The Nick Bare Podcast - 066: Eating For Performance With Dan Churchill

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

In this week's episode, I welcome a guest: my good friend and world-renowned chef, Dan Churchill. As the executive chef at The Osprey in Brooklyn, Dan has gained insight and experience at not only curating incredible dining experiences but also creating dishes that fuel and serve your body well. There's a lot to consider when we think about our eating habits - how they affect our performance, our gut health, and even the effect that stress levels have on our metabolism. Dan is a fantastic resource on this topic, and this conversation is hugely insightful on eating for performance. Save 10% at BPN Supps: https://bit.ly/nickbare10audio Follow for more:  IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Dan: IG: https://www.intagram.com/dan_churchill Dan’s book: http://www.danchurchill.com/pre-order-book Topics: 0:00 Intro 0:23 Welcome 3:08 Trust your gut 9:42 Data vs intuition 17:50 Eating like a legend 20:28 How your brain affects your gut 27:05 Eating for performance vs aesthetics  31:27 Approach your diet as an individual 36:32 Food as a tool 40:43 The diet groups 45:53 Planning your fuel 56:32 Dan’s upcoming book 1:05:29 The truth about restaurants 1:12:03 All in instead of all consumed 1:18:24 Binge eating 1:24:10 Feeding your gut’s microbiome 1:28:46 The mechanisms of food

In today's episode of the podcast, I am sitting down with my good friend and world famous chef, Dan Churchill. We're talking about how to eat for performance, eat like a legend, and take control of your diet to achieve your performance outcomes. Back on the podcast for a second time. Actually, is there a third time? Third time in the podcast, bro. Third time. Let's go. You're the first third time guest.

What? Returning. Let's go. Oh! We just made an epic meal. We did make an epic meal. Tell me about it. What do we do? We did the coconut banana, high-protein waffles from BPN. These things are insane.

And when is this podcast coming out, dude? When's it coming out? A couple weeks? No, a couple days. Okay, sweet. So this is like Ryan time for Mother's Day. Uh-huh. So you're going to recreate this for a lovely lady that you have called Steph and, of course, Charlie.

But, dude, it's just amazing, amazing waffles. Sometimes I forget that I'm outnumbered in my household. and then I have two women, and then there's me. Yeah, man. But soon, with baby boy bear on the way, it's going to be two verse two. I'm really curious how that situation is going to be, because is he going to be a little QB, or is he going to be a gym rat? What do you reckon he is?

I think he's going to be a runner. Yeah. He's going to be a gym rat. Yeah. He's going to be a hybrid athlete. Absolutely. And if he decides to pursue sports, I'm going to have to study the art of sport. Oh, dude.

Are you going to be the guy? You're going to be the camera guy. You're going to be on the sideline. Like, go one more. VHS, dude. The HS. I honestly would love to, as our kids get older, to coach sports. Of course.

I think I would get a lot out of that. And I've also always said that, like in this next future chapter of life, I would actually love to go back to be a high school teacher. Really? Yeah, I think that I would get a lot out of that. Growing up, my mom was a school teacher. in my high school, she taught special education, and then she was the supervisor of special education for the district.

And I just saw how much passion and fulfillment she got from that. And I just think that, one, I would get a lot out of that experience. But two, I think that I could provide a lot of value for younger minds and students. Dude, that's like a fulfillment thing, right? Like you've always been guided by yourself and where you, you want to go based on how you feel on things you want to do, right? So for you to go into that area is like completely not, it's kind of shocking to me because I'm like, it's a world that's completely separate to where you are now.

But it's also like, I feel it's more giving back. So is that like a challenge? It's also Mr. Bear would be such a badass name. Mr. Bear. Mr. Bear. Yeah, I like that. Mr. Beat. No, you're going to have Mr. Bear.

I think I just let him call me Nick. I beg that rebellious teacher. Hey, guys. Just call me. You were the cool teacher. Yeah, yeah, cool. You mean the cool, yeah, Nick's so cool. You know, it's funny.

I'm obsessed with this podcast right now that I was talking to you about called Founders. Yeah. And it's hosted by David Senra, I believe his name is. And he essentially reads biographies, autobiographies, and then breaks them down and just shares the lives and lessons learned from these high-level entrepreneurs, athletes, world leaders. and he was recapping the life and the work of James Dyson, who built Dyson vacuums. And one of the things that James Dyson said about himself that I resonated with so much

is that he considered or considers himself an anti-business billionaire. Now, I'm not a billionaire. Be Nost, dude. I'm not a billionaire. But I like to think that I approach business in a different way where it's almost anti-business. And I am building brand.

I'm building tribe. I'm building community. I'm building connection with products that I believe in for a mission that I believe in. And I've worked with business people and people who are businessmen or women. And I'm like, you ain't my people. Dude, you discussed this the other day.

If you're okay sharing. It was like talking about how the last year, what did you learn? Like, what was last year you learned? Dude, I learned a lot this last year. Well, yeah, you've talked about this lot on this podcast, but you talked about how you took a lot of advice from people last year, which is a good thing to do. But reality is you realize that your business was built upon your direction. Vision. Your vision. Like Nick's vision. And yeah, you have people around you to guide you, but you probably had too many people telling you what to do and not letting Nick just make that decision.

Yeah, I mean, I was telling you guys the other day that I lost confidence in my ability to get the business to the next level where I thought we were supposed to go. And a lot of that loss of confidence was just being surrounded by people who were putting on an act that they were better and smarter than me. And I believed in balled into that. And then I eventually realized after months that no one has the answers were all figured. and out as we go. And that's okay. But, you know, even as what we're talking about today, like diet and eating for performance, there's a lot of people out there who position themselves as experts telling you how

you're supposed to be eating, how you're eating wrong and incorrectly. And here's the way to solve all your problems. And you think to yourself, why I don't have the confidence to fuel myself with the foods that I think I'm supposed to be eating? so I should follow this expert who knows, and eventually you realize they don't know what they're talking about. They don't know any more than me. And I think it's very applicable to all things in life

that we're never going to have all the answers or learning as we go. But as long as you outsource your vision, your thoughts, your ideas, your perspective, the trajectory of your life to other people or someone else, you're heading in a direction that is not authentic to where you should be going. dude chento pichento like no one knows the complete answer to everything and i think what we've always

known is trusting your gut is the biggest thing and your gut will tell you that's why i love working in food but like trusting your gut and your intuition above all is the most in my opinion best way to guide you on the right path yeah i agree so important i mean it helped you build bpn bro yeah for an I think the hard part about that advice to someone else, because it sounds very lofty, just trust your gut. Just trust your intuition. In the back of your mind, when you hear it, you think, it's not that easy.

It's not that easy. But with more experience and repetition, your gut becomes calibrated. So the more you do something, the more confidence you build, the more you can lean on your gut intuition, but your gut actually does connect to your brain. Your brain connects to your gut. So there's something there that it's not all lofty. There's some science behind that stuff.

Dude, like this is the thing. It's not, this is, I feel you look at the same. We read a lot of books. You know I read a lot of books. You put me into founders. I love listening to founders.

And the thing about listening to all these podcasts and reading these books is you can't almost find a true habit created from all of them by these founders or people who have been experts or successful. They all did work. They repeated that work, but they did it based on some sort of intuition to follow a path, even when people told them not to. And they got to eventually a point of success after being a point of difference. And then they just kept doing it, hammering, hammering, hammering, hammering it.

And we just kind of touched on this before. It's like your brain is connected to your gut through the vagus nerve. So your gut, as you said, is responsible for understanding a lot of the things that happen for your brain, via your central nervous system, the way you think, even just how you transfer messages to and from around your body. So if your gut sends you this almost like quirky feeling in your system, you know it's going to have a response to your brain. And so you look at all these people along the way. It's like, okay, well, if they always see, if Dyson didn't feel good about something, there's a reason why probably something didn't happen or a direction did take

conversely. And I think back to, and I'm not the best example, I'm just one person and what my thoughts, everything that I've done and everything that I've also failed at, I've had intuition as to why it would fail. And like my gut would tell me otherwise. Same with food. I'm like, I'm going to lead with my gut, not because a tribe or a group of people are doing so because it's meant to work based on what they say, but because I want to, based on what I want to do. And I feel it's really hard in this day and age to follow a path, particularly in the diet world, when we have a lot of just white noise out there, just bring it back to the foundation of it all of how you actually feel and trusting your own intuition. So here's a question.

Hit me. Do you follow your gut even when there's data to support otherwise? And at one point do you choose data over intuition? And I don't think it's an on or off switch. It's a dimmer switch where they support one another. But for example, say you're doing one thing one way and it works for you and you enjoy it. And then there's all this research that comes out saying that what you've been doing is actually wrong and it doesn't provide you any benefit. and what you were feeling was all placebo. Do you keep following what you were previously doing

based off of your gut intuition, or do you change paths based off of objective data? So I'm going to answer it from my perspective, knowing me as an individual. And what I mean by that is my emotional response to things is I will use data as a guide, but if I wholeheartedly believe in something, I'm just going to go that way.

Now, for me to wholeheartedly believe in something, but also see the data and say it's incorrect, I have to be pretty darn accurate myself within my gut to be like, I am going this way. For example, we are told to get eight hours of sleep a night. Data says this, the importance of sleep says this, you listen to every single book about sleep. wearing a whoop I get realistically maybe seven hours if that of time in bed not asleep however I trust that because I'm able to get up and look at the fact that I'm still got a resting heart rate that is extremely low I'm able to perform every single day the way that I am that while sleep eight hours of sleep is a measurement I think it's more

important to look at your restorative sleep as data not the top total sleep. So back to your question, I trust my gut to actually believe it's less about eight hours of sleep and more about the quantitative or the quality of sleep you get. And that to me is more important. Why do I come to that conclusion? Well, I'm figuring the fact that whenever I fall asleep at night time, I still get up at the same time, the matter what. And sometimes I can't get to bed with being a chef. I can't get to sleep until 10, 30, 11 o'clock at night to wind down. So am I then going to be like, no, I need to stay in bed until for eight hours of sleep for me to get the benefit that I'm meant to be getting? But truthfully, I get up in the morning.

I feel I'm wide awake and I can't get back to sleep. I'm trusting my gut. I'm like, no, I'm meant to be up now as opposed to trying to sit there and be like, okay, I need to be in here for eight hours of sleep every single night. And that's just a simple one to use based on data versus how I feel. but I personally believe I can look at data as a guide not an absolute and that's the biggest thing I come out of it

I'm the same way I think there's a few different ways to look at this one if you're doing something and it works for you and then all this objective data comes out that argues that what you were doing or are doing is incorrect

well if it's working for you technically it's working. Regardless of what the data says, it's working for you. So keep doing what you're doing. Because if that data never came out and you were making progress, maybe there's no causation between the two, but there's a positive correlation in some way. Well, if you look at food in general,

if we trusted data as the absolute the whole time, we wouldn't have an answer because there's studies that show plants being plant-based is the absolute way to go. The study is saying that being a carnivore is the absolute way to go. So then we look at these two metrics of data, which is the complete opposite to each other, what do you make as your decision? If you're going to use absolute, you don't have an ability to make a decision. But if you used your gut and made the reasoning of like, okay, I'm going to trust what I want to do

and know wholeheartedly what works for me, then you can make a decision. then you can make an informed decision that's best suited for you, as opposed to relying on data, which in this way is actually quite complex. Yeah, I like trusting my gut, but then using data to reinforce what I am doing or potentially what I'm not doing, because there have been times in business, for example, where I've suggested that we do something or make a change or try something new. and then the team says, well, we have this data that says otherwise. And I'll listen and I'll read and I'll study the data.

And I usually come to the conclusion, okay, my assumption is wrong. Let's use the data to support a new trajectory or a new path. So I will often approach it that way as well. I think you can find and create data, objective data, to prove everything. in anything, regardless of what line of the sand you stand on. So you can always find data that supports what you're trying to build a narrative around. So do we trust data? Do we not trust data?

Do we trust our guts? Do we trust our intuition? I think it's a combination of all of those things. But that's why it's really hard to say. There is one way to do everything. And you have to listen to this one person to make progress in all things. food, training, parenting, relationships, business, everything. You just got to try, test, fail, succeed, adapt.

It's evolution. We're all going through evolution. Absolutely, bro. And if we all did the same thing, there would be a million BPNs. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably a lot of BPM wannabes, though. Let's be honest.

Well, speaking of sleep, what time do you wake up? Dude, right now, probably around 5.30, 515, so after you've started your second mile, I think. Yeah, I kick off my run right now at 5 on the dot. Yeah, dude. 420 wake up right now. Wow. But that's, I mean, over the years, my wake-up has slowly gotten earlier and earlier and earlier.

And that was, you know, the foundation of early wake-ups was built based off my time in the military. Yep. And then transitioning out of the military, being a business owner, wake up early just because I was so excited to get the day started. Yeah. I just like I couldn't sleep thinking about building. And then I started running. So I wanted to knock out my runs earlier, especially being here in Texas.

Then I became a dad. So I had to start waking up earlier before Charlie woke up. And then when his next baby's born, I was laying in bed the other night with Steph, just thinking about how much our life is going to change when the second baby is born in August. And I said, I think the only way for us to navigate this next chapter of life is I have to find a way to not sleep anymore. That's the only way. It's the only way to make it work. Dude, if you work out the solution, please share.

Because if you can work out how not to sleep and operate, I think a lot of us are one of that secret. I'm actually working on a formula right now. It's an R&D. What? No. Dude, this is the thing, bro. Like, you say stuff like that. And I'm like, that's actually such a neat thing to actually do.

It's something I would try to pursue. My gut would tell me there's a solution. And the data would say, absolutely not. That's how you become a billion-dollar business right there, bro. That's what a big. Then I would be the anti-business billionaire. That's exactly it. Up there with James Dyson.

So I want to talk about food, hit me. Nutrition. You know, you have your new book that you just wrote and it's on pre-sale right now. getting ready to launch, eat like a legend that I'm super proud of. One, because I'm your friend, a big supporter of you, but also because I have some content in that book. Absolutely, dude. This has got Nick Bear written literally on it.

On it and in it. On it and in it. But a lot of the, dude, a lot of the principles that you and I have talked through over the years are in here. And essentially, like, you know, you look at your military background. you look at your ethic as a businessman, as a father, as a husband. It also applies the concept of what we talk about around like looking after yourself. A lot of what people see and what we do in the athlete world is so dominant around like

that's what it's like to be in performance. Reality is we need to perform every single day as individuals. And so there was a moment that you and I had a chat on. It was a few years ago now and talks about the moment it clicked for you, when it came to food was the moment that you changed your process around where you looked at, you know, ingredients and nutrition. No longer were you looking at food for aesthetics. You were looking at it for performance.

The moment you made that switch, you said it changed the way that you were able to not perform, but your relationship with food. And that, like for me, was so apparent. There are a lot of young men, women as well. who have, and how do I say it, not a good quality relationship with certain food, unbeknown to the fact they have it. I used to go out, I used to not eat

because I didn't have control over the food that I was going to have, thinking it was going to be bad for me, which is considered a mild eating disorder. Then you have the ability to think of like the way that you look in your appearance is so impacted by the way that you eat. But if we thought about it in the reverse,

if we looked at the way that we need, need to eat to perform, it will in turn support the way that we do work out or do show up for our family or do show up to get that promotion or build the business or whatever is that we need to do. And in turn, we'll get the assaics, our body is charged and ready for it. And so, dude, that's one of the principles I put in here. I was like, when I was writing this book, because that message you said to me hit home so much, I'm like, that is the best way to submit the way that we need to look at our relationship with food. Right. So I was listening to a a Ben Greensfield podcast.

As I was previously just mentioning to you, I was telling you, whenever we're in Florida, I end up listening to Ben Greensfield podcast. It's my favorite place to run along 30A. I start in Seaside. I've done marathon prep workouts there. I'll run 8 to 10 miles and I'm there on vacation. I just love it.

Just love running there so much. And whenever we're running in 30A, for some reason, I'm always listened to Ban Greensfield podcast. And I was listening to this episode when we were there a few weeks ago and he was interviewing this nutritionist. And the nutritionist was talking all about

just eating disorders and relationships with food, which I remember when I first started talking about unhealthy relationships with food. And someone had sent me a DM saying, you don't have relationships with food, you have relationships with people. And my thought was,

well, if that's your thought process, you've probably never had an unhealthy relationship with food. So you might not understand it. And that's okay. But I know, I know there's a lot of people in the fitness space, in this world, listen to this podcast, who don't have healthy relationships with food.

I interact with these people on a daily basis. And then when you've had an eating disorder, you know one when you see it. Yeah. But I was listening to a podcast, he was interviewing a nutritionist, and she was talking about how when you've had an eating disorder or unhealthy relationships with food, either in the past or in the present, you oftentimes have gut issues, you have

or are more prone to autoimmune disorders because of the way that you think about food. And that stress in your mind connects actually, like physically connects to your gut, through the gut brain axis and the vagus nerve, and when you stress about food, and you overthink about calories and the quality and how it's going to change your body composition and your performance. And you think about it in an obsessive way,

it actually manifests into gut issues, into autoimmune disorders. So it's a much bigger issue than just getting too thin. Yeah, dude. So I want to break this down a little bit because you really touched on a really good point there. So just to really break this down fundamentally. So you've got the gut and the gut is directly physically connected to the brain via the

vagus nerve. Now, the gut takes on the food and is a line essentially where you go through a process of breaking down certain things. That will then potentially be transferred through the vagus nerve and gets the blood into the blood-brain barrier at which it will be decided by the blood-brain barrier if it will make it through within the brain. Now, that's a really cool, basic, fundamental way to look at how it's all connected. But how do the way that we, our sensory, so like the look, the feel, the touch of everything

going on around us and our decisions, how does that affect our emotions, our emotional state, which effectively has an impact positively and negatively on how we consume food and even how we feel. So because your brain has the ability. to light up or not light up with certain hormones. So you look at seroton or endorphins, which are the response to happiness and positive emotions. It has a direct relationship about getting you excited

and your body to digest food. So you hear of the parasympathetic rest and digest state. So when people aren't in the state of rest and digest and they don't have the hormones that light up your body getting you prepared to digest food, they're going to inefficiently break down because they haven't got the optimized, you know, bile acids and the juices to really break down your food you had on and sufficiently put it to where it needs to throughout the rest of your body.

But that's a lot of the part because your brain is taking a lot of the emotional, well, essentially the emotions from the neurotransmitters are either in flux or they're making a decision, lights up your brain, doesn't allow up your brain, and it has an impact on the way that your gut will have ability to digest the right foods. So this is an important thing when you think about like your emotional state and the impact it has on your digestion of food or that lack thereof in general. If someone doesn't want to eat food and they're forced to eat food, we've talked about this. If you try to eat something you don't like, you don't want to have it, but you're forced to have it. Your body's not going to be prepared to digest it as optimally as if it's something you do want to have.

Because the thought of you having something you want to have versus the thought of you having something you don't. want to have, there's going to be a different amount of digestive juices and preparedness within your gut for you to optimize that breakdown. Would you say it goes the same way if there's something you want to eat but you feel guilty for eating it, do you have the same reaction where you might have stomach discomfort or issues because of so much stress around that food? There's more, yeah, stress is a big component of it because as you increase stress, the cortisol increases, the inability to actually burn fat and all that, that goes on. And that goes on. So like, again, the emotional state has an effect on how you are able to break things down.

So for your question, even though you want it and thinking you shouldn't be having it, part of that's going to affect it. Because even though you're primed, you're like, oh, I want this delicacy. I want this thought process. And the cue, you got like, you know, you got like the cue, the craving, the response and the reward is what we see from habits, right? cue. The habit is you may walk into, you know, you may walk into work and you're like, oh, I want a donut. So you go get the craving, which is, you know, oh, I'm going to go get a donut. Then you're

actually the response, I have the donut. And then the reward is like the taste and sensation of it. Reality is in that, in that whole process, your body isn't responding the same way internally as it is from the physical thing of actually consuming it. So then you've got to take on this food. And even though nutritionally it's not the best thing for you. Emotionally, it's not the best thing for you either. And so then we go through this whole process of eating disorders alike and we look at performance and we think about nutrition when we really should be thinking about food as a whole across the spectrum of emotions as well. So what does eating for performance look like compared to eating for aesthetics? So eating for aesthetics is typically looking at, the best way to look at

a very dogmatic approach. You're eating to look good. Best way to put it. And when you do that, you often restrict yourself to what you typically need from a performance perspective in the pursuit of trying to be optimized the way you look. So you may, you know, look at macros and say, I've got to hit X amount of protein, X amount of carbs, X amount of fat. Now, typically, fat's lower because you want to have a very lean amount of, you know, fat present as you walk down the street with your shirt off. But it may not. It may not not be what's the best thing if you're performance. Same with your carbohydrate intake. And personally, I used to do this. I used to look really flat. Like, you know, you look at

bodybuilders and, and like, I didn't eat enough. And I thought I was trying to eat just enough to survive to look lean and like good, right? I'm a perfect example of it. Ultimately, when you don't eat enough, your body doesn't have the nutritional value to support all the work you are doing both emotionally and physically. So then it's a lot of you. So then it's, starts to draw upon your stores. First goes carbs, as we know, through forms of glycogen that's stored. Then you've got fat, which can be a good thing. Then you get to protein. It is shocking how often we actually get to protein sometimes, without even thinking about it. And then you're trying to build lean muscle. You're like, dude, just because you're trying to

look good, you're not consuming enough food in order to achieve just looking after the maintenance of it as opposed to supporting the development of it. So then we flip the switch. So you've gone from having a very specific macro nutrient profile. You're counting your macros. You're looking at things you need to eat every single day to look after the way that you look. How about we did that in order to perform? So this in case could be obviously a little bit more intake, but it's more about how much food you need to thrive every single day.

Are you waking up flat? Are you waking up tired? Are you getting towards the end of the day and not able to actually do your job? Are you pursuing an athletic trait and not able to actually complete it? Maybe you're at work and you're falling asleep during a presentation. All these things are pretty just natural things we do throughout our day. Yet a lot of it, I would suggest, comes down to inability to eat for our performance. So you've gone from eating numbers just to look good to then now consuming foods in order

for you to thrive, to above maintenance. and in turn when you go to the gym, fully fit, fully loaded with nutrition of value, you're able to run faster, lift heavier, which in turn will build more muscle, more cardiovascular system

and make us all look like Nick Bear effectively. So if you're listening in, the secret is to eat for performance. Right, Nick? I have found, I say it's humbly, that one of my competitive advantages with training, running, lifting, all the things, is that I've learned how to fuel my

performance. Yeah, dude. And I'm by no means, like, this elite marathon runner, but I believe for a bigger guy that holds more weight than most marathon runners, I run a pretty fast marathon. And I've run with a lot of people who are a lot lighter than me, who have been training longer than me who balk and get injured and fall out of runs because they're not fueling appropriately. Once you understand and respect and appreciate how to properly fuel your performance, the change, not only for your workouts, but the recovery is overnight exponential success.

So like when I first started training Iron Man and triathlon and then marathons and ultras, and I learned how to fuel my workouts early in the morning. Not only were my workouts better, my recovery was improved, and later in the afternoon I wasn't sucking. I still felt strong. And what I found with fueling for performance, what's kind of a big topic of discussion I think we can dive into is fueling for performance for one person is not the same as it is for another.

You could be, like how much do you weigh right now? Oh, dude, I'm terrible. It's 77 kilos. Sorry, 170, I think I'm 172 pounds. 172? Yeah. So you're 172, I'm about 2002 pounds. Must be nice.

It's like 30, I'm like, wait, 30 more pounds than you. Yeah, dude. Most people would assume that I consume exponential more calories than you. But that might not be the case. Absolutely not. You could be consuming a thousand more calories than I am. Now, let's get my tattoo done last week. And I was talking to the artist who trains really hard too.

Jack Guy, Andy Foe here in the Austin area. And I believe he said he weighs 165 pounds. And he's consuming about 4,000 calories a day. Yep. Which is a lot of calories for 165 pounds. This goes for men and women. You cannot compare your fuel and requirements to someone else based off of your gender, your size, your energy demands for that,

working out for that day, everyone is so unique and different, you have to fuel you. There's no blueprint. There's no menu. There's nothing that works for me that might not work for you. You got to look at it as a unique approach and perspective. That's exactly why I go back to this concept of trusting your gut, particularly around food.

Because we've talked about this before, I think it's the first, the second episode, around bio-individuality. We're all different. You can be a twin with the same. same genome code. And they've done a study that looks at twins in the UK. And they saw that even though they're the same genes, you know, the same chromosome makeup, over time their physical characteristics adjusted, why? Even if they had the same foods per se, they've got lifestyle factors that

intervene. But typically they have different foods and the way they respond is different to that. And so over time, you can see even though we have two people who are starting in the same, their physical changes over time are the result of the choices they make throughout the day. And some could be not eating enough, some could be eating too much. But all it is to say that we should be treating ourselves as an individual. And to that point, yeah, I meant to eat more than the average person does at my weight right now, right? And that is a perfect example that you look at my weight and what I do and people are like, why are you eating so much based on this?

It's like, because I know that this is, actually through data, no, I actually have a significantly high metabolic rate that burns a lot of calories even when I'm not working out. So in order to support that, I trust my gut in the type of food decisions that I need to make. One benefit you have, and I think this is really, really cool, is you know pretty quantitatively just, you're like a human scale. You've kind of done so much, so many things. physical competitions on a range of scale. So like you've gone everything from, you've done powerlifting at a fundamental level, you've done bodybuilding, you've done triathletes, you've,

triathons, you've done ultras, you've done marathons. So you know from a bodybuilding level what you need to do to get down to, you know, minimal body fat, which is a very uncomfortable time. I don't prefer it. I do not want to be around you and that's the situation. No one does. Nope. To the other side, which is like an ultra, where you're not having the specific foods of fiber, you're actually just trying to get calories in. So two ends of the spectrum. Then you've got the hybrid, which is 100% like actually more towards the ultrasound, less about the, you know, how we look, but ends up being the best savage looking animal. You know, based on that spectrum, inside your head, what you need to do to survive in your given modality. So most people don't have that, right? Most people haven't gone that broad and haven't built in the reps, right? So the suggestion here

would be to simply start comprehending what numbers that you need just to maintain based on your daily exercise and that can be like, what's your favorite wearable for understanding calorie intake? I mean, I really just wear a garment right now. Cool.

And I'll look at like the calorie burn metrics with a grain of salt. Yep. At the end of each day, I'll look at my steps. I'll use my steps as a gauge of how much nutrition I need to be consuming. Look at my mileage. I'll look at like what workouts I've done and what workouts are coming up. So to kind of take a step back, I view food and nutrition as a tool.

And I want to be very careful in the way that I say that around a chef. Yes. Well, and more so in a way, I don't want to say that I'm robotic in a sense that food is just a tool to achieve performance and aesthetics. I love food. I love eating food. I love good tasting food. I love going to dinner. I love making different recipes. I want to enjoy my food. Everything I eat, I want to enjoy. And I can typically find joy in almost everything that I'm eating. But when I say I view food and nutrition as a tool, it's that I know how to manipulate my food intake based off of the demands that my body needs to fuel the performance that it requires. And the best way that you do this, I believe, is by forward thinking

and backwards planning. So tonight, before I go to bed, I'm going to look at my schedule tomorrow. I'm going to plan out my workouts and I'm going to determine what my fueling requirements are before I go to bed in preparation for tomorrow morning as well as throughout the day tomorrow as I prep my meals. So if it's a bigger workout day, it's a lower body strength day, if it's a longer run, I'm going to have more carbs throughout the day, maybe some more dietary fat. Proteins always stay inconsistent. But you are correct in saying or identifying that with all these different competitions I've done, and the extremes in which I've pushed my body, I've learned effectively how to use nutrition and food as a tool to my advantage.

But not everyone understands that. No. And I think, but as an example, it's like you've, I think you've done the reps. You've put the reps in to understand what that is. So what I'm trying to get out here is that, like, you know, we all look at what you do, whether it be through your socials or, you know,

your general just daily output. And you're someone who really does plan out everything on purpose and intentionally. But even the tops and the amounts of food you have is very much like it's now a habit that you've created based on triggers. So it's triggers. Like again, going back to referencing atomic habits. Like I told you,

I've been reading atomic habits again. It talks about like we build into ourselves these systems through, you know, cues, cravings, responses and rewards. So, like, you know, you may get home and may hit just after bedtime and you're like, just so you may just have the dinner time. After dinner time, you may get a cue. As soon as dinner's finished, you have the cue of going, okay, I'm craving, getting my planning ready.

Sweet. So you plan ready for the next day. All right. So not everyone has built that system yet within themselves. It's not automatic. But for you, it is. And the same for like understanding your food and when you're going to break them out. So you may think about the day and go, okay, I now know I need to hit more carbs this day, right?

Some people don't even know what more carbs look like based on the average day. So what we need to find out is for people to understand what actual carbs are for an average day, like a maintenance day versus a performance day where you're doing more than the average, right? I think that's where we're at now. Helping people understand what their foundation nutrition is and from there helping them make the adjustment intrinsically for themselves as a bio-individual to make them help, well, to help them perform at their peak. So for that reasoning, if someone decides to not eat carbs based on, you know,

like I don't, I personally suggest you need carbohydrates. You know, like a lot of people talk about having a low-fat diet. I'm sorry, low-fat and also having no carbs at all. I'm like, how do you, how does that work? Like, firstly for water retention or this kind of stuff, but hey, I'm not going to push something if they truly feel it's worth. What's best for them? To this day, I still haven't found someone who's had more than three years of being on that diet.

I don't know if you know anyone who can hold. No, I've found that of all the diet groups, the no carb group is a pretty small or short shelf life. Very short shelf life. That most people who go low, no carb, eventually start incorporating carbs back in. to feel better I've also have seen the same thing with a vegan

plant-based community and I've always heard from a lot of people like there's this 10-year target where like when most people hit 10 years of being plant-based or vegan

maybe you've heard otherwise but a lot of people start incorporating meat back into their diet because if you aren't adding meat in your diet and you are plant-based, you are vegan.

One that's a preference. Everyone can eat the way they want to eat. I have nothing against anyone's diet. But from what I've heard and what I've seen, if you're plant-based, you do need to get more protein in your diet than you would have been if you were consuming meat.

If you have to get more dietary protein in, it can be more difficult to get that much protein in from quality sources. and there are vitamin mineral deficiencies that are common in plant-based individuals as well. So I've seen a lot of people who, you know, maybe do a plant-based vegan diet for 10-ish years and eventually start incorporating meat back in. There's also people who are plant-based for their entire life and feel just as great.

So again, I think it depends on the individual, but I don't personally ever foresee myself eating a diet that restricts any one type of food. For performance, emotional relationship, everything. Dude, nothing worse. And I mean, it's like, I, look, I'm not an expert in relationships by any means. But it'd be very interesting when you sit down

with a potential life partner and you only eat a certain way, the other person is a certain way, and for that relationship to not have trouble, you know, long term. You know, like, or even just even the short term, like, oh, is this going to work? We even going to bother trying this. But yeah, man, like I, the whole thing around plant-based, you know, I've said this before,

I don't think it's a bigger, like, in terms of your health, it's more of a differentiated or factor if you eat enough plants, regardless of your plant-based or not. You love your beats. I'm all about it, bro. Keep eating those beats, dude. But, like, I think people have to fundamentally know what works for them, make it for the rest of their life. So, as you said, I don't want to restrict anything. I never like restriction. You tell something you can't have something, they're going to want to have it at a rebellion,

you know? But when we're trying to help people understand what's right for them, you know, there's things you can think about is like, what are you actually into, right? That's number one. How much is the right amount is the question that everyone asks me all the time. How much of this should I have? How much of that? And I use wearable technology with a grain of salt, to. For example, if I'm wearing a watch or like a garment or a whoop or whatever I'm wearing, if I can see consistently that I have a high calorie intake every single day, when I say high, I would say above two and a half thousand is like two, two and a half is pretty pretty average or starting to tinker along. Anything above three, you're starting to get pretty high. I have like

a three and a half to four on average thousand calorie day that I need to just to maintain. So like I know if that's a consistent thing I'm seeing across my metrics, that I need to consume a lot of calories to maintain my diet, just every day, naturally. So what I would say is look at your habits, look at your routines, look at the day, and start to actually factor in the habits that you're seeing

into implementing your nutritional goals. So if you're someone who's like tinkering around, you know, the average of the individual for, you know, say two and a half or two thousand calorie day, you know that you've got the pretty standard American intake. When I say standard American intake, still make it based around what it is you are having. And then you look at calories from carbohydrates, proteins and fat.

You can look at different ratios, whether it be a 30, 40, 30, 40, 30. There's different ways you can look at it. But I don't want to go into that right now, but I would just say, because it's like most important number I feel is to understand how much you need every day to look after your energy intake and perform. Once you work out what that is, or at least how you feel, then you can work out the best maconotrient based on that.

Do you count your macros? I don't. Oh, sorry, it's not true. I usually don't. Right now I am because I'm doing, I'm actually building muscle. So I have to hit 210 grams of protein or roughly that a day,

about 380 grams of carbs and about 100 grams of fat a day. I think it'd be beneficial if we kind of just rift on some actual items that people could put into place to to fuel their performance.

Dude, only, we only said this earlier. We'd have planned. We were like, done the full open up of topware containers of rice and chicken. Dude, you know, it's funny.

It's not funny, but I'll never forget this. I was at last man standing. The race that I did in in August, September timeframe, early September. How many laps you do? 25, 26.

I ended up doing just over 100 miles. Yeah. There was a 4.2 mile loop. Nice. And at last man standing, I ran into someone who was running their first ultra there. Oh, my God. And I was asking them what their fueling strategy was. And I think they were coming from more of a bodybuilding aesthetic background.

So they had chicken. rice and broccoli. Oh, no. Ready to consume in between each lap in preparation to fuel the next. I was like, hey, man, like, completely appreciate and respect the approach, but this is a different beast. You got to approach this differently. Your body needs calories, calories that are easily digestible. Protein's good, but it's, you want carbs.

You want some fat in there. and I'll never forget having this conversation because people will look at fueling performance in the same way that they view fueling aesthetics. And there's different levels of performance. There's performance like ultra where you look at someone who's like Courtney DeWalter who's eating sour gummy candy during her race

to get the calories. Savage, man. And then there's like your daily fueling of performance that sees clean, natural. unprocessed, minimally processed foods that fuel your energy and your workouts and your recovery. But when I think of like fueling performance, first off, I think, and I kind of talked about this in my last podcast, like lay the foundation. That foundation for me is calories and then it's protein.

So right off the bat, prioritize protein. And I always aim for one gram of protein per pound of body weight. And I want to ensure that I'm spacing that out throughout the day. When I found with a lot of people is you have to have a plan going into that day. It's really easy to fall behind on your protein. And if you're just eating what's available or you're just picking up something on the go and you know this by experience of tracking your calories and your macros, it could be 6 p.m. at dinner.

I wonder how many grams of protein I've consumed today. I've only consumed 25 grams of protein. I need to consume another. 175 grams before I go to sleep to hit my goal. So for me, it's always have a plan of how you're going to be getting your protein in, or at least prioritizing protein intake throughout the day to ensure that by the time you finish that day or that night, you're wrapping up your one gram per pound of body weight. So that's like always my first approach.

Okay. Then let's talk about carbs and then fat. How do you approach carbohydrates to fuel performance? Yeah. So I use the same strategy. So first off, I look at amount of protein I need, and that will factor in based on, you know, whatever my need is for that period of time. Right now, I'm actually doing more than one pound, a one gram per pound, right?

Because I'm looking at the amount of intake I have from my just general maintenance. As I said, I've got to hit around 3.7 on average right now, 3,700 calories is what I need to eat right now to be maintenance or just above maintenance for my daily needs, right? So from building muscle, which is something I struggle with. So, you know, I'm quite a lean person. I easily stay lean. It's really hard for me to build muscle. I have to be really intentional with the amount of food I have.

So therefore, I'm having more protein. Once I work out my protein amount, it actually factors in to say 30% or just around what I need for, say, 40% of my carbs and then the 30% of my fat. So once I work out that ratio of my protein or the gramage of protein, I associate it with my ratio with respect to percentage. And then therefore I can work out my carbs. carbs and therefore I can work out my fat. So I, to that point, knowing your calories will help you understand your, essentially, your overall needs, whereas protein helps you be, create the foundation

for what your carbs and fat would be. So my fat, you know, with nine grams, with nine calories associated with one gram of fat, and the same for being four grams, or four calories with one gram of carb and the same for protein, you can then work out what your calories are associated with those two respective macronutrients. So in this instance, I'm eating around 380 grams of carbohydrates and around 100 grams or just over 100 grams of fat. And I worked that out after I work out my protein. And once I work out my protein, I associate with like a percentage of ratio. And that ratio is typically a 30, 40, 40, and maybe 30, or it could be a 30, 50, 30, 50, 20, whatever it is based on what I need. That makes sense.

So you're trying to gain right now. Absolutely. Yeah. Fuel performance to gain. Yeah. Do you ever get worried about going over those calories? Or is it just, this is my bare minimum of what I want to hit. If I go over slightly, that's okay.

Yeah, it's a good question. I don't think I've been in this situation. So when I play rugby, I was so into, like, when I play rugby, obviously, high impact, constantly justly, you know, hitting people all the time. you want to be big and strong. At that point in time I life, though, I was so conscious about the way that I looked, so conscious.

So I underfueled myself. Now, you know, 15 years later, I'm looking at this going, I don't think of actually given myself enough of a crack at building muscle with the right amount of food. I think that's, that happens a lot of people.

The fear of gaining too much pulled people back. Yeah. So like, I've never done that. So your question is like, do I fear it? I don't think so anymore, given knowing how quickly I know I can just turn into like lean man. That's why I'm pretty dedicated. That's why when you saw me I rocked up this morning, oh dude, everyone listening in right now,

I rocked up to BPNHQ hangary. And part of the reason I was hangary was because I was disappointed myself that I didn't plan to have my food sorted properly. And I essentially ordered food, didn't rock up, and it's still within, and it's still my control, right? And the day, got to put on me as responsibility. But I was so frustrated because I knew how much food I have to have on a daily basis. And I did a workout this morning and knowing that I wasn't able to view myself properly frustrated me so much. It's like letting myself down.

So I think more than anything, I'm not concerned about putting on too much. I'm finally giving myself the opportunity to build the muscle that I need to then perform with the strength that I need. Well, you know if you're ever shown up to BPNHQ or anywhere that I'm at, I'm going to have food readily accessible. Dude, this is the best part. This is why Nick's a fucking homie. Like, literally rocks up and I felt, I felt terrible because I was late because I was like stressing about trying to get food and wasn't able to get it. And Nick looks at me as like, how are you? And I'm like, I'm very honest with Nick. Like, I like, he's my homie. So I'm like, dude, I'm fucking angry. And Nick's was like, first thing was just like, bro, let's go get you some just meat.

Let's go get you some food. Do you get you some rice? Like, like, pulls out the red carpet. And dude, I'd like, after that, I was like, I said, dude,

of course I have prepped rice and 300 pounds of meat and our freezer in the back. I'll give you as many meals as you want. We always have food. I know, dude. I just, yeah,

I never, I never, I never take, I never like taking advantage of true friends. That's all it is. It's like, me and, me and Steph were traveling a few weeks ago for a wedding.

And we're about to roll out for this. this wedding out of our hotel room and I reached a little mini fridge and I pulled out a Tupperware container of rice and chicken and she's like, where did you get that? I was like, I instacarded a rotissory chicken and some BT rice

and I wanted to prep this meal because I'm going to be gone for the next couple hours. Like, I need my meal. She said, you have a problem. It's like, no, I'm fueling my performance. Absolutely. That's not a problem.

And that's the thing, though. It feels straight up though. that is a trigger, that is a habit, that is a cue. You have created that based on experience and full well knowing what is important for you to survive and thrive. But you've done it knowing full well what you need to do with neuroscience control. You knew that you weren't able to get food readily available, potentially the next few hours.

In order for you to survive and thrive, you controlled the controllable and got food ahead of time. And I would say majority of people never think like that. We think impulsively. We don't plan. we think of what we need at that moment in time. And that's the biggest challenge we face when comes to food. It's not working out

how much we need. It's that we don't plan ahead like we treat a lot of other things in our day and our week in general. If you ever see me in the airport, check me and ask, be like, show me your meal. And I'll reach you in my bag and I will pull out a Ziploc bag

of chicken, beef, rice, sweet potatoes. Like, when I go to the airport, I always have a meal with me. In a zip block bag? A Ziploc bag. Steph, it drives Steph crazy because we'll be, I look like, she's like, like, you look like a bum. I'm sitting in the corner of the airport.

Yeah. With my zip block bag in a plastic spoon eating out. People are looking at me thinking, what is this dude doing? I'm like, dude, this is eight ounces of chicken and 300 grams of rice from Primal Kitchen buffalo sauce. This is America right here. This is freedom looks like. dude you know that oh man

the amount of people now after this podcast if we see someone if I see it's gonna be the most gratifying thing for me if I go through the airport one time and I see someone sitting down eating out his little bag and like they listen to this episode

with like a go on more hat yeah yeah 100% I already see those I want them to listen to this episode and be like oh yeah we now do that I'm gonna start doing that now there's no shame in it oh absolutely I'm proud

no shame so let's talk about eat like a legend Let's do it. What was the foundation of wanting to write the book, share the recipes? You know what's interesting, dude? I was trying to think, someone asked me that recently. But like, around the first time I met you, you asked me, when's your next book coming out?

And, you know, Eat Like a Legend was the first book I'd actually done in six years. The last one I did was when I first got to America. No one knew me, came out, didn't do well. And it was because a lot of my audience, well, all my audience was from Australia. at the time I knew no one. And so I knew it was going to want him to do another book with the right publisher, with the right team. And, you know, six years on, I've now lived in America for eight and a half years.

But in this time, I've built friends, a great circle, but also a community and a team. And I knew, built, like, deep down inside the type of book I wanted to do. And I wanted to make sure that I was in a position for it to succeed and do the best of I could and have people around me to support it. But it was after, I was generally thinking about this, after our chat, when you said the eight performance line, I'm like, I've been doing this for so long, and that's the best way to summate it. And when someone approached me, do you want to do a book again?

It was almost like all these different factors of my life had come together at mine, where my gut was telling me, it's time. Because I know my message. I feel like I've had an imprint in people's lives now when it comes to. helping them eat for better performance, but I hadn't yet put together one piece of literature that could help support it just with one documentation. But now I had a team who can help support me personally. I had my friends around me who love what I do and support me like you do every single day. And I realized that I could crush this. Like this is my, this is what I was

born to do. And so I want about, you know, as you know how to create a book, you, you pitch in front of a company, a publisher. And they straight away were like, we want this right now. And so Harper Collins wanted to be my publisher. And, you know, it's funny. Like writing a book is like anything. It's creating a product, right? I did my first self-published my first two books. So I learned how to create a book, spend a lot of money, waste a lot of money. design a book, sell a book, everything. And ever since I've been in America, I've learned a lot about how the world is so different and the way that we perceive things are different and that, you know, coming from Australia,

thinking that the Australian way of life is right and coming here and learning like, there's different people in this world and we have to be, have greater perspective. One of the best things I ever did was move to America. But also like learning from our friends and our network. And so, yeah, man, it was like, it was the right time. but I didn't want to just write a book. I want to write a book that was truly defined pioneering. I wanted to have it with QR codes.

It created video interactions, people understand things. An AI capability, people take a photo of the fridge and see what they should cook from that based on the ingredients they have. So I have that created. That's cool. Yeah, it's fucking cool, dude. So you can actually take a photo of your fridge and be like, oh, what can I create of this? Because for me, what do I want to do? I want people to cook more.

What are the barriers to people cook more? well one time two skill and three honestly costs so if they've already got something in their fridge and instead of running out to the grocery store thinking they have to get more ingredients if i take a photo of their fridge and they already know with whatever they have there they can put something in a recipe is printed out for them then i've done my job i've already created one one barrier or prevented one barrier to entry so constantly coming up with ideas behind that and then you know again growing the social following to people for people to understand that this thing is super and coming up with ideas that would make people, again, follow habits.

You say go one more. You've built that consistently. You say it over and over again for people, and it builds up in this positive mindset for people. I say control or controllable. And one of the things I find with cooking is people just quit. They don't want to do it after one time that affects their ability to, you know, either do something else or it's too hard. But like anything, you know, you didn't build your business in one day.

you failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, success, failed, failed, fail, failed, success, fail, foul, foul, sack, sex, you know, it's a progressive thing. And on another scale, the way we look at cooking is the same. If I told you to create the same meal every Tuesday night for the next three weeks in a row, the first night will take the longest,

it'll cost the most, and it'll be definitely the hardest. By the third night, you probably have a glass of wine on your hand as you're cooking. You have using one pot. That's my favorite way to cook. Dude, straight up. Yeah. It's a baller.

constant thing is just get the reps in man get the reps in if you want to eat like a legend you have to learn to cook like one and if you want to show up for yourself and everybody every single day you have to get the reps in no matter what it is this book's all about cooking it's all about helping you eat the way that you need to to perform but in life it's about putting yourself first so you can put others the way they deserve to be the first in your life so it's why i create the book was what's made cooking more enjoyable for me because i love cooking now yeah you do and i think this might help a lot of people. It's kind of the way we cook today. We made those waffles. What makes cooking so tedious and boring for me is when you're weighing everything and anything and it becomes just

like this job. Today as we were making the waffles, it's eyeballing. I've seen the recipe. It's like two-third cup oil or two-third cup, one-third cup oil. That looks about one-third cup. Two-third cup maple syrup. Now it looks about two-third cup. Some tables soon as Cinnamon. That's about tablespoon. I think that for me is fun because it's on the fly. You're experimenting. You taste it. This needs a little bit more cinnamon.

It needs a little bit more applesauce or whatever it is in there. And you manipulate the recipe on the fly as you go. That's what makes cooking for me more fun. Yeah, dude. And if you're fueling for performance and you have a big run come up tomorrow. I'm going to throw a little bit more banana in here. make it a little bit more carbohydrate dense. But I resonate with the way that you talk about food.

We talk about this a little bit. We were talking about it earlier in regards to eating more purples and more blues and more colors. Because the way I've seen a lot of popular diets and diet tribes take off in these past couple years is you have to have this one thing, this secret, that no one else is doing yet. That is the unlock in which you haven't identified yet that's going to solve all your problems. It's like you haven't been able to lose weight of all the times you've tried. Here's this thing called keto. Here's this thing called carnivore.

Here's this thing called plant base. Here's this thing called paleo. There's like there's a solution. But I need now be the expert because you can't understand the solution. So I'm going to guide you through it. The reality is like nutrition and diet isn't that complex. and I think you and me eat the same way where it's nutrient dense,

it's variety, it's diversity, it's plants, it's meats, it's fruits, it's carbohydrates, it's healthy fats, it's all these things

in abundance and in balance. And there's no like secret. There's no sex appeal to it, but it works. Dude, yeah, my philosophy is a thing. My philosophy around food isn't like I make food sexy, but my philosophy is not that sexy. It's not going to be a buzzword

that gets SEO out there. This cookbook isn't going to be the defiance of something. What it does do it help you fundamentally learn how to cook in a pioneering way to help you enjoy it and also has front matter that helps you understand how to eat your performance. At the end of the day, the underlying message is you've got to get the reps in no matter what it is. In the day, you've got to be the one of cooks and you've got to be the one to put your body first. You know, so if you follow a keto diet, I'm very curious how long you can do that for for it to be sustained. You and I live a life that we want to live for the rest of our lives. So why would you find something that's going to be short-sided in that?

Right. You know, like I find it, when someone comes to me and says, what do you think about this diet? Automatically, when I say diet, I get a negative connotation. I haven't got a good relation with the word diet. I don't. That's why I try to use nutrition instead of diet. I like it. It's much better.

One thing I wanted to talk to you about, you know, you coming from the restaurant space, growing up in restaurants, launching Charlie Street, and now being the executive chef at the Osprey at the one hotel in Brooklyn, I want to know, like, what is the truth about eating at most restaurants? because I've heard people talk about it in the restaurant space and a lot of these chefs. I know a lot of it's true. I'm curious how you guys approach it at your restaurants and the restaurants you've worked in the past. People were like if you, I saw this Instagram post. It was probably a year ago. I was like, if you order broccoli at a restaurant, it's covered in butter and oil.

If you order a steak at a restaurant, it's covered in butter and oil. If you order potatoes, the restaurant, it's covered in butter and oil. Is that true? It was like everything you eat at a restaurant more chlorically dense based on the way it's cooked and prepared. And how have you approached that in the restaurants you've worked at? Yeah, great question. Dude, I would say majority, I'd say on a generalistic note, the answer is yes. You have more salt, more fat and more calories added to food.

That's why it tastes so good. Yeah. The idea behind a restaurant isn't to give you, it's to give you the most amazing experience, which includes the taste for most of it. So like what happens is people fry foods, they'll put oil on them, they'll fry them again. You know, they'll sit them in butter and hold them for a bit. Like there's just a number of different ways you can do things that will just maximize the way that our flavor receptors will just get sex appeal and light up our brains. And that's the thing.

Once our brain gets lit up and has this dominant cue from what they just taste, they're just going to want it again. That's what creates cravings. You know, it's just natural. So we see this in not just restaurants, but in packaged foods. the amount of things that are added to foods, like the texture of a crunch to a certain umami salts like MSG that we see, to even the, you know,

the feeling that we're consuming something that we think is, but it's not. And like then all of a sudden I gut has a different response to it. So we see this. And so both in packaged foods particularly and of course in restaurants, yeah, it's a dominant thing. And that's kind of like where I,

where my big point of difference is, like, I don't like using the term, like we are a healthy restaurant. We're a restaurant that is modern Australian, but I don't use seed oils. I don't like using seed oils. I have the ability to be at a restaurant and in control of a restaurant

that doesn't use seed oils. So like to use olive oil? Extra virgin olive oil. Yeah. And so it's a high price cut in us and it tastes a bit different with certain foods, but the challenge is to make it harder on us to make it easier on the customer.

And so along with that, there's things that I don't want to use refined sugar in our cooking. Reality is, for desserts, some of the things still need to include refined sugar. They don't need to, but we do. Part of it is the clientele, but also the fact that we want this certain ways that sugar responds to certain chemical reactions that maple syrup and honey just can't do yet. So that's the only reason we use refined sugar. Other than that, like my things are very wholesome, nourished kind of feel. You've eaten there, like Steph and the team have eaten there.

Same principles apply. So in this case, man, it's like, as a chef, at least from my background, I have responsibility to, with every resource that I put out, both in books, TV, social, everything is my message and how I feel, which includes a restaurant, which includes the menu. And even on those days where you see me doing outback cooking, like when I'm legitimately cooking in the ground. It's not using excessive amounts of oils and butters and things like that

and just using the natural goodness coming from the food and seasoning appropriately to make them shine. And that's how I feel about in general. As someone who's a home cook looking to look after themselves, it's just learning how to season, fundamental cooking and don't have to do too anything extravagant for it to be a win. So I think there's a key takeaway there for the listener. And I think you mentioned it when you first started talking about the restaurant that you're currently working in. Your job there is to create an experience.

Yeah. That experience is not necessarily something like someone is going for every single night. And you're not going to be living off of that food all the time. But when you go there, enjoy yourself. The food was created, curated. the menu was developed to not only nourish you, but make you feel a certain way, mentally, physically, emotionally. But we all have this responsibility,

this self-responsibility where, yes, we can go and indulge and enjoy these experiences. But the majority of our life and our day needs to be built off the foundation of recipes like in this cookbook, where you're bringing to life the natural flavors of, the meat and using light seasonings and the way you prepare the food to highlight the flavor as opposed to creating an experience for every single meal.

That, dude, chanto per chanto. You're like, I don't expect someone to go out at dinner time, a night out with friends, and not enjoy themselves with me, not getting a chocolate cake. That's not what we're talking about here. When you go out, experience, have a good time. Within your Monday to Friday or your controllable environment where you're looking to improve your performance and still eat a delicious meal, that's what I'm there for. It's my job is to help you enjoy your everyday life,

every single day at the utmost possibility. But we hear of 80-20, you hear of all these different ratios in the day. You'll know when you are overdoing it, but it's up to you then to make that decision to change your habits, to suit, to benefit your performance. Yeah.

And if you really, I'll always say this, if you really wanted what you are saying you want, you will make that change. You really will. Too often people tell me, I really want to, but it's really hard. And I'm like, I can't, well, there's nothing I can say. In the day, like, you either do or you don't.

And it sounds really harsh. I know, like, there's a lot of different responsibilities. And, you know, people feel maybe they have obligations. But I still think down to it. It's like, build up the basic habits and fundamental cues so that you can make that decision's actually best for you. Well, that's why I like training for performance goals over aesthetic goals. Yeah, dude.

And there's more flexibility. when you're training for a performance goal. And when I say there's more flexibility, that does not mean there's less discipline that's required. There's more flexibility where you can have, at least me personally, I can have a better mental and emotional health around food because I'm fueling that performance.

When I'm training for an aesthetic goal, like my bodybuilding competition last year, that was a mental and emotional nightmare for someone who had a previous eating disorder, which is just like, a poor decision on my end. Yeah, but I, this may not like justifying it for you, but I feel it's almost like a challenge to get back into that position and see how you can do.

So my question is, how did you feel during and then post that situation? During the bodybuilding prep? During, it played to my advantage because I can dial in and you could put a piece of, you could put a rib-eye steak in front of me that seasoned perfectly cooked medium rare and put a fan behind it and blow it at my face and I'll sit there and take it

and I won't be tempted to eat it. Yeah. When I'm dialed in and I'm turned on, I'm turned on and dialed in. Yeah. What's tough for me and what was tough for me post bodybuilding competition

is that it's hard for me to turn it off. Gotcha. Bodybuilding competition was over. I still wanted to control every variable. I still wanted to stay lean. I still was tracking my calories and my macros. Because for me, it's not a, I can turn that switch on. Sometimes I can't turn it off as easy as I can turn it on.

So that's kind of like one thing I identified in this bodybuilding prep is I'm really good at controlling the controllables. But sometimes it's me being all consumed after I've been all in. because me and my family, me and staff, me and friends, like going for dinner. When we ate at the Osprey in New York, everything you brought out, we ate. Yeah, did. And we ate a lot of food. So when I go to dinner, like, that for me is an experience. Yeah.

It's not, I'm not, and I used to be like this, so I'm not anymore. Say, for example, I knew we were going to your restaurant. a few years ago. And I knew you were going to bring out all this food for us. I wouldn't eat all day so that I could binge at night. I would save up all my calories so I can go so hard at night. Now, I eat the same way I would normally throughout the day. Maybe I'll reduce dietary fat and carbs a little bit. Maybe I'll eat chicken instead of steak or beef for lunch. Maybe with that third meal, I won't have the cup of oatmeal and the banana and berries that I normally would because I know I'm going to have more carbs in the evening.

I'll make some small modifications, but I don't restrict throughout the day. And then when we get to dinner, I'm going to try everything, but I'm not going to eat all of it just to say that I ate all of it. So me and stuff will always get dessert. And we might take one or two bites of that dessert.

And it might hit. It's like, wow, that was really good, but we're good. Sometimes we get. a dessert and it's really, really good. And we will say, all right, let's just finish this. Regardless of how full we are. But I don't overthink about it. No. Because for me, it's an experience I'm sharing with another person. We're having a great conversation. And I don't want me obsessing over the food to get in the way of that experience. Now, if I have a goal that's very specific, well, yeah, I will dial back and dial that in. But on just any,

given day where I'm I'm training in this hybrid method and style just to improve the quality of my life, my fitness and performance, I'm going to allow myself to experience that experience. Yeah, I still to this day, I don't think we eat enough in this environment. When I say in this environment, I mean, like, people who, you know, listen to this podcast, people who are in the athletic state who sign up for these events and are training pretty hectically, I don't think we eat enough based on the performance that we need throughout the day just to look after ourselves. So the biggest thing from what you're saying here is like you are using now, based on what you used to do, you're using intuition to determine that's okay to

indulge in foods every so often, but also indulge in calories over so often because you know that the amount of work you put in throughout the day, every single day, just constantly, is far greater than what you eventually have on that maybe weekly, week, weekly, scale, right? So the takeaways I want people to have from that conversation is like, it's okay to indulge and be okay with not feeling next day you have to get up and sweat out and like as if you've been how to, you know, one too many eats or drinks or whatever it is. Like I'm, I want people to live and enjoy life. And in order for you to perform, you have to have your head and your physical body aligned and being able to do so. So, you know, I just want,

I think my goal is, I want. I want. what people to feel is if they can make the right in decisions and not stress about it. The realistic expectations, that's not going to happen. Like, everyone's going to stress about it to some degree. But, you know, understanding what your overall calorie intake is on a foundational level, not stressing about it, but knowing that will help you over time to not have to worry about it. Because transparently, this is something you used to do.

You used to do your numbers. All right, you said, no, now you can look at a bowl and know what your fat, carbs and protein is going to be. So you may not actually count your numbers. anymore, but at least you have a good intuition as to know what they are. And so I think that's the thing. It's like, get your reps in, understand it, maybe do it for three to four days. After three to four days, you'll know what your calories are based on the same meals you're

typically having Monday to Friday. If you blow out on the weekend, cool, enjoy yourself. And then get back into the Monday to Friday, controllable, controllable state. Yeah, I think from what I've experienced and observed from a lot of people, now this is not like mass America, mass world. We're talking about into a demographic that's typically type A, performance focused, aware of what they look like and what they feel like. And what I've observed in that group of people is a lot of them are under eating,

restrictive. And then when there's an opportunity to binge, it's a big binge. That's it. And then there's a guilt associated with it. And then I've seen so many people, so many people, even like, that have worked here in this building. where they will, they know we're going for this big meal, or they're planning this big dinner that they want to go to.

And they'll restrict around the day, and they'll binge at this one meal, and then they'll fast for two to three days afterwards. I've seen a lot of people do this approach in this fitness space. And I think that binging is almost a bigger issue, restricting and binging than under-fueling and underperforming. and from someone who has had an eating disorder, like I said, I know and when I see it.

And they are out there more than we think or people would like to admit or even know. And it's an issue. And under-fueling is an issue for a lot of people. Dude, that binge thing is so accurate. Yeah. Like I think most people would just say, like, I can hear the amount of people listening right now

where they're driving to work, whatever, going, oh my God, that's me. it's so common that you would make the decision afterwards not to eat anything to feel good about the fact that you over-indulged or you think you're over-indulged the night before and to that point you're under-fuel and therefore you actually don't perform which in turn means you start to draw from your existing stores

which physically means you're potentially leading to atrophy and a decrease in performance which is the opposite to where you're trying to head. people will make the decision that they're going to fast during or after that, even before. I've seen people before the food is even dropped off the table, they say, tomorrow I'm not eating anything based off of what I know I'm eating tonight. And it's like, well, let's think about what you just said. Maybe we should approach this dinner a little differently.

Or I've seen a lot of people finish a meal. And as soon as the meal is done, you're full, you just had a big steak and some sides, they say I'm not eating for the next 24 hours. Well, how do you know how you're going to wake up in the morning? You might wake up in the morning starving. You don't know. And I used to be this type of person. And now I just approach these meals so differently where I'll eat until I'm full

because I know the next day I'm going to train and I want to fuel that training with the meals throughout the day. But I'm hoping that there's a lot of people listening to this podcast right now. thinking in the back of their mind, oh crap, I do this. And that's a eating disorder in itself. Yeah. Might not be anorexia or bulimia, but it's an eating disorder. Dude, I'm guilty of that.

I'm straight up, I've told you before. I used to have that same process. Like, oh, I ate too much last night. I'm not going to eat the next day until like 2 p.m. And maybe have one meal. And I just know, like, I know now it's like it's not the cat. I struggle to eat enough, let alone, you know, too much, right? Like, just enough.

Interesting fact, whenever I have pasta, I will have, you know, like those 16-ounce pack, I probably have like 12 ounces of pasta in a sitting. The next night, and I have that like, say, you know, 7 o'clock at night. The next morning, I'm starving. So what am I going to say to myself, Mike? No, bro, you shouldn't eat anything else because you had so much. pasta last night. Now, this is just an individual like me, my gut, my gut telling me that I'm still hungry, but I'm going, oh my God, I need to eat, even though I had so much pasta last night, which

means either A, I can digest pasta very well, B, I actually didn't eat enough and need to support my, you know, daily needs or C, all the above. So maybe I, what I know is I actually break down pasta efficiently. more than not, I still don't eat enough every day. So when I wake up dehydrated, which means I actually don't have enough carbohydrate to my system, but hold on to the water all the time too.

It's another factor to consider. And also, like, the carbohydrate intake in general is like, it's a great way to get calories in and I still don't get, and pasta. Dude, oh my God, everyone's going to hate me right now listening this podcast. Like, crime me a river, Dan, you can have a lot of pasta and get away.

I'm like, yeah, I can, but I still don't eat enough. It's crazy. But it's also part of having, a healthy metabolism. Yep. And a lot of people, I talked about this in

my last podcast too. Calories in versus calories out will always be king. However, we can't ignore that there's metabolic damage, there's hormone damage that people are experiencing that do affect the way that they

gain weight or lose weight. And by doing this yo-yo-type diet approach where you're punishing yourself or what you consume and you're restricting and you're binging. You're promoting and building an unhealthy metabolism. And that's not doing you any favors in anything. No favors, dude.

We also need to talk about the fifth macronutrient, which is as important as the other three or four because if you don't have plants, beets, colors, then the carbohydrates, the macronutrients, the fats, the proteins, they're just kind of sitting stack. magnet without them. If you don't have, if you just do fats and carbs and protein without concentrating on the fiber, you're just, you're not creating the whole chemical reaction to take place. Otherwise, you just have this excess of macros just floating around your system. You need to support

your body with everything. And again, yes, calories in calories out, it's important, but it's actually not what calories you take on. It's actually how much you absorb. So like, You can eat the right amount of calories, but if you don't have enough calcium, if you don't have the right amount of ions, if you don't have enough things actually to help support the work of digestion, it's not going to make the food bio available for it to be digested and then utilized as nutrition. It goes back the way we started this whole episode. It's talking about the gut.

Exactly. And feeding the gut. And that's why fiber is so important. and when you go on a nutrition protocol like carnivore that ignores plants, that ignores these soluble fibers, you're not feeding the microbiome of your gut. And I think fiber scares a lot of people who aren't eating a fiber-rich diet because they go from zero to 100 real quick. Real quick.

And then they're like, oh, like plants make me gassy and bloated. there's possibly two reasons for that. One, that's what they're going to do. They ferment and, like, it's a byproduct of fiber in the gut. And two, you just overloaded your system with too much fiber too fast. You got to use like a dimmer switch where you're increasing slowly. There might be some vegetables and fiber sources that don't agree with you, but it doesn't mean that all vegetables and all diet sources don't agree with you.

Correct, bro. again talking back about like the difference between a plant based and omnivorous. It's not about if you're plant based or not. It's the amount of plants that you have. And yeah, gradually getting people up. You had Dr. B on the podcast, no? I didn't have Dr. B on the podcast yet,

but we've talked frequently. Cool. So you talk about like as a Beijing foundation, this is what he taught me. But essentially that the microbiome is made up of, trillions of, so the gut is made up of trillions of microbiome. And he talks about how the thumb has more, you know, has a high population of microbes on it than the city of London. You know, so like we have so many microbes. Each microbe has some sort of fiber that it is both

responsible for eating and also creating a product for. So like, you know, when we continue to eat things like prebiotics, like you have your prebiotic. Like you have your prebiotic fibers, which come from plants and you enjoy your beats, each color of the rainbow is responsible for a particular dietary fiber. And that's why we look to say, eat the color of the rainbow. Because then therefore, if you have a diversity of colors, you have a diversity of pre-botic fibers, therefore the probiotics, the wonderful microbes, have a variety of things to consume, which results in a variety of a call-up post-biotics, which can be anything from this fluid that both helps look after the membrane of the gut, but also can be turned into it.

into short 10 fatty acids, which go to the brain and help support what actually goes through the blood brain barrier. Dr. B talks them out as being the security guard for the blood brand barrier. So in short, eating enough plants is responsible for supporting the blood, brain, gut access amongst many other things, like even just supporting the lining of the gut, making sure, you know, things that aren't meant to be escaping through, do not escape through. And in order for that to happen, and you want to eat a variety of plants through which are a variety of colors. And the more dense the color, the more dense the micronutrient value. It's also the more dense the pigmentation, the more flavor is present in that ingredient.

So why beets so dense in that purple, rich goodness, are so tasty. I love beets. Dude. I'm obsessed. Bears' beads. Bears' beats. Well, Lane Norton was on Rich Rolls podcast recently. I heard, he had the best announcements.

in terms of the way we need to start looking at food. Because a lot of these diet tribes will identify a mechanism of a food. And they'll use that mechanism to for or against a narrative. Okay. For example, like the narrative against plants is that one of the mechanisms of certain plants is that they are toxic. And they will rob your body. of nutrients and vitamins and minerals.

Well, that is a mechanism or a potential mechanism of that one food or ingredient, but the overall impact of that food or ingredient is greater than that one mechanism. And the analogy he used was a mutual fund. So say you invest in mutual funds. And within that mutual fund is all these different stocks. and you find one stock in that mutual fund that is down 50%. So someone might say, this mutual fund is horrible.

You need to pull all your money out of it because this one stock is down 50%, and it's killing everything inside it. And then the financial analyst says, yeah, but the mutual fund itself is up 50%. So just because this one stock within the mutual fund is down doesn't mean the mutual fund is bad. And that analogy for me,

It's like, bingo. It's really easy to identify a mechanism of a food or an ingredient and say that it's bad. When in reality, the entire thing might have a greater positive impact and benefit than that one mechanism of action. Yeah, dude, it's trying to get people to play for and against on things. You can pick things apart easily. It's like too much of greens can be toxic. Yeah, but in order to be toxic, you have to have an inundated amount of the green concept, right? You can also say, like, that's like saying that you're not washing your veg properly or you're not, maybe you need to cook your veggies down.

And it's like saying that protein, by only having proteins, but yeah, well, you only ate protein. You're not going to get the dietary fiber. So, like, that's the problem with a lot of these studies is they pick apart certain details to then have an argument to create against it. Yeah. And so, and then all of a sudden that blows up because of New York Times or something. And then it gets behind a cult leader. That cult leader has a cult following, which then all of a sudden creates a tribe. And that tribe creates a movement.

And that movement is spread. And then that's where it becomes an issue. Because people go, oh, have you heard of this thing? And you're like, I get text messages, like a screenshot of a headline. Like, dude, did you see this about this one food or this one, like, this one fruit or meat that's killing you? Like, peaches are bad for you. How the fuck? Like, bro, like, how old peaches?

Yeah, dude, they've contained sugar. Why do they contain sugar? Because they're carb, like, like, dude. Just like, yeah. They're also packed full of dietary fiber, essential minerals and trace minerals. Anyway, I won't go into it. But the end of the day, if it's whole food based, you really can't lose as long as you're having a variety of that along with everything else.

Just, I know the world. world can be complex, but as you said, bring it back down to a foundational level. And a lot of plants progressively eat sufficient amount of protein and remember you need carbohydrates for energy. And when all else fails, eat like a legend. Exactly, dude. As Nick Baer says in the book. Heck yeah. Well, dude, thanks so much, man. Always a fun time. Great conversation. Always, bro. Appreciate you. Your book, Eat Like a Legend, pre-sale on Amazon. Yep. Pre-order Amazon. You can actually, I'm sure the link will be in the show notes. But yeah, if you pre-order right now, it's going to be a great Mother's and Father's Day present. And by pre-ordering, you go on the, you essentially

go on the running to win a bunch of prizes, including potential two-night stay at the one hotel that Nick himself would stay or any one hotel. You know, a couple of other amazing prizes as well. BPN's going to throw some stuff in. But yeah, at the end of the day, it's a great book for Mother's Day and Father's Day. And if Nick gives it the all clear, I think you guys are going to like it. It's clear. It's clear. Oh, dude.

Thanks, man. Much love, my guy.