[00:00:00] Anthony: Hey there, my friends, it's Dr. Anthony Balduzzi, and I want to welcome you back to another episode here on the Fit Father Project and Fit Mother Project Podcast. Today we're joined by guest expert, Dr. Thomas Hemingway, a board certified medical doctor, a father of six. The host of the unshakable health podcast and the author of a very good book called preventable five powerful practices to avoid disease and build unshakable health.

[00:00:36] And the reason we're bringing Dr. Thomas Hemingway on is because this guy walks the walk, he talks the talk, not only does he have a lot of medical experience and he presents it in a very good way, but he's like the living embodiment of what it looks like to be healthy in your fifth decade of life. I mentioned he has a lot of kids, he's living in Hawaii, he's running his medical practice, and he's also implementing all these lifestyle habits that we talk about inside our program.

[00:00:58] So today, we're gonna [00:01:00] basically have Dr. Hemingway on to talk about how all busy parents can optimize their health, their energy, and vitality, and we're gonna run the whole gamut of talking about nutrition. Exercise, mindset, and also get into some things that we haven't talked a lot about here, like environmental toxins, um, and other things that Dr.

[00:01:15] Hemingway feels are very relevant for a long and healthy life, so, Dr. Thomas Hemingway, welcome to the show, my friend.

[00:01:20] Thomas: Oh, aloha, aloha, it's great to be here, thanks for having me on, I'm pumped. Yeah, I'm pumped

[00:01:25] Anthony: too, and I want to kick off by kind of getting straight into some of the high level statistics.

[00:01:30] You wrote a book called Preventable, largely because I think you looked around and you saw that. We're kind of hitting this weird epidemic and it's happening right now where metabolic issues are like crazy and people are not getting better and not being well, and we're actually kind of like eating ourselves to death and all sorts of like this, like how bad is this epidemic of preventable disease?

[00:01:48] And like, how do you kind of talk about this with people when you come on these types of shows?

[00:01:53] Thomas: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's as bad as it's ever been. And, and really the first time in human history, this [00:02:00] happened a couple of years prior to COVID in our lifetimes. And over the, you know, the last 100 years, the life expectancy has been going up until a couple of years prior to COVID.

[00:02:11] It started to dip stabilize. And now it's, it's going down each and every year. And like I said, even prior to COVID, the life expectancy has been going down. This is despite having all the cutting edge medical technology we have today. And it, it ain't working. And I can tell you honestly, as a board certified physician of a couple of decades now, I see this in day to day practice.

[00:02:33] I see young people in their thirties, in their forties people, I say young, and I feel really young myself. I'm in my 50th year and I'm. crushing it in every way, staying active. But I was seeing guys and gals, both women and men having heart attacks, strokes, you know, have significant, uh, comorbidities, health challenges in their thirties, forties.

[00:02:55] And I just thought to myself, what in the world is happening here? I, I trained [00:03:00] in medical school 30 years ago and I don't think I ever saw anybody have a heart attack younger than 60. Right. And most were in their seventies and eighties. And like, now we're having folks in their Thirties and forties having heart attacks and stroke, which those two combine together make up the most common cause of death right here in the us.

[00:03:18] Like literally, one person out of every three in this country dies of either a heart attack or a stroke. That's how common this is. One person every 30 seconds has a heart attack in this country. And in fact, when you take the top 10 leading causes of death in the entire world, not just speaking us and developed countries in the entire world, seven.

[00:03:39] Out of 10 of these common causes of death are nearly entirely preventable. And not even one of those is, is, uh, starvation and malnutrition. Like you would think, right? And all these rural sub Saharan countries and whatnot, where they might still have issues getting food and, and some still do. But that is even in most of those countries [00:04:00] right now, Dr.

[00:04:00] Anthony. The leading cause of death is related to the comorbidities of obesity. And literally that metabolic issue that you sort of started with is becoming the most prevalent disease on this planet. We are fatter as a human race than we ever have been in our entire, you know, civilization. And the sad thing is, as All of the common causes of death, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, even lung conditions, for example, kidney disease, stroke, as I mentioned, the neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, all of these things go up in frequency as your weight goes up.

[00:04:38] every single one of them. And we can talk about why that is later, but it is a tragedy. And that was one of my biggest sort of, I think, impetus to actually write this book is because I was seeing it real time in the ER. Um, as a board certified doc, I was seeing young folks come in with these conditions and it wasn't how I trained.

[00:04:57] You know, I was used to seeing older folks having heart [00:05:00] attacks and all of a sudden this 30 and 40 year olds, 50 year olds every single day having heart attacks. And I'm like, that is not, Right. Something's got to give something. We, and I say we, and I mean me primarily in the, in the Western medicine arena, we are not doing something right.

[00:05:15] We have all of this amazing technology. I mean, we can literally get somebody to what's called the cardiac cath lab in less than 30 minutes get their main artery, the coronary artery opened up so they can perfuse or get blood flow to the heart and save them in the throes of a heart attack, but we can't prevent it.

[00:05:31] Like what is going on here? Something's got to give. And so that's why I did full pivot, full stop. And I said, Hey, we got to do something better. I'm going to lead the charge here. I'm a medical doctor of many years experience and I know how we can do better. And so let's tackle this with prevention. Over prescription, because most of these diseases, as I said, seven of 10 of the leading causes of death worldwide are almost entirely preventable.

[00:05:55] Wow.

[00:05:56] Anthony: I mean, and well said. Now, what is [00:06:00] uniquely happening with being overweight and obese? Is it the unhealthy lifestyle? Too many calories? Metabolic toxins? Like, what is, why are those things so highly correlated to all these other kind of conditions? Like, what's the underlying Common thread of the pathophysiology that's happening with these things if there

[00:06:18] Thomas: is some yeah So the the underlying sort of ground roots, you know base of all of these health conditions including obesity including heart disease cancer diabetes Type 2 I'm speaking of stroke Neurodegenerative challenges the base of all of this is what we call chronic inflammation.

[00:06:38] They are all inflammatory conditions. Obesity in and of itself is an inflammatory condition. And I had that pleasure a couple of years back before anybody really knew who he was. Dr. Benjamin Bickman came on my podcast and he shared how literally inflammation is at the root of obesity and at the root of nearly every disease and how insulin [00:07:00] resistance ties into that and I, he wrote a book, um, Why We Get Sick was the title.

[00:07:05] If folks haven't gotten that, I'd encourage them to do that because it kind of brings it all down to one common denominator, which is chronic, ongoing, daily inflammation, which I think we ignore in this society. It's really sad because it's literally the one thing that will affect every health condition out there.

[00:07:25] And not for the better. Like inflammation on a daily basis is not what you want. If you fall down, scrape your knee, like you want inflammation to happen. You want those blood cells to target that injured area and fix, repair it, get pathogen as quickly as possible. But once that sort of initial healing takes place, you want that inflammation to dissipate.

[00:07:44] You want it to go away, right? It's like, I, I, I kind of use the analogy of a fire. You know, in your body, you have this smoldering fire of inflammation going on if you're overweight, if you have type 2 diabetes, if you have metabolic conditions like insulin resistance, which we now know is [00:08:00] like 9 out of 10 of us here right home, at home in the US, 9 out of 10 of us have insulin resistance to some degree.

[00:08:06] And most doctors don't check for it. Most medical doctors do not check for it. They don't do a fasting insulin level. And that's sort of the base of all these diseases is inflammation. And it's not a good thing. Is

[00:08:16] Anthony: it fair to say this is coming from like the food input mostly? Because like what's happening?

[00:08:20] Are we just poisoning ourselves with food? Is the lack of activity causing inflammation? Is lack of sleep causing it? Like what are the main factors that are leading to this inflammatory state in people's bodies?

[00:08:31] Thomas: Yeah. So it's all of the above. I wish it were just one thing and food is a, is a huge driver, a 100 percent food is where I generally start.

[00:08:38] I tell, uh, the folks I work with that food is either the best possible medicine, the most helpful tool you could ever have, or. It's a slow poison and you get to pick that. You get to pick that at least three times a day for most people, you know, throwing a couple of snacks, maybe it's four or five times a day.

[00:08:56] You get to pick that. It's either your best tool and aid and [00:09:00] helpful sort of natural medicine, if you will, or it's a poison and you get to pick that. And sadly, right now, present day, as, as you and your audience probably knows, our most common type of food here in the U. S. is not just processed food. It's what they call highly processed food.

[00:09:16] Right. The ultra processed food is like 67 percent of our diet and in kids, it's like 70%. I mean, it's, it's, and I know this, I got six kids and I

[00:09:25] got

[00:09:26] Thomas: a couple that are in just a standard elementary school setting right now. I got a couple in college, a couple in between, but my kids who go to elementary school, they'll tell me what's on their school lunch calendar.

[00:09:34] In fact, we'll look at it because sometimes they want to get school lunch because you know, their friends get it. It's kind of fun. It's kind of different. You know, it's not dad's boring cooking they want. So we'll look at the calendar and we'll try to decide like what day does it. look like food. Most of the days, I'm just going to be honest.

[00:09:49] It looks like a food like substance. It doesn't even look like real food on their calendar. And, and that's because it's this ultra processed food, which sadly is, is [00:10:00] really the demise of our current health situation in this country and around the world. As we're eating poor quality, I call most of this stuff, a food like.

[00:10:08] substance. It's not even really food. I mean, it's ultra process. It has sort of the big three drivers of inflammation, which are highly processed sugars, highly processed grains and flours, and then the highly processed, what I call the industrialized seed oils. All of their foods that are on the menu for the most part, probably nine out of 10 of them have these three ingredients, which are literally the recipe for not only obesity, but for every health condition that plagues society.

[00:10:33] Today. And so I'm going to add more than subtract kind of a guy, Dr. Anthony. I just tell people, you know, if you can avoid three things, make it be those three and then just fill your plate with all natural, colorful, real foods, all the things that like, if you were to go to Italy today, like what would they put on their plate?

[00:10:49] Just think about, you know, those types of real food substances. There's literally way more things to add rather than subtract, just subtract these three things and it would make a world of difference.

[00:10:58] Anthony: So what would you see on [00:11:00] a nutrition label? If you were looking through something that would be like.

[00:11:03] The absolute red flags. Um, or if someone was finding like a medium process food, some kind of like healthy organic cracker, at least it looks that way. But if you look on the nutrition label, what do you look for and see that ends up making it a no go into your body?

[00:11:18] Thomas: Cause it's just not worth it. Yeah. So, so one of the biggest factors, the really two biggest ones I look for are any type of industrial oil, which we call, you know, the seed oils collectively.

[00:11:30] And the way I have people think about this is it's any oil that you can't make with just squeezing the fruit. So if you can take an olive and you can squeeze it, press it, as they say, and get the oil, that's safe. Olive oil. We've been using it for millennia. It's, it's a good type of oil, avocado oil. If anybody's sliced through an avocado, it's a real greasy, fleshy type of fruit.

[00:11:49] You just squeeze that thing. And yes, it's a fruit. You squeeze that thing. You get oil coconuts. If you guys have ever cut open a coconut, it's very fleshy, very, you know, if you take it and, and touch it on your skin, it's real oily, right? Hence the coconut [00:12:00] oil and things like that, that you put on your skin and skin products.

[00:12:02] Like those are the three kind of main. Healthy or sort of safe oils, everything else for the most part is no good. Start with the most common offender which is soybean oil. Soybean oil is ultra inflammatory. Canola oil, and here's the thing Dr. Anthony, a lot of times people go, well it says organic canola oil.

[00:12:21] It says organic sunflower oil. I don't care. It's still a highly processed, um, industrial oil, which literally comes out of the package rancid. Now you can't tell. The reason you can't tell is because it's deodorized, right? They bleach it. I mean, they do all kinds of high heat, high pressure just to make this stuff.

[00:12:41] And then to make us not, you know, go, Ooh, this is pretty disgusting. They, they bleach it. They deodorize it. They do all these things so that when we pour it out of the. Uh, the container that we can't tell that it comes literally, it comes rancid. And so it is one of the biggest contributors to inflammation.

[00:12:58] So anytime you see any of those [00:13:00] industrial oils on the container, and you can't go by organic labels because they'll often have, like my favorite here is I love hummus. And there's only about one or two brands that I've ever found that don't have sunflower oil, safflower oil, canola oil, one of these industrial soybean oil.

[00:13:15] There's only one or two brands out there that I've found that don't have those bad oils. And you gotta read the dang label because it'll say organic hummus and you're like, sweet. Chickpeas. They're good for me. They have fiber. They're awesome. And then you look at the second ingredient and it's like sunflower oil and maybe it'll even say on the label.

[00:13:32] It'll say, oil, extra virgin olive oil hummus. Yeah. And yet, that'll be ingredient number 10, 2, 3, and 4 will be sunflower, safflower, canola and soybean oil. That's the trick, yeah. So, you've got, yeah, you've got to, sadly, uh, you have to read labels and if it has any of these industrialized oils, throw it out.

[00:13:49] Sugar is another big thing I try to avoid for the most part. I don't care if it's. Maple, you know, if it's like cane sugar, which I love in Hawaii, obviously, I would rather we use cane sugar than the ultra highly [00:14:00] processed granulated sugar. But honestly, anything with a bunch of sugar is no good. Right now in society, we are plagued with what's called non alcoholic fatty liver disease, NAFLD, which is primarily caused by over consumption of sugar.

[00:14:15] And in the form, most of it, Fruit Coast or highly processed, you know, industrialized high fruit coast corn syrup. So if there's anything that has sugar, especially corn syrup or the highly processed corn syrup out there, high fructose corn syrup, definitely try to avoid that. I'm, I'm pretty hardcore on the grains too.

[00:14:33] I don't like a lot of grains. Most of them are no good for us, especially in this country. Sadly, I pretty much don't eat any bread in the U S. Um, or any bread products, really, because they contain this hybridized dwarf wheat, which is not the wheat that we were using millennia ago. So if you go to Europe, a lot of people that have gluten sensitivities when they travel like to the Mediterranean, for example, they'll tell me, Hey, I can actually eat the bread over there.

[00:14:56] I can eat the pasta. I don't get this really gnarly stomach pain and [00:15:00] gas and all the things I get when I eat it here in the U. S. And that's because they don't use that hybridized dwarf wheat that we use here. And so I pretty much don't eat any grains either. When I'm, when I'm in the US, I'm very selective, um, about, uh, any grains that I do eat.

[00:15:13] So I try to avoid those big three when I look at labels, the sugars, processed flours and grains, and then the seed oils. Those are the three. And you know what's cool about that is when you keep it that simple, most of those other things that I would also encourage people not to, you know, consume like the artificial flavors, artificial colors, all of these kinds of things.

[00:15:32] So you don't have to look for them as strongly because they will usually be with those three things. The sugars, the grains and flours and the seed oils usually come with other bad ingredients. So, uh, you know, I, you can use my grandmother's adage. She would just say, Hey, look at the label. If it's anything you don't recognize, you don't understand, or it sounds like it could be something in a chemistry lab.

[00:15:56] Put the thing back on the shelf. Don't put it in your cart, stick [00:16:00] with real food. And I'm telling you, she's right. Real food is best. I love it. I have a

[00:16:04] Anthony: couple of sub questions to these when it comes to fruit, talk about fruit and ranked fruits. If you feel like some fruits are better than others. And then the concept of maybe getting sugar in the context of fruit versus the product with added

[00:16:16] Thomas: sugars on the label.

[00:16:18] Yeah, so you're talking to a guy that actually loves fruit and I'll be honest, I got sort of the fear of every, you know, everybody, every health influencer out there has kind of been, you know, shaming sugar for a long time. A lot of them have been shaming fruit and I think that that is actually misdirected, misguided.

[00:16:34] I think fruit was created, especially when it's in season, it was created for us. Like it's literally there for us. There's so many healthy nutrients. Today I ate an entire papaya, like not just these tiny little. Uh, uh, ones you find that come from Mexico. This is a Hawaiian papaya. These things are pretty good size.

[00:16:51] And I ate the entire thing. Why? Because it's delicious, number one, but it also is chock full of healthy antioxidants [00:17:00] like lycopenes, for example. It has tons of vitamin C. It even has Most people don't know this. It even has potassium in there. Like, it is so dangand it's gotit's got actually, forfor millennia, they used it as a meat tenderizer because it has papain in there, which helps you digest your protein.

[00:17:15] So, I threw that in at the end of my meal. I had a big hearty breakfast. I had four eggs. I had some sausage. I made my kids some bacon. They love bacon. They didn't eat it all, so then I ate their bacon, too. And at the end of my meal, I ate a whole papaya. And that not only helps me digest the proteins that I just ate in the meat and eggs, but also, it's got Tons of antioxidants and vitamin C and it just tastes so dang good.

[00:17:36] So this is what I say. I say, eat your fruit. Try not to drink it so much. So I'm not a fan of juicing. I don't do really any juicing. I will make a smoothie from time to time and it's okay because I'm using the whole fruit. I'm not cutting off the peels and skins and, and just squeezing juice in there. I actually eat the whole fruit when I make a smoothie.

[00:17:56] Throw in the whole berry. You know, there's actually a fair amount. Most people don't know this, but raspberries, [00:18:00] you eat a cup of those, you've already got eight grams of fiber. That's like more than half of what the whole standard American population eats in a whole day. Like our fiber consumption is way down the tubes.

[00:18:10] It's like 14, 15 grams a day. You eat one cup of berries, you already got half of that. You know, and that's in one meal. So when you eat the whole fruit, you not only get the benefits of the, the phytonutrients like vitamin C, the lycopenes, the antioxidants, those kinds of things, but you're also getting the fiber.

[00:18:25] Which is great for all the other folks that live in our intestinal tract, right? The bacteria, um, primarily, there's everything, bacteria, protozoa, viruses, all of that, but the main ones that we think about when we think about the microbiota is the bacteria. When we eat fiber, we feed them too, and they can literally help us to achieve optimal health.

[00:18:44] So, eat the fruit. I'm all about fruit. I won't ever tell somebody not to eat fruit unless they specifically have a problem with it. Some fruits I feel like are M. D.: Or more likely to spike your blood sugar. Evan Brand, M. D.: And I always tend to eat my fruit at the end of my meals. I don't start my meals with fruit, for example, so the timing, [00:19:00] I feel like, is pretty important.

[00:19:01] And personally, if you've ever done a CGM, which is a continuous glucose monitor, you'll learn what fruits will spike your sugar more than the others and you'll learn the combination. So everybody's a little bit different and it's kind of a blessing and a curse. I've had the opportunity to do this a few times.

[00:19:15] I actually got a daughter who has type 1 diabetes and so. We're watching her all day long. And then I've tried the thing as well because I, I'm curious anyway. And so I've got to see how my body responds to certain fruit. And so bananas and pineapple, those two for me spike my blood sugar more than basically any other fruit.

[00:19:32] And so I don't eat them as often, which is hard. In Hawaii, we have tons of pineapple. The other night we had some at the end of our barbecue and I just had a couple of little pieces because it, that, for whatever reason, it just spikes my blood sugar more than. Then other fruit. So if you have the luxury to do a CGM, you can really find out which ones spike at which ones don't.

[00:19:49] But I would say, generally speaking, fruit is safe. Fruit is great. And anybody that tells you not to eat fruit, I just think they're misguided, honestly.

[00:19:58] Anthony: Great answer. And I [00:20:00] totally agree with you now, a question about some of the healthy fats and, or just fats in general, you mentioned a couple of oils that you do.

[00:20:07] All of oil, coconut oil, avocado oil. What's your take on butter? And I'd also like you to speak into the egg cholesterol combination and that kind of discussion there.

[00:20:18] Thomas: Yeah, I would love to. So, you know, I grew up in the seventies, um, as a kid, early eighties. And my mom, as most parents did in those days, feared cholesterol.

[00:20:28] Like she was like. If you have more than one egg, you're going to die of a heart attack. I've always loved eggs. I ate four eggs for breakfast today. I mean, I just love eggs. I love the taste. They're so versatile. Like you can stick anything together with eggs. It's literally the glue. If you want to make something real fancy, like throw an egg in there and it'll help.

[00:20:45] I love eggs. So. for not just because I love them, but actually they have, as you mentioned, they have cholesterol and guess what? Our brain is mostly cholesterol. Like we actually need it. And so if you stop eating all eggs, all cholesterol sources, guess what your body's going to do? [00:21:00] Well, the liver will actually make the necessary Requirement for cholesterol, even if you don't eat it, I would rather eat it because I just freaking like eggs.

[00:21:10] I think they're amazing and healthy fats. Like you said, butter. Um, I'm all about butter, ghee, tallow, any natural, real fat is 100 times better than anything man made, right? Anything made in a factory. Like the industrialized oils, whether it be those cooking oils that we talked about, anything that says vegetable oil, that's sort of off the list.

[00:21:29] I'd never use that stuff. Or, you know, the heaven forbid that Crisco stuff, right? Crisco was literally, literally the beginning of this issue with the uptick in heart disease in this country in the 1950s and sixties, it was Crisco and the. fake fats, right? The margarines and the shed spreads. You know, I actually grew up with shed spread and I never really liked it.

[00:21:49] It looked kind of disgusting. It looked like it had food coloring in it. It was a weird consistency and you put it on the counter and like two minutes, the whole thing would turn into mush and it's like real butter doesn't do that. Like what the heck, but [00:22:00] you know, it was cheaper. Everybody said real butter was bad for you in those days and we were misguided, misdirected, you know, Ancel Keys is tip of the iceberg with respect to all that discussion, which probably don't have time to get into, but real fat that comes from real.

[00:22:12] living things like butter, especially grass fed. And I'm so stoked that now you can get grass fed butter more easily. Even at Costco, we have it in Hawaii. If we have it in Hawaii, it's probably everywhere. Um, but I love, I love real sources of any kind of food. And in this case, it's a real source of butter and fats.

[00:22:31] So here's the thing. I, I've actually come a little bit full circle on this because there was a time where I was like super, into the super low carb movement. And I think low carb is great, especially for initial phases of weight loss. Yeah, the sensitized insulin for sure. Exactly. And once you kind of get what I, what you described as insulin sensitive, or what I like to call metabolic, uh, metabolically flexible, and you can tolerate Um, any type of nutrient, whether it be carbs, [00:23:00] fats, proteins, um, I feel like you could add more in.

[00:23:02] But I think for a quick, you know, couple of months when you want to get your body sensitive to insulin, going real low carb is super important. I, I did it too long. I did it for a couple of years, a couple of years back because it was all the fat, right? Everybody's doing this intermittent fasting. It's like, you do 16, I'm going to do 18.

[00:23:17] No, I'm going to do 20. Shoot. I'm going to do the OMAD thing. I'm doing one meal a day. And what I found out is that as a dude, number one, I was starting to lose muscle when I was eating. One to two meals a day. I just couldn't get the protein in. Yeah, it was just really, really hard. So I added back the third meal.

[00:23:32] I, and I love breakfast anyways. It's one of my favorite meals because it's protein packed. And so I think all of these things are good in the right time, and when they come from a real whole from. food source, but, but weight loss stuff is really, I think, critical to sensitize your body to insulin, which a low carb diet is really critical for.

[00:23:52] I just don't think low carb is the panacea for the rest of your life. I think low ish carbs is fine, but then if you wanna get carbs from fruit, bunch of [00:24:00] vegetables that have these phytonutrients, I'm all about that. I'm, I'm after it. I put all of these things on my plate. It looks like a rainbow of colors.

[00:24:07] I love colorful vegetables and fruits.

[00:24:09] Anthony: You nailed it. I mean, at least that's where I've arrived as well. And now we are going to circle back and talk more about intermittent fasting. I have some specific questions on that, but what are some of your families go to healthy carbs, proteins, and fats? And I want, I'm asking you now, like dad to dad, you're feeding a number of kids in your household.

[00:24:26] So like, what's the production look like for like dinner time, for example, what is often served at the family table and how do you

[00:24:33] Thomas: prepare that? Yeah, and I would say first of all, just give some hope to all of the folks out there when you first make a dietary change As an individual, it's a little tough.

[00:24:43] And then you bring the whole family in. They, you know, you got young kids, they can be a little resistant and that's normal, but guess what? If you stick to it and you, especially mom or dad, you take the lead and you're like, this is the way we're going to eat. And that's the way the kids see you eat. And that's the way you buy the food in [00:25:00] the supermarket to begin with.

[00:25:01] They will follow. I'm promising you when I grew up. Sad to say it, like I was a Wheaties kid. Wheaties, Corn Flakes, Chex, whatever. I always started my day with some kind of breakfast cereal. Like, I don't even put that stuff in the house anymore because it's like. It's probably the least nutritious of almost anything you could eat in the morning.

[00:25:20] I mean, we might as well eat cardboard, for example, and cardboard wouldn't have all the sugar in it. But it's, it's not good for you. And that's the way I grew up. I mean, that's what we were told, you know, that all the Olympians were on the, you know, Wheaties box. Why wasn't I gonna eat that stuff? I mean, it was marketing.

[00:25:35] So at dinner, you mentioned, I always think of first, and, and this is cool because my kids follow now. I got a daughter, like I mentioned, who has type 1 diabetes, and her first question is, what is going to be our protein tonight? Like what's going to be the protein? Like she's thinking protein. Cause she knows how powerful protein is.

[00:25:51] So is it going to be chicken? Is it going to be steak? Uh, the other night we had ribeye and I was stoked cause I had leftovers and I've been eating steak and egg two mornings in a row now. [00:26:00] So, so I always start with what's the protein and here we're currently at home in Hawaii and we have lots of fresh fish available, so we eat.

[00:26:08] Um, ahi tuna, we eat mahi mahi, we eat all that kind of thing more readily when I'm spending time elsewhere. I don't eat a lot of fish because I'm kind of, I don't know, a little bit of a fish snob. I like the fresh stuff that's caught in local waters. I know the fishermen, I know where it comes from, you know, I kind of like that.

[00:26:24] So it's either some sort of protein, usually a fish, a chicken or a steak, or I, I, I'll be honest, like we buy pounds and pounds of ground beef every single week. Like we go to Costco and we'll like buy, you know, 10 of those packages. And each one has, I think it's like four pounds of ground beef per package.

[00:26:43] You know, it's like a pound and something each one. And there's three of them. We buy like 10 of those when we go to Costco and people look at us like you guys are. Insane. Cause it's like 20 bucks a pop, you know, right, right. There's 200 worth of just ground beef. I mean, it's, it's a little on the pricey side, but it's sort of my go to [00:27:00] protein.

[00:27:00] You can put it in anything, right? You can make tacos, you can make, throw it in it to a sauce for something. Um, so I always look at what's the protein first. And then after that, we, we talk about what are going to be the vegetables. Um, and that's something that, um, you know, my kids, thankfully, because my wife and I started it, like, I eat lots of veggies, like, they, they, they get tons of fiber.

[00:27:24] We, we love brussel sprouts, that's one of our favorites, I don't know why, we just learned how to cook them. You roast them? You don't boil them? Like, as a How do you do it? Always, always oven roast them. Like as a kid, my parents boiled them and they taste like crap. They're bitter. They have zero flavor.

[00:27:37] Like I hated Brussels sprouts and we've always buttered them up. We put some Parmesan cheese. We always roast them in the oven. So they're a little bit on the crispy side. You want something. Fanatically amazing throwing a little bit of bacon in there. Like, Holy crap, you've never had such a great vegetable in your life.

[00:27:52] Like Brussels sprouts can be amazing. Um, so that's the second thing I put on the plate is, is the healthy vegetable. And I do about half, like I do [00:28:00] half protein, half veggies. And then at the end of the meal, we'll throw in some kind of a. A berry something. Usually we just love berries in our house. So blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, like any kind of berry that we can find at Costco.

[00:28:11] That's organic. We'll throw that on at the end of the meal. Maybe we'll have it with a little bit of a Greek yogurt, for example, as our little treat, you know, instead of ice cream, which is what I used to think as a treat, but I hardly ever eat ice cream anymore. It's just such. It's too sugary for me and honestly, mostly low quality.

[00:28:26] Um, but that's kind of what a typical dinner looks like. Some kind of big, uh, protein that takes up half the plate, a bunch of veggies, and then sort of, uh, the end of the, the meal, we throw in some kind of a fruit. I love

[00:28:39] Anthony: that seems really simple. You could do it in many ways. And obviously you do rely on like ground beef as a go to, which I didn't overlook.

[00:28:46] It seems like a really big staple and you also get the healthy fats in that too, which is great because it will keep you really full. Hey, it's Dr. Ray. I want to quickly pause this episode to thank you for listening to this Fitfather podcast. I am just blown away at how [00:29:00] amazing this podcast has become. I had no idea when I started FFP around 10 years ago.

[00:29:05] That it would grow into such an impactful mission. And I want to let you know that I'm so grateful to be connected to you in this lifetime. And on behalf of me and my entire team, we are so grateful to be in your life, helping you get and stay healthier for your family. That's what I want to share. Just some gratitude from my heart to yours.

[00:29:20] Let's get back to today's episode. All right. I want to talk about fasting. I know fasting is, uh, you talk about, you know, basically fasting and circadian rhythm. It's something that you do. And when I was reading your book, something I found that was really cool is. How you kind of discovered over time that you started to like breakfast.

[00:29:37] And in fact, you, it was better to have the breakfast and sometimes you actually skip dinner, um, which I think is cool because a lot of people do it the other way where they shift that first meal back a long time. And, and maybe they, you know, do a, we have a lot of people who listen to this, who do a 24 hour dinner to dinner fast once in a while, which is huge, but talk to us about just like fasting, what you do, what you've kind of discovered going through this, the different levels of it [00:30:00] and

[00:30:00] Thomas: how you implement this.

[00:30:02] Yeah. So, and I, and I've tried all of the above, like we were kind of chitchatting about the OMAD thing that even snuck into that, uh, into my lifestyle for a few months and I've tried it all. And what I've found is that I do best personally when I'm eating three meals a day. Partly because I like to get the protein in.

[00:30:20] I, I shoot for 150 grams every single day. And that's hard to do if you're eating two meals and super hard to do if you're eating one, one meal. And I would say you'd probably have a hard time processing all that, assimilating that and whatnot. But, um, I always do. Uh, mild overnight, what I call a circadian fast.

[00:30:39] So this is kind of like your natural body cycle is that during the day, we should be doing all our stuff, including we should eat during the day. Once it's nighttime, we shouldn't really be eating anymore. I mean, just think of what we used to do. A hundred years ago, two hundred, a thousand years ago, we never really ate at night.

[00:30:54] We didn't have refrigerators. We didn't have pantries. You know, heaven forbid we didn't have convenience [00:31:00] stores and drive thrus. So we never ate at night. So I always recommend at least an overnight 12 hour fast. for anyone and everyone. Even my type one diabetic daughter does at least a 12 hour fast every single night.

[00:31:15] Like that's baseline. We can all do that. If you want to throw in a couple hours on the other end of that, whether before or after. I'm cool with that too. I personally like to try to fit in three meals. So i'm trying to eat Um a breakfast which is sometime usually around 10 a. m Which still gives me about a 14 hour fast on most days because i'm usually done eating by 6 p.

[00:31:37] m And so you add a couple hours there by 8 Dr. Justin Marchegiani is most people is just to don't eat at night. I would say the hardest thing to start is that. Couple of hours before you go to bed. Cause most [00:32:00] of us, you know, it's like you're so busy, you push hard all day long, sometimes you don't get dinner, you know, until like seven or eight o'clock at night.

[00:32:07] And then if you do what I recommend, wait three hours. That means you shouldn't lay down till at least 11 o'clock to go to sleep. You should have about a three hour window before you lay down at night where you're not eating. I call it a food curfew and that's actually super helpful for your sleep.

[00:32:23] You'll sleep better. You know, any, any of us, like even me when I go out on the weekends and maybe my wife and I might have a later meal, if I get to bed, you know, closely after eating a big meal, I'll be tired and I'll fall asleep. But like two hours later, I'm awake and I'm like tossing and turning, I'm having a crappy sleep.

[00:32:38] And it's because I ate late into the night where I should have done a little bit of a curfew as I like to call it a food curfew and don't eat those last three hours before bed. So I feel like fasting is still beneficial. For everyone on a regular basis, like a 12 hour overnight fast, and you can extend that by a couple of hours.

[00:32:57] What I don't think is great is when we take it to [00:33:00] the extremes. Like we do an 18 or 20, 22 hour fast like every single day, and we just eat like one meal a day. That's not really great for the long term. I think it's okay for the short term, and you can even do that once a week if you want to do a 24 hour fast.

[00:33:15] We like that once a week, but every day would be too much for sure. Yeah. Every day is too much. And the other thing, and people don't realize this, is that when you get into that like over fasted state, your body gets smart. It's like, Hey, these are kind of like famine conditions. Like I know what's going on here.

[00:33:31] I'm going to actually hold onto those calories even more strongly. Then ever before. And so at first you'll lose a bunch of weight and then your body gets used to it. And it's like, screw that I'm going to hold onto these calories. No way. You're not going to trick me. Like I know what famine looks like.

[00:33:44] Like I've been through thousands and thousands of years of existence as a human. I know what that looks like. And so that's why you got to mix it up. Whatever you're doing, you should mix it up. In fact, even for me, I don't do the exact same thing on every single day of the week on the weekends. I'm usually [00:34:00] pretty mellow about my fast.

[00:34:01] Like I'll just do my minimum 12 hours. Um, And then on the days of the week, I usually extend it to 14 or 15, but I'm still packing in three meals in a day. And what I found is really helpful for people, too, is if they take a little bit of a break between meals, and they just eliminate snacking. Snacking is not great for our metabolism.

[00:34:20] Like what we were taught back in the day in school, like you gotta eat every three hours, like most of that is hogwash. It's based on zero science. But that, what that'll do is guarantee you insulin resistance. If you're always spiking, Your glucose, guess what, also spikes your insulin and guess what, your body gets resistant to it.

[00:34:36] And so, eliminating snacking, extending, you know, the evenings to 12 hours minimum to not eat overnight, that's the baseline I think everybody can benefit from. Like I said, even my daughter who's a type 1 diabetic, even my wife when she's pregnant, she usually goes 12 hours overnight. Um, and most of us can do that, 12 hours overnight.

[00:34:54] But don't really be pushing it like on a daily basis. If you want to do a 24 hour fast once a week or you want [00:35:00] to do, uh, 48 or 72 hour fast once a month. Like I'm cool with that. Fasting is awesome. It's just not made for every single day.

[00:35:08] Anthony: Yeah, I totally agree. And it wasn't missed on me. The subtle detail of your food curfew, and then how you all have the berries or the sweet thing at the end, it's like a signal to, if you have it, it's like the last thing you covered all the taste range, you got the umami.

[00:35:22] Now you got a little sweet. And then mentally, I'm sure a switch flips in your, in your mind where you're like, okay, time for the food curfew, it's over. And now it's no longer an option. And then you begin the fast. I

[00:35:32] Thomas: love that. Yeah. Yeah, no, it works out. It's like, it's, it's, it's the proverbial cherry on top, but it's usually a couple of berries on top.

[00:35:39] Absolutely.

[00:35:40] Anthony: Okay. So let's talk about hydration. Um, what do you counsel, uh, your patients and your clients and people who come to you for health advice in re in relation to hydration, that might be type of water impurity, amount of water you drink when you drink it.

[00:35:53] Thomas: All of that. Yeah. Yeah. I would say, um, It's really, really important to, at a [00:36:00] baseline, get approximately, and these are approximate, everybody's a little bit different, because if you're in a place where you're sweating a lot, like east coast in the summer, or in the south during the summer, or Hawaii like me, where you're, you know, the temperature is just up a few notches and the humidity, like you're gonna have to add a little bit to this, but most people could benefit from a simple equation where you just take your body weight, like for me.

[00:36:24] Take half of that in ounces and use that as your starting point. So for me I always add a bare minimum, It's like 80 ounces of water. Bare minimum. That's just where I start. And then if I'm exercising, if it's a hot day like it is today, the sun finally came out after like 3 days of non stop rain, it's so humid you can tell I'm like having beads of sweat on my Forehead.

[00:36:44] Cause we don't have AC in the house here in Hawaii. So I'm like, I'm drinking this stuff. Like it's going out of style on a day like today, but I would say a baseline is half of your body weight. Um, when you're speaking pounds to ounces. Every day as a minimum and then add [00:37:00] to that for your exercise and add to that for the time of year and pretty much the only thing that counts for me is, is, is water.

[00:37:09] If you're going to throw in like a packet of electrolytes, that counts obviously, but if you're going to be drinking like soda, which hopefully you're not drinking, but if you are, you know, I don't really count that towards your water intake because a lot of times it has things in there will act like a diuretic, which makes you pee.

[00:37:25] So you may actually be. less hydrated after you drink whatever that fluid is. So I'm pretty much just counting water for the most part. If you're eating a bunch of fruit, there's obviously significant water content like in a watermelon or a melon cantaloupe, honeydew melon, those kinds of things too. And that kind of plays in, but I would start with the bare minimum of half of your body weight.

[00:37:45] And I would say when you first wake up in the morning, probably the best thing to reach for, it's not the coffee. It's not, you know, the, the croissant or the bagel or whatever, or even a piece of fruit. The best thing to reach for initially is a big [00:38:00] tall glass of water. I start every day with at least 16 ounces of water.

[00:38:05] First thing when I wake up, because why? Because I'm, as I mentioned, I'm in my 50th year. Like I, if I drink water before I go to bed at night, I'm getting up to pee. Like that sucks. I don't want to get up to pee. I want to sleep the whole night. And so you wake up naturally a little bit dehydrated because hopefully you haven't had anything to drink in at least eight hours.

[00:38:22] And so you wake up and it's like, Yeah, that big tall glass of water never tasted so good. I'm down in the whole thing. There's even an Ayurvedic principle that describes this practice of drinking a big tall glass of water. They usually say like 20 ounces. I, I shoot for 16, 18 and sometimes 20, but when I first wake up, boom, pound the water and it kind of.

[00:38:41] kind of gets me fired up, gets all my cylinders going, gets me ready for the day. So start every day with water, especially if you're looking for weight loss. One of the best things to do, start every meal with a full glass of water. Drink 8 to 16 ounces right before every single meal. And it does two things.

[00:38:58] One, there's this thing [00:39:00] metabolically called the thermogenic effect of water that actually boosts your metabolism a little bit, helps you burn calories better. But also guess what? Duh, it extends the stomach. It distends it a little bit. It's there's some sensory receptors in there that say, Hey, my stomach's already got something in there starting to fill up.

[00:39:16] Maybe I won't want to eat as much food. Like it has that sort of physical effect as well. Um, and you just, It's so darn easy, and yes, if you can get the reverse osmosis, if you can add back in some minerals and electrolytes, great too, but I would just say the baseline, you know, make sure you're drinking at least your half of your body, uh, in ounces, um, every day and then start the day with about 16 to 20 ounces of water and try to do water before every meal as well.

[00:39:41] That'll help especially with weight loss. Nice.

[00:39:44] Anthony: All right. So this is probably something that wasn't discussed when you were in medical school, and that's the role of environmental toxins in preventable disease, particularly like stuff in our households. Industrial stuff could be in food products, but also plastics.

[00:39:55] Like what do you teach people about that? Like, what do people need to know about environmental toxins? Like, [00:40:00] are they the real deal? And if so, which ones are What, what things are actual actionable in our households to look out for and what changes have you made for your family?

[00:40:10] Thomas: So this is definitely not something we focused on in medical school.

[00:40:14] We talked about, you know, the toxic drones, if you will, when people would have accidental or purposeful overdoses on different things or, or whatnot, but we didn't talk a lot about environmental toxins that surround us each and every day. And there's. Sadly, thousands and thousands, there's like 80, 000 some odd approved, uh, toxic chemicals here in the U.

[00:40:33] S. right here at home that are approved for use, that say that they're okay. It's like Roundup is one of them, glyphosate. Like that's okay? Heck no, that stuff is not okay. But here's the thing. So what I do at home, a couple of just super, super simple things. Number one, first thing, and this started, I'll just be honest, in Hawaii we have a tradition and most people do here.

[00:40:53] we take our shoes off at the door. So don't go trudging into your house with your shoes on. Like who knows, especially me as a physician, [00:41:00] if I'm working in the hospital, ER clinic, like who knows what kind of bacteria I got on my shoes. In fact, I even went to the point where I have a pair of shoes that I leave at work.

[00:41:07] I don't even leave. They don't leave the building. They stay at work. I don't ever take those things out. I don't bring them home. Like I always have myself, my kids and anybody who visits, like you got to take your shoes off first thing. So don't wear shoes in the house. And especially if you have carpet, like please don't wear shoes in the house.

[00:41:25] Like double whammy. You can never really clean carpet. Like for us in Hawaii, one of the first things we ever did first home we had here, we ripped out all of the carpet. Talk about huge allergen flame retardant, just. toxic dump of chemicals in carpet. And, and, and it's just, it's tough. Like if you're going to get, you know, uh, organic, you know, hemp or bamboo or whatever, like it's better, but I don't, I'm not a fan of carpet.

[00:41:48] Um, so take your shoes off at the door for the most part, try to avoid carpet. Um, if you can, here's another big thing also free. Yeah. Open your windows. Let the air flow through. Yeah. And I know we're coming up [00:42:00] on winter, so it's probably starting to get cold, but even if you have a window cracked and you let some natural airflow come in, that's almost always a good thing unless you live exactly next door to an airport and you're getting kerosene and other burning fumes coming straight into your house.

[00:42:14] I mean, outside of that, for most of us, having a little bit of some air circulation through our homes is actually a really good thing. So open the windows. Um, take your shoes off when you first hit the door. And then I would say the biggest, um, secondary thing that, that does tend to cost a little bit of money is make sure you're drinking clean water.

[00:42:33] And what this usually means is you can get, I, I always recommend a reverse osmosis, uh, filtration system to start. And these aren't super expensive. You can get one on Amazon for maybe two to 300. So it's not like crazy ridiculous, but it's a really good investment because there's nothing worse than having.

[00:42:51] Bad quality water. I mean, we've all heard of the crazy stories that have been perpetuated with the media, like the Aaron Brockovich stories and the others that have happened [00:43:00] when people live close to industrialized places that dump their effluent right into the rivers, and then we get to drink it and nobody seems to care.

[00:43:08] They say it's safe, but it's not like, like there's actually a really cool website. If you just go to ewg. org, there's links to how you can get your local water, um, information you can, you know, it's really helpful. So, so. A reverse osmosis filter is kind of the baseline. I add to that. Um, I also have a carbon filtration that goes after that.

[00:43:28] So I do, or charcoal, I should say. So reverse osmosis. And then I have a charcoal filter that it goes through after that. And then, you know, about half of the water I drink in a day, I throw in some electrolytes just to add back. Cause one of the downsides of like, Ultra filtering your water is sometimes you'll miss out on some of the important minerals that you might otherwise get.

[00:43:47] And I'm not talking about fluoride, like get the fluoride out of the water. We don't need that. It's never been shown to really be helpful. Um, but I'm talking about, you know, you can get, uh, helpful things like calcium, magnesium, potassium. You can potentially get that from good [00:44:00] quality water. And when you ultra filter it, sometimes.

[00:44:03] That gets filtered out. So adding that back in is not a bad idea, but water is really important. And then you've mentioned it already, like get rid of the plastics. I mean, even simple things like this is a glass cup. My, my, um, bottles. I also either use, um, I either use glass, which, you know, I have young kids.

[00:44:19] So with them, they have the stainless steel ones. Um, but we try to get rid of all the plastics in the house. Like heaven forbid, like don't. Put plastic in the microwave, don't, you know, eat out of plastic. I mean, try not to drink out of plastic bottles when I travel. Sometimes I have to, cause that's the only thing that's available.

[00:44:35] And like this last trip, I spaced it and my water bottle had a little bit of water in it through security. So I didn't have time to go back through and save it. So I had to dump my, my water bottle that I really liked. And, and so sometimes I do drink out of plastic. I just don't try to, I try to avoid it, you know, because plastics are like the new.

[00:44:52] I don't know how you speak of these things, but they are. Disastrous to our hormonal system and they're so [00:45:00] prevalent. Whether it be from the water bottles, from the cookware, from just the packaging of standard foods that we buy at the grocery store. I mean, almost everything is in plastic, like get it out of the plastic.

[00:45:11] Like my wife got upset with me cause I started dumping all of our Tupperware and replacing it with glass. Yeah. And it's great because I feel better about it. But if the kid drops it on the tile floor, cause we don't have carpet or anything, it breaks and it's a mess to clean up. So it's a, you know, it's a little bit of a trade off with young kids that sometimes the glass gets broken and things like that.

[00:45:29] But. I just feel so much better about keeping my food out of plastic as much as I can. So those are kind of the lowest hanging fruit that I think most of us can benefit from immediately. And basically they're all free other than the water filtration. Very good. And air too. The air part is, is, is not necessarily free, but if you open the window, that's free.

[00:45:49] Just open the window and circulate it a little bit. Yes. If you have some kind of a heating or. Or HVAC, you know, AC type unit, make sure you clean those filters at least once a month. Like you'd be surprised at what's living in [00:46:00] there. I just did a test on mine and I was like, Whoa, like I thought I was pretty anal about cleaning this stuff.

[00:46:05] And now I'm like, I'm cleaning it, you know, twice as often. Nice.

[00:46:09] Anthony: Good rundown. Um, now I want to ask you about supplements as we've kind of discussed that nutrition. whole food based nutrition is, is the foundation. That said, there are probably some supplements that people can take. Are there any supplements that you would recommend generally for most people over 40?

[00:46:26] Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. And here's, here's why they're important. So even if you do a food first mantra, which is always what I. Profess to do and I do my best to do, you're going to have some gaps and supplements, as long as we use them as supplemental and we don't use them as, Hey, I'm going to take this so I can eat checks in the morning or Wheaties or Doritos in the afternoon.

[00:46:48] Like it doesn't replace a crappy diet. Like this is just adding to the holes that we will have even. With a whole foods diet, because right now, present day, our soils are deplete. Like there was a [00:47:00] study that came out. It was like 1938 that was showing that the soils were significantly depleted of nutrients back nearly a hundred years ago.

[00:47:08] And guess what? Nothing's been done about it. And it's even worse. It's even worse now. So the things that we buy, even though there are, you know, hopefully organic and they're well raised and all of that, they still are less full of nutrients than they used to be. So there are a few. Things that we need to supplement with, even with a whole foods, real foods diet.

[00:47:26] And one that almost all of us can benefit from is the omega 3 fatty acids. Most of us don't get two to three servings of fish every week. Even I don't when I'm not in Hawaii. I just don't. I probably have fish once every two weeks when I'm not in Hawaii. When I'm here, I have it maybe three times a week, maybe four times a week because it's just so readily available.

[00:47:45] So the omega 3s. game changing. I mean, for brain health, they're also very much anti inflammatory and like, talk about a good fat to have the Omega threes. Um, I actually did a recent podcast on that. If people want to [00:48:00] really interesting backstory, you know, many of us are familiar with the Omega three that.

[00:48:05] became pharmaceutical lies that was sold as, and still is sold as a prescription, which is actually not even as good as the ones you can get in supplement form, which is kind of crazy. But anyway, there's an interesting story about that, that I shared there, but Omega threes, we could pretty much all around the whole world benefit from a magnesium is one of my favorite minerals.

[00:48:24] And most of us are deficient, at least functionally in magnesium. And so I feel like we could almost all benefit from additional magnesium in our diet because it. It's literally involved in 600 plus reactions, including the most important one that keeps us alive every single day, every breath making the ATP.

[00:48:41] You can't even do that without magnesium, magnesium, super important vitamin D, which is also one of those super important low hanging fruits that unless we're. Bear backed in the sun every single day of our lives. Like we're probably not going to get enough. Even I, when I'm in Hawaii and I literally, I walk [00:49:00] around with my shirt off and bare feet and like, I'm getting as much vitamin D as I can.

[00:49:04] What I've noticed is with age, you actually don't produce it as efficiently. As you did when you were a kid. So even I, when I'm in the sun, I'm still taking vitamin D supplements. Yes. I'm trying to get it from our, our food. Like fish has vitamin E, any kind of liver. Um, if you're eating the whole organ that nose to tail approach, which I know most of us don't, but if I can get some chicken liver, beef liver from time to time, I try to add that to my diet.

[00:49:28] Or if you can't stomach the thought of that, there's, there's some supplements, some organ supplements, but vitamin D is really important and it's actually really inexpensive. So that's D three. I usually throw in a deep three K two. together with that and, um, game changing. So, so those three are sort of top, I would say lowest hanging fruit that almost anybody can benefit from.

[00:49:49] But I do have an entire chapter in my book, preventable that speaks exactly to the supplement. Um, Topic because it's confusing and so many people out there are like, well, [00:50:00] take this one. No, take that one. Oh. So I'll go through in the book, like how to, you know, come up with a good game plan of how to approach all supplements.

[00:50:07] Because I buy like 20 different brands. I don't just buy one type. Like if it's good and it uses good manufacturing practices, comes from a good source, hopefully not China, you know, and all these things. And, and, and it's, you know, uh, been looked at for other fillers, additives, toxins, and things like that.

[00:50:24] And you, and you trust the label and you know, they use the good manufacturing process and it's third party validated, things like that. Like there's so many different brands out there that are good. So it's not just one brand, but there it's a little bit nuanced. And I would just for. Better, you know, complete list, you know, check out the book.

[00:50:40] I got a whole chapter there, but those are sort of my three favorites that I just mentioned.

[00:50:43] Anthony: Love it. Love it. Okay. So as we get into the tail of this, I want to ask you about. How the rubber meets the road here in terms of people doing this, you know, what's the order of lifestyle change of things people could do is something more important than others.

[00:50:57] We talked about food. We haven't mentioned [00:51:00] specifically exercise, but obviously it's very important and then there's sleep and then there might be supplementation. Like, how do you counsel someone through the thinking through the hierarchy and where to actually start when implementing a lifestyle change like this?

[00:51:13] Thomas: Yeah, so you're exactly right. All of those factors and you left out one really important one stress and how the stress influences all of us and I think the last, you know, several years with the pandemic has been super stressful for most of us, how we optimize that and deal with stress in our life.

[00:51:28] Super important. But I would say the starting point. Is gotta be what we put in our mouth. So what lands at the tip of our fork, our food is, is I think the biggest initial first lever. And if you focus on the real foods, like we talked about and avoid the big three that we talked about ad nauseum, super great place to start.

[00:51:45] The second is an equally important. It's gotta be the movement piece. And what's cool about the movement piece is that I don't think it needs to be. That complicated. I think we've made it way too complicated. And even our [00:52:00] influencer friends make it too complicated. You're looking at a guy who's really active and can do a lot of crazy things with his body.

[00:52:08] And yet I don't have a gym membership. So It can be done simply. You don't need a gym membership. I think having some kind of weight, you know, training portion, what we now call resistance training and doing that at least three days a week is really, really important. I think that's one of the biggest misses in traditional.

[00:52:28] Fitness, traditional medicine, health and wellness is that we over focused, overemphasize cardio. Cardio is great. But like if you do cardio all day, every day, and you never do anything with weights, like you will actually lose muscle mass. I'm telling you from a guy who lost a little bit when he was doing too much fasting.

[00:52:47] It's not what you want. Like if there's one thing that'll help your metabolism more than anything, it's putting on more muscle. Muscle is the metabolic magic for the ladies. It's the metabolic spanks that hold you [00:53:00] all tight and together the way that you want to look, that's muscle. Like you want to have more muscle.

[00:53:03] So if you're not incorporating at least three days a week, some kind of weight training, resistance training activity, and it can be at a gym or it can just be Doing air squats like I'm doing right now can be doing pull ups. It can be doing push ups It can be doing body weight stuff do do planks do Lunges like all this stuff can easily be done with body weight And if you have a couple of you know Dumbbells that you can add to it at home like we have a super small skimpy Home gym for for my wife and I who are Fitness fanatics.

[00:53:35] Like, I wish I had all those, uh, fancy, you know, different machinery and equipment that they have at a gym. We just had this weird, uh, first time in our life opportunity to go on a cruise a few months ago. And what I loved, it sounds crazy. The two things I love the most was they had an amazing gym. And most people when they're on a cruise, they're not thinking go to the gym.

[00:53:54] Dude, I was at the gym like all day. Like I love that place. There were so many exercises to do. So much equipment. Like. [00:54:00] I was eating amazing food, but I was working out like crazy. I mean, it was crazy. It was awesome. I love the gym, but I don't personally have a membership to one and you don't need one, but do body weight stuff.

[00:54:10] Make sure you incorporate at least three days of resistance training. Don't overdo the cardio and just do the simple things. Like I'm going to share with you two things that we can all do. that most of us don't think about. One is just do more everyday standing than you thought possible. So nowadays, you know, the standing desk is kind of a cool thing.

[00:54:30] I'm standing, talking to you right now, Dr. Anthony, like I don't have a standing desk most places that I work. I get a cardboard box. I throw it on top of the regular desk and my laptop is right on top of that cardboard box. Like that's my standing desk. Like it's easy. Do as much as you can throughout the day with movement.

[00:54:47] If you got to take a call and you can do it on a walk, like just go for a walk and take the call on the walk. Like it's, it's amazing if you just think about how you can incorporate more movement into your day. a lot of the things that we do, we [00:55:00] could do on a walk or we could do standing or What I recommend people do is after every meal, do five to 10 minutes, 10 would be perfect.

[00:55:10] 10 minutes of movement of any kind. If you're in a super cold place and you got young kids, one of the funnest things ever, you put on some music and you do a 10 minute dance party, you pick three songs, you're done. And it's a lot of fun. You get a lot of giggles, especially if you got little girls like I do.

[00:55:23] Even the boys, they, they giggle and they think it's kind of cheesy and lame, but they'll do it too. Like we just do 10 minutes of movement. After every meal, no matter what. So if you're at a workplace, eat your lunch, but then go up and down the stairs for 10 minutes. If you're at home, do whatever you want to do.

[00:55:39] Go for a quick walk around the block, you know, whatever, just do 10 minutes of movement after every meal. And it'll be a game changer, not just for your insulin sensitivity, but for your waistline and just for this. This that lies between the ears, like you'll be so much happier. You get so much more energy, you digest your food better.

[00:55:56] It's like the simplest thing ever. And yes, there's data now that says it's [00:56:00] better for insulin resistance and all that cool stuff, lots of data, but it works and it's fun. Just move a little bit more. So those are the two biggest game changers. I think sleep is underutilized as well. I think it's one of the most powerful tools.

[00:56:12] I got a whole chapter on the book on that. And I would just say. Prioritize it, schedule it, put it in the day and calendar. And if you have little kids like I do still like try to get them to bed a little bit earlier so you can make sure you get your seven or eight hours of sleep. Like for me, once I started valuing that, my wife will tell you I'm just a better human.

[00:56:31] I'm just nicer. I'm kinder. I just a better dude when I have a full night's sleep. So don't underestimate the value of sleep.

[00:56:39] Anthony: I love it. I mean, I'm just reflecting on. This conversation and what we've covered so far, this was like a wide range from the beginning when we talked about the big picture of what's going on and like a population level, all the way through the deep nutrition stuff.

[00:56:52] And now into the simple habits like dance party. I'm going to start with that with my daughter. I think that's a brilliant way because I can't always get that walk. So. [00:57:00] I'm taking a lot out of this and I'm sure everyone listening is and also what I really love is that you've definitely affirmed a lot of the principles behind our programming and stuff that people have gone through.

[00:57:09] And I think that's going to help so many people realize that coming from you, especially in the weight that these things have is going to help really just drive these principles home and something someone's really going to value. So on that note, I know you do a ton of health education in many places, your book, your podcast, please tell us where more people can connect with you far past

[00:57:27] Thomas: this combo.

[00:57:28] Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much, Dr. Anthony, for having me. It's been such a pleasure. And I would just like to leave everybody with, you can start today with any of these things. Pick a couple that you've heard that you're like, I'm going to do, like Dr. Anthony says, I'm gonna do that dance party now. Like, I'm excited about that.

[00:57:44] Like, whatever it is, just pick a couple of things to start with today. And you would be surprised when done consistently, how I'm Big, the effect, the magnitude of these small, simple things that we can just do on the daily. They will have huge, hugely [00:58:00] positive effects in our future, whether it be weight loss, more energy.

[00:58:04] We just like the way we look better. We just feel better. We just, you know, we're excited about life. We wake up alive instead of. Like I was for many years, just kind of on autopilot. Like I was surviving life for way too many years and I'm thriving now. And I want thriving to be a part of each and every one of your lives.

[00:58:20] And so easiest place to reach out, um, is just my website, which is my name, thomashemingway. com or Instagram. Dr. Thomas Hemingway, that's just D R and then Thomas Hemingway. I spelled my name just like Ernest did with one M got the same name as cool. Grandfather Ernest there, though, nothing closely related, sadly.

[00:58:38] Um, But I do have a book now, which, you know, you type in Hemingway and his books will come up and maybe mine will too. Hopefully my book is over there on Amazon. Uh, preventable. You can just put my name in Thomas Hemingway. It'll come up there for you, but yeah, any place on the interwebs, Thomas Hemingway, you can find me and I would love it if you grabbed the book because it's just, it, there was a whole topic here, dr.

[00:58:59] Anthony, [00:59:00] we didn't even. Touch at all, which I think is one of the biggest needle movers, which maybe we can talk about on a future episode or something is gut health. Gut health is so critical and I devote a couple of chapters in the book to that as well. And so, um, yeah, just, uh, follow me over there on Insta, grab my book and let me know what you're liking and loving and learning.

[00:59:18] And actually I do respond to all my messages personally, both on Insta and emails and stuff like that. So reach out to me, I'd be happy to chat and keep. Keep, uh, keep doing what dr. Anthony is recommending. He's a cool dude. And it's really, it's got just a plethora of helpful courses and programs. Like I just think what he's doing is amazing.

[00:59:38] So thanks for having me on dr. Anthony. Keep crushing it, man.

[00:59:41] Anthony: Thank you. You too, brother. This was great. I learned a ton. I appreciate you.