Written by Christopher Kelly
Jan. 27, 2017
[0:00:00]
Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly and today I'm joined by software engineer and obstacle course racer Ryan Baxter. Hi, Ryan.
Ryan: Hi, Chris. How are you doing?
Christopher: I am very well and delighted to have you on to talk about some of the work that we've been doing together. Why don't we start with you telling us a little bit about yourself? I'm really interested -- Obviously, we have a lot in common. We're both software engineers. Tell me a bit about your work and the types of athletic endeavors you enjoy.
Ryan: Yes. So, I guess, I'll start with my work. Like you said, I'm a software engineer and spent the vast majority, I guess, of my short career -- At this point, I've been doing it for eight or nine years, ten years. I spent the first big chunk of that working for IBM, which I'm sure everyone knows what the company is.
Christopher: Of course.
Ryan: I did various projects there, worked on a lot of things, and recently got the opportunity to move over to a new and smaller company compared to IBM called Pivotal and I'd been doing a ton of open source work there and stuff related to the cloud and whatnot. So, I had a lot of fun. I'd been doing that for, I don't know, six months at this point maybe. So, that's been pretty cool.
I guess, my story as an obstacle course racer, first off, I'll just clarify I'm definitely the typical weekend warrior. I'm not a pro or anything like that and you probably never heard of me before, won't see me on TV or anything like that. I'm your typical weekend warrior, average Joe obstacle course racer. But I really got sucked into it probably about, I guess, I want to say year and a half ago, a little more than a year ago. Actually, a little longer, probably a year and a half ago.
I started exercising so I wouldn't call myself the most fit guy. I detested running. I hated running throughout my entire life and I never really got into sports that much ever which is, I guess, your just typical software engineer, right? We're not very athletic.
Christopher: No. Not unless it's absolutely necessary. If there's a tiger chasing you then maybe.
Ryan: Yeah, right, maybe, yeah. Or running to get the coffee or whatnot. That's about it. But I had gone to the gym pretty much throughout my college career. I just go to the gym for an hour, hit the elliptical, do some weights, nothing strenuous or anything like that. And then, for some reason, I kind of got this motivation to start running. I was going to do my first 5K, for whatever reason, I don't know. It was not because I was terribly out of shape or anything like that but I just decided that's what I wanted to do.
So, I did my first 5K and ran. Like I said, I was never really a huge fan of just running so I said, "Well, what about this obstacle course racing stuff?" I've heard about the Spartan races and whatnot. And it's more than just running, right? There's all these obstacles involved and different challenges so it's not just a pure road race which I found a little bit more intriguing. So, I signed up for my first Spartan race and, I guess, it was November 2015.
They have a stadium series where they host the races in various different athletic venues. I lived in the northeast. At that time I was living in Massachusetts. And they were having a race in November at Fenway Park, which is where the Boston Red Sox play. So, pretty historic venue. I'm a huge baseball fan even though I'd never played baseball in my life. I'm a huge baseball fan. I love the Red Sox. So, to be able to race in Fenway Park was like super exciting to me.
Christopher: That's cool.
Ryan: Yeah. So, me and my wife signed up and I started training for it and as soon as I finished it, I was like -- I told my wife, I'm like, "I can't wait to do my next one." And she's like, "I'm never doing this ever again."
Christopher: I wonder if obstacle course racing does that to every single person that tries it.
Ryan: You either go one way or the other way.
Christopher: Exactly. Polarizing.
Ryan: You either love it or you hate it. And she is more of a road running background. She enjoyed, I mean, doing road races and she had done a half marathon and completed a couple triathlons this past year. So, she is more on that spectrum but I just hated the pure running part of it. I said, "I can't wait to do my next one." So, in 2016, Spartan has this three distance races or three main distance races.
So, there's what's called a sprint, which is something like three or five miles and then there's a super, which is like five to eight or something like that. And then there's the beast which is anywhere from like, I guess, 12 plus miles. And so if you complete all three of those in a year, you complete what's called your trifecta and I said, "That's what I want to do." And coincidentally at the same time I had started to clean up my diet. I was kind of on your traditional American diet of grains and cereal and whatnot.
I tried to eat somewhat healthy but I'd always heard the low fat type of deal, eat low fat diet and be cautious of the cholesterol you're taking in and whatnot. So, I have been on your kind of traditional American diet. But as I looked into more about training and how I should train for these longer races, I looked more into it, obviously, the fuel by carb methodology, which I had heard of. But then I had also come across this post about you could also fuel yourself by just consuming large amounts of fat and I found that particularly interesting and at the same time I was starting to kind of transition more over into a Paleo diet, which lends itself more to that type of training anyways.
[0:05:07]
Christopher: Did you have a reason for that then? Did you have any complaints that you thought might be addressed by eating a Paleo diet?
Ryan: No, not at that time. I had been eating, I had been cutting down on the carbs a lot. I was a huge -- I loved to have pasta. I would have a huge bowl of pasta and bread on the side and whatnot. And I wasn't even burning a huge amount of energy at that time. I would just love to eat. That's one of the things I probably miss the most since going Paleo but I love that stuff, right? And I'd been cutting back on my carbs. There's definitely times when I was doing that, I was like there's no way I could do a Paleo diet because I love pasta too much. I have to have some kind of pasta.
And then I had just cut it down so much to the point where I was like if I don't eat it, not a big deal. So, then I just made the full on transition. And it wasn't because I felt bad even though later on, like now when I look back at it, I'm like maybe it was because of my diet. But at that time I don't think, I've never been tested but I don't think gluten sensitivities or anything like that. I don't have any chronic illnesses to speak of that most people or some people transition to a Paleo diet to solve. But definitely, now looking back, I definitely feel better now.
Anyways, I just started to look into that and made the transition to a Paleo diet and then later on in the year I start to read more about it and hear about this thing called ketosis and stuff like that. And the same thing happened again where I was like I could never do ketosis even on a Paleo diet. I think I'm taking in more than 50 grams of carbs a day, whatever the supposed limit is for ketosis, I'm not really sure.
Christopher: Right.
Ryan: Because it's still blurry to me. I don't know if there's really any scientific evidence about it. And the other thing that bothered me was like people just say X amounts of carbs so like what counts as a carbs? The carbs in vegetables count? And everyone has a different answer to this. So, it was like no clear definition to the everyday person. Anyways, I was listen to a podcast. One of the podcasts that I listen to quite frequently is the Ben Greenfield Podcast and he's great and I learned so much from his podcast.
But he had interviewed Mark Sisson about this new book that they were coming out called Primal Endurance. And the whole book was about how to do endurance events in a smarter new day, no following of Paleo primal diet, et cetera, and I'm like, "Oh, this is perfect for me. This is exactly what I do. I'm going to do this beast event that's going to be pretty long and I'm on a Paleo diet and I'm going to follow the training methodology and the eating style in this book."
And I read the book and it was a great book. Mark and Brad took great job bringing that book. I think any endurance athlete should read it especially if you're a Paleo or following a Paleo like diet. It's a great book. But I started training, doing what's called MAF training, so kind of doing the majority of my training aerobically and I was building up my mileage and going longer and longer and I continued to read about different eating patterns, intermittent fasting and stuff like that. And I started a plyo list.
I was definitely going low carb. I would have maybe some of every small amount of sweet potato every once in a while or some fruit every once in a while, high fat, moderate protein. So, that was kind of my diet. All along, this whole time I had never thought that I was in ketosis at all. Of course, I never tested myself but I just assumed that I'm eating way too many carbs. I'm definitely over this limit.
Then I tracked my diet in MyFitnessPal and came out with the daily carb intake and it's like, "Oh, you've consumed 75 grams of carbs." And I'm like, "Okay, well, I'm not in ketosis." And all along I'm doing the races, so I did my sprint race and I did my super race and I was pretty happy with my results. Obviously, for a sprint race, not very long distance, you [0:08:47] [Indiscernible] consume anything either. But even the super, I didn't have to consume any calories either so I was pretty my fat burning was pretty good.
I was eventually able to go out for like 13 plus mile long runs completely fasted in the morning without eating anything. I would just go out in the morning, two plus hours, for a run and I wouldn't have breakfast or anything beforehand. I just take water and just go. So, I was definitely like -- I knew I was pretty good at fat burning, I guess. But I didn't think I was in ketosis. And the other thing that started to happen to me during this time was like I noticed some things were changing just in my body. I knew, I could tell like my sleep sucked. It sucked. I have a young daughter too. I think she might be the same age as your daughter.
Christopher: Yeah, my daughter is just over three now. So, that kind of muddies the water. You're not sure whether it's you, the kid, or maybe both together.
Ryan: Right. My daughter is two and a half now. Last year she was younger. And the sleep is always hectic with young children. You're on their schedule, not your own schedule. So, I was also getting up early in the morning to go train because I have a full time job and whatnot and luckily I can work from home so that made it a little bit easier but I was still getting up pretty early in the morning having sleepless nights with my daughter and stuff like that.
[0:10:06]
So, my sleep sucked but I just attributed it to that. I started to notice that my libido was going away or wasn't the same as normal and I started noticing like my mood was pretty terrible. I would just get very angry, agitated, short fused and this, again, having a young daughter, it can be frustrating experience at time.
Christopher: Oh, yeah, for sure. I know that bit part too.
Ryan: Yeah. So, I just noticed that my patience wasn't the same and particularly wasn't too happy with it.
Christopher: And did you notice any particular triggers? I always wonder if I had done this now more back when I was going through some similar stuff. Did you notice what it was that led to a particular high point or a particular low point? Was there like eating foods or was it the amount of sleep you got that led to the foul mood or did you notice anything?
Ryan: I didn't really notice much. I couldn't come up with a pattern. Because I'm such a scientific guy, if I come up with a pattern or something, like, "Oh, I did this," or, "I ate this," or, "I didn't eat this," or blah, blah, blah and I reacted this way or felt this way, it just seemed like it was constant no matter what I did. Sometimes I would notice like if I did have a day where I might eat a lot, a little more carbs than I would normally eat, sometimes I would sleep better but that wouldn't be consistent. Sometimes I would sleep better and sometimes I wouldn't sleep better. It didn't seem to be at all consistent.
I also found myself getting completely stressed out. So, I was stressed about just life in general, training. It was just a ton of stress in my life and I could tell -- I definitely knew when my stress level was super high that that's when my mood went south too. It was like I have too much on my plate and I'm stressed about all these things and now X,Y, Z thing is happening and I'm just in a funky mood all the time and it just wasn't good. And just to kind of wrap up my story a little bit quicker, I ended up doing the beast race in September and this race was at Killington Ski Resort in Vermont, at a mountain.
Christopher: This, to me, as somebody that just rides a mountain bike in the woods, seems beyond crazy. You've already taken this crazy thing which is the longest distance of Spartan race that is possible and then you put it at a ski resort. What elevation are we talking about here?
Ryan: So, I believe the mountain itself is like 4,000 plus feet in elevation.
Christopher: Yeah, I'm sure it must be.
Ryan: It's not the tallest mountain in New England but it's a pretty decent mountain. And the thing is that what they do to you during this race on the mountain is they send you up and down the mountain multiple times.
Christopher: Oh my god.
Ryan: So, you're not just going up once and then coming back down. You go up and come back down and go up and come back down and go up and come back down. And all the while you're doing this, you're going through various obstacles along the way. By far the biggest obstacle is the mountain itself. That's the hardest obstacle. The sheer fact of going up and going down can be pretty daunting but there's all these other obstacles along the way. Anyway, this race takes the average person anywhere from six to ten hours to complete.
Christopher: Holy cow.
Ryan: This is the average person. If you're an elite, you're probably anywhere in the two to three hour range?
Christopher: Oh, really? There's that much difference between the front and the back of the pack. That's incredible.
Ryan: Definitely, yeah. And they have cut off points, right? So, if you don't finish, if you're not done by a certain time, that's it. They pull you off the course. And it happens constantly to people. I hear tons of stories about it. But anyways, so I did the race and I completed it and, I think, my time was six hours and 44 minutes. But I clarify that a little bit. I had dragged one of my coworkers to this race. He agreed to do it with me and he had never done the Spartan race before and I essentially dragged him, and I feel kind of bad about it, to this race.
He also lived in Austin, Texas, which does not have a lot of hills. So, the first four miles of that, I was dragging him along and I was trying to keep him motivated so I had to stay with him and whatnot. And then eventually he was like, by mile four, he was like, "Just go. You're well trained for this and just go."
Christopher: Like leave me. There's no hope for me. Just you go.
Ryan: Essentially. Yeah, so I was a little bit slower due to that but not his fault. I'm not blaming at all. I finished it in six hours and 44 minutes my first time doing it and all the while the only thing I ate was two packets of almond butter, Justin Almond Butter packet. And so after that, I was like, yeah, I'm definitely fat adapted. That proved it to me.
[0:15:00]
Christopher: Yeah. I mean, there's no possible way you could do that. Nobody has that much glycogen. And what were the other guys around you eating?
Ryan: It was unbelievable sometimes. I would get to water station and I saw people handing out like gummy bears and gummy worms and, obviously, the traditional gel packets. There's people sitting down and having like sandwiches with salami and peanut butter and all kinds of crazy different fuel. I mean, it's just like when I saw the people eating gummy bears and gummy words and candy on the mountain, I was like, how can you fuel your body with that? That's just not even good just to eat in general, never mind trying to do this huge race and you're going pound down this crap?
Christopher: Yeah. I have no idea. So, when you exercise, the blood is diverted away from the gut so I have no idea how people manage to keep that stuff down but somehow they do. I see it in the bike races too.
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, I'm going to talk about this later on, I have a super strong stomach, I think, compared to other people and I can tolerate things pretty well but sitting down and having candy in the middle of that is just like, there's no way. You have to feel terrible after that. But, yeah, I mean, that was the culmination of my experience last year. But throughout the year I just continue to feel worse and worse.
And I didn't really want to admit it to myself either. It was like, "Oh, I can fix this. I just got to do this, that, or the other thing. I'll cut back a little bit on training and I'll be fine." It just never worked. And so then in November I finally finished my last. I went back to where I originally started. I went back to Fenway Park and did the race there. And then after that I was done for the season and so I was like I need to fix this. And around the same time I had gone and see my primary care doctor and I told him how I was feeling and the low libido and the mood and my diet and all that stuff.
And he didn't want to do any blood work on me so I didn't have any blood work done. Because he said, "Because you're diet's so good, what do you have to worry about? You're super lean, you're fit, and all that stuff. So, we don't have to worry about anything in the blood." And he's a little concerned about the libido thing so he did my testosterone but the results came back completely normal on that test.
Christopher: So, you just did a single marker, just testosterone?
Ryan: Yeah, that was it.
Christopher: And I wonder what he was going to do if the testosterone had come back low, can you guess?
Ryan: I had no idea. I actually don't even want to know because that would have led me down a whole another path and I probably wouldn't reach out to you guys and wouldn't ever solve my problems so it's probably a good thing that it came back normal.
Christopher: Yeah. I don't want to be too rude but you could train a monkey to do that. You run a testosterone test and when the testosterone is low you prescribe testosterone and call it good.
Ryan: Right. Yeah, typical thing, right? And then when that happened, I was like, I had heard about you guys, Nourish Balance Thrive. I think the first time I heard it was on the Endurance Planet Podcast with--
Christopher: With Tawnee, yeah. Good friend, Tawnee. That's a fantastic podcast. It's still on the top of my list of podcasts.
Ryan: Yeah. Even though it's more triathlon related, they do talk about a lot of relevant stuff as far as doing endurance training just in general and following MAF principles and stuff like. So, it's particularly interesting to me. And I had heard you on there one time talking about the DUTCH test and stuff like that and I had looked up the website and done a lot of research. And then listened to a bunch of your podcasts as well and I was like, I want to reach out to these guys. They sound really good. And I'm super glad I did.
Christopher: Yeah, thank you.
Ryan: I'm feeling much better since.
Christopher: That's wonderful. That's wonderful. I'm really interested to know, I'm always really interested to know this with everyone, what was the moment, like what was going through your head when you thought, "Yeah, I got to pull the trigger on this."? Because it's not a cheap program. You spend a lot of money on testing and that can be quite a lot of money on supplements as well and then some lifestyle, maybe some diet changes which require commitment too of a different sorts. I'm just wondering, what was going through your head when you thought, "I'm going to do this."?
Ryan: Well, if it wasn't for having a family, I probably wouldn't ever done it.
Christopher: Interesting.
Ryan: Because I deal with myself -- if it was just me and I was in a bad mood or I was, whatever, wasn't affecting anyone, no big deal. But if it's starting to affect my wife and my daughter and my life with them and then I was like I just can't let that happen anymore. They're, obviously, number one priority.
Christopher: Right. Do you not feel like it affected your work as well though? Because I was a very different sort of person when I was a software engineer. I used to enjoy the back office. The fewer people I talked to during the course of the day the better, and now I'm hosting a podcast with over 100,000 downloads per month. That's quite a radical transformation. Did you not feel like it was affecting your work?
Ryan: No, not particularly. I mean, it wasn't like affecting my concentration or anything like that. I was able to concentrate. I was able to get my work done. I should also mention my job situation changed when I switched career probably six months ago. Before that, my last position at IBM, I was doing more developer advocacy work. So, that involved traveling around to a lot of conferences and presenting and stuff like that. And that added even more stress to my life.
[0:20:05]
Christopher: Yeah, I could imagine.
Ryan: Just getting up in front of a bunch of people, traveling to different countries, et cetera, and then also doing that with family at home is just adding more stress to that. But I was able to do that fine. Besides the added stress to my life because of that type of decision, it didn't really affect my work life that much. It just sort of more affecting my family life more than my work life.
Christopher: And how did you think it affected your family life? I know that for me personally, before, when I was eating a very high carbohydrate diet and maybe had a whole bunch of gut issues going on and not feeling good in general, the training I was still able to get done but it used to completely wipe me out and then I'd spend the rest of the day on the couch and I know now that's not really acceptable when you've got a small child. You can't really get away with that. But I'm just wondering maybe your situation is different.
Ryan: No. I would have those same days. I would get up early Saturday morning and run for two hours so I could be home for the majority of the day before my wife and my daughter got up. But I would be dead by the time I got home. I would be completely wiped out and tired and not want to do anything the rest of the day. So, it didn't even matter that I got up early to do it because I was just useless the rest of the day anyways.
And the other thing, like I said, is just my mood, my short temper, my short patience and whatnot. And, obviously, my libido with my wife, that obviously affected our relationship. Once it started to really take a toll on my family life and I couldn't find a solution to it, that's when I decided I had to pull the trigger and at that point, yes, money -- I'm not wealthy by any means but I had some money to spend and I wasn't going to have limited budget but I had to spend to where I was comfortable trying to fix the problem with having a better family life.
Christopher: And were you surprised by many of the recommendations? You mentioned the Ben Greenfield podcast. Many of the things of our program have been talked about on the Ben Greenfield podcast especially because he is a fire hose of information and maybe the real problem with Ben is like which of these things do I do first, which is going to make the most difference to me? And did you try a whole bunch of things?
So we talked a lot about circadian rhythm. And you don't need to do a test to know that your circadian rhythm is off or at least you don't need to do a test to know that you should be doing it. So getting outside first thing in the morning and then avoiding light at night. Did you try any of that stuff yourself before getting into the testing?
Ryan: I had tried a little bit with like avoiding electronics at night time. He's a huge proponent of shutting everything off. The same thing with Mark Sisson talks a lot about that too. I was just like having a couple of hours before you go to bed and not staring at your phone. When you're in the field that I am, it's kind of hard. I love technology. I love the phone. I love the computer. I'm on it the majority of the day, anyways. And, obviously, I do some work at night too after my daughter goes to sleep and stuff like that. But shutting that stuff off is kind of hard.
I still have trouble with it today. I mean, at 8:30 -- usually hit the bed, go to bed around 9:30, 10 o'clock, around there. Around 8:30, I definitely shut down the computer. I definitely don't pick up my phone the rest of the night so I can at least get some time away from that. I still watch TV. That's mine and my wife's alone time. So, we try to spend some time watching TV, sitting together while my daughter is asleep. But I've been doing okay with that.
If I had found that my sleep was not getting any better then I would have just cut off the TV completely but I've been able to sleep with that. Sometimes I just read instead of watching TV. So I try not to stare at the TV the whole time. But, yeah, definitely some of the lifestyle things like I had tried to do that I hear on Ben's podcast. One thing that I started doing that I've constantly heard him talk about is like cold thermogenesis and like taking a cold shower. I was like, I don't ever want to do that.
Christopher: No.
Ryan: The cold never bothered me that much. I live in the northeast so I'm cold half the year. But just like jumping, purposely getting in a cold shower is like terrifying to me.
Christopher: I can tell you it's so much harder when you're in the shower. I've got a wine barrel that's full of cold water and I just get into that. And if you keep your head and your hands out, for some reason, it's not as stressful but, obviously, it's still quite cold. And you can stay in there quite a long time and it's not that terrible. And you're definitely cold when you get out. You can feel it takes a long time to warm up afterwards. But there's something particularly horrifying about cold water splashing onto your face. It's different.
Ryan: I know, yeah. And I've done the cold shower thing now like a month and a half straight since you guys recommended it. I was like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to try it out and have been doing it. And I don't know if it necessarily has made a difference per se but I definitely feel better in the morning after I do it so I get a cold shower and I really like it. With it being winter now, it does take a while to warm up. I'm hoping that is actually building up that brown fat adipose tissue that's supposed to burn more calories, the good type of fat. So, we'll see how that goes. That's one of the things I've been doing.
[0:25:06]
There wasn't too many diet changes that I had to implement. I was already on the Paleo diet so that was cool. but just learning how to eat more carbs and stuff like that, which I guess we can talk about.
Christopher: Yeah, let's talk about that. So, that was the first thing. I talked to Tommy all day long on Slack and Amelia and my wife too, obviously, as well. And we talked about the test results. It's kind a weird thing that probably most people don't appreciate what goes on behind the scenes is you may only talk to one person in particularly, like you spend a lot of time talking to Amelia, but your results are talked about by all of us. Everybody gets to see the data and we discuss it.
I was talking to Tommy about your results and he was just like, "This guy, just get him some carbs. All you need to do is just get him some carbs." What did you do? Obviously, you had this message relayed by Amelia. What did you do? Did you start eating some more carbs? And if so, what did you find?
Ryan: So, one of the things, the first thing she said was, "You need to eat more carbs." And I was like, "Oh, okay." And she's like -- The funny thing was the day I went and had my blood work done I had just gotten, and this is like way too late in the process, I had just gotten one of those Precision Xtra blood glucose monitors that also measure your ketones. And so the day I went and got my blood work done, I had to fast anyways so I was like, "Oh, this is going to be a good day to check my ketone levels just to see where it is." The first time I ever checked my ketone levels, not thinking that I was going to be in ketosis.
And so I got out of the office to get my blood work done and then I jumped on the car and I did -- I used the Precision Xtra meter and my ketone levels was 2.0 millimoles, I think. I was like, "Oh."
Christopher: Mission accomplished.
Ryan: I didn't think I was. But to clarify, I was never trying to be in ketosis just because I thought that I didn't necessarily want to. I just wanted to burn fat the whole time and I thought I was eating more carbs than it would allow me to be in ketosis. But then again I never tested myself. I never tried to figure out whether I was or not. And apparently, majority of the time I probably was in ketosis. And I was completely taken back by that, I guess, and I should know then.
But then when we got the blood work results back and all my other test results back and Amelia was like, "Yeah, you're definitely in ketosis." And I was like, "Well, I kind of had an inkling about that given the fact that I did this Precision Xtra thing." But, anyways, yeah, she said one of the major things is like you need to eat 150 to 200 grams of carbs a day. I'm like, "What?"
Christopher: Yeah. Which is funny you say that because the standard American diet is not 100 to 150 grams of carbs per day.
Ryan: Definitely not, yeah.
Christopher: And they've done studies of type II diabetics with the Paleo diet as an intervention and they've kept the type II diabetics eating 400 grams of carbs per day, which probably will make your eyes water compared to what we're recommending here. So, it's not like we're talking about a lot of carbs but it's certainly not ketogenic levels of carbohydrates. So, what types of carbs did you reintroduce?
Ryan: So, I started eating -- Well, my favorite carbs are sweet potatoes and particularly now, in the fall and the winter, butternut squash. I really like that. I do occasionally have some white rice. I know that's not 100% Paleo by most people but when the meal calls for some type of rice I'll throw in some rice. And then I'll occasionally have some fruit. So I'll have, like this morning, with my Paleo oatmeal, I had a couple of berries and some bananas or stuff like that.
And that's pretty much what I'll do. I mean, I'll have maybe like -- Typically, I try to stick away from the carbs for breakfast but at lunch I'll have anywhere from half cup to a cup of either sweet potato or rice or butternut squash or something like that and do the same thing at dinner. And that's pretty much how I've been operating for the past two months or so.
Christopher: That's awesome.
Ryan: And that ends up being around -- I still never reach that 200 grams of carbs mark that she set out for me. That probably puts me anywhere between 100 grams and the 150 grams a day but I've felt better with that amount of carbs. So, we kind of decided that that's a good enough level for me.
Christopher: Yeah. And Amelia has lived this too so the recommendations came direct from Amelia. Of course, she's been doing Cross Fit for a while too and just done her first competition. She knows exactly what the results are going to be.
Ryan: Yeah. It's definitely to me more interesting now because now I've gotten back to training so she gave me the go ahead to actually do some training again. The first two months I was pretty much restricted to walking, hiking and doing yoga.
Christopher: And you didn't mind that? That's kind of difficult sometimes.
Ryan: Oh, no, I definitely [0:29:41] [Indiscernible]. Being the type A personality that often gets yourself in trouble and such things, just telling you to stop training and not doing anything at all besides yoga and walking and hiking is like, how am I going to live? But it made it easier when I started seeing changes. So, I could tell I was feeling better. I could tell my mood was improving, my sleep was improving.
[0:30:05]
So, after I started seeing results of following these guidelines and stuff that everyone's recommending, it made it a little bit easier but at the same time I still had the urge to get out there and train. But now I've gotten that back. I've only been training now, back to training, for like a week. It will be more interesting to see if the harder I train the more carbs I feel like I need or not, if that level goes up or not. But I'm definitely going to try to be more mindful about how I feel this time around and adjust things that way.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely. I know. I've experienced this personally that sometimes the exercise addiction is being driven by the fact that you don't feel very good and the reason you want to go out and continue working out even though you're obviously a mess is because that's the one time when you do feel good. I know now from also experiencing this that I can go for long periods and definitely without doing a ton of exercise and still feel completely normal because I'm not looking for something like that, a crutch of some sort, to bring back to a kind of normal baseline.
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Some of the email exchange with Dr. Wood we had before we did this podcast, it was kind of talking about getting the same type of effect from, as you would with ketogenic diet and going out with fasted runs and stuff like that but still trying to introduce carbs after that period so you really do burn a lot of fat while you're exercising but then just kind of replenish everything after you're done later on. It's kind of a different approach to what I was taking before where I would really just go out fasted and then just eat no carbs afterwards.
Christopher: Right, right. There was interesting story that went down the listeners won't know about and that's Tommy and I were talking about Ryan's results in the last podcast we did about oxaloacetate. I'll link to that in the show notes so that people can hear some of the more detailed technical explanations about what Ryan's blood and urine and stool data looked like.
And, of course, I kind of realized this at the exact moment that we were recording the podcast that Ryan was a software engineer and he was probably very numbers driven and he would probably listen to this podcast and recognize his numbers and then reach out to me and I was like, "Oh, no, have I just breached some terrible, made some terrible privacy faux pas?" That did happen and you were really, really cool about it and that led to this really interesting dialog with Tommy.
Ryan: Yeah, definitely. I was super excited to hear my results being talked on the podcast for some reason.
Christopher: Yeah, and we didn't mean to single Ryan out. We saw a number of people that were perhaps of a similar type and when you go to record an interview, at some point, you just have to make an abstract set of ideas concrete with real numbers and it just happened to be Ryan's results that we used to make that concrete but we didn't mean to single him out. I think for people listening, know that there are certain activities where a very low carbohydrate ketogenic diet don't work particularly well and the result is what we talked about in that last podcast in the data.
So, we can recap that a little bit. You see very, very low fasting glucose and Ryan's insulin was actually unmeasurable. The lab just said less than one. So, you'd think this is really, really good. But then we also saw very low thyroid function and then some problems that were downstream of that. So, an elevation of mean corpuscular volume, which is the average size of a red blood, and that's because those red blood cells are not maturing properly because of the absence of thyroid hormone.
And then we also saw a really, really low testosterone on the DUTCH. And the results were bad enough for me to say to Tommy, "Hey, what the heck is going on for this guy?" It's just like he just needs to eat some carbs. This is what happens. So, yeah, really, really interesting. One thing we didn't talk about in that podcast though was what was going on in your gut and I think that is going to also be crucially important and, I think, that's true for all of the athletes that we work with.
It's very, very unusual for us to work with someone that doesn't have some gut issues. But he didn't talk much there, at least in this interview, about any GI symptoms. So, do you think you had perfectly normal digestion in the whole way along?
Ryan: Yeah, I was kind of hinting at that one. I said I feel like my stomach is pretty strong when we talk about the crap people were eating during the race. I was surprised and it sounded like Amelia and you guys were also surprised that I had very little to none GI distress at all. Because I apparently have or had, we're going to retest very soon, candida and a C-diff yeast infection in my stomach. I guess, I never experienced any symptoms from that.
I never really had terrible digestive issues at all. I would go to the bathroom pretty regular and whatnot. I really had no alarming, any indication at all that I had something wrong in my stomach. The one thing that I can't think of that might be an indication of the infection was after you told me or after the results came back and said I had candida.
[0:35:05]
Of course, I was researching what it was and found that you can also have toe fungus associated with that. And oddly enough, I've had a toe fungus at one of the toes for a while that never went away even after taking medication, stuff like that. Of course, my doctor just told me, "Well, it's just never going to go away. It it doesn't bother you. Just live with it." And I'm like, "Whatever." I don't really care what my toes look like in truth. So I just lived with it.
But after I started some of the medication to solve the yeast infection I noticed that the toe fungus has gotten better. So I'm wondering if that was actually or is actually connected to that and just no one ever thought of it to make that connection.
Christopher: Yeah, it seems like the gut is connected to everything in all kinds of weird and wonderful ways and it's not unusual for people who do have overgrowth of what people generally agree to be pathogen, so candida being one microbe that people generally agree to be a pathogen. But the end product of yeast metabolism is ethanol which most people know is alcohol. So maybe you just feel kind of foggy headed like you're slightly hung over the whole time and that's because you are slightly hung over the whole time.
Your liver is busy detoxing the ethanol which is the byproduct of the yeast metabolism and so you may not notice anything in your gut and the only thing you can do is the full and proper investigation and see what's there and just go ahead and fix it.
Ryan: Yeah. Right. The one thing I would say about, just to jump back a little bit about if you're doing certain level of activity and being careful about whether you're in ketosis or not or whether it's affecting you or not, if you're going to do something like that, the testing is invaluable. If you start to head down that path, and maybe it might be fine for you. I mean, it's still not 100% clear to me at what level of activity is it okay to be in ketosis and in what level do you need to really start introducing some carbs.
But if you can test yourself to figure out whether anything -- Like even just doing the simple blood work test and seeing some of those markers on there, if things start to come back wrong or out of line then probably you should think about dong more tests and getting, having someone like you guys look into it and really see if there's any problems and then stop right away before you dig yourself a huge whole like I did.
Christopher: Yeah, definitely, especially for the -- I feel like some of the younger kids I see racing cyclocross could do anything, eat anything and be completely invincible and have no problems whatsoever. Whereas once you get into your mid to late 30s and you start to have responsibilities and you've got people reporting you in your day job and all these things start to layer upon each other and then it seems like the risk of something going wrong gets greater and so quantifying what's going on inside of your body, I think, becomes really important.
And you did a lot of test. You did our fancy problem. But I don't think that you really need to do the whole fancy program if you're feeling great. Just go ahead and get a really good blood panel done and establish a baseline and then if anything goes wrong in the future you've got that baseline to which you can compare and know exactly what has changed.
So, for some people, something will look kind of off but they've got absolutely no complaints. And if they were to have not done that baseline when they go to test when they're not feeling good they'd see that same thing that's always been off and not know that that's always been the case. So, establishing the baseline I think is really important. I was going to say that one of the most important things about the testing though is that you do go ahead and retest.
We have some nutritional supplements that you can take to get rid of a candida overgrowth or a C-diff infection but those solutions are not 100% water tight and sometimes we see people that do a retest and then they need to go ahead and do another round of weeding, might be an appropriate analogy. If your garden is overgrown with weed then you have to take some weed killers in order to get to that next stage. So, you are going to go ahead and retest now that you've taken some supplements?
Ryan: Yeah, definitely. I think that the first thing we're retesting is the yeast overgrowth. This is the last week I'm taking some of the supplements and medication for that. And then I'm going to do the organic acids test again and retest for that. And then, obviously, I think we're going to retest eventually and do the DUTCH test again and probably do my blood work again. Like you said, it would be great to have a healthy baseline. Now I know what these numbers look like when I feel healthy and feel good. So, if it ever happens again, which I hope it does not, that I can get these tests and see, okay, well, these numbers are now back to where they used to be or they're below what they were when I was feeling good and I should probably do something to correct that.
Christopher: I think it's important, actually, to wait a few weeks. If you've been taking some supplements to kill off the yeast overgrowth, say, then you have to wait at least a couple of weeks after finishing those supplements before you redo the organic acid test because sometimes you'll see a rebound yeast overgrowth.
[0:40:02]
So, if you took the test the day after you've stopped taking some oregano oil, say, you might see this huge rebound which is artificial because if you'd waited a couple of weeks you'd see that that big peak will come back down to a more level baseline which may bring you inside of the optimal reference range. So, you just have to be a little bit patient after you stop taking the supplement.
Ryan: Yeah. There's a few days between the time I stop and the time I'm going to do the test.
Christopher: Well, tell me about how you're feeling now. So, you're feeling much better then?
Ryan: Yeah. I'm definitely feeling better. My sleep is like, I don't know if it's normal or not but it's definitely better than it was. I have one of those -- Another one of the things that I picked up from Ben Greenfield is the, I got one of those oura rings. I don't know if you've heard of this.
Christopher: Yeah, of course. Tell me about it. Have you had a good experience with it?
Ryan: Yeah. It's super good for your sleep. They're spot on with your sleep and it actually amazes me. One of the things that it tells you is the different levels of sleep you're in throughout the night and, obviously, how long you're sleeping and it's super accurate about, I guess, it's accurate about the different levels but definitely accurate about when I go to sleep and when I wake up. And also it does activity tracking and stuff like that, gives you like a readiness score as far as it takes your HRV into town along with other factors and [0:41:14] [Indiscernible] scores as far as how ready you are to go out and train that day.
But anyways, I've noticed the huge difference in my sleep levels since I started the training as far as that ring is telling me. So, I get a lot more deep sleep. I get like 14 minutes of deep sleep a night maybe before, and now there's some nights where I get like an hour and a half or almost two hours of deep sleep a night. And I can definitely now make the association of how I feel the next day and how much deep sleep I get that night because now I can see the difference.
The other thing I've done just myself, just to allow myself to sleep more is I don't train in the morning anymore so I don't get up early to go to the gym or anything. Obviously, I've only been given the go ahead to go and train for a week now but I decided I'm going to try to avoid training in the morning at least waking up early and training morning because I feel like the sleep is so important. It made so much difference in my life. That getting that extra sleep in the morning just is what I need especially right now.
And you hear I'm going to talk about it and it's 100% true. I mean, just the other thing that amazed me was that you guys also recommended that I take the Doc Parsley sleep remedy and I found that to be hugely helpful as far as just getting me to go to sleep at night. The first half of the night, I'm so asleep, like super sleep. It's great. And it just gets me to go to sleep and that's been super helpful too. I think even after I'm done with the program and whatnot I still think that I'm going to take that because, I think, that's super helpful.
Christopher: Yeah, people love that stuff. I've not tried it although I've tried all the component parts. So, one of the good things, the nice things about that product is it just brings together a whole bunch of different things into one packet and so you don't need to have a whole drawer full of supplements that you add together especially late at night. I guess, I've done it in a sense but not the actual product.
I'm worried about trying it because I'm worried I might become dependent on it because I've heard so many people tell me how great it is. I'm like I don't want to need this thing in order to be able to get great sleep. But there's also a fear of missing out when people like you who are actually quantifying their sleep tell me that it works so well. I'm like, oh no, I'm just going to have to try it.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah. I think I also tried not using it for a little while to see how I do without it and see if I can put myself to sleep which I think is the ultimate goal. But I definitely keep it around for those times where I think I need it because I think it is super useful.
Christopher: Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah, my stress level has gone way down. I feel much less stressed most days. And I'm more mindful about when I do get stressed.
Christopher: Yes. So, that's a really interesting question then. The stress, obviously, doesn't go away. You still got a kid, you still got a job, you still got obligations and really what you're changing is the way in which you respond to that stress. So, how do you think that you've done that?
Ryan: So, I try to avoid putting unneeded stress on myself. Like, for example, like I was just talking about before, getting up super early in the morning to go workout.
Christopher: Right. There's no need for that.
Ryan: If I can deal without doing that, that's just stress that I don't have to deal with. Or if, I don't know, just like, for example, certain times, certain things you're like, oh, I can make food items, for example, like I can make this food item at home by myself and it's going to take me an hour or something to do that and during a busy day I'm trying to do that and then I try to weigh the balance of actually doing that myself and just going out and purchasing it instead. It's going to cost me money but it's the added stress that I'm putting on myself we're trying to get this done in the middle of a busy day, is that worth it?
And I've also been doing some meditation with Headspace and whatnot and I've been almost done with their stress module. And just the concepts that are talked about during that module and during the meditation, trying to just let things go and not let them bother you or think about.
[0:45:06]
You're not the only person who's stressed and there's other people who's probably dealing with more stressful situations in the world and stuff like that. It actually kind of helped me, when I do find myself stressed out, help me balance myself and try to like always handle the stress. It's never going to be 100%. I'm going to get stressed out, I realize that. It's just trying to moderate the amount of stress that I'm putting myself under and not put any extra stress for no reason. Is the thing that I'm doing that's stressing me out actually worth it at the end of the day?
You're right. You'll never be in a 100% stress free lifestyle. So, you just have to learn to deal with it better and maybe eliminate things that are potentially causing stress that aren't worth it.
Christopher: Absolutely. Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for doing this with me. It's really been a pleasure and it's just awesome to know that there's people out there just like me who are like, you think you're weird and wanting to get all this data and understand what's going on inside of your body. But we have so much in common both coming from similar backgrounds so it's really awesome to talk to someone that thinks like I do.
Ryan: Yeah, definitely.
Christopher: Okay, then, Ryan. Thank you so much.
Ryan: Thanks, Chris.
Christopher: One final thing before we go. If you would like to book a free consultation, you can do so by coming to the front page of our website. It's nourishbalancethrive.com and there you'll find a little button that you can push to schedule, completely online, really easy to do. And then we can talk about how the testing that we do at Nourish Balance Thrive can be used to improve your athletic performance.
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