In this episode of The Unlimited You, join Andy Freebird and me as we dive into the critical role of nutrition in recovery. We'll break down macronutrients and micronutrients, discuss the importance of protein, carbs, and fats post-workout, and explore how vitamins and electrolytes support muscle repair and growth. Whether you're an athlete or just fitness-curious, this conversation will give you the insights you need to fuel your body right for optimal recovery. Tune in to transform your post-exercise routine!

Well, it, the number one thing, it always comes down to the total amount of calories that you're People usually do this like per day, but you could look at this more in like, sort of a larger scale context.

Mm-Hmm. How much are you eating per week? Per month? Per year? Mm-Hmm. Because I guarantee that if you're like eating the right amount every day and then the next week you eat double that it's not going to be affected. So

That's a good point. Yeah.

Yeah. And so what you want to do initially is to determine like, okay, how much food should I be eating?

Mm-Hmm. You could use a, calorie calculator online, but these are very inaccurate. Yeah. So the best thing to do is to start there. Use one of these online. They're free. It's gonna ask you some simple questions like, how old are you? What is your gender? How active are you? Mm-Hmm. And then it's gonna tell you how much it thinks you need to eat to either stay the same weight Mm-Hmm.

Andy Freebird: What's up y'all? Welcome back to another episode of the welcome back.

Master Victor: back.

Andy Freebird: Andy and I are here to talk about nutrition today nutrition's role especially in

Master Victor: in recovery

Micronutrients are the vitamins and minerals that you need in your diet, and that's also very important for a lot of the things

Master Victor: for a lot of the things

Andy Freebird: Hmm. So when it comes to recovering from exercise, the most important thing is gonna be to ingest protein. To rebuild the damage to your muscles that takes place When you're exercising. So your muscles are made out of proteins and a need to accrete more proteins, not only to heal, but also to grow bigger. Carbohydrates are also very important after a workout because you're burning that carbs as fuel while you're working out and you wanna replenish it afterwards so that you have more

Master Victor: fuel use

agaiN

Andy Freebird: And I would say fats also, healthy fats are important because you're gonna need that. In order to build, for example, the cell walls, the actual lipid wall is made outta fat. So eating fats is a very important part of your diet too. And your body can use fat for energy as

Master Victor: for energy as well.

I think we talked about last time that vitamin C mm-Hmm. Is this essential for recovery? You know, vitamin D is important for your immune system. You know, calcium is important for development on recovery of your bones. Really I would say that if you want to be the best possible version of yourself, you wanna make sure that you cover all your bases in macro and we can get more into that down the road, but the best source of micronutrients is still gonna be food. So, you know, you can take supplements from micros Mm-Hmm. If you want, you can take a multivitamin and that's great, but food is always gonna be better. Would you say magnesium and potassium would go into that micronutrient group?

Yeah. So now we're getting into what electrolytes. Okay. And we can talk a little bit about what electrolytes do. Okay. And basically allow the mitochondria, which you might be familiar with, you know it right? Ah, yeah. The powerhouse of the cell. Uh-huh. So they actually help power the mitochondria and there's actually, it's called electrolyte because it's by electrical.

Yeah. As it bulks up, you need to be able to take in water into Yeah. So if you have those electrolytes, more readily get the water into your muscles. That's a good point. I'm glad you brought that up also, because carbohydrates have this when you eat carbs, most of those carbs are gonna be stored in the actual muscle tissue.

Some of it's gonna be stored in your liver.

Master Victor: liver.

Andy Freebird: Interesting. But you can even kind of think of it by combining like, you know, sodium and carbs together with water, you're gonna hydrate a lot better because it's bringing that into the tissue. It's not just circulating through your blood, it's actually bringing it

Master Victor: bringing it into the cells.

Yeah,

I believe in the liver. So with the water soluble vitamins, like vitamin C,, all the excess that you consumed, you would just excrete through your B Yeah. Through urine. Mm-Hmm. It's the vitamins. A, D, E, and K are the ones that you wanna make sure you don't consume too much of. And I wouldn't just assume that you're deficient in something. Right. Like if you're concerned about that, you might have a deficiency, you should probably go get some blood work done. Hmm. Go to your doctor and see if you actually do need to maybe raise something up. 'cause you may even have an issue with your gut that makes it difficult to absorb certain nutrients.

Yeah. It may be essential that you actually take supplements.

Master Victor: take supplements.

Andy Freebird: sense. Absolutely. And you know, let's say especially lately there's been a

Master Victor: been a big

You know, even if you're not using reverse osmosis, 'cause most of us are not gonna be doing that at home, but if you have like a Brita filter or something like that, is that depending on how much you filter that water, it may actually be completely deficient in electrolytes, vitamins, and minerals And if you're drinking too much water, hypo hydrating, you're actually excreting all of those that you have in your body.

Mm-Hmm. But in reality. Actually sea salt, specifically like pink salt, like Yeah. It actually contains already all of the essential Yeah. Yeah. Like vitamins and minerals that you would need. Mm-hmm. Or sorry, micronutrients and minerals so I would just recommend doing that, Then you're gonna get your sodium,

Master Victor: sodium, your potassium,

Andy Freebird: your mitochondria need to function properly. absolutely. Ice that in the morning. Just drink like a liter of water with like a couple pinches of sea salt in it. Yeah. Just to rehydrate. Yeah. And just kind of bring up the point about the Bretta filters.

Yeah. And I could feel myself getting more dehydrated the more I drank it. And that's exactly what we were just talking about. Yeah. Like my mouth felt drier. And you wanna make sure that you're not ingesting that because it can actually take the essential vitamins out of your organs. Mm-Hmm. And then it's gonna cause organ shutdowns.

Yeah. You're in a whole different mess. And not acutely, but like over time on time, Deficient in everything that you need. And this gunning segues into the importance of hydration. You know, like how important would you say it is to not only stay hydrated, to maintain that, especially during an intense workout.

For example, what conditions are you training? Maybe it's really hot and humid. Well, you're gonna sweat a lot more. Yeah. So hydration, usually you're gonna want to match that to like sweat loss. Mm-Hmm. Sweat loss can be really hard to measure though. Especially if it's evaporating off your body. It's not like you're sweating into a bucket and then weighing it.

Yeah. You know? So typically they say like, drink the thirst. Mm-Hmm. Right. And they also say that by the time you feel thirsty, you're technically already were dehydrated a little prior to that sensation. Yes. What I would say is like

Master Victor: is like

Andy Freebird: the most important thing is just to make sure that you're drinking water that actually has electrolyte content in it.

Mm-Hmm. Because we were talking about. We're not trying to drink water, we're trying to hydrate, and that's different. Yes. Drinking water just means it's going in your stomach. Mm-Hmm. Hydrating means it's going into the cells and allowing them to

Master Victor: them to perform work.

So they would essentially do their maximum amount of pull-ups. And then drink water. Mm-Hmm. And do their maximum amount of pull-ups and then drink Gatorade. Yeah. And the study showed that actually, like chocolate milk was, was superior, had the biggest effect. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Where, you know, it has all of those different things.

Mm-Hmm. But different vitamins, fats, proteins, which the Gatorade and water does not because Gatorade only has carbs. There are no fats or proteins in it. Your body actually wants those other macros in real time as you're training. Yes. 'cause it, it's using them as energy.

Master Victor: energy. Mm-Hmm, exactly.

You're doing high-intensity training and you're exerting a high level of energy. If you're not hydrating, you're gonna start to feel lightheaded. You're gonna dizzy. And that's not only gonna affect your training, but you could end up hurting yourself. Where you get your body to the point where it doesn't want to take in anything, you're gonna start puking and it's gonna be an endless cycle of Mm-Hmm.

You puking and not being able to ingest water, and then you'll have to go to the hospital and get keep it down. I've actually had that happen to me. It's horrible. Don't put yourself in that situation. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you want to know your limits. If you're starting to feel Lightheaded, get some water immediately.

Yeah. Immediately. Yeah. Yeah. There's a couple things I'd like to say about that. Yeah. You pointed out just now, it's like, it's not just about the extreme end of this where you can end up like hospitalized from dehydration, but it's also about performance benefit. Mm-Hmm. Even just being this much dehydrated is gonna affect your ability to think clearly.

Your urine should because you run the risk of hypo-hydration. clear, you may just be over-consuming water. Yeah. If it's any darker, then very, very light yellow. And also, keep in mind, when you pee into a toilet, it's diluting the color. Yeah. It's going into water.

Yeah. So I want you to look at the shade that it is, and imagine that it's actually a shade darker than that. Yeah. If it has anything more than the palest yellow, you are dehydrated and you should immediately drink water or some kind of beverage that has electrolytes in

Master Victor: in it so it can get in your body.

Yeah.

Master Victor: their

Andy Freebird: It's a little bit of both. Hmm. Like there kind of is an ideal, but what's ideal for a person is what they're gonna do and what works. So some people strive for perfection. Mm-Hmm.

But it's not really something attainable to them, and so then they just don't do it at all. The best plan is what you're gonna stick to. Yeah. Now, what is ideal from a standpoint of muscle growth and recovery has been shown in clinical research to be approximately six times a day. Hmm. That way you're keeping a steady rhythm of what's called muscle protein synthesis, where there's this constant influx of new proteins to the muscles, allowing them to regenerate.

Master Victor: to try to put on mass.

Andy Freebird: And condensing your meals into less meals that can often help a person lose weight. Hmm. Right. Think about like intermittent fasting, for example. Mm-Hmm. You just have a smaller window of the day in which you eat. So it's harder to con, you know, consume a lot of food in that smaller window.

Master Victor: window. Yeah.

Andy Freebird: So it's almost essentially like grazing. Yeah. And I think also you want to think about how this goes with training because you wanna make sure that when you eat a pre-training meal that you give yourself enough time for it to digest. You're not feeling it slosh around in your stomach while you're trying to, you know, spar with someone.

So what Victor's talking about is called carb loading. And this is really popular for endurance athletes because endurance athletes, they're using almost entirely like. Carbohydrates and, and combined with oxygen. Mm-Hmm. In order to produce the energy they need to, to it's essentially a slower method of producing energy, but it's kind of has a, it's more efficient, it's more potent.

Yeah. Yeah. It's way higher in efficiency. So what you could do, like I said earlier, you're storing those carbs in all the muscles in your body. Mm-Hmm. So what you could do is the night before or the day before a lot of carbohydrates, but you would want to consume complex carbohydrates. Mm.

Mm-Hmm. Like a, you know, of glycogen. Those would be better for loading then, like right before you're actually training or even during something that's very simple like some honey or some fructose Yeah. That would give you even more energy. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's really important where, like let's say after you eat dinner, you're gonna consume a bunch of sugar.

That sugar, you're probably gonna go down and sit down on a chair. It's all, it instantly gonna transition into fat. Where I prefer to take my sugar during an exercise or after an exercise to replenish the body. And then that gets processed in my body immediately and then used for energy where it's not just sitting there.

Yeah. And like I have a big sweet tooth that I love. I love chocolate ice cream. Which one is it? Ice cream. Which tooth? All of them, all of them sweet teeth. Oh boy. That's a problem. Yeah, it is. It is. I'll eat a whole like plate of fudge if you leave it. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's bad. Okay. I'll remember never to do that to be very adamant about, you know, controlling my portions,

Master Victor: portions.

Andy Freebird: that for a long time was a and it got me to, to a point where I had to be aware of desire, right.

That that mental desire of like this sugar is actually releasing endorphins and making me happy to ingest it. Mm-hmm. But it's only temporary. Mm-Hmm. In the long run building fat, it's gonna end up bleeding to diabetes and all these other issues that I didn't want. yeah, yeah. That main issue is gonna be your sensitivity to sugar is going to start to get messed up if you're overconsuming it and that's what diabetes is and then your cells can no longer utilize Yeah.

Master Victor: and body composition.

Andy Freebird: I, I think one of the biggest things that I removed from my diet that had the biggest impact was liquid sugar, where like, oh man, sodas, juice Once I removed that, I saw a drastic drop in my weight Yeah. Do you wanna talk more about like, how to maintain that body composition and keeping off weight?

Sure. Well, it's interesting that you pointed out that liquid sugar. It's always easier to consume calories by drinking it. Everybody who's had a you know, getting over food poisoning or something, maybe it's like you don't want to eat something, you're going for like a smoothie maybe first. Right?

Yeah. It's way easier to get a liquid down. Yeah. So in general, liquid macros are the things you want to cut out. So that's going to be like soda, sugar, stuff like that. But it's also gonna be things that are really high in liquid fat, which is oil. So like fried food, for example. The calorie calories from that.

Yeah. It's gonna be way more calories than it should Absolutely. That's a good And what I've noticed is after really changing my diet, I've gotten pretty far away from a lot of these fried foods, especially deep fried foods. They have started to smell different to me. Hmm. Where I used to smell some fried food and I'd be like, oh,

Master Victor: be like, oh, let me go eat

Andy Freebird: I want some, And now it's like, it doesn't even smell like it would be

Master Victor: like it would be good for

Andy Freebird: you know? That's really interesting because I noticed the other day like I don't eat fried food very often. Once in a blue moon. Yeah. You know, that's good. Gotta enjoy life, you But I noticed the other day.

Master Victor: oil.

Andy Freebird: Now, aside from cutting out liquid sugar is there anything else you would say is really important to watch out for, to that body weight?

Master Victor: weight?

Andy Freebird: Well, it, the number one thing, it always comes down to the total amount of calories that you're People usually do this like per day, but you could look at this more in like, sort of a larger scale context.

Mm-Hmm. How much are you eating per week? Per month? Per year? Mm-Hmm. Because I guarantee that if you're like eating the right amount every day and then the next week you eat double that it's not going to be affected. So That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. And so what you want to do initially is to determine like, okay, how much food should I be eating?

Or you could eat a little bit less than that and lose weight, or get a little more and gain weight. problem is it's not really accurate. Yeah. So what you wanna do, try eating that much for a couple weeks. Stand on the scale. Are you the same weight as you were two weeks ago? Yeah. If you are, then it was right. you aren't, then it wasn't. And make a little adjustment. And then you'll find pretty quickly exactly how much you should be eating. Now the, something important to consider when doing this is, let's say you're exercising, doing especially weight training, and you're doing this, you might see an increase in your weight because you're gaining muscle.

And you might have actually lost fat. Yeah. And this kind of gets into that. Measuring specific body parts might really utilize

Master Victor: during

And the more I exercise, the hungrier I get, the more food I want to put in because I've exerted that So, you know, during my rest days over the weekend,

Master Victor: the weekend, sometimes

Andy Freebird: Try not to eat as much, where on the weekend you want to go enjoy yourself, you might eat like two dinners and two desserts and stuff like that.

And that might out all that good work you did that week. 'cause you put in all this fat, all this sugar in all the, at the same time. Yeah. And you're resting and all that's getting transferred into body Yes. Yeah. I take a very similar approach to Victor actually. I base what I'm eating and when I'm eating it around my training.

If I'm burning a ton and maybe if I use my muscles a lot, I need a lot more protein that day to recover. Yeah, absolutely. And let's say like you exercise, you're really sore the next day. What would be something that you To kind of reduce that soreness.

Master Victor: soreness.

Andy Freebird: Okay. So we did talk about vitamin C last time.

Mm-Hmm. Will help with that. Hydration is extremely important. Mm-Hmm. Without it, you're not gonna deliver anything to the muscles that allows them to heal. So proteins gonna be number one there. Yeah. But something that I really recommend people is to add additional leucine to their protein. Mm. The first thing you wanna do is you wanna pick a protein that already is high in leucine content.

Mm-Hmm. Those proteins are gonna come from animal products, primarily milk and eggs. Mm-hmm. To a lesser degree, but still pretty good is gonna be meat, like chicken and beef and that kind Now you can take leucine. Refined. Mm-Hmm. And add it to that. So what you could do, the highest bioavailable protein would be whey protein isolate.

Mm-Hmm. Help stimulate that even more. Yes, absolutely. And I would also recommend in addition to that, collagen peptides, because it's not just your muscles, we gotta recover. It's ligaments. Yes. Connective Now, if, let's say you're a vegan or vegetarian, and you don't ingest animal proteins Mm-Hmm.

It's extremely important for you to get more than one kind of because the, proteins that you get out of plants, they're more basic. So they're not as complex proteins, and you need to get a variety of them in order to complete that entire

Master Victor: that entire protein

Mm-Hmm. And put them together. So when it comes to eating plants, very few plants have what a complete protein. Mm-Hmm. Or like peanuts, for example. They don't actually contain complete proteins, but they're mis missing, I think it's a thionine, if I'm not mistaken, but that's so abundant in other foods.

Oh. However, potatoes are so low in protein content, it's not really effective to like isolate a protein powder outta potatoes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So when it comes to like supplementing for vegans, keep in mind you can get leucine and o and the other branch chain amino aminos, isoleucine, avalian. You can get those vegan.

Hmm. They can make it outta sunflower. Hmm. And I would highly suggest doing that. And I would also say if you're vegan, definitely take protein powder. Because if you eat meat, there are foods that are almost entirely protein. Mm-Hmm. Right. Like a chicken breast that's like a hundred percent protein. Hmm.

Yeah. And I wanna talk about also vegan collagen where, you know, if you take, normal collagen, it's, it's already

Master Victor: it's already

Andy Freebird: collagen. Right now. The vegan collagen is essentially helping the body stimulate the

Master Victor: the natural production

Andy Freebird: Huh? You're not ingesting that's derived from animals.

Right. So, you know, as you take

Master Victor: take

Andy Freebird: vegan protein, you also wanna take

Master Victor: to take. vegan

Andy Freebird: helps your body stimulate that Interesting. Yeah, I didn't know that actually. Now I'm gonna have to look into that. Because endogenous production of collagen would be great. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Right. It's responsible for that REM stage of sleep. So that doesn't surprise me. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause there's also, you know, the pituitary gland is close by, which produces growth hormone, which again, you release during sleep. Hmm. If you're not sleeping, you're not recovering, so you're not gonna get that HGH production.

You're not gonna get that peptide production. Most of your muscle recovery happens while you're sleeping. We talked about protein synthesis. Yes. Most of that's happening when you're

Master Victor: that's happening when So

Andy Freebird: would you say

Master Victor: would you say is that sleep to your

Andy Freebird: Paramount. Yeah. Paramount, I might even say that sleep is more important than training or nutrition.

Yeah. Like that's your square one. Because if you can't do that, you're not gonna recover at all. I don't care what you're eating or how you're training. Okay.

Master Victor: Okay.

Mm-Hmm. To such a degree that it's almost like getting younger in a sense because as we get older, we produce less and less growth hormone. Mm-Hmm. Until some people produce virtually none, and that really impacts their ability to recover.

Master Victor: recover. Yeah.

Andy Freebird: Did you say, would you say that like ice baths also has a role in recovery?

I would say ice baths has a role in recovery in the sense that it can reduce inflammation and probably over time make your nervous system less sensitive to Interesting. If you can learn how to relax in extreme cold, extreme heat and just overall find comfort in the discomfort Mm-Hmm. I would think that that has kind of a cascade effect of exciting recovery.

Your body's gonna send a lot of blood there and it's gonna itself and you want to do the ice bath to essentially reduce the level of soreness. But I've also found that. maybe not necessarily directly after injury or let's say the exercise is bringing heat, like sauna or, oh, definitely hot tub allows more blood flow to get to whatever area you're dealing with

Master Victor: dealing with and actually

Andy Freebird: the rehabilitation.

You wanna speak about that? Yeah. So when it comes to like icing an injury, it's usually we would want to do that when it's like just happened. Yeah. Like an acute injury. And often when that happens you don't have access. So unfortunately, when I'm out doing something, I mean, I smashed my shin trail running last week which I'm actually happy about.

So you wanna immediately put it on there to reduce that swelling. Mm-Hmm. But when it comes to actually recovering from the injury Mm-Hmm. What they're finding is that ice doesn't really seem to do a whole lot, like directly. That's why I said with like the ice bath, it's more of like a cascade effect.

Yeah. But heat seems to like, directly actually improve it. Like you were saying, that improve blood flow. Mm-Hmm. And I think also the supplyability of the tissue, it's more able to like, you know, expand and contract and move uninhibited when it's hot and has that blood. Yeah. Very recently actually experienced that.

When I hurt my knee, we were, we were climbing, I jumped down from bouldering patella moved outta place. Mm-Hmm. Immediately I went and got an ice pack, put it on there helped reduce the swelling that I got. soon as I got home, I started introducing

Master Victor: introducing

Andy Freebird: I took a Epsom salt bath.

Mm-Hmm. And allows for easier movement where like if I'm sitting here and I get up, everything's gonna feel all, Yeah. Especially the joints. Exactly. The knee is your articulation point. Exactly. So that, that's really important in rehabilitation where if you have sore or

Master Victor: you know, you

Andy Freebird: experience an injury, you got a bruise or a broken hand, you might actually wanna add

Master Victor: add some

Andy Freebird: and

Master Victor: and.

Andy Freebird: Yeah. That's a great point. Use anything that you can, you know, if you don't have access to a sauna Mm-Hmm. Or a hot tub. Do what Victor did. Take a Epsom salt bath at home. Get a, you know, a hot pad you can put on there. You can get an electric one or a water one. Doesn't cost much at all. Yeah, absolutely.

Master Victor: to the nutritional

Andy Freebird: know, when you're taking in all these different nutrients, these different meals, you know, how important is your gut health to and to your

Master Victor: and to your health

Mm-Hmm. And then delivered to the target area of the body, and then utilized by that target of the body. If your gut is super inflamed Mm-Hmm. Or if you have like a huge growth of, you know, candida and you're having all kinds of, you know, gas and bloating and everything, I guarantee your body is not optimally going to be able to absorb the nutrients you're

Master Victor: the nutrients you're

Andy Freebird: And I, I think that's something a lot of people sometimes ignore is

Master Victor: is

Andy Freebird: gas. You know, where you're putting something into your system. And that gas is your body telling you something. Yeah. Hey, I'm not able to properly digest this. So it's creating the best thing. Yes, this happens for lactose intolerant.

That's why grumbles when you're hungry, then there's chemical ways to break down food. Like the acids in your stomach. Mm-hmm. Right. The enzymes it's producing. So if you aren't lactose intolerant. You produce a la an enzyme called lactase. Mm-Hmm. And this chemically breaks it down. But if you don't have that, it ends up in your gut.

Which is really weird to think about. Which is really weird to think about. Yeah. Yeah. So some people would benefit by probiotics, some people wouldn't. Mm-Hmm. Right now we don't have a great way to determine exactly which strains you want. Mm-Hmm. How, you know, what population size you need or anything like that.

Yeah. So I don't personally take probiotics. Mm-Hmm. I have taken them in the past. If they work for you, great. Just, it's hard to kind of make a calculated decision about how to go about it. Yeah. You're almost kind of taking a shot in the dark. Like I would say you're experiencing a lot of stomach pains a lot of things aren't working for you.

Yeah. Like, let's say you have, you're drinking kombucha, which has naturally occurring, know, beneficial bacteria being produced in it as long as it's made well. Mm-Hmm. Versus likely you take a little pill that's been sitting on a counter for That may not have the same effect as a live Yes. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to speak a little on foods. Mm-Hmm. That naturally are probiotic. So a lot of fermented foods, they already contain these probiotic strains of bacteria. By the way, probiotic just means pro-Good, right. Con-bad cell, good bacteria. We want these ones.

Yeah. They already have them in it. 'cause they're thriving off of the food they're eating the food. So one of the ones that I recommend to people is a particular kind of yogurt it's called Kafi. Kafi. Yeah. And I drank kefir every day for maybe a month or two. Mm-Hmm. And after that, my ability to tolerate a much wider range of foods increased.

Mm-Hmm. You know, how many CFUs do I want? Which strains what I looked at. A lot of clinical research didn't feel any different. Hmm. But the kefir for me was very effective. So, you know, find out what works for you. Absolutely. And you can meet, you know, kimchi that's also probiotics in it,

Master Victor: in it.

Andy Freebird: kombucha, I believe Skir also does.

It's another fermented yogurt for it's Icelandic. Okay. know. Mm-Hmm. And we're getting kind of into creating a sustainable diet now where, you know, a lot of people jump on this trend or this fad that's

Master Victor: fad that's coming around.

They'll essentially change their entire way of They're not necessarily happy with it. They feel hungry all the time, or they don't feel very happy with what they're doing. And then they'll just go right back they'll, they'll lose some weight. Right. And then you, they'll go right back into their old habits.

Yes. And then all that weight comes back Yes. You wanna speak about like, to create a sustainable habit and avoiding these kind of fad traps? Yeah. I think the first thing I wanna say is I want to illustrate the importance of doing that by just explaining that the vast majority of people who lose a significant amount of weight, like more than 15 pounds, the vast majority of those people gain it back within the

Master Victor: back within

actually filling to you?

Hmm. Are you feeling like you are satiated? Or are you going through your day feeling like you're starving? Torturing yourself. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause if it doesn't taste good and you're starving, I guarantee you're ready for relapse. So if you're out there listening to this and you want to lose some weight, I want to tell you, you can definitely do this.

And it's actually easier than you might think it is. But you need to go into it with a mentality that if you don't enjoy eating the food that you eat and you don't feel full from it, you will absolutely relapse. Mm-Hmm. And I, I think it's a better approach to remove small things from the diet and then see their effect.

Master Victor: diet

Andy Freebird: did drastic effects. And I go out of my way not to drink soda.

I probably, the first time I drank soda was maybe a month ago. Mm-Hmm. At a movie theater. And I was like, I, I want to get a movie theater, and popcorn. It's classic. You. Yeah. I hadn't been in a movie theater in a year, so I got myself a big soda and I, I could taste the sugar in every single sip.

I was like, I don't know how I used to drink time. It when you'd stop drinking soda. Mm-Hmm. And I'm curious if you experienced this. 'cause I also once in a blue moon, my guilty pleasure is Coca-Cola in the glass bottle. You gotta open it with the bottle opener. Okay. But you know, once in a blue moon, once every few When I was young though, I drank a lot of soda. I know you did When I drank a soda, when I was young, it felt refreshing. When I drink a soda. Now once you quit drinking soda, it's like syrup. It feels and tastes like syrup. Not like a refreshing liquid. Yes. So you experienced that too?

Master Victor: like it's,

Andy Freebird: you know, getting into your blood system, you know?

Yeah. It kind of like sends you up in your little jittery Yeah. And then it kind of crashes you back down. Yeah. I, I didn't so much like that feeling about it. Yeah. Me either.

Master Victor: me either. Yeah.

Andy Freebird: So, you know, the best ways I would say to diet is look at what you're eating. Find out what has a lot of fat,

Master Victor: of fat,

Andy Freebird: you know, start maybe reducing those things and, you know,

Master Victor: you know,

Andy Freebird: maybe you need to exercise a little bit more.

So if you're trying to lose weight, you want to gravitate towards foods that are very filling, but low in calories. Mm-Hmm. The foods that are the most filling and lowest in calories are the foods that are highest in water and fiber. So fruits, vegetables, leafy greens. Like you eat a few handfuls of spinach, you're like, I'm good.

Or like peanut butter even better. 'cause now it's like processed in a way that's easier to eat. Yeah. Almond butter, peanut butter. And you eat a few spoonfuls of that, you're racking up the calories that just like, you're not even close to full.

Master Victor: to full.

Yeah, that's a good point. That's a very good

Andy Freebird: And you know, a lot of people also have trouble, like when they go out to yeah.

In their social life creating a good routine and keeping it, especially when you go out, you know? Yeah. Would you give, want to give any advice

Master Victor: any advice on,

Andy Freebird: that or how to handle those situations? Yeah, so one of the things that you can do is actually eat before you go out, eat something at home or from a place that is healthy.

Mm-Hmm. And then when you go out, you know, it might be tempting to eat with the other people there, but go into it knowing like, okay, I don't have to do what other people are doing. I have my own. Plan with my nutrition and diet, and the reason I'm really here isn't to eat, it's to socialize and spend time with my friends and enjoy being with them.

Master Victor: in hungry. That's a good point.

Andy Freebird: And for, you know, dietary restrictions, let's say, you know, you're vegetarian or vegan, there can be a lot of restrictions, let's say, if you go to a steakhouse and have very little options.

Mm-Hmm. For, you know, vegetarians, vegans. So it's about, you know, picking the right places to eat. Mm-Hmm. As well as, you know, being ready if they don't have anything there, maybe, you know, you ate before you went Mm-Hmm. So you're not as hungry, you're not required to, you know, rely on that outlet of food.

Yeah. For, for nutrition the social pressures of other people eating. Especially like I'm personally vegetarian you know. I still crave meat. So when I go into situations where there's a lot of meat,

Master Victor: lot of meat,

Master Victor: you make a decision to. Like,

Andy Freebird: instead of ordering, you know, the,

Master Victor: the,

Andy Freebird: let's say pound and a half steak, maybe you get the chicken if you eat meat.

Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. Or, you know, instead of ordering the really high fat dessert at the end of the meal, maybe you don't eat dessert that day. Yeah. It's about making like these small but really impactful choices in not only your private setting, but in your social I like how you just said that about maybe you don't eat

Master Victor: you don't eat dessert

Mm. You see what I'm saying? Mm-Hmm. So make decisions based on that. Say, well, I really want to eat some ice cream today. I haven't had in a long time. Then maybe don't eat a bag of potato chips that day. Right. Don't put all of these junk food things together, or you're gonna quickly overconsume Absolutely. And you know, do you have your own customized diet plan that you follow at the moment? I do. So at the moment I've kind of been going more organically just. Kind of winging it. Mm-Hmm. Like at this point, I know what my body needs. I know what foods are healthy and aren't, and I'm not trying to be the biggest, most muscular version of myself.

Make sure I was hitting all my essential, you know, micro levels. Mm-Hmm. And yeah, it tasted amazing and I, it was really not filling 'cause I was trying to gain weight so I could eat a ton of it. And it was super effective. I, you know, bulked up during that diet plan 30 pounds. Nice.

During that bulk. Yeah. Wow. And you just mentioned something really important. I think a lot of people will sodium. Mm-Hmm. And they, like, sodium is important. You definitely need sodium, but especially when you eat meat, a lot of people put a lot of salt in their food. sodium can really dry you out it can have a lot of different effects especially, if you don't have the healthiest diet Mm-Hmm.

Where it's, you are gonna have problems going to the bathroom and having to push harder. And that can have different effects through your bowels. it's really important to maintain

Andy Freebird: a moderate or low level of sodium in your diet so that you're not experiencing problems in your digestive Yeah.

Yeah. So sodium is similar to water, kind of in this regard where it's relevant, it's relative to the needs of the individual. Mm-Hmm. And the athlete. So for a lot of people, if you're like inactive, you're probably over-consuming sodium. And as Victor said, it affects your health. That also affects your heart health.

So it's important for longevity not to over-consume sodium. But if you're an athlete and you're sweating a ton, especially if you're like an endurance, you do some kind of endurance training or a martial artist and you're going long rounds of sparring, your sodium needs are higher. And you may actually, if you eat really healthy and you cook all your own food, you'll become sodium deficient.

Is sugar. Mm-Hmm. Where I, I really only try to have sugar when I'm And aside from that, I try not to eat really high fatty you know, deep fried fried foods, chips, I save those for snacks. Maybe we're going on a long drive know, I'll have some potato chips. Mm-Hmm. it, it's really restricting those things that I don't necessarily need, but increasing the things I do. Mm-Hmm. know, leafy greens,

Master Victor: greens.

Master Victor: is really important

Andy Freebird: you know, you're not straining off for like a whole month going on like a sugar binge. 'cause then yeah, that's gonna have all of the negative effects.

And then you're gonna be, I. And a whole world of her.

Master Victor: of hurt.

Like for me, if I'm craving sweets, I'll just eat like a handful of blueberries or like some strawberries or something like that. Just way long enough. There's barely any fructose in that. Like you, the amount of blueberries you would have to eat in order for the amount of fructose in your body to be problematic is like astronomical.

Yeah. Even probably like the eating contest champion of Earth probably couldn't even do that. Like Yeah. It's mostly water. I think it was maybe I don't know how long ago now, like eight years ago I actually ended up in the hospital for digestive so, my stomach produces. excessive amount of acids.

Master Victor: acids.

Hmm.

Andy Freebird: in turn, like that makes its way down my digestional tract I see. To and large intestines.

Master Victor: large intestines.

Master Victor: almost anything.

Andy Freebird: you eat your stomach acids increased to break down all that food. And I would feel indigestion, feel gas. And I also wasn't taking enough fiber. overeating sodium and I wasn't drinking enough water. I ended up going to the hospital because I became extremely constipated.

And I have hemorrhoids where I wasn't able to, to push

Master Victor: to push because

Andy Freebird: so hemorrhoids is essentially, you're the, there's a vein inside of. Your rectum can swell up and like pressurize. Yeah. It becomes really painful. Yeah. Especially when you have a bowel movement. And I have internal and external hemorrhoids and I ended up having to go to the hospital so I could go to the bathroom.

It was, it was bad. Wow. After that experience, I completely changed my diet. I was about to ask. Yeah. Like that's probably a wake up call. Right. I've reduced my, my coffee intake to almost none. Mm-Hmm. Now I actually drink Rize, which is a,

Master Victor: is a

Andy Freebird: Like mushroom based coffee. It still has, those are pretty popular now.

And these foods that you're eating are actually having a negative Yeah. Some people can't actually feel that effect and some people can. Hmm. This is what we call it interoception. Some people have a stronger ability to sense what's happening inside their body. Other people can't even tell.

So they're eating these foods and it's damaging them. They don't even know. Yeah. So I had kind of the opposite problem of Victor, which was that I had reflux disease. So rather than that overproduction of acid going down my, into my gut, it was going up into my esophagus. Ooh. Now, what ends up happening when that takes place is that the cells in your esophagus think, oh, there's a lot of acid here.

So I was also eating foods that were acidic that was causing this. Mm-Hmm. And by the way, this condition called Barrett's esophagus, it's considered precancerous, so it kind of starts reflux Barrett's esophageal cancer. Oh. So I cut out tomatoes. That was one that was really getting me. Yeah. And I stopped drinking coffee for a while.

What I ended up eventually finding, you know, once the damage had healed was that the combination of foods you eat is a huge factor. Yeah. So there's foods that are very basic and will actually kind of cut that down as well. So, for example, I like coffee. Mm-Hmm. If I put a shot of espresso with like some oat milk or something, I don't feel any acidity at all.

You gimme some black coffee. No. Yeah. That's gonna be bad.

Master Victor: be bad.

And they, what do they eat? Oh, ice cream. Yeah. Or milk. Yeah. But even better, the ice cream's cold too. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause that the fats in it will just kind of help that, bring that acidity down and like, cool. Everything back down. Absolutely. That's, a very good point.

Master Victor: good point.

Andy Freebird: So kind of just to review a lot of what we've talked about so is, you know, if you're having trouble maintaining or getting to a strict diet, you know, maybe don't have such a drastic change where you look at the little things that you're know, maybe you're having

Well, that's the, that's the perfect Yeah. All mode. The problem is these foods are so tempting to eat that if you simply just have them in your house. It's maybe you have self gets, like you have self-control till you don't. Yeah. You know, I have pretty good self-control with that. I, I can put ice cream in my freezer, no joke and not touch it for months.

Then I'll have that one bad day and that ice cream is gone in one sitting. Yeah. So only buy what you are, what you want to eat. Mm-Hmm. Buy smaller portions. Yeah. You want ice cream. Go get like a tiny like ice cream bar or something and just eat it. Yeah. You want potato chips. Get one of those little travel bags.

Yes. And I'm gonna tell you right now, unless you have like a mind of iron that significantly reducing your calories is gonna drive you insane. Like you're gonna be so grumpy, hungry, tired, I would never recommend a deficit of calories greater than 500 calories. Hmm. So we talked about how to establish where your baseline is, right?

Mm-Hmm. With using a calorie calculator in a scale, once you have that baseline, I'd recommend maybe just two or 300 calories below that. And if you can handle 500 calories below that, cool. Probably wouldn't go any less than that. Mm-Hmm. You're just gonna be miserable. Yeah. Yeah. And then you can incorporate exercises to help reduce that weight.

Master Victor: a lot longer to see those, those

Andy Freebird: Totally. Yeah. So this is something that is important to recognize is the more calories you're, that you're burning, you could eat more food. 'cause ultimately it's like you have kind of a, a hypothetical scale. How much energy are you using that day? How much food are you eating that day? Mm-Hmm. So if the amount of food you're eating, ex Exceeds, the amount that you're actually moving, you gain weight.

If the amount that you're moving exceeds the amount that you're eating, you lose weight. So one way to be able to be able to lose weight without feeling like you're starving is just move more. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've tried both approaches. I've been incredibly lean before. I think, like I said, I've been down to probably five, 6% body fat, and I've taken an approach of just caloric restriction and I've taken an approach where there was more.

Yeah. Yeah. And with that cardio, like I can eat sugar and not feel that same effect. Yeah. You know, and I've, I've actually noticed that, you know, the, the healthier I get doing my exercises, the less sugar and the less trash food I want to eat. Mm-Hmm. Because I'm starting to see those beneficial impacts in my life, and then I want to keep going.

Yes. You know, I don't want to fall off and then go back to being, you know, a couch potato. Totally. Which I was for a while. So, you know, the more progress you make, the more you want to stay at it. And as long as it's gradual, then it becomes a lot easier to, Yeah. Yeah. I definitely agree with that.

Yeah,

Master Victor: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Andy Freebird: I think that pretty much covers like a lot of

Master Victor: lot of

Andy Freebird: the nutritional aspect and recovery. Mm-Hmm. Is there anything else you'd like to kind of throw in there,

Master Victor: of throw in there? like

Andy Freebird: I think the final thing that I would say is just

to the best of your abilities, try to try to avoid foods that are processed.

Yes. You know, minimal processing might be okay. Like if you want like some, you know, natural peanut butter or something like that. Like sure that's processed, but Mm-Hmm. Ultra-refined carbohydrates and sugars like corn syrup and that kind of stuff. Try to stay away from it. The more real food you eat. The better.

Using a lot of pesticides. Like you can taste the difference when you, you know, you eat really good organic food or let's say even homegrown food. especially those of you who have, you know, gone outside of the country. Let's say you've gone to Mexico, their food tastes a lot richer. Yeah. Like, I will eat about half the amount of food when I go outside of the country and it feels a lot more filling and it has a lot more nutrients because it's grown differently where a lot of our agriculture.

Is meant to create mass amounts of food. Mm-Hmm. But it may be lacking in those

Master Victor: in those nutrition.

Andy Freebird: And, you know, there's a lot of other ways of growing food that, you know, it retains it. It takes that energy from the sun, from the water, from the soil, creates healthier food. Yeah. So the quality of food that you're putting into your body, the less processed it is, the better grown it is.

Master Victor: growing with a bunch of

Andy Freebird: and you know it's gonna be better for you to put that in your body rather than all this other trash that Yeah, I a hundred percent agree with that. I guess I'll point out like a couple of, maybe the most important ones to be mindful of would be strawberries, because this is gonna be the highest use of pesticides. So, you know, not everybody can afford organic groceries does cost more, but if you're gonna eat strawberries, I highly recommend that you get them organic because otherwise they will inherently be absolutely covered, like just way more pesticides than you would find on most foods.

Yes. Doesn't have, you know, growth hormones and antibiotics and any of that kind of stuff in it. Yeah. It's gonna be in their blood system in the meat. Yep. And you're putting that in you, yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's super important. Exactly. I think that pretty much wraps it up. If you all wanna learn more, make sure you subscribe.

We're gonna be going into other aspects of recovery, and improvement. You can go to fairacademy.com slash you, check out more information, and we'll see y'all in the next episode. Take care.