#151 - Dr. James Dinicolantonio: Unleashing the Power of Salt to Maximize Performance

What if you could have incredible endurance and energy where you perform at your peak, where you really have the edge at work, waking up at 4 in the morning or going longer at night? You're gonna understand on today's show how to win with Dr. James Dean McLean Tonio. He has a brand new book called Win that is based on his, uh, bestseller called The Salt Fix. And you're gonna understand how minerals like sodium, magnesium, and potassium are the key nutrients, really essential nutrients, essential minerals to transform your life completely. All on today's show, guys. So let's get started right now. Hi, my name is Jorge Cruise, but I'm also known as the Zero Hunger Guy. I'm a celebrity fitness trainer and a multiple New York Times bestselling diet author with 12 million fans. You may have seen my work with Oprah Winfrey, Khloe Kardashian, Kelly Clarkson, or even Steve Harvey. My career started because I was addicted to sugar, carbs, salty snacks, and stress, and experts told me to simply count calories to get control. They were were wrong. My passion to get radical control over both physical and emotional health has led me to find science-proven shortcuts that help my clients drop 25 belly inches or even more fast and permanently. And I know I can help you too. Welcome to the Zero Hunger Revolution. All right, guys. So before we get started, I want to thank our sponsors, A big shout out to Primal Kitchen for all their support over the last few years here. They truly have supported the Zero Hunger Guide podcast more than anyone else. And as a thank you to us and to all of us, remember to go check out and get their free lime mayo made from avocado oil. It's anti-inflammatory. It's a way to quell hunger. And you can use it while you're fasting with pickles. You can use it on a steak while you're breaking your fast. It's going to turn off hunger and dial it down. You get a free bottle of it on Amazon. I just checked today. It was $14. Totally free for you.

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And we're also brought to you by Zero Hunger Water. Zero Hunger Water is fueled by Elemental Labs, created by Robb Wolf, truly one of the world's greatest biochemists. And Robb Wolf has really taken a basic formula for, for energy and maximum performance and have given us an easy-to-use packet that you just put in the water. You can get a free box of these and they have all these varieties. That is why I call it Zero Hunger Water. So check it out. Simply go to zerohungerwater.com. And, uh, sign up for the free box. You have to get a value bundle, but you get a fourth box for free. It's absolutely the best deal out there. And you can also just get the recipe for free if you just wanna make it at home using salt, magnesium, potassium, a little bit of stevia. Uh, you simply go to zerohungerwater.com. This is a man that's been on the show various times, and out of all the books I've read, his books tend to be the ones that have, in the last, I would say 2 years, have really changed my thinking when it comes to human nutrition and really understanding appetite and, and hunger and how to gain control of our lives. If you guys don't know who I'm talking about, it's Dr. James. You guys know his book. This is the book, The Salt Fix, has become a classic bestseller. And on today's show, he has a brand new book though that takes it and goes even deeper on performance, and it's called Win. Check this out, everyone. It says achieve peak athletic performance, optimize recovery, and become a champion. So we're gonna be talking about that. And even if you're not someone who does a lot of exercise, maybe it's just a 20 or 30-minute walk every every day where you do some of my 8-minute exercises. What's great is that this is about really performance and endurance in life. Dr. James, tell us about this new book. Let's get started because I think I need more endurance in my life. I'm over 50 now. I know a lot of the people out there are just wanting to get out of bed and have a good day, and I think you can help us do that and even more today. We will hit a home run. So welcome, Dr. James.

Thanks for having me on again. Yeah, no, you hit the nail on the head in regards to The reason why this book is so important is because it takes what I wrote in The Salt Fix, but translates it to performance. And like you said, it doesn't— you don't have to be an elite athlete to read the book. It really pertains to everyone because hydration is life. Salt and fluid is life, and it fuels our workouts. And so we— and exercise is one of the best things you can do for your health. Really, chapter 2 is all on hydration. It took me a ton of research to actually pull a lot of those studies. And really the common thing here is that when you perform any type of vigorous exercise, that blood volume drops very quickly within 5 minutes, 5 to 10 minutes, you drop a percent blood volume and it's a relative drop. Obviously you don't lose blood, but what happens is when you vigorously exercise, the blood that used to go to the heart now has to go into the working skeletal muscle. And then it starts actually going to the skin to dissipate heat. So you have this competition. Between blood volume from the heart, the skeletal muscle, and the skin. And so if you can boost blood volume prior to performance, which is what chapter 2 covers, then you can prevent the drop in blood volume, which is the main reason why performance suffers is the drop in blood volume.

I think it's so vital because I feel like in life we often seem to be low energy, low performance, low endurance. I think chronic fatigue is something a lot of our listeners experience and they think the solution is more caffeine or stimulants. And I love that your theory is so different. It's more of a mineral-based theory, obviously starting with sodium. Can you take us back just for those listeners that maybe didn't hear our first interview and give us just a tiny recap of what kind of this premise is? Because in your first, in the book that got me to understand what your work was and why it was so important was this Salt Fix about why experts got it all wrong. You know, because they vilified salt and sodium and how eating more, literally on the COVID of the book, we say, and how eating more salt can save your life. Because if we can start there, I think a lot of people have been told for decades, if you're 50, like I am, or 60 or 70, that salt is, I'll let you tell it. What have people been told for how many decades and why is it all wrong? Let's start there and then we'll dive into obviously how it impacts everything from hydration and appetite and performance. But take us back to the roots of your work and how everyone got it wrong. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. From a historical perspective, if you think of Romans used to consume on average 25 grams of salt, and even in the 1800s, salt consumption was upwards of 50 grams in many European countries. And even a lot of the army rations understood that most soldiers needed 18 to 20 grams of salt. So this is 2 to 3 times what we typically consume in a day was actually thought to be important back a couple hundred years ago before we invented the refrigerator. We use salt to preserve our food. Now what's basically happened in the last 70 years is that we just simply de— now demonize salt. We, we've been told it's toxic. Poison instead of this essential mineral. And what's interesting, what you said, we all think about caffeine, coffee. We didn't used to consume that hundreds of years ago, but that is one of the biggest depleters of salt is coffee caffeine. And when they were making all these recommendations to consume a low amount of salt, they never took exercise into account, nor did they take the fact that caffeinated teas and coffees are some of the most commonly consumed beverages, which deplete our bodies of salt.

So it does the opposite. It actually, what would you call it? Like leaches sodium from our bodies. And why briefly, why is that? So if someone's nah, that's just a bunch of chemistry, but it's honestly one cup of coffee, it removes how much water would you say? Something people can relate to.

Sure. So on average, I'll just go over some of the salt studies that looked at caffeine, but essentially 2 cups of coffee will cause you to lose 600 milligrams of sodium extra. Compared to placebo or just drinking water. And if you consume 4 cups, you lose half a teaspoon of salt or 1,200 milligrams of sodium. And so that's why coffee is a diuretic. That's why you lose water is because it flushes out sodium and chloride. It prevents the reabsorption of sodium in the proximal tubule of the kidneys.

Wow. So when we drink coffee, in theory to create this, what is that called when there's a balance, obviously? When we don't have that balance, it's dehydration, right?

Yeah.

And talk to us how that leads to what we've talked about in the past, to not just being thirsty, I would think if you feel that even, but then more importantly could trigger appetite, right? In, in the sense of not having this, what, what's the proper term when you have the right hydration? What, what's the term you would use?

Yeah, I would just say optimal hydration because you can talk about hydration in the cell, which is intracellular hydration, or in the blood, which is intravascular hydration. But essentially they balance each other out at a certain point. Basically the interstitial fluid has the same osmotic gradient as the blood, and eventually they'll balance each other out. But you have, you had two questions like coffee, hydration, and then basically hunger and, and how salt controls that. So there have been studies in humans looking at consuming 3 cups of coffee twice a day. And what ended up happening is that caused a massive increase in diuresis and it actually led to a net negative volume or basically hydration status of 750 mL when these people were consuming 2 liters a day. Wow. So in other words, if you don't increase your water intake essentially above 2 liters, and let's say you consume 3 cups of coffee twice a day. You will become dehydrated. That's been proven in metabolic studies looking at coffee consumption because of the diuretic effect.

And when we're dehydrated, give us what happens with everything from performance, energy, and what a lot of people want to know from this podcast usually is about appetite and how it may trigger us to want to eat when we're not really hungry. We're just dehydrated. Is that Take us through what the, the results of this are. They sound negative for the most part, right?

Yeah. Simply being dehydrated by 1.8 to 2% has been shown to reduce cognition, reduce mental performance, and reduce athletic performance. And especially if you hit 3% dehydration, that will reduce both endurance as well as basically power output. So you're reducing strength and you're reducing endurance. When you're dehydrated. And that's because you have less volume to dissipate the heat, to sweat, to cool your body off. That's one of the benefits of preloading with salt and fluids is you're boosting your fuel tank, you're boosting your coolant to, to actually sweat off and still maintain a normal amount of blood to feed the heart, the muscles. So that's why it's important in regards to hunger.

Yeah.

That this is what's interesting. The animal studies show that if you deplete an animal of salt, the, the addictive properties of things like sugar, things like Adderall and things like cocaine actually dramatically go up. And that's because low salt diets actually activate the reward center in the brain. It's a defense mechanism for basically animals, including humans, in order to maintain an adequate amount of salt. Essentially, if you are salt deficient, the body has to have a way of telling itself go out and seek out this nutrient, otherwise you're gonna die. And how it does that is it activates the reward center in the brain so that when you get salt, it's more rewarding. It allows the animal to seek it out, find it, consume more of it. But things that are addictive can cross over and become more addictive when you're not getting enough salt because that reward center is now hyperactive.

Wow. Now I know a lot of people know people and maybe have addiction problems, whether it's alcohol, substances in the past. But one of the biggest addictions I know a lot of our clients suffer with, which we cannot throw in and never vilify, is what I think you would agree should be vilified, which is sugar. And how does it impact our ability to crave sweets? Because literally I've heard others say, and I think you may agree with this, that sugar can be more addictive than hard stu— substances like even heroin and cocaine and other hard drugs. How does sugar play into this and our ability to regulate our control of sugar, carbohydrate?

So the animal studies, basically if you give animals intermittent access to sugar, they'll pull on the levers for sugar more than cocaine.

Wow.

So that's where you constantly hear the sugar is more addictive than cocaine. It's from those animal studies and it's the intermittent access where basically there's a period where they're off sugar and then they go back on it, but it's a constant, basically they're consuming it every single day. And wow. That's the problem with the American diet. It's hidden in everything. So not most people, it's true, most people aren't just consuming spoons of sugar, but they do put it in their coffee. And when you spike a, a processed food with sugar, then it just becomes so much more addictive. So a lot of people are focusing on the harms of seed oils, which of course are super damaging and inflammatory, but you gotta understand it's the sugar that it's driving people to overconsume all a lot of these processed foods leading to obesity and type 2 diabetes. So in my opinion, refined sugar is almost just as bad as these refined refined seed oils because it drives addiction and overconsumption of food and the problems of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Wow. We're getting to— this is my favorite part of our conversation so far, because I feel like a lot of people don't have control and they lack discipline. They beat themselves up so much. And I feel like sometimes we don't hear enough that, hey, not that it isn't our fault, but that if we have certain practices that we follow consistently. And it seems like maybe you can summarize this up until this point, and then we get into the performance part, but we have a pattern, it seems, of dehydrating our bodies of essential, not just water, but these minerals. And by doing this consistently, just the example of coffee, right? How many people consistently, like watching right now, you email me guys, Everyone does this. We overdrink coffee and we don't drink and like, oh, gimme a big water with that coffee. We just drink our coffee and then we're starving or hungry or we lose that control and then we have to have a big sugar muffin or a bunch of fruit or a bunch of sugar or orange juice. And it just seems to create this negative loop of dehydration, of losing the salt and the water, which causes us to lose control. Is that in essence, get help, help people understand why, as much as they may have discipline and be disciplined in their life, this is a hard thing to beat. It's, it sounds it's more addictive than heroin. Like you said, in these lab studies, right? The sugar seems to draw us almost like a drug, right? It's never been vilified. Not that we want to vilify it right now, but if we were, what would you tell people about sugar and carbohydrates and how it's truly maybe something more addictive than a drug. And I think when people do drugs, they get that, oh, I need help. I need to go into recovery. But they don't think about it when it comes to sugar because they think, oh, it's benign. But tell us why it's not benign maybe, and how maybe someone listening that is a sugar holic, it isn't their fault possibly, right?

Yeah, no, truly it isn't. And sugar is refined and processed just like a drug would be. So think, if you think about opium or you think about cocaine, they're all highly refined powders from plants. Sugar comes from sugarcane and you get this highly refined white crystal. So when you think about the processing of sugar, it's the same as a drug. It comes from a similar substance, a plant, a natural plant. 'Cause a lot of people say, how can it be addictive? I can get it in nature. Well, we gotta understand the processing of it. And when you process something into a very refined white crystalline form, now you can get spikes in dopamine that you never could get with just eating a piece of fruit. And it, it's really the level of dopamine that you get. If you get too high of a level, you'll downregulate the dopamine receptors that can lead to withdrawal effects and cravings. And then you are in this vicious cycle of not just high sugar, low sugars, which is a physiological dependence. Now on sugar to try to maintain blood sugar levels. But now you're in this dopamine high-low and your body's constantly craving sugar because of the dips in dopamine. It's the troughs in blood sugar, the troughs in dopamine that lead the person to basically crave sugar. And that's what's going on. Wow.

So if someone wants to, let's just be bold here and gain radical control over this. Why do I feel like salt may be the solution? Tell us why. And let's get into how it solves everything else too, right?

It's certainly number one. It's the biggest mineral that can be lost the most rapidly in, in, in basically you can have a huge clinical consequence within just an hour or two of sweating outside in the heat. You can suffer heat stroke if you don't get enough salt. There's no other nutrient like that where you can really die within like a couple hours. From an exogenous thing that's gonna deplete it, which exercising in the heat will do that. Yeah, that's number one. We gotta understand, yes, we, especially we're eating processed foods, we get enough salt, but there's so many things that can rapidly deplete the body of salt. That's what's different about salt. Not a lot of nutrients get rapidly depleted in the body. And then salt controls insulin sensitivity. When you don't get enough salt, the kidneys will, and, and the body will release more insulin to retain the salt. And now when you have high insulin levels and you're more insulin resistant, you crave more sugars, you gain more fat per calorie consumed, which is— so salt controls in a way hunger because it controls insulin and leptin sensitivity.

Wow.

So with the right amount of salt, and I'm a fan of simple products, I think you've, you're familiar with things like Elemental Labs, their products. I put one of these in, I have my 32 ounces of water and I've shown this on television and all that, and you've helped me in magazine articles talk about salt and all that. But if someone wants a simple prescription, and then let's get into why this simple prescription can give us— I think what I love about your book is the ability to win in life from the point of view from strength, speed. I think endurance is the biggest thing I think people are lacking right now. But what would you say is a prescription? Do you agree with this? Is, I think this one's 1,000 milligrams, right? Which is about half a teaspoon. Is that approximately right?

Yeah, just under half a teaspoon would be 1,000 mil.

And then I put it in 32 ounces of water. Is that a simple fix, something like this, or what would you suggest?

So it depends on the person's diet. If you're consuming a lot of processed foods, then you're probably getting adequate salt and you really need to drop the refined carbs and sugars. But if you're eating a whole food diet, now we don't consume the blood. The interstitial fluids, the organs. So the salt has been removed from whole foods now. So you gotta replace the salt back with like things like Redmond Real Salt or what you just showed. Like you gotta replace it back. And the studies show that between 3,000 and 5,000 milligrams of sodium per day is likely optimal in regards to decreased risk of all-cause mortality, lower risk of cardiovascular events, strokes, heart attacks, things like that.

Say that number again for us and then tell us for anyone's whose ears are perking up. They're like, that sounds like more than what's recommended because the, the government for some reason tends to regulate this or gives a recommendation. But correct me if I'm wrong, but they don't for sugar. And I feel like if you're going to give us a doctor's prescription here, this is your background, what would it be compared to? Because I think people need a reference point. What is the— it truly is the government that says, hey, we should have this much. And what are your thoughts on that number versus the number you just gave us?

Yeah, so a lot to unpack there. So number one, 3,000 to 5,000 milligrams of sodium is about 1.5 to 2 teaspoons of salt. It's true. The government has long recommended to consume less than 1 teaspoon of salt. And of course you can lose more than that in just 1 hour of exercise. So we can basically unpack how that is., you know, completely just a blanket statement and shouldn't be prescribed individually because of depending on coffee intake and how much you exercise. So that's that. And then 3, in regards to governments not regulating sugar intake for the longest time, the U US Dietary Guidelines said that it was okay to consume 25% of your total calories from added sugars. And so in the Sulfix, I go over the historical and how they changed it and how it was basically, they went from moderate sugar intake to you can consume up to A quarter of your entire day's worth of calories is refined sugar.

Wow.

I mean, never, whereas for an essential mineral, they never even said consume at least this amount so you don't die. It's always just the less than sign. And as if this isn't an essential mineral. Wow.

With that said, what does someone do if they're— because I hate to ask this simple question, but I think it bears having your opinion on. Like this idea that doctors use this information from the government to make recommendations to people. And if people are being told by their doctors to— what is, what are they typically told about salt? Oh, be careful. People, I know if I tell people to drink salt, the very first thing they think, I'm gonna have a heart attack. Literally, they're worried about what, what is it? It's high blood pressure.

Yeah.

Tell us how that— help us break that down. So maybe if anyone listening right now. Is no, I can't do salt. My doctor has said not to. They're basing it on what you just told us. And tell us why we need to— I hate to say it— not only do we need to get your new book, but we need to get the original book because they got it wrong. And how do we give people— I don't know what the word is, but the tools to be able to have an intelligent conversation with their doctor. Because I don't think— can we win at that? Is that a lot? How do we do that with a doctor? Because I'm sure a lot of people have been told— what is it that they've been told, Dr. James, over the years? Be careful, right?

Yeah, totally. The first thing, if you have high blood pressure, the doctor's gonna say is cut your salt intake. There's no nuanced discussion. I don't think the goal should be to try to convince your doctor otherwise, cuz you don't have a lot of time with them anyway, and it's not gonna work 99% of the time. You're not gonna change their mind. So the goal would be to just clean up your overall diet and consume an amount of salt that is good for you, that optimizes how you feel, all your symptoms that you're having. Most people, when they start introducing salt into their diet, healthy quality salt, they instantly see improvements in atrial fibrillation, cognition, energy levels, exercise performance. So you'll know what the right amount is for you when you start adding it back into your diet.

Yeah, that's great. For those that want that, that reference out of all your books or tools out there, I think The Salt Fix is one of them. The new book, do you get into that as well? And let's get into that because from a sense of endurance performance, and really optimized, um, I mean, for me, I think it's vitality because I feel like if I'm middle-aged and maybe I'm not an athlete, but I'm tired all the time, all I do is what, like we said in the beginning here, is we drink coffee and coffee. And ironically, it's doing the opposite. It's hard to believe that caffeine is making us tired, but at one point it takes us up, but then the dehydration does the opposite. So explain how we can now use what we've just talked about for improved endurance and energy, please?

Sure. So there's like a few different ways that you can think about hydration. You can think about hydration as, okay, I want to acutely boost my performance, or I want to have my performance improved later on, basically. And how that happens is you adapt to dehydration. It's called dehydration acclimation. So if you're someone who you're about to compete in an event, you wanna be basically, there's in the book, I unpack how to take these salt solutions, but you start basically 90 minutes prior to performance or competition. You slowly consume those over about 30 to 60 minutes and, and that allows the salts and the fluids to start boosting the blood volume. And in the clinical studies, you can exercise up to 20 to 21 minutes longer, vigorously exercise. That's the key.

Wow.

Which if you compare that to any other performance-enhancing supplement on the market, including beta alanine and beetroot juice, those supplements can only boost endurance by about 1 to maybe 2 minutes if you're lucky. So this is salt, Luid is 10 to 20 times more powerful in regards to boosting performance than any other supplement or performance-enhancing supplement out on the market.

How does it work for anyone out there? I was talking to a client last night because she was helping review a lot of what were questions from our listeners, from everyday women that are in their 50s and 60s. Tell us briefly, and then I want to get into some of your nutritional guidelines on protein and fiber about performance, but briefly, how does blood volume, increased volume, give us this edge? Because I think you get, we get that, that this is what happens when you do the sodium, but how does it give us that edge in a layman's way, like in a very simple way? When blood, when you take in this wonderful fluid with the salt in it, then your blood volume goes up. How does that ex— I don't know if you can dumb it down for us, but explain as best you can how that impacts truly our energy, our endurance, our appetite, because with that volume in there, what happens like that? I guess that's the part I'm seeing the blood in our bodies go up. That's— tell us what that means. So blood volume increase. And how it works, please.

Yeah. So essentially when you start exercising, you're now shifting blood to working muscle, the skeletal muscle, and then you're also shifting blood to the skin to then dissipate heat and you're losing volume when you sweat to cool off. So there's not only a true drop in volume because you are, you have to sweat water to cool the body off, but there's now a shift in blood that used to go to the heart that is now having to go to the skeletal muscle. So there's a relative drop in blood volume now feeding the heart. So there's this massive just depletion of blood volume within 5 to 10 minutes of 8 to 10%, essentially when you measure it in the arterial supply, cuz it's now going into the skeletal muscle, into the skin. You have to boost blood volume by 8 to 10% so you don't get the drop that occurs within 5 to 10 minutes. And the way to do that is to take salt and fluids in a fairly high concentration, essentially a concentration that's very very similar to blood, which is ironic. And we actually learned how to do this through astronauts. This would, there's a really interesting story here on, on hydration, and it's when we send astronauts into outer space for several days, because there's no gravity, their blood volume drops. So when they, upon reentry into the Earth's atmosphere and the gravity, they have this low blood volume. It was causing astronauts to pass out. So NASA had to figure out how to boost blood volume 2 hours before reentry. And really a lot of the data actually comes from that. It's kind of interesting.

Wow. And basically the fluid that is in something like this, 32 ounces of water, and I put one of these packets in there, will do that. In essence, is this kind of, you said it's like getting the ratio down to what blood is to some degree. It does not taste like blood, but in essence it gives you the same. It's almost like a transfusion, right? Is that what it? I mean, it sounds like we're vampires here, but is it like a transfusion, right? It really does give us that edge.

It 100% does. This is again to acutely boost performance, but essentially between 3,000 and 4,300 milligrams of sodium per 26 to 33.8 ounces respectively. So 33.8 ounces is a liter of fluid and 4,300 milligrams has been tested as probably the best way to boost blood volume. That's now pretty high. A lot of people would say, wow, that's really high. You don't have to do that though. Before regular typical exercise. This is okay, I have an NFL game or I have a UFC fight. You want to be consuming the 3,000 to 4,000 milligrams of sodium in that amount of fluid. And adding glycine to that can actually improve the absorption of salt and decrease core body temperature as well. 'Cause glycine is an inhibitory neurotransmitter and that's actually how it helps us sleep is glycine lowers core body temp. So I have some protocols on how to do this, but if you're someone in training camp, and you want your performance to be better 2 weeks later.

Yeah.

What you do is you come in fully hydrated, but then you induce mild dehydration. Basically, you weigh yourself before training, weigh yourself after, and you wanna see like a 1.5 to 2.5% drop in body weight because it's the acclimation to the dehydration later on. You do that for 1 to 2 weeks and your body will enlarge plasma volume on its own as an acclimation response to the dehydration. And now you have a larger blood volume at baseline. So there's different ways to hydrate. Um, if that makes sense.

Oh yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. And I think, I feel like so much of what has become the questions a lot of my clients have are the very answers and solutions that all your books are about. And I feel like you've become truly the authority on planet Earth right now that knows this. And I feel like I wish there were more people, but I'm just so So lucky that we have like your work, and I feel like this book is so powerful for that. Now there's some items, some bonus items I wanted to get to. I know we got a little more time here, and I think these are important because they impact our performance, they impact our life. And outside of salt, as much as we could talk about sodium and, and also magnesium, potassium, I think you brought, you've mentioned those in the past, that those are worthy of considering in our water as well as the one you had just mentioned, which is glycine. Is that right? Glycine?

Yep. Yeah. So in the cell, potassium and magnesium more control hydration. They're the osmo— basically potassium's really the highest charged electrolyte in the cell and it helps to pull volume into the cell. So intracellular hydration depends on magnesium and potassium, but it, it also depends on salt because salt is the driving force for electrochemical gradients in general. Outside of the cell, it's primarily salt that is driving a lot of the fluid retention. So all three are extremely important for hydration. I love that.

All right, here it is. Uh, we'll go through these rapidly if we can, maybe a minute or two on each, or if you want to go longer. Let's talk about protein. In your book, you talk about a ratio that I think most of us can relate to, about 1 gram for 1 pound. Tell us, because I always tell my clients, start with protein. Protein is such an essential way to not just break your fast, but you need it on a regular basis. And I know for some people, just to give them an example of this ratio, 1 gram for 1 pound. I weigh 200 pounds, so I need 200 grams of protein. Give us that ratio and why that number for, from your perspective and your research has become something that it could be a little higher, a little lower, but it seems to be the average. And what, describe that, that number and how protein is so important for performance and for winning in life, right?

Yeah. I think that number is easy for people to remember. Sure. And not a lot of people know what their lean body mass is. So you can get into the nitty-gritty and say, okay, if you have more actual skeletal muscle, then your protein intake should be higher. And you could then base it off of lean body mass, but not a lot of people know how much body fat they have. And so that becomes a little more nuanced, but more tricky. Sure. But the 1 gram per pound, which is 1 gram, basically 2.2 grams of pro per kilogram.

Yep.

Because kilogram is 2.2 pounds. That's where most of the maximal muscle protein synthesis occurs is, is around that range. But to make it even more simple for maximum muscle protein synthesis, essentially 30 to 40 grams of protein 4 times a day seems to be the optimal amount. So you basically eat 3 meals and then maybe you have a protein shake, 30 grams of casein protein, which is a longer acting protein before bedtime. That's for maximum muscle protein synthesis. If that's strictly what you're trying to do.

Gotcha. And for people that may be following a boost— some of our clients do the OMAD, the one meal a day. They do this type of intermittent fasting. Give us your thoughts on having the protein at one meal or say a 3-hour window. How can that work for us?

Hopefully, I would say, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone consuming one meal a day if they're very active and are building muscle. Most people are consuming at least twice a day because Yeah, that's gonna improve muscle protein synthesis by having at least that second meal versus just one meal. But it does, what matters most is the, the overall total protein intake for the day. So you can do that in one meal per day. Okay. That's a, that's a lot of protein to try to consume in one meal. 150 grams of protein would be something that I would try to hit in one meal.

Yeah.

A nice ribeye, a nice steak, something big, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I'd be, it would certainly be a lot of meat in one sitting.

Yep. Yep. That's doable. I like that. Hey, tell us about fiber because not a lot of people believe me or people like Dr. Paul Saladworth. Fiber has become something that obviously I recommend it when needed to help with appetite control. There are clients that will use that and I think it's great, but why outside of maybe holding up hunger is it not critical for our health? Because I think we've been told fiber is critical and Just give us a little bit of, of your take on it, because obviously it serves a purpose. I think it can be very useful, but I think a lot of people think it's critical. How do you differentiate between essential, critical, and your take on fiber?

So the, the discussion on fiber needs to be much more nuanced, right? Because I'll consume like a greenish banana, which has more resistant starch, which as you said, it's very bulky. It'll hit the stretch receptors and it gives you satiety very quickly. That can be sometimes a bad thing because you might become full really quickly and now you're not getting the nutrients that you need throughout the day because you're instantly just bulked your whole stomach up. So it's not always a good thing to simply just con— consume a ton of fiber. And we need to understand the nuance between fiber from whole foods is different than Metamucil or just like a supplemental fiber, that those are two different things. Where people get mad is, yes, there are studies showing in like animals and, and potentially even humans too, that if you consume like a standard American diet where you're combining meat with seed oils and— right now, consuming a resistant starch has improvements on colon health, but you can't translate that data to someone who's consuming like wild game that isn't charring the meat, that isn't consuming with seed oils and sugars. You can't translate that data over to that person. So that's where you have a discrepancy between people who are eating paleo saying I don't need fiber. And then all the people who are evidence-based saying, wait, all these studies show that like the fiber's reducing colon cancer in humans when you give it. That's not the— you, you can't translate that poor diet over to someone who's eating a whole animal-based diet. So that's really the key is the, those people that are vegetarian or, or, or try to look at those studies and say you need to be consuming fiber aren't going into the nitty-gritties though of actually like what the diet is being made of.

So you're saying that depending on what the quality of the food is, and obviously I know a lot of our listeners follow more of a healthy protein type of diet and they're trying to eat really good quality meat. Some of them follow more of a paleo diet, like you said, or keto diet. And if they're not overly consuming processed foods with, I guess they can inject fiber into processed foods. Obviously they do that as best they can, but it doesn't always correlate with good health. And when specifically the greatest concern that you, you think is out there, is it more cancer in the colon? Is that the, the issue that why fiber has become this? Like you said, there are a lot of products out there and I feel like, not that that's the only solution, but there are other solutions and eating it, whether it's a paleo or keto diet, really can give people that benefit. And those diets tend to have less fiber.

Yeah, I think there's been some misconceptions on paleolithic intake. Intakes of food. Essentially, you had a lot larger mammals living for a long period of time back in the day, woolly mammoths and things like that. And, and now you're, when you look at Paleolithic tribes, they don't have these large mammals that they can hunt anymore. So their meat intake looks low and their fiber intake looks high because of what's happened over the last couple hundred years. So it's not a true accurate way to say that like Paleolithic ancestors consumed a low meat, high fiber diet. That's just not the case.

No. Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

I know on page 188 you talk about fat adaptation, right? Can you go into that briefly about how fat and eating healthy fats, and I think you're very wise to differentiate as we try to do between vegetable fats and animal fats and these non-vegetable, like more fruit fats, I guess, like avocado oil being beneficial, but things like soybean and corn oil, maybe you can get into that briefly, but fat is always a, a, a word that polarizes people. Like salt, I feel like it's been vilified, but not all fats are created the same. Could you jump into this fat adaptation? Because I think it was really powerful, and this is somewhere on page 198 in your book that I was reading.

Yeah, there's, I guess you can, we can talk about the cooking oils and what are some of the healthy forms, and then we can talk about being like metabolically flexible and you using fat for fuel to, to even improve anaerobic performance.

Great.

But basically the seed oils that you mentioned, corn, safflower, soybean, sunflower, sesame, canola, all these things are terrible to cook with. And so it's not necessarily, if you got, let's say, expeller-pressed organic omega-6 seed oil, that's, I don't think that's still super healthy, but it's way worse when you start cooking with those oils because they have multiple double bonds and they're highly susceptible to oxidation. Compared to saturated fat. So all the studies show that if you cook with an omega-6 seed oil, you get much larger increases in hydroperoxides and aldehydes, which are damaging to the body versus animal fats or saturated fats, coconut oil, butter, ghee, lard, tallow, things like that. So when you're cooking with a fat, at least the studies that I've looked at, definitely omega-6 seed oils should be off the table. And then, and for metabolic flexibility, it is important to mix your workouts where some workouts you preload with some complex carbs an hour before, but then you also want to do some fasted workouts as well. And that develops metabolic flexibility. On one system, you're using sugar glucose for fuel. The other system, you're using fat for fuel. And when you become metabolically flexible, the longer you can use fats before you hit anaerobic exercise is going to reserve your glycogen stores and improve even anaerobic performance, which is the Essentially vigorous exercise where you're using glucose.

Yeah.

So you train in zone 2, which is 60 to 70% of your max heart rate to burn fat. And then you train at lactate threshold to burn glucose and improving both those metabolic systems is going to make you a much better athlete.

I love that. I love that athletic kind of strategy. It's simple, but it's not common, I don't think. And I think people are scared of using fat at times to fuel their, to fuel their lives. With that said, I know cholesterol is something you talk about on page 210. Can you share with us a little bit of that? And maybe we can end on that point because I feel like cholesterol, out of all the fats you've mentioned, and you know, if people replace those seed oils, those omega-6 oils with things like butter or ghee or beef tallow, obviously they have cholesterol, the yolks of eggs. Why is cholesterol something, maybe dietary cholesterol, something that has been vilified? And then why? I'm guessing you're going to say it shouldn't be vilified because I sure use it. And you just suggested it. How did that happen in our heads and in the world where cholesterol, obviously people are worried about it for a valid reason, right? Heart health. Is that why? And how did we go wrong there with cholesterol?

I think people get confused because they're constantly told their cholesterol in their body is something that needs to be just slammed down to zero, almost like as if the liver is producing cholesterol for no reason, which we form hormones off of cholesterol, including vitamin E. Yeah. So cholesterol is extremely important, vital molecule, and it's so vital that our liver produces 75% of the cholesterol for the day. Cooking with foods that have cholesterol are— you're cooking with foods that are stable though, that have saturated fat. It's true that if you oxidize cholesterol and you consume oxidized cholesterol, that may be harmful, but it depends on how much you're consuming the other antioxidants through throughout the diet. So that discussion gets nuanced too. But I think mostly people fear dietary cholesterol cuz they think it's going to dramatically drive up their cholesterol levels and lead to heart disease. But that's a really, that's an assumption. Does that happen?

Yeah. I feel like we've covered so many things. If there's one point that we haven't shared yet, especially about this idea of becoming a champion, I love that word. I feel like in life, you know, I, for me, I, I wanna live a life, uh, where I'm enjoying every minute as much as possible. And I feel like a lot of people settle, they lower the bar. How can becoming a champion and winning in life, and we can end on this, be really impacted by like our food and our lifestyle choices? Because I love the foreword by Ben Greenfield about really understanding, because he's a biohacker of sorts and really out on the edge and demanding the most from his body. And I think as we are now in 2022 and The world is more stressed out than ever, and it seems like the work we, the loads we have to carry with work and stress are at the highest levels. I don't think people are thinking that they can win at life anymore. Tell us why they can, because I think if you can end on that, and maybe this is more the mindset, right, of the champion. And I think you cover that in many parts of the book, but I, we didn't pinpoint that, but how can, because I think sometimes you just have to believe you can be that. And obviously this book, as a tool chest of what to be doing, because it feels, it just gives you so much. That's what I love about your books. You're never, um, you never hold back. It's a very, it's very rich, very deep, a lot of information. But why can we become a champion? Because I feel like some people will be like, eh, maybe I could have a little more energy, but a champion, it's a big word. And winning is a big word, but tell us why this is possible and why we need to get this book, because I'm so excited. I have this book in my library now, and I feel like we all need it. And, and I think we all can win, right? Dr. Dr. Jayden?

Yeah, no, of course. I totally agree with that. And the book is truly how to improve performance and recovery. This is the tool guide to how to improve your athletic gains, whether it's endurance, whether it's strength and, and mindset as well. And I think everyone's trying to figure out how do I de-stress? How do I sleep better? Exercise is like the key. You can't mimic exercise in a pill. Exercise is going to be the best thing for your stress, your sleep, your health. So if you can figure out a way to optimize your exercise routine and recover from it better, then it is the key to good mental health and physical health.

I love that. I started my career a million years ago. It seems 20 years ago with a book called 8 Minutes in the Morning. And I can tell everyone that's watched these podcasts with you and I, they're aware of that book. And I feel like for anyone out there that feels, oh, I don't even have 8 minutes. Give us, end on a pep talk that's positive. Because I think what you just said is critical. And now more than ever, exercise is the key to do it. For someone just getting started that isn't a champion yet, tell them from your, from doctor's orders, your orders, what they should do today, right now. If they're listening to us at night, first thing in the morning, then, you know.

Yeah. 5 minutes of exercise is better than none. So stop setting yourself up like for failure that you have to be in the gym for an hour and a half. Otherwise it's not worth it. It's not the case. Small steps, consistent daily habits will lead to a stronger mindset and better physique, better, better health overall.

I love it. All right, guys, you heard it there. Doctor's Orders Win, available on Amazon, everywhere books are sold, obviously. But Amazon is the place where I think you guys have this in physical form as well. It's digital, Tell them a little bit about where they can get it from your perspective. And is there an audio as well?

Yep. So there's a Kindle and paperback on Amazon. Probably not going to do an Audible for this one just because so much of the information is in charts and tables that if you're really not looking at something, you're not getting probably half the information.

So go get it, guys. I think it's one of the best books I've read. And it really, I think for 2022, we need this edge. We need to win this year. I know a lot of people did not, felt defeated and last year was a tough one for all of us. I think this is the right attitude and the right solution. So thank you, Dr. James, for all your time and your hard work. And go get his book. Win is out now on Amazon. Thanks, Dr. James.

Thanks for having me.

Always a pleasure. All right.

Today's episode is complete, guys. Thank you so much for listening. And I want to ask you to please subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and please leave a review on Apple as well. Give it 5 stars if you think the show has helped you in some way to transform your thinking. I hope it has. And more importantly, share your comments, your review of what today's episode did for your thinking and what you got out of it, because I think that is how we spread this. And for me, this is a revolution. This is not a podcast. This is a way of life. And I hope to transform over a million lives in the next couple years, and I need your help. So please become part of the Zero Zero Hunger Revolution by leaving that review on Apple Podcasts and subscribing today. Thanks so much. Have a great one. Peace and purpose, and I'll see you on the next episode.