spreadsheet where I track all my food, stay on track well although I do have a Perfect Keto Whey shake for breakfast everyday. Not ideal but helpful given my vocational and avocational commitments. Four weeks in and I’ve lost 8 pounds and am in nutritional ketosis based on measuring blood ketones. One of the cookbooks I’ve picked up mentions recalculating your macros periodically. I’ve done that and it drops my macros slightly based on weight loss to date. Seems reasonable to me, but is this something you also recommend doing?
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Kyle
4. Pregnant or breastfeeding metabolic health [32:57]
Becky says:
First off, screw any haters you get for your “salty” rants in The Healthy Rebellion Radio. More people with platforms like yours need to speak out. The hypocrisy, the nonsensical rules (bars are open but kids can’t go to school), the suppression of seemingly effective CHEAP widely available prophylaxis and treatments….its all SO INFURIATING and it is so good to hear both of you question what is happening on your platform. THANK YOU. I’ve unfortunately had to distance myself from a few health “influencers” that I once really respected who have gotten very SJW and holier than thou this past year, so I am thrilled that I finally started listening to your podcast and seem to have found some kindred spirts. Definitely makes me want to join the Healthy Rebellion too, which brings me to my question…
I am 37, work out moderately (strength training 2-3 times a week, trail running or walking 1-2 times a week), get lots of outside time, pretty good sleep, and eat 80-20 primal (stick to whole foods, but will indulge in ice cream, white rice, or other no-nos on occasion). The primal eating with a focus on protein and fat has done wonders for my hunger and “hangry” symptoms, which used to be a constant plague (who knew that a breakfast of Cheerios, skim milk, and a banana did not a satiating meal make). However, I’ve always been about 20 lb overweight, and still feel the need to eat every few hours to avoid irritability, brain fog, and shakiness. This tells me I’m definitely not metabolically healthy, which is my ultimate long-term goal (although weight loss would also be nice).
However, I’m currently 6 months pregnant with my second child. I plan to breastfeed this little guy for around 2 years like I did my first, who I weaned when I was about 10 weeks pregnant. In other words, I’ve been either pregnant or nursing now for the last 3.5 years, pretty much ever since I discovered “Wired to Eat” and a more paleo lifestyle. Healthy pregnancy and breastfeeding are my top near-term priorities, therefore I don’t think doing something like going full keto would be right for me, but I would love to start the journey towards better metabolic health. Where should I start?
And, related to the Healthy Rebellion, I’d love to join but am not sure it will be worth it in the near-term given my current maternal journey. Are there resources in THR that would apply to pregnant or breastfeeding mamas as well?
Thanks,
-Becky
PS One of the things I’ve struggled with a lot through both pregnancies and breastfeeding has been a feeling of dehydration. I would have mornings where I woke up feeling hungover when not a drop of alcohol had been had the night before. I got a LMNT free sample pack about a month ago and LOVED IT. I feel such a huge difference in energy, thirst, and a lack of headaches. This is exactly the product I’ve been looking for since moving to the tropical island where I now live! Thank you!
https://lilynicholsrdn.com/real-food-for-pregnancy/
5. No issues [38:02]
Park says:
Hey, I’ve been listening to a variety of podcasts over the last ten years and it’s always amazing to me how many people have issues with so many foods or can’t lose fat or have low testosterone, etc. Without sounding like a giant douche, I think it’s time we hear that someone has no issues and everything is fine. I’m 62 and have no idea what my testosterone is or my LDL or any metric. I drink too much beer, but despite this I’m lean and my libido is humming along nicely. I’ve done IF for almost ten years, eat mostly paleo-ish and do compound movements three days a week. I realize it’s oversimplification to assume that my protocol should work for everyone else, but damn, it’s so shocking that so many people seem to struggle. When people chime in with their protocols, are they not being entirely truthful? It seems that the basics should work more often than they do.
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Transcript:
Download a copy of this transcript here (PDF)
Nicki: It’s time to make your health an act of rebellion. We’re tackling personalized nutrition, metabolic flexibility, resilient aging and answering your diet and lifestyle questions. This is the only show with a bold aim to help one million people liberate themselves from the sick care system. You’re listening to the Healthy Rebellion Radio.
Nicki: The contents of this show are for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast should be considered medical advice. Please consult your licensed and credentialed functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary, or fitness change. Warning, when Robb gets passionate, he’s been known to use the occasional expletive. If foul language is not your thing, if it gets your bridges in a bunch, well, there’s always Disney Plus.
Nicki: No do, no do, no do.
Robb: Welcome back, Rebels. Welcome back, wife.
Nicki: Welcome back, everyone. We’re hanging on by a thread over here.
Robb: The thread keeps going around my neck, but it keeps breaking before I-
Nicki: We are in the midst of the packing and moving chaos and that’s a lot.
Robb: We’re in that spot where the first say, 60% goes real quick and you’re like, oh I totally have this, man.
Nicki: We’re on top of this, this is easy.
Robb: Then it’s like there’s some sort of a math problem or something or thought process where if you could travel towards something but you only get half again as close every time you made a jump or whatever, how long would it take you to get there? You never get there. It’s like getting to the last digit of pie, it just keeps going. We probably only have 10% left to pack and it is-
Nicki: Yeah, we’re close but it’s-
Robb: … just dragging out, man.
Nicki: Also, I think your truths about energy, mana, whatever you call it, starts waning at an exponentially faster rate.
Robb: The closer you get to completion, yeah.
Nicki: The closer you get to being done, so it’s like you’re almost done but you’re weaker.
Robb: It’s very first world problems, but moving sucks.
Nicki: Moving does suck but we’re thankful that we weathered the storm. It appears that we only had one sprinkler pipe break, so nothing in the house so that was a huge blessing and we’re thankful for that. Yeah, it was gnarly for Texas, so.
Robb: Yeah, and we were supposed to go on… Rogan, Diana and I were supposed to go on but when I started looking at the weather I was like, I don’t think this is going to happen. I wasn’t even sure about traveling in and out and all that. Diana being the hard head that she is, pushed her flight forward and if you didn’t follow her travails on-
Nicki: Her Instagram, I think she posted some stuff on Instagram that she was in a hotel in Austin with no water.
Robb: She was down to peanuts and White Claw, yeah.
Nicki: Tuna fish and Whit Claw and yeah, it was rough. Finally, she made it to us on that Wednesday of that week and stayed one night before she flew out that Thursday, so.
Robb: Good times.
Nicki: Lots of adventures.
Robb: Yep, in theory we should be on Rogan in the next couple of months, so we’ll figure that out.
Nicki: Yep, gosh I did want to share some wins from our last reset, just because some of them are just too good not to share. This first one is from Steven, he wrote, “This is my post 30-day reset update. I’m down eight and a half pounds, one and a half inches off my waist, two inches off my hips. I also went from a 12-minute 41-second mile to an 11-minute 45-second mile. Beating my goal of a 12-minute mile. That’s with only being able to run half the month and rowing the other half. I’m super happy with my results.” Then he shares, because he started seven months ago, so I was told after starting seven months ago, he’s lost 89.4 pounds, 11 inches off of his waist, eighth and a half inches off hips, 214 days sober.
Robb: Wow.
Nicki: Which is amazing. He’s gone from a size 46 pants to a size 36 and a triple extra large shirt to an extra large. “I couldn’t have done any of this without the information Robb and team push out, and the support of this group. This place rocks. Now, time to get back to work, I still have more to do.” So that was-
Robb: That’s pretty cool, that’s awesome.
Nicki: Super impressive share from Steven.
Nicki: June also had one, she says that she’s… let’s see here, I’m not going to read the entire thing but she did the tight pants test, she did the measurements photos, tight pants and measured her weight. She said, “I’ve definitely been a little sloppy but mostly sticking to plan. My weight only went down one pound from start until yesterday but this morning I put on the tight jeans, forgetting the last time I wore them. I couldn’t even close them and they fit. They don’t fit in the way that’s ‘these are really tight, but at least I can close them.’ Nope, they fit comfortably and I’ve been wearing them all day. Yay.” So that was another big win, which goes to show too, some people do have really dramatic changes in the scale weight but we talk a lot about this in the reset, that sometimes people don’t. But because it’s body composition changes and the clothing fitting well really is key.
Robb: We’ve done no statistical analysis on this, but I would venture a guess that this is more common in women because they oftentimes begin a more dedicated resistance training program as part of the reset, and so while they’re losing fat, they’re gaining muscle, gaining bone mineral density. This is why seeing that scale shift is cool unless it’s not, unless it’s completely a red herring, canard, whatever the deal is, is a distraction because it’s really not telling the true story about what’s happening, so that’s awesome, yeah.
Nicki: Yep, and we talk about this so much during the resets because it’s one of these things that people have to break through in their minds because we’ve been conditioned that the number on the scale is the thing that you look at, and it doesn’t tell the whole story, so. That was a fun one.
Nicki: Then I have to read one from Whitney, and I know we’ve mentioned Whitney in the past. She has multiple sclerosis and she went carnivore. She shared a little thing here. She was in a comment thread with Jessica, one of our team members. She’s like, “Jessica, I will tell you a great step story from today.” So Whitney has been trained to talk, doing her 10,000 steps, but previously she could only get to about 5,000 without feeling-
Robb: It would lay her out, yeah.
Nicki: Yeah, and she’d be exhausted. So then she’s been getting around her 10,000 steps so she’s been making this step goal progress. So she says, “Jessica, I will tell you a great step story from today. It’s 38 degrees and I went through a muddy pasture to fetch my horse for my lesson. She was all the way at the very end of the pasture, maybe 75 yards. The rain and mud were extreme, though the mud was a little hard from a warm day on Tuesday. I got her and we walked to the wash rack to tack up. Then I had a great lesson and walked back to my car carrying my saddle. Usually my riding instructor would have to get the horse for the lesson and carry my saddle to my car for me when we’re finished after, after I have sat and rested for a few minutes. Now I’m back at work where I parked in the regular lot and walked a block to the building. After a riding lesson I would normally pay for parking in the front of the building. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely feel my legs but the walking is happening. I’m so happy to report my success, I feel really well.” So that’s another great, great-
Robb: Am I just exhausted from moving, but I’m-
Nicki: Tearing up?
Robb: No.
Nicki: It’s huge, what she’s sharing with about her day and I mean she obviously loves her horse riding and what not, but it manifests in so many other areas of her life. Not just her, but all of the people that are making these changes.
Robb: Well, and again, there’s a lot of different ways to affect weight loss and they’ll work various ways. It typically involves some type of calorie restriction, I think we’re all on board with that. There aren’t very many ways to legit pump the brakes on autoimmune disease, not the way that we see with keto, paleo, carnivore. This is life changing stuff and the morbidity and mortality in things like rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis are shocking to see nothing of the just the loss of quality of life. Fuck, you can’t get this anywhere else. The vegans have tried, there’s all kind… it’s like if you want to go on immuno suppressant drugs and some people absolutely need that, particularly for flares and what not, but this is just that thing again where this stuff really matters and if somebody doesn’t want to do it, fine, but there are so many people that would be willing to do damn near anything to get their lives back to the degree that Whitney has.
Robb: This is why we keep beating this drum, because not enough people, not enough practitioners, not enough information is out there yet to just give people the option. If you want to change, here is something you can try. Do it and then assess whether or not it’s worth it for you. Maybe it’s not going to work for everybody but god damn, it seems to work for a lot of people. So this is the stuff that’s good for me, for us to see. It’s like, okay, this really matters, this really impacts people in a massive way, so it’s cool.
Nicki: Yep, so anyway. Just wanted to share those few highlights from this past reset. We do have another one starting coming up in April. Also, this month, well, March, we’re trying to get a couple episodes recorded so that we’re not offline when we move. So we’re recording this a little bit early but first week of early March, we’re doing another strength program with Sarah and Grayson of Basis Health and Performance. So that’s going on inside the Healthy Rebellion, so lots of great stuff packed into our schedule and calendar for this year. So if you’re not yet a member, you might want to consider joining. I think that was all that I had for my preamble, hubs. So you can jump into your news topic.
Robb: News topic is a piece, a giant solar farm sounds perfect, right? Not quite. It’s a very accessible piece, it’s a newsy piece, it does draw on some research. It basically talks about there’s this thought that we’ll put these solar farms in these unproductive areas like the Sahara Desert, it makes the case in the paper though, that there’s some unintended consequences. It creates a much higher heat albedo, which is basically that it pulls more heat into the area and so the net effect on climate change could end up being even worse than the amount of productivity that you get out of the solar panels. I don’t know that any of that is really true yet. I’m a big fan of solar, I think that one of the biggest problems with it is that battery technology, although improving is not seeing a Moore’s Law expansion. You can only stuff so many electrons in so many places. Famous last words, you don’t know what the next innovation is going to be. Maybe somebody will figure out some sort of a plastic spaced battery or something that’s different than the lithium ion stuff, I don’t know how the chemistry of that works but storage is a big deal.
Robb: Since we just went through the snowpocalypse here in Texas, a couple of points here. One is if we all sign up with the notion that within the recommendations or the suggestions of what’s going to happen with climate change, that what we’re being told is that weather conditions will be more variable and more extreme. By extreme, we will have higher highs and lower lows and it will happen in places that we have not really seen that, which is this coldest weather I believe ever recorded in Texas, or at least in the last 35 plus years or what have you. So I’m not totally sure on that, but if we’re in a situation in which weather conditions are going to be more variable, then I believe it is unconscionable to recommend that we shift more resources into energy infrastructure that is less stable and is more prone to being disabled due to abnormal weather.
Robb: So yeah, a bunch of wind turbines that froze in Texas and other places, you have solar panels that were covered in six inches to a foot of snow in Texas and other places. So that’s just a piece to this. Another piece to is that these systems are shockingly complex. When you start trying to figure out the total heat mapping of a planet and what one move does versus another, just all of the blacktop roadways that we have. This is one of the reasons why cities tend to be warmer than rural areas is that the heat island that is created around these.
Robb: A recommendation that has been made is to have a lower albedo, a different color and different material to the roadways which could be a great idea. What you need to look into with that is, what is the energy input of these other ideas? Cement or whatever they may be thinking of, may be shockingly more energetically costly and so then you’re weighing the increased C02 expenditures versus the potential decrease in a heat footprint. The main point here is that the problem that I have with so much of this stuff is that super broad reaching, simplistic recommendations are being made for systems that are just completely beyond our understanding.
Robb: It’s so reminiscent of the pre-2007 financial meltdown with Ben Bernanke came on and he said, “We’ve offloaded risk, there is no more risk. Modern monetary theory has completely solved this thing.” It was bullshit, and the whole global economic system nearly melted down and maybe it should have, maybe we could’ve tore that bandaid off and dealt with it, but the reality is that you can’t offload risk infinitely. You can’t infinitely understand unknowable, complex systems like the weather, like the global climate, like a global economy. We can get some insights, we can see some trends, but then when something changes in a way that’s unpredictable, like we both had a friend that did really well doing some trading early in the 2007 run up and he said, “Yeah, all of our models work great,” until it just failed catastrophically. It’s like, well, everything just continued to fucking go up. So you could’ve had… probably had nothing to do with the model and everything to do with the fact that there was a bunch of bubbles going on and they rode the bubble up and didn’t get out before you get out because virtually nobody does.
Robb: So anyway, not to ramble too much on economics, but it’s a good piece. I don’t know that I’ve got a huge dog in the fight either way, other than pointing out that this is really, really complex stuff. It’s difficult to talk about these complexities. The Dark Horse Podcast, if people aren’t listening over Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying and the work that they’re doing. They’re beating this drum that follow the science, this science is settled. That is absolute bullshit. We’re going to make lots of mistakes, we’re going to make lots of wrong assumptions, and we won’t know that unless we’re able to-
Nicki: Question.
Robb: … discuss and hash this stuff out. Otherwise, we’re going to have some people up on high who will make, dictate, and god help us if they get it wrong. As it is right now, we have potentially billions of eyeballs, billions of brains looking at this information and kicking around ideas, putting out hypotheses, that we could then test and tinker with and model and explore.
Robb: Again, I will go out on a limb and say that our solutions to climate change and food production and a host of other issues that we face, need to be much more local and regional in nature. What people end up doing in Scandinavia to deal with these issues is probably going to be very different than Central American and Sub Saharan Africa, and rightfully so, but because globalization, because of this power consolidation, we’re really getting this from up on high recommendation that there are this tiny basket of three different solutions that need to be metered out. I think that that could be absolutely disastrous. It reminds me of Grass World is Sacred Cow-
Nicki: Sacred Cow.
Robb: … where you have this ecosystem that is functional but it’s a three-legged stool and if you kick one leg out, the whole thing collapses. So let’s not build three-legged stools that underpin our civilization. Let’s get a lot of diversity and a lot of thinking more on the local level. That’s big pitch on that.
Nicki: Okay, let’s see our… oh, our T-shirt review winner this week goes to Meghan Del Coral, she says, “It’s mother F#% time.” She said, “This Healthy Rebellion Radio Podcast is the greatest source of reliable information for the health and wellbeing of this cancel culture, plus participation trophy soft AF world. It’s about time someone told us to clean up our acts, put down the fork full of garbage, and actually take our health into our own hands. Robb is my hero, mine and maybe six other listeners. Keep up the salty talk.” Meghan Del Coral, thank you so much. Send us an email to hello@rebels.com with your T-shirt size and your mailing address and we’ll send you a Healthy Rebellion T-shirt.
Nicki: This episode and every episode of the Healthy Rebellion Radio this year in 2021 is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company, LMNT. Robb, I know we’ve talked before about breastfeeding mothers reporting that LMNT and increasing their sodium has significantly helped with milk supply. I wanted to read a review from Claire, one of LMNT’s verified buyers and she says, “This is such a good gift. The variety pack is one of my favorite gifts for new moms because it’s been so helpful in increasing my milk supply and keeps me feeling alert despite sleepless nights and no caffeine.”
Robb: Super cool.
Nicki: That’s really cool, and we’ve definitely… I know we’ve talked about this before and people have shared images of moms who have been pumping breast milk volume with LMNT and then with LMNT. It’s pretty impressive, so some good stuff there.
Robb: It’s gone like wildfire through these different mommy groups and it’s cool. Again, not a randomized control trial but when you’ve been beating your head against the wall or your breasts against the breast pump and you’re very attuned to what your production is. Then you tweak one variable and your production changes, shockingly, you-
Nicki: I mean I had to exclusively pump with Zoe because I had a really hard time getting her to latch. I ended up just exclusively pumping for-
Robb: Nine months.
Nicki: It was 11 months, and then I started having some other issues but if I had only known the sodium piece because you get desperate. It’s a hard road in those early months with-
Robb: Indeed, it is.
Nicki: … a baby. So anyway, I thought that was fun to share. Also wanted to let everybody know that LMNT has extended the free plus shipping offer, and the sample pack now includes all of our flavors. So you’ll get one stick pack of all seven current flavors, citrus salt, raspberry salt, orange salt, chocolate salt, mango chili, lemon habanero, and the rotten flavored. So you can try each flavor just by paying shipping, which comes to just $5 if you live in the United States. URL to grab that is drinkLMNT.com/Robb. That’s drink, L-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B.
Robb: Cool.
Nicki: Okay, questions, it’s question time. Our first one is from Leslie and she wants to know how much protein can one absorb per meal? She says, “Hi, I am a 70-year old female. Paleo and low carb for many years. Avid podcast listeners and book buyer, I love all of yours. I don’t want any more sarcopenia than I already have. I followed your advice and went on the keto gains macro calculator that recommends about 100 grams of protein per day, but I’m also working on lowering insulin by only eating two meals per day. Searching tells me that body builders think they can only absorb 30 grams of protein per meal. I eat berries, collagen, protein power, which is grass-fed, goat kefir and powdered multivitamins mixed together, along with four ounces of meat and two eggs for breakfast around 11:00 AM. For dinner, I eat four ounces of meat with some Amy’s organic soup and sometimes a salad. I’m not aiming for ketosis, just low carb. I could stand to lose a few pounds, but at five foot four and 135 pounds, at my age I am okay but I would like more muscle or at least not to lose anymore. Should I add a third meal for some of the protein or perhaps redistribute the protein amounts? Thanks.”
Robb: So this… man, this one has been unpacked a lot. I didn’t forward the show note, so I’ll dig in. There have been some great analysis on this. It was way back in the paleolithic of nutrition research that there was a suggestion that there was a protein ceiling at a given meal that you only absorbed a certain amount of protein and the rest was just wasted, that’s not true. We can absorb a remarkable amount. I’m not sure that anybody knows a total upper end. Again, are we talking about a small female, a large male? A bunch of different variables there.
Robb: There is a reality though that the frequency of protein eating does matter from an anabolic perspective. So the body builders scene recommending four to six small meals a day and spaced out, probably is optimum for muscle mass gain. Not everybody does it, other people are successful on less frequent feeding schedules but there is an anabolic stimulus each time you consume a decent wack of protein. Typically, above about 25 grams of protein to get enough leucine and branched-chain amino acids to stimulate mTOR and get this anabolic effect.
Robb: I think two meals a day is right at that bottom end for most people. I could make the case for two meals and a snack, which I don’t know if that turns into three meals or what exactly is going on there but again for aging folks, my bet is really on this… everything that you do to avoid sarcopenia is helping you to avoid everything else. It lowers your cardiovascular disease risk, it lowers your neurodegenerative risk. I mean, short of just going on a massive of anabolic steroids and insulin and everything to get as big as possible, we’re not really talking about that. But in general, the things that go into effective aging from a muscle mass perspective support everything else. So that’s where I think that focusing on the preventing sarcopenia muscle mass maintenance is such a cool place to focus because it’s a one-stop shop. You don’t need to worry as much about well, is my neurological health good? Well, are you sleeping well? Is your glycemic load appropriate? Are you getting adequate nutrition and what not?
Robb: So I could make the case that maybe an additional protein snack, particular on training days, maybe wouldn’t be a bad idea. On non-training days, maybe just stick with your two meals but if we see anything, like a reset, body composition shifts, magic just happens when people get adequate protein. 100 grams of protein seems pretty good but it’s also looking like a good amount of that protein is coming in the form of-
Nicki: Protein powder.
Robb: … protein powders. The collagen, although helpful, cannot count in your protein total. It can count in your calorie total but because it is so deficient in branched-chain amino acids, it’s not really helping on that side. So, what’s her name again, is it-
Nicki: Leslie.
Robb: Leslie, so if Leslie is getting 25 grams of protein in the form of collagen then she’s really only getting 75 grams of effective protein and maybe 25 grams of that is coming from her whey protein or-
Nicki: Grass-fed protein powder.
Robb: Yeah, so it’s skinny, potentially. So I would recommend more protein that you chew, definitely on training days a third meal, a snack or whatever it could be. Mainly protein or all protein or protein and some veggies if you want to do it, but I would lean that way for sure.
Nicki: Okay, our next question is from Matt on thru-hiking, backpacking, and the paleo, keto diet. Matt says, “I have been following a paleo diet for five to six years now and transitioned to a ketogenic approach at the beginning of this year. Since then, I’ve been able to maintain a much lower body weight than ever before in my adult life and my endurance and fitness levels and to a lesser degree, strength levels, have been better than ever before. These past couple years I have gotten more into thru-hiking and backpacking and have been planning some longer hikes and a longterm goal of doing the entire Appalachian trail.
Nicki: My question is, to your knowledge, is there anyone developing programs or templates on planning long hikes, primarily utilizing ketogenic and paleo foods? Everywhere you look when planning thru-hikes, the advice is largely the same. Granola, oatmeal, instant mashed potatoes, and candy for energy, but it seems obvious that six months on a trail requires primarily oxidative phosphorylation and ketogenic diet or paleo seems to be an obvious choice. Information done on this topic seems pretty slim, especially when it comes to planning and packing for at least a week’s worth of sustenance that would be necessarily when out in the wilderness. With as many ultra runners and endurance athletes beginning to tout the benefits of keto, I am wondering if there are any thru-hikers doing the same thing. I don’t know if you have addressed this in podcasts or blogs in the past and I just missed it? Seems like it could be an interesting topic.”
Robb: Yeah, so with not thru-hiking specifically but we did interview Gina Shively, the title was Fat Fueled Sheep Hunting. She’s a professional sheep hunter up in Alaska and she’s been doing this for a while. Went paleo, keto for some health related reasons, found that she was lighter, liked the endurance characteristics that all of this provided her. She also noticed that she needs to pack for a week or longer at a time because these are back wood events and the load that she’s carrying, she’s a little gal too. So the total load she’s carrying really, really matters. I forget what the difference was but I want to say that for a given period of time, whether it was a week or 10 days or two weeks, she was five pounds, 10 pounds lighter in her pack than what she was previously. Basically doing the bare minimum of protein and then different sources of fat. She would put in a little bit of extra variety because it gets pretty monotonous in the back woods just eating exactly the same thing, but.
Robb: Everybody bemoans the fact that fat has nine calories per gram, relative to carbohydrate, which has four. So from a packing perspective, that seems pretty obvious. You’re getting literally more than double the energy out of that, relative to what you would get with oatmeal or something. Could make the case for putting in a little bit of something like an oatmeal or rice or something that’s easy to fix because if you’re just packing fat-
Nicki: It’s hard to choke it down, if that’s all your… yeah.
Robb: It’s hard to choke it down, sometimes, yeah. Things like pemmican can be cool where you put a little bit ground nuts and stuff like that. So you just got a little bit of matrix in there for some mouth feel because I can eat a lot of fat but… also a lot of people with rendered fat, just liquid fats, they will get the whoosh effect from just eating spoonfuls of fat.
Nicki: You don’t want that when you’re out on the trail.
Robb: You don’t want that on the trail, yeah. So check out… that was episode-
Nicki: Nine-
Robb: Was it-
Nicki: Salty Talk episode 19.
Robb: 19, okay.
Nicki: Yep. Then also Matt, if you do, we want to hear how it goes when you do your-
Robb: That would be cool.
Nicki: … entire Appalachian trail. That would be awesome.
Robb: It sounds like there might be an opportunity to develop exactly these things, yeah.
Nicki: Yep, okay we have a question from Kyle on the Keto Master class and if he should recalculate his macros. Kyle says, “Hello, I’m hoping to ask a quick question about the Keto Master class. I am into my fourth week and feel and doing relatively well. I’ve got a spreadsheet where I track all of my food. I stay on track, although I do have a Perfect Keto whey shake for breakfast every day. Not ideal, but it’s helpful given my vocational and avocational commitments. Four weeks in and I’ve lost eighth pounds and I’m nutritional ketosis based on measuring blood ketones. One of the cookbooks I’ve picked up mentions recalculating your macros periodically. I’ve done that and it drops my macros slightly, based on weight loss to date. Seems reasonable to me but is this something that you also recommend doing?
Robb: Yeah, and I bet Tyler and Luis have a better answer to this than I do. Some of the rules of thumb and as Greg Everett would say, I’m not sure who this thumb guy is and what rules he came up with, but.
Nicki: Was it Tom Thumb?
Robb: Who knows? Yeah, but 10% body weight loss is a time to recalculate but again, that’ll vary. If somebody’s starting with a huge amount of weight to lose, then 10% may be a relatively easy thing to achieve, whereas if you have a smaller person… and so it gets a little bit variable on their… other people say just ride whatever you’re doing until it quits working. Maybe you go three weeks, four weeks and you don’t really see some scale change but more importantly also the tight pants test and measuring the weight.
Nicki: Body composition, yeah.
Robb: Body composition, because we have to keep a really steady eye on that. So if you lose body fat but at the same time you’re gaining muscle mass, maybe you don’t need to adjust calories down much at all, and continue to lose body fat. So I would say it depends a little bit. Again, this is something that maybe reaching out to Tyler and Luis, they might have a more ironclad answer to this, but I guess the two answers. A 10% body weight loss, then recalculate, and or just ride the pony-
Nicki: Ride it out until you stall.
Robb: … until it stalls, and then recalculate from there, yep.
Nicki: Yep, okay. It’s time for the Healthy Rebellion Radio Trivia.
Robb: Oh, man.
Nicki: I’m happy about my question because I was feeling this this week, but anyway. Healthy Rebellion Radio’s sponsor drink LMNT, is giving a box of LMNT Recharge Electrolytes to three lucky winners selected at random who answer the following question correctly. Robb, you’ll have to tell us if you Googled this to find out the answer, but. Do they still make Calgon?
Robb: I would say yes, because man, somebody’s got to take me away.
Nicki: I was writing, thinking of a question and that’s where my head went. I just was like, that-
Robb: Calgon, take me away.
Nicki: … commercial popped into my head, so. Okay, apparently they do still make Calgon.
Robb: Anybody not quite a boomer won’t have an idea of what this is.
Nicki: Yeah, and I’ll just call out Jessica, she probably doesn’t know what this is.
Robb: Jessica doesn’t know any of this stuff.
Nicki: Well, sometimes it’s so funny, in our internal team’s Slack channel, we’ll say something and she’ll be like… oh, what was it? Elizabeth said something about-
Robb: Bum-rush.
Nicki: … bum-rushing and Jessica was like, “What? What’s bum-rushing? Bum-rushing?” I’m like, you don’t know the expression to bum-rush? Apparently it’s a thing that you have be 40 or over to know and Calgon is probably also one of those things.
Robb: At least, yeah, yeah.
Nicki: All right, folks. To play, go to rebels.com/trivia and enter your answer. We’ll randomly select three people with the correct answer to win a box of electrolytes from our sponsored drink, LMNT. The cutoff to answer this week’s trivia and be eligible to win… oh my gosh, I put the wrong date. Let me find that really quickly. I did not update the date, is Thursday, March 11th at midnight. Winners will be notified via email and we’ll announce the winners on Instagram as well. This is open to residents of US only.
Nicki: Our fourth question today is from Becky and she has a question on pregnant or breast feeding and metabolic health. She says, “First off, screw any haters you get for your salty rants on the Healthy Rebellion Radio. More people with platforms like yours need to speak out. The hypocrisy, the nonsensical rules. Bars are open but kids can’t go to school. The suppression of seemingly effective cheap, wildly available prophylaxis and treatments is also infuriating and it’s so good to hear both of you question what is happening on your platform. So, thank you. I’ve unfortunately had to distance myself from a few health influencers that I once really respected, who have gotten very SJW and holier than thou this past year. So I’m thrilled that I finally started listening to your podcast and seemed to have found some kindred spirits. Definitely makes me want to join the Healthy Rebellion too, which brings me to my question.
Nicki: I am 37, I work out moderately, strength training two to three times a week, trail running or walking one to two times a week. Get lots of outside time, pretty good sleep, and eat 80-20 primal. I stick to whole foods but will indulge in ice cream, white rice, or other no-no’s on occasion. The primal eating with a focus on protein and fat has done wonders for my hunger and hangry symptoms, which used to be a constant plague. Who knew that a breakfast of Cheerios, skim milk and a banana did not a satiating meal make. However, I’ve always been about 20 pounds overweight and still feel the need to eat every few hours to avoid irritability, brain fog, and shakiness. This tells me I’m definitely not metabolically healthy, which is my ultimately longterm goal, although weight loss would also be nice.
Nicki: However, I’m currently six months pregnant with my second child, I plan to breast feed this little guy for around two years like I did my first who I weaned when I was about 10 weeks pregnant. In other words, I’ve either been pregnant or nursing now for the last three and a half years, pretty much ever since I discovered Wired to Eat and a more paleo lifestyle. Healthy pregnancy and breast feeding are my top near term priorities, therefore I don’t think doing something like going full keto would be right for me, but I would love to start the journey towards better metabolic health. Where should I start? Related to the Healthy Rebellion, I’d love to join but I’m not sure it will be worth it in the near term, given my current maternal journey. Are there resources in the Healthy Rebellion that would apply to pregnant or breast feeding mamas as well?”
Robb: Do you want to tackle-
Nicki: Thanks, Becky.
Robb: … that last one first?
Nicki: I’ll just say that we have lots of pregnant and breast feeding moms inside the Healthy Rebellion, and moms that are no longer pregnant and breast feeding but have a wealth-
Robb: Depth of wisdom.
Nicki: … of wisdom and lots of conversations around kids and all things female. We have a topic that’s dedicated to kids, we have a topic that’s dedicated to… we call it Rebellious Women but we talk about everything from birth control to birthing to pap smears.
Robb: HRT.
Nicki: Everything, mammograms, all of those types of topics.
Robb: We have a lot of doctors, nurse practitioners, running around in those midst too, so you do get differing opinions but it’s also not just an uninformed free-for-all. There’s some very smart people in there that we’re incredibly grateful for their participation, yeah.
Nicki: Yep, yep, so Becky, I think that if… and I also think it could be a great just supportive place to be as a mom with little ones. Sometimes it can just be all consuming, but having a place to go where you can have some adult conversation and a little reprieve could also be good for the sanity as well.
Robb: It sounds trite but a non-trivial number of people will just pop up in there and say, “I need to vent.” They will vent and they’ll get some attaboys and occasionally you’ll get a little bit of hear you, but you need to buck up in this situation and stuff. It’s a really interesting mix of what you get out of that and clearly self-interested on things, but.
Nicki: Support and tough love. It’s-
Robb: It’s good, it’s good. Very-
Nicki: It’s a good mix.
Robb: Yeah, very cool.
Nicki: Yep, but agree. I don’t think there’s any reason for you to go keto per se. I think focusing on real foods, focusing on protein, which is, if you’ve been listening for any length of time you know we hammer that all the time. I think you’ll do great.
Robb: I did provide a link if you scroll down just a wee bit. I love Lily Nichols, she’s a registered dietician that wrote Real Food for Gestational Diabetes, and then also Real Food for Pregnancy, which is the link here. It’s phenomenal and she gives you some rubrics for… So Becky, you’re mentioning that you still will end up in a hangry, brain fog kind of state. So maybe going full on keto isn’t the way to go, but there might need to be some tightening that happens. It’s good for you and good for the baby, keeping a more normal blood glucose profile. Lily’s program, her book, and all of her support material are phenomenal in that regard.
Nicki: Awesome. Then our last question this week is from Park and he has no issues. He says, “Hey, I’ve been listening to a variety of podcasts over the last 10 years and it’s always amazing to me how many people have issues with so many foods or can’t lose fat or have low testosterone, et cetera. Without sounding like a giant douche, I think it’s time we hear that someone has no issues and everything is fine. I’m 62 and I have no idea what my testosterone is or my LDL or any metric. I drink too much beer but despite this, I am lean and my libido is humming along nicely. I’ve done intermittent fasting for almost 10 years, I eat mostly paleo-ish and do compound movements three days a week. I realize it’s over simplification to assume that my protocol should work for everyone else, but damn, it’s so shocking that so many people seem to struggle. When people chime in with their protocols, are they not being entirely truthful? It seems that the basics should work more often than they do.”
Robb: Do you have thoughts on this one? I found this one really interesting. I have some thoughts, but-
Nicki: I know, and we have a big, long list in a document of all the questions that people submit and I’ve read over this one several times when putting together the episode. Then I finally, I don’t know what struck me on the day that I put these questions together, but I decided to include it. It’s tough because there’s so many variables that go into all of this. Some people were born with vaginal birth, some C-section, some were breast-fed, some weren’t. Some people were raised on a farm with lots of dirt and microbes and animals and played outside and worked outside their whole life. Some people were-
Robb: Well, and some people had none of that and they’re still-
Nicki: Fine, yeah.
Robb: … fire breathing savages.
Nicki: Some people were fine like you and then went to Mexico and got Giardia somewhere.
Robb: Was smashed, yeah.
Nicki: That changed the trajectory of your life. Some folks like Cybill, got bit by a tick and got Lyme Disease. A lot of people are suffering with things and they might now know the root cause.
Robb: It’s interesting, what this made me think of is Park’s profile is like, everybody who follows Layne Norton, Alan Aragon, there’s just this whole cross section of people for whom they have seemingly no GI issues or none that they’re aware of. Maybe they’re running around with them and in that culture, nobody asked these questions. I remember Layne was on Joe Rogan and he said something about eating pizza before doing a squat workout but he had to stop and take five shits beforehand, which I was like, okay, that just sounds like possibly a problem.
Robb: So, I mean it’s interesting and I remember Spencer Nadolsky at one point, he said of the folks that follow him, he’s like, “They’re just a worried well. They’re fine, these people are fine.” My friend Chris Erwin, who’s a retired Navy Seal, he looks super jacked, and he’s got some health problem. He talks about a lot where he doesn’t feel he doesn’t perform where he was once. It was just like falling off a cliff and it’s been a long road to get him back.
Nicki: I think that was an environmental toxin exposure, right?
Robb: It was a bunch of stuff. When you’re in the Seal teams, you get a massive amount of vaccines, which I’m not an anti-vaxxer but there are immunogenic consequences to this.
Nicki: Sleep deprivation.
Robb: Sleep deprivation, the lead load-
Nicki: Stress.
Robb: … that they’re exposed to is remarkable because of all the firing range time that they do. Usually, these guys are pretty good about taking the clothes that they have at work, washing them at work, not bringing it home but you don’t always have a perfect environment with that. But you look at heavy metal toxicity, you look at the traumatic brain injuries that these guys get from firing weapons, deploying parachutes, riding a Zodiac at 50 miles an hour over choppy water. Was it one of them, was it all of them, was it none of them? Don’t know, but in the eight years I worked with Naval Special Warfare, there were a lot of Seals that just to make it through selection, you are really, really different. You are really robust and when people break, they break big. The wheels just fall off the wagon.
Robb: So Park, I don’t have a great answer to this. I mean, on the one… the first thing that pops into my head is, this is a moment to thank your lucky stars that nothing is fucked up on you. I mean, honestly. The flip side of this is that I think that there are a lot of people that probably are struggling and if they stuck to some basics like whatever basic good nutrition is, like a protein-centric nutrition and largely whole foods.
Nicki: Whole foods based.
Robb: They sleep reasonably, they do a little bit of intermittent fasting, they resistance train a couple of days a week. That would fix an enormous number of things and it’s hard to just get people to do that.
Robb: But then there are people for whom they do those things and it still, it’s better than doing the alternatives but I think when you’ve had good health or maybe one day you feel pretty good and another day you feel like shit, you know that there’s something out there. I just don’t want to give up. I saw both of my parents largely give up on their health and it looked pretty horrible. So I’m of a mind to just fight tooth and nail the whole way, but it… Remember, I had a discussion with Tony Budding? He was the former media mogul of Crossfit-
Nicki: Of Crossfit Inc.
Robb: … way back in the day. I’m finally at a spot where I probably wouldn’t punch Tony’s teeth down his throat for many a time I would have, because the people in that scene that knew better like Tony, should’ve bowed out before they got pushed out, but that’s neither here nor there, but.
Robb: I remember Tony was interviewing Dave Tate of West Side Barbell. It was a good interview, but one of the things that was shocking was that Tony said something like, “Well, people deadlift more than they back squat.” Dave looked at him and he’s like, “No they don’t. Not elite power lifters.” Literally, Tony was dumbfounded, he didn’t know that the world record for squatting was greater than dead lifting because generally beginner and intermediates, that is flipped. Then when people become truly advanced, then the back squat is the heavier of the two, which shines a light on what huberosity Tony’s next statement was. I was given him what for, about some of the stuff and I said, “Tony, this stuff’s all well and good but studying what the elite do is potentially a dead end street for the average person. They have nothing to do with them.” He quipped and he said, “Well, I just find the needs of the elite to be the place to look at and blah, blah, blah.” I’m like, okay, you’re a dumb ass. So what, there’s no fixing that but there’s that thing too.
Robb: We had our good friend Charles who had an abysmal diet. Charles Savage, that we knew in our Capoeira days.
Nicki: He was your roommate when I first met you and we first started dating.
Robb: Wonderful guy and-
Nicki: He was a vegetarian and he lived on Arizona Iced Tea and brownies.
Robb: And jalapeno poppers from Jack in the Box. He had muscles on top of muscles.
Nicki: He was an excellent Capoeira player, super athletic.
Robb: So he-
Nicki: Lean, strong.
Robb: So his dad had suffered a heart attack at age 35, maybe 38, something like that. I’m like, Charles, dude, externally you have this great performance but internally this shitty diet may end up being a problem.
Nicki: Catching up to you.
Robb: So let’s try to clean it up. So he was so funny. We tried to get him to eat artichoke hearts and he’s like, “Wait, they’re called hearts?” I’m like yeah, and he’d go, “I can’t eat it.” I mean, he-
Nicki: I’m like, it’s a from a plant, dude. It’s not a heart from an animal.
Robb: He goes, “No, no, no, no, I can’t do it.” So we got him doing some whey protein and compositionally we cleaned stuff up and this dude that was already super lean, super muscular, he just started putting muscles on his eyelids and stuff. Then I noticed that all of the protein powder was bagged up next to the dorm. What’s up with this? He’s like, “Yeah, the chicks just aren’t digging all the muscles. I’ve got to pump the brakes on this.” I’m like, oh, you bastard, but this is a person who… very smart, he’s an environmental engineer, a great athletic performance, and could eat pretty much like a cockroach and more or less thrive on it. Again, I don’t know longterm that that’s really going to work out well. We haven’t checked in with him in a long time, so we should definitely check in with Charles, but that’s just another piece to this thing. It’s sometimes folks can just motor along and do great and then if and when things change, then you start having to do stuff more like my schleppy, broken down self. You have to be a little bit more careful about gluten exposure but I will say that-
Nicki: My mom had rheumatoid arthritis that we now think was onset due to toxic mold in the house that they lived in when I was born. They moved out six months after I was born, but that was right when all of her RA stuff started manifesting. So there’s also environmental exposures to things that can seriously trigger and change the course of somebody’s health too.
Nicki: So I don’t know, Park. I think like hat Robb said, thank you lucky stars that all is well.
Robb: I think I’ve mentioned it before when we worked as physical therapy aides. We would have people come in the clinic that had back pain, and they’re sweating and they can barely move.
Nicki: I know, and you were like, all of these people. This can’t really be that painful.
Robb: I’m like, they’re malingerers. I’ve had compound fractures, I’ve broken all kinds of stuff. It hurts but I mean these people, it looked like they were dying. I’m like, and they’ve got to slipped disk? What’s the deal with this? But I was a dick and what it was is I was really uninformed and un-empathetic to what that situation really was. Then I had a catastrophic back injury, and I mean I was maybe five minutes into that thing and I was like, oh my god, I get it. I hurt my back so badly that I was fighting to maintain continence. I could tell that I was close to pissing and shitting myself because you’ve so disrupted the nervous impulse, regulation of your pelvic floor that you’ll just void. I was like, oh my god, what a dick. That was one of the first things that I reflected on was what an absolute asshole I had been. I wasn’t a jerk directly to these people but I was just uninformed.
Robb: But again, from my experience, I had had compound fractures, I had broken this, I had done that. It hurt but it wasn’t this thing where I required assistance to move across a room. Then I hurt my back and I did. So things can change. So let’s hope they don’t, but if they do, we have a deep well of options to start exploring, which is both the benefit and the curse of this kind of ancestral health model. It’s an infinite pool and oftentimes we don’t know exactly where to start but that’s I guess some of the fun of at least staying in the fight and doing what you can do.
Nicki: That was a good ending to that, babe. All right, folks, I think that’s it. Anything else you want to share-
Robb: I got nothing.
Nicki: … for this week?
Robb: We may have one more podcast.
Nicki: We’re going to do… yeah, we’re going to try to get one more in here.
Robb: From Texas, yeah.
Nicki: I think we’re going to record it tomorrow. So, sorry if the intros are-
Robb: Nicki is super fucking ambitious on this, but we’ll see.
Nicki: Dude, yeah, we’re… I’m just trying. I’m trying to get it all done.
Robb: I may just take… So this may be the last one from Texas, because I may pull an Audible here and just take everything down. Just can’t do it.
Nicki: No, because I don’t want to have to do one right when we… I don’t want to miss more than one week. If we have to miss a week, and guys, I’m sorry if we do miss a week but we may miss a week, but I don’t want to miss two.
Robb: Okay, I’ll leave everything up.
Nicki: Okay, all right. Thank you guys for listening. Be sure to support our show’s sponsor and grab your LMNT sample pack just for the cost of shipping. Again, that’s one stick pack of all of our seven current flavors, citrus salt, raspberry, orange, chocolate salt, mango chili, lemon habanero, and the rotten flavored. Just go to drinkLMNT.com/Robb. That’s drink, L-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B. Yeah, thank you all for listening and we’ll-
Robb: See you all soon.
Nicki: … be back next week.
Robb: Bye.
Nicki: Bye.
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