PNTV - The Thrive Diet by Brendan Brazier

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hey, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got the book the Thrive Diet by Brendan Brazier and he's actually got a new cover for this book which is pretty hot. And he's got a new book out called Thrive, Thrive Fitness. Check them out. Looking pretty fit. So Brendan Brazier has become a good friend of mine. We actually met at John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods Ranch, maybe, I don't know, four years ago now, maybe even five. Wow, time flies. Anyway, brilliant guy who is a professional Ironman triathlete who has a 100% plant based diet. He's one of the few professional athletes in the world who's competed on 100% plant based diet, which is extraordinary. Not only that, he was an Ironman triathlete which arguably is one of the most challenging sports, certainly one of the most challenging, if not the most challenging sport in the world. Get this to do an Ironman for those who don't know, it's 2.4, is that right? 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, followed up with a marathon 26.2 mile run. And he did all that fueled on plant based fish foods. A lot of people say where does he get his protein? He gets his protein from plants. Plants by weight have an extraordinary amount of protein to them. Unfortunately they don't have quite the same extraordinary marketing budget as the meat and dairy industry. Tragically. Hopefully that will all be changing. Not necessarily the marketing budgets, but certainly and hopefully our common sense. We'll be aligning ourselves back to what we are really built to consume and which is essentially a whole foods diet, a whole plant based diet. So the Thrive diet is all about learning why that's important. The difference between eating a plant based whole foods based diet versus a refined foods diet. And we're going to take a look at some of my favorite big ideas starting now. So he's got these great kind of constructs where he talks about stress and, and the stress that we face in our day to day lives. And he proposes the fact or the idea that our greatest stress load comes from the food we eat and the greatest way we can reduce our overall stress is to change our diet, which is a pretty cool, radical concept I had never thought of before. And the way he describes it is great. So really quickly Brendan says we have three major different types of stress, complementary stress, which is actually good for us. It's stress like working out, training, exercising, Things like that. That stress makes you stronger. That's complementary stress. The other type of stress is production stress. Right now I'm producing. Well, there's a certain amount of stress on my body that I have when I produce. That you have when you produce, when you just go through life moment to moment to moment, right? And then there's uncomplimentary stress. Uncomplimentary stress. Stress is stuff like you'd expect. Emotional and psychological stress would be one part of uncomplimentary, and environmental stress would be another. And the biggest one by far is nutritional stress. So Brennan says that the complementary stress, like the working out and training, that makes us stronger. The good stuff is about 10% of our stress load, right? 10% complementary good. And then the production productive stress is about 30%. Right? It's just part of being alive. And then the rest of the stress is uncomplimentary 60%. And now it's exciting because we can do something about this 60%. We can change our psychology. We can purify our environment so we don't have quite as many toxins in them. We're never going to be perfect, but we can optimalize, right? And optimize and we can change what we eat. And he says out of that 60%, that's uncomplimentary stress, about 70% of it.

Is that right?

Let me check my numbers here. Nutritional stress is 70% of the uncomplimentary, and then psychological is only 20% and environmental is 10. Now, I would have thought that it's like 70% psychological, right? Maybe 10 or 20% nutritional. But he says no, no, no. It's 70% nutritional and 20% psychological and then 10% environmental. And the fact is, our nutrition is also going to influence are psychological stress. So you deal with one and you're dealing with the other really powerful stuff. Now, what he describes as nutritional stress is essentially the amount of energy, the stress load that's put on our body by eating foods that really weren't made for human consumption. And I think it's in his Thrive Fitness book where he says that they shouldn't even be some food in quotes, shouldn't even be called food. Like a Twinkie shouldn't be called food. It should be called food like substance. We can get away with digesting it. But if you actually follow that Twinkie into your body, the amount of stress it creates in your body, it takes a heck of a lot more energy to digest that Twinkie than it does a Head of kale or a head of green leafy greens or some sprouts. Take takes way more energy to digest the Twinkie and very importantly you get way less energy out of it. The Twinkie has very little nutritional density. So Brendan says what happened there was you had a very low net gain. The net return on your food was miserable for the Twinkie. You had to spend a lot of energy to get very little energy. That's not a good equation. And that leads to the uncomplimentary nutritional stress. Really powerful idea now. And this leads us to the next big idea actually, which is actually I've got it further down in the note. But he talks about the fact that high net gain is the key to the thrive diet. So what we want are not the Twinkies or the Oreos or even the. Well, especially the white flower and all the processed refined foods. If your great great grandma couldn't have eaten it, you probably don't want to eat it. That's one way to think about it, right? Think natural foods before we have the technology to do such crazy things to them. The idea of irradiating meat is a whole other conversation. But that's just insanity. We're going to park that over here. I'm going to talk a lot more about the politics of food and all that stuff some other time. But the idea here is we want to eat whole plant based foods and when we do so, the net gain on that is extraordinarily greater than the refined foods and our uncomplimentary nutritional stress load goes down dramatically. What that means is we have much greater energy so quickly. The math on that goes like this. I just had a huge salad for lunch with pea sprouts and sunflower sprouts, cabbage, butter leaf lettuce, awesome sweet white onions, some dulse and some wonderful dressing and maybe a few other things. Now that all has it's just made to be consumed. So my body recognizes that as food it has enzymes that are still in there. He talks about the fact that raw foods, foods prepared not heated above 118 degrees, have a different chemical property to them. Enzymes that are still intact that are destroyed when they're cooked over a certain level. Whole other conversation on that. Check out the note in the book for a lot more on that. Again, I'm going to be talking about that more. But again, net gain food, it's really simple. Eat more whole plant based foods and more raw organic foods the better, right? Again, we can talk about that for a weekend. For now we're going to move on. So the number one cause of uncomplimentary nutritional stress again, refined food. Eliminate refined food. Certainly reduce it dramatically. He talks about biological age. Have you ever noticed that people who work out consistently and work out a lot look younger? Why is that? It's because our body is essentially recreating itself within a year. Nearly every single organ and tissue in your body is regenerated within a year, he says. Nearly every tissue and cell within six to eight months. And faster, depending on whether you're exercising. When we exercise, we literally require our body to rebuild itself faster. That's why people who exercise a lot look younger than those who don't. It's extraordinarily cool. Our biological age is independent from our chronological age. Some people look a lot older than they are. Why is that? Because they don't exercise and they eat crap. The refined foods which stresses them out and makes them look older. Reverse your aging process by eating better, the plant based foods and exercising intensely and often consistently. It's a powerful thing. Really, really cool. And know this, what your body recreates in those new cells that are being reformed, where are they getting the energy from? What are they being built out of the food you're eating? So eat good food and you're going to be more vibrant. We got a bunch of other great ideas in here about coffee and how that's just a terrible way to get energy. The Thrive Food pyramid. We talk about a little bit more on enzymes, a little bit more on alkalinity, but we are out of time. So there you go. That is the Thrive Diet. Brendan Brazier. He's awesome. Check him out. Brendan Brazier. B R A Z I E r dot com. Check out his new book too Thrive Fitness and check out his Vega sports nutrition supplement. Awesome stuff.

Enjoy.

All right, look forward to sharing more with you soon. See you.

Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that Philosopher's Notes TV episode. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson Me. Two basic things. One, our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And two, our Optimal Living membership program.

This is where I put all my best stuff.

Ten bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there, philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes which are basically 6 page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my optimal living classes.

This is where I take all the.

Ideas we cover in the Philosopher's Notes and boil it down to the most practical stuff you can apply today. Classes include Confidence 101, Getting Stuff Done 101, Relationships 101, Habits 101, etc. You'll also get access to what we call micro classes that I think you'll love. We aim to astonish, and we're blessed to have thousands of members telling us we're helping them change their lives and and that this is the best 10 bucks they invest in themselves every month. Go to BrianJohnson ME membership to learn more. Thanks for your support and have an awesome day.