7 Basic Rules for High-Performance Nutrition

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And you need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast. You know, I had somebody send me a note a couple of weeks ago. They made a comment on one of my Facebook posts. And the post was about self empowerment like many of my posts are.

Talking about how you don't have much time left. That's a constant theme of this podcast. You don't have much time left. You're only here temporarily. So you gotta make the most out of this life.

And you gotta put work into living your best life. But this person took issue with that message. And what he said to me was, you know, the Australian fires are burning right now. Global warming is a problem. How can people worry about themselves when the world isn't in order?

And, you know, I have my own feelings about global warming. I think that the Australian fires are a tragedy a tragedy of human error. But here's the deal. There's a lot of people out there who want to save the world. But if you think you're going to be able to save the world without fixing yourself first, then you're in for a really big surprise.

In fact, it is such a egotistical thing to believe that you can save the world without having your own house in order. I have a thing that I visualize every single day. And one of the reasons why I do this podcast, obviously I want to empower the veteran community, but I truly believe that amongst the listen listenership of this podcast, there's future congressmen and congresswomen, there are future senators, and there might be a couple of future presidents out there. And I believe that each person in this audience has the ability to affect his or her community, to make change in this world in a positive manner, to have an impact on this country. That's why I do this podcast because I believe in the audience.

I believe in The US military veteran community. I believe that you particularly in this community have the skills and you have the ability to lead. But the problem is that there's a lot of us who after we got out of the military, we let certain things go in our personal lives. We started to let our personal habits get out of order. We might have gotten out of shape.

We might have gotten behind in our financial well-being. We might have been a little bit aloof for a while and not taking charge of our professional lives. And I say all that because I've been in each situation. I've been in the situation where I was completely out of shape. I've been in a situation where I was smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes a day, drinking a fifth of whiskey a day.

I've been in a situation where I didn't know how I was going to survive because my financial state was so bad, so poor. I've been in a situation where I started self destructing my personal relationships. And I've been in situations where I had no professional prospects. And one thing I know about being in those situations is that when you are in one of those situations, It's really difficult to worry about the world. It's really difficult to bring value to other people's lives because you're not in a situation where you're bringing value to yourself.

You're not in a situation where you're taking care of yourself. And my belief is that the more we make people capable of truly lifting themselves up by their bootstraps, the more we educate people and empower people to take charge of their own lives, the better this world, this country, and all of our communities are going to be. It starts with each and every one of us. And one of the first things that you can get control of is your own body and what you're putting into your body. So today, I'm going to talk about nutrition.

And this isn't going to be me sitting here and telling you to try this magic diet or that magic diet. It's going be practical tips about how you can begin looking after what you eat. But first, I just want to say this. For those of you who haven't been here before, this is the Warrior Soul Podcast. My name is Chris Albert, and my mission is to empower The US military veteran community and anyone else willing to listen to live their absolute best lives.

And I do that by delivering tools, tactics, strategies and ideas to help them to show up as wiser, stronger, more capable individuals in the civilian life, in the civilian world, or in their own lives if they haven't served in the military. And if you haven't served in the military, stick around because obviously anything I talk about here is going to apply to you as well. Many times I am speaking to somebody who is a lot smarter and much more accomplished than I am. I've had on people like Grant Cardone, Robert Greene, had on Les Stroud, Ben Greenfield. Coming up, actually, I think already published by this time is Michael Franzese, former capo regime of the Colombo crime family, who turned his life around and turned to God, and is now doing amazing things and inspiring people to be better.

I do all of this without really asking anything in return. All I ask of you, the only thing I really ask of you guys is to spread the word about the show. To share these episodes out with others who can use them, and to head over to iTunes and write a written rating and review for the show. And the reason I ask that is because I want to get this information into the ears of more veterans. I don't care if you ever spend a dime with Warrior Soul.

You can, you can support us in that way, but it's not necessary. I'll continue doing this for free as long as I know that people are listening. So please continue to spread the word. We've been growing like crazy. We tripled our download record last month.

And I want to keep growing. I want to make sure that I'm hitting the ears of as many veterans and as many people who can use this information as possible. So, again, what I want to do today is I want to talk to you about practical tips for eating better, for putting better fuel in your body. And this is a sore point for a lot of people. It's a sore point because in the world of fitness and nutrition, you got a lot of gurus out there these days.

There are so many people who have jumped into the fray of telling people how they should eat, trying to put advice out there, some of it's great, some of it's awful. And a lot of people get confused because they don't know what's true, what's not true. They don't know how to start because everybody's telling them to do different things. You got people out there saying, hey, go keto. You got people out there saying, Hey, go carnivore.

You got people out there saying, Hey, go vegan. And you got people out there saying, know, do the zone diet. All these different diet protocols, all these different gurus out there. And one of the things you have to understand about nutrition and fitness in general, particularly with nutrition, is that there really isn't a single right answer or correct answer. There's only one thing that you should know and that you should understand.

The key factor for success for any nutrition program above all is consistency. That means not just doing it for a week, just doing it for a month, doing it day in day out over a period of time. Being consistent. And that's the only way that anything is going to work. And let me put it this to you to in a different way because I am a trainer, am a nutrition coach, I write plans all the time.

And what I can tell you is that with the hundreds of people that I've worked with, and the hundreds of plans that I've written, there is one thing that applies to everybody, and that's this. I could write you the most perfect plan in the world. I could look at your blood work. I could look at your genetic background. I could look at everything and I could write everything down to the macronutrient, I could include every calorie, every gram of protein, every gram of carbohydrate, every gram of fat.

I could show you exactly what you need to do. But here's the thing, that's not going to work at all if you can't implement it into your life. If you're following a plan that is unrealistic for you to follow consistently, meaning that it's not sustainable, then even if it's the most sound nutrition plan in the world, it's not going to work for you. So what does that mean? That means that above everything, beyond the the protocols that you see out there, beyond the the the trend diets, the fad diets that you see out there, you need something that you are going to be able to follow and that you're going to be able to follow on a day in day out basis.

That means that it needs to mesh well within your life. Now that's not saying that you can't you don't need to be disciplined. That's not saying that you might not need to sacrifice something in your lifestyle in order to be successful. But it is to say that if whatever plan I were to come up with for you was not working with your job, not working with your family life, not working with who you are as an individual, then it's not going to work. So the primary thing you need to work out is how are you going to implement whatever nutrition plan you get on based on your current lifestyle.

So for example, if you're an active duty Marine and I sit there and I tell you, Hey, we're gonna go really, really low carb and I want you to eat, you know, rib eye steaks three times a day. It's probably not gonna work out for you. It's probably not gonna work out for you because you're getting most of your food from the chow hall. I'm sure you'd love to eat rib eye steaks all the time, but you're probably getting most of your food from the chow hall, you're probably heading out to the field a lot, you're eating a lot of MREs. So that's going to be impossible for you to implement, and it's going to be impossible for you to sustain.

So what's gonna be more sustainable for you? What is something that you're going to be able to implement? It might take a little bit more discipline, it might take a little bit of willpower, but what are some rules that you could implement in the way you eat that are going to allow you to gain the benefits of better nutrition while also being able to do it? Well, what we should think about, number one, are what are the things that we have in our current diets, the things we're doing right now, that if we stop doing them, they would benefit us? Well, primarily what I could say is that if you were to eliminate foods where the primary ingredient was sugar, that would probably be something that's a small change with a huge impact on the nutrition you're putting in your body.

So for example, if you were to say you're gonna remove sodas, you're gonna remove candy, you're gonna remove desserts for the most part, that would probably have a giant impact. A lot of people drink a lot of soda, a lot of people drink a lot of fruit juice, concentrated fruit juice that's got loads and loads of sugar in it. A lot of people eat a lot of candy. And if we were to just take that out and maybe have you have that every once in a while, right? Like maybe once a week you get a cheat meal where you get to have a bit of sugar.

But 90 of the time we take that out of your diet and probably eliminate a lot of needless calories. So number one, really good rule to go by is to eat sugar only on special occasions when you're having a cheat meal. And if you're going to eat sugar, if you were going to include that in your diet, the only time you should really eat it is after you've done a good amount of physical activity. Like let's say the day is coming to the end and you've done a workout, you went, you rolled some jiu-jitsu, you've done some good physical activity, well then that might be a time when you could have that cheat meal. Could Where have that cheat of having some soda or some cake or some pie or some ice cream.

Might be the time to do it. When is not the time to do it? Well, the time not to do it is in the morning you're heading to work, you probably don't want to take a can of coke with you because what you're gonna do is you're gonna drink that, you're gonna load your system up with sugar, it's gonna spike your insulin, and then you might feel good for a little bit, but then you're gonna crash about an hour later and you're gonna have an energy, you're gonna have low energy, your brain's gonna feel like mush. Right? So those little changes could could have a huge impact.

Here's a second one that that you could start doing. When you drink fluids, make sure that 99% of the time the fluid you're drinking is water. Right? If you were to say, I'm not gonna drink anything but water except on special occasions, again, that could have a huge impact. The more hydrated you are, the more primed your body is to burn fat.

The more hydrated you are, the better your physical and mental performance. You should be drinking at least half your body weight in fluid ounces plus an additional 10 ounces if you are doing a lot of physical activity. So rule number two, drink water. Drink half your body weight and fluid ounces of water plus an additional 10 ounces. Another good rule, rule number three, when you are going to eat carbohydrates, and I'm not saying that you can't eat carbohydrates, right?

A lot of people are anti carb these days. And I've done keto in the past. I've done low carb in the past. I've gotten a lot of benefit out of it, but I've also gotten a lot of benefit from eating carbs. And the times when I've gotten a lot of benefit out of eating carbs is when I've followed the following rule.

Having most of my carbohydrates after I've done some physical activity, after I've done a workout, after I've come back from a jiu-jitsu practice, right, what that does is it gives you a great opportunity to replenish the glycogen that you lost during the workout. And it's a great opportunity to refuel your body, to use the carbohydrates for what they were meant for. Because I use carbohydrates in this way, because that's how I eat them, I prefer to include easily digestible carbohydrates like white rice. White rice is a great post workout carb. It really helps recovery, gets to your muscles really quick.

Really simple three rules we have so far. Rule number four: At every meal that I eat, I have a protein and I have some vegetables. Doesn't matter what the protein is, right? It could be chicken, it could be beef, it could be pork, could be fish. But at every meal I have a protein source, could be eggs, right?

And then I include at least two to three cups of green leafy vegetables, cruciferous vegetables. That is a really good rule to go by because then most of your plate, most of the calories you're eating at any given meal, well they're nutrient dense, they're packed with protein, they're going to help you to keep your metabolism going. So every meal you want to have those two things: protein source and some vegetables. Really simple. Rule number five: Chew your food.

Chew your food. I am running into so many people right now. Those of you who've been following me for a while, you know that I suffer from an autoimmune disease called ulcerative colitis. That means I have a compromised digestive system. And the thing is, I am not a rarity.

There are a lot of people out there who are suffering from IBS, IBD, leaky gut syndrome, who are suffering from gastric disorders. And a lot of that happens because we rush through eating our food. You need to chew your food until it's liquid, until it's mush. And if you don't, here's what happens undigested food goes into your stomach. A lot of us have weak stomach acid.

And so if it's partially digested, when you're chewing your food, your saliva actually releases enzymes that start breaking that food down. And then if you're swallowing that, it goes into your stomach and your stomach acid isn't able to do a complete job and that undigested food goes through your duodenum and it goes into your intestinal tract, well here's the thing about that: in your intestinal tract about 75% of your immune system is housed there, And in some places it's separated from the waste products in your intestines by a cell lining that's about a single cell thick. And if that lining becomes permeable and those food particles interact with your immune system, well that's where you get inflammation. Now inflammation can do a lot of things. You're dealing with achy joints, particularly you young guys out there who might still be in the Marine Corps or in the Army, you should listen to this.

If your immune system starts interacting with those food particles and you start to become inflamed, well that inflammation can lead to achy joints, body aches. But here's another thing it could lead to. Those inflammatory cytokines, they travel throughout your body. And what happens with your testicles? Your testicles don't like inflammation very much, that's why they're outside of your body.

And high levels of inflammation can actually kill off Leydig cells. Leydig cells are the cells that are responsible for producing testosterone. And a lot of times, low T can actually be explained by high levels of total body chronic inflammation. So one way to shut that down, one way to keep that from happening is by chewing your food and taking care of your digestive tract. Rule number six: make your food digestible with your vegetables.

Don't eat them raw, cut them up, let them sit there for about ten minutes, then steam them. If you're going to eat nuts, soak those nuts first. Soak them for about twenty four hours, let them dry off and stick them in the freezer so that they won't build up mold. Nuts are great for you, but they're also notoriously hard to digest. And I've got a bunch of this written out in an article that I wrote for Testosterone Nation that I'll put up on the show notes for this episode.

Rule number seven. This is a big one, guys, and this is probably the most simple rule for you to follow. Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't come to a point in your life and say, hey, you know what?

It's not worth it. I'm just gonna give up. I'm just gonna give up on trying to be better. I'm just gonna give up on trying to to move forward. I'm gonna just give up on trying to improve myself.

There are too many of us who've done that. I've done it in the past. And I know some of you are there right now. Here's the thing I need to tell you guys. Right now I'm 40.

Right? Most of us could be expected to live pretty long lives these days. We could probably expect to get to 80, might get to 90, and a lot of us might get beyond 100. You've got a long life ahead of you. And you don't want to spend that life being sick.

You don't want to spend that life not being able to be present for your family, not being able to be present for yourself because you've got a chronic condition. One in four veterans admitted to the VA system right now has full blown diabetes. That's twenty five percent of us. They think a lot of us, probably around sixty percent of us, have pre diabetic conditions. So what does your life look like when you're dependent on insulin?

When you can't eat anything that has sugar in it, not even occasionally, because it can cause you to become toxic and die. You don't want to live like that. You don't want to deal with the constant pissing, the constant headaches that you get from diabetes. You definitely don't want an autoimmune condition like I've got. And I know that regardless of how your life is right now, you believe that life can get better.

And it can. But you got to put the work in. So don't give up on yourself. I'm gonna get these rules listed out on the show notes. I also want to let you guys know that I have put a lot of my fitness writings together, my writings on nutrition.

A lot of the rules that I've covered here are listed out on a couple of publications I got up in the Warrior Soul Academy right now. The Warrior Soul Academy is up at www.warriorsoul.academy and you'd find these rules in a couple of publications. The first one is Getting to Shredded. That is a guide to fat loss that I wrote a few years ago and it became a very popular e book that people were passing around amongst each other. And in that plan I've got four phases there.

And it's four phases to allow you to get your body as lean as possible while still remaining healthy and still maintaining muscle mass. And the second one is a course that I put together called Warrior Fitness. And in that course I list a lot of this stuff out. I put out protocols for improving your digestion, for improving your diet, improving your nutrition, designing your own diet, designing your own training plan. Again, if you guys want to go check those out, they're up at www.warriorsoul.academy.

Beyond that, guys, once again, I want to thank you for listening. I want to thank you for sharing these episodes out. I want to give a quick shout out to our amazing sponsors, F Bomb Nutrition. If you're looking for a great, great way to supplement your diet with some healthy fats, They've got portable packets of nut butters, they've got coconut oil, got a nut butter, it's macadamia nut butter mixed up with coconut butter, so delicious. They also got cheese snacks and they got meat sticks.

Really great company. You can head over to www.dropanfbomb.com use the code Warrior Soul at checkout and get 20% off your first order. And I also want to give a shout out to Save the Brave. Savethebrave.org. They're an amazing five zero one C3 charity for veterans and they do camaraderie events.

They do fishing events, golfing events, they're starting to do a few other events. Definitely want to check them out, see what they've got going on in your area and that's at www.savethebrave.org. Of course, if you want to interact with me more, I'm on Instagram at Warrior Soul Agoge. I'm also on Twitter at Warrior Soul Gear. I tend to get a little bit political on Twitter, but you can follow me there anyways.

And then beyond that, for more awesome content, you can head over to www.warriorsoulagoge.com. That's a g og. And if you wanna support the podcast in other ways besides sharing our content, you can head over to warriorsoul.shop and get yourself an awesome t shirt. I hope you guys got out got a lot out of this. Let me know if you did.

Please write us a review on iTunes. Let us know how we're how we're doing. And again, thank you so much. Get out there. Live your best life while you can.

And this is Chris, and I am out.