Nutrition Protocol and Book Recommendation

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: [00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared Moon here with Joe Courtney. Once again, so glad to have you back. It's a lot of pressure by myself, man. It's like quick turnaround. Yeah. I think you just got lonely. Yeah. You take some of the pressure off and I just be like, Hey, I don't.

I can't handle this. I need some help, but I'm glad I'm really happy to be diving into this stuff. So let's talk about what's going on in today's episode. We're going to do some updates again, just like what's going on. I want to talk about some training of my kids and some ideas behind what I've been doing there.

I'll update everybody with that stuff. We're going to be talking about some upcoming books that we want to read from people that I have previously interviewed on a podcast or talk to, and they have really awesome content, so we're not getting paid to push their new books or whatever, nothing like that.

We just, we're going to read some of these and we want to throw it out on the radar. I'm going to talk about some of the protocols I've been following lately just to become a better human, be fitter, all those kinds of things. I want to give that to the community. So you can maybe try tackling some of those things as well.

And then we're going to be talking about a book [00:01:00] briefly called real food, fake food that Joe read recently. I have not made my way all the way through it. Been reading a lot of stuff, but haven't. Finish that one, but I want to ask Joe some of his big takeaways from that one. So that's what we will be diving into today.

Let's start with updates, man. What's going on in your life training? Are you better? Is your foot, is your heel better? It's like your shoulder. Good. All the things that seem

Joe: to be falling apart. Really good. Like I, I don't think I've had much of anything and I don't know if it's because I haven't been pushing as hard, but I just shoulder actually feels really healthy.

I don't know. I started doing a lot more, my warmups have been a little bit more deliberate. I've been doing certain banded stuff for my upper body warmup and then lower body. I always do like a specific glute and like outer, the outer glutes warm up so that, cause I was starting to have a little bit of a groin or, um, hip flexor pain when I was doing some lower body stuff, but I've been doing those and yeah, everything feels.

Fairly buttery smooth for how well I can feel that is for even though my mobility isn't the best, [00:02:00] I think I ran like the day after we talked last night, I mentioned my heel and even though I'm getting another PRP injection in just two more weeks. It's still not. My heel spur doesn't feel that bad afterwards.

So normally six months ago, whenever I would run, I would be like limping around a day or two afterwards if I ran because my heel just hurts so much or I couldn't like even put my foot up on a cushion, the pressure of that would still hurt some but now it's pretty much fine. So I'm just getting the PRP just as another, double up, let's get even better because I need to really start running more and I'll be adjusting my programming to run more because of the.

Mile and a half test. I have coming and I just last 68 weeks. I've been dialing it back because of my heel, but it's good enough that when I can run, I'm not limping about it. So I'm all systems go at this point. So it doesn't really affect me, which is great.

Jerred: Yeah. And I think the biggest takeaway I hear when I've heard you talk about injuries or whatever is the fact that you're still doing something, a lot of people use as an excuse to [00:03:00] just go shut down and not train anymore.

So I think that's good on you to just even train. Yeah. Continue training through limitation. Just working around it. I think more people need behavior.

Joe: Get creative with some stuff. I had all kinds of things in the past, and when I first did PT back in like 2017, my back was really bad.

I remember and like when my low back, my hips were really bad. There was a lot that I couldn't do, but I just got a bit creative with what I could do. And I know even Long time ago, I had a hernia surgery and like the amount of you use your use for your abs. Yeah, it's killer. So like you have to like really isolate certain things that you can do.

And yeah, just. Zigging when you need to zag or whatever you just gotta be flexible and that's why I always have a cycle where okay, I'm just going to focus on this. It's not like every cycle. I'm not always trying to get super strong and super fit and all these things. Sometimes I'm just like, Hey, I'm just going to focus on this one area and that's going to be my primary thing that I work through.

And then I'll just sprinkle in some other stuff to keep balanced after [00:04:00] that. That's

Jerred: awesome. And yeah. I'm doing well, I'm not hurt, but what I want to update everybody one on was this is my new favorite workout to do with my kids. So doing death by 10 meter, either at your house or on a field. So if you don't know the workout, it's you.

It's like an EMOM every minute on the minute. The first minute you run 10 meters and then you rest the remainder of the time. And then the next minute you add 10 meters every minute. So the next one would be 10, 10. And it's like a shuttle run, right? It's down 10 back 10. So you only need 10 meters to be able to do this.

And and then you just go until either you quit or can no longer fit it in the minute. And the reason I really like doing this with my kids is because it's a way to get them running and do some serious conditioning that can increase their VO2 max, make them fitter without saying, Hey, let's go run two miles or run one mile.

Because if your kid is pretty fit, they can fit nearly a mile in this, depending on how far they go. So Graham, my middle child, he did [00:05:00] 16 minutes before he was like, I'm good. It was more of he's I'm tapped out and I think that turns out to being like 13, 50 meters, something like that.

And then I just went one additional just to beat him and show that I'm still the man. And I did 17, but it was pretty difficult for me. And so that is my new favorite workout. I highly recommend you getting your kids in. into doing that because it's like I said, it's just a sneaky way to add some conditioning.

If your kids want to do conditioning my kids are really big into fitness and sports and everything. So they're really happy to do those things, especially if I do it with them. So that is my new favorite my conditioning modality with my kids that I want to throw out there for other people who might be interested in doing something similar.

Joe: Yeah, that is a you can do that as the Air Force PT test. Now the basically the beep test. Is that right? Yeah, basically. Yeah. And I really want to do it because I'm pretty sure I could smash it just being an athlete and like you have the recovery, even though you only recover in the beginning, but I feel like I could totally smash.

I'm trying to find what the [00:06:00] actual stats are to see what, like where I would be or What, how many you can even what the score would be, but I can't find where the charts are, but I think that would be a lot of fun to do. But it's one of the things where I want to show up and be like.

Hey, let's do this shuttle test for the very first time. And then if you just like completely like whiff on something or some sort of technicality this is hammer shuttles. They're like giving really big numbers, but I guess it would be,

Jerred: yeah, my buddy is still active duty. He texted me about it and I forgot what the distance was, but he said it's pretty difficult.

He's pretty good shape. Like it's not easy to max out. It's he's there's like a big gap between doing well and maxing it out. Just like the mile and a half run, it's like doing getting a 90 or like whatever, not too hard, but like the max out time is okay, you got to run a six minute mile for mile and a half or something crazy.

So anyway, I think it's something similar there, but let's jump into some of the books that are coming up, man. You mentioned Alex Hutchinson has a new book. It's coming out or has come out, right? It's comes out in three [00:07:00] weeks. Yeah, so Alex Hutchinson, the reason I want to give a shout out here is because I've talked to Alex, he wrote the book Endure, and it's amazing, and I think it's very hard to make any kind of book about this category, health, fitness, strength, conditioning, interesting, and I'm not saying that all the books out there aren't interesting, but to have an actual like good book that's not just yeah, A step down from a textbook I think is tough.

And so he's a writer full time. Last I checked he wrote, writes for Outside Online. And he wrote that book, Endure, which is really good. It's like one of my top books. The four minute mile. That one is the other, like phenomenally written like fitness book, if you will. Very hard to do those things.

So that's why I'm really jazzed up for his next book. And you have the title pulled up? What? It's what it's called it's called The Explorer's Gene.

Joe: I had the, just for, let's see.

Jerred: It's like why we wanna do Hard things, Explorer, uncharted. Why? We see big challenges,

Joe: new flavors, and the blank spots on a map.

Jerred: Yeah. So I think that one will [00:08:00] be really interesting. Just throwing this on people's radar. And then another person who I interviewed coming out with, no, it just, it already came out, right? Brad Stolberg's new book. When the inside game, is that right? Stig

Joe: Magnus. So

He helps with performance.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. When the inside game is already out. Yeah.

Jerred: And then you said that's about getting kids to play outside.

Joe: So the subtitle is how to move from striving to thriving and free yourself up to perform and I saw the reason why this came about is because I saw a social media post and it went on and on about how kids not only, kids need to play like play outside free form play and but also like adults still need some sort of play like playing outside and not just like playing inside and freeing from technology and, doing It's more than just activity.

It's like the social part of it, the problem solving it the, there's even like a risk when playing certain games, like I'll I definitely, I feel like I always get hurt whenever I play some sort of sport, but it's always a whole lot of fun.

Jerred: Yeah. That's the thing is yesterday, so we, I did that conditioning workout with [00:09:00] my kids yesterday at the track, but we go to the track.

Sometimes we have free time. We call it the track. It's like a football field and it's a track, but we just will bring a bunch of balls and like cones and do different things. And they always want me to do whatever. And I try and do as much as I can. Like they want me to do whatever they're doing.

And then they were like, let's run forties. And time it. And I was like, how about on this one? I time you guys just because I haven't sprinted in a while. And I was like, I'm not gonna pull a hamstring. So you have to know I don't want to be limited in that way. I'll probably run the next one with him.

But I'm like, I'm not running a 40 cold right now. And I'm not gonna make you guys wait 15 minutes while I warm up for it, so anyway, there are certain levels of activity, but I was the goalie yesterday for grams Shots. I was like jumping on the ground, doing all this kind of stuff. We were playing football.

I was like being the the safety that had to block passes between the two of them. So it's just a lot of fun. Like you said, being able to play some of those sports and stuff. So

Joe: really enjoy it. And whenever you do something like that, I feel like. At least for me, I know certain things like my groin or certain things are way [00:10:00] sore than they normally are, I feel, because you don't run laterally.

When you go out for a run, you're doing intervals, you're not running laterally or sideways or anything, it's always oh man, I know it's been a while.

Jerred: Yeah, that's why you gotta stay up to date on those things and like just do them frequently, that's the only real way to avoid getting sore from them.

Cool, man. Let's jump into some of these protocols. I have two different protocols. I wanted to hit on that. I've been following religiously over the last couple of months, and I wanted to talk to people about it. So I have two of them, and, Joe, feel free to chime in with any questions, but talked about on the podcast a long time ago I was wearing blood glucose monitor, checking my Checking my blood sugar because my A1c had climbed up, which was like super surprising and it all happened when like I wasn't doing as much strength training.

I was running, probably eating too many carbohydrates. My body didn't do well with that. So I put on a CGM, continuous glucose monitor, to try and bring the A1C down. And I wanted to see what was going on with different things that I ate. So I learned a lot in that process of about four to six months or whatever it was wearing the [00:11:00] CGM, but I needed something sustainable, like longterm, like that's how my brain works.

I need a system, a framework, something I could put into a habit. And so what I developed several months ago, and I've been trying to stick to the best of my ability is what I call three 50 micro three 50 micro. So what it is, you get three meals per day. That's it. No snacks, nothing else. You get three meals a day, and the reason the three meals a day is important, and I know it sounds like whatever, but most people are eating three, four, six meals, and then whatever if you include the snacks people are eating a lot throughout the day, I don't think that's good, it's not good for me for my blood sugar, so I'm trying to really limit myself on three meals, so it's here's breakfast, You better be full because you don't eat again until the next meal.

I'm very strict about it, and that's helped a lot with regulating my blood sugar. Second thing, 50, so it's 350 micro, 50, minimum 50 grams of protein per meal. So that means I'm going to get, if I follow that, I'm going to get at least [00:12:00] 150 grams of protein. If I'm eating three meals now this is where this will play a route, play out differently per individual, right?

Like you might only need a smaller female, maybe 30, 40 grams of protein per meal, if you want to follow this three 50 micro, maybe a bigger dude, do you have other goals? And you're like, I got to get 60, 70 or whatever. Like you can play around with those. There's a certain threshold.

I would probably go with protein and single meal, just. From the actual consumption of it would be hard not because I'm going to say your body can't use it or whatever, I don't think the science is ultimately super clear on that, but I'm trying to hit at least 50 grams of protein every single meal, that's another thing, it's you're super satiated when you hit that much protein in a meal, and it's going to help with your blood sugar if you're having carbohydrates with protein, that really helps balance your blood sugar, and then the last part of that is micro micro.

And so that is making sure that you have micronutrients in your meal. And typically most micronutrients are going to come from fruits or vegetables. Meat has micronutrients, but most of it's micronutrients and people think about them are fruits or vegetables. All the vitamins and minerals that can [00:13:00] be in food.

So that means I'm thinking when I go into a meal. And the reason I say go into a meal is because I'm not following a meal plan. I'm not trying to eat the same exact thing every day. While a lot of things do repeat, if I just show up in my kitchen for lunch and I'm like three 50 micro, like this is my second meal of the day.

I need 50 grams of protein. I'll grab those things first. That would get me there. And then I'm like, okay, where are the micronutrients? And so I'm either adding some fruits or vegetables to the meal. And now I got the micro box checked. So that's a protocol I've been following for a while. And to be honest, when I do it really well.

I feel really good. Like a lot of energy left over at the end of the day. Very on point mentally, like it's just been a really good and very simple framework for me to follow my diet over the last couple of months.

Joe: Yeah, I definitely struggle with three meals. I'm somewhat of a snacker. And it's the breakfast to lunch meal is always hard for me to pin down to actually have structured two meals there.

And that's why I counted some recently because I'm pretty [00:14:00] sure I was under eating in those meals. And like during the day, I wouldn't feel that hungry. I would even if I would have one meal, but then I'd have dinner and then 30 40 minutes after dinner, I'm hungry. And I'm like it's an hour before bed, but I can't have a bigger snack or a second, like a second dinner.

So I needed to balance out earlier in the day. It's just timing wise is weird because normally I finish my workout at about 9 30 10 o'clock. I have protein shake and so I don't want to eat a bunch before that. I'll usually only have a bar first thing in the morning, like seven, but then afterwards I got a protein shake and it's okay by the time this protein shake processes, I'm pretty much at lunch already.

And so all I've had is a bar and. I shake before lunch and then I have to make up. Okay, maybe I'll just have a big lunch, but then if I have a lunch at noon, we don't eat dinner till five and that's like a big gap. So I balancing that is I still don't think I could do three meals, but I do, I definitely noticed that when I do count macros, like actually, if I need to weigh and count.

Was always when I had the best balance of meals because I had to sit there and [00:15:00] I couldn't just go in and grab a snack because I had to be like, Oh all right, let's break out the scale. And if I'm going to break out the scale, I might as well make this whole thing worth it to consciously make the meal.

So in a way, it's like harder having the freedom that I can just eat. Anytime I want whenever I want cuz I'm home all the time but having the structure I know definitely helps a lot and then like right now we're in between traveling so like it's not like I can stock the fridge up cuz I don't want to have a bunch of food in the fridge when we go out and down.

Jerred: Yeah and that's. I'd say for anyone else listening who feels like they're in a similar situation if you are going to go more than three meals and you are going to snack just try to make the snacks protein if you can. Like I've gotten a lot of just like those meat sticks. I've been trying out different companies and stuff, but I've been throwing that in.

Because like you, if I'm going to like I'm at home, and so if I go snack, it's always easy to find carbohydrates for a snack, super easy, just have a bunch of carbs. And that's going to make me feel worse over time and not what I want. So I'm like, okay, if I could grab two of these meat sticks and an [00:16:00] apple.

If I'm more in like the snacking category cause I'm not perfect on the 350 micro, but when I am, I feel really good. But if I'm like, ah, yeah, schedule's crazy, whatever, screwed up. I just need to eat something real, real quick. I might have, yeah, two meat sticks and an apple and a scoop of peanut butter, something like that.

That's the whole like snack and it's more satiating than whatever, grabbing some kid's snack. Cause I'm in a hurry, cause they have all their snacks that I could just grab. So that's something. But I do think if. If you can work it in and figure it out it's really helped.

And like I said, I'm not perfect every day, but it's it's really been helping me. And some people might be like what about the fats and the carbs? And it's I've never really cared about those things as much. I feel like those things just even themselves out. If you're like, okay, I'm going to have 50 grams of protein in this meal, and I'm going to make sure I have some micronutrients that come from carbohydrates.

You're probably good. Like either the protein source that you selected might have fat in it already, whether that's some sort of meat or if it's like yogurt or like whatever, like it's going to end up having some fat in there anyway. And then most of your carbohydrates will come from whatever fruit or vegetable you [00:17:00] selected.

So it, it tends to work itself out. But if you are in like a really tight situation with macronutrients, maybe track for a while, but this has been working for me without having to track anything because it's easy to just be like, what's 50 grams of protein. Basically, that's half the meal plan right there.

If not more.

Joe: Yeah, that's why I like the macro tracking app that I was using because the main thing that it only shows you are protein and calories and then it's just logging from there. And I feel like I like fat and carbs could go. Can sway of any time I count on from either like 20 percent of this to 40 percent of this.

And so if those things are moving, that's just the energy. I feel like I'm good enough to eat balance enough. I just want to care about the protein and then the calories and making sure I'm getting enough to replenish.

Jerred: Now, the second protocol I've been following, I want to talk about, we've been, I've been doing this for years and it's over a decade, some version of what I'm talking about.

I have this like infographic I found the other day that I created in he is [00:18:00] 2013 and it was like how to earn points and how to lose points in a day. And it was like. A hard workout would actually take you down a couple points. And so to counteract that hard workout, you'd have to have like nutrition or sleep, right?

It's like this, that balance of stress and recovery, right? I've been focused on that for a lot of time. We've had the recovery game in the app, like where you can log your recovery points and stuff and and it's always worth tracking this to some degree. And so I've been I've always been thinking this way, but I've been tracking it almost every day for several months now.

And what I do is I have a category in this note that I use on a daily basis, like a templated note I use, and there's a hormesis category, and then there's a recovery category. Okay. So that's trying to put in simple frameworks again to where I'm not having to think about too much. And so in the hormesis, if you don't know what hormesis is, I talk about it in my book, killing comfort.

And it's just the idea of what doesn't kill you makes you [00:19:00] stronger. That's the idea of hormesis. It's small little stressors that stress your body out in the acute short term, but long term make you better and healthier. Fitness is one of those. If you look at all of the parameters around working out, if all we did was look at what's actually happening in your body, fitness might seem like a bad thing.

We're ripping your muscles apart. We're elevating your heart rate to a high level inflammation, like all these bad things happen from exercise. In a small acute sense, but long term, your body adapts, gets better, gets stronger. And we all know exercise very good for you. So that's hormesis. And then recovery is all the typical things you would think you need for recovery.

And I'll go over those as well. But something like sleep is like a big one, right? Make sure you sleep enough time. So here's how I look at it. Hormesis. I have this on my checklist every day. I try to hit at least one form of hormesis every single day. And so the big one for me is training exercise.

And then there are four others. Cold exposure, we all know about that, fasting, sauna, or, and this is [00:20:00] a unusual one, plant based toxins. So I'll go over that one in a second, but I'll start there because it's like, what is that? If you, there are certain like compounds you can have, and this isn't like a major one.

I just did a lot of research on hormesis, and this is like one that always comes up. Like garlic. Yeah, if you were to cut up a clove of garlic and swallow it how you're actually supposed to do it is cut up the garlic, smash it, and then wait, I think, 10 minutes, and then you can eat it. Because that has to do with fiber

Joe: or something, right?

Or, I remember reading about that in one of those books. It's

Jerred: Compound, I forgot what it's called, that it reacts with oxygen, and that's where, like, all the goodness from garlic comes from. So you have to wait for that. So anyway, if you were to swallow all that garlic it's going to stress your body out to a certain degree, but it's a good stressor.

And there's a lot of like plant based foods like that. That's one form of hormesis, but I try to get at least one, if not two forms of hormesis every single day. So training, exercise, cold exposure, fasting, sauna, plant based toxin. So if today I'm not going to work out. I'm for sure going to try and hit two other forms [00:21:00] of hormesis because they're not as powerful as exercise.

So it's like I got busy and I'm like, crap, I'm not going to work out today. I'm going to be like, okay I can do the sauna and cold exposure today. And so I knock out two. So I'm always trying to, even if I don't exercise, focus on whether or not I get hormesis in a day, nine times out of 10.

That's just me exercising. I might throw one other, but I don't want to stress my body out too much. And then the game that I play, how I make this a game is. Now, every one Item of hormesis requires two items of recovery and the recovery category is sleep. So sleeping 78 hours, hydration, 50 percent of your body weight in ounces, nutrition, be what we're talking about with 3 50 micro, getting at least two of those in those kind of meals in a day additional aerobics.

So like blood flow, getting 10, 000 15, 000 steps doing additional aerobic exercises. Doing getting sun or vitamin D or breath work. So those are six different categories for recovery. So just to put that in [00:22:00] perspective, it's okay, I trained today. That's one form of hormesis. I need two forms of recovery, so I make sure I sleep seven hours and I'm gonna make sure I'm well hydrated.

At a minimum, right? At a minimum. I try to knock out as many of those as I can in a day. But if I do, say I do two, say, because like right now I'm fasting, I'm currently fasting as we're speaking, I will also train later today. So that's going to be two forms of hormesis. I need four. Ways to recover. So I'm going to go for sleep, hydration, nutrition, and I'll probably get some, the blood flow like additional 10, 000 plus steps.

So I'll have those four in. So that's the game I've been playing. And I've just been tracking it manually in a note of okay, you got one horror or medic stressor, or you got two. So you need two or you need four forms of recovery. So that's another protocol I've been Following very simple, very easy to track.

And again, I think it really just helps you stay consistent with the basics of being a better human and living a good life.

Joe: It's definitely a great point for on non training days because not everybody, it's [00:23:00] hard to train on the weekend, especially with family stuff and sports seasons. And also I'm sure having ideas like that for people are cool.

The plant thing intrigues me. I'll be interested to look up, see what some of the other ones are that you could do for Toxin, the plant toxin one.

Jerred: Yeah, it's just, it's the whole thing. That's how vegetables are in a lot of ways. It's like you have to find the right ones, but there are certain vegetables that.

Ultimately stress your body out a little bit to consume them, but it's good for you. Just like exercise over time. Spicy foods. I do think, yeah, like I don't know what all to be honest, garlic, garlic's the only one I ever truly practice because we have cloves of garlic all the time. And so it's very easy for me to I actually do what I said.

I chopped them up. I smash them, I wait, and then I just swallow them. I just they're pills. I just, and then I'll take a whole glove of whole clove of garlic I don't know, once a week, if I'm really reaching for a form of hormesis, right? Cause that's an easy one to knock out. It takes almost no effort.

Not something I do every day. If you do it every day The garlic [00:24:00] will come, it will come out,

Joe: you're going to

Jerred: go into the

Joe: sauna, it's

Jerred: going to smell like kitchen. I remember a long time ago I did, I was like getting really consistent with, I was like, I'm going to do it every day. If it's that good for you, I did it like every day.

And then, yeah, I just smelled like garlic all the time. I was like, where is it? Is it just, it's, I sweat garlic now. It is crazy. So be careful with that one.

Joe: That's pretty cool. That would, that's, I'm sure a lot of people will will like those things.

Jerred: Yeah, I think you could, that's just the mindset of okay, I'm not gonna work out today.

Can I factor in some form of hormesis today? And I think if you could think of that, and then also a big thing I think is counteracting that, cause I think that's where like influencer culture has gotten out of control. Is okay, I'm going to train today. I'm going to do cold exposure. I'm going to fast.

I'm gonna do heat exposure with a sauna and I'm do plant based toxins. And it's cool. What are you doing to recover from that? It's I'm going to sleep. And yeah, it was like you're going to, you need a lot more than that. Like the, if you're going to hit the gas, you always need a break.

That's how you have to be balancing these things out. And if you don't, you'll end up digging yourself into a hole. And I feel like that's what a lot [00:25:00] of people are unknowingly doing right now with some of these, like trying to have good habits, you think, but they're all of your habits are just stressors.

Which is good to a certain degree. But if you tackle, if you tack on all of those hormetic response stressors that I talked about, and then you also have a high stress job and you have kids and you're just a busy schedule, like now you're stacking so many stressors that you might not be able to recover from it, even though you think the things that you're doing are good.

So it's always something to be mindful of.

Joe: Yeah, where do kids fall on hormesis, man?

Jerred: They are definitely what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Definition. I award you zero points. May God have mercy on your soul. All right, man. Let's jive into it with you now. Real food, fake food.

I'm interested to hear your big takeaways from this book. See if you think you recommend it to the garage gym athlete audience.

Joe: Yeah, it's been about six weeks since I read it. So I'm fuzzy on some of the details. I do remember it being very eye opening about how these about all the information that you get.

So the premise of [00:26:00] the book is how it's a mixture of like quality of food and the marketing industry and regulations regarding the foods. So you'll see things labeled a certain way, like parmesan cheese, champagne, Kobe beef, stuff like that. It has that carrying brand name. But Those names are specifically have certain standards and regulations and are only come from like certain specific regions.

But because of, and it's mostly a blasting the US is lackadaisical, marketing or laws and stuff is that people can label it anything that they want. And the pe, the places where they come from, 'cause they're international, can't say anything about it because they're. They don't have any say for us laws.

And so just going over all the things that like you will see every day, like how Parmesan cheese can only really come from. Parma in italy and how a lot of parmesan cheese like the stuff you buy at the store they found and a lot of these have like laboratory testing and genetic testing and the [00:27:00] information is crazy, but like the parmesan cheese, a lot of those found like sawdust in parmesan cheese.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, stuff like that. And like Kobe beef, you see here about people eating Kobe all over the place. But according to the author, like the town or wherever Kobe comes from, there are only three licensed restaurants in all of us that can actually sell authentic Kobe beef. And how many places have you seen list Kobe or something similar on it?

So Things like that are very eye opening and crazy. And then there's this whole crazy section about seafood and how. Like people, you can't tell what one seafood is. And other besides salmon, like you look at a piece of fish. It's okay, I can't tell what the heck that is. And they, and marketers take huge advantage of that.

And that's when they do a lot of DNA testing to where you'll go to sushi restaurants or grocery stores and be like, this is marketed as bass, but we're going to genetic test it. And Nope, there is not any bass in that fish that you just [00:28:00] sold me sort of thing. It's for a while, it becomes holy crap, I'm just eating all kinds of bad stuff and they poured on you.

But usually at the end of the section or certain parts of the section, they'll tell you if you want a cheese or cheese like this or you want this kind of fish, then these are some of the stores that actually do really well. And at these stores, there are seals like some places have seals. They said I remember they said Costco, even Walmart and like Whole Foods are some of the best places to go to because yeah, They have their own really good, and I think Trader Joe's, they have their own really good policing for standards and like actually like third party testing on the standards of some of the seafoods and beef and stuff, so they actually have to look for certain seals in on your food in the in the store to make sure it is what it says it is and not just marketing slapped on your thing.

So I I need to look at to see if there's some sort of PDF because once we were in, we're in Spain right now. So I actually don't have to deal with most of this stuff. Once you get back to the States, I'm definitely going to want to have that handy to see [00:29:00] okay, what do I really need to be buying when it comes to seafood?

Where do I need to go to get my seafood, my beef? We don't really do cheese. I actually skipped like the entire chapter on champagne because I just didn't care because I don't really drink. I don't drink champagne. But a lot of that stuff, I think it was really informative, really interesting.

Yeah. I've always known like if for people who would want to read it, if you've already gotten into sort of the nutrition space and some of the regulations somewhat interest you, I've been interested in the past for some of the books that we've read where they go over just like what is actually allowed because it's very eye opening to get behind the scenes of marketing and to look past it.

So if that issue, I thought that was really neat. And the lack of restrictions that the US has it wasn't until. Was it last year that they now ban red dye? Yeah, like super recent, but it's been banned so many other places. And I only just recently realized and heard like for people that actually know who you told me about the story to about kids who have red dye [00:30:00] and go absolutely batshit crazy because red downs.

If I know that was the thing, because I'm like

Jerred: that and we just learned it. Emily is pretty in tune with all of those things, but yeah, we just. Thanks. Made the connection after a couple of birthday party instances or whatever. And yeah, we don't touch any kind of food coloring with anything now.

Joe: Yeah, so it's it this book is good for taking more of health and everything into your own hands because you pretty much have to especially if you're in the US you need to like do your own due diligence and go the extra steps to protect yourself your family and your health and a book like this really helps to like, okay, I know why.

And now I need to know which, which things to get. And then you can go before from there. And a lot of times with food and stuff, it could be information overload going through the, some of these books. I've probably read 10, 12, so nutrition books. And usually I don't remember a lot of them because, a couple of years down the road there's some things that I'll eat.

And I'm like, yeah, I eat this way. I want to do it in this way. But I won't do it that way. And people are like, oh, why? I'm [00:31:00] like, honestly. I forget, but I know there's a good reason and I know I read about it and this is just how I'm doing it now because I'm, I can't remember all that scientific reasoning behind it, but I know this is the best way to do it.

So that's what I'm going to do because that's what science and research and books have told me.

Jerred: Yeah. And that's and that's the problem with some of those books is like, it can be really overwhelming for somebody who's just trying to make better decisions. So if you're in that boat, like there, there are two things that come up.

It's either overwhelm. It's okay, This is a lot. And so instead of doing something, you do nothing. If you feel like you're in that boat, just try to pick one small thing. Okay, I am going to focus on meat quality or vegetable quality or whatever it is. And then the second thing that could happen, which I basically have the same advice for is budgetary.

It's Okay, yeah, I want to buy all the foods that you're talking about. I want them to be good source from Italy, best meat, whatever. And then it's my grocery bill just doubled and I can't afford that. I hear that feedback as well. Again, you have to go back to what's important. [00:32:00] What's most important for you?

I'm like a big one is this has nothing to do with food, but like filtering your water. Make sure you make sure that you're drinking filtered water. Spend whatever it costs there because if you're drinking, I like, I basically only drink water and I have some coffee and that comes from the water at my house.

So like making sure that's really filtered is very important to me. And I think I consume more of that than anything else in a day. So I'm like, okay, that's worth my financial resources, time and attention. So boom, let's get a water filter for the water. And then it's okay, now we can move on to meat or whatever.

That's what I've been focusing on lately is meat. And here's the deal. I don't trust anybody when it comes to food, nutrition, or supplements. There's not a single company. And that's why you'll ever really talk about a supplement company on here or like a very specific food brand, because even the ones I eat or the supplements I consume, I do not trust them.

I don't trust them. I have maybe decided okay, I'm going to take these supplements from this company because it seems good enough right now, but I know we're only like one lawsuit [00:33:00] away from finding out that it's not. You know what I mean? Whether that's Athletic Greens or insert popular influencer supplement company here.

It's Oh, we found these bad things in your supplement or like whatever and same with foods. And it generally happens when these companies want to scale and they don't scale very well. They like, they start outsourcing things like this has nothing to do with food, but it just happens over time.

Like GoRuck. Go Rucks big thing was like, we make American made backpacks and they're awesome and we're veteran founded all that kind of stuff. I'm like, cool. So I bought some of their backpacks and then they started to scale and they're like, actually, we're gonna have to start building some of these backpacks in Vietnam.

And I'm like, that whole premise and like how they got started it. It was American made quality, all this kind of stuff. And then they're like, Oh actually the quality is just as good in Vietnam. And I'm like, don't, didn't it just take a crap on the whole, like American made quality idea.

If you're just saying it's just as good over in Vietnam. So anyway, I'm not like trying to give go ruck a hard time. I'm just saying, this is what happens when you, [00:34:00] when companies try to scale their company and they can't with. Like they can't stay within the parameters that got them to where they were, because they either have to decide to stay small because everything costs are too high.

And I think that happens with all of these food companies and supplement companies. I think supplement companies even outgrow quality. They're like, Oh, they might start really awesome quality based company. And then when they try to scale, that's when I start getting nervous when I hear someone like they're double tripling their supplement company.

I'm like. I'm not a hundred percent sure I want to keep using your supplements when I hear that information because you just don't know what, how, what corners are having to cut, if any, to be able to do that. So anyway, that's my little rant on just like food and supplements is do your research, pick small areas to improve.

Don't try and do everything all at once and trust no one.

Joe: Yeah. And so many companies will get bought up by somebody and they're like, we don't want to scale. So we're just going to sell this to somebody else. And you might not even know they were

Jerred: purchased, right? Like you will unless you're like really in tune with [00:35:00] those things, you'll never know that the company was bought.

Like Coca Cola bought Topo Chico. Not that was like a big health move, but it was like Topo Chico used to be like this, like local, not locally owned, but like family owned or something like that. And then in the dead of night, Coca Cola came and bought Topo Chico. And not again, that's not a health thing.

It's just you don't hear about these things like often, like these things happen all the time. They don't make big announcements for it just becomes a part of the brand. And then their first thing they're going to do is try and increase profit and how they do that. Sometimes you don't want to know

Joe: making shortcuts.

It's very interesting. I would, if you're, if I wouldn't say it should be the first nutrition book you read, but I think it's very it's worth listening. And like the audio book is only eight or nine hours. So if you listen to any accelerated rate, it'll go by pretty quick. And, um, there's also more takeaways and like going back to cheese, like people want the Italian or whatever cheese, but like in the U.

S. you could just find, I Comparable similar cheeses [00:36:00] that are more local and they go over a few that are like there's certain cheeses in parts of the U. S. that they're coined specifically in the U. S. Just like it is in Parma, Italy and those places where they're coined after the name and they have those in the U.

S. They're just not as widely known. So just finding those sort of products that are a bit more local or aren't they're not coming in from overseas anyway, or can, be doctored or just go off that big brand catchy name that, you know,

Jerred: That's awesome. Sounds definitely a worthy book for the listeners out there, but we can wrap this one up.

Project Delta is coming. Just weeks away we are

Joe: cycle for those wondering that's the new programming for,

Jerred: yeah, so it'll be on the hard to kill track. It'll be the next cycle. When we get started with Project Delta, we have been getting questions about that probably do a little bit more information in an upcoming podcast on that just to answer any questions that come up about Project Delta, but I'm really excited about it.

Really psyched up to. To jump into that. So that's, what's coming for all garage gym athletes out there. [00:37:00] If you're not one of our garage gym athletes, go to garagegymathlete. com sign up for a free trial and we would love to have you there, but that's it for this one. Remember if you don't kill comfort will kill you.