Podcast Transcription: Everything You Should Know About Nutrition: Part 1: How to Lose Weight and Stay Fit

Ted Ryce: What's up my friend, and welcome back to another episode of the Legendary Life podcast. I'm health expert, Ted Ryce, and today, it's just going to be you and I, and we're going to cover a very important topic. We're going to cover what really matters when it comes to nutrition, so if you're reading blog posts and listening to podcasts and watching people on social media say different things about nutrition, and you're super confused, we're going to clear all of that up today.

So let's dive in, but well, I guess before I do, I need to say this, if this is your first time listening to the podcast, what Legendary Life is about, it's about breaking down science-based information so that you can learn the right way to lose fat, prevent disease, and live a longer, healthier life.

I'm still a little bit jet lagged, that 12-hour time difference, and if that's what you're interested in, then you're in the right place. And I want to tell you this, my Friday episodes are a bit different, I go into mindset, I go into personal stories and we develop a deeper relationship, but today we're going to be more science oriented.

So let's dive into it. What really matters when it comes to nutrition? So many people say so many things, it's not confusing for me, but I know it's confusing for so many people. It's like, oh, do keto, and you know what? You want to take it a notch up from keto, do carnivore, and then make sure you add in intermittent fasting and make sure you put in MCTs in your coffee, because MCTs are going to help you burn fat, and all these other things people say out there.

Carbs make you fat, insulin rises when you eat carbs and that's what really makes you fat, it has nothing to do with, you know, fat doesn't make you fat, or maybe, seed oils are inflammatory and the inflammation causes you to get fat, or there's toxins in the environment and the toxins make you fat because they, whatever.

So we're going to get into all of that today. If that's what you're into interested in learning, you're in the right place, and you want to listen to this entire episode because I’ve prepared something very thorough for you, but I'm going to keep it light. So don't worry, I'm not going to be quoting studies or anything like that or using big fancy science-y words to make myself seem like I'm really smart. We're not going to do any of that, I'm just going to speak plainly to you, because I believe I've mastered this information., and so far, I'm able to get results with myself and all of my clients with it.

So let's do this. What we need to do, first of all, is breakdown these categories and these things are separate. Nutrition has several different categories, and I'm going to name three. This is just how I look at it because I'm a very practical guy. I'm a very real-world, results oriented guy, because if my clients don't get results in the real world, I don't get paid, and it’s been like that for me ever since I've been in this business. So that's why I take the approach that I do.

What I'm saying there basically is I don't get paid to argue on the internet, to look smart, to give talks about nutrition. I don’t get paid to sell diet books, I don't have a diet book. So it might be different if a person makes their money that way, but I do not.

If my clients don't get results, and if I don't get results and I don't look the part, then nobody wants to work with me. And have you seen my photos lately? I'm looking pretty good if I do say so myself, I mean, my hair didn't grow back or anything when I lost all the body fat, but the veins are popping out on my abs, and I'm in the best shape I've ever been in, in my entire life.

I'm in better shape now than when I was in my 20’s. So that's where I'm coming from, and this is all based in science, although I'm not going to be quoting the research because frankly, I don't think that you're that interested in it, you just want to know what works and why it works. And if you've been listening to this long enough, hopefully I've built up enough trust for you to at least pay attention and test some of this out for yourself.

So let's get into the three different categories of nutrition: There is fat loss, there is nutrient optimization, and then there is gut health.

Now we could expand on this, but these are the three main ones, and the ones that I think are the most important and the ones that we're going to dive into today. And they're different, I want to say that again, they are different.

What might help you with gut health, may not help you with fat loss. What might help you optimize your nutrient intake may not help you with gut health or with fat loss, these are separate things and this is really important because a lot of the information that you're hearing out there now doesn't separate these things.

So let's talk about fat loss first: What do we know helps with fat loss?

Number one: Total calories.

If you bring up calories these days on social media, you just get attacked. Oh, do you believe in that ancient bullshit? We're not a calorimeter, calories don't matter, it's the type of calories that matter. We're going to dive into that, but that isn’t true.

And I just want to tell you this, for those of you who don't know me from a long time ago, I used to not believe in calories. I used to believe in carbs make you fat, and insulin is the driver of fat storage and disease, and so many other things. I was a low carb person before all this low carb stuff got popular. I was a paleo before paleo had the name paleo. And I've evolved, because I didn't get results with what I was doing.

So total calories: this is a fundamental principle that all animals, not just human beings, but all animals. You need to get more energy in than what you expend to get it, because we don't always have Walmart’s and Kroger's and Whole foods and Publix and Trader Joe's, we had to go hunt and work hard for our food.

And if you worked too hard for your food, if you hunted too many days and didn't find enough food, you starved to death, or potentially to death. And animals today, animals in the wild, not the ones fed in cages in zoos, but they have to do the same thing, they can't expend energy, they don't just do what they want. This is a thing that's programmed into their minds, into their brains, into their behaviour.

This is a fundamental thing, we need to get more energy out of the environment than we put into the environment to get the food, or we're in trouble. So total calories.

Now we're in a situation now, where we don't work very hard for our food at all, unless you’re like, well I put in my credit card information three times before I was able to use Uber eats to get my food delivered, so hard. Unless that's your idea of hard work, we don't work very hard for our food.

We're so disconnected from it, we don't even see the animals get chopped to pieces, like I did when I was in the markets in Southeast Asia, where you see the pig head sitting there and the body just chopped up, we're so disconnected from it. It’s all okay, but I’m just saying, total calories, this is a principle, it’s never going away.

If you take more energy in, then you're expanding, then you're going to gain weight, and if you're not exercising hard, or even if you are exercising hard and you're eating past over a certain point, you will gain fat.

In fact, so many people think it's hard to lose fat, it's not, it's quite easy. What's really hard is to help someone gain muscle without putting on too much fat, now that is hard. That is tricky, but losing fat is so simple and it really is so simple, and if you’re saying, it's not simple for me, I can't do it. Look, you just don't know what you're we're doing, it’s not a judgment, I've been there, but you just don't know what you're doing.

But total calories, it's the fundamental principle here.

Now, what's the next principle? Protein. Protein, because we don't want to lose just weight. Losing weight, this is a fundamental mistake that so many people make when they're trying to lose fat. They ended up losing weight, and do they know where the weight came from?

They assume it comes from fat, but where it really comes from is when people go on really strict diets and don't eat enough protein in particular, if you cut your calories too low, if you don't eat enough protein, it comes from lean mass, that means muscle, and if you lose muscle, it’s like losing money. It’s like losing the valuation of your business is less, or I guess the valuation of your house is less.

You’ve just lost, you lost muscle, that’s losing net worth. You messed up, in other words, and now it's going to be easier for you to put back on the fat, so easy, because muscle contributes to your metabolic rate, but beyond that, it contributes to your weight and bigger bodies can eat more food, can eat more calories.

So we want to make sure that we're really, we're working out, we’re doing resistance exercise, but since we're not talking about resistance exercise today, we're talking about nutrition, what do we do? We make sure we eat enough protein.

Because it maintains your muscle mass. A lot of what happens to my clients is they end up putting on muscle. I don't run a weight loss program. I had one of my clients, shout out to you Bassi, who gained weight, and she was freaking out on me.

She's like this isn't working, this isn't working, I gained weight. I'm like do a body fat test. Her body fat dropped from 26% to 18%. Huge drop, huge, but her weight went up. So again, resistance training, but making sure we're eating enough protein is critical.

Protein does a few other things: It helps you stay satisfied. In other words, if you're satisfied, you're not going to want to keep eating more, and a lot of people who maybe just eat a carb heavy meal, then you're like, you know, people say that about Chinese food. It's like, I ate Chinese food, but now, it's two hours later and I'm hungry again. So eating more protein is going to help you stay satisfied for longer.

Another thing that protein does: it has a high thermic effect of feeding. Now I know that sounds a little weird, but it just comes down to this. Whenever you eat food, digesting the food is an energy intensive process. Have you ever chewed some chewy meat and your jaw starts to get tired, you're working your jaw muscles

But even beyond that, your body has to work and release hydrochloric acid, release digestive enzymes, like amylase to digest the food, and then it needs to assimilate it in your small intestine. It’s energy, it takes energy, it’s work, all work takes energy, that's just a fundamental thing.

And so, protein takes more work to digest, and you may say, well, is that really a thing? Is that really relevant? Is that a big enough deal? And the answer is yes, because what we know is that, if you eat a carb heavy or fat heavy, or carb and fat heavy meal and low protein, about 10% of the calories that you ingest get used up to digest the food.

But a protein heavy meal can be up to 30%, so let's just use some sample numbers here. So if I eat a thousand calories, but the meal was mostly carbs and fat, about a hundred calories are used up in the digestion and assimilation of that meal, but if I'm eating a protein heavy meal, 300 calories, so 300 calories get used up, so it's a big deal.

Another thing is that: as we get older, we need more protein. We start to experience what's called anabolic resistance, so we need more protein. And I know that goes counter to some of what's said, and we're not really going to talk about that right now.

Some scientists, and I use that term real loosely, will say that protein actually predisposes you to cancer, and we're not going to talk about that right now, but I will tell you this, people are dying mostly from heart disease, and heart disease is mostly from a lack of exercise and too much body fat.

So had you bet on higher amounts of protein, because the protein causing cancer, the protein cancer connection, that's not solid, but everything that I'm saying about sarcopenia, in other words, the age-related loss of muscle that solid. People dying from heart disease and lack of exercise that solid. So where are we at? We’ve talked about total calories, we just talked about protein.

Now let's talk about carbs versus fat: the arguments rage on the internet, carbs versus fat, but the truth is it doesn't matter much for fat loss.

Here's what matters most? Do you like eating fat more or do you like eating carbs more? What I've found, the majority of people like eating carbs more, but here's what I do, I have my clients track their nutrition and we look at their choices and if they end up eating more fat, then we skew fat loss calories towards eating more fat, or if they eat more carbs, we skew it towards eating more carbs.

So what I'm trying to say here is, it really doesn't matter for fat loss. However, I will say this, carbs matter for psychological health, because carbs help shuttle the amino acid Tryptophan across your blood brain barrier, that helps you create more serotonin, which more serotonin helps you feel better

And low carb diets, if you Google ketogenic diet and panic attacks, you'll read a lot of anecdotal reports from people or stories in other words, of people having panic attacks because they went low carb, that happened to me. I had some really bad time following a very strict, low carb diet. So, it was also low calorie, which adds additional level of stress to your body.

So carbs do that, carbs also fuel performance: So if you're only lifting weights three times a week, and you're not pushing yourself that hard in terms of, let's say in terms of like you're huffing and puffing, you're just lifting some weights and you're working to muscular exhaustion, but you're not pushing yourself, that, that hard. Well, maybe you can get away with eating less carbs.

You would have to experiment to know, because some people feel a lot better when they eat carbs, like me, but I do Brazilian jujitsu, I do Muay Tai and, and there's no way I would try any of that without eating enough carbs.

So carbs fuel performance, they also have an effect on your psychological health.

Now fat is a bit different: Fat is connected with hormonal production, so you do need some of it. In fact, what a lot of the low carb crazies say, is that, oh, you don't need carbs, you can live without carbs, but you can't live without fat, and that's true.

There's something called rabbit starvation: It's just a term, because during, I think the exploration of America, these guys were trying to live on rabbits, and ended up dying because the fat content of their diet was so low that you need fat to survive.

However, you don't need that much and certainly carbs can improve the quality of your life, so when people say you don't need carbs to stay alive, that's true. It's just, staying alive, surviving isn't optimal, we want to thrive.

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We’re back to the fat situation, fat does help with hormone production, but you don't need that much of it, and there's certainly nothing healthy about going out of your way to pour olive oil on your food or coconut oil in your coffee. If you're adding fats to your diet, because you think it's helping you, you're just adding more calories and getting fatter most likely and causing your health to get worse.

So we'll talk about this because nutrient optimization is different than fat loss, because you can lose fat in an unhealthy way, can't you? Get thrown in jail in Thailand and get fed, like a Thai diet, you're going to lose weight, like crazy, but it's because you're in prison and you're not being fed enough.

So does that make sense? It's kind of a silly example, but it's true. Or get stranded on a deserted island, like Tom Hanks in stowaway, every single one of you right now would lose fat.

Every single one of you, oh I just can't lose fat. I don't know, maybe my slow metabolism, bullshit. Go get stranded on a deserted island for a week, where you're eating insects and drinking coconut water, and having to work hard for your food. You will lose fat.

This has already been figured out, it's just that it's really hard to do it in the modern food environment. That's what your struggle is, not anything else, not pre-menopause, post-menopause, low testosterone. None of that is, not your age, not any of that.

Now, those things may have an effect on trying to gain muscle, but that's a totally different conversation. Fat loss is separate.

So the next thing beyond that we need to talk about is whole foods versus processed foods. Well, there is a difference here, whole foods are certainly better for you, but why? And why are processed foods not as good for you? And I will say this, I eat processed foods, I eat sugar every day, added sugar every single day, not the sugar from fruit, I have that too, but I have sugar every day.

I had a dark chocolate drink that is delicious, it's mostly dark chocolate, but it has about eight grams of sugar in every serving. I had two servings today, so 16 grams of added sugar. So you can get away with eating whole foods and processed foods, but we want to, and you know, and this is part of the thing, so many of us, we think, oh, I can't eat that, that's a bad food.

This is a healthy food, that's an unhealthy food. And the truth is, it may be better for you physiologically, but it's harder for psychologically, and the psychological aspect of nutrition is something that is really underappreciated. I'll talk about that more in a second.

So, what is the difference between physiologically whole foods and processed foods? Well, whole foods take more energy to digest, processed foods, like the name suggests, it's pre-digested, is processed. So it's easier for your body to get the calories out of the processed food.

So if you're eating a piece of pizza, versus eating a piece of steak and a potato, a whole baked potato, your body's going to work much harder to get the nutrition from the steak and potatoes, versus the processed food, which is just the pizza, just sort of melts in your mouth as you chew it, it liquefies easily. Are you thinking about pizza like I am right now.

So, the other thing about process food that's really important here is that: processed food stimulates your brain differently. Processed food, and okay, you probably know that, if you ever felt addicted to social media, for example, why is it that it's so hard when someone responds to your comments and you want to get in this conversation with them? What is that thing? Why do I feel so compelled to get back to someone I don't even know on social media?

Well, it's because it triggers your reward system, you get a dopamine spike. A specific neurotransmitter in your brain gets spiked, when you eat, I'm sorry, let's stay with the example. When you're on social media, that's why you feel so compelled to do it, that's why it's addictive. So processed foods have a similar effect on your brain.

And I want to give the example, now I use social media because it's something that we deal with all the time, every single one of us pretty much, but I'm going to give you another example that may be more than, maybe something that you don't have experience with, but it may help paint the picture a little bit better.

So cocoa leaves, I'm going to be on my way to South America soon, and cocoa leaves have been used to make tea for the people in the Andes to deal with altitude sickness, and also to help with energy levels, but somewhere, and it's been used for who knows how long? I don't know, hundreds, or maybe even thousands of years by the indigenous people in South America.

But, somewhere, I guess in the 80’s or 70’s, someone figured out how to isolate the compound in cocoa leaves and create cocaine. So nobody is shooting people or engaging in criminal or lascivious acts because of cocoa leaves, but cocaine, that’s caused a lot of trouble. And to take it a step further, cocaine has been processed into crack, which is a free basing, so you smoke it and it has an even more powerful effect.

And if you've ever been around, I mean, I'm from Miami, I've been around crack heads, and you see the devastation.

So look processed foods isn't crack cocaine, it's not cocaine either. And nobody needs to do cocaine, but we all need to eat, and we're all going to eat processed foods every now and again, but it's important to understand that processed foods affect our brain differently. It triggers our reward system. I mean, just think about it, I don't need to even explain it so scientifically.

Think about a whole baked potato with nothing on it, just a plain baked potato, or even better boiled potatoes. Do you have that picture in your mind? I want you to really picture this. Don't close your eyes if you're driving, or if you're running, but I want you to think about boiled potatoes.

Now think about potato chips, or if you like French fries, think about French fries, same thing, but it's been processed. Potato chips have been sliced thin, fried in oil to make crispy and added fat. French fries are crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and have been fried in fat.

So these processed foods, there's never going to be a time where boiled potatoes or a plain baked potato tastes better than French fries. Do you understand that? Do you get that. I mean, just thinking about it, just like so much better.

Milk is never going to be as exciting as ice cream. So processed foods, even thinking about these things, it's like, ooh, did you say ice cream? Oh, did you say, French fries? French fries with some salt and some ketchup, ooh, delicious. There's never going to be a time when boiled potatoes taste that good.

And that is because, think about it, did you decide that you liked ice cream more? Or do you did you decide that French fries were better? Why is it so common that people feel that way? It's because the innate wiring in our brain.

So the next thing we need to talk about. So we talked about total calories, we talked about the importance of protein. We talked about carbs versus fat. Now we just talked about whole foods versus processed foods.

The next thing we got to talk about here is satiety: This is very important. Satiety is, well, I'll say it like this, why do we eat so much? Two reasons, we're hungry or we're having cravings.

So hunger is when you need food because you need to fuel your body, because we all need to fuel our bodies. There's no one that can last without wating. I think the longest fast was actually quite long, towards the better part of a year, over like 300 days, I think, but that wasn't a very obese person, and it had to be medically supervised, the whole fasting experiment.

So if you're extremely obese, you can go with food for maybe a hundred or 200 or however many days, but we all need to eventually eat or we die. So we need to eat or we die, so that's hunger. Cravings is something different. We'll talk about emotional issues in a bit, but I want to talk about satiety, because this is super important.

It's not me just saying this because I needed to put stuff down to talk about, it’s super important. So satiety is, how do we manage our hunger? And sometimes, some of us think we have cravings, but it's really, we're eating foods that don't satisfy us. So there's a few things here.

Number one: having a higher protein intake will make you feel more satisfied than a higher carb or fat intake.

Now, the exception here is the ketogenic diet, ketones help with hunger, but that's a separate issue and I'm not going to go into the ketogenic diet because I'm not a fan. Most people can't keep it up, even if they like it initially, and I don't think it's optimal and there's just no need for being that strict. But I just wanted to acknowledge that, just to be thorough here.

So, if we're eating a normal diet normal, we're not trying to restrict any one macronutrient, like for example, cutting carbs, or even cutting fat so low. For eating a mixture of these macronutrients, how do we deal with this hunger issue? And it's really simple.

So we already talked about protein, but the next thing we need to talk about is whole foods. Whole foods are more satiating than processed foods: and think about that.

So processed foods, there's a saying for Lay's potato chips, I bet you just can't eat one. It's because you eat one and you're not satisfied. So then you keep eating another, and you’re still not satisfied, and then before you know it, the whole bag is gone and you’re still hungry.

So, that's not cravings, that's just processed foods inability to help you with your hunger, does that make sense? Inability to satisfy you? That's not really a craving.

A craving is like, I just got into a fight with my wife or husband, or like me recently, I was doing some emotional eating because I'm with my dad and I was getting a little stressed because his health is so poor, and I didn't have anywhere to put the energy, so I just went over to his, he's got so many snacks and all this candy and junk there. I was mostly eating nuts, but still, I was just emotionally eating.

So satiety is huge. Besides focusing on protein and whole foods, we can also focus on something called gastric distention. So what does that mean? The stretching of your stomach helps with satiety.

So the best thing here is to have, this is what I do personally, I eat soups. Soups are amazing for this, soups are absolutely amazing for this. So soup, you eat a larger volume of food because a lot of it's, water it's soup. And when I was in Thailand, and Bangkok, I was having a soup every day, I was having this amazing wonton and noodle soup called Bamee Slow, and it was delicious, I would have it every day, fresh vegetable broth.

Not only was it tasty and delicious, it also helped me not be hungry. So, having things like soups, eating more vegetables and making sure you're drinking enough water, drinking enough liquids, because sometimes we're dehydrated and what we really need is some hydration, but we eat food instead because we get water from our food, right?

Not from dry crackers, but if you're having yogurt, like I had for breakfast this morning, there's a lot of water in it, or if you're having fruit, a lot of water in it. So by choosing foods that help kind of fill you up, and have a high volume, and stretch your stomach, that helps too.

And this is not some stupid life bio hack, this is legit stuff that you can use in the real world and to make a difference, try it out.

Now, I happen to love soups, you may not, but sipping herbal teas throughout the day can help too. So these are the major things when it comes to fat loss and I was going to talk about emotional issues, but I think I'm going to cover that on a separate episode. I'll cover the nutrient optimization, gut health and emotional eating on separate episodes.

So I'm going to end this here, but I hope you got a lot out of today, and these are all things that you can start to think about in your life. Think about during your day, all the opportunities that you have to eat, during your mealtimes in other words.

Are you making the right decisions? Are you monitoring how many total calories that you're eating? Are you making sure that you're getting enough protein in. Do you do better on higher carb intake, or higher fat intake and making sure that you have less of the other macronutrient? Are you focusing on foods that help you feel satisfied or are you going to foods like potato chips, where you can't just eat one and you end up eating the whole bag and then you're still hungry?

Are you focusing on whole foods that will help you feel more satisfied, that will help you give you more nutrition, that will help fill you up, and focusing less on processed foods, but still having enough processed foods, enough desserts and things, so that you feel like you're not being so strict and depriving yourself.

So, that's really what matters when it comes to nutrition. Of course, this is just part one, and we're going to go into nutrient optimization. We're going to go into gut health and we're going to go into emotional eating in this. Now it's going to be a four-part series.

But I hope you enjoyed today, and I want to say this, if you're the type of person and you don't value coaching, and you're just here for the information, cool, use this information, keep tweaking, keep trying, and keep doing your best to get results.

But if you're a person, you're a high performer, you're financially stable, you're doing well in life, and you realize having a coach is what helped you when you were playing sports, or the mentors that you had during school, and you know that having a coach really makes a difference and you're spending way too much time and energy, trying to figure all this stuff out yourself, and you've listened to this podcast long enough to where you're interested in. potentially working with me and making 2020 the year that you get into the best shape ever, that you lose fat consistently, that you transform your body and ultimately kick some serious ass this year like you've never kicked ass before, or at least in the past decade or two, then what I want you to do is go to Legendary Life program.com/apply and apply for my coaching group.

I've got a group coaching program, I've got a one-on-one coaching program and people are doing great in both. Just wait until you see and hear the testimonials coming out of this group, this group of people that I have, that I'm working with for the past couple of months.

I'm organizing that and that'll be coming out, but just incredible results. Life-changing results, and if you never want to go back, if you want to learn the right way so that you can do this on your own, and never have to go back to another program or wonder like, oh okay, so I went and did that program, but now I'm wondering what do I do next?

If you want to never be in the position where like, okay, well, I don't know what to do next. Now, I guess I join another coaching program or buy another book. If you want me to help you level up so that you know what to do on your own, go to Legendary Life program.com and book a call with me.

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In fact, there's nothing to buy on the masterclass, there's no pop-up or anything like that, here's no offer. There is an offer to hop on a call with me only if you resonate with information.

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That wraps it up. Hope you enjoyed today. Have a great week and speak to you soon.