In this free-for-all-Friday Trent describes his experiences with a new diet.
Transcript:
00;00;00;02 – 00;00;20;19
Now I know why they call it a diet. Because it makes you want to die. It. Welcome to the Council of Trent. I’m your host, Catholic apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we talk apologetics and theology. But on Friday, we talk about whatever I want to talk about. And today I’m going to talk about my exploration into dieting.
00;00;20;22 – 00;00;42;03
I’ve now reached my 40s. Metabolism has slowed down a bit. I still feel pretty good where I’m at. I’m grateful that I do jiu jitsu. That helps me to stay healthy, though. I do need to add some more cardio to that. I’ve been feeling pretty winded as of late and I wanted to be healthier with food, and so my wife recommended me a program called The Whole 30.
00;00;42;03 – 00;01;04;12
And so it’s a 30 day diet, and I gave it a try. And I saw tremendous results both with with weight and with just general energy feel. So I wanted to just share that with you because this is my first this is really my first foray into this usually throughout most all of my life. Basically, I’ve eaten kind of what I’ve wanted to.
00;01;04;13 – 00;01;21;24
I mean, I never was crazy eating. So my wife shared with me a food susceptibility test and I took it. And it tells you like a scale of 1 to 10. I was just to you are to food. So like if you’re a ten, like you’re nonstop, you’re constantly thinking about food. A one is like, you don’t like food at all, you barely eat and you’re like chronically underweight.
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And so I’m lower, like around like a three or a four. Like, I might have a bag of candy, I a joy and I’ll put it away in a cabinet and maybe like forget about it, which you don’t forget about if you’re high in the susceptibility scale. So food is never something I really struggle with, but I do make bad food choices that would make me tired and slowly, over time, starting to add weight and it would start is starting to pile up a bit.
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And so that was something I was, you know, a little concerned about, like nutrition, energy and weight and thought, okay, well, how should I manage this? So my wife recommended something me called the whole 30 diet. It’s just something you do for 30 days. I’ll read through a summary of it and then I’ll give you my thoughts about how it worked for me.
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By the way, I’m not I’m not a health care provider. I’m not a nutritionist. Do not take any dietary advice for me. I’m just sharing from what I thought was interesting for me, if it works for you, great. If you do something else. Hey, that’s great too. So according to this article, the whole 30 diet is a popular 30 day nutritional program designed to help participants identify foods that may negatively affect their health.
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Energy levels are well being created in 2009 by Melissa Urban and Dallas Hartwig. The program is intended as a short term dietary reset, rather than a permanent eating plan or a weight loss diet, although many people report losing weight while following it, and it’s the thing, you only do it for 30 days, and it helps you figure out what foods are like making you inflamed, for example.
00;02;39;04 – 00;02;53;21
But I find it something. I hear people do it once a year, do a few times a year. I might do this where I’ll do it like a few times a year, do it, reset, and then kind of introduce foods back in. I fell off the wagon a bit because we had family vacation. You go to Disney, you go to different places.
00;02;53;26 – 00;03;18;14
You can’t help but get pretzels and snacks and stuff on a vacation because, as Jim Gaffigan has said, vacations are really just an excuse to eat in places we’ve never eaten before. So it goes on to say, during the 30 day program, participants eliminate a variety of foods that are associated with inflammation and unhealthy eating. These included all added sugars and artificial sweeteners, alcohol, grains, legumes, dairy products, processed foods containing additives.
00;03;18;14 – 00;03;40;12
So if it’s good, you can’t have it. Especially the hardest me to give up dairy. Cheese I love cheese. You could put cheese on anything and I will eat it. I love cheese, so dairy is hard. Alcohol I don’t really drink. Alcohol is not that big a deal. Grains are hard, I use, I eat gluten free bread at home, but even then I still got rid of the grains.
00;03;40;12 – 00;03;55;28
Grains were hard. I think dairy was the hardest. Sugars are hard. I’m not a big sugar person, but you know a few chocolate chips here or there is something I really like not having that dessert hit at the end of the day that that was rough. Not being able to have something of that. You want something to be sweet, for example.
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So it says followers are encouraged to eat whole, minimally processed foods vegetables, fruits, meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, healthy fats from avocados, nuts. Not legumes, not peanuts, but regular nuts, almond, nuts or almonds would be example seeds and olive oil. One of the key principles of whole 30 is breaking unhealthy relationships with food. I do like eating out, so that was hard.
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Like not going in and out. I love in and out. I’m glad it’s not near me otherwise I go like every day, but not doing a drive through. Drive thrus were killing for a while. I used to go to McDonald’s at night. That was a horrible decision. What was I? What was I thinking? Glad I don’t do that anymore, but that was actually really killing me.
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McDonald’s in and out actually not make me feel about it. McDonald’s certainly did after. So it says. After completing the initial 30 days, participants gradually reintroduce eliminated foods, one group at a time. It allows you to discover which foods are worse for you, and many participants report increased energy, improved digestion, better awareness of how foods affect their body.
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But the whole 30 has received some criticism. People say it’s unnecessarily restrictive, and some of its exclusions, like legumes and whole grains, are widely recognized as nutritious. But I think it’s good because, look, it’s just 30 days. The worst it can happen is you do it for a month and you get off it. You can get back on all of this stuff.
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But I found it to be helpful. I think I lost, like, I don’t know, 10 to 12 pounds in one month just doing that. My wife was worried because I didn’t eat bread. So like for lunch, I usually just have a lettuce wrap and no cheese and no, I had mayonnaise. I don’t think I had mayonnaise either. It was just maybe I’m not sure what was on.
00;05;28;09 – 00;05;52;15
There might have been lettuce, onions and turkey like deli meat. Laura was so funny. She’s like, I’m really worried about you. You’re eating rabbit food and getting thin. Getting too thin. I was like, oh, the feeling thin. Nothing taste as good as feeling thin. That’s what people always say on a diet, right? Then someone’s hiding around the corner with a hypodermic needle and they’re like, oh, Zam, pick.
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You could try Osmp. I’m like, no, I’m not gonna do. I feel like I worry about it. We don’t have a lot of long term studies for that. And I see people who use those. They always look really gone. Like, you lose muscle mass. They look gaunt, like they’re just, like, deflated. I don’t like that. I don’t like that.
00;06;09;29 – 00;06;37;12
It’s. I mean, if if it works for you. Because here’s the thing. Somebody say, oh, it’s so unhealthy. But it’s like, well, yeah, maybe it’s unhealthy. But being overweight, it’s also unhealthy. So, you know, sometimes you have to pick the lesser of two evils. You know, in this it’s sort of like some people have said that smoking could actually be like cigarettes might be healthier than some overweight eating diets, because a lot of people who smoke cigarettes, they lose weight because you have something in your hands.
00;06;37;12 – 00;06;53;25
And and nicotine is an appetite suppressant, even though, yeah, it makes you greater risk of lung cancer. You have great. You have a lesser risk then for heart disease, heart attacks, diabetes. So you know devil, you know devil you don’t. I guess it’s out of the frying pan into the fire frying pan. Fire. Or I could go for some barbecue right now.
00;06;53;27 – 00;07;16;00
See, it comes after you. It comes after you. So, going through it, I did find it to be helpful. It gave me more energy. And now, after this vacation, I’m weaker and more tired. I think I need to get back on it to get my mojo back, and so I’m excited for that. I will say though, it you learn when you do the program, you just the biggest thing that you get over is just learning.
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I would say going to bed hungry, like I’m hungry, I’m going to go to bed, maybe not hungry, but you’re not fully you’re not stay satiated. You don’t have that plumpness of like having a dessert after you’re filling dinner or something like that. And you just kind of get over that and realize, I’m not going to die. I’m going to go to bed, I’m going to wake up and I’m going to be fine.
00;07;35;06 – 00;07;51;07
Other things I’ve learned in the Diet Crash Course is if you feel hungry, drink water, drink ice water. And that’s the thing. Having lots of water with meal is super healthy and good for you. So I found that to be helpful. I did find a few things helpful for me when I needed, like that late night snack to feel good.
00;07;51;08 – 00;08;12;25
I just want a little thing, like a nightcap, like a sweet or something. Strawberries. Strawberries are naturally sweet. They’re like nature’s candy. My wife was real. She was so nice to me. She made me a little apple slices with almond butter on them. So just at the end of the night, I’m still hungry because I didn’t have, you know, I didn’t eat that much for dinner.
00;08;12;25 – 00;08;29;15
And I’m also kind of intermittent faster. I don’t eat breakfast either. So she made me a little apple slices, almond butter on them. And they were delicious. And you know, it’s good. It’s just it’s good food for you. I think the biggest thing there’s a book out called Ultra Processed People. I think I covered it in a previous free for All Friday.
00;08;29;15 – 00;08;54;21
I highly recommend that because I think really the source for a lot of our food unhealthy is just these processed foods that are full of chemicals and preservatives. They are making us, you know, fat and sick and sad that the biggest thing to be healthy, I would say, is just eating as much fresh things as possible. So meats, vegetables, fruits, anything on the outer rim of the grocery store, not the inner aisles.
00;08;54;22 – 00;09;13;26
The more outer rim, the stay in the Outer Rim territory. So this is a Star Wars analogy. Once again, I’m not a nutritionist. You’ll have to take other advice from other people. But yeah, it’s in also, I guess it’s hard the first few days you get really obsessive about food. Like I never really dieted before. I know women listening to this will probably like, oh, really?
00;09;13;27 – 00;09;30;22
Like, it’s like women, you know, experiment with dieting when they’re young age. It’s something that’s on their minds a lot, you know, even from a very young age. And boys and men don’t really think about that. And sometimes guys are really mean to women, by the way, when it comes to weight, like losing weight, they’re like, well, if you just didn’t eat, you lose weight.
00;09;30;22 – 00;09;48;02
Yeah. Like I’m a guy. If I don’t eat, my metabolism is running like crazy. And so I can, like when I sleep at night, I am I need a fan running a full blast because my body is so hot, because my metabolism is running, that’s going to burn calories. But women are not like that. Women are always like, I’m so cold, I’m cold and need a jacket.
00;09;48;02 – 00;10;05;03
I’m cold. It’s just not the same. They don’t burn their bodies, just cannot burn calories the way that a man says. And I have proof of that. Bear Grylls did a reality show called. It Was Like The Island or something. They put a group of like ten men on one island and ten women on another island and told them to survive.
00;10;05;03 – 00;10;24;17
And the men just do way better at cooperating and taking down crocodiles and building shelters. And the women do not fare as well. And when you watch the show, it’s crazy because the men look like skeletons. They look like concentration camp victims because even though they’re catching food, they’re burning calories like crazy and they look like a bag of bones.
00;10;24;19 – 00;10;45;23
I mean, you look at the women, though, they they look thinner, but nowhere near as, like, skeletal as the men. So it’s clear, like the women aren’t cheating. They’re not running off to the Costco on the island or something like that. And they were they were losing weight. And it was funny. They’re actually happy about it. When a doctor came to check on them and told them their weight, they were like really happy and thrilled how lean they had become.
00;10;45;23 – 00;11;05;01
But they were nowhere near as lean as the men. So clear you have. It’s a perfect experiment. These women are not cheating and the women are eating less. The men could catch crocodiles, catch fish. They had a ton of food. The women barely had any food to survive with, barely had any. So they were basically starving themselves. The men warrant, yet the men lost more weight and the women didn’t.
00;11;05;01 – 00;11;27;23
Because women’s bodies are just different than men’s. Women’s bodies are designed to hold on to fat for as long as possible, so they can nurse children and care for children. That’s just different. So when men hold women to these standards related to weight unrealistic standards, now that doesn’t know. Of course, men and women can engage in unhealthy habits to make them overweight, no doubt there, certainly.
00;11;27;23 – 00;11;41;26
But when you treat women as if they can just lose weight in the same way that a man can, I would say that that’s very, very unfair. But yeah, if you’re interested in just a diet that might help you reset, figure out what foods are inflaming you, making you not feel good, check out the whole 30. It’s you know, it’s just for a month.
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Talk to your doctor first. So if you if you have any questions. But I found it to be I found it to be really helpful and interesting. So definitely something to check out. But thank you guys so much and I hope you have a very blessed weekend.