Hi Everyone and welcome back to the Hockey Journey Podcast, episode number 61, Nutrition, Is it Time to Start Paying Attention, presented to you by Online Hockey Training.com. I'm your host Coach Lance Pitlick. If you're new here, please make sure you subscribe, so you won't miss out on any future episodes.
Before we take a bite out of this topic and begin the conversation, if you want to learn more about me, my hockey experiences, what I know, and most importantly, how I've been helping hockey players get really good with a stick and puck, just head on over to onlinehockeytraining.com and gain instant access to my 10 part video series where I'll show you everything. Consider it my gift to you.
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For this episode, I'm going to attempt to discuss the topic of nutrition for a number of reasons, but mainly, because it's been moved up on the daily priority list for the Pitlick household. It all started back when my oldest son Rem was at the University of Minnesota. That was the onset of his nutrition educational journey, as he began to invest daily time into trying to figure out which foods/meals he ate, provided the best results, in how he felt and how he performed, not only on the ice, but also in the classroom.
His investigation into nutrition and having a more deliberate daily practice of eating healthier, has gratefully, seeped back home to my wife, younger son and I, where 6 years later we're still continuing to making healthier food choices. It's a forever commitment for my wife and I, now that we're in our 50's, having 19 surgeries between the two of us since 1989, which requires more time now for us to stay operational and semi-pain free. Meaning not only eating better, but also working out consistently, and maintaining a regular routine of stretching and rolling out.
Over time, as we tracked our progress and new habits, there were patterns that were revealed, when both of us would have flare ups somewhere on our body, shoulder, back, hip, elbow, knee, or ankle after we ate certain foods. Yeah we're a bit of a mess sometimes. What we learned from tracking our food consumption and researching the benefits of eating healthier, was that a lot of what we were consuming was highly inflammatory to our bodies, like high-fructose corn syrup, artificial trans fats, vegetable and seed oils, refined carbohydrates, and processed meats.
This little bit of extra effort on our part to not only start re-educating ourselves on health conscious eating habits, but acting on what we learned on a more consistent basis, has made a huge difference on how we feel. There are way more good days than there are bad now. With that being said, we still deal with a lot of pain and discomfort, but now, we can stay operational more days than not. But let me also mention, we still have our cheat days or meals, cuz Coach likie some chocolate cake once in a while.
What I'd like to do with the remaining time of this podcast, is introduce you to some books that brought a new conversation to the table for me in how I look at my eating habits and practices. The importance of consuming the right foods is super important, right? We all know that if we had to make a choice between a bag of chips or sleeve of cookies, or some fruits and vegetables, the correct and healthiest decision is to go with the fruits and vegetables.
I know this information, but over the years, I've went the other direction and chose the chips and cookies most of the time. Not so much today, as I win the battle with the devil voice in my head, saying "it's ok to make the not so good decision this time," more times than not now. One reason it's become easier I believe, is because I now regularly listen to some type of content online related to nutrition. I've found that because I'm persistently listening to the topic, it's easier to make the choice I want to be making more often because I'm consciously filling my brain with information, findings, studies, and tips, that I can rely on when I'm starting to feel weak in my decision making ability.
So that's the movie that's been playing for me, as a male in his mid 50's, but let's talk about a different food intake focus, and that's for the athlete or hockey player specifically. It's come down to a science on what you should be eating before a workout, after a workout, as well as the day before a game, the morning of, lunch and post game meal. This can be even more challenging for some if dealing with food allergies or a disease like diabetes. My hope is that you younger ones out there, start investigating on your own, best eating habits so you can continue to optimize and stay a little a head of the rest of the pack. Wink, Wink :)
I continue to be a work in progress and I'm definitely not an expert in the field, but there are many, who have made the investigation of nutrition their life's work, and I'd like to share with you some of their most important findings. Again, all I'm trying to do is pass on information that was critical in me making a major shift in how I'm going to live the rest of my life when it comes to food consumption. If we don't have our health, we really don't have anything, do we?
For the following books I'm going to reference, know that I'm only scratching the surface of all the learning nuggets in each of the titles. If something resonates with you from a certain book, by the end of this episode, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of your own and read it in its entirety. I'll put the links to each of the titles in the description. With that being said, let's begin.
Book Number One
The Case Against Sugar
By Gary Taubes
Quote #1
“The purpose of this book is to present the case against sugar—both sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup—as the principal cause of the chronic diseases that are most likely to kill us, or at least accelerate our demise, in the twenty-first century. Its goal is to explain why these sugars are the most likely suspects, and how we arrived at the current situation: a third of all adults are obese, two-thirds are overweight, almost one in seven is diabetic, and one in four to five will die of cancer; yet the prime suspects for the dietary trigger of these conditions have been, until the last decade, treated as little worse than a harmless pleasure. If this were a criminal case, The Case Against Sugar would be the argument for the prosecution.” (End Quote)
Quote #2
SUGARS AS THE CAUSE OF DISEASE
“This book makes a different argument: that sugars like sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup are fundamental causes of diabetes and obesity, using the same simple concept of causality that we employ when we say smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer. It’s not because we eat too much of these sugars—although that is implied merely by the terms ‘overconsumption’ and ‘overeating’— but because they have unique physiological, metabolic, and endocrinological (i.e., hormonal) effects in the human body that directly triggers these disorders. This argument is championed most prominently by the University of California, San Francisco, pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig. These sugars are not short-term toxins that operate over days and weeks, by thislogic, but ones that do their damage over years and decades, and perhaps even from generation to generation.” (End Quote)
Quote #3
THE PRIME SUSPECT: SUGAR
“If this were a criminal investigation, the detective assigned to the case would start from the assumption that there was one prime suspect, one likely perpetrator, because the crimes (all the aforementioned diseases) are so closely related. They would only embrace the possibility that there were multiple perpetrators when the single-suspect hypothesis was proved insufficient to explain all the evidence. Scientists know this essential concept as Occam’s Razor. When Isaac Newton said, ‘We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances,’ he was saying the same thing that Albert Einstein, three centuries later, said (or was paraphrased as saying): ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.’ We should begin with the simplest hypothesis, and only if that can’texplain what we observe should we consider more complicated explanations—in this case, multiple causes.” (End Quote)
Quote #4
SUGAR AS A DRUG
“Sugar does induce the same responses in the region of the brain known as the ‘reward center’— technically, the nucleus accumbens—as do nicotine, cocaine, heroin, and alcohol. Addiction researchers have come to believe that behaviors required for the survival of the species— specifically, eating and sex—are experienced as pleasurable in this part of the brain, and so we do them again and again. Sugar stimulates the release of the same neurotransmitters—dopamine in particular—through which the potent effects of these other drugs are mediated. Because the drugs work this way, humans have learned how to refine their essence into concentrated forms that heighten the rush. Coca leaves, for instance, are mildly stimulating when chewed, but powerfully addictive when refined into cocaine; even more so taken directly into the lungswhen smoked as crack cocaine. Sugar, too, has been refined from its original form to heighten and concentrate its effects, albeit as a nutrient that provides energy as well as a chemical that stimulates pleasure in the brain.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #5
ENERGY BALANCE VS. METABOLIC THEORY
“The second pillar of modern nutritional wisdom is far more fundamental and ultimately has had far more influence on how the science has developed, and it still dominates thinking on the sugar issue. As such, it has also done far more damage. To the sugar industry, it has been the gift that keeps on giving, the ultimate defense against all arguments and evidence that sugar is uniquely toxic. This is the idea that we get obese or overweight because we take in more calories than we expend or excrete. By this thinking, researchers and public-health authorities think of obesity as a disorder of ‘energy balance,’ a concept that has become so ingrained in conventionalthinking, so widespread, that arguments to the contrary have typically been treated as quackery, if not willful disavowal of the laws of physics. According to this logic of energy balance, or calories-in/calories-out, the only meaningful way in which foods we consume have an impact on our body weight and body fat is through their energy content—calories. This is the only variable that matters. We grow fatter because we eat too much—we consume more calories than we expend—and this simple truth was, and still is, considered all that’s necessary to explain obesity and its prevalence in populations. This thinkingrenders effectively irrelevant the radically different impact that different macronutrients—the protein, fat, and carbohydrate content of foods—have on metabolism and on the hormones and enzymes that regulate what our bodies do with these foods: whether they’re burned for fuel, used to rebuild tissues or organs, or stored as fat.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #6
TOXINS: ACUTE VS. CHRONIC
“So the answer to the question of whether sugar, in the form of sucrose and HFCS [high-fructose corn syrup], is the primary cause of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome and therefore obesity, diabetes, and heart disease is: it certainly could be. The biological mechanisms that were elucidated by the 1970s make it clear that sugar is a prime suspect and should have been all along. The damage that these sugars do, their toxicity, would take years to accumulate and manifest themselves as disease. This wouldn’t necessarily happen to everyone who ingested them (just as cigarette smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer in everyone), but the biology suggests that when insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome appear, these sugars are the likely cause. The greater leap of faith, in this case, would be to assume that the sugars are harmless. And if sugars cause insulin resistance, as the evidence suggests, there are all-too-regrettable implications.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #7
SUGAR = CANCER CANDY
“But the other way to initiate the cancer process, according to these researchers, is to increase the levels of insulin and blood sugar in the circulation itself. Insulin resistance would do that.Thus whatever is causing insulin resistance would be promoting the transformation of healthy cells into malignant, metastic cells by increasing insulin secretion and elevating blood sugar and telling the cells to take up increasingly more glucose for fuel. This leads those like Cantley and Thompson directly back to sugar. As Cantley has said, sugar ‘scares’ him, for precisely this reason. If the sugars we consume—sucrose and HFCS specifically— cause insulin resistance, then they are prime suspects for causing cancer as well, or at the very least promoting its growth. Even if the details of the mechanism should turn out to be wrong, the association between obesity, diabetes, and cancer, and the specific association betweeninsulin, IGF, and cancer, suggests that whatever is causing insulin resistance is increasing the likelihood that we will get cancer. If it’s sugar that causes insulin resistance, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that sugar causes cancer, radical as this may seem, and even though this suggestion is rarely if ever voiced publicly.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #8
HOW LITTLE IS TOO MUCH?
“To understand this tautological logic better, imagine a situation in which cigarette smokers who don’t get lung cancer (or heart disease or emphysema) assume de facto that those smokers who do are those who smoke ‘too much.’ They’d certainly be right, but it still wouldn’t tell us what constitutes a healthy level of smoking or whether such a thing as smoking in moderation even exists. How many cigarettes could be smoked without doing at least some harm to our health, and could thus constitute smoking in moderation? If we say none, we may, indeed, be right, but now we’ve redefined how we’re willing to work with the concept of moderation. The same logicmay also apply to sugar. If it takes twenty years of either smoking cigarettes or consuming sugar for the consequences to appear, how can we know whether we’ve smoked or consumed too much before it’s too late? Isn’t it more reasonable to decide early in life (or early in parenting) that nottoo much is as little as possible?” (End Quote)
Sponsor (Snipers Edge Hockey)
Book Number 2
Clean Gut
The Breakthrough Plan for Eliminating the Root Cause of Disease and Revolutionizing Your Health
By Alejandro Junger M.D.
Quote #1
“My medical practice today is so much more rewarding because of the Clean Gut program, both for myself and my patients. I am no longer a diagnosis-making, prescription-writing machine. Before I even think of making a diagnosis, Iimmediately look for gut dysfunction. Often it is so obvious I don’t even need any tests. After a twenty-one-day gut-repair program, so many of my patients’ problems are completely gone. There’s no need to order tests or prescribe pills. With an understanding of how the gut gets damaged, how gut dysfunction manifests as a multitude of seemingly unrelated and distant diseases, and, most importantly, how to help the body repair the gut, I was able to help many of my patients restore their true health. Such results led me to write this book. The Clean Gut program is a simple, lifesaving protocol designed to start you on the path to vibrant, lasting, prescription- and disease-free health. This book is the culmination of the work and research I started when I set out toheal myself. I discovered that the gut is the root of health, and gut repair is the mother of preventive medicine. If your gut is healthy, there are almost no chronic diseases to prevent. For too long we have reacted to symptoms as our first steps in getting healthy. But with this new protocol, we offer a method to strike down disease before it takes hold. We no longer have to get sick to get healthy. With this new program we are able to transform our entire approach to health. Food is medicine, and the gut is the key to a long, vibrant life.” (End Quote)
Quote #2
SYMPTOMS VS. ROOT CAUSES (PAINT BROWN LEAVES GREEN?)
“The reason I say this was my first lesson in good medicine is because after eight years of medical school, six years of training, and another fifteen years of practice, I came to the conclusion that good medicine is very much like good gardening. Imagine you have a tree you love. One day you notice its leaves have turned brown. They will, you understand, soon whither and fall off. Imagine now that you call an expert who, after close examination of the leaves, recommends thatyou paint them green and attach them back to their branches so the tree can at least appear to be healthy. Everyone would agree that’s crazy. If you want to get your tree truly healthy, you can’t just cover up the problem. You need to get to the root of it. And just like Fermin used to say, the problem is most likely in the roots.” (End Quote)
Quote #3
MEET YOUR SECOND BRAIN: THE GUT (DEPRESSED?)
“As the tiny nerve filaments that innervate the neighboring cells join with one another, they form nerves, which are bundles of axons, extensions of the neurons that live in the gut. Amazingly,if you were to isolate these neurons and clump them all together, they would form a mass of neurons larger than the ones in your head. In fact, the brain in your gut is way more active in the production of neurotransmitters than the brain in your head. Serotonin, the neurotransmitter responsible for the feeling of happiness and well-being, is primarily manufactured in the gut—90 percent of it, in fact.” (End Quote)
Quote #4
LONGER SHELF LIFE = SHORTER YOUR LIFE
“This will only take us so far, however. There are other, more insidious antibiotics decimating our intestinal flora. These are found in our food. Some of the same antibiotics doctors prescribe to human patients are administered to livestock by the food industry. These antibiotics kill your good bacteria as well. Now include the number of antibiotics the food industry adds to any processed food that comes in a box, jar, bag, tube, or bottle. Many chemicals are added to food during processing to kill any bacteria or funguses that would shorten a product’s shelf life. The food industry calls them preservatives, but in essence they act as antibiotics. Other chemicals, such as coloring agents and texture, odor, and flavor chemicals, also make it hard for good bacteria to thrive. How else would something edible last for years without decomposing? Nexttime you shop the aisles of a supermarket, remember the longer the shelf life of what you are eating, the shorter yours will be.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #5
NUTRIGENOMICS
“I do not mean to oversimplify things. Cancer is the result of many factors. But even genetic factors are connected to the gut. Carrying the gene for a certain cancer does not guaranteethat the cancer will develop. Genes can be turned on and off by the conditions in which the cell is living. Nutrigenomics is the science that studies how nutrients, a lack of nutrients, or toxic molecules absorbed from our food can activate a gene that was previously dormant. The conditions that turn cancer genes on, however, are mostly the result of gut dysfunction.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #6
GLUTEN: A UBIQUITOUS MODERN POISON
“Most people don’t fully understand how much gluten affects human health. The list of syndromes and diseases associated with gluten sensitivity is endless. It affects all the body’s systems: hematologic, reproductive, neurologic, endocrine, hepatic, rheumatologic, encephalopathic, dental, and cutaneous. ... Gluten is associated with cancers of the mouth and throat, esophagus, small intestines, and lymph nodes. ... Gluten sensitivity is also associated with other autoimmune diseases... depression, migraines, arthritis, fatigue, osteoporosis, and anemia to name a few. With so many scientifically proven or suspected connections to so many diseases, it is tragic that instead of removing gluten from our lives, here in America we put it in everything.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #7
STEP 1: REMOVE TOXIC TRIGGERS
“Toxic triggers are foods that may taste great but more often than not leave you feeling terrible. They can cause mood swings, indigestion, bloating, and fatigue. They may also trigger an autoimmune reaction. Toxic triggers often promote the proliferation of unhealthy organisms inside the gut. The most common toxic triggers are gluten, dairy, processed sugar, caffeine, and alcohol. Getting clear on your toxic triggers will undoubtedly improve your health and prevent your mood, weight, and energy from yo-yoing up and down. During your reintroduction process you’ll focus on two most common toxic triggers: gluten and dairy. I can’t stress enough how important it is to identify your toxic triggers. It really is the foundation of building a clean gut and living clean for life.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #8
THE GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR LIVING CLEAN
“The guiding principles for living clean for life are clear and direct concepts that have worked for our community and our team. That being said, there is no single right or optimal way foreveryone. There are hundreds of programs, doctors, and ‘experts’ who tell us what to eat and how to live. But nothing is more powerful than your personal experience as you test and try out each of these principles. Pick the ones that work for you and modify the ones that don’t. Most importantly, though, if something isn’t working for you, be open and willing to try something new.” (End Quote)
Whew, kinda blows the doors off the hinges doesn't it? Before I get to the final book, I want to pass something on to you, throwing a little solid your way. My oldest son Rem, has been the one who's opened up pandora's box on nutrition for me again the last half a decade. He does the research, speaks with the right people in order to make the most informed decisions regarding his nutritional intake.
One company he's introduced to me, is organifi.com
Organifi, is a line of organic superfood blends that offers plant based nutrition made with high quality ingredients. Each Organifi blend is science backed to craft the most effective doses with ingredients that are organic and free of fillers and contain less than 3g of sugar per serving. Each Organifi blend is easy to use by simply mixing it with water or your favorite beverage while on the go, and they don't compromise quality for taste.
On busy days where I have a lot of in person off-ice stick skill lessons, I'll mix up a water bottle with one of orgainfi's blends and sip on it throughout the day, and I've never had more energy and peep!! Seriously!! My son Rem contacted organifi and they were kind enough to provide the Hockey Journey Podcast listeners a 15% discount on any order if interested in giving organifi a try. Use the the coupon code OHT15 (that's online hockey training for short) that's OHT15 for 15% off and see what benefits it might have for you. Thank You Remmer!! Now let's get to the final title.
Book Number 3
It Starts With Food
Discover the whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways
By Dallas Hartwig & Melissa Hartwig
Quote #1
“We eat real food—fresh, natural food, like meat, vegetables, and fruit. We choose foods that are nutrient-dense, with lots of naturally occurring vitamins and minerals, over foods that have more calories but less nutrition. And food quality is important—we are careful about where our meat, seafood, and eggs come from, and we buy organic, local produce as often as possible.This is not a ‘diet’—we eat as much as we need to maintain strength, energy and a healthy body weight. We aim for well-balanced nutrition, so we eat both plants and animals. We get all the carbohydrates we need from vegetables and fruits, whilehealthy fats like avocado, coconut, and olive oil provide us with another excellent source of energy. Eating like this allows us to maintain a healthy metabolism and keeps our immune system in balance. It’s good for body composition, energy levels, sleep quality, mood, attention span, and quality of life. It helps eliminate sugar cravings and reestablishes a healthy relationship with food. It also works to minimize our risk for most lifestyle-related diseases and conditions, like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and autoimmune conditions.” (End Quote)
Quote #2
+1 OR -1 BITE BY BITE
“We have a theory about food that directly influences the rest of the book. The food you eat either makes you more healthy or less healthy. Those are your options. There is no food neutral; there is no food Switzerland—every single thing you put in your mouth is either making you more healthy or less healthy. It should be simple then, right? Just eat the foods that make you more healthy. Well, it is and it isn’t.” (End Quote)
Quote #3
AN EXPERIMENT OF ONE
“We’re going to share our views on food. We’ll share our personal experiences. We’ll give you testimonials from others who have changed their lives just by changing the food on their plate. And we’ll give you the science—the studies, experiments, and conclusions that form the basis for all of our recommendations. And then we’ll say, ‘Don’t just take our word for it.’ We are going to teach you how to turn yourself into a scientific experiment of one, so you can figure out for yourself, once and for all, whether the foods you are eating are making you more healthy or less healthy. And that’s worth more than any scientific findings you read about— because there hasn’t been a single scientific experiment that includes you as a subject. Until now. When you complete our Whole30 program, you’ll see for yourself the effects of more healthy and less healthy foods. By the time the program is over, you’ll know in no uncertain terms which foods are improving the quality of your life and which are detracting from your health. In just thirty days, you will have gained that incredibly powerful knowledge. Why is this knowledge so valuable? Because it will change your life.” (End Quote)
Quote #4
PALEO, DEMYSTIFIED
“Before we go any further, let’s debunk some myths about the Paleo diet. First, it’s not about recreating the existence of cavemen. No one wants you to go without electricity, hot showers, or your beloved iPhone. And yes, cavemen didn’t always have a long life span, but that’s not because of their food choices—it was more likely the lack of antibiotics, the abundance of predators, and harsh living conditions. Second, it’s not a carnivorous diet—the moderate amount of high-quality meat is balanced with tons of plant matter (vegetables and fruit). Third, the fat you eat as part of a Paleo diet will not clog your arteries because fat all by itself is not the culprit in that scenario. (Really. More on that later.) Finally, the diet is not carb-phobic; it’s 100 percent sustainable from day one, and it’s really not that radical—unless you consider eating nutrientdense, unprocessed food radical. Which, in today’s microwave-dinner-fast-food-low-fat era, might very well be the case.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #5
GOOD FOOD STANDARDS
“We choose foods by following four Good Food standards. We’re pretty picky about this: all the foods we recommend have to satisfy all four criteria. Not three, not most... all. We’ll explain them in more detail in the coming chapters, but here are the basics. The food we eat should:
1. Promote a healthy psychological response.
2. Promote a healthy hormonal response.
3. Support a healthy gut.
4. Support immune function and minimize inflammation.”
(End Quote)
Bonus Quote #6
DO YOU *REALLY* NEED TO EAT GRAINS?
“The marketing from big cereal companies would have you think that cereal grains are highly nutritious—and that if you don’t eat them, you’ll miss out on all sorts of vitamins, minerals, and fiber that you can get only from grains. That’s simply not true. Grains are not (we repeat, not) nutrient-dense when compared with vegetables and fruit.”
“Another way that a diet high in grains leads to suboptimalnutrition is in terms of opportunity cost: If there are more whole grains on your plate, then there’s probably less of some other food—like vegetables—on your plate. And that lowers overall micronutrient density in your diet too. In summary:There is not a single health-promoting substance present in grains that you can’t also get from vegetables and fruit.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #7
YOUR PERSONAL HEALTH EQUATION
“Of course, while we believe your journey to optimal health starts with food, there are other factors that also play important roles. Health and fitness is multifactorial, and while nutrition is always the foundation, we also believe that you cannot focus on just one aspect of health to exclude others. Sleep, exercise habits, and stress also affect your personal health equation.” (End Quote)
So, I don't know about you, but after reading through all of the fore-mentioned, I definitely need to revisit everything that I eat and drink, and put it under a little stronger microscope. Lot's to think about, isn't there?
Well that concludes another episode of the hockey journey podcast. I can’t thank you enough for stopping by and listening. I hope you enjoyed this first segment on nutrition. I'll be revisiting the topic from time to time as it's good practice for me to reinforce optimal daily living. If you think there’s someone in your circle of family and friends that might like this episode as well, please share it with just one person, it will really help me in growing this hockey community.
Again, I appreciate you being here, don’t forget to subscribe, rate or submit a review, I hope to see you back here soon, and do me a favor, make someone close to you smile today. All the best my friends!!
