#40 Eat To Win For BJJ: How better eating will improve your Jiu-jitsu

Christmas eating blowing you out? Time for another crash diet? We say NO! Eat To Win is an approach to food and eating that will set you up for better health and better rolling. JT & Joey  clear away the dieting BS to give you the easy to access info to live the #eattowinlifestyle

Macro Nutrients
Diet Trends: Keto, Low-Carb, low fat
Food As Identity
The Best Fuel For BJJ
Your relationship with food

Knowing what foods work best for your body is a process that takes years of experimenting, trial and error. BJJ is a demanding physical activity that requires us to fuel, repair and restore. If you are looking for some good general advice we have got you on this episode.

Speaker 1: 0:04

Better listen. Very careful. A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready, essentially at this point, the fight is over. So you pretty much flow with the goal who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limit this power. I’m ready,

Speaker 2: 0:29

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for BJ J podcast. And today we will be discussing how to eat, to win for BJJ. Now, ultimate ultimate. And uh , if you haven’t heard or speak before about nutrition, this idea of eating to win is about eating well, eating well, optimally getting the most nutrients you can to stay healthy because this is actually something that’s not discussed a lot in BJJ. For whatever reason, people are always doing crash, diets, fad things, all the kind of crazy things. And what we want to do for you guys today is actually break it down. Very simply how we look at food and why we approach it the way we do. Are we talking when you say to win , are we talking about specifically competition or are we just talking generally? No , it’s a philosophy, right? Like this is , this is something you about more as your food flex. Joey is actually a , uh , he’s a closet celebrity chef, most famous chef he never heard of, but , um, he does cook good food, good wholesome tasty food and is , is always hitting up with the hashtag eat to win. And they’re good. I get jealous. I see those posts and I’m like, ah , gosh , I wish I could be bothered. No , <laugh>, that’s why I put ’em out there. Yeah. I want people , I want people to feel bad, feel jealous about their inadequacies in the kitchen and not, no , <laugh>, that’s a good flex , but yeah, no. I think to give a bit of context, at least on my thinking of the eat to win movement, which get on board guys, <laugh> eat to win nation. How I eat to win lifestyle. You heard ear first , um , is , uh , Joey’s cooking show starting very generally. It’s about, it’s about understanding food. It’s about having a good relationship with it, knowing how to work in the kitchen and making time for that. But then also celebrating sometimes when it’s like, I’m gonna indulge in, you know, whatever a takeaway burger or some pizza or whatever floats your boat, but it’s not all about , uh , steamed chicken and broccoli and rice and you know, all the time, it’s about an enjoyment of food and making sure that it’s nourishing. Yeah. I thought where we might start is we might talk about macros , uh , macro nutrients. That’s what macros is short for. And to just break it down really simply because basically what we’re referring to when, whenever you hear the word macros, don’t get too caught up in like a special diet. We’re talking about protein, carbohydrates and fats, and they all have their role and they all have a degree of importance. So if you are not really across this, we’re not gonna boil you to death, but we want to talk about each piece of the puzzle and then relate that back to what a good meal looks like. How do we get a good portion of each and, and why that’s important. Yeah. Macros is important. One to understand isn’t it ? You , yeah, it’s essentially, I , I , you know , to give people a basic understanding, cuz it’s a good bit of context for you to understand food. It’s about energy. Yes. And macros is referring to those three macronutrients, which are like three simple categories that most foods will fit into the confusing part when you’re new to it. Is that if you take like a protein sauce , it is not purely protein. No, it does contain elements of carbohydrate and fat in there as well. Sure. But we tend to categorize the food by whichever macronutrient is most present. Most prominent. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, meats and animal products, often protein sources , grains and pastas and breads and whatever carbohydrate sources as well as tubes like , uh , underground roots. Yep . Potatoes and sweet potatoes and. And then sure . Uh , what’s your fats fats looking at all kinds of things. Cuz fat can come in in the form of meat as well. Yep . Or we could be looking at an avocado. Yep . Looking at an oil nuts. Yep . There there’s , there’s actually fat dairy fat dairy fat. So there , I mean there’s a lot of different options here and we’re not gonna be push a lot of people love to associate their identity with a type of eating like I’m vegan, I’m keto, the butter guy <laugh> I am the butter guy, the butter flex guy <laugh> I was watching the family guy the other day. And um , Peter has to have a battle with quagmire for a cooking show and Peter’s a terrible chef, but then the secret ingredient for their Cookoff to see who’s gonna get the TV spot is butter. <laugh> like in iron chef and Peter’s like, excellent. That’s French cuisine. That’s basically what it is. More butter , more salt. Delicious. That’s me. I’m I’m basically French. But now here’s the thing guys, because I’ve been obsessed with food since I was pretty young, since I was like a chubby little kid and wanting to overcome that there has been trends cuz in the nineties it was very much low fat . It’s like don’t eat fat, it’ll make you fat. And then there was a bunch of research to show that that’s actually not the case. And then there’s a bit of a shift there and we have talked about this before or we don’t wanna go too hard on running over old ground. But then, you know, there was a stage where carbs like carbs is the enemy, no carbs, you know, keto, you know, there’s these different paleo. Yeah. And then, but then sometimes this goes to extreme. So then someone swings back the other way and goes basically whatever Joe Rogan’s talking about, <laugh> Joe Rogan or whatever, you know, people can profit off. Right. Because there’s that cuz it’s like, oh don’t even eat food, just eat pills and powders. It’s more pure. What we want to get you guys on is understanding what certain foods may give you. And if you’re lacking, where can we, where can we make it healthier? Cuz that’s ultimately what we want. If you wanna get better at jujitsu, you wanna have good energy. You wanna have good fuel. You wanna be healthy. If you , if you’re sick or your , your guts are off or you’ve constipated, all these things, you’re not gonna do good jujitsu. No. And you’re also generally gonna be in bad health and that’s gonna affect everything else in it . Exactly. So looking at the different kind of requisite pieces here, obviously if you are growing up, depending on if you’re in the USA or UK, Australia, wherever you might be in the world, you may have had some very basic nutrition in school. Like whether it was in high school or primary school and you know, they do the food pyramid thing and best say , you gotta eat this and this and this, but everyone is quite different. And culturally, your culture might eat more bread or you might eat more rice or maybe you don’t eat a lot of that. You’re , you’re eating more meats and vegetables depending on where you’re from in the world. But essentially we can’t get away from the fact . And this is something that I , I really want to kick us off with the car. Hydrate is the best source of energy, like easiest to access. Yeah . Easiest to digest readily available to turn into blood glucose, which is what’s fueling us for training. Yeah , absolutely true. You can look at the , the science supports it . A great analogy I heard once was that if you’re knocking on death door, if you’re like critically ill and you’re in hospital, the first thing they do is hook you up to glucose. Yep . That is fuel for the body. They don’t hook you up to fat. They don’t hook you up to protein <laugh> and you haven’t got that protein shake going straight in the IV. Like ah , yeah . And I heard a biologist talking about this who was very pro carb and he’s just like, it is the cleanest burning, most efficient fuel sauce for the body. Why would you avoid it? Yes. But you know, whatever food beliefs, someone might have jujitsu is a very , uh , lytic sport isn’t it requires a lot of sugar. Correct. And so we believe carbohydrates are an extremely important part of an jujitsu player’s diet. Yeah. I think what gets mixed up here is people often look to people who are like jujitsu . People look at other industries and other fields of physical expertise and people might admire a body builder . Right. And they’re like, man, they just eat protein. They only eat carbs selectively. But the truth is for a lot of these guys, if they are deep in the bodybuilding world, they’re standing on the spot or they might quite , but then they’re sitting down their actual overall energy demand across an hour is very different. Like lifting weights is proven to burn less energy than cardiovascular activity. But even they pump the carbs, right? Oh no, they do. Depending on what they’re doing. Yeah . But I think it’s the idea that, oh , they’re this whole bulking cutting just mindset of performance. And we’re talking about eat to win is it’s very short term . <laugh> it’s peak. Yeah . It’s like, how do I look? The shreded and big and all this like 20 minutes on stage and , and then they’re passing out backstage. It’s not, not a great vibe. I think the great thing about like the , where carbs really got put off was when we had that swing back from, we had the high carb movement through the eighties and nineties. Yep . And it was all about victimizing , um , fats that’s and it’s like Don fats, I give you heart disease. And then we had this swing back where it’s like, the pendulum went the other way where it’s like carbohydrates outta the enemy. And this is where we saw , um , the paleo movement. And then on we saw the keto movement , um , you know, sort of come in almost as a response to that. Yep . And I think that the pendulum just swung back too hard in the other direction. Do you remember the Bulletproof? Uh , the Bulletproof diet, Bulletproof coffee , Dave Asbury that guy. Sure. I think he was talking a lot of. I , I think he was a bit of a grifter. Right. We can see that there was a , he was a Charlton, he was a char it sound snake oil . He was, he, he taken the small truth and try to extrapolate that out to something way bigger, which was not true. Yeah. And I mean, and , and just an interesting point with him is he didn’t train. He didn’t do exercise. He stood on like a vibration board. Yeah . For 20 minutes a day or something like that . Some biohacking, not a particularly healthy guy. If you look at Dave Aspray and not that I’m not trying to punch down here, but like if he shouted up to jujitsu, I’d choke him extra hard. You know, he was , you know , he was on road that Dave cop that show up. But if you look at interviews with him, he doesn’t look healthy. No. It’s like, he’s like a geeky kind of whatever kind of guy. Like he’s not in any case though . He’s not the kind of person that a jujitsu person should be taken diet advice from, not at all. So when you think about, well, how did this low carb thing get proliferated? And it was like, well, it’s by people like that who don’t have any business telling you what you should be doing because you are doing a sport that is like extremely , um , energy demanding. Yeah, that’s right. It has a lot of physical output. So it’s interesting to look back at, oh what catalyzed these things within our food culture. It in the west at least. Yes. And then you’re like, okay, that’s irrelevant for me. Yeah, that’s right. And I think it’s also, we get this association of like, oh, I don’t, I want to have abs or like, I want to be lean, oh , if I have carbs, I retain water. All these different ideas bubbling around. But the , the truth is that if you are expending a lot of energy and you’re not putting enough fuel back, your general quality of training, learning, anything goes down, this is something that is just not talked about because you see some of these people out there who look remarkable, like they look, they look so, so impeccable, you’re like, dang, that’s a rig trying to have a conversation with them . They’re a idiot. Like you are trying to learn something really complicated. And that’s another thing which isn’t discussed. We’re gonna go to fat next as a fuel source, like fat is a great fuel source, but it’s harder to break down. It takes longer and it can’t cross the blood brain barrier. So you can’t think as clearly. And that idea of people getting dumb as they cut weight is a real thing. So your body has to then go to other fuel sources. And that’s really tough. So if you are trying to learn whether you’re at school, you’re studying or you’re just doing jujitsu, you need blood glucose for your brain to function. Optimally, just a thought. So I want to just kind of step away from carbs for a second and talk about fat, cuz this is something else that’s been demonized over the years, but now people are coming back around to it avocados. So popular robbing all the young millennials of their house deposits. <laugh> that’s right. <laugh> smash that thing on a piece of sour, please, sir. Right . That’d be $27 50 <laugh> um , at least here in Australia. <laugh> I like avocado. They’re pretty cheap right now. They’re in season, but I love butter. I love fats in general. I’m somebody who digests fats quite well, but that’s not the same for everyone out there. So some people can’t tolerate fatty, rich foods. They just find it indigestible or they get reflux. There’s different things with that, but that said, it really supports your immune system . So however you get it, we were talking , we had a question about fish oil before. Uh , I love Saines even though S stink and make you very unpopular. If you want people to leave you alone, just open to canard. Very simple. Um, but that’s the thing. It’s some of the highest concentration of fish oils in macro and Saines , if you don’t wanna take pills , it’s cheap too. Canard , pre cheaps, buck, 50, whatever. That’s how I’m getting my fat in and also nuts. I’m a big fan of eating. Monds Brazils cashews pretty much any kind of nut I’m keen on, but for some of you out there, you might be allergic to that. So that’s not an option for you. Um , how about yourself, Joe ? How do you get fats in your diet? Look for me. I , I , um , I really like fat in terms of like what, what pleases me to eat. Yes . Um , but I definitely, you know, compared to say the amount that you eat, I would eat a lot less. Sure. Um , and the way I see fats and I , I think back to some of the, the people that I look to for this kind of information , um, Luke TOK is , is a person who I genius expect very much shout out Luke, TOIC smart guy, check guy , check him out. He’s got a podcast he’s on the gram Luke tele podcast. Yeah. Yeah. It’s what it is . Right. And he’s a , the guy studied neuroscience and he’s a body builder , so he knows some, but he also he’s into training and building muscle and then applying the science and the academia to that process. Yes . One thing that always comes through from what I get from him is that he’s like, you don’t need to, if you have a balanced diet, like you eat most foods and you , you tend to pretty well, you generally don’t need to seek extra fats. He’s like, there’s gonna be enough fat in the butter that you put on your toast in the bit of avocado you have on the side. Sure . Um , in the olive oil, on your salad , he’s like that, that is more than enough to cover immune function, all those things. Yep . He said, but if you are looking for extra calories, yeah. Fats are a great source of that. So for me, I tend to just follow whatever of fats I have with my meal. And I’m, I’m liberal with the amount of butter and with the amount of Ava I have. And sure . If I’m putting oil on something, I’m doing the Jamie Oliver, like <laugh> the drizzle of oil here guys, and five minutes later, you know , smart it up . Yeah . Um , so, you know, so I’m like, there’s plenty in there. Yep . And I like, ’em all, I’m actually strangely I don’t eat a lot of nuts these days. I used to love them . Yep . I think when I was very into the paleo thing, I went hard on the nuts and the nut butter. Yep . To the point where I now just don’t want it too much . How much I don’t wanna see arm and butter ever again in my life . Oh , de yeah . Awesome . Well, I think , yeah, like I said before, guys, the thing is we are putting out there a structure or a framework for you to then go experiment with, right. Like I’ve been playing with this scene for more than 25 years. So I know definitely what works for me. And I know definitely what doesn’t. And I also try and we , we won’t go too deep it , but I try and eat more seasonally as well. So certain times of year I will eat, you know, slightly differently to other times of the year, as opposed to just eating the same old thing every single day, which digestively isn’t even that good for us. So the other thing which is really good these days, guys, is you can get something like rice, brand oil, like say you like chips, or you like frying up your own schnitzel at home or something like that. Rice brand oil is really awesome because it’s got like a really high smoking point and it’s got long chain , fatty triglycerides in it, which are good for you. It’s really good for you. It it’s crazy. I mean, we’ve kind of invented it. We’ve used it. And it frying with it will not get carcinogenic or terrible or anything. It’s a good way for you to access that food without thinking, you know, is this gonna give me heart disease, talk text to protein protein? So the, the love of my life, protein I feel is overhyped and underrated, depending on where your at it , the thing which is hard about protein is just super hard to digest. It’s the hardest thing to digest out of all the foods. So depending on where you are getting your protein, and if we break proteins down into amino acids, we’ve got essential amino acids kind of non-essential and then there’s one or two little amino acids in there that hang around that could do either dry . They are, the building blocks are everything in the body. We need it for so many chemical interactions and our body’s chronically breaking down, breaking down, breaking down. If you change jujitsu, you are wrecking your body, wrecking your nervous system, wrecking your muscles. You’ve gotta make sure you’re getting enough of it in . And that’s actually a pretty hard job to do we to do the work, but we don’t like to do the kind of repair stuff. Yeah. You know, like we like to just make , yeah. P Harda make a mess of our internal system, but then not clean up afterwards. Yeah . And, and eating well helps us with that re repair and clean up process. And protein is the key ingredient. Now, depending on where you’re coming from, if you a vegetarian, maybe you’re not eating meat, you’re gonna have to work harder to satisfy your protein sources, but there’s a lot of good options out there. Now, you know, you can get soy proteins, you can get P proteins. But the thing is, they’re not necessarily as digestible. Whereas if you are a meat eater and you’re happy to eat, you know, any kind of meat, eggs, dairy, your job’s easier. That’s all we’re gonna come down to. Like, don’t take the whole moral, ethical imperative out of it. Eating meat is almost like a cheat. You get so much there. It’s , it’s just easier. So shout out if you’re a veggie vegetarian or a vegan, you have chosen the harder path, but except that you can’t be lazy, you’re gonna have to eat more meals. You’re gonna have to be more organized. You’re gonna have to get, you know, get your chickpeas there, get, get your other sources that are high in protein to make sure that your body’s repairing. Otherwise you start to fall apart. Yeah. You gotta to work harder if you’re choosing to not eat animal products. Correct. So you, Joe , when you are trying to get protein in , uh , you did touch on this before. What is your preference go to man for me every morning, eggs of some sort , uh , you know, I like to think that maybe there’s a day when I don’t have eggs, but I haven’t met that day yet. Yeah . But yeah , I really like eggs . If I’m , if I’m firm , like, I don’t want so many eggs, maybe I’ll have some cottage cheese or something I protein, you know, at , at breakfast with just one or two eggs kind of deal <laugh> well , I don’t feel like eggs. The funnies I have ’em on the side . The funniest is when we’re like, oh , I’m super , let’s go out for like , for breakfast and we’ll go out on the weekend. You’re like, I’m gonna have something totally different. They’re like, what would you like? So like, gimme the eggs. <laugh> every time . Um , yeah. Eggs for me in the morning, then at lunchtime and dinnertime, I’m eating some kind of meat, whether it’s, you know, whatever beef lounge , I , I try and vary the protein sauce . Yep . We, we put a little bit more effort into it. My partner and I, we buy bulk, we buy bulk meat from a of different producers that are local to Sydney. Oh wow. Where it’s farmed in an ethical way. Sustainable. Yeah, yeah . Yeah. It’s all, it’s all grass fed . It’s all like pasture raise type stuff. Beautiful. And you buy it directly from the farm. So you buy, you know, a couple hundred dollars worth, but it goes in the freezer and then we mu on that for a month . That that’s great. It’s really good. I, I totally Harbor some of those , um, some of that, a conflict about the ethics of eating meat. Oh yeah. And I get that and it’s, it’s a decision I choose to go. Okay, well, no , I’m gonna eat it anyway. Cuz I , I feel it’s good for my health. Yeah . Um, but I, I am . Yeah. Like you said before, I respect anyone that, that decides to take that higher road. Yeah . I just think what’s really important is that if you are not eating meat purely for a choice, I think that that’s treacherous ground. I do think that there has, you know, like , uh , that documentary, what the health yes. Which was very misleading and was really a , a low quality documentary. And I know people who stopped eating me because they saw that and like it’s bad for my health. And it’s like, no, no, they had an agenda in that documentary. Unfortunately it made you think that eating it’s a bad thing. There’s a case for eating less. There’s a case for eating high quality, you know, all those things. But meat has been, the procurement of protein has been basically what humans have done since the beginning of time, but also our evolution, right? Like, yeah . It’s like you’re hunting to get protein. Our brains wouldn’t be where they are if we didn’t consume more protein. Exactly. And so just the idea that whole food group is like bad for you. It’s no , there’s other things that are , that are , you know , causing the issues at play here is just an aside. I guess what I would say is this, when people say to you, yeah, you should go vegetarian. I did that. I did that for 12 months. My partner was vegetarian at the time. This is when I was younger. She was also vegan for a sustained period of time. She is a carb based lifeform <laugh>, you know, like that’s she tolerates just eating carbohydrates exceptionally well. And she had a natural, very high level of , uh , blood, iron platelet, kind of her, he, iron levels were very high. Mine were not <laugh> and actually there’s anemia in my family. And that year I basically, even though I wasn’t anemic at the time drove myself into anemia and I was like fallen asleep, half crashed in the car, which is an iron deficiency, iron deficiency specifically, the only place you get, he, he , iron is from another animal, right? Non-heme iron non-heme sources are plant derivative. So, you know, like even now I , I have cut back on my meat intake because I’m aware that that has the biggest impact on kind of climate change and affecting the world. I’m the same, Joe . It is a conflict. But I try like with any of my choices, I make sure that it’s organic or it’s locally sourced so that I’m paying a bit more money, but that is better on my conscience that the animal lived a better life. Yeah . And that ultimately means better nutrition for me. That’s right. You know? And so we we’ll get away from the ethics thing guys, and talk about how do we look at food and how do we organize a meal? That’s gonna give us the eat to win . Are you familiar with precision nutrition? I am. I really like their stuff. They’re , they’re a great nutrition company out there. They , they do good education for people that wanna coach it and, you know, infographics that make it real simple. But they have one that, and I , I, if I think about, I don’t actually think about this when I’m preparing my meals, but if I reflect my meals , now it’s more, if I think about I’m like, oh yeah, my meals kind of match that. And a real simple diagram they use is , um, a fist full of carbohydrate, a palms worth of protein and then a thumb of fat. Okay. So you could say like that’s rice that’s and then that’s avocado. Sure . And then I think they say like a , like a handful of the greens and salad. And I’m like that for me, if like, if someone’s looking for, for a simple guiding , uh , a place to start, that works and you do that three times a day. Yeah . It doesn’t, maybe you don’t have the , the salad and the vegetables at , at breakfast, but you can put them in a lunch and have double. Yeah . You know , but that, like, that is just a really simple way to go about figuring out portion sizes. Yeah . Um , and we’ve spoken about another podcast, but we are generally big fans of just eating three square meals. Correct. That’s a great starting point in my opinion. Definitely. And look, if you’re doing something different right now, for whatever reason, you’re , you’re doing five small or six small meals across the day and that suits you. That’s good. But if you are skipping breakfast and then trying to tell yourself that you’re doing intimate at fasting, you’re kind of bullshitting, you know what I mean? Like just skipping breakfast. Cause you’re like, oh , I don’t have time. You’re kind of being lazy there. Cause it has actually been shown that not eating breakfast, lowers your immunity now for some people it’s better. They don’t feel like eating when they get up. That’s okay. That’s not, you know, that’s not a problem. But if you have a busy lifestyle and you haven’t got time to do anything at lunch and you intend to train jujitsu that night, you wanna make sure you’ve got fuel in the tank. Yeah. And training jujitsu at night is how the majority of our people train. Right. Like I would say that’s probably, you know, 60 to 70% of jujitsu people in general, they’re very busy during the day. Some people do mornings. If you’re lucky, you can sneak in a little cheeky jujitsu session at lunch. But most those people train nights. Yeah . And not that we’ll go really hard on it now, but that whole idea of training at night and I’ve found it lately, cuz I’ve been back to training at night, feeling tired and wired and not hungry. Even though I , I will eat. It is harder for me to eat after a heavy Jisu training session. Totally. So you wanna make sure , sure. That you are getting the bulk of your nutrition in earlier in the day. Yeah. And it’s like, I think if you’re the , if you’re the standard person who’s like kind of working all day and you’re like, oh, I’m gonna fast. I’m gonna skip breakfast. And then you find yourself and you’re in the office and you’re like, oh, go get some lunch and you get like a ham sandwich and it’s, you know, and your third coffee of the day. And then it’s like, oh. It’s jujitsu. It’s five. O’clock gotta yeah . Jut . And you’re jumping on the mats and you’ve like had a sandwich. Yeah . And a bunch of caffeine that is not good nutrition. And that is also not, yes. Eating less calories is gonna help you lose weight, but not in that way because you are just grossly under fueled. So yeah, I think the um, the fasting thing is can be very problematic if you want to do it. And we’ve spoken about it. I’ve used it for cut weight , leading up to competition very effectively. But I was also hyper structured from like 1:00 PM till like from when I had my first meal to when I went to bed sidebar, I’m not bagging intermittent fasting. It is effective. It’s a great way to reduce your calorie intake, whatever . Right. The reason why I said what I said is there’s so many people out dressing up poor organization and bad nutritional practices, just fasting. Yeah . Like I don’t think that’s what’s going on. Yeah . And yeah. So like choosing to go vegan or vegetarian, you have to be more disciplined and you have to have more understanding of how this works. If you choose to use a somewhat complex strategy, like fasting. Sure. So if we look at cuz I want to get to kind of preferences in terms of like our take , like the Bulletproof take on most recommended most high leverage versus Hey, maybe do less of in terms of foods. Yeah. Foods approach to why we, we choose these things. If I’m looking at my best meal and you were saying like, you know, we’re talking different sizes, fist Palm, thumb, cetera . Uh , my body functions really well on rice. Like if I have rice, stomach is happy, an Asian arrangement, like a stir fry , some rice, my body loves that. So like whether it’s pre comp or I’ve got a really big day, if I know that I have to do a whole bunch of yard work or help my parents out something the night before I will even have a gang of Chinese food or Thai food and I will eat a large rice to myself, easy. I might even eat two . I love it. And I get so much energy from that and I never get any digestive issues. Whereas for some other people like my partner, she’s polished, she loves bread. Bread is absolutely her carb of choice. And that works really well for her. How much self man mate I’ll lead any form of carb in that regard like bread, Ry , you know, sweet potato, whatever. But I certainly feel that bread is the lowest quality choice of all of them for me. Sure. You know, I can smash a burger or I can go and get something from the cafe that’s in a , in a , you know , a bread roll or whatever. And it’s, it’s not an issue. But if I do that repeatedly over a few days and I’m, I’m like, oh , I’m eating a lot of bread here. I do notice I start to get sluggish. I start to feel it in my skin. Sure. I start to get , uh , psoriasis kinda like eczema. Sure. And that will flare up. Yep . So I find the pro cause because you gotta guys gotta think about like, this rice is a natural product. Yeah . Sweet potato comes outta the ground, goes in your face , uh , potatoes , same thing. Bread is from taking the, the , the grain of that grass and then processing the out of it and adding things yeah. To make this amazing food. Right. Like flour is , is life changing. Yeah. But it is suboptimal when you compare it to like a sweet potato. Yeah . Right . Or even, or even rices. So I’m just mindful that it’s a substandard choice for me. I try to eat the majority of my bread as sourdough bread. Yep . These days. And, and so I would probably have a piece or two of sourdough most days. Yep . And then it’s like, yeah, rice, sweet potato potato. And occasionally I eat pasta. And just on that sourdough piece, guys, what you should know about sourdough is when it’s made, basically it’s pretty simple. They just add like a scoop of yogurt . So there’s good bacteria in there. That’s basically what it comes down to. Well, they , they add starter culture which can come from previous bread or yeah . Yeah. And , and so that’s, that’s really helpful in the aiding of digestion. And this is where we can have some allies to help us. And so lots of cultures do it like pickles , uh , kimchi, sour, CRO , or fermented foods, all these things assist with our digestion. And so when we were looking at natural foods, cuz that’s definitely something we , uh , ascribe to is like whole foods, healthy foods is eating foods that help you. The difference between having an orange and having orange juice obviously is the processing involved. I’m not just taking , I’m not talking about just getting an orange and putting it through a juicer and having the juice without the pulp. I’m talking about orange in a bottle from the supermarket versus eating an orange that processed kills the, the enzymes in , in the , in the , in the food itself. And that’s the thing that enzymes help you digest the nutrition that , that , that is contained within the food. That’s why eating an apple is beneficial and also the fiber. And this is probably something we haven’t quite touched on, but we’ll get into next as to like what helps us maybe what isn’t as how helpful eating vegetables, they got a lot of enzymes provide . You don’t cook. ’em too much , uh , like my grandma classic, you know, get those Brussels sprouts, boil the out of it . Boil ’em to their gray . Yeah . All the green is in the, in the water. <laugh> yeah . Tip that down the sink. Just eat those gray little nuggets. Yeah. Up . Um <laugh> and then like mashed potato, just heaps of salt. Heaps of butter. Just cook the hell out of it. I mean still Rose Lamb rose that thing for like three hours dry. Yeah. Put some , put some mint jelly on it. Oh yeah. Just get some sugar now you’re talking. Oh , winning. Anyway. Shout out to my grandma. I love her dearly. Um, but that’s the thing, right ? That was just at the time. But what we have learnt is eating certain foods raw or fresh or not quite cooked as heavily is better for us. Uh , yeah. Uh , yeah. To a certain extent, to a certain extent, right. There’s ones that are good to cook and there’s ones that are good to have raw isn’t there. Yeah. But yeah, you’re not trying to cook the life out of them . You’re just trying to soften them a touch. I mean yeah. For Cru CI vegetables like cabbage and broccoli’s and chips , it’s important to cook even tomatoes like lycopene, when you heat tomato to a certain temperature, it actually releases more like , oh yeah, tomato sauce and stuff. Have more of that. Don’t they? Yeah. So like, you know, the orange stain that you get, like if you, I don’t know if you had this guys you’ve reheated some bolognas or something and it , it’s not just the fat from the mince that is lycopene cuz it’s fat soluble. So if you like kind of saute tomatoes, roughly, and the , you see that orangey oil, that’s the lycopene coming out and that’s like a super valuable nutrient from tomatoes. Mm . Just saying , but uh , look, vegetables for me is , has been a big one in recent years where I realize that if I do eat regular are servings of vegetables, I just feel better. Yeah . And it used to be a bit of an afterthought for me. It was like, what’s the protein that I’m cooking. What’s the carb . And then, ah , I’ll throw together a salad or , and I just try and take a little bit more of a deliberate approach these days so that I get more of it in recently with that I’ve been moving house. So the kitchen wasn’t set up. So we’re eating a lot. We’re getting a lot of like delivery stuff. Sure . And we’re getting like decent stuff. But what I noticed when you’re eating out a lot more, you generally have less vegetables. Yep . And I started to feel it I’m like, oh man. And my body starts to crave veggies. And it was like. I was really excited to get in the kitchen, make a meal and prepare a huge salad. Yeah . And it was almost like, as soon as I ate, I’m like, I feel so much better after that. Yeah, definitely. So I think that’s, that’s been a big focus for me is trying to get more veggies in at least two meals per day. If not three. Awesome. Well , my hack on that is this guys I’m gonna , I’ve got a confession to make here. I am not good with green veggies. O other than broccoli, I’m good with cooked veggies or uh , colorful vegetables. I love carrots. I love caps. Come . Tomatoes are great. You know, I love colorful vegetables. You put a salad in front of me. I’m disappointed. I , I just, I , I just don’t enjoy it. I will eat it cuz I know it’s good for me, but I just like, Ugh , salad, around . I just don’t. I don’t engage with it. So what my partner and I have worked on this is my little workaround. I do green smoothies. So , um, literally it’s kale, apple avocado, maybe some berries in there to sweeten it up, whatever. And you literally just blend the hell out of that. And you haven’t rolled vegetables now . Obviously there’s different arguments about the fact I’m not chewing and this that this, but what I’d say is I don’t chew much anyway. <laugh> , I’m kind of fine . I’m kind of like a duck go , just chunk it down. Right? So the fact that it’s broken down to this minute level actually makes it quite digestible. And I find my energy is significantly higher if I factor in more greens. So I mean, I’m not being a childish about it. And my partner will say this, I’ll sit there with a bag of baby spinach and I’ll eat a whole chicken and alternate like chicken baby, spin chicken, baby spin. Mainly cuz I’m lazy. And I don’t wanna make a salad <laugh> but I’ll , I’ll eat the baby spinach. But would say if you have a really good blender, a green smoothie is a really easy way to have a whole bunch of nutrients available, which isn’t just some powdered crap. That’s that’s my take on it . Yeah. And that’s a good work around like practical takeaway from that is like, well , if you’re not gonna eat veggies, maybe it’s not the ideal way to do it, to have the smoothie. But if you’re not gonna eat veggies, it is the ideal way. Cuz it’s the only thing you’re gonna do. Sure. So it’s like do it. You know? And that’s, I think that’s really important with nutrition where it’s so easy to find conflicting information that you can be like, oh , this thing that I’m doing or not doing is not perfect. I need to do that thing. It’s like, no , you need to do what’s to stay for you. And what you know is more or less like 80% of the way there. Yep . And it is different for each person. Like I said, I’ve played with this for a while. So I know it works for me. Joey’s been on this for a fair while too. He knows what works for him. If you don’t know what works for you, it is important for you to start to explore it. Go, oh , I’m gonna try and eat this before training. Nope . Didn’t work. Or I tried, this felt a bit better. And, and so we can’t tell you exactly. We’re just gonna give you some recommendations for you to , to try. And maybe if you try something we’ve recommended and it works for you, come back and let us know, like give us that feedback. You know, that’s always positive for us to know that we’ve been able to help you. The next little thing that I want to kind of bring us closer to the end on is things that possibly we should have less of. Uh , Joe got a little bit upset with me a little while back. Cause I said, this is bad. Don’t do that. And he’s like, you can’t say that, bro. I was like, I just did stop me. <laugh> that’s what I do. You know? I like to, I like to be the polarizing fact that Joe likes to be there . I almost deleted the entire episode. He got upset. Did not do that. Yeah. Okay. But what I think we can agree on is there’s some things which aren’t as helpful. Yes. Sure. Well what we’re tell ’em what we were . What I say . I said processed sugar is bad. Yeah . And you , Joe was like, no , there’s a use for everything. Yes. I was like, stop being so moderate. <laugh> I we’ll try to create sensationalism here so we can get some traction sound bite . <laugh> blow up on the internet. It was a good conversation. JT is like, well for most of the people that we’re talking, we want them to eat healthily and most people have too much sugar in their diet. Yeah . So I’m gonna say sugar’s bad because for them it is, I said processed sugar, processed sugar. Right, right. I’m not , I’m not saying fruit. Yeah . I’m not , I’m not saying don’t eat carbohydrates. I eat lots of it. Whereas for me I’m like, well, no , because everything can have a place. And as an example, depending on what your goals are, if you’re trying to put on mass or something, maybe processed sugar could play a role for you. So you can. Right. And so, but obviously that’s not speaking to the majority of folks who are hearing this right now. So it’s just a , it’s just a perspective piece. Yeah. And , and to be honest, man, I , I , there’s a , I’m an obese mass stuck in a slightly fit man’s body. I can eat a bag of chips and, and a whole bag of snakes like anyone’s business. Is that what you should do? No. So what can help? What I have found with different pieces of advice over time? Cuz people will always take things to the extreme is we wanna make sure that people are satisfying the basics. So we’re doing the three square meals and trying to get enough of each thing sometimes where people can go wrong is trying to like max out on supplements. And at the end of the day, look at the title supplementary it’s for, if you are missing something. And a lot of the time we really feel like inadequate. A lot of media and advertising is making us feel like you’re not strong enough. You’re not jacked enough. You’re not anything enough. And they do this by going, we have the answer. This product will make you better. And that’s not necessarily the case. So we did have a question about multivitamins before, like does this multi vitamin work and it’s really, you gotta actually have a closer look at yourself to know if you need it. Cuz maybe you are doing really well right now. Even though you feel flat, it could be a lot of other contributing factors. You don’t know until you get a blood test. If you’re iron deficient, you, shouldn’t something you mate goes , Hey man, you need to get more iron. You know, you I’ve started eating more iron. I feel awesome. I feel great. You should do it. And it’s like, you actually need to . You’re a different person. You need to understand what’s going on with you first. And the other thing too is with supplements is that they can distract you from addressing what you’re already doing. It’s like, well you’re already eating every , so maybe uh , the low hanging fruit is looking at what you are already eating and what your habits are around food currently that perhaps you could adjust instead of adding something new. Yes . Right. So it’s like, well, okay, maybe you don’t eat enough vegetables. Start there. Yep . Maybe you’re not hydrated enough. Okay. Get hydrated. Make, make drinking like more water, a habit of yours. Um, maybe you eat like a lot of processed foods . So then you listen to this and you’re like, okay. You know what ? I’m gonna stop eating the ship that I cook from the microwave and I’m gonna make my own food. Yeah . You know, maybe it’s I , I buy all , I buy the cheap bulk pack of family sausages. That’s my protein. It’s like right . Maybe I’m gonna stop buying that. I’m gonna buy some organic chicken thigh or something. Like sure . The addressing that staff is easier and it’s higher percentage because you’re doing it every single day. Aren’t you? Yeah. And I think we would both say that then once you’ve , once you’ve sort of exhausted that realm, then it’s like, all right , well, if you’re still feeling a bit flat and you sleep’s great and you’re doing all the right things in , in terms of eating great, check out some supplements or go see the doctor and get a blood test. Definitely. Definitely. Like I , I said this before I had a , I have a friend, good friend of mine, Paul , and he’s an artist. He lives a rockstar lifestyle. He’s kind of dialed it in recently, started doing the things we’re talking about eating better, but he was partying a lot. Um , staying out real late, a few recreational bits and pieces substances, whatever he couldn’t put on weight. He really wanna put on weight. And he said, Hey man, is there any like good steroids? And I was like , uh , how about get a good night’s sleep? Yeah. Yeah. That’s sweet. That’s sweet. But like, are there any good steroids like healthy ? I was like, bro , get your sleep on. Like regulating your hormones is much related to getting a good night’s sleep. And almost none of us can do that. So even though we are prepared to pay money for powders and just ingest things that taste like crap and just do all this stuff in the name of being healthier, we’re not prepared to do something which is simpler, but maybe more confronting cuz it makes us go I’m living unhealthily. Yeah . You know the peel and powder won’t solve the problem. Yeah . It’s the it that’s right. It feels like it’s like a silver bullet. Yeah . And you’re like, oh I’ll just, I’ll buy that because it’s gonna help. Yeah. Nah , I just need to sleep more. Yeah. True. So circling back around on the eat to win lifestyle, Joe, if, if we could give people a bit of a kind summary to take as to how they can start to hashtag blessed hashtag eat , to win hashtag eat , to win lifestyle. <laugh> what, how would you approach that? All right . The , the big takeaways for me from that episode are three square meals per day. Right? And this is a general recommendation three square meals per day. And then let’s talk about portion sizes. So we’re saying fist full of carbohydrate pump full of protein thumb full of fat. Right? Third takeaway for me is the seasonal piece. So you go to the supermarket, try and go to a reasonable supermarket. Uh, avocados are cheap. Okay. They’re probably in season. Great. When you go to the supermarket and avocado is at $10 a piece, don’t buy them because that tells you they’re not in season, which means they’re likely imported or they’re likely been like preserved somehow. And they’re gonna be lacking in nutrients anyway. So buy what’s cheap from the soup buy what’s in abundance. And that is usually a pretty good way to eat seasonal. Um , further to that, I would say, how have good sources for your groceries? So if you’re like, well I buy meat every week, go to a good butcher or find a good place online where you can access good quality stuff at a cheaper price. Um, because otherwise you’re just putting your hand , your , your health into the hands of the local supermarket, which probably don’t stock the best stuff. And you are gonna be paying premium dollar for it as well. Correct. Um, extra takeaways for you. Ah , look, I , I feel the thing about all of this information is if you are not actually putting some time aside and thinking of this in a , like, as an experiment in the sense that trying to understand what works for you and what doesn’t work for you, you could be doing, be doing so many different things and have them not work for you because you just you’re doing it blindly. You’re not , you’re not actually doing it with some direction. Yeah. So don’t try and change everything at once. That that’s what I would say, start with one thing first, whatever that , whether that is hydration or that’s, I’m gonna eat a bit more carbohydrate or whatever it is that you feel, cuz we all deep down know if we’re eating well. Yeah . You know, like we kind of know if we’re smashing too much Uber eats or kind of snacking on chocolate when we could have something else, but we do it cuz it’s convenient. Take that out of it. Pick one thing that you are gonna change and do it consistently. And once you’ve done that and , and you feel, it makes a difference. Cool. But if you change that and you feel like it’s not making a difference, that’s okay. Go to work on something else, but be consistent with it for a period of time. Cause I feel like just doing it for one day or just doing it for a week. Isn’t enough. You need at least a good solid what month to yeah. Feel that out. Yeah. For food related stuff, it seemed like, like say you want to try and go, oh , you know, I’m gonna cut dairy and see how I feel. Yep . You gotta cut it for like three months to like for your body to actually get to a point where there’s none of it present in there and whatever, you know, maybe side effect of your allergic response to it have gone. Sure. You gotta give it time. More importantly is developing these habits. You gotta give things a good couple of weeks, at least don’t you. So yeah. Don’t rush it man. It’s a lifelong experiment. The way I see it is we’re all eating food every day . Yeah . Forever. Like you you’re married to it, whether you like it or not. So you might as well play around in a , in a mindful way to try and find out what is optimal for you. Yeah. And just checking in on your BJJ energy doesn’t lie. If your energy is improving, you’re feeling good. That that is the undeniable truth of it. If your energy’s not good, even though you might be doing all the right things, you need to reconsider your approach, energy composition . Right . Oh , true. True . You know what I’d say ? Like I don’t believe that everybody should have a six pack . I don’t subscribe to that idea. However, I do think that if you are noticing, oh , I’m putting on fat around my belly or I seem to be not shifting this weight. That is an indication that something is outta whack either with your sleep or your nutrition. Yeah . So that’s just a really simple way to look at it. And if you , you like training and eating well and you’re like my body fat’s kind of dropping away or I’m feeling pretty. That’s a good sign. Definitely. All right mate. I think we’ll leave it there. That was a big one. Thank you guys. Appreciate you guys.

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