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5 Nutrition Myths, Debunked

With

A ripe avocado.

Season 1, Episode 7 | March 9, 2020


There are a lot of misconceptions around healthy eating. For our first bonus episode, we brought back our guests from episode 5 — nutritionist Julie Brown, RD, and Ryan Dodge, LifeCafe executive chef — to debunk five of the most common ones. You’ll learn whether all calories are created equal, if you can out-train a bad diet, the truth about low fat, and more.


00:59

For this episode, we brought back our guests from our episode on “Why Healthy Eating Doesn’t Need to Be Boring,” Julie Brown and Ryan Dodge. Brown is a registered dietitian, personal trainer, and the nutrition and assessments program manager at Life Time. Dodge is the executive chef for Life Time’s LifeCafe® nationwide.

1:04

There are a ton of misconceptions around healthy eating. In this episode, we play a rapid game of “true or false” to address five of the most common ones.

01:23

True or false: All calories are created equal.

02:12

True or false: You can out-train a bad diet.

03:39

True or false: It’s OK to not eat organic.

04:58

True or false: Fat makes you fat.

06:44

True or false: Low fat is better than whole fat.

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Transcript: 5 Nutrition Myths, Debunked

Season 1, Episode 7  | March 9, 2020

Jamie Martin

Welcome to Life Time Talks, the healthy living podcast that’s aimed at helping you achieve your health, fitness, and life goals. I’m Jamie Martin, editor-in-chief of Experience Life, Life Time’s whole life health and fitness magazine.

David Freeman

And I’m David Freeman, the signature program lead for Life Time’s Alpha program. We’re all in different places along our health and fitness journey, but no matter what we are working towards, there are some essential things we can do to keep moving in the direction of a healthy, purpose-driven life.

Jamie Martin

In each episode we’ll cover the foundational elements of healthy living, including fitness and nutrition, health issues like sleep and stress management, and mindfulness and community.

David Freeman

And we’ll be talking to experts from Life Time and beyond who’ll share their insights and knowledge, so you’ll have the tools and information you need to take charge of your next steps. Here we go.

[Music]

David Freeman

So we’re back because we know you guys wanted some more with the nutrition episode, so we’re going to get you guys going. Jamie, take them away.

Jamie Martin

Okay, so we have Chef Ryan Dodge and Julie Brown, registered dietitian. They’re both with Life Time.

Julie Brown

Hey, there.

Jamie Martin

We are going to talk about some misconceptions about healthy eating. There are a ton of them out there, and we have a little game of “true or false.” So I’m going to read — we have five statements and you guys are going to let us know if they are true or false, and then we’re going to dive into them just briefly.

Ryan Dodge

Is there any right or wrong here?

Julie Brown

I think there is.

Ryan Dodge

OK, good.

Jamie Martin

That’s the point. OK, here we go. True or false, all calories are created equal.

Ryan Dodge

True.

Julie Brown

I’m going to take this one.

Ryan Dodge

Dammit.

Julie Brown

False. At a fundamental level, yes, calorie is a calorie is a calorie, but what those calories do to your body is no way created equal. You could literally put 1,000 calories of 15 different foods in front of you and yes, calorically they are the same at a mathematical level, but the way that those 15 different food stuffs or piles of energy — that’s  what food really is, is a pile of energy — how they interact with your body, how they influence your cellular structure, how they teach your hormones how to talk to each other and work differently, they are not created equal. So, again, we could go into a whole dialogue on that one, but I’m just going to leave it at that. The answer is no.

David Freeman

It’s a firm no then. OK. False on that one. True or false, you can out-train a bad diet. This should be an easy one. Yeah, you can out-train a bad diet, right?

Julie Brown

No, you can’t, David. I really wish it was true, I do, because again, I think all of us love the idea of rewarding ourselves with, you know, it was a long day, you’d had a hard meeting, oh, gosh, I just . . . I really want that cupcake, that whatever, that milkshake, you name it. No, you can’t out-train a bad diet. And I think there’s some balance that we . . . you know, we’ve talked about it before, the importance of keeping it together, but 80 percent — 20 percent shouldn’t happen every day, guys, it shouldn’t.

So, choosing and being thoughtful about where you leverage your 20 percent is important. I’m certain that we’ll get into the whole aspect of how to build a healthy workout pattern in a different episode, but finding the type of movement that works well for you is important and being consistent with it. That’s the key. So, find that balance between your exercise and your food and make it work for your body, but I’m sorry to tell you that even though you might be out-eating your exercise habits right now, it will catch up to you. It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but I promise you it’s going to happen.

Ryan Dodge

Isn’t it important when you eat after you exercise?

Julie Brown

Well, yeah. You want to fill your body as soon as you can after exercise, but even then, what you’re bringing in can be dependent upon the type, the style, the modality, the intensity of the workout that you’ve done.

Ryan Dodge

Oh.

Jamie Martin

Alright, next question. It’s OK to not eat organic, true or false.

Julie Brown

I’m going to go true on that one.

Ryan Dodge

Yeah, I think it’s OK to not eat organic. There are specific food items that you want to eat organic or are more inclined to eat organic from the herbicides and the pesticides that are applied to those products and when they’re applied.

Julie Brown

Yeah, there’s a list that comes out annually from the Environmental Working Group called the “Dirty Dozen,” and those are the lists of the top 12, sometimes 13, you get a bonus one from time to time, that have the greatest volume of residue on them, pesticides, herbicides, typically at the point of purchase for the consumer. So, if you’re going to choose where to use your organic dollars, I would say those top 12 or 13 foods is really the most powerful place to spend those dollars.

And then more often than not, when you’re talking about your protein and your dairy options, if you are consuming animal proteins and dairy options, I would go organic across the board as often as you can there.

Ryan Dodge

I would also say that there’s a lot of different solutions that you can apply to washing your vegetables that they’ve come out with recently that are very beneficial as well, if you have the time to wash your vegetables and clean them.

Julie Brown

I hope you make the time. Always wash them even if they are organic.

Ryan Dodge

Always wash them. Yeah.

Julie Brown

Wash them, man. Wash them.

Jamie Martin

Wash your veggies.

Ryan Dodge

They’re usually dirty.

Julie Brown

Oh, I know. It’s bad.

David Freeman

Alright, so we got two false, one true so far. Next one. Are you ready?

Julie Brown

Bring it.

David Freeman

Fat makes you fat.

Julie Brown

Oh, thank God it doesn’t.

Jamie Martin

What would we do without that butter?

Julie Brown

Oh, gosh.

Ryan Dodge

Oh, fat is flavor.

Julie Brown

Oh, right? It’s so good. Can you . . . I mean just . . . let’s just all pause for a moment and just think about a fatless world, and I’m talking about fat in your food. It’s just sad. It’s so sad. But no, eating fat doesn’t make you fat. Actually, on the contrary, fat is actually essential to how your body functions. So, the myelin sheaths on your neurons that help all of your brain activity talk to all the different functions in your body, critical to have fat in your diet for that.

All the hormones . . . I mean, I hate to break it to you, they’re built on fat. That’s kind of the backbone of how our hormone structures work. And a lot of people go, oh, you know, low-fat to no-fat is really powerful, but no, you actually need a pretty good amount of fat coming into your day to make sure that you’re nourishing your body.

I hate to use that word over and over again, but yes, nourishing your body down literally to the cellular level. And I have to tell you, if you’ve ever been around anybody who’s on a low-fat diet, they’re not very happy people, they’re just not. They’re beasts, and they’re angry all the time, and it’s not just because their food doesn’t taste good, it’s because at a hormonal, cellular level they are not functioning optimally. So, again, fat it so important for hormone balance, for mood, behavior, so yeah, please don’t cut it out, guys. It’s good for you.

Jamie Martin

OK, but I’m going to just piggyback off that for a second. Are there good fats and bad fats?

Julie Brown

Oh, for sure, 100 percent. So I’m going to just . . . going to just cut us off there because we could probably go another 20 minutes just on that topic, but yes, good fats and bad fats, that’ll be in a future podcast.

Jamie Martin

Absolutely, we’ll do that. OK. And I think the last one, and this is question five, another fat question.

Julie Brown

Yeah.

Jamie Martin

Low fat is better than whole fat.

Julie Brown

Yeah. Well, no, wait. I got that backwards. Whole fat is better.

Jamie Martin

OK.

Julie Brown

Whole fat is better. So, you want to watch out for your low-fat dairy products because if you’re taking the fat out of a product, again, just what we talked about, removing the flavor. The other part of it that Ryan’s hit on before is you’re removing the satiating component of that dish in a lot of places.

So, if you’ve taken . . . I love the example of yogurt because it’s something that most people can identify with. You’ve got a yogurt and a lot of times for a long time there was these yogurts that were very flavor-packed and really touted this no-fat, low-fat concept, and when you turned it over and really started looking at what was in there it was a lot of sugar. It was a lot of sugar flavoring some milk that was left over, and you would eat that yogurt, I mean many of us had this happen at different points in our life.

You’d eat that yogurt and you’d go I’m still real hungry, and if you weren’t at that instant, 15 or 20 minutes later you were in the kitchen again looking for something else to eat. It was definitely going to happen because there was no satiating quality of that. And you know, we kind of hit on in our other episode how sugar hits you high and then drops you low, and when that’s all you’re getting in with nothing to buffer it, you’re not going to be satisfied by that, and fat is an amazing buffer for the impact of carbohydrates on our bloodstream.

So, having fat in some of those food products is really powerful. Now, again, there are good fats and there are bad fats, but having fat coming in is important because if we’re taking it out of a product like milk that had fat in it naturally when it came from the udder of the cow, it’s more highly processed to become low-fat, no-fat and it’s no longer in its whole food form. So, the more whole-fat, whole foods you could have, honestly, the better off you are.

Now, you do probably want smaller portions of those things, but the good news is you can eat less of them and still feel better and more satiated by those foods because they have all of the natural components they were meant to have.

David Freeman

The whole fat.

Jamie Martin

Awesome.

Ryan Dodge

Whole fat, all fat, nothing but the fat.

Ryan Dodge

P-H-fat.

Julie Brown

Boom.

David Freeman

That was our first official bonus round. It felt like speed dating, not that I have any experience with that, but that was amazing. So, we appreciate you guys. Again, our first official bonus round that’s taking us out.

[Music]

David Freeman

Thanks for joining us for this episode. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our conversation today and how you approach this aspect of healthy living in your own life, what works for you, where do you run into challenges, where do you need help.

Jamie Martin

And if you have topics for future episodes, you can share those with us too. Email us at lttalks@lt.life or reach out to us on Instagram @lifetime.life, @jamiemartinel, or @freezy30 and use the hashtag #LifeTimeTalks. You can also learn more about the podcast at experiencelife.com/podcast.

David Freeman

And if you’re enjoying Life Time Talks, please subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. Feel free to write a review and also let others know about it, too. Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on social or share it with your friends, family, work buddies, life coach, you get the gist. 

Jamie Martin

Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next time on Life Time Talks.

[Music]

Jamie Martin

Life Time Talks is a production of Life Time — Healthy Way of Life. It is produced by Molly Schelper with audio engineering by Peter Perkins and sound consulting by Coy Larson. A big thank you to the team who pulls together each episode and everyone who provided feedback.

We’d Love to Hear From You

Have thoughts you’d like to share or topic ideas for future episodes? Email us at lttalks@lt.life.

The information in this podcast is intended to provide broad understanding and knowledge of healthcare topics. This information is for educational purposes only and should not be considered complete and should not be used in place of advice from your physician or healthcare provider. We recommend you consult your physician or healthcare professional before beginning or altering your personal exercise, diet or supplementation program.

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