Facilitated

42| Q+A ish: Zebra Cakes And The Truth About Basics

• The Facility Denver

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0:00 | 38:14

We break down why “normal” labs don’t always mean you feel well and show how patterns across markers tell a clearer story. Then we get practical about foundations that beat biohacks, real-world setbacks, and exactly what we eat on a typical day.

• lab ranges as broad guides, not guarantees
• patterns across CBC, glucose, vitamin D, WBC shifts
• foundations before supplements and gadgets
• walking, sleep, daylight, alcohol limits, simple meals
• decades of moderate vs short extreme plans
• using exercise timing and carbs strategically
• daily protein targets and satiety
• hitting 50 to 60 grams of fiber with beans, oats, fruit, psyllium
• our weekday meals and post-workout nutrition
• flexible structure to fit life phases


Want to take the next step with functional medicine? Learn more about our new patient process and lab testing at www.thefacilitydenver.com 

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Stay curious, stay proactive, and we’ll catch you next time!

Meet The Hosts And Mission

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Facilitated, where we bring you real stories, strategies, and science from the world of functional medicine. I'm Dr. Mitchell Rasmussen, a functional medicine practitioner.

SPEAKER_03

And I'm Kate Darty, a certified nutritionist. We are the owners of the facility, a functional medicine clinic here in Denver, Colorado.

SPEAKER_00

We help people improve their biology and get out of their own way. In my view, our work is about getting to know the person with the condition much more than it's about understanding which condition the person has. As I always say, diagnose the biology, not the disease.

SPEAKER_03

On this podcast, we break down complex health topics, share real patient cases, anonymized, of course, and explore cutting-edge wellness strategies so you can make informed decisions about your health. Quick heads up before we dive in this podcast is for education and general information only. We're here to share insights, not to diagnose or treat. So if you're dealing with a health issue, chat with a qualified healthcare provider before making any changes. All right, let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, look at us. Two weeks in a row.

SPEAKER_03

We said we were gonna do it, so we're gonna do it. And right before we started recording, Mitchell said, okay, let's just not make any mistakes. I'm just not gonna edit them out.

SPEAKER_00

So Okay, cool. So if I were to just Nope. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

Don't intentionally make a mistake.

SPEAKER_00

Because I'll make enough. Yeah, that's my new favorite saying is you've got to schedule the wins in life because the losses tend to schedule themselves.

SPEAKER_03

Do you want to know my new favorite saying?

SPEAKER_00

Uh no, I'm good.

SPEAKER_03

It's a good one.

SPEAKER_00

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03

You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

SPEAKER_00

So be sweet, not sour.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, especially if you're like uh customer serv trying to deal with a customer service representative or trying to, you know, solve a problem. Being nice about it, you tend to get a better answer than jumping in in anger or frustration.

SPEAKER_00

Does anybody you know? Oh my god. Can you explain to me why you just laced up your Nikes while we're recording a podcast?

SPEAKER_03

But they were kind of loose.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, are you ready to sit here and talk now? I just look down like, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_02

No one listening has any idea.

SPEAKER_00

That was funny. You catch more, so what are the flies in this? Uh what do you call it? An analogy? Is that an analogy or a metaphor? I'm not good with those like parts of speech or whatever. A saying?

SPEAKER_02

I said it was a saying.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, what what is the fly in this example?

SPEAKER_03

The things you want.

SPEAKER_00

So you get more okay, because flies are gross.

SPEAKER_03

Return on investment.

SPEAKER_00

You get more of what you want by being kind than by being rude. Profound. That's cool. Love it. Love it. How was last week's episode to you?

SPEAKER_02

Pretty good.

Candid Banter And Show Format

QA Mindset In Functional Medicine

SPEAKER_00

Thought it went well. I thought we were silly. I didn't even listen to it. I just it felt good doing it. It was fun. Yeah, so this week, no editing. Make it easy on you. We have too many patients this week. You got too much going on. I don't want your weekend to be this. So no mistakes, everyone. Alright. That was our regrets. That was our show. No regrets. That was our show. Thanks for listening. Share it with a friend.

unknown

Stop.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, let's do some QA.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

We have a I mean we essentially my job is I am a QA person. That's what I do all day, every day.

SPEAKER_03

Every day, every day, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It's just QA. So when you ask me today, like, do you want to do some QA? It's like, oh my gosh, think about all these where we're starting with people right now. We seem to be getting a lot of people who are kind of abused their bodies for too long, and then they're having this realization, wow, my body did pretty good job. What did I tell the guy we just got off the call with? My goal for the next six weeks, try a little bit. Hey man, you're like genetically, you are so gifted. Just try a little bit. But I mean, that is my yeah, it's just funny. What do you think about peptides? That's I'm getting emails like that currently. I mean uh that's that's like saying like uh what do you think about chairs? Are we talking like an airplane seat? Are we talking about a Herman Miller recliner? Like peptides, are we talking about insulin or glutathione, or are you asking about BPC or you know tes of moralin? I mean, it's just funny. Like, what do you think about peptides? But I get a lot of that. Not talking about peptides today.

SPEAKER_03

We will.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I wanted to, but what was your response?

SPEAKER_03

Are you ready to talk about peptides?

SPEAKER_00

Not to the level that I'd like to be.

SPEAKER_03

Let me rephrase that. Are you organized enough to talk about peptides?

SPEAKER_00

Because you could blab for a while, yeah. But yeah, as a as a professional QA person, that's what I get paid to do, essentially. Um, that's one of my favorite things. I think maybe we're attracted to the things we enjoy, or maybe we just uh get used to them. But I think uh part of the reason I do this is I like being able to be a resource for people. I do. I I'm connected to this idea, and there was like an ego part of me when I was younger that I was like the health guy, and I felt this need to always know answers for people, and it was good in a way that it helped me seek knowledge, but it was bad in a way that I was bad at saying I don't know. And over the last 15 years I've gotten so good at being like, Man, I don't know, but I'll try to figure it out. I'll ask some people, I'll do some reading. But yeah, I like I like uh having solutions for people, you know, just guys out there, and if you're in a relationship with a woman, maybe uh if you're like a problem solver, maybe clarify are you looking to be listened to, or are you looking to have your problem solved? Because it can also not be great in a romantic relationship. Sometimes people just want to tell you what's going on, they don't want to solve it.

SPEAKER_03

So I've learned that very, very challenging for problem solvers. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Like, what's what do we do? We're just talking or just chit-chatting about these problems or no interest in just finding a solution. Okay, cool. Wow, that's terrible, honey. I'm sorry. I wish we could come up with a solution. I love you, Christine. But relationships are funny. Um, so we do have a like a I just want to go through a couple today.

SPEAKER_03

Hold on, hold on. We gotta we gotta back up one second.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

I was with a patient who's become a friend recently. You would also consider this person a friend, and she had no idea you were getting married.

SPEAKER_00

Can you mouth who it is? Stay with. Oh, really? Well, I mean, I posted a picture to my Instagram bringing your fiance to work day like six months ago.

SPEAKER_03

That was your announcement.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Was it a real post though, or was it a story post? It's still on there.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. I was at the because where I get my car fixed is up by her hospital. So sometimes we'll just I'll go drop my car off, these Volvo guys, and then she'll come pick me up, and then I'll hang out in her office all day and work, like on a Tuesday. But I mean, I thought it was pretty clear. There was literally a ring in the caption that said it's bring your fiance to work day, and she was sitting like this. Remember when that one patient thought I married my mom? No, yes, you know who I'm talking about. She I posted a picture of me and my mom when I was home, and then she reached out to the facility Instagram and said, Hold on. Wait, Mitchell got married? I was like, what like I like that's my mom. Now you know, right? Yeah. That was weird.

SPEAKER_03

So Mitchell's getting married.

SPEAKER_00

May 9th.

SPEAKER_03

Two months.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, she's not super impressed that I don't have all the suits figured out yet.

SPEAKER_02

Two months.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I tried one on and we're getting it figured out, but yeah. I have very few responsibilities for this wedding.

SPEAKER_03

As most grooms do.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, I don't think she's really excited about this whole thing. It started out we were just gonna do something small, and then well, one thing led to the next, and here we are flying 160 people asking them to fly across the country to the middle of nowhere in Texas to get married in May. It's gonna be hot.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, it's gonna be so much fun. I'm looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_00

Me too, I guess. Yeah, I'll be there.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, now we can continue with the Q.

Why Normal Labs Still Feel Wrong

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, but I'm getting married. Do you want to go into a couple questions? Okay, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03

Would you like me to ask you the question?

SPEAKER_00

Well, yeah, and you can jump in wherever you want.

SPEAKER_03

This feels like such a like canned question, but uh, here you go.

SPEAKER_00

It's on the list, right? Yeah. Are you making it up or are you reading it?

SPEAKER_03

Why do so many people feel off even when their labs are normal?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I have a I mean, I always say if you go to someone and you ask for help and they run some labs and then they tell you, oh, good news, everything's normal, that you should probably fire them. If they're not curious enough to dig deeper, then they're not really serving your best interests. So number one is they probably didn't look at the right things, and number two, lab ranges are wide as hell. Right? Like, oh think about a a fasting glucose. Oh, you're at 92, good job, you're at 98, good job, you're at 99, good job, you're at 100, ooh, a little prediabetic. You might want to we'll check it again in six months, and then 126, boom! Oh no. You know, it's like there's there's this black and white thinking when we know that health occurs in the gray area, the shades, you know, so normal does not mean good.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Also, it we never see a lab panel that doesn't have something flagged. I've never seen a lab panel that doesn't have something something flagged. Even mine, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, the other thing is patterns. We just had that with a gentleman this morning where he goes, Oh, the because I'm sorry, like I want you to have all this. He's a really sharp guy, but he's not up in healthcare. And he said, Well, no, it's so cool to just think about how all these patterns play together. You know, like these hints of things like my vitamin D didn't flag low because the range is ludicrous, but it's in the low 30s. You know, the same thing, like this little hints of things, like you have to look at try to look at things as patterns, not just one individual lab marker. You gotta zoom out and like picture how the pieces play together. So you can have a lot of air quote normal lab markers that are trending high-low, you know, mid-high, mid-low, kind of off the beaten path, but they technically didn't flag, and that can give you a big hint of mold exposure or chronic viral infection. I mean, that's the common stuff we see that's picked up on a sixteen dollar CBC, but it didn't flag. It's just that's the pattern that's shifted funny. White blood cells are shifted funny, right?

SPEAKER_03

Makes me think a lot about uh physiology, anatomy and physiology. Put yourself back in college, learning it. I I'm so thankful that we're good students and took things seriously, but it's so much more than just memorizing an anatomy chart, because we did that, sure, but now we can picture all of that anatomy as we're looking at blood markers and where everything fits. I guess it's more physiology, but how everything flows together, and it isn't just memorizing of oh, anytime T4 is high at this number, that means this. It's like you have to picture the all of the physiology together.

SPEAKER_00

So yeah. I also I mean, you're talking to undergrad students in neuroscience.

SPEAKER_03

It's on my mind right now.

Reading Patterns, Not Single Markers

SPEAKER_00

Uh it's on your brain. Talking to the neuroscience students at your uh uh undergraduate university. I mean, I've felt like that frequently. I wish I could go back to a kid in Gen Chem and be like it doesn't feel like it matters right now, but it matters it does matter. Think about like organic chemistry, like polyspin principle or like valence electrons, and you're like, what the heck? And then you have a patient with high iron, and you start to think about oxidation, and then you like it all layers on top of like, oh my gosh, I did not know why I was taking a year of organic chemistry in undergrad as a pre-med student, thinking it was so silly that this was not related to the body at all, and then now it's like, oh my gosh, I'm so happy I have that foundation. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And even just like you say, I was a serious student. I mean, I wasn't a serious student until I started learning about the body. My first year of physics in undergrad was absurd. We're talking about ladders and lights and bridges and stuff. The moment I took human biomechanics, I was like, oh, physics is awesome. Remember thinking, like, why couldn't I take human biomechanics first? I would have been so much more interested in a moment arm or inertia if we were talking about the human being in space. So there was the moment it got turned on its biological, you know. Like, did you take human biology? Human biology? Or general biology?

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Plants.

SPEAKER_03

Right. So boring. Yes. One of the students wrote that in their personal statement. They were in the pre-med undecided track, and the they took the plant biology class and they were like, Nope, I'm out. Yeah. And then luckily the next semester had a neuroscience class with brain physiology and anatomy, and they were like, Yep, back in.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, but I just remember like, do I need to understand trigger pressure in a stem of a dandelion or whatever? Just all this stuff. But it was like, it's all part of it, right? It's you start you start to think about like osmotic pressure in a vessel, then it's not perfectly correlated, but you definitely have an interesting, I get an interesting picture in my head of how things are going because of the foundation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I derailed us.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's my job.

SPEAKER_03

What are the biggest mistakes people make when they're trying to get healthier?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I see a lot of people that are too hard on themselves in ways that probably don't matter and way too easy on themselves in ways that do.

SPEAKER_03

And also a lot of people thinking they need to take the easy solution, the simple solutions with before they do the foundation work.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. You know, what do those Instagram people say? You're stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.

SPEAKER_03

Another saying.

Foundational Habits Over Shiny Hacks

SPEAKER_00

Or you're m majoring in the miners. You know, like you probably don't need to optimize your Celtic salt if you're not moving your body. Right? It's okay. They they do things, they do trend things. Like they're on electrolytes, but they're sitting in an office all day doing their 45-minute hit workout at night. I think they need two element packets. Yeah, I work out, I don't know, 14 hours a week. I've I don't know when the last time I took electrolytes was. I eat foods, I have good water. What a know-it-all, Mitchell. No, but I wouldn't you say those are some of the biggest they they're like like foundation. Find things that help off-gas some of the stress of this modern world. Get to bed at night. Right? Minimize alcohol, don't smoke. Cut back on talking shit about other people constantly. Like, engage in some positivity. Like it's the same people like that question you just asked, like, well, what I'm taking 20 supplements, I don't feel any better. Yeah, you're missing the point. You're doing the easy thing. I see that in patients all the time. It's like they come in with a bucket load of supplements, but they haven't exercised in 12 years. Oh, my knees hurt, and it's like, yeah, it turns out the body needs to move in order to work. That was my email a couple weeks ago to our uh our email list. Was just like, it's wild that people underestimate this privilege that they have to move their bodies when they have it because someday we won't get to. And there are people who are paraplegics or quadriplegics or born without limbs or amputees from accidents or or war or diseases, and they would probably do so much to be able to jog or walk to experience freedom of movement in their bodies. And those of us who are able-bodied just so often take it for granted. Does that answer your question? I'm I'm passionate about this because I see so many people they're willing to do the money things, the watch, the devices, and the smart things and all this crap, but they drink too much, don't find joy, don't move their bodies, don't fall asleep at night, and don't even attempt to eat clean.

SPEAKER_03

I also think there are a lot of people who I see put a lot of restriction on themselves that is unattainable, and then break it. And the breaks of it far outweigh the restriction. Whereas if you can just be moderate with things over a longer period of time, you'll be so much more successful.

SPEAKER_00

What have you heard me say to those people who asked me about 75 hard?

SPEAKER_03

And now I see like you want like 2000 medium.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, like can I do like decades of moderate?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And we we had a guy today, and I love that he got it at the end of his. It was our f first follow-up, so we ran labs. Um, he's gonna do great. But he even said to me, Okay, so it sounds like you don't even want me to be worrying about regimented exercise.

SPEAKER_05

Right.

SPEAKER_00

And it was like, no, I want you walking every day, turning the devices off at night, put down the boost for a period of time. Let's really work to stabilize rhythms and blood sugars. Exercise for you is the easy thing. And he said, actually, you're right, because I use exercise as a reason to then go eat like shit or drink. And I'm like, damn, I'm the opposite. When I exercise, everything else is better because it's like, why would I waste that? And he looked at it as like a little treat I gave myself. And I'm like, so we don't need to worry about, we know you'll exercise. That's the easy thing for you.

SPEAKER_03

I'll I'll give you a little real-world anecdote. Throw someone under the bus. Look, my husband, we are working on some moderation, and Mitchell gave him some very specific nutrition macronutrient goals. Total amount of protein, carbohydrates, fat, and calories and fiber to aim for. He was doing well with it. He decided he wanted to see faster progress. So he used the macronutrients calculated by the app based on the amount of weight he wanted to lose. Which was already unrealistic, but anyway. His uh calories were like 1400, I think is what it suggested to him. His reasoning for this is well, I always go a little bit over, anyways. So I'd rather have my goal set lower.

SPEAKER_00

Hey, first know yourself.

SPEAKER_03

He lasted about two days. And then he was putting it in. He was like, man, I went way, way over. Sometimes you just gotta let people prove it to themselves. I told him, I said, that's a mistake. That's not the way to do it. It is not gonna work out for you. You're gonna end up blowing that and binging in a few days. Even Oscar, our 17 my 17-year-old stepson, said, no, no, no, that is not appropriate. You cannot stick to those numbers. Nope. He had to do it for himself.

SPEAKER_00

He didn't tell me this.

SPEAKER_03

I know.

SPEAKER_00

Man, like, do you think I'm pulling numbers out of my hands? Like, it's based on like, yeah. That's wild.

SPEAKER_03

Treating your family, treating your loved ones is the hardest project. But that's it's funny because I know I'm sure we have patients who are just having these same struggles. We just don't see it on a day-to-day basis. To see it right in front of you and to see someone blatantly not follow your advice until they prove it to themselves that their way doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00

I'm glad that that was time well spent on my end. Thank you guys. That was just a considerate donation, I guess. I mean, and what's wild is as he was following my direction, he was being successful in it. And it was I mean, he was down to it was 20 pounds in like three months. I told him you know, you're not 32 years old anymore. You can't just starve yourself and lose the weight, besides the fact it's not gonna be the weight you want all the time. Right. That's funny because it was working so well. Yeah. Turns out a lot of it's pretty basic and boring. It's hard to do. I always say that it's not it could be simple, but it's not easy. Because we're humans, we've got I mean, I wanted to I tried to convince you to go to Jimmy John's for lunch, even though I knew I wasn't going to, but I knew if I could get you to, I would. Damn, Mike. Yeah. She probably just again was just like, damn it, Mitchell was right.

Moderate For Decades, Not 75 Hard

SPEAKER_03

Do you like all my derailing today? Yeah, I'm impressed. Good. I have another one because I just thought of it. Uh it's probably been a couple months now, but a patient asked us if we would talk about what our daily diet is like on the podcast. So here's your opportunity. We are both boring, we both have a regimen of like we can recite exactly what we eat for let's do a weekday. Just give us a snapshot.

SPEAKER_00

Mine?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Man, okay. And I'll say this. Some people say that weighing your food is disordered. Man, humans desire control and autonomy in their decision making. And to me, knowing the weights of things is a way that I feel stable. I feel like I'm not allowing my moods and my feelings to control because I kind of know what my body needs generally. So for me, I don't see it as being it's enabling, it enables me to feel less decision making, to feel less my moods. So I'm gonna preface that is I weigh a lot of my food, and it's because I want to know where I'm at and I want to stick to the plan because I'm one of those people when I'm not understanding and planning and doing things, I will just go nuts. You see it. You know, I after getting back from my bachelor party, I had three um okay. Trust tree, right? We're in the trust tree. In the five days after getting back from my bachelor party last week, I had three boxes of little Debbie's.

SPEAKER_03

And were they zebra cakes though?

SPEAKER_00

Two zebra, the rolls, zebra rolls, and one oatmeal cream pie box boxes, and then I also in one day ate an entire minus like okay, Christine made me give some Oreo cream to the dog. Not the cookie. Yeah, she wanted me to give the cookie and she kind of has chocolate all the time. Call it animal shelter.

SPEAKER_03

So I don't think it's real chocolate anymore.

SPEAKER_00

But I had to do the mega stuff, Oreos. I had an entire thing in a day, and three boxes of Oreos and two frozen pizzas.

SPEAKER_03

Alright, so what's your typical day?

Real-World Coaching And Setbacks

SPEAKER_00

Sorry. So, yeah, I mean, I start my day, wake up, I take some a few nutrients, B vitamins that I take out an empty stomach, and then about 20 minutes later I have a shake. It equals about 32 grams of protein. It's GI's immunoglobulins, some whey protein, not a full scoop, and then a half a scoop of beef isolate that you quit. I put five grams of creatine and a tablespoon of psyllium. Okay, so I have that, and then I make my breakfast after I walk the dogs. My breakfast is about a serving. I'm not going to keep saying the weights, it's reasonable for my weight and my goals. Uh sprouted oats, glyphosate free, and my rice cooker mixed with a cup of frozen blueberries, organic, and then Costco has these awesome organic sheet pan vegetables. I weigh out two servings of those. They're just a big mix of vegetables with olive oil. Two servings of those. I bake those while I uh put four whole eggs and then about 140 grams of egg whites together and I cook those. So between my shake and my breakfast, I'm about 85 grams of protein, about 80 grams of carbs, 35 grams of fat, like 20 grams of fiber. Most days of the week, my lunch will be of a salad, pretty low carb at lunch with typically seeds, seaweed, kraut, and a fish of some sort. I eat fish probably four to five times a week. On those days like today, where I don't do that because I worry I eat too much fish, I will do something like chomps and a rise bar with seaweed. Very simple. Ton of kiwis, I eat because they're one of the highest fiber fruits available when you eat the skin. And then dinner, I mean, is is typically a red meat, elk bison, or beef from North Star Bison, the best in the world. And or chicken or turkey. Some sort of something boring, whether it be Normandy vegetables and rice or potatoes. Like it's very, very simple. And then so Christine stays involved with something turned a taco mean. We'll make taco bowls or taco salads or uh grain-free enchiladas with dairy-free sour cream and stuff. Um, I mean, it it's that doesn't sound that that exciting, but I typically try to hit like 220 grams of protein. Carbs change constantly between 200 and 400, depending on my goals and my workouts, and fats are around 100 grams of fat, and I try to hit 50 to 60 grams of fiber a day. Yes, 50 to 60 grams of fiber a day. So my post-workout is typically a bunch of fruit, protein, creatine, psyllium, you know, cherries, strawberries, and then sometimes rice cakes that are organic. But that's when I try to, as a natural athlete, I try to leverage insulin post-workout as an anabolic hormone. So I will that's on workout days, that's when I'll have a large bolus of carbs post-workout, low fat, try to do like three grams of carbs for every gram of protein, hoping to create an insulin response as I'm very insulin sensitive post-exercise and trying to drive glycogen replenishment as well as some anabolic effects. So that's I'd say how carbs change. Workouts go really high, but my diet is pretty much the same. What about you? Sure, that was legible.

SPEAKER_03

I got it. Um, my pattern is kind of interesting and dictated by the phase of life I'm in, but I wake up and immediately have a lot of times a bar, whether that be something like a perfect bar or a G2G bar or Aloha or what's the other one called? There's one other one. Anyway, something like that. Never a David bar. No, I don't want to ruin my day right at the beginning. Um, some sort of bar, usually around 250 to 300 calorie bar, and occasionally I will have like a protein muffin or a like a homemade protein ball type of thing if I'm ambitious that week, but some sort of small 200 to 300 calorie snack, then I make my coffee, I add heavy cream to my coffee, it's delicious. Then about an hour later, I make breakfast for my daughter Lucy, and I make five eggs. So some days I eat two eggs, some days I eat five eggs. I let her eat however much she's gonna eat, I eat the rest. So anywhere in the two to five range, typically. And a slice of sourdough bread, and usually some berries of some sort, mixing it up from week to week. Then I come to work. At work for lunch is pretty reliably a can of tinned fish, whether that's sardines or mackerel, are actually my favorite. Mackerel is usually my go-to. And then most of the time I will have a protein warm protein shake after lunch, after my tinned fish. Uh if I didn't have a bar earlier in the day, then I might have my bar then. Then I go home for dinner, and my dinner is a pretty significant portion of protein, a lot of vegetables. A lot of times it is a pre-made salad of sorts, meaning I will make like a coleslaw out of tons of cabbage and carrots and some primal mayonnaise and some spices and some vinegar, and then eat that over several days. Or I will do like a bean salad type veggie-loaded thing that I can simply take that and put it on top of a bed of greens, and now you have a much more delicious salad than just eating spring mix out of the box. And then I usually have some sort of carb with it, whether that is rice, occasionally quinoa, potato, or sometimes pasta as well.

SPEAKER_00

What kind of pasta?

What We Actually Eat Daily

SPEAKER_03

Uh I've I tried I recently tried the sourdough pasta. It was gross. So not that one. I could have told you that. It was like we're doing red lentil pasta, that's been my favorite lately. I'm not as big of a fan of that. I like the jovial pasta a lot, which is brown rice. I like that one a lot.

SPEAKER_00

Uh you didn't mention a ton of fiber sources to that. I'm not done. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, that's my dinner. And then 8 p.m. toddler bedtime. Around 8 30, I get my post-dinner treat. I have a treat every night. It's usually uh some sort of cottage cheese base blended with protein, collagen. That's where I put in seeds, nuts, more berries sometimes, sometimes cacao nibs, sometimes peanut butter, peanut butter powder. It's like my favorite part of the day. I love my dessert.

SPEAKER_00

Are you watching TV when you eat? Like, are you like relaxing or what are you doing?

SPEAKER_03

Reading, watching TV. Yeah. Uh we'll just occasionally do it in the creamy. Freeze it ahead of time. Um Kodashi sometimes is yogurt-based, but some sort of treat at night. So I really don't eat a lot in the middle of the day, but I bookend it with two breakfast feedings and two dinner feedings, and it works well for me.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you're more free-flowing, I'm more structured, I would say. But I think they both work. I would also say you're uh you're not doing a ton of strength training currently. No. So a lot of my stuff is is timed around when I'm gonna go to the gym. That's you know, I'm I'm so numbers driven. So like everything like my fiance, she like knows me. Like when we say at her parents' house, like, what time does Mitchell want breakfast? She just knows eight hours after he goes, what or depends on when he gets up. Well, when is Mitchell gonna get up? Eight hours after he goes to bed. Like, I like and that's how my body I don't even want to set an alarm most of the time. I just wake up eight hours after I go to bed. And I haven't set an alarm in well, you have a child. That's true. Um, but I I do I I'm very I like I you know I've tracked my workouts for 20 years. I it I very much see the world in patterns and numbers, so that's how I make sense of it.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, I can tell you how it changes when I'm working out. Is I my morning is or my immediate thing is often similar. I'll do a bar. Sometimes when I'm working out, I'll shift that into more like fruit, like a banana before I work out or something like that. Um, but I will eat something small, then go work out, then my breakfast just gets my second breakfast just gets a little bit bigger. So a little I might put a protein shake or a smoothie in there, and then still probably eggs and toast and berries, or potentially add chicken sausage, something like that. So it just becomes a little bit more robust at my breakfast meal post-workout. Nice workouts always in the morning.

Training Timing And Fuel Strategy

SPEAKER_00

Beans have been, I forgot to mention that beans have become more of a staple for me. Great source of a few different vitamins, but I mean, powerhouse for fiber man. Because I I have friends of mine that don't see me as a patient, but they'll just like you know, always lending my friends in here for their choices and stuff, and I'll just tell them like hit a hit almost a pound of protein per pound of body weight and try to hit 50 grams of fiber. How do you hit 50 grams of fiber? You gotta try. Like, that's how. Try. It's hard. Like, I don't know, like you're a big boy, use AI, use Google, high fiber foods, eat those. But for me, it's typically, yeah, it's berries, kiwi, beans, oats, and then I use psyllium husk. Pears, apples, you know. Salad has very little. Like a big bowl of salad's like one. But like my mixed vegetables in the morning, that's like five, you know, because it's a different broccoli and asparagus, or uh Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes. There's a lot of onions, all sorts of things, but yeah, salad is not really a high fiber food. Okay, well, we got to a lot of questions today. I think we should call it. That was fun though. We have a whole list, we have a lot of questions sitting there, so we'll probably do this soon again.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for uh digressing us.

SPEAKER_01

For more about what we do at the facility, check out our website at www.thefacilitydenver.com. You can also follow us on Instagram at the facility Denver for extra tips, behind the scenes fun, and updates on new episodes. Thanks for listening. Now go facilitate your own health, and we'll see you next time.