Brad Kearns Pt 2: Take The Cold Water Plunge, Unlock Dietary Success, and Master Your Body at Any Age

February 6, 2019
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This is Part 2 of our interview with Brad Kearns, for Part 1 click here to listen. In this show, we pick back up on the testosterone conversation from Part 1 of the show.

Brad is the host of the Get Over Yourself podcast, professional speedgolfer, co-author to the Primal Endurance and Keto Reset Diet with Mark Sisson.

Enhancing testosterone naturally (summary):

  1. Reduce training stress: Do fat-burning/MAF workouts and limited HIIT (covered in part 1)
  2. Chronic temperature stress
  3. Diet: Be a conscious eater, sensible, and avoid extremes.

Topics covered in our continued conversation:

  • Temperature stress as a hormetic stress:
    • Cryotherapy – does it count for cold water therapy? Maybe not as effective but has its own benefits.
    • Cold water is an instant cure for anxiety and boosts norepinephrine. In as little as 30 seconds you alter your physiology to reap the benefits.
    • Chronic cold exposure can benefit immune function, and adaptations for athletes who will be in the cold
    • Get out before you start shivering or feeling loopy! You can take it too far!
  • Diet and testosterone
    • Eliminate nutrient-deficient foods, i.e. get rid of the crap! (Whether that’s vegan, keto, macros, etc.)
    • Be a conscious eater, sensible, and avoid extremes.
    • It doesn’t just have to be the ancestral diet (i.e. an overabundance of fruit maybe is not the best idea even if it is a natural food our ancestors ate).
  • Main goal:
    • Metabolic flexibility – don’t be wedded to regular meals as main source of energy and get good at burning your own fat for fuel!!!
    • Achieve this with intermittent fasting, lower carb periods, etc.
    • But it’s not just about low carb to get there, we produce glucose in other ways that can spike blood sugar even in the absence of carbs–a lot of this is stress and a chronic sympathetic state.
  • Diet and stress:
    • Don’t let dietary ambitions cause you more stress.
    • Sometimes time-restricted feeding works, sometimes it doesn’t.
    • If you’re healthy you should be able to handle any food (in moderation).
    • Don’t just blame the food if things aren’t happening.
    • Do avoid things like bad fats and oils.
    • It’s important to create healthy habits that will last.
    • Moderation vs. keeping a strict diet regimen. Brad says be strict at first, especially with sugars, bad fats, etc., and eventually you can be more moderate when health and metabolism are in good shape.
  • Other
    • Vegetable oils = not good! See Cate Shanahan‘s resources.
    • How eating well can boost your MAF pace.
    • Dropping excess body fat: Be good at burning fat before you start trying to lose weight. Sounds easy enough to just drop carb intake and decrease insulin levels to lose weight, but this can been further disruptive to an unhealthy body. FIRST you have to be healthy, i.e. gut health in order, stress managed, cortisol levels normal, able to burn fat for fuel, etc.
    • The Keto Reset Diet says for gut health: Leaky gut is rampant for endurance athletes, so start with fueling with clean foods during training.
    • To boost his T levels, Brad takes a highly spontaneous approach these days. Dr. Tommy Wood said he needed to eat more food to get rid of energy fluctuations, with less fasting. Sometimes more moderation sometimes hardcore keto.
    • The most important factor is having the mental commitment to do what it takes to achieve your desired goals.
    • Tawnee makes the point, do we sometimes sabotage ourselves from achieving these goals because we have unhealed wounds and mental work that needs to be done first?
    • So it’s not just about getting healthy first before losing weight, it’s about being mentally sound as well!
    • Food can be a coping mechanism. Don’t use food as a drug.
    • Be mindful of disordered eating patterns if they develop on the healthy diet journey, and being careful not to develop an eating disorder.
    • Gluten – do we all need to give it up or is there a case for it being ok?

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