Andy Freebird: [00:00:00] Now, aside from cutting out liquid sugar is there anything else you would say is really important to watch out for, to that body weight?
Well, it, the number one thing, it always comes down to the total amount of calories that you’re People usually do this like per day, but you could look at this more in like, sort of a larger scale context.
Mm-Hmm. How much are you eating per week? Per month? Per year? Mm-Hmm. Because I guarantee that if you’re like eating the right amount every day and then the next week you eat double that it’s not going to be affected. So
That’s a good point. Yeah.
Yeah. And so what you want to do initially is to determine like, okay, how much food should I be eating?
Mm-Hmm. You could use a, calorie calculator online, but these are very inaccurate. Yeah. So the best thing to do is to start there. Use one of these online. They’re free. It’s gonna ask you some simple questions like, how old are you? What is your gender? How active are you? Mm-Hmm. And then it’s gonna tell you how much it thinks you need to eat to either stay the same weight Mm-Hmm.
Or you could eat a little bit less [00:01:00] than that and lose weight, or get a little more and gain weight. problem is it’s not really accurate. Yeah. So what you wanna do, try eating that much for a couple weeks. Stand on the scale. Are you the same weight as you were two weeks ago? Yeah. If you are, then it was right. you aren’t, then it wasn’t. And make a little adjustment. And then you’ll find pretty quickly exactly how much you should be eating.
[00:02:00]
Andy Freebird: What’s up y’all? Welcome back to another episode of the welcome back.
Master Victor: back.
Andy Freebird: Andy and I are here to talk about nutrition today nutrition’s role especially in
Master Victor: in recovery
Andy Freebird: how important it is get proper, know, vitamins, minerals inside your body, after your workout. Let’s get right into it. I guess we can first talk about the essentials of the macronutrients and micronutrients Mm-Hmm. And the role rehabilitating your body after an exercise. Sure, yeah. What would you say, I guess, would be the, the biggest ones to focus after intense I think that’s a great question. Mm-Hmm. And to start with, I’m just gonna very simply break down. I. What macronutrients are and what micronutrients are and what the difference is for those of you who are not familiar. So, macronutrients are the main components of the [00:03:00] food that we eat. There are three main components, which I’m sure everyone’s heard of, carbohydrates, Fats, and proteins.
Micronutrients are the vitamins and minerals that you need in your diet, and that’s also very important for a lot of the things
Master Victor: for a lot of the things
Andy Freebird: Hmm. So when it comes to recovering from exercise, the most important thing is gonna be to ingest protein. To rebuild the damage to your muscles that takes place When you’re exercising. So your muscles are made out of proteins and a need to accrete more proteins, not only to heal, but also to grow bigger. Carbohydrates are also very important after a workout because you’re burning that carbs as fuel while you’re working out and you wanna replenish it afterwards so that you have more
Master Victor: fuel use
agaiN
Andy Freebird: And I would say fats also, healthy fats are important because you’re gonna need that. In order to build, for example, the cell walls, the actual lipid wall is made outta fat. So eating fats is a very important part of your diet too. And your body can use fat for energy as
Master Victor: for energy as well.
Andy Freebird: And what would you say [00:04:00] micronutrients from a recovery standpoint?
I think we talked about last time that vitamin C mm-Hmm. Is this essential for recovery? You know, vitamin D is important for your immune system. You know, calcium is important for development on recovery of your bones. Really I would say that if you want to be the best possible version of yourself, you wanna make sure that you cover all your bases in macro and we can get more into that down the road, but the best source of micronutrients is still gonna be food. So, you know, you can take supplements from micros Mm-Hmm. If you want, you can take a multivitamin and that’s great, but food is always gonna be better. Would you say magnesium and potassium would go into that micronutrient group?
Yeah. So now we’re getting into what electrolytes. Okay. And we can talk a little bit about what electrolytes do. Okay. And basically allow the mitochondria, which you might be familiar with, you know it right? Ah, yeah. The powerhouse of the cell. Uh-huh. So they actually help power the mitochondria and there’s actually, it’s called electrolyte because it’s by electrical.
Yes. Actually stimulating electricity. So those [00:05:00] electrolytes are potassium, sodium primarily, and those are gonna modulate how much water is going into the cell. Mm-Hmm. And how much of that water is going into the blood. And that directly correlates to, you know, the size of the muscle, because you know your muscles mostly made up of water.
Yeah. As it bulks up, you need to be able to take in water into Yeah. So if you have those electrolytes, more readily get the water into your muscles. That’s a good point. I’m glad you brought that up also, because carbohydrates have this when you eat carbs, most of those carbs are gonna be stored in the actual muscle tissue.
Some of it’s gonna be stored in your liver.
Master Victor: liver.
Andy Freebird: Interesting. But you can even kind of think of it by combining like, you know, sodium and carbs together with water, you’re gonna hydrate a lot better because it’s bringing that into the tissue. It’s not just circulating through your blood, it’s actually bringing it
Master Victor: bringing it into the cells.
Yeah,
Andy Freebird: like when you get extremely dehydrated and you know they give you that IV. It’s got electrolytes essentially. Yes. Sodium’s in [00:06:00] there Mm-Hmm. Yeah. I actually went to a hot yoga class the other day, sweat more than I knew I was capable of sweating. Just to give a little background, I have sweat a lot in my life.
I’ve expeditioned to Amazon. I’ve like, you know, we, wrestled in the Florida heat, like, I regularly meditate in like a 200 degree sauna. This thing’s so much harder. Oh, so much hardeR But right afterwards I drank, immediately drank at electrolyte drink. Okay. To replenish that. Yeah. What would be some of the pros and cons of supplemental aids? you’re not getting those macro micronutrients. I guess what would be some benefits of taking a supplement or I guess the negatives of it too. Yeah. So some supplements you can’t really like take too much Typically what we call water soluble vitamins. So these are vitamins that are actually circulating through your blood. Mm-Hmm. And they don’t really have like a storage organ per se. Whereas we have fat soluble vitamins. These actually are stored [00:07:00] in your liver tissue. Hmm. Right. So like B vitamins for example, are gonna be stored.
I believe in the liver. So with the water soluble vitamins, like vitamin C,, all the excess that you consumed, you would just excrete through your B Yeah. Through urine. Mm-Hmm. It’s the vitamins. A, D, E, and K are the ones that you wanna make sure you don’t consume too much of. And I wouldn’t just assume that you’re deficient in something. Right. Like if you’re concerned about that, you might have a deficiency, you should probably go get some blood work done. Hmm. Go to your doctor and see if you actually do need to maybe raise something up. ’cause you may even have an issue with your gut that makes it difficult to absorb certain nutrients.
Yeah. It may be essential that you actually take supplements.
Master Victor: take supplements.
Andy Freebird: sense. Absolutely. And you know, let’s say especially lately there’s been a
Master Victor: been a big
Andy Freebird: uptick in people having reverse osmosis filters for their water so that way they get clean water and a lot of these reverse [00:08:00] osmosis filters, which is essentially passing water through a membrane a you leave dirty water behind and you have perfectly distilled water that has no nutrients And then a lot of these filters will re-add minerals back into the water. Yeah. You know, what, what would you say is like. important nutrients or minerals that are in the water we and require. That’s a really good question actually. So one of the problems with filtering water Mm-Hmm.
You know, even if you’re not using reverse osmosis, ’cause most of us are not gonna be doing that at home, but if you have like a Brita filter or something like that, is that depending on how much you filter that water, it may actually be completely deficient in electrolytes, vitamins, and minerals And if you’re drinking too much water, hypo hydrating, you’re actually excreting all of those that you have in your body.
So you’re like getting increasingly depleted. You’re just diluting. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So you want to make sure that you add those electrolytes back in. Now you can go [00:09:00] online and you can get like electrolyte tablets. You can get like a solution with drop it in. It’s not gonna taste great. So a lot of times they put, stevia and flavoring in like a tablet.
Mm-Hmm. But in reality. Actually sea salt, specifically like pink salt, like Yeah. It actually contains already all of the essential Yeah. Yeah. Like vitamins and minerals that you would need. Mm-hmm. Or sorry, micronutrients and minerals so I would just recommend doing that, Then you’re gonna get your sodium,
Master Victor: sodium, your potassium,
Andy Freebird: your mitochondria need to function properly. absolutely. Ice that in the morning. Just drink like a liter of water with like a couple pinches of sea salt in it. Yeah. Just to rehydrate. Yeah. And just kind of bring up the point about the Bretta filters.
They’re essentially a activated carbon filter that only removes chlorine, chloroamines, and heavy metals. They don’t do a really good job at actually filtering the the water. Yeah, so if you’re gonna look at a water filtration system, you wanna look at at least a three-part filtration system, or even a three-part with a reverse [00:10:00] That way you properly filter all of the water. Get the contaminants out and you’re left with distilled water. Now you wanna make sure you don’t drink distilled water because I’ve done this by accident. We, we bought some water that wasn’t properly labeled. Oh. And you thought it was like spring water or something?
Yeah. And I could feel myself getting more dehydrated the more I drank it. And that’s exactly what we were just talking about. Yeah. Like my mouth felt drier. And you wanna make sure that you’re not ingesting that because it can actually take the essential vitamins out of your organs. Mm-Hmm. And then it’s gonna cause organ shutdowns.
Yeah. You’re in a whole different mess. And not acutely, but like over time on time, Deficient in everything that you need. And this gunning segues into the importance of hydration. You know, like how important would you say it is to not only stay hydrated, to maintain that, especially during an intense workout.
That’s a Okay. That’s a really good question. People love to give general recommendations about how much water to drink. [00:11:00] Probably all seen those bottles that are like, have the times on them. Yeah. To encourage people to drink water. That’s better than not drinking water. There’s no real rule of thumb here because there’s so many factors.
For example, what conditions are you training? Maybe it’s really hot and humid. Well, you’re gonna sweat a lot more. Yeah. So hydration, usually you’re gonna want to match that to like sweat loss. Mm-Hmm. Sweat loss can be really hard to measure though. Especially if it’s evaporating off your body. It’s not like you’re sweating into a bucket and then weighing it.
Yeah. You know? So typically they say like, drink the thirst. Mm-Hmm. Right. And they also say that by the time you feel thirsty, you’re technically already were dehydrated a little prior to that sensation. Yes. What I would say is like
Master Victor: is like
Andy Freebird: the most important thing is just to make sure that you’re drinking water that actually has electrolyte content in it.
Mm-Hmm. Because we were talking about. We’re not trying to drink water, we’re trying to hydrate, and that’s different. Yes. Drinking water just means it’s going in your stomach. Mm-Hmm. Hydrating means it’s going into the cells and allowing them to
Master Victor: them to perform work.
Andy Freebird: In that regard, something that’s kind of strange is that actually milk has been shown in [00:12:00] clinical research to be superior for hydration. Then not only water, but all sport drinks like Gatorade, Powerade, all that And it could also be that it’s just a better version of it, essentially. just carbs know, electrolytes, fat protein. Yeah. And so it’s going into the body like a little bit more Yeah. Yeah. I, I’ve seen a study on this where, there were testing the effects of these different drinks on an athlete while they were exercising.
So they would essentially do their maximum amount of pull-ups. And then drink water. Mm-Hmm. And do their maximum amount of pull-ups and then drink Gatorade. Yeah. And the study showed that actually, like chocolate milk was, was superior, had the biggest effect. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Where, you know, it has all of those different things.
Mm-Hmm. But different vitamins, fats, proteins, which the Gatorade and water does not because Gatorade only has carbs. There are no fats or proteins in it. Your body actually wants those other macros in real time as you’re training. Yes. ’cause it, it’s using them as energy.
Master Victor: energy. Mm-Hmm, exactly.
Andy Freebird: [00:13:00] this is especially important during extended training sessions where I.
You’re doing high-intensity training and you’re exerting a high level of energy. If you’re not hydrating, you’re gonna start to feel lightheaded. You’re gonna dizzy. And that’s not only gonna affect your training, but you could end up hurting yourself. Where you get your body to the point where it doesn’t want to take in anything, you’re gonna start puking and it’s gonna be an endless cycle of Mm-Hmm.
You puking and not being able to ingest water, and then you’ll have to go to the hospital and get keep it down. I’ve actually had that happen to me. It’s horrible. Don’t put yourself in that situation. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you want to know your limits. If you’re starting to feel Lightheaded, get some water immediately.
Yeah. Immediately. Yeah. Yeah. There’s a couple things I’d like to say about that. Yeah. You pointed out just now, it’s like, it’s not just about the extreme end of this where you can end up like hospitalized from dehydration, but it’s also about performance benefit. Mm-Hmm. Even just being this much dehydrated is gonna affect your ability to think clearly.
Focus, move reactively. So if we’re [00:14:00] trying to be as optimal as possible, we wanna stay optimally hydrated. Second thing I wanted to say was that the best way to actually tell how hydrated you are is actually to look at your urine. Now, people will say that, you know, urine should be clear if you’re hydrated, this is not true.
Your urine should because you run the risk of hypo-hydration. clear, you may just be over-consuming water. Yeah. If it’s any darker, then very, very light yellow. And also, keep in mind, when you pee into a toilet, it’s diluting the color. Yeah. It’s going into water.
Yeah. So I want you to look at the shade that it is, and imagine that it’s actually a shade darker than that. Yeah. If it has anything more than the palest yellow, you are dehydrated and you should immediately drink water or some kind of beverage that has electrolytes in
Master Victor: in it so it can get in your body.
Yeah.
Andy Freebird: And if it’s perfectly clear, you need to put some electrolytes in there immediately too. Yeah, yeah. Good point. So both. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And then let’s say timing of meals. Right? So, a lot of people struggle with portion control and when to eat. They’ll eat dinner and then two hours later come back [00:15:00] for another Would you say that there’s kind of like an ideal, or it varies per person, per situation on when to eat their
Master Victor: their
Andy Freebird: It’s a little bit of both. Hmm. Like there kind of is an ideal, but what’s ideal for a person is what they’re gonna do and what works. So some people strive for perfection. Mm-Hmm.
But it’s not really something attainable to them, and so then they just don’t do it at all. The best plan is what you’re gonna stick to. Yeah. Now, what is ideal from a standpoint of muscle growth and recovery has been shown in clinical research to be approximately six times a day. Hmm. That way you’re keeping a steady rhythm of what’s called muscle protein synthesis, where there’s this constant influx of new proteins to the muscles, allowing them to regenerate.
Most people are not probably going to eat six times a day though. So really the total amount of calories, the total amount of food you eat per day, you can split it into any number of meals you want. Mm-hmm. Some people only like to eat one meal a day. It typically more meals throughout the day is gonna be [00:16:00] something more like a bodybuilder would do to try to put on
Master Victor: to try to put on mass.
Andy Freebird: And condensing your meals into less meals that can often help a person lose weight. Hmm. Right. Think about like intermittent fasting, for example. Mm-Hmm. You just have a smaller window of the day in which you eat. So it’s harder to con, you know, consume a lot of food in that smaller window.
Master Victor: window. Yeah.
Andy Freebird: So it’s almost essentially like grazing. Yeah. And I think also you want to think about how this goes with training because you wanna make sure that when you eat a pre-training meal that you give yourself enough time for it to digest. You’re not feeling it slosh around in your stomach while you’re trying to, you know, spar with someone.
Right. Or come up. Yeah. Or come up and then you wanna replenish that stuff like immediately after. So you wanna like. Think about, okay, going into the meet up to work out, you know, I’m gonna need more carbohydrates for energy, some healthy fats coming outta the workout. I’m gonna need a more protein rich meal to rebuild So one of the things that we learned in high school for football was that carbohydrates you need to eat them the day before [00:17:00] Is for them to have the optimal effect. And then during the exercise sugars, Proteins are kind of more readily available and easier to break down. Yes. Would you say that’s, yeah.
So what Victor’s talking about is called carb loading. And this is really popular for endurance athletes because endurance athletes, they’re using almost entirely like. Carbohydrates and, and combined with oxygen. Mm-Hmm. In order to produce the energy they need to, to it’s essentially a slower method of producing energy, but it’s kind of has a, it’s more efficient, it’s more potent.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s way higher in efficiency. So what you could do, like I said earlier, you’re storing those carbs in all the muscles in your body. Mm-Hmm. So what you could do is the night before or the day before a lot of carbohydrates, but you would want to consume complex carbohydrates. Mm.
Which means that the molecular chain is more complicated than what we call a simple So sugar is also a carbohydrate. Mm-Hmm. But it’s typically just a very simplistic molecule, like a, maybe a disaccharide [00:18:00] molecule where you just have literally two stuck together. That’s it. But then a complex carb could be like a whole chain.
Mm-Hmm. Like a, you know, of glycogen. Those would be better for loading then, like right before you’re actually training or even during something that’s very simple like some honey or some fructose Yeah. That would give you even more energy. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s really important where, like let’s say after you eat dinner, you’re gonna consume a bunch of sugar.
That sugar, you’re probably gonna go down and sit down on a chair. It’s all, it instantly gonna transition into fat. Where I prefer to take my sugar during an exercise or after an exercise to replenish the body. And then that gets processed in my body immediately and then used for energy where it’s not just sitting there.
I’m really glad you said that because honestly, kind of like a good rule of thumb with this is if you’re not about to use your energy, go for complex carbs. Yeah. If you’re about to use your energy, go for simple carbs. Go for sugar. Yeah. Don’t eat sugar and not move. That’s how you get [00:19:00] diabetes. That’s the truth.
Yeah. And like I have a big sweet tooth that I love. I love chocolate ice cream. Which one is it? Ice cream. Which tooth? All of them, all of them sweet teeth. Oh boy. That’s a problem. Yeah, it is. It is. I’ll eat a whole like plate of fudge if you leave it. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it’s bad. Okay. I’ll remember never to do that to be very adamant about, you know, controlling my portions,
Master Victor: portions.
Andy Freebird: that for a long time was a and it got me to, to a point where I had to be aware of desire, right.
That that mental desire of like this sugar is actually releasing endorphins and making me happy to ingest it. Mm-hmm. But it’s only temporary. Mm-Hmm. In the long run building fat, it’s gonna end up bleeding to diabetes and all these other issues that I didn’t want. yeah, yeah. That main issue is gonna be your sensitivity to sugar is going to start to get messed up if you’re overconsuming it and that’s what diabetes is and then your cells can no longer utilize Yeah.
[00:20:00] That sugar. Yeah. And this kind of gets into like managing your weight and body
Master Victor: and body composition.
Andy Freebird: I, I think one of the biggest things that I removed from my diet that had the biggest impact was liquid sugar, where like, oh man, sodas, juice Once I removed that, I saw a drastic drop in my weight Yeah. Do you wanna talk more about like, how to maintain that body composition and keeping off weight?
Sure. Well, it’s interesting that you pointed out that liquid sugar. It’s always easier to consume calories by drinking it. Everybody who’s had a you know, getting over food poisoning or something, maybe it’s like you don’t want to eat something, you’re going for like a smoothie maybe first. Right?
Yeah. It’s way easier to get a liquid down. Yeah. So in general, liquid macros are the things you want to cut out. So that’s going to be like soda, sugar, stuff like that. But it’s also gonna be things that are really high in liquid fat, which is oil. So like fried food, for example. The calorie calories from that.
And also like potato chips, junk food. Most of those calories are actually coming not from the potato. It’s [00:21:00] coming from all of the oil that they’re cooking it in. So, and not only is it like nobody’s sitting there drinking oil, but you don’t wanna I hope not. I hope not, but, but you don’t want to eat foods that have a ton of oil added to them because they’ve added those liquid calories into the food.
Yeah. It’s gonna be way more calories than it should Absolutely. That’s a good And what I’ve noticed is after really changing my diet, I’ve gotten pretty far away from a lot of these fried foods, especially deep fried foods. They have started to smell different to me. Hmm. Where I used to smell some fried food and I’d be like, oh,
Master Victor: be like, oh, let me go eat
Andy Freebird: I want some, And now it’s like, it doesn’t even smell like it would be
Master Victor: like it would be good for
Andy Freebird: you know? That’s really interesting because I noticed the other day like I don’t eat fried food very often. Once in a blue moon. Yeah. You know, that’s good. Gotta enjoy life, you But I noticed the other day.
Smelling, some, some roasted peanuts that all of a sudden it reminded me of McDonald’s. Huh. And I was like, why am I thinking about [00:22:00] McDonald’s? And I realized, oh. ’cause they fry everything in peanut oil. Yeah. Yeah. As soon as you walk in there, that aroma you’re smelling is actually oil.
Master Victor: oil.
Andy Freebird: Now, aside from cutting out liquid sugar is there anything else you would say is really important to watch out for, to that body weight?
Master Victor: weight?
Andy Freebird: Well, it, the number one thing, it always comes down to the total amount of calories that you’re People usually do this like per day, but you could look at this more in like, sort of a larger scale context.
Mm-Hmm. How much are you eating per week? Per month? Per year? Mm-Hmm. Because I guarantee that if you’re like eating the right amount every day and then the next week you eat double that it’s not going to be affected. So That’s a good point. Yeah. Yeah. And so what you want to do initially is to determine like, okay, how much food should I be eating?
Mm-Hmm. You could use a, calorie calculator online, but these are very inaccurate. Yeah. So the best thing to do is to start there. Use one of these online. They’re free. It’s gonna ask you some [00:23:00] simple questions like, how old are you? What is your gender? How active are you? Mm-Hmm. And then it’s gonna tell you how much it thinks you need to eat to either stay the same weight Mm-Hmm.
Or you could eat a little bit less than that and lose weight, or get a little more and gain weight. problem is it’s not really accurate. Yeah. So what you wanna do, try eating that much for a couple weeks. Stand on the scale. Are you the same weight as you were two weeks ago? Yeah. If you are, then it was right. you aren’t, then it wasn’t. And make a little adjustment. And then you’ll find pretty quickly exactly how much you should be eating. Now the, something important to consider when doing this is, let’s say you’re exercising, doing especially weight training, and you’re doing this, you might see an increase in your weight because you’re gaining muscle.
And you might have actually lost fat. Yeah. And this kind of gets into that. Measuring specific body parts might really utilize
Master Victor: during
Andy Freebird: and then for, for managing body weight, one of the [00:24:00] portion control things I’ve kind of implemented is if I’m not exercising, I will, like very intuitively, but also intentionally eat less because I’m, I’m not using or outputting that so I don’t need to intake, even though I’m be just as hungry.
And the more I exercise, the hungrier I get, the more food I want to put in because I’ve exerted that So, you know, during my rest days over the weekend,
Master Victor: the weekend, sometimes
Andy Freebird: Try not to eat as much, where on the weekend you want to go enjoy yourself, you might eat like two dinners and two desserts and stuff like that.
And that might out all that good work you did that week. ’cause you put in all this fat, all this sugar in all the, at the same time. Yeah. And you’re resting and all that’s getting transferred into body Yes. Yeah. I take a very similar approach to Victor actually. I base what I’m eating and when I’m eating it around my training.
So if I’m not training hard that day, I don’t eat to eat as much food [00:25:00] and I’m gonna change what kinds of food that I’m eating based on my recovery Mm-Hmm. So for example, I was very inactive physically yesterday, so I only consumed yesterday I think around a thousand calories. But on other days I consume as much as 3000, 3,500 calories.
If I’m burning a ton and maybe if I use my muscles a lot, I need a lot more protein that day to recover. Yeah, absolutely. And let’s say like you exercise, you’re really sore the next day. What would be something that you To kind of reduce that soreness.
Master Victor: soreness.
Andy Freebird: Okay. So we did talk about vitamin C last time.
Mm-Hmm. Will help with that. Hydration is extremely important. Mm-Hmm. Without it, you’re not gonna deliver anything to the muscles that allows them to heal. So proteins gonna be number one there. Yeah. But something that I really recommend people is to add additional leucine to their protein. Mm. The first thing you wanna do is you wanna pick a protein that already is high in leucine content.
Just to tell you a little bit about what leucine is, Proteins are made out of smaller [00:26:00] pieces called amino acids. Mm-Hmm. Now your muscles are made of protein, but the amino acid that they’re primarily made of is leucine. Mm-Hmm. And different proteins have different compositions of amino acids. So the proteins that are highest in leucine are gonna be the best ever pair in your muscles.
Mm-Hmm. Those proteins are gonna come from animal products, primarily milk and eggs. Mm-hmm. To a lesser degree, but still pretty good is gonna be meat, like chicken and beef and that kind Now you can take leucine. Refined. Mm-Hmm. And add it to that. So what you could do, the highest bioavailable protein would be whey protein isolate.
Mm-Hmm. Extremely high in leucine. And you can take leucine, which you can get isolated and add it to that. Hmm. Take that as a supplement in a shake. And I would add carbohydrates to it. I would suggest maybe mouth a dextrin. It’s like more of a like starchy carb, but like powdered, right? So you can digest it easily and quickly, but it’s not giving you that like immediate sugar rush, like a simple sugar [00:27:00] And that complex carb is gonna help, like I said, bring it into the muscle because it needs to enter the muscle to store that energy. It’s gonna actually help synergize bringing the protein, bringing the leucine into that muscle to repair it, to heal it. Now I’ve heard that you can also add vitamin D to this combination.
Mm-Hmm. Help stimulate that even more. Yes, absolutely. And I would also recommend in addition to that, collagen peptides, because it’s not just your muscles, we gotta recover. It’s ligaments. Yes. Connective Now, if, let’s say you’re a vegan or vegetarian, and you don’t ingest animal proteins Mm-Hmm.
It’s extremely important for you to get more than one kind of because the, proteins that you get out of plants, they’re more basic. So they’re not as complex proteins, and you need to get a variety of them in order to complete that entire
Master Victor: that entire protein
Andy Freebird: combination. Yes. So let’s say you’re taking a protein and it only has, pea protein, then you need to be ingesting something else that has [00:28:00] maybe pea protein, nut protein. know, pumpkin seed protein, flax seed protein. There’s an endless list of them. So make sure that if you are. or vegetarian, you’re ingesting different types, at least three different kinds of proteins for you to complete that combination. Mm-Hmm. Otherwise you’re gonna be really kind of starving yourself in that protein Yeah. I’m glad you brought that up. Because you can actually eat foods that do not have complete proteins. Meaning they have most of the amino acids, but not all of them to complete the protein chain. And then your body can take those pieces, take those amino acids and actually synthesize proteins out of it.
Mm-Hmm. And put them together. So when it comes to eating plants, very few plants have what a complete protein. Mm-Hmm. Or like peanuts, for example. They don’t actually contain complete proteins, but they’re mis missing, I think it’s a thionine, if I’m not mistaken, but that’s so abundant in other foods.
Yeah. That your body will simply add it [00:29:00] with it. Yeah. Creating proteins out of it. So when it comes to vegan proteins. The highest bioavailability you’re gonna get is gonna be hemp protein, if I’m not mistaken. Yeah. Actually, surprisingly, potato protein interesting is almost on par with like milk and eggs.
Oh. However, potatoes are so low in protein content, it’s not really effective to like isolate a protein powder outta potatoes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So when it comes to like supplementing for vegans, keep in mind you can get leucine and o and the other branch chain amino aminos, isoleucine, avalian. You can get those vegan.
Hmm. They can make it outta sunflower. Hmm. And I would highly suggest doing that. And I would also say if you’re vegan, definitely take protein powder. Because if you eat meat, there are foods that are almost entirely protein. Mm-Hmm. Right. Like a chicken breast that’s like a hundred percent protein. Hmm.
Lean cut of beef, almost entirely protein. Mm-hmm. But there’s no plant like that. Every plant is either predominantly gonna be carbohydrates or fats in its macro [00:30:00] profile, and then some of ’em have some proteins, but without adding protein, you’ll never get to the protein levels that a meat eater would get to pretty easily.
Yeah. And I wanna talk about also vegan collagen where, you know, if you take, normal collagen, it’s, it’s already
Master Victor: it’s already
Andy Freebird: collagen. Right now. The vegan collagen is essentially helping the body stimulate the
Master Victor: the natural production
Andy Freebird: Huh? You’re not ingesting that’s derived from animals.
Right. So, you know, as you take
Master Victor: take
Andy Freebird: vegan protein, you also wanna take
Master Victor: to take. vegan
Andy Freebird: helps your body stimulate that Interesting. Yeah, I didn’t know that actually. Now I’m gonna have to look into that. Because endogenous production of collagen would be great. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
You’ll add that into what I’m doing. there’s a link between, meditation and your pineal gland helping stimulate, melatonin. Mm-Hmm. That can also help of [00:31:00] oh, collagen and Well, so I know a lot of recovery happens while you’re sleeping and melatonin is part of the sleep cycle.
Right. It’s responsible for that REM stage of sleep. So that doesn’t surprise me. Yeah. Yeah. ’cause there’s also, you know, the pituitary gland is close by, which produces growth hormone, which again, you release during sleep. Hmm. If you’re not sleeping, you’re not recovering, so you’re not gonna get that HGH production.
You’re not gonna get that peptide production. Most of your muscle recovery happens while you’re sleeping. We talked about protein synthesis. Yes. Most of that’s happening when you’re
Master Victor: that’s happening when So
Andy Freebird: would you say
Master Victor: would you say is that sleep to your
Andy Freebird: Paramount. Yeah. Paramount, I might even say that sleep is more important than training or nutrition.
Yeah. Like that’s your square one. Because if you can’t do that, you’re not gonna recover at all. I don’t care what you’re eating or how you’re training. Okay.
Master Victor: Okay.
Andy Freebird: And is there any, I guess you mentioned the growth hormones. Would you say like saunas on your growth hormones? Yeah, so saunas exposure has been [00:32:00] shown, I believe the study I looked at was 30 minutes per day to dramatically increase the synthesis of growth hormone.
Mm-Hmm. To such a degree that it’s almost like getting younger in a sense because as we get older, we produce less and less growth hormone. Mm-Hmm. Until some people produce virtually none, and that really impacts their ability to recover.
Master Victor: recover. Yeah.
Andy Freebird: Did you say, would you say that like ice baths also has a role in recovery?
I would say ice baths has a role in recovery in the sense that it can reduce inflammation and probably over time make your nervous system less sensitive to Interesting. If you can learn how to relax in extreme cold, extreme heat and just overall find comfort in the discomfort Mm-Hmm. I would think that that has kind of a cascade effect of exciting recovery.
’cause your body’s just more relaxed. It’s not stressed out all the time. It can do what it wants to do. Instead of feeling like it’s in fight or flight. Yeah. And diverting all of its resources toward that. Absolutely. And, you know, the inflammation correlated [00:33:00] to soreness where Mm-Hmm. If you exercise a muscle, ripping, it’s tearing.
Your body’s gonna send a lot of blood there and it’s gonna itself and you want to do the ice bath to essentially reduce the level of soreness. But I’ve also found that. maybe not necessarily directly after injury or let’s say the exercise is bringing heat, like sauna or, oh, definitely hot tub allows more blood flow to get to whatever area you’re dealing with
Master Victor: dealing with and actually
Andy Freebird: the rehabilitation.
You wanna speak about that? Yeah. So when it comes to like icing an injury, it’s usually we would want to do that when it’s like just happened. Yeah. Like an acute injury. And often when that happens you don’t have access. So unfortunately, when I’m out doing something, I mean, I smashed my shin trail running last week which I’m actually happy about.
I’m always happy when I get a shin smash ’cause I know it’s gonna get a little stronger, you know? But I didn’t have ice. [00:34:00] Yeah. Meanwhile, when I end up using ice on injury, it’s usually ’cause I like. Winged my elbow into the wall and by accident, you know, in my apartment. Yeah. And then I get an ice pack out.
So you wanna immediately put it on there to reduce that swelling. Mm-Hmm. But when it comes to actually recovering from the injury Mm-Hmm. What they’re finding is that ice doesn’t really seem to do a whole lot, like directly. That’s why I said with like the ice bath, it’s more of like a cascade effect.
Yeah. But heat seems to like, directly actually improve it. Like you were saying, that improve blood flow. Mm-Hmm. And I think also the supplyability of the tissue, it’s more able to like, you know, expand and contract and move uninhibited when it’s hot and has that blood. Yeah. Very recently actually experienced that.
When I hurt my knee, we were, we were climbing, I jumped down from bouldering patella moved outta place. Mm-Hmm. Immediately I went and got an ice pack, put it on there helped reduce the swelling that I got. soon as I got home, I started introducing
Master Victor: introducing
Andy Freebird: I took a Epsom salt bath.
I have a, a heat pad I put on there and we’ve been going to, you know, sauna [00:35:00] hot tub and introducing that heat and that. Created a lot of blood flow. what I’ve noticed is when it’s hot, I can move easier. and this goes for, you know, this is why we warm up. brings heat and blood flow into the muscles.
Mm-Hmm. And allows for easier movement where like if I’m sitting here and I get up, everything’s gonna feel all, Yeah. Especially the joints. Exactly. The knee is your articulation point. Exactly. So that, that’s really important in rehabilitation where if you have sore or
Master Victor: you know, you
Andy Freebird: experience an injury, you got a bruise or a broken hand, you might actually wanna add
Master Victor: add some
Andy Freebird: and
Master Victor: and.
Andy Freebird: Yeah. That’s a great point. Use anything that you can, you know, if you don’t have access to a sauna Mm-Hmm. Or a hot tub. Do what Victor did. Take a Epsom salt bath at home. Get a, you know, a hot pad you can put on there. You can get an electric one or a water one. Doesn’t cost much at all. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:36:00] Kind of going back to the
Master Victor: to the nutritional
Andy Freebird: know, when you’re taking in all these different nutrients, these different meals, you know, how important is your gut health to and to your
Master Victor: and to your health
Andy Freebird: Extremely important. Mm-Hmm. That’s [00:37:00] going to determine how effective your body is at actually breaking these things down into a state in which they can be absorbed.
Mm-Hmm. And then delivered to the target area of the body, and then utilized by that target of the body. If your gut is super inflamed Mm-Hmm. Or if you have like a huge growth of, you know, candida and you’re having all kinds of, you know, gas and bloating and everything, I guarantee your body is not optimally going to be able to absorb the nutrients you’re
Master Victor: the nutrients you’re
Andy Freebird: And I, I think that’s something a lot of people sometimes ignore is
Master Victor: is
Andy Freebird: gas. You know, where you’re putting something into your system. And that gas is your body telling you something. Yeah. Hey, I’m not able to properly digest this. So it’s creating the best thing. Yes, this happens for lactose intolerant.
I’m lactose intolerant whenever I cheese, you don’t want to be around me the next few hours ’cause it can be farts. So I’ve severely reduced my, know, lactose intake and I felt a lot better. [00:38:00] I, I can eat more and not feel as full and bloated. And would you say that like probiotics and taking probiotics is necessary or has Well, it has an effect, but as to whether it’s necessary is kind of a case by case basis. So for those of you that don’t know, the reason that certain foods give you gas is that there are, you know, mechanical ways to break down food like chewing Mm-Hmm. And your stomach actually kind of like mechanically churns as well.
That’s why grumbles when you’re hungry, then there’s chemical ways to break down food. Like the acids in your stomach. Mm-hmm. Right. The enzymes it’s producing. So if you aren’t lactose intolerant. You produce a la an enzyme called lactase. Mm-Hmm. And this chemically breaks it down. But if you don’t have that, it ends up in your gut.
And what’s gonna break it down is the bacteria. Mm-Hmm. That live in your gut. Now, the bacteria in your gut, some of them are trying to help you, some of them aren’t. And in this particular case, the bacteria, they’re gonna eat that lactose, they’re essentially farting inside you. They’re producing that gas as a waste product that then [00:39:00] you are gonna have get rid of.
Which is really weird to think about. Which is really weird to think about. Yeah. Yeah. So some people would benefit by probiotics, some people wouldn’t. Mm-Hmm. Right now we don’t have a great way to determine exactly which strains you want. Mm-Hmm. How, you know, what population size you need or anything like that.
Yeah. So I don’t personally take probiotics. Mm-Hmm. I have taken them in the past. If they work for you, great. Just, it’s hard to kind of make a calculated decision about how to go about it. Yeah. You’re almost kind of taking a shot in the dark. Like I would say you’re experiencing a lot of stomach pains a lot of things aren’t working for you.
You might want to try, it may benefit Mm-Hmm. But you wanna look at, know, how, how many of those bacterias are in what you’re taking. Like some of ’em may have a million, some of ’em may have a billion in that colony. Mm-Hmm. And the number will have a very big effect, especially in how it’s [00:40:00] stored as well.
Yeah. Like, let’s say you have, you’re drinking kombucha, which has naturally occurring, know, beneficial bacteria being produced in it as long as it’s made well. Mm-Hmm. Versus likely you take a little pill that’s been sitting on a counter for That may not have the same effect as a live Yes. Yeah. And I’m glad you brought that up because I wanted to speak a little on foods. Mm-Hmm. That naturally are probiotic. So a lot of fermented foods, they already contain these probiotic strains of bacteria. By the way, probiotic just means pro-Good, right. Con-bad cell, good bacteria. We want these ones.
Yeah. They already have them in it. ’cause they’re thriving off of the food they’re eating the food. So one of the ones that I recommend to people is a particular kind of yogurt it’s called Kafi. Kafi. Yeah. And I drank kefir every day for maybe a month or two. Mm-Hmm. And after that, my ability to tolerate a much wider range of foods increased.
It was like I could almost eat anything. And [00:41:00] my gut was never uncomfortable at all. So it did seem to have some effect of optimizing my gut microbiome. And that, for me was a lot more effective than the time that I had tried taking. Actual capsules. And before I took those capsules, I did a lot of research.
Mm-Hmm. You know, how many CFUs do I want? Which strains what I looked at. A lot of clinical research didn’t feel any different. Hmm. But the kefir for me was very effective. So, you know, find out what works for you. Absolutely. And you can meet, you know, kimchi that’s also probiotics in it,
Master Victor: in it.
Andy Freebird: kombucha, I believe Skir also does.
It’s another fermented yogurt for it’s Icelandic. Okay. know. Mm-Hmm. And we’re getting kind of into creating a sustainable diet now where, you know, a lot of people jump on this trend or this fad that’s
Master Victor: fad that’s coming around.
Andy Freebird: let’s say like keto for example. Oh, yeah. And, or, you know, [00:42:00] calorie counting, weight Watchers, and they’ll do it for 4 months.
They’ll essentially change their entire way of They’re not necessarily happy with it. They feel hungry all the time, or they don’t feel very happy with what they’re doing. And then they’ll just go right back they’ll, they’ll lose some weight. Right. And then you, they’ll go right back into their old habits.
Yes. And then all that weight comes back Yes. You wanna speak about like, to create a sustainable habit and avoiding these kind of fad traps? Yeah. I think the first thing I wanna say is I want to illustrate the importance of doing that by just explaining that the vast majority of people who lose a significant amount of weight, like more than 15 pounds, the vast majority of those people gain it back within the
Master Victor: back within
Andy Freebird: And the reason that they. Relapse. Like this is like how Victor is saying, their model they created to begin with was not sustainable. So the two things are, do you actually enjoy eating the food you’re eating? Hmm. Does it taste like [00:43:00] cardboard or are you excited to eat it? Yeah. And the second thing is, are these foods
actually filling to you?
Hmm. Are you feeling like you are satiated? Or are you going through your day feeling like you’re starving? Torturing yourself. Yeah. Yeah. ’cause if it doesn’t taste good and you’re starving, I guarantee you’re ready for relapse. So if you’re out there listening to this and you want to lose some weight, I want to tell you, you can definitely do this.
And it’s actually easier than you might think it is. But you need to go into it with a mentality that if you don’t enjoy eating the food that you eat and you don’t feel full from it, you will absolutely relapse. Mm-Hmm. And I, I think it’s a better approach to remove small things from the diet and then see their effect.
See how you’re dealing with it. Like for me. One of the first things I removed, like I was saying earlier, was soda. Mm-Hmm. Like, I, I would drink 3, 4, 5 cans of soda a day. you know, that has so much sugar in it. Yeah. And just from removing [00:44:00] soda from my diet
Master Victor: diet
Andy Freebird: did drastic effects. And I go out of my way not to drink soda.
I probably, the first time I drank soda was maybe a month ago. Mm-Hmm. At a movie theater. And I was like, I, I want to get a movie theater, and popcorn. It’s classic. You. Yeah. I hadn’t been in a movie theater in a year, so I got myself a big soda and I, I could taste the sugar in every single sip.
I was like, I don’t know how I used to drink time. It when you’d stop drinking soda. Mm-Hmm. And I’m curious if you experienced this. ’cause I also once in a blue moon, my guilty pleasure is Coca-Cola in the glass bottle. You gotta open it with the bottle opener. Okay. But you know, once in a blue moon, once every few When I was young though, I drank a lot of soda. I know you did When I drank a soda, when I was young, it felt refreshing. When I drink a soda. Now once you quit drinking soda, it’s like syrup. It feels and tastes like syrup. Not like a refreshing liquid. Yes. So you experienced that too?
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I, I much now prefer seltzer. [00:45:00] Mm-Hmm. Just because it, it’s, it does the same thing. You get the carbonation, it’s refreshing, it’s cold. Don’t seem more refreshing. Yeah. And you don’t get that sugary feel. Mm-Hmm. So you still kind of, you feel more hydrated and you don’t feel like it’s,
Master Victor: like it’s,
Andy Freebird: you know, getting into your blood system, you know?
Yeah. It kind of like sends you up in your little jittery Yeah. And then it kind of crashes you back down. Yeah. I, I didn’t so much like that feeling about it. Yeah. Me either.
Master Victor: me either. Yeah.
Andy Freebird: So, you know, the best ways I would say to diet is look at what you’re eating. Find out what has a lot of fat,
Master Victor: of fat,
Andy Freebird: you know, start maybe reducing those things and, you know,
Master Victor: you know,
Andy Freebird: maybe you need to exercise a little bit more.
Mm-Hmm. Because that, that’s also gonna help burn those calories gonna help increase your metabolism where you’re burning off a lot of that excess energy in your body. Mm-Hmm. And creating balance between those [00:46:00] is gonna help you know, have a longer term effect rather than like all of a sudden you cut all this stuff out and then you can’t stand Yeah. You know, people, I think I brought this up before, they tend to wanna swing from one end of something to the other. Mm-Hmm. And that’s not really realistic. Yeah. It’s like you wanna kind of gradually make these changes so it feels So a couple things I wanna point out. Mm-Hmm. Is some foods are more filling than others, but actually have less calories.
So if you’re trying to lose weight, you want to gravitate towards foods that are very filling, but low in calories. Mm-Hmm. The foods that are the most filling and lowest in calories are the foods that are highest in water and fiber. So fruits, vegetables, leafy greens. Like you eat a few handfuls of spinach, you’re like, I’m good.
Yeah. But that was barely any calories at all. Now vice versa, you’re trying to gain weight. Do the opposite. Find the foods that are very high in calories. This is what we call caloric density. Mm-Hmm. All the calories are compacted. So like nuts, for example, seeds. Are the highest [00:47:00] density. Yeah. Right. You could just be eating that like all day.
Or like peanut butter even better. ’cause now it’s like processed in a way that’s easier to eat. Yeah. Almond butter, peanut butter. And you eat a few spoonfuls of that, you’re racking up the calories that just like, you’re not even close to full.
Master Victor: to full.
Yeah, that’s a good point. That’s a very good
Andy Freebird: And you know, a lot of people also have trouble, like when they go out to yeah.
In their social life creating a good routine and keeping it, especially when you go out, you know? Yeah. Would you give, want to give any advice
Master Victor: any advice on,
Andy Freebird: that or how to handle those situations? Yeah, so one of the things that you can do is actually eat before you go out, eat something at home or from a place that is healthy.
Mm-Hmm. And then when you go out, you know, it might be tempting to eat with the other people there, but go into it knowing like, okay, I don’t have to do what other people are doing. I have my own. Plan with my nutrition and diet, and the reason I’m really here isn’t to eat, it’s to socialize and spend time with my friends and enjoy being with them.
Mm-Hmm. You know, I don’t [00:48:00] need to like hedonistic, you know, eat a ton of food, even if they are, but it’ll be easier if you already go in satiated. Yeah. Don’t go in hungry.
Master Victor: in hungry. That’s a good point.
Andy Freebird: And for, you know, dietary restrictions, let’s say, you know, you’re vegetarian or vegan, there can be a lot of restrictions, let’s say, if you go to a steakhouse and have very little options.
Mm-Hmm. For, you know, vegetarians, vegans. So it’s about, you know, picking the right places to eat. Mm-Hmm. As well as, you know, being ready if they don’t have anything there, maybe, you know, you ate before you went Mm-Hmm. So you’re not as hungry, you’re not required to, you know, rely on that outlet of food.
Yeah. For, for nutrition the social pressures of other people eating. Especially like I’m personally vegetarian you know. I still crave meat. So when I go into situations where there’s a lot of meat,
Master Victor: lot of meat,
Andy Freebird: sometimes I get a craving. Yeah. And it’s about your determination [00:49:00] in not eating those things that you make a
Master Victor: you make a decision to. Like,
Andy Freebird: instead of ordering, you know, the,
Master Victor: the,
Andy Freebird: let’s say pound and a half steak, maybe you get the chicken if you eat meat.
Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. Or, you know, instead of ordering the really high fat dessert at the end of the meal, maybe you don’t eat dessert that day. Yeah. It’s about making like these small but really impactful choices in not only your private setting, but in your social I like how you just said that about maybe you don’t eat
Master Victor: you don’t eat dessert
Andy Freebird: cause a great way to maintain your weight is to think about the calories you eat every day currency. Mm-Hmm. Think about this, almost like you’re trying to be effective financially. So you have, let’s say, to maintain your current weight that Victor has to eat. 2,500 calories a day. Mm. And I think probably for you it would be somewhere between 2020 500.
Yeah. If you’re working out a lot, it’s gonna be more. If you’re working out less, it’s gonna be [00:50:00] So now basically Victor has $2,000. So if he goes and he eats the steak, he spent a certain amount on that. And if he goes and he eats the dessert, now he’s gonna be in debt. He spent too much money.
Mm. You see what I’m saying? Mm-Hmm. So make decisions based on that. Say, well, I really want to eat some ice cream today. I haven’t had in a long time. Then maybe don’t eat a bag of potato chips that day. Right. Don’t put all of these junk food things together, or you’re gonna quickly overconsume Absolutely. And you know, do you have your own customized diet plan that you follow at the moment? I do. So at the moment I’ve kind of been going more organically just. Kind of winging it. Mm-Hmm. Like at this point, I know what my body needs. I know what foods are healthy and aren’t, and I’m not trying to be the biggest, most muscular version of myself.
I, I’ve already done that. Maybe in the future I will do that again. Mm-Hmm. But when I was doing that, I did create a meal plan for myself and I put it on spreadsheets to make sure that I had exactly the quantities or percentages of macros that I needed. Mm-Hmm. Make sure that my sugar [00:51:00] level and sodium level was low enough.
Make sure I was hitting all my essential, you know, micro levels. Mm-Hmm. And yeah, it tasted amazing and I, it was really not filling ’cause I was trying to gain weight so I could eat a ton of it. And it was super effective. I, you know, bulked up during that diet plan 30 pounds. Nice.
During that bulk. Yeah. Wow. And you just mentioned something really important. I think a lot of people will sodium. Mm-Hmm. And they, like, sodium is important. You definitely need sodium, but especially when you eat meat, a lot of people put a lot of salt in their food. sodium can really dry you out it can have a lot of different effects especially, if you don’t have the healthiest diet Mm-Hmm.
Where it’s, you are gonna have problems going to the bathroom and having to push harder. And that can have different effects through your bowels. it’s really important to maintain
Master Victor: [00:52:00] maintain.
Andy Freebird: a moderate or low level of sodium in your diet so that you’re not experiencing problems in your digestive Yeah.
Yeah. So sodium is similar to water, kind of in this regard where it’s relevant, it’s relative to the needs of the individual. Mm-Hmm. And the athlete. So for a lot of people, if you’re like inactive, you’re probably over-consuming sodium. And as Victor said, it affects your health. That also affects your heart health.
So it’s important for longevity not to over-consume sodium. But if you’re an athlete and you’re sweating a ton, especially if you’re like an endurance, you do some kind of endurance training or a martial artist and you’re going long rounds of sparring, your sodium needs are higher. And you may actually, if you eat really healthy and you cook all your own food, you’ll become sodium deficient.
If you don’t add sodium, that’s Yeah. So make sure you add a pinch of ideally, like Himalayan sea salt to your home-cooked meals. If you only cook at home and you eat super healthy And you’re exercising I mean, personally my diet, know, I’ve modified it through the [00:53:00] years where I, I think the biggest things I’ve taken out or.
Is sugar. Mm-Hmm. Where I, I really only try to have sugar when I’m And aside from that, I try not to eat really high fatty you know, deep fried fried foods, chips, I save those for snacks. Maybe we’re going on a long drive know, I’ll have some potato chips. Mm-Hmm. it, it’s really restricting those things that I don’t necessarily need, but increasing the things I do. Mm-Hmm. know, leafy greens,
Master Victor: greens.
Andy Freebird: protein, especially different kinds of proteins because there was a while I lost a decent amount of muscle mass because I wasn’t getting Right. So I had to significantly increase my, my protein intake in order to not only maintain but increase my muscle So, you know, your [00:54:00] diet plan is gonna be extremely dependent on your lifestyle, on what you do. And you know, you can’t really create a generalized diet plan for everybody because everyone’s doing Yeah. And that’s where essentially someone like yourself that has a lot of experience and knowledge and nutrition comes in handy and saying, Hey, what are you eating now? What do you like to create a good plan that you are gonna stay to and actually commit to. Mm-Hmm. And that becomes really important. whatever plan that you decide to do, you need to commit to And you know it’s okay to step off a little bit, coming back to it is really
Master Victor: is really important
Andy Freebird: you know, you’re not straining off for like a whole month going on like a sugar binge. ’cause then yeah, that’s gonna have all of the negative effects.
And then you’re gonna be, I. And a whole world of her.
Master Victor: of hurt.
Andy Freebird: We all like sweets. I mean, like you said, yeah. All, you got a whole mouthful of sweet teeth apparently. [00:55:00] But there are healthier ways to go about that too. Yeah. So for example, like if people really like sweets, if you’re just eating candy all the time, Berries might not taste sweet to you, but over time they will.
Like for me, if I’m craving sweets, I’ll just eat like a handful of blueberries or like some strawberries or something like that. Just way long enough. There’s barely any fructose in that. Like you, the amount of blueberries you would have to eat in order for the amount of fructose in your body to be problematic is like astronomical.
Yeah. Even probably like the eating contest champion of Earth probably couldn’t even do that. Like Yeah. It’s mostly water. I think it was maybe I don’t know how long ago now, like eight years ago I actually ended up in the hospital for digestive so, my stomach produces. excessive amount of acids.
Master Victor: acids.
Hmm.
Andy Freebird: in turn, like that makes its way down my digestional tract I see. To and large intestines.
Master Victor: large intestines.
Andy Freebird: I was in taking a lot of acidic foods, soup, coffee [00:56:00] especially. one for me. Oh yeah. And it ended up treating stomach ulcers where I was having a lot of stomach pains whenever I ate almost
Master Victor: almost anything.
Andy Freebird: you eat your stomach acids increased to break down all that food. And I would feel indigestion, feel gas. And I also wasn’t taking enough fiber. overeating sodium and I wasn’t drinking enough water. I ended up going to the hospital because I became extremely constipated.
And I have hemorrhoids where I wasn’t able to, to push
Master Victor: to push because
Andy Freebird: so hemorrhoids is essentially, you’re the, there’s a vein inside of. Your rectum can swell up and like pressurize. Yeah. It becomes really painful. Yeah. Especially when you have a bowel movement. And I have internal and external hemorrhoids and I ended up having to go to the hospital so I could go to the bathroom.
Wow. Yeah. Wow. And it became this really big [00:57:00] situation where they gave me oxycodone and Oh man, I’m apparently allergic to oxycodone. Oh, no. It just keeps getting worse. Yeah. It became constipated, so I couldn’t pee. Oh. So I had to go back to the hospital and get a catheter to put in so I could pee. Oh no.
It was, it was bad. Wow. After that experience, I completely changed my diet. I was about to ask. Yeah. Like that’s probably a wake up call. Right. I’ve reduced my, my coffee intake to almost none. Mm-Hmm. Now I actually drink Rize, which is a,
Master Victor: is a
Andy Freebird: Like mushroom based coffee. It still has, those are pretty popular now.
It, it’s been working pretty well. Yeah. I, I definitely like it more than just drinking straight coffee. Huh. Because it’s not as acidic. Mm-Hmm. I can definitely feel it in my stomach. I see. And I reduced a lot of the Sodium, I increased my fiber intake. Now. Fiber really helps with, you know, your bowel movement and keeping everything together and allowing yourself to essentially push poop out of you easier. And so if you’re having [00:58:00] any of these troubles, you want to definitely lower your sodium intake, increase your fiber. Definitely watch the acidic food levels like coffee, Tomatoes. There’s a lot of foods that are acidic that we often neglect and don’t think about. Mm-Hmm. That, you know, as you build up and you’re starting to have these you, you might not be thinking about it.
And these foods that you’re eating are actually having a negative Yeah. Some people can’t actually feel that effect and some people can. Hmm. This is what we call it interoception. Some people have a stronger ability to sense what’s happening inside their body. Other people can’t even tell.
So they’re eating these foods and it’s damaging them. They don’t even know. Yeah. So I had kind of the opposite problem of Victor, which was that I had reflux disease. So rather than that overproduction of acid going down my, into my gut, it was going up into my esophagus. Ooh. Now, what ends up happening when that takes place is that the cells in your esophagus think, oh, there’s a lot of acid here.
We need to become more resistant to that acid. So they [00:59:00] start mutating into stomach cells. They’re supposed to be esophagus cells though. And when they start mutating into stomach cells, that accelerated rate of mutation Lends itself to the development of esophagus cancer. Oh. Because now you’re having the cell turnover is too high and the free radical potential is amplifying.
So I was also eating foods that were acidic that was causing this. Mm-Hmm. And by the way, this condition called Barrett’s esophagus, it’s considered precancerous, so it kind of starts reflux Barrett’s esophageal cancer. Oh. So I cut out tomatoes. That was one that was really getting me. Yeah. And I stopped drinking coffee for a while.
What I ended up eventually finding, you know, once the damage had healed was that the combination of foods you eat is a huge factor. Yeah. So there’s foods that are very basic and will actually kind of cut that down as well. So, for example, I like coffee. Mm-Hmm. If I put a shot of espresso with like some oat milk or something, I don’t feel any acidity at all.
You gimme some black coffee. No. Yeah. That’s gonna be bad.
Master Victor: be bad.
Andy Freebird: And that milk [01:00:00] cuts is, milk is basic. It’s gonna cut the level of acidity in your coffee and make it more tolerable. That’s something that Yes, they definitely experience too. Yes. Yeah. We’ve all seen you know, those like hot ones and stuff, you know, they’re eating like crazy spicy food.
And they, what do they eat? Oh, ice cream. Yeah. Or milk. Yeah. But even better, the ice cream’s cold too. Yeah. Yeah. ’cause that the fats in it will just kind of help that, bring that acidity down and like, cool. Everything back down. Absolutely. That’s, a very good point.
Master Victor: good point.
Andy Freebird: So kind of just to review a lot of what we’ve talked about so is, you know, if you’re having trouble maintaining or getting to a strict diet, you know, maybe don’t have such a drastic change where you look at the little things that you’re know, maybe you’re having
Ice-cream for dessert every night. it down to like twice, twice a week. You know? So on, on the ice cream thing. Yeah. It’s really, really, like, I love ice cream. Me too. Yeah. If I had like a favorite sweet probably that, maybe cookies is a close second, [01:01:00] but it’s So ice cream on cookies.
Well, that’s the, that’s the perfect Yeah. All mode. The problem is these foods are so tempting to eat that if you simply just have them in your house. It’s maybe you have self gets, like you have self-control till you don’t. Yeah. You know, I have pretty good self-control with that. I, I can put ice cream in my freezer, no joke and not touch it for months.
Then I’ll have that one bad day and that ice cream is gone in one sitting. Yeah. So only buy what you are, what you want to eat. Mm-Hmm. Buy smaller portions. Yeah. You want ice cream. Go get like a tiny like ice cream bar or something and just eat it. Yeah. You want potato chips. Get one of those little travel bags.
Don’t get the family-sized bag and think you’re gonna have self-control. That’s a good point. Yeah. Look, I love Oreos if I buy the family-sized pack, this family-sized pack. Yes. If I buy the tiny little roll, I’ll eat the tiny little roll. So you know, whatever I buy, I’ll eat and it’ll be gone in the Yeah, yeah. That’s a good point. And if you eat the family size, you’re gonna be family size, so. Yeah, exactly. And then I also liked, you said, you know, more the [01:02:00] gradual approach too. I. Because one of the things that makes a lot of these weight loss programs so unsustainable is how aggressively they cut calories.
Yes. And I’m gonna tell you right now, unless you have like a mind of iron that significantly reducing your calories is gonna drive you insane. Like you’re gonna be so grumpy, hungry, tired, I would never recommend a deficit of calories greater than 500 calories. Hmm. So we talked about how to establish where your baseline is, right?
Mm-Hmm. With using a calorie calculator in a scale, once you have that baseline, I’d recommend maybe just two or 300 calories below that. And if you can handle 500 calories below that, cool. Probably wouldn’t go any less than that. Mm-Hmm. You’re just gonna be miserable. Yeah. Yeah. And then you can incorporate exercises to help reduce that weight.
Mm-Hmm. You know, going on a run, maybe you’re on the bike, maybe you’re training martial arts, calisthenics, all of these things are gonna have that. Kind of [01:03:00] compounding impact on top of that diet where, you know, if you aren’t doing those and you’re just relying on the diet, it may take you a lot longer
Master Victor: a lot longer to see those, those
Andy Freebird: Totally. Yeah. So this is something that is important to recognize is the more calories you’re, that you’re burning, you could eat more food. ’cause ultimately it’s like you have kind of a, a hypothetical scale. How much energy are you using that day? How much food are you eating that day? Mm-Hmm. So if the amount of food you’re eating, ex Exceeds, the amount that you’re actually moving, you gain weight.
If the amount that you’re moving exceeds the amount that you’re eating, you lose weight. So one way to be able to be able to lose weight without feeling like you’re starving is just move more. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve tried both approaches. I’ve been incredibly lean before. I think, like I said, I’ve been down to probably five, 6% body fat, and I’ve taken an approach of just caloric restriction and I’ve taken an approach where there was more.
Cardio dominant. Mm-Hmm. And the cardio dominant approach had superior I would not base weight loss [01:04:00] entirely on dieting. Yeah. It really needs to be a combination of exercise and diet. I agree. I’ve had very similar experience. I’ve heard this from other people too, anecdotally as well.
Yeah. Yeah. And with that cardio, like I can eat sugar and not feel that same effect. Yeah. You know, and I’ve, I’ve actually noticed that, you know, the, the healthier I get doing my exercises, the less sugar and the less trash food I want to eat. Mm-Hmm. Because I’m starting to see those beneficial impacts in my life, and then I want to keep going.
Yes. You know, I don’t want to fall off and then go back to being, you know, a couch potato. Totally. Which I was for a while. So, you know, the more progress you make, the more you want to stay at it. And as long as it’s gradual, then it becomes a lot easier to, Yeah. Yeah. I definitely agree with that.
Like, it’s like you’re making an investment, you’re working hard, you’re building something. Mm-hmm. So the more that you build that, you’re not gonna wanna throw that away. It took this time and effort, you’re proud of it, plus [01:05:00] you’re gonna feel great, you’re gonna look great, and you’re not gonna wanna stop feeling or looking great.
Yeah,
Master Victor: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Andy Freebird: I think that pretty much covers like a lot of
Master Victor: lot of
Andy Freebird: the nutritional aspect and recovery. Mm-Hmm. Is there anything else you’d like to kind of throw in there,
Master Victor: of throw in there? like
Andy Freebird: I think the final thing that I would say is just
to the best of your abilities, try to try to avoid foods that are processed.
Yes. You know, minimal processing might be okay. Like if you want like some, you know, natural peanut butter or something like that. Like sure that’s processed, but Mm-Hmm. Ultra-refined carbohydrates and sugars like corn syrup and that kind of stuff. Try to stay away from it. The more real food you eat. The better.
Yeah. Th this kind of brings up a, an important thing I kind of forgot to mention, where, you know, the, the quality of food is extremely important in the nutrients that you’re gonna get out of it. Yeah. For example you’re, if you’re eating food that has been grown in soil that doesn’t have [01:06:00] a lot of nutrients and has been Oh yeah.
Using a lot of pesticides. Like you can taste the difference when you, you know, you eat really good organic food or let’s say even homegrown food. especially those of you who have, you know, gone outside of the country. Let’s say you’ve gone to Mexico, their food tastes a lot richer. Yeah. Like, I will eat about half the amount of food when I go outside of the country and it feels a lot more filling and it has a lot more nutrients because it’s grown differently where a lot of our agriculture.
Is meant to create mass amounts of food. Mm-Hmm. But it may be lacking in those
Master Victor: in those nutrition.
Andy Freebird: And, you know, there’s a lot of other ways of growing food that, you know, it retains it. It takes that energy from the sun, from the water, from the soil, creates healthier food. Yeah. So the quality of food that you’re putting into your body, the less processed it is, the better grown it is.
You’re [01:07:00] gonna see the impacts in yourself. You’re gonna be able to eat less food, you’re gonna feel fuller, and you’re going to feel healthier just by literally choosing the better option. Mm-Hmm. So, when you go to the supermarket, that’s step one is choosing the healthier foods. Definitely. Maybe you’re picking more organic foods for this reason where they’re not growing with a bunch
Master Victor: growing with a bunch of
Andy Freebird: and you know it’s gonna be better for you to put that in your body rather than all this other trash that Yeah, I a hundred percent agree with that. I guess I’ll point out like a couple of, maybe the most important ones to be mindful of would be strawberries, because this is gonna be the highest use of pesticides. So, you know, not everybody can afford organic groceries does cost more, but if you’re gonna eat strawberries, I highly recommend that you get them organic because otherwise they will inherently be absolutely covered, like just way more pesticides than you would find on most foods.
And the second thing is animal products. This also applies [01:08:00] to animal products, and I might even say even more so that if you’re gonna be drinking milk or eating eggs or eating meat, make sure guys get that from an animal that was raised properly, you know, outside, organically, given its proper feed, given space to move around.
Yes. Doesn’t have, you know, growth hormones and antibiotics and any of that kind of stuff in it. Yeah. It’s gonna be in their blood system in the meat. Yep. And you’re putting that in you, yes. Yeah. Yeah. It’s super important. Exactly. I think that pretty much wraps it up. If you all wanna learn more, make sure you subscribe.
We’re gonna be going into other aspects of recovery, and improvement. You can go to fairacademy.com slash you, check out more information, and we’ll see y’all in the next episode. Take care.
Master Victor: Good.[01:09:00]
