This podcast on nutrition dives deep into food and nutrition as how it relates to health, and well-being. Darius and Peter discuss their personal journeys from viewing food simply as fuel to understanding its profound impact on health and well-being. The hosts emphasize lifelong learning to optimize nutritional health, discussing topics like intermittent fasting, avoiding processed foods, and listening to one’s body. They also address emotional eating and the complexities of dietary choices as men age, highlighting the importance of mindfulness in eating.
Key Points
- The importance of mindful eating: paying attention to when you eat, what you eat and why are you choosing to eat?
- We often eat for pleasure and comfort, but sometimes the comfort we’re seeking isn’t just physiological, sometimes it’s emotional.
- The prevalence of chronic diseases like cancer, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s is increasing, and many of these diseases are linked to diet and nutrition choices.
Darius
And welcome, everyone to another episode of 50 to 70 meaningful conversations between men. I'm here with my good friend and co-host, Peter. Peter, how are you?
Peter
I'm doing great, Darius. It's good to be here with you. With our audience as well. And I Just want to preface today's episode as I wish we would do more often. This is a conversation, between men that we highlight. But it's also. We're learning. Having an impact on women who have to interact with men.
Darius
And interact, deal with, tolerate.
Peter
And so we also want to make sure we welcome in our audience the women who are listening to the podcast on nutrition. And you're welcome.
Darius
Or we're sorry, I'm not sure which way to go. Yeah. So those of you who have been following with us, we've covered a number of different topics. And today's is going to be on diet and nutrition. And this is a subject that Peter and I have a big preface. Neither Peter or I are nutritionists or medical doctors, but this is a subject of, really intense importance.
Darius
I guess I would describe it to both of us, given some of the realizations we've had.
Peter
Yes. And both of us, as lifelong learners, have learned from our mistakes, made adjustments, and continue to make adjustments with the objective of maintaining a high level of health and well-being and vitality, especially as we age. As we've coined a number of times in our attempts to age differently.
Darius
Yeah, perhaps. And I recognize that for many members of our audience, food might be a triggering event because a lot of people have complex relationships with food and and use food for other things other than nutrition. And we'll touch on that as well as we go through this.
Peter
Yeah. Which brings me to the audience. Can't see this, but I have a T-shirt on. You'll see it in the video, says Eat Good. Feel good. I think part of our conversation today is going to be what do we mean by good. Is it good. Isn't pleasurable. And satisfying and that's it. Or do we mean good as in something that is more appropriate for your overall health and well-being.
Peter
Or is it a balance.
Darius
Yeah. So we've got three questions we're going to cover during the course of this episode. One is when to eat. Two is what to eat, and three long one that is why you're choosing to eat?
Peter
Yes.
Darius
But before we get into those, my history of food is pretty simple. When I was growing up, if you put it in front of me, I'd eat it. Just. I considered food, fuel for the engine. Did I read a label? No. Did I try to eat healthy? Yeah, I tried to eat healthy. But was I really eating healthy?
Darius
Probably not, with the abundance of processed foods. And I traveled a lot for work, which meant I ate out constantly and you have no idea what is actually going into your body when you're eating out. And it's only in the last three years where I become more mindful and more conscious and more prioritizing, I guess, is the word. What I'm going to eat, when I'm going to eat, to make sure that my body's getting the fuel it needs.
Peter
Yeah, yeah, I was similar as a child, you know, as a child or even all the way up to a young adult. You basically follow whatever your parents leads or whatever their customs, their family habits have been. As a young adult, though, I started to ask questions, you know, and ask and read. And, you know, at that time there was a kind of a revolution happening in food as people started to challenge whether the manufacturer and the industrial complex of food processing was healthy for individuals and as well as with animals as well.
Peter
That was another consideration that I won't just overlook. But as a young adult, I started looking into it. I started looking to see if there was a benefit to things like eating less red meat, eating less processed foods like, eating more vegetables and fruit, which I liked it as a young adult was on our table quite often or around quite often.
Peter
So that was kind of natural. But it may not be natural for most people or many people in the audience. And so the question is, what happens now when you're an adult? Maybe we should talk about that.
Darius
The ability to make choices. So the first choice is when to eat. And I was growing up conditioned, got the belief you need to eat breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And then I started reading about intermittent fasting and the benefits of not eating all the time and allowing the body to reset and not expend energy digesting food.
Darius
And obviously, for those not familiar with the concept, intermittent fasting every day you don't eat for 12, 14, 16, 18, 20 hours, and then you eat in a smaller window of time. Have you tried to use intermittent fast?
Peter
It's so ironic. I first want to mention that I grew up with a number of cultural influences.
Darius
Okay.
Peter
And so, I grew up in a Latin household. My mother's Cuban. And so the habits weren't always to have breakfast, except for maybe on the weekend. As a child, yes. But adults, as I became a young adult, was around other adults. As I grew up and was influenced, my father being in the military by cultures, Japanese, Korean, German that some of my friends, their mothers were there were all kinds of influences that I, some of which I adapted, some of which I admired, some of which I ignored.
Peter
So I have, through my life been kind of ebbed and flowed with breakfast. Now as an adult, I don't and, I don't really feel a need or a desire to eat breakfast, except for when I'm with you. You're eating breakfast. But to answer your question about intermittent fasting, almost by, default, I become an intermittent fasting.
Peter
I tend to eat late now. I'm eating earlier as I've aged and recognize eating late is not good for my body, not healthy. And so I eat a little earlier, and I still don't have a desire to eat breakfast. And my own metabolism. I don't feel hungry until, like, the afternoon. So I've come to eat one big meal a day.
Peter
That's that's how I've. And unconsciously and now consciously find myself intermittently fasting. I won't eat anything of substance until about 4:00 after having eaten a meal, maybe at seven the evening before, say nine. And so I find that my energy levels are high. My, I'm not spending a lot of time with digestion. And that's one of the things, the food that I eat, I have to be much more conscious that it's, feeding my body appropriately, the nutrition.
Peter
And I've figured that out, you know, and the way I figure it out is by being with my body, paying attention. You know, we've covered this in a number of episodes, being mindful of what's going on with my own body. And so having done that for a number of decades now, some things I've learned, some things I've unlearned, some things are habits that I still haven't rid myself of.
Peter
Some things ebb and flow sometimes I come back to doing things in the way I used to, and then sometimes I realize that's not in my best interest. That's not best for this being that I call home.
Darius
Yeah. So if I think about it, I've had some research in front of me on the benefits of intermittent fasting, which you're personifying, improve cognitive performance, weight loss, no change in physical performance. In other words it doesn't negatively impact athletes that are out there, prevention of some cancers is cardioprotective and even help reduce the need for insulin in some patients with type two diabetes.
Darius
So yeah, essentially what's happening is we're allowing the body rather than focusing energy on digesting to clean up and to heal itself along the way. Yeah, such a powerful tool. Now, it's not easy if my metabolism is very different than yours. I wake up hungry. I choose not to eat until 10 or 11. Then I'll have a nice solid breakfast and then around 4:00 I'm just hungry.
Darius
Yeah, just. I need to eat and eat and eat and eat. And I'll try and stop. Similar to you, by around 6:00 at night, because I want to have that four hours before going to sleep. So that I'm not digesting my food while I'm sleeping. That's done. Yeah.
Peter
Yeah. Well, you're much better at that than I am. I'm. I have to confess to you in the audience. I'm still, still, working on that one.
Darius
Have you ever tried an extended fast?
Peter
Yes.
Darius
And your experience?
Peter
Oh, it's such a detoxifying, cleansing experience. And it reaches not only into the metabolism in the body. It's not into the physical aspects of your being, but your mind as well. And, you know, we throughout our episodes keep talking about the relationship of emotions. To your being, it also is a cleansing of the, the emotional weights, that perhaps you've been carrying because you just, you're focused on just being, you're not distracted by processing food or thinking about food or having an emotional tie to the foods you eat.
Peter
Because we do, all of that during the periods of fasting just kind of gets neutral.
Darius
How long do you go for?
Peter
I've done as long as a week. Typically I try to do three days at the beginning of the year. Fasting, just water. Some people and I, I've done juice, fruit juice for seven days. There's kind of different ways you can fast. You know, the one that I mentioned, just water, no solid foods, including, no soups either.
Darius
No soups.
Peter
But some people do fruit juice, which is water loaded with fruit juice. So there's a couple of different ways to approach it. You could also and I can suggest this to somebody who's trying it for the first time. You could also do it gradually. So you kind of wean off to, you know, maybe a big meal is what you have once a day, or maybe you have 2 or 3 meals and instead you do one meal the next day you have half a meal, the next day you do no meal.
Peter
So there's a couple of ways that I suggest you could approach fasting.
Darius
Yeah, I've done three day juice fast. One day water. I don't have a spiritual experience. I just get lethargic and tired and don't want to do very much for those days.
Peter
All three days?
Darius
No.
Peter
Day three okay, there's different theories on that. I'll share with you my experience and the experience of others who have shared with me. It takes three days to get to where you reach the cleansing.
Darius
Yeah.
Peter
Yes.
Darius
Would make sense. So when we break the fast and when we are eating, what do you usually eat? Peter?
Peter
I eat as clean as I possibly can. And when I say clean, I mean foods that are not processed. Vegetables, fruits, lean protein. I don't eat chicken. No, and I only started eating fish again, in large part because I felt my body wasn't getting enough omega. I mean, that may sound strange.
Darius
Makes sense to me.
Peter
But in this practice of mindfulness, having a sense, an awareness, the awareness. And, you know, I like to quote awareness in this way when you realize that everything you do makes a difference, you begin to pay impeccable attention. That's a quote from Sarah Bornstein. And so, I've learned to pay impeccable attention to what's going on with my body and what happens when I eat certain foods.
Peter
And this is my invitation to the audience. Just make a note of I'll give you the easiest one when you go on a drinking binge. That's a food.
Peter
I say it's wine. Try to notice how you feel the next day. Or if you go drinking hard alcohol how do you feel. So isn't your body kind of telling you how it felt about what you just ingested. It does that with every food that you intake. So if you're paying attention impeccably then you start to identify what's good, what's not so good for your body.
Darius
You mentioned processed foods. What's a processed food or processed food?
Peter
Using foods that are, enhanced with preservatives or enhanced with flavors that aren't natural to the food that you're eating. And it's been some, it's grown as part of the food industrial complex as a way of selling this commodity that we call food, which should be more than just a commodity for us. It should be life sustaining. Health building.
Darius
Life enhancing.
Peter
Life enhancing. Yeah. And so again, this, this different mindset of paying attention.
Darius
Yeah. The, the processed foods is a big no no for me. That's one of the things that I have steered away from. And as you become mindful and you actually start to read labels, things that you thought were good for you. So roasted almonds. I love roasted almonds until I looked at the label and they're roasted in canola oil, which is an obviously an unhealthy fat.
Darius
So now I need to get my own almonds and dry roast them. And you talked about the, the, artificial chemicals that are added. They'll say natural flavors on a lot of labels. Natural flavors aren't actually the natural flavors. They're basically chemicals designed to simulate that flavor.
Peter
Yes.
Darius
Right. So it's not like if you're getting, a lemon drink with natural flavors, they got a little bit of lemon juice in there. Now they have the lemon chemical in there. And the more you learn the dyes.
Peter
Oh the dyes.
Darius
Aspartame, all of these artificial sweeteners, it's just terrible.
Peter
For having a lot of the dyes been linked to cancer.
Darius
Absolutely. And that's why I remember reading a study, the dyes get pulled and new dyes that do the same thing get put on the market that haven't shown the links to cancer yet. So processed food just I mean, it's everything if it comes in a box, if it comes in a bag. And the other thing I've noticed about them, not only do they taste different, they're addictive.
Darius
You want more!
Peter
Yes. Yeah, yeah. And have you noticed where that's most prevalent?
Darius
United States.
Peter
Which type of food establishments?
Darius
Which type of food establishments? Fast food.
Peter
Yes.
Darius
Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
Peter
You know, where foods are enhanced so that you just get addicted to the flavors and you want to go back and buy some more and it's priced right. And you don't have to look to see why. Is it healthy for me or not. Yeah.
Darius
Well the answer I think we all can tell. The answer is no. Yeah. All right. So we talked a lot about processed foods and how bad processed foods are for you. Now let's talk about what we should be eating. You mentioned eating clean. And that has a lot of different connotations. I've over the course of my life, I've been a vegetarian.
Darius
I've been, pescatarian where I've been vegan, except for fish. I tried, what was it? High protein diet. Was that called Atkins? I can't remember what it was called. I tried that, and what I found is that for my body, it's clean as defined by fruits, vegetables, nuts, lean proteins, healthy fats, and by healthy fats. Extra virgin olive oil, avocado, nuts.
Darius
Not the kind of stuff that you get. The movie theater and the popcorn, which, speaking of addictive, that's a textbook example of addictive. But what is eating clean in your mind?
Peter
You know, that's, again, so customized to our audience, some of whom may have intolerance to certain foods and, have more tolerance for others in general. We've kind of learned to, give our bodies protein and limited amount of carbs and lots of fruits and vegetables. So in, in, in their most natural state is what I would define as clean.
Peter
But I'm going to throw a curveball at you today.
Darius
Okay.
Peter
I'm going to define diet and eating clean as foods that keep you from being sick.
Peter
Taking on dis ease in the body or disease, I would invite you and the audience and this is kind of an approach I've taken. I'm trying to eat in a way where I maintain my physiology, my immune system, and I don't get sick. And that's what I'm trying to pay attention to. I haven't had a cold in decades, except for right after, my Covid shots.
Darius
I would say I would build on your thesis, the curveball, and say that eating clean and what everybody's body needs is different. And you need to listen to what your body is telling you and react, not react. Respond accordingly. In other words, if you are having difficulty losing weight, well, the body is telling you you either need to move, go back to listen to our podcast, move it or lose it, reduce your calories, or get rid of the processed garbage that's going in.
Darius
I mean, for me, I avoid there's foods that I avoid, alcohol. If I have one drink, have an allergic reaction. So if I'm going to have one, I'm going to have seven. I'm going to have a good old allergic reaction followed by a wonderful hangover the next day. By allergic reaction, I mean, blotched skin, wake up at 4:00 in the morning, sweating, heart racing, nauseated.
Peter
How's that working out for you?
Darius
That's why I don't drink anymore. It's a gift. Processed sugar, poison. I mean, just so bad for you when it comes to prematurely aging the cells and aging the body. Personally, I avoid dairy because I've found that it puffs me up, which results in some kind of inflammation going on. You know, something there that I don't that doesn't respond well to?
Peter
Most people have, are not they have an intolerance to lactose in dairy. I don't, I don't consume dairy.
Darius
Yeah. And then unhealthy fats, like any kind of seed oil I tend to avoid taste. Great. But I just know for long term aging differently.
Peter
Yeah. And you know, it's you know, we're saying these things. And I would like the audience to know that we're both I am challenged in keeping alignment to eating healthy, even with the objective of eating so that I don't incur illness, I still fall back on bad old habits. You know, you mentioned processed food, processed sugar. You know, my my children tease me all the time that I'm a I'm a sugar addict.
Peter
Because I love sweets. I'm much better than I used to be, but it's still so indelibly imprinted in my psyche and in my habits that, you know, I revert back every down that with what I know.
Darius
Well, it's interesting, because now we're getting to the last topic we need to cover here, which is why people eat now, if you are like younger us, as you eat because you're hungry, you're trying to build mass, you're trying to get ready for whatever it is you're doing. But as you get older, what I've seen is that the relationship people have with their food becomes far more complex.
Darius
And I think you're touching on that complex. Yeah. So why do people eat? Peter?
Peter
I think I feel that the the answer lies very much in how our psyches have been imprinted, conditioned, habituated over time. And in general, we I, as I said, with sweets, desserts, look for a pleasurable experience. And so we we're kind of addicted to comfort and pleasure. And food is one of those most can be one of those most immediately satisfying experiences.
Peter
Good food. Good tasting food based on what you learned, what you were conditioned to believe or experiences. This is so pleasant. And so oftentimes I think that's why we eat. We eat for pleasure and for comfort. But sometimes the comfort we're seeking isn't just physiological. Sometimes it's emotional.
Darius
Yeah. And then I'm bored watching TV. Maybe I'll just go get something to snack on. I'm not feeling good. To your point. I'm depressed. Give me. I want some ice cream because I'm depressed is right. Eating to get that comfort or the other one is stressed. I'm stressed out. I'm really focused on this. I need to eat.
Darius
But in all of those examples that we're talking about, food is being used as a crutch. Yeah, it's not being used for nutrition. It's being used as a crutch. Because if you think about the choices that you make when you're in that state, it's typically not an apple, some celery, some carrots. It's cookies, crackers, cheese, potato chips, cake.
Darius
It's things that are super pleasant.
Darius
Super pleasant for the moment. But then not afterwards.
Peter
No no I didn't say super healthy.
Darius
No really. And you can if you start paying attention to your body you can feel the effects sometimes within seconds, sometimes just in hours, sometimes the next day.
Peter
Yeah. And we don't have to say much about the longer term effects do we? You know, maybe we should.
Darius
We can touch on the longer term effects, but you can Google cancer rates, obesity rates, diabetes rates. I mean, all Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, the rates, the prevalence of all of these are going up in this country. Yes. And we're spending money trying to get a pill to cure it. Whereas we're not looking at the source of the problem, which is we are what we eat.
Darius
So do you want to be Cheetos or do you want to be an organic apple? Yeah. Do you want to be, you know, ring pops or whatever kind of sweet stuff is out there? Or do you want to be grass fed beef that you have once a week voluntary? However often you need it that builds the body the right way.
Peter
Yes. Yeah. And prevents decay or retards decay and slows down illnesses. Yeah. Slows down the degeneration that happens with aging, which is, you know, one of the major themes we have here at age differently and on this podcast on nutrition. So food is just such a critical aspect of being.
Darius
It is we can't live without it. I want the other thing I'll, I'll comment on is sometimes when I'm hungry, I'm not hungry, I'm actually thirsty.
Peter
And you mentioned that.
Darius
So I will go and have a drink of water, especially late in the day, because I'll drink a lot of water in the morning as you know. And then I tapered off as the day goes on. But late in the day if I drink that big cup of water.
Peter
Mike? You're not.
Darius
Hungry? I think I was a little confused that I get hungry half an hour later, but it seems like the thirst getting in the way. So I would posit there's a segment of the population that if you're hungry, go have a drink of water, wait 30 minutes, see how you feel. Yeah. So we're coming to the conclusion of our episode, and we're up to the call to action, my friend.
Darius
And I think the call to action here is to be mindful and aware of what you're eating. Look at processed foods, go read the label.
Peter
Yes, please.
Darius
If you don't understand something, don't eat it. But be mindful. Be aware of what you're eating when you're eating, and for bonus points, start to figure out what's making you feel good the next day. Giving you that vitality, that energy, versus which foods are making you feel hung over sluggish malaise. The next day.
Peter
Okay, I'll throw a mindful curve in there, please. Why you're feeling the way you're feeling while you're eating.
Darius
Exactly. That's the when you're eating why you're eating. What's going on in your psyche that's driving you. Yeah. So we usually close most of our episodes with a poem or a quote. So Peter I think you've got one today.
Peter
I do and I have to read it. And it relates much more to this element of being that I was referring to and how food integrates with just being. You're being from a physical, mental, emotional, energetic. We talked about this in several podcasts, but here we're talking about it in reference to diet and nutrition and eating. Have you ever had the experience of stopping, stopping so completely?
Peter
Of being in your body so completely of being in your life, so completely, that what you knew and what you didn't know, that what had been and what was yet to come. And the way things are right now, they no longer held even the slightest hint of anxiety or discord.
Peter
It would be a moment of complete presence.
Peter
Beyond striving and beyond mere acceptance, beyond a desire to escape or fix anything or plunge ahead, it's just a moment of pure being for a longer in time, a moment of pure seeing, pure feeling, a moment in your life in which. It simply is. And that is. Ness grabs you by all of your senses, all of your memories, all of your conditioning, by your very genes.
By your loves. And that is ness of being welcomes you home.
Darius
Wonderful. Well, thank you everyone. This will be up on agedifferently.com. Please head over. Leave us your feedback. Leave us your comments. We'd love to know what you thought of the episode and until next time, Peter. Yes.
Peter
Till next time, Darius. And thanks to the audience and hopefully we've impacted one of you, if not more. Thanks for joining us.
Darius
Thank you.
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