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January Mistakes to Avoid - Part 4
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Transcript
00:00:01
Christian Yordanov
Okay.
Common New Year Mistakes
00:00:02
Christian Yordanov
So in today's episode, let's discuss another common mistake folks make in the new year. They say, okay, I'm gonna, you know, get my shit together. I'm gonna lose some weight, go to the gym.
Misconceptions About Low-Carb Diets
00:00:19
Christian Yordanov
We discussed that a little bit, but, One method that a lot of people have been duped into thinking is gonna solve a lot of problems for them is going low carb, maybe keto, carnivore and
00:00:39
Christian Yordanov
I've discussed this issue multiple times before and on podcasts have been and stuff like that. But it it bears repeating because even I had one one of my friends, he read my book and he's like, oh, my God, I'm eating more carbs now. He was doing faster workouts in the morning, crazy stuff like that. And then he started, you know,
00:01:01
Christian Yordanov
He stopped doing faster workouts, eating more carbs. And then I didn't speak to him for like three months and then he pinged me and he's like, oh dude, yeah, I just finished the month of strict carnivore. I'm like, what the hell are you doing?
Consistency Over New Knowledge
00:01:19
Christian Yordanov
I leave you for three months on your own and you go and shorten your life for no reason. and And actually later when ah ah when we were talking, on you know,
00:01:28
Christian Yordanov
about it he told me like he was feeling kind of lethargic at certain points like he just lay there it's like yeah of course you're gonna feel lethargic when you're doing this crazy stuff the low-carb stuff you know but uh that's why it's important to repeat some of these things because it's not really some it's not you don't need new knowledge to resolve health issues improve your health increase your longevity well We know, most of us know what we have to do to a great extent, at least just to cut the basics. The problem is we don't apply them
Misleading Weight Loss on Low-Carb Diets
00:02:08
Christian Yordanov
consistently. you know So what what's the problem with going low carb in the new year to lose some of the weight?
00:02:18
Christian Yordanov
Well, you will lose weight, no doubt about it, but you have to be pretty sort of, naive to think that you're losing a lot of fat, right? Okay. You might lose 10 pounds, you know, 15 pounds in the first month, but a lot of that, you have to understand a lot of that weight on a low carb diet is watering glycogen and it
00:02:49
Christian Yordanov
It's not really the kind of weight we want to lose. We want to lose ideally fat as much as possible. So it it's impressive. Don't get me wrong. the The kiddo, you do start losing weight. It's impressive. And I was looking at one study I cited in my book. and The study was biased because it was the Atkins, sort of the low-carb company behind it. So they clearly wanted to show that low-carb is better for for weight loss in like a six-month period. I think it was a six-month period.
00:03:25
Christian Yordanov
and they so that the weight in that study that the the low fat the low carb group lost like double the weight that the low fat group did right but here's what you have to understand this is This is the most important thing to to understand here. Why did the low-carb group lose almost twice as much weight as the other group? Is it because the low-carb diet was magical? Is it because magical fairies and unicorns came down from the skies and you know created this incredible metabolic adaptation
00:04:12
Christian Yordanov
where you lose double the amount of fat or so or more likely is it Did they lose more weight rather say more likely they lost more weight because it's a hell of a lot more stressful on the body and a byproduct of being super fucking stressed is you're gonna lose weight and Right? That's why marathon runners, for example, that put themselves through tremendous amount of stress every week, running and running and running hours and hours and hours, maybe like 20 hours or God knows how long they run per week. That is a tremendous amount of stress and that's why they lose a lot of weight.
Societal Trends and Health Implications
00:04:58
Christian Yordanov
Similarly, well, not similarly, but yeah the the cancer, end stage cancer, the reason people
00:05:08
Christian Yordanov
become emaciated and and kind of sick as yeah they can't eat and they can't hold food down and stuff but to a great extent it's the stress of the disease that is making the person lose weight so if you look at an old person if they start rapidly losing weight that's that's a bad sign that's a bad sign for that person right so losing weight
00:05:40
Christian Yordanov
In controlled conditions, right? When we're not dying of a disease and and stuff like that, losing weight in controlled conditions can happen quickly. It can happen slowly. The faster it happens, the more we are putting stress on the body. That's, that's the lever we're pulling.
00:06:06
Christian Yordanov
in order to achieve that faster weight
Stress and Metabolic Impact of Low-Carb Diets
00:06:08
Christian Yordanov
loss. in and In the next episode, I'm gonna talk about weight loss in more specifically, but I'm just kind of, you know, maybe that's a teaser to do some of the topics we'll cover there, but this is what you have to understand. The the fast weight loss on a low carb slash keto slash slash carnivore diet is simply because they are fucking stressful on the body of these diets.
00:06:34
Christian Yordanov
It's not because they're magical and super effective. It's because you're putting more stress on your body doing those diets. That's what people have to understand. And what's the problem? What's the big problems in a sort of societal sort of way? It's a lot of the people that are doing all this biohacking and low carb and keto stuff they're still very young people you know they're like in their late 20s early early 30s and i started doing keto when i was i guess 32 or something like that and yeah yeah it was great for a while but uh you know you lost a lot of weight and stuff like that and people commenting how how i was melting off me and stuff but it
00:07:28
Christian Yordanov
You can take that stress when you're younger. you know that's the That's kind of the point. The older you get, the more health issues you have, the more these diets are going to screw you over, even though you're going to get some some gains in the beginning. And this is another sort of way we we screw ourselves, is we get some gains in the beginning.
00:07:48
Christian Yordanov
and
00:07:51
Christian Yordanov
then we think we have to continue doing it because it's going to give us more gains and more gains. But there's, I'm not saying that some, you know, doing maybe low carb for a while is not going to give you some progress. And maybe for some people, maybe that's what's needed, sort of get a little bit of momentum going. But if you just continue doing that,
00:08:15
Christian Yordanov
What's the problem? Well, the problem is, like I said, the reason it's stressful, these these diets, right? The reason this kind of low carb but modality is stressful is because when you don't ingest a sufficient amount of carbohydrates,
00:08:30
Christian Yordanov
The body has certain amounts of glucose, certain requirements of glucose every day that must be met. And if these requirements are not met through dietary means, the body has other means to meet those glucose requirements. And some of them are, for example,
00:08:55
Christian Yordanov
When you're eating a ton of meat on a carnivore diet, for example, a lot of that is wasted. A lot of protein is wasted to be turned into glucose. The amino acids are deaminated.
00:09:10
Christian Yordanov
which is actually a toxic process. It releases ammonia, which you know puts stress on puts stress on the kidneys. And again, depending on what health challenges and vulnerabilities a person has, that actually could be deleterious, you know deleterious enough where it could uh just for want of a better term just shorten their life basically but basically it could lead to complications metabolically speaking later on and then they might get diagnosed with some kind of kidney disease and it's like oh yeah it's just genetic you're getting old but
00:09:43
Christian Yordanov
Is it is that the case or is it the dumb things we did when you were young and trust me? I'm I'm like Olympic team level dumb things I did So I'm not judging or anything Like I definitely would would be on the Olympic team for the dump dumb dumb dumb things dudes do Category gold medalist um Yeah, so
00:10:13
Christian Yordanov
so that's So that's one way we meet the glucose requirement, right? The deamination of amino acids to turn them into glucose into the liver through the process of gluconeogenesis. Then the other one is if you're not eating eating enough protein or just in general enough calories, which is a possibility on keto and and carnivore because when you eat keto, there's so much fat in the diet relatively speaking to other diets.
00:10:38
Christian Yordanov
that fat is satiating and this is why, one of the two reasons, the main reasons, people lose weight is because they are most more satiated, they they can just go longer without food and they eat less, hoorah, magic, it's magic, eating less and then they eat less garbage because you can't have
00:11:01
Christian Yordanov
you know glyphosate, pasta, and and bread and crap like that. You can't have that on a keto diet and a carnivore diet. So eat less processed garbage and lo and behold, you you eat less and then you know you're more intentional with your food. You clean up your diet and you lose weight. so I always say nowadays is why don't we just clean up the diet without necessarily going to extreme and it is extreme I used to sort of bulk and kind of anyone that will say use the word extreme to label a thing like plant-based when I was brainwashed by the plant-based sort of stuff I and they would call it an extreme diet I'd be like you're you're just a pussy bro or whatever you know like you don't know jack extreme
00:11:49
Christian Yordanov
man up pussy and and also with the the carnivore and keto then i was like it's not extreme it's how we used to eat all the time bro you know you like smash a deer's head into a rock and then like suck its brains out out of its eye socket and I was eating like raw liver and chicken hearts raw out of the packet and then you know, I was what I got some parasites and I wasn't feeling well after that, you know, but Point being here is that they are extreme these diets are extreme excluding any macronutrient
00:12:31
Christian Yordanov
for a significant length of time is extreme. Don't let them fool you that this is how this is our base state it's like you're born when you're a baby a newborn baby you're in ketosis so so we're gonna be like in ketosis is a natural state because of that and we need to be in ketosis all the time because a newborn baby's in ketosis a newborn baby can't feed itself it shits its pants every five hours so should we like just wear a diaper and shit our pants instead of wiping our butts and going to the toilet
00:13:10
Christian Yordanov
Ketosis is our natural state.
Dietary Stress on Fertility and Health
00:13:12
Christian Yordanov
are not So that means is fasting and ketosis is our natural state. That means that if we leave things alone, right if we leave things alone we're gonna die of starvation. And during that process of dying via starvation, you're gonna be in ketosis most of the time.
00:13:35
Christian Yordanov
So let's mimic that state, I guess. like do like Do these people like ever like write down the things they say or like watch the videos and listen to the podcast where they talk and just kind of like stop for a second and just reevaluate what they're saying? So ketosis is our natural state, which means slowly dying of starvation is our natural state. So let's mimic that or let's trick the body That's what the keto diet does, right? That's why you start making ketones because you've tricked the body that it's starving.
00:14:10
Christian Yordanov
Right? So that's why it starts to make ketones, right? It's very clever. We're very smart humans, right? So we were able to do these kinds of things. We're tricking the body, but when the body thinks it's starving for a long period of time, do you think if it's making ketones, do you think that it might also be doing other things that the body normally does in response to starvation?
00:14:37
Christian Yordanov
And do you think those things are beneficial? Or are they supposed to, is the body trying to prolong its own survival? And what are those things? or the theyre They're the downregulation of nice to have functions, right? And if you look at infertility rates nowadays. And if you look at what's super and vogue, a lot of exercise for for for girls as well, women, not to my obviously guys, a lot of exercise, low carb, fasting, cold exposure, you know hustle, hustle culture. You know, you got to hustle, hustle, hustle.
00:15:25
Christian Yordanov
So these are a lot of stressful things put together and when you stress the body sufficiently it will not be fertile. Now I know toxins and plastics and pollution these are also a factor but the So it's not that simple sure, but it's a it's a big piece of the puzzle for sure it is so Back to Jesus tells long rant the hell was I even talking about so back to So the body if it doesn't get enough protein
00:16:01
Christian Yordanov
to deouminate to make into glucose it will break its own tissue down and that could be muscle but if you're if you're actually exercising it you're giving the muscle stimulus so the body will be a bit apprehensive to break down the muscle too much because again we're smart this is this is how bodybuilders cut weight for a show, for example, they train pretty hard while cutting calories. you know So the body is has to hold on to that muscle tissue because of the stresses being put on it. So but this is another way that we kind of are shortening our lives because
00:16:47
Christian Yordanov
there's something has to give there's an equation there and we cannot magically create energy out of nothing so something has to give a big reservoir of potential energy or substrate for energy fuel is the bones right and the connective tissues all over the body that includes collagen networks and in the skin and ah ah like I said the bones are like 35% collagen and that those amino acids are very useful to make glucose and to make ketones some of them there's minerals in there so if you're like if you're putting these stresses on your body and you're not meeting them where they're at with diet and supplementation it's coming from your body that's why I i can see a lot of guys that are very active you can see there their face skin start to sag and
Comparison of Diets for Long-Term Health
00:18:13
Christian Yordanov
i can't have I don't have them here handy, but it's a lot, it's a lot. So you can go a long time doing this, but something's gotta give and guess what it is gonna be? It's gonna be freaking years of your life. So the the other thing to remember is when you're doing low carb keto carnivore,
00:18:39
Christian Yordanov
which again are still better than eating garbage in the Western and the standard American diet. All right. Don't get me wrong. Still better. Still better than eating plant based vegan, whatever. Right. Still way better, but not optimal. That's what I'm trying to say.
00:18:57
Christian Yordanov
They're okay stepping stone, like I said, an okay stepping stone. But a stepping stone is a stepping stone. It's a month, two months, maybe three months. More than that, I don't think so. I don't think they're they're at all optimal. so But here's the thing. When you're removing the carbohydrates from the diet, the body raises cortisol.
00:19:24
Christian Yordanov
And there's four hormones that can stimulate glucose production, gluconeogenesis. So that cortisol being one of them, primary one, that is a degenerative hormone, right? It it will make you feel like shit.
00:19:42
Christian Yordanov
it to interfere with your sleep and your mood it will make you irritable it will actually long term it stimulates deposition around the trunk right it actually whilst it's kind of it basically that when the body's being stressed in such a way that the signal starvation being being given to it by a low carb diet, you know, it will become more thrifty. This is why a lot of people doing this destroyed their metabism metabolism and they become frankly, hypothyroid on the blood work. Even, even their doctor can diagnose it. You know, it's that sort of end stage hypothyroidism, which there's many sort of flavors and layers and nuances to hypothyroidism.
00:20:30
Christian Yordanov
And the lab work can look okay, can be within range for your doctor. So they might do not might say nothing or do nothing, not even like bother even checking those markers. But usually when it's bad in terms of the the the lab work showing frank hypothyroidism, it means like it's been years of dysfunction and degeneration causing that, right? Or occurring below the surface.
00:20:57
Christian Yordanov
so this is what This is what you're going to do if you decide to do low-carb. You're going to be raising cortisol, a degenerative hormone that stimulates the breakdown of lean tissues, like I said, muscle bone, connective tissues, skin, organs, and making you feel like garbage at the same time because it also triggers the release of other hormones that are less than desirable when elevated. so adrenaline and and, and, and, you know, the list kind of goes on. There's a few others there. We don't need to get into the nitty gritty there, but so that's why, that's why when I was doing keto and low carb, I was like,
00:21:42
Christian Yordanov
I was not sleeping well. Yeah, I was not sleeping well. The carnivore stuff, I gave myself parasites because I was doing raw carnivore. Now that's extra dumb. Like I said, Olympic level stupidity in the past. and the But the the good thing is that people can learn from my mistakes. I made these mistakes so that you don't have to. but That's why I do the podcasts, I do the content, I do the coaching, I do the you the books. so that you I do the exploration and come back and I tell you, here's what works, here's what doesn't, here's what will destroy your health, don't don't do it. so why It's like, I don't know who, it was like some Greek philosopher that had this quote, but
00:22:25
Christian Yordanov
A smart man learns from his own mistakes. A wise man learns from others' mistakes. right So I guess I'm not that wise. Or maybe I am, because I you know i don't just learn from my own mistakes and experimentation, but I learn from the best in the health industry.
Personalized Nutrition and Biochemical Differences
00:22:44
Christian Yordanov
you know so there's hundreds of people at this point that I learned from. The idea is find the best bits, create something I can call my own, and then save people thousands of hours of research and effort and frustration, and thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of you know investing things into the wrong whatever area.
00:23:09
Christian Yordanov
so that's what that That's a major thing that low carb diets do, right? And here's the other thing. And there's plenty of evidence for this now. Well, when I say plenty, not that much evidence, but there's enough evidence to cut out for us to know. Don't mess with it. But if cortisol ah is elevated, that actually lowers T, testosterone. They're antagonistic.
00:23:35
Christian Yordanov
so Why are a lot of low-carb people's testosterone low? It's probably because of the the high cortisol that their body, now they might be dealing well with it. Certain people are able to do that. you know I know people that can intermittent fast and they're actually pretty pleasant to be around. If I'm intermittent fasting,
00:23:57
Christian Yordanov
I am Richard Dickinson, the third, you know, like you don't want to be dealing with me when I'm having eaten. So, and my wife, my wife can attest to that. So she was glad when I when i kind of put these things behind me, the the low carb and the fasting.
00:24:18
Christian Yordanov
But there's another thing here, right? So we have like, this is kind of a bit more certain other guys are talking about this, you have like a slow oxidizer, fast oxidizer, that can be determined with certain like metabolic typing tests and hair testing and stuff like that. so it's it's not something i do nowadays as much but i was kind of always a fast oxidizer on all these tests and a fast oxidizer you you cannot make them fast because they need a constant supply like their massive furnace needs a constant supply of energy
00:24:54
Christian Yordanov
so some people don't get me wrong i understand some people will do better with this like fasting and skipping meals and eating less and eating lighter foods and and less like you know more plants and ah ah less calories and maybe low carb but yeah certain people are a little bit better adapted to that, or where I shouldn't say adapted, but so just in terms of like the whole physiology and biochemistry, certain people are more apt for you know like eating more carbs or less carbs, more meat, more fat. So there there is these is these biochemical individual and the individualities between us, right?
00:25:36
Christian Yordanov
there's what What's definitely not so much open for the debate is that there's cells in the body that can only run on glucose or prefer glucose, or their option is glucose or ketones, right? So if you have like something like blood cells, they need they need glucose, right? So you have brain cells that can run on glucose or ketones.
00:26:05
Christian Yordanov
and And so that's already like 100, 150 grams per day of glucose that must somehow magically or through the diet appear in inside the body for it to be oxidized as fuel.
Economic and Metabolic Inefficiencies
00:26:21
Christian Yordanov
And if it's not coming from the diet it's coming from Deaminating protein or it's coming from breaking down your own tissues in the body and a little bit can be made from like, you know a fat metabolism the glycerol backbones of Triglycerides they can be to two of them can be joined together to make a glucose molecule, but there's it's super negligible right this would like keto people are like I Yeah, you could make glycerol ah ah you can use glycerol to make glucose. Yeah, but it's a freaking tiny amount. It's a negligible amount. And the amount of protein you need to make 50 grams of glucose is staggering. It's 100 grams of protein. Not meat, not steak. Not 100 grams of steak. 100 grams of protein, right?
00:27:11
Christian Yordanov
so If a steak has roughly, let's say, 20 grams of bioavailable protein per 100 grams, that's more than a pound, 500 grams of steak roughly, to give you 100 grams of protein, that you're going to waste on on a keto diet, you're going to waste that in a carnivore diet,
00:27:32
Christian Yordanov
By turning a hundred grams and keep in mind 500 grams of friggin Decent beef is gonna cost you I don't know 20 30 40 50 bucks. I don't know depending on where you're at. So it's not cheap and so yeah and just to turn it into 50 grams of glucose because it's a very inefficient process never mind the ammonia that's gonna again put a stress on the kidneys and blah blah blah and so 50 grams of glucose that's like four tablespoons of of honey right so you're turning half a kilogram more than a pound of meat into like four tablespoons equivalent of carb well it's honey is
00:28:20
Christian Yordanov
I'm just giving examples here. you know Don't quote me on this. It's honey, it's fructose and and and glucose, but we're talking about turning protein directly to glucose, not necessarily to fructose. so But you know what I mean. like The equivalent of carbohydrate in four tablespoons of honey
00:28:38
Christian Yordanov
you have to ingest, digest, assimilate, deaminate that protein to turn it into glucose. It's an inefficient process. And the other thing is I have to find this where they were talking about the the glue the process of gluconeogenesis, right, making making glucose in the liver from substrates like amino acids and you know whatever glycerol backbones from fatty acid from triglycerides so you're spending I think six molecules of glucose to make too I think that's that that was the those were the numbers I saw somewhere I have to find it but that's a very inefficient process it's like your
00:29:29
Christian Yordanov
you know, investing six dollars to get two dollars, but you don't get to keep your your six dollars. That sounds like some kind of a, you know, scam like the the financial system is. you know so But you you probably would would definitely turn your nose at ah ah as a deal like that. But that's what that's what you're kind of signing up for when you're doing a lot of this eating a high protein diet that is going to going to just waste that protein to a great extent.
00:30:03
Christian Yordanov
So there's so many reasons why this is a mistake going low carb, keto, carnivore, the stress
Rebound Weight Gain Issues
00:30:13
Christian Yordanov
of that. Yeah, you're going to lose some weight, but you're going to lower your metabolism because of the stress. That's what the body does in response to stress. It lowers its metabolism. And then what do you get? If you can't stick to the diet long-term,
00:30:28
Christian Yordanov
yeah And you kind of go back to eating whatever you were eating before or something like that. So lower metabolism, if you just resume the previous calories you were eating, you will gain weight. That's why a lot of people have this rebound weight gain after diets. That's why it happens because the Lord, like I call it, painting yourself into a metabolic corner. And,
00:30:56
Christian Yordanov
That is not fun. like People are not happy to to to deal with that sort of thing. and this is kind of the mystery But this is kind of the mistake that many folks are making is just hopping on to these trends and bandwagon.
00:31:12
Christian Yordanov
that promise so much but deliver very little they give you some gains and then you lose the gains and then you're forever chasing the dragon until you move on to the next thing and it's so difficult to maintain something like that like low carbon and keto or carnivore if you lose your initial gains you're like what the hell am I doing and clients have told me it's like I did this I lost some weight Then had a stressful period of my life or it was Christmas again. I regained the weight and then since then it's just been like treading water. So it's like, what the hell am I doing? why Why am I wasting my time and going through the, through the freaking motions on this thing, which is like effort for, for no real gain. And I always like, I always start with consider this.
00:32:06
Christian Yordanov
what if What if we just cleaned up our diet as a first step, then worry a little bit more about the macros, the calories, you know that even the timing of the food. These things are all important. and you know this is I teach my clients exactly what to do on all of these things. you know but Start there. Start with cleaning up the diet first. Eat real food.
00:32:39
Christian Yordanov
and I think it was, what was the guy? Pollen, something Pollen, Michael Pollen or Pollack, Michael Pollen. He had a thing, eat food, not too much, mostly plants. I'd probably say, say it's something like eat food. Okay. Not too much. Sure. Mostly animal products is the way I would kind of say it.
00:33:06
Christian Yordanov
Not to say they don't eat any plants, let's say eat mostly animal products.
Investing in Quality Nutrition
00:33:11
Christian Yordanov
The this strategy is if you're going to eat animal products and you eat shitty conventional from the store animal products, you're not going to do too well in in the long term eating that stuff. you know because i mean i I just shudder to think having to drink milk from the like just from the It's absolutely not something I would do. Anyway,
00:33:43
Christian Yordanov
anyway that that would be the thing I would do first. Cleaning cleaning up the diet and instead of wasting money on vegetables and and and all this nonsense with very little nutrition in it, as I discussed in the previous episode, I would invest that money into higher quality animal products. So if you let's say if you think but organic stuff is expensive and you buy some animal products and some plant stuff from the conventional know grocery store, I would just not buy the stuff, the the the vegetables, not waste money on vegetables and whatever, asparagus and spinach and all this absolute nonsense.
00:34:32
Christian Yordanov
right almost zero zero nutrition in there and instead of wasting your money on that and just creating big poops for all your efforts, just invest that money into better quality animal products and see how you do, see how your you feel, see how your health and your weight and your cognition and all of that changes. And I am almost certain it will improve. It will not get worse, right? At the very least it will stay the same, but will very likely improve cleaning up the diet. yeah, so
00:35:15
Christian Yordanov
You're welcome, I guess. That's the most important thing, cleaning up the diet. Really, it's the most important thing. There is no magic sauce. I mean the supplements that like can have clients that do really well with the supplements, but then when it comes to the diet, they don't want to track the diet. They don't want to eat the very specific sort of foods I give them. And those clients, there's few there's ah ah relatively few of those now in in my experience over the years.
00:35:46
Christian Yordanov
But those ones always progress less less quickly than the ones that dialed in the diet faster. And they helped me to die helped me to help them dial in the diet in terms of they tracked the diet and they followed instructions and they trusted the process, you
Foundational Health Practices
00:36:04
Christian Yordanov
know.
00:36:05
Christian Yordanov
because it is a process it's not the kind of thing again it's not magic we're not doing magical things here we are doing small changes that accumulate into many changes over a long period of time and that's that's really like if you look at any successful person out there you know they they're not necessarily doing magical things like athletes for or um not that we want to model athletes or whatever but you know business people Just kind of ah ah doing planning, training, fundamental moves, amazing marketing, tracking finances. They're very sort of rudimentary little things if you kind of look at them atomically.
00:36:51
Christian Yordanov
But the fact that they do it do them consistently and you know the they build on top of each other over the years and decades, that's why some people do do well, whereas others, they go from one ideology to one, you go from diet to program that to another. And it never really works out because they don't stick to one plan. you know So that's what that's what I would say is that the most important if you're struggling with your health or your weight right now
00:37:23
Christian Yordanov
And you're wondering, is some kind of a supplement out there going to, you know, should you, should you even waste time looking for supplements right now if you still haven't cleaned up your diet properly? I mean, probably not because no amount of supplements will out-compete a shoddy diet. And I'll tell you right now, very, very few people that come to work with me have the diet close to dialed in. Most people have a ton of improvements to make to their diet.
Overcoming Dietary Excuses
00:38:05
Christian Yordanov
I'm not saying my diet is perfect by any means. I'm pretty constrained in what I can purchase here because there's such a
00:38:15
Christian Yordanov
There's such a low availability of get you know decent organic products. So we have we have a fairly limited diet, unfortunately. So it's not perfect. It's not as good as I would like it to be. If I was in the USA, you know it would be a hell of a lot better with all the access to you know hunted wild, wild-caught type oh ruminants and stuff, game, whatever. And you just have a ton of good shit in the USA. So I think this is one thing I do not accept anymore is people in in kind of the Western world telling me the food so supply is so bad. Yeah, it's bad if you just go out and drive down to the the convenience store or you know to the big big box stores or whatever.
00:39:12
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, the food is horrific there. it's Borderline grows disgusting, most of it. Most of it I wouldn't wouldn't even dream of putting into my body if if i if I could help it. So we have to go out of our way a little bit. We have to make a little bit of effort to get higher quality food. But in the USA, I mean, you don't even have to go anywhere. It will come to your house. All you have to do is find it and put in a cart and then pay do the checkout.
00:39:42
Christian Yordanov
And then it's your details are saved and then next time it's even easier. So the first time is a bit of effort. Then the next time it's even easier than that. And you could do recurring order where you get high quality meat and whatever product you, you, you enjoy organic to come to your house without you even have to have it to move a finger. Like people come and put it into your fridge. It is amazing.
00:40:09
Christian Yordanov
So in in the Western world, zero excuses. We have zero room for excuses right now, right? No excuses.
Value of Simple Health Changes
00:40:19
Christian Yordanov
This is the other, this is the other thing we have to kind of, this is a mistake. I should do an episode on this is just kind of Making you know bullshit excuses. About the world and why why we are why health is not great is because of the you know it's all the choices we're making on a daily basis and sometimes the choice to educate yourself.
00:40:44
Christian Yordanov
you know, is one of the most powerful choices you can make. And yeah I mean, that's what you're doing listening to the podcast, of course, which is great. But you know, and I'm not necessarily talking to you directly about this stuff, but it just I just I've spoken to so many people in the last few months that I can just see the the The desire isn't there. And I'm thinking to myself, oh well I cannot get healthy for you. You know, I can't do the work for you. And it's so it's it's not like it's hard work. It's not like we're going to have to like dig ditches eight hours a day in the summer's freaking hot sun to get healthy. It's little things we have to do on a daily basis that become habits. And after a few months, you don't even have to think about them. It's just who you are.
00:41:31
Christian Yordanov
So it's not even that hard. It's actually pretty damn simple. I've laid it out so sort of, I think clearly, it's simply that anyone can do it, you know, busy people. Everybody has been able to do it, that what that wanted to do it. But the the most important thing is to understand the value of your health. Because if you understand the value of your health, you actually, it's a value of yours, your health.
00:42:00
Christian Yordanov
Then this whole thing that I'm talking about here, the most important thing, and I kind of over the series, I've already been alluding to it multiple times, screaming about it multiple times really, is the most important thing is to eat clean, as clean as humanly possible.
00:42:24
Christian Yordanov
And when I say the most important thing, the most important thing to being healthy, the most important thing to staving off disease and degeneration, remaining healthy, having good mental to performance, having good physical performance, right? All of the things, all of the things, the most important thing is to eat clean. Yes, I can give you really awesome supplement protocols for hormone balancing, for sleep, for detox, for gut balancing, cleansing, for boosting cognitive function and stuff like that. But I'm always like, and I made this mistake as well. Again, i so a lot of mistakes I made for you. But even like I was doing the keto bullshit,
00:43:13
Christian Yordanov
The low-carb bullshit and I was taking all of these new tropics to for boosting brain power and stuff and I Was starving my body of the damn the very damn thing that my brain cells run on glucose and then I was trying to like Band-aid the problem with these expensive new tropic supplements Which I became an expert in which is you know a really fun area to to explore but it's like you know you have and like a Ferrari and then you buy the cheapest shittiest tires and then you just buy the the regular fuel on or you know you put in some I don't know some crappy fuel in there and you don't you don't take any care of the damn thing and you wonder why the Ferrari is not performing as well as they told you it will it's that kind of thing so
00:44:11
Christian Yordanov
Eating clean and eating the foods that your body ah ah requires, not starving yourself of the things your body needs is the e most important part. If you don't have that dialed in, forget about anything else really having a meaningful effect. Because just to kind of explain, all right, you might like do some detox protocols, right? Boost your detox systems.
00:44:39
Christian Yordanov
Yeah, but if you're eating a bunch of shit and and and toxins from the food every day, that kind of cancels it out. It might still not actually be enough. Whenever you're doing detox wise, it might not be enough to cancel out or to mitigate all the toxins that are coming in. Similarly, you you know, you might be doing, you might do a stool test and you might invest in a gut cleanse and all that good stuff, probiotics, blah, blah, blah.
00:45:06
Christian Yordanov
And if you're eating shitty things with emulsifiers and chemicals that increase leaky gut and have directly toxic effects to gut cells, that kind of invalidates all the money. So it's a big waste of time and money.
00:45:23
Christian Yordanov
you know Similarly, similarly ah ah you could like get all these amazing sleep boosting supplement stacks and I can give you the stacks that I use and you know the best stuff. I've tried hundreds of things in and experimented and gotten client feedback on what works and what works the best. But if you don't freaking feed yourself if you're like starving he yourself of glucose and your stress hormones are high to kingdom come. oh No amount, even like a sleeping pill at that point might not even put you out if you're if if your diet isn't dialed in that that kind of way. So I hope that kind of makes sense. There's so so many
00:46:06
Christian Yordanov
areas where I see people, they're expanding effort, they're trying things, they're committed to the process, they're they're spending money on supplements, and sometimes they're damn expensive supplements, but they don't have basic stuff around the diet dialed in. And this at least at at At least one thing I'm kind of glad is since we, there's been lapses and stuff over since 2018 when we kind of started to truly get our stuff together with my wife after my plant-based bollocks phase. One thing is that, we you know, we've been relatively good with the diet.
Low-Carb Diets vs. Clean Eating
00:46:46
Christian Yordanov
You know, bar, you know, COVID and bar, you know, after we had our baby for a while, we were like a little bit stressed and
00:46:54
Christian Yordanov
stuff like that, but um that's one thing at least I'm i'm happy though, though the the supply here is limited in terms of what we can get from the the the suppliers, at least that little that we get is clean, you know, so I'm happy about that. And the again, just I cannot stress this enough, keto carnivore, low carb, these are not the panacea you're looking for. What you're looking for is really cleaning up the diet really well. I know it's kind of, it's an ambiguous term. I'm not going to get into all the k nitty gritty of cleaning up the diet here, but you you know, this is again another, one of those things. You know yourself where you being a naughty little boy or girl.
00:47:45
Christian Yordanov
or her or zur or bur, whatever you're, whatever you identify as. So you know yourself, there's certain things in behaviorally that we ah ah we all do that we know we should do less of or do no more of, right? So yeah and now I'm talking about diet specifically in in this context, right? So you know what you can improve And unfortunately, I also have this shiny object syndrome, a diet, a cleanse, a bollocks, uh, you know, freaking detox, whatever. Uh, these things, most most of them are like genuinely, I'm not saying they're, they're obvious, right? But I'm just.
00:48:40
Christian Yordanov
ah ah It's like they kind of, to me, at least a lot of these things are, they should be icing on the cake, right? They shouldn't be, they shouldn't be the staple, the daily staple, right? If you know what I mean.
00:48:56
Christian Yordanov
you need to have specific daily staples and then you might have a dessert here and there. like that That's what a lot of these like juice cleanses, I'm not saying don't do a juice cleanse or don't do and a special herbal detox from the medical medium or but whatever nonsense, but it's just These things are not going to truly move the needle for you the way you think they will for the most part, unless you're like doing really poorly in terms of your diet lifestyle. And then this specific cleanse or detox forces you to, you know, remove a ton of the stuff. But here again, is the thing that I've been repeating is if you just clean up your diet, right? If that doesn't change your life,
00:49:47
Christian Yordanov
you know you're You're probably already doing a lot of things right.
Avoiding Trendy Diet Pitfalls
00:49:51
Christian Yordanov
But if if you're having a lot of severe health stuff going on, Uh, this is where, and you can't afford coaching. You can't afford, you know, to work with me or whatever. That's where I would start. If you can, see I would still, I would still make you or not make you, but I would still encourage you to do that. So nobody gets a free pass here, right? Nobody gets a free pass to eat, to eating well, eating clean and keep in mind.
00:50:22
Christian Yordanov
The previous segment we did about vegetables are not eating clean. That's not eating more vegetables. I eat almost zero vegetables and I eat clean. So keep that in mind. And I was going to do a, another mistake a lot of folks are making out there right now. As we speak, you know, someone is letting out a massive bean or lentil fart.
00:50:51
Christian Yordanov
You know, while their partner, they're watching Netflix and their partner went to the bathroom and the dude or whatever is like, Oh, I got to get this out.
00:51:02
Christian Yordanov
So I was going to do a whole segment on why going plant-based in January is a big mistake a lot of people are making right now. But I think the vegetable stuff kind of covered the last time. I know I didn't do it in a super scientific way, but that's not what that's not what these this series is about. It's not about like just ramming knowledge and science and figures, in fact, down your throat. It's about having a sort of real talk We, we don't necessarily like how things are going in our life at the end of the year. We may have not achieved all our goals. We may want to change, or we just may be overindulged over the Christmas period. And now it's, we feel sucky, we feel, oh you know, and we want to use this momentum of the new year to make a change.
00:51:59
Christian Yordanov
Unfortunately, so many of the things out there that are on offer are not the mecca, the panacea, the change, the awesome thing that we want or expect or think we're going to get. And at the end of it, it could be one week or one month or three months. At the end of it, a lot of us going through these things would be no better off. Sometimes we would be worse off. In fact, we would be less healthy than when we started.
Establishing and Maintaining Healthy Habits
00:52:32
Christian Yordanov
And this is what I'm hoping to help you avoid. Whether or not you know decide to work with me as a client or you know to book in a free metabolic function assessment, that's that's completely that's completely irrelevant.
00:52:47
Christian Yordanov
but the What I'm hoping at least you're going to do is heed some of the advice over the the last few days that i've I've posted about these topics and not make these mistakes because there's better ways to do it. And again, just to kind of be a freaking annoying bastard, the most important thing that you will have to do whether or not you become a client of mine. If you actually want to resolve your health problems and you want to be healthy for a long time, you will have to absolutely not a negotiable thing. You will have to clean up your diet once and for all, not just once and for a month, once and for all. Not saying it has to be perfect.
00:53:37
Christian Yordanov
Like I said, if you want to have a glass of wine, a piece of cake, you know, and a little bit of a few drags off of a crack pipe once in a while, that's totally up to you. You do you. You do you. But for the most part, we have to dial this stuff in, figure out what works for you, dial it in, and just maintain it. That is it. After a few months, it will be the new you and maintaining the current you, which is the new you,
00:54:05
Christian Yordanov
which is you know the you you created over the last few months after the old you became the new you that new you is easy to maintain because just maintain the same habits so you have inertia and momentum sort of pushing you in the right, but in this case, it will be pushing you in a much better direction. So you just made a tiny little course correction, tiny, tiny, tiny one, half a degree. And that is going to pay dividends for you years down the line. Okay. So hopefully that was
Listener Engagement
00:55:22
Christian Yordanov
It's a lone game podcasting. You're just talking to yourself and you know you're hoping you're not boring people to tears on the other end. and So if you if you're enjoying the stuff, just shoot me an email you know or review the book on Amazon or review the podcast just so I know there's people out there. It's not just me talking to a camera.
00:55:47
Christian Yordanov
But yeah anyway, hope you hope you enjoyed this one or you learned something and I'll see you on the next episode. Thanks for watching or listening.