Change Your Brain Every Day - What Diet Should You Be Eating: Tips on the Mediterranean Method, with Dr. Steven Masley
Episode Date: January 15, 2020Dr. Steven Masley has found that the most efficient path to greater overall health is to focus on the diet. His new book “The Mediterranean Method” is filled with tips and recipes for using the Me...diterranean cuisine to dramatically change your body and brain. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Masley gives some of the highlights from his book.
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We are going to start your new year, your new decade off with a bang.
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Welcome back.
We are still here with our friend, Dr. Stephen Masley.
We're talking about his new
book coming out, The Mediterranean Method. You may have seen Dr. Masley on PBS, and we're just
so blessed to have him here with us today talking about fast strategies. So we want to know what we
can leave our listeners and our followers with that will help them feel better. You know, not
just like through like post-holiday blues people, we see them,
you know, after sort of gorging from Halloween through New Year's, what can people do to feel
better as they come out of the holidays and move into the new year? I think maybe the biggest
single choice we make is the food we eat. You know, what do we put on a fork and put in our
mouth? And the key to me, you know, what I've learned, I've just spent seven months sailing and traveling in the Mediterranean Sea,
looking at how people in Mediterranean countries eat. And it's simple. It's not.
They're eating simple, fresh, local food without preservatives that they made themselves.
Even the, you know, the restaurants, it's like a lot of ma and pa-like restaurants
where they just, and they don't try to make 50 dishes.
They make a few things really well.
They don't overdo it.
They don't make it overly complicated like you might see in a restaurant in the U.S.
It's simple, wholesome food without chemicals, without preservatives,
without sweeteners, hit the ingredients, and then it tastes so good, you feel fantastic.
And there's not 15 choices for salad dressings.
I'm confused because I've seen this Mediterranean thing for a long time.
But when we go to Italy, which is one of our favorite places to go, loaded with pasta that's gluten-based, loaded with pizza, which is gluten, dairy, and the fruit, tomatoes.
People don't think of tomatoes as fruit, but they are because they have more sugar.
So how do we-
I want to push back on that, though.
How do we reconcile what you think of as an Italian restaurant, a Mediterranean restaurant,
and my experience in Italy with this is somehow good for me.
Wait, I want to push back on that for one second, because one thing I noticed was,
yes, there is that, but a lot of the restaurants, it's homemade. It's actually made right there.
But number two, this portion sizes were significantly smaller. And like you said,
Dr. Masley, the farmer's markets every morning when we stayed,
what it was in Navona, was it Navona?
Square.
Square where we stayed.
Every morning, the farmer's market was right there,
the little fresh market you go through.
And people don't have big refrigerators.
Where we stayed, there was no,
like the refrigerator's tiny.
You had to buy stuff every day.
So it's, the whole lifestyle is a little bit different.
But what about the gluten, dairy, high levels of tomato?
Well, the last time we were there, there was a big shift.
Everywhere we went, you could get gluten-free stuff.
That was the first time I'd ever been there where I saw that.
You can get gluten-free almost everywhere.
It's a frenzy right now.
So gluten-free is more available now than I've ever seen before.
And in Paris, too.
But William Davis would say gluten-free isn't.
And portion sizes are dramatically smaller yeah remember
if you when you think about a meal in italy you might you usually have an appetizer which
typically would be olives right or some vegetable you know just different vegetables that were
marinated with um vinegar and you know which helps give you stomach acid for digestion and then you might have a pasta dish
but it's like four yeah it comes on a little salad plate it's a lot smaller it's not a massive
platter like we would get here and then you have your main course and the main course is a big
portion of vegetables and a small portion of clean protein. Now, that's not to say, though,
that in some of the cities we've seen more westernization. But when you get outside the
cities, like you said, on the Mediterranean, they don't even speak English and they're a lot more
traditional. That's what I know. So if you're in Rome and Florence and Venice, it's much more
touristy. And I don't see that as much. But I mean, mostly I'm in small
towns, small ports, markets, restaurants. And, you know, and then, you know, so your biggest
portion is vegetables and salad and the appetizer, which is olives. And then they give you dessert.
Here we charge for dessert. They give you dessert for free, which is fruit. Right. It's like melon or frequently berries or, you know, air and apple.
I mean.
Yeah, in Greece they give you Greek yogurt.
I'm thinking about tiramisu and gelato.
Yeah, no.
In Greece they give you Greek yogurt with walnuts.
And they drizzle a tiny bit of honey on it.
But it's so different from our desserts that we see here.
It's so different.
Okay.
So if I'm a brain warrior and we generally
recommend gluten-free because gluten has been shown to increase leaky gut.
If we generally, and that's what we do, generally recommend gluten-free,
dairy-free. It's just this thing in my head. when we were in Naples and you could see the pizza, which looked amazing.
But I know for me, when I eat pasta and pizza, I get fat and it happens quickly.
So it's just better for me to ignore that.
And that's fine.
But you're making a really good point.
Dr. Ann, I want to point this out.
So in the Mediterranean method, I'm looking at a low glycemic version.
So I have pretty much, I am leaving those type of foods you described as an occasional treat.
Right.
You know, Europeans do not ban whole groups of food.
No.
But they don't eat them every day.
So every day is more like vegetable, fruit, beans, nuts, clean protein, spices and herbs and olive oil.
That's the, and lots of water.
That's the essence of, so I'm trying to focus.
I agree with you that we should be using a low glycemic version of a Mediterranean diet.
And that was the difference when we went to the cities versus when we were on the Mediterranean, it was more seafood and vegetables and a little
bit of pasta, not nearly as much. So if you want to age backwards and really decrease the amount
of plaque, then if you think of a plate, 70% of it should be plant-based foods, 30% high quality, clean protein mixed
in with a whole bunch of healthy fat.
And I think that makes the most sense in a low glycemic way because diabetes completely
damages your body.
You said that.
You said that's like the number one cause of plaque is high blood sugar,
which is an epidemic in the United States. According to a study in JAMA, 50%, that's
5-0% of the population is either diabetic or pre-diabetic, which is just a freaking nightmare
when it comes to your body. And both you and I and Tana, because Tana's
grandmother had diabetes, you see people, they don't heal. So they end up losing their toes.
They lose their feet. They lose their eyesight. They lose their heart function. They lose
their mind. And really a weapon of mass destruction is our high glycemic, low fiber, fast food industry that is just destroying the health of America.
Well, and I point out that, you know, maybe one of the best looks at the Mediterranean diet was the EPIC trial out of Greece.
And they went through and tried to analyze, okay, which components have the most benefit, which have almost none.
And whole grains had almost zero benefit for the Mediterranean lifestyle.
When you think about the pyramid, the classic pyramid of a Mediterranean lifestyle, the classic one has grains like vegetable, fruit, and grains at the bottom.
I pretty much took the grains out and put it up with sweets and occasional, you know,
so I've turned it upside down.
But I completely agree with you that we need a lower glycemic version.
And grains become optional.
And if you do have them, they should be whole grain.
And if you do have that, gluten-free is obviously an advantage.
And the portion size should be little.
So I always say eat them like a condiment.
That's my mantra is eat them like a condiment.
Yeah.
So your process is just very similar to ours.
And before we end this one, what are some simple food takeaways that people can feel better fast?
Your predominant oil is, the problem that you cook with is olive oil.
That's easy.
Extra virgin olive oil.
It's nutritious.
It's got tons of research that says anti-inflammatory, and it's got life-giving properties to it.
I think an important thing is not to overcook it.
You know, high heat ruins it.
It'll actually damage the fat. So you only use it at medium heat, something like that.
And cut out the sugar and cut out the flour. We don't really need those. So we really focus on,
as you said, what, 70% plant foods. I'd probably use 70 plant foods 15 protein and another and 15 of our
plate is fat which you know which makes it 30 of our calories um i i think you know we we need the
plain simple local plant foods um cut out the sugar and we dramatically feel better dramatically very quickly. So what's for breakfast in your mind?
And speaking of that, I do intermittent fasting most days.
Is breakfast important?
I think it varies by the person.
So like yesterday I did intermittent fasting
and I didn't eat from like 10 until noon.
And I try to, I think that's very common in the Mediterranean that you skip breakfast.
You might have a cup of black coffee or a cup of black tea or you might just have water.
So doing that two days per week, I think, is what I've recommended for a long time.
And that when you do have breakfast, I either usually like today I had an egg and an avocado that I whipped up together.
That's my breakfast.
Either that or a smoothie.
Or a smoothie.
That's my other one.
You know, a berry cherry smoothie with almond milk.
That's mine, yeah.
And then I'll add, I usually add a scoop of acacia protein or fiber to it or something like that.
And how about snacks?
Last question.
How about snacks? Last question. How about snacks?
What are some snacks that,
because, you know, I mean, we're a snack society
and I grew up with Oreos and a Coke.
Well, and some of us like to graze.
Some of us don't like to,
like I don't like to sit down and have a big meal.
Unfortunately, dinner is usually the one meal
I sit down to and have a larger meal.
But I'm busy during the day. I'll forget to eat if I don't just have snacks to grab and go.
Well, that's an interesting thing because in the Mediterranean, they don't really
snack. It's socially almost forbidden. You eat meals and you have a leisurely long meal and you
eat until you're satisfied and then you don't eat again until the next meal. But for snacks,
my favorites would be nuts, dark chocolate, and fruit.
And maybe if you're not dairy intolerant, plain organic yogurt with some fruit.
Nuts.
But you can get lactose-free yogurt as well and stuff like that.
The Mediterranean Method coming out soon, available everywhere.
Dr. Stephen Masley, when we come back, we're going to talk about the bugs in your gut and how they influence your heart and your brain.
We're going to talk about the infestation and making it positive rather than negative. Stay with us.
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