In this solo episode of the No Days Off podcast, host Brian Gubernick shares personal insights on nutrition, emphasizing three core areas: portion control, hydration (including electrolytes), and reducing processed foods and added sugars. He begins with a disclaimer that he is not a licensed nutrition professional, framing his advice as experiential rather than medical. Drawing on his history of experimenting with various diets—paleo, keto, low‑carb, grass‑fed, etc.—he highlights the importance of matching calorie intake to energy expenditure, using the simple equation of burn versus consume for weight maintenance, gain, or loss. He advocates for mindful portion sizes, referencing the “eat to 80% full” principle common in East Asian cultures. On hydration, he notes that water alone isn’t sufficient; electrolytes, especially sodium, are crucial for those who sweat heavily, and he recommends aiming for at least eight cups of water (≈100 oz) daily, supplemented with LMNT electrolyte packets. Finally, he urges listeners to limit processed foods, which are high in added sugars, unhealthy fats, sodium, and preservatives, and to prioritize whole, unprocessed foods while still recognizing the convenience of processed options. He concludes with a call to action for listeners to research, adjust their habits, and adopt incremental improvements in nutrition as part of the broader No Days Off philosophy of daily self‑improvement.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into today's topic. Today is part 2 of our health series. Yesterday We covered sleep. Today we're going to discuss nutrition. Uh, just a quick disclaimer, I am not the nutrition expert. I am certainly not licensed to give, uh, health advice. Uh, I am licensed to sell real estate, but I am certainly not licensed to be giving health advice. I am simply giving, uh, advice based on my own personal experience. Both as somebody who aims to increase their health on a daily basis, but, you know, that's owned a gym and worked in the health and nutrition space, uh, has tried multiple different nutrition plans and training regimens and all of that. I kind of am a lab rat and test everything on myself. And so what I share with you are my experiences and of course my opinion. And the objective is not necessarily for you to adapt— or excuse me, adopt all the things that I'm talking about, but to simply get you thinking about, in this— in today's case, your nutrition. Here's what I want to focus on as it pertains to nutrition. I want to talk about a few things. Portion control. I want to talk about hydration. And I want to talk about processed foods. Foods. Now, let me first give you some history for me. I have tried all different sorts of food plans, ranging from heavy calorie, weight gain style, mass producing style eating, and protein shake consuming. I have gone 100% paleo, which many of you have probably heard of or tried before. I have done low carb, I have done keto, I've done balanced food intake, I've gone fully grass-fed and organic, I've gone partially grass-fed and organic. I have tried it all. And based on those experiences, I'm gonna share some of my insights. And so that's my background. The areas I wanna focus on, portion control, hydration, and limiting processed foods and sugar and added sugars. These are 3 critical areas. There's more to nutrition than just this, but these are 3 areas that I love to focus a little bit more attention on because I don't know if they get the amount of attention that they deserve. Let's talk portion control. What do I mean when I say that? It's really simple. I think that we— and when I say we, most specifically I'm talking about North America and our population. We need to do a far better job paying attention to the portion sizes that we're consuming because, well, we overeat. Just call it what it is. And we overeat because we don't purposefully manage how much we're consuming. We eat out. We don't eat at home a lot. And restaurants, especially in the United States, serve an abundance of food, probably far more than we necessarily need. And it's accessible. It's easy. It's at our fingertips. I was talking about it the other day in the conversation around the comfort crisis. And food's always available. As a result, we have a tendency to overeat because it's just so easy. When it comes to portion control, what I'm really focusing on is balancing my intake, specifically my calorie intake, with the amount of energy that I'm expending each day. I think that that's a very core principle of nutrition and even weight management, overall health, that's just so neglected. I think we get into these fad diets, we try these different things, and we forget the most basic of basics, which is if you want to maintain your weight, you gotta burn the same amount you consume. If you want to gain weight, consume more than you burn. And if you want to lose weight, burn more than you consume. Now, there's more to it than that, but we're forgetting about that very basic math equation. So I want you thinking about your portions. Do you feel full all of the time after you eat? Should you feel full? I know that some, some Asian countries, In East Asia, you know, there is the principle of eating to 80%, meaning that you get to a place where you feel like 80% of the way full and you're done. It's not ironic, it's not an accident, I should say, that these countries have some of the healthiest, longest-living individuals. In the US, our portions are truly out of control. Hydration, the next subject I want to talk about as it pertains to nutrition. I can tell you, like, on this one, I have messed this one up, which is why I'm focusing on it today, in that I thought consuming a lot of water meant that I was hydrated. And what I've learned is while that is absolutely a step in the right direction, drinking the adequate amount of water throughout the day, allows you or helps you to maintain proper hydration. There's also a variety of other things like electrolytes, like salts, that play a role in hydration, especially if you're sweating a lot, if you're training a lot. I live here in Phoenix. All summer long, we are sweating. It is more than just water, it's electrolyte intake. So the old adage of aim for 8, around 8 cups of water, It's a good one. It's a great place for you to start. If you're not consuming that quantity of water per day, you should maybe aim to start with 8 and see where you can go. For me personally, I'm trying to get 100 ounces plus per day. In addition, I add electrolytes to my water to make certain that I'm getting the sodium, the salt, the electrolytes I need, as they play a significant role in my hydration. For what it's worth, I am very much into LMNT, the L-M-N-T, the letters L-M-N-T, the supplement that you can add to your water that's no sugar, no carbohydrate, no sweetener. It is just straight electrolyte and heavy sodium. Many podcasts and others talk about it. I'm a huge fan of it. I can physically feel different when I'm drinking 1 to even 2 of those per day. Last thing I want to talk about around nutrition— we've covered portion control, we've covered hydration— I want to talk about processed foods. Specifically, I want to talk about limiting processed foods. Processed foods contain all sorts of added sugars, unhealthy fats, outrageous levels of sodium, preservatives, all sorts of things of that nature. And while I'd love to see you eliminate processed foods, and added sugars. At a very minimum, I'd love for all of us to moderate this a bit more. We should trade processed foods for more whole, unprocessed foods, in my opinion, as often as we can. And I think it starts with actually reading the food labels prior to us consuming. You want more whole foods, you want more real foods. I understand the need for processed foods. I understand, like, I'm not anti. Right? These are quick, easy to consume, at our fingertips things, and we need it. We need it. I mean, we need that access. The things I'm describing, they take time, and of course, you know, I'm gonna push you to take that time because it's healthier for you. But at the very minimum, I'd love to see you limit processed foods. And along those lines, I'd limit especially some of the grains that we're consuming. I'm not saying eliminate bread altogether. But I think we could all agree having a little less bread and grain probably would be beneficial. Keep in mind, over the course of history, you know, having grains to the level that we do today, this is a new phenomenon. These are new things. It's not how we were wired. That's not how we were built. There are lots of other things as it pertains to nutrition. I didn't touch on, you know, a balanced diet. I didn't touch on your individual needs and considerations. There's lots of other variables here. You got to take that all into consideration. We can get into, you know, the types of foods beyond processed that you should be eating. It's not my area of expertise. My challenge for you is to go do some more research. And as I stated at the beginning of today, I just want to get you thinking. And today I want to get you thinking around your portions, your hydration, and the processed foods that you're consuming. So the focusing question today Based around what I said, or maybe what I didn't say, but today just happens to be nutrition, what action steps can you take or should you consider taking to improve your health? What should you be researching? What should you be reading? What should you be doing differently to help you feel a little bit better than you felt today? Is— that's what this No Days Off movement is all about. We're aiming to get better, not just at business, not just at relationships, but of course at our health. That's all I have for us today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better, so let's get after it.
