A Good Nutrition Book — And the Bad Advice That Inspired It

0:00Hello and welcome back to the consistency project podcast a special episode today. I'm Patrick here as always with EC every week. We in the simplify the principles and practices of nutrition, health and fitness. Thanks for tuning in. Hello, EC. Hey, how are you? I say it's a special episode because your book is out. Yay! As of today, as of today, we're releasing this a day later than usual in the week because it's October 1st. And we wanted to wait for this episode to come out so that the book is out on October 1st. It is out now. We'll put 47 links in the show notes to make sure folks go get it. It's called a good nutrition book. We talked about this a little bit last week. We've been talking about it for a little bit. Why it's called the good nutrition book. But give us the give us the the one or two sentence pitch for what this book is. What you hope to accomplish with it. Yeah, let's see if I can do one or two sentences. I tried to distill my thinking about nutrition with the 10 principles of nutrition as well as then how I apply it with the three pillars method in a really succinct way that you can really go on and become your own nutrition coach.

1:05And you can kind of opt out of the insanity that is online that I fell victim to for so many years and have a tool to really do that and guide you forward. And I know I said it last week, but it is probably my favorite sentence in the book. I wanted to give you the rules of the road without you having to know how internal combustion works. So a very practical way to navigate that's evidence based without necessarily making you try to become an expert. Okay, we're going to talk about a good chunk of that actually today. I'm excited about this. But for folks out there, if you've been listening to the show or watching the show or following you see on social or getting emails or taking your masterclass, whatever it is. If you've gotten value from EC, the best way you can right now give a little love back is to go get yourself 12 copies or one copy mostly 12 copies. Give it to your family, give it to your friends, hand it out at the gym, do whatever you got to do because EC has been working on she's been working on talking I'm talking I'm talking past you right now, we see because you're not going to make this pitch. You've been working very hard over the last three to four months on this book, but you've been working even harder over the last 10 years to have the knowledge and to be able to communicate that knowledge in a way that you can you can do it well in approximately 120 pages.

2:14And so it is the culmination of so much work and so much time and so much effort. So again, if you've received value from EC, I am asking you to please reciprocate get a copy of the book or 12 or listen to the call, listen to the audio book. That's right. Whatever you've got to do, but it's a great way to show a little bit of love back to all of EC's effort. Cool. Well, I got to jump in real quick. Thank you, of course, but also thank you for encouraging me to write the book. I think people should know that you were basically the reason I got it done. But also just for people that have taken my past courses, of course, thank you for all of the support to date. But this is also new. Now, of course, it's not like I always said say only me, but like every time I have a protein per bot, of course, there's some through lines. I hope that people would expect that from me. But every time I sit down for a new product or to update like when I did the app and even update stuff, it's still truly a rewrite for me. And I only say that because I do think this is the tightest and clearest I've been able to make my methodology. And it's kind of crazy to me to think like wow, I'm at nine or 10 years in.

3:22And now I think I've said it clearly. But I do think even people that are quite used to how I approach things, my opinion, I still think there's some learnings to be had there. Yeah. I agree. All right. So you told me that you just want to talk about the book this week. And then you do let me pick the subject matter. So I'm excited about this. So we're going to talk about your own personal history through the choppy waters of nutrition advice and nutrition information, especially online. I thought the best place to just welcome people to the book and welcome people to this episode and to the subject is actually for us to listen to the introduction to the book. As I mentioned, you've got an audio book that comes along with it. So just put it on the table. There's a physical book, a Kindle or digital book, whatever the people call these days and then the audio book. So however you like to engage with these ideas, we've got options for you. But what I'd like to do is listen to the introduction to the book. It's about four or four and a half minutes long. And then on the back end of that, we will have a conversation about your own history and kind of what the kind of the seeds were ultimately got us to where we are today.

4:29So let's listen to that now. Introduction. I didn't eat a banana for three years. I thought I was improving my health. I was a victim of online nutrition misinformation. The unfortunate part was that I genuinely wanted to learn. I was reading all the blogs and message boards where the free thinkers were. I was following what this expert said about that new study and what another expert claimed was the latest food we should avoid. This was the internet era before social media, but the viral experts use the same playbook they do today fear. They convinced me that fruit had too much sugar. Dairy was inflammatory grains would make me insulin resistant. Conventional produce would give me cancer and on and on. You name the food. There was some rule that went with it. Avoid it. Cook it. Par with something else. By only this brand never eat it after seven p.m. Eat it only raw. And I did it all. Perhaps the most embarrassing part is that I already had two biological science degrees at that point. I incorrectly assumed that because someone had a PhD or MD after their name, they knew what they were talking about.

5:34After several years of following this cutting edge nutrition advice and only a case of disorder eating to show for it, I had enough. What does the science actually say? No more blogs, no more gurus. I wanted to look at the studies myself. That decision led me to earn a master's degree in nutrition, become a certified nutrition specialist, and also become a licensed dietitian nutritionist. What surprised me most wasn't that nutrition was incredibly complicated. It was that it wasn't. The internet has made nutrition seem impossibly complex and changing. But when I looked at the totality of the evidence, instead of cherry-pick studies, the fundamentals were remarkably consistent and dare I say simple. In many cases, what you actually should do was the complete opposite of the advice dominating blogs, podcasts, and social media. I was embarrassed that I had fallen for the online hysteria despite my education, but that experience gave me two things. First, empathy. I've been exactly where many people reading this book are today. Second, it gave me a mission.

6:37I wanted to help people avoid the mental gymnastics, stress, and literally thousands of dollars I'd spent chasing bad nutrition and health advice. That became the foundation of my business, which for the past nine years has helped thousands of individuals, gym owners, coaches, and corporate wellness participants build effective nutrition habits grounded in scientific evidence. And along the way, the banana I once feared became a bit of a symbol for all of it. In the book, there's an image of a social media post that's done in a breaking news sarcastic style. It reads, breaking news, woman eats two bananas at breakfast, still alive. This social media post from 2020 became me running joke in my community. It's a rallying point for those fed up with nutrition misinformation hashtag to banana club. Throughout this time, people have asked me, can you recommend a good nutrition book? Well, there are some great evidence based books out there. The book I wanted to recommend didn't exist. Until now, of course, a good nutrition book is the book I wish I'd had 15 years ago. It's not a blow by blow of which study is right and why it's not about mastering the technical details of metabolism or physiology.

7:44It's not even a guide to spotting misinformation or reading studies. You don't need to become an expert at debunking bad nutrition advice. You need to understand enough nutrition that you stop needing someone else to debunk it for you. It's a book that teaches you how to think about nutrition instead of simply telling you what to eat. A book that explains why countless different diets work, but maybe not for you. A book that allows you to opt out of the endless cycle of conflicting headlines, viral diet trends, and internet arguments. My goal is simple. By the time you finish this book, I want you to be your own nutrition coach. You can learn enough to confidently navigate nutrition without needing to become or rely on an expert. It's about putting you in the driver's seat by learning the rules of the road, not how internal combustion works. If you're looking for a simple list of dos and don'ts, expert takedowns or nutrition conspiracy theories, this isn't for you. But if you're ready to stop following rules and start thinking for yourself, you're in the right place. Okay. That was again the introduction to the book. We will put links to it in the show notes or you can just go on Amazon.

8:47Search for a good nutrition book. And then just just because I'm going to say it now, in case this is the only time you listen, if you read it and you like it, leave a review because that actually helps more people trust that the book is worth their time and effort. So one last pitch for getting the book and then leaving leaving EC review. Okay. So here's what I would like to do. What we heard in that introduction is sort of your origin stories of how you got to a place where you were like, what the hell is going on here? I've got to figure this out for myself. And in episodes past and on social like you've made mention of all of the things that you've tried before, you mentioned in the introduction and in other places like I only came to this because I was so stuck and I ran in so many circles that ended up nowhere. That ultimately that was I had to figure out what is going to work, what does work, what does make sense. You've gone to school for it. You obviously spend the last 10 years working with actual humans to even understand it more. And so what I want to do is kind of go back to the beginning of when nutrition became a big part of your brain space.

9:52So I obviously met you back in the days of very early CrossFit CrossFit Boston was probably 2006. Talk to me about like was that when nutrition became a thing for you? Was it before that? Did you end up with CrossFit because nutrition was like a big thing and fitness kind of traveled with it? Did we start with fitness and ultimately end up with nutrition or just kind of walk me through just like the very beginnings of it. Yeah. I think like everybody who does fitness, you know, they think of themselves as a more healthy eater. So I think I had that ethos. I was always a regular excerciser and into fitness for many, many years. So I think I was putting myself in the healthy eating camp when I met you. I will say I think my first real nutrition deep dive would have happened in my first Masters though. So probably 2004 before I really started CrossFit. And this is I was working out a ton and I did macros by hand. If we really want to date me. What does that mean? Macros by hand? What does that mean?

10:53Yeah. So basically on the side of all your food that has a label, they'll list out, you know, of course the nutrition in the food. But they'll also say what the recommendations would be if you were doing like a 2000 calorie diet or a 2500 calorie diet. So I just picked 2000, which this is a great lesson when I tell people that you can't use cookie cutter numbers. This is a great lesson. I'm six feet tall. I was working out crazy amounts at that time in my life. And yeah, I just followed the prescription of what the USDA said for 2000 calories and I counted all up my nutrition labels by hand. So when people tell me about what I'm measuring tracking, I'm like, I get it. I did it. And I did it by hand. And yeah, I whittled myself down by like 25 pounds and obviously didn't sustain it because it was just way way too small. But that was really my first real kind of nutrition diet if you will. That was a couple years before CrossFit. And I think when I found CrossFit, I was still continuing some of those behaviors. So I guess in line with it, but probably not as tight because I put some of the weight that I should have put back on. And then of course CrossFit with their level one is kind of my next I guess step.

11:58Yeah. The first master's the master's in 20 2004 was it engineering? Was it? No, that's my undergrad. So my first master's was more like environmental sciences, but I had to focus in genetics. Yeah. And that kind of peaked your interest around nutrition. Just that sort of. Yeah, I don't really know why I was like, I'm doing macros by hand. That is a lot. That is a leap. But I think you know, again, I've been a gym rat my entire life. Like I was doing five days a week when I was in middle school. So I think that's where I was like when I talk about how I think people really unlock nutrition by being regular exercises. I think in part because it was for me too. It's just again that I'm a healthy person is how you identify. And so you start exploring these other options. Yeah. And was there a was there a problem you you remember trying to solve or what like I know you well enough to know that I think the intellectual exercise was also probably stimulating. But was it also in conjunction with like a hey, there's something wrong and I'm trying to fix it or was it mostly I'm a healthy person and man, this would be this is kind of interesting.

13:04And I'm willing to put a spreadsheet together and track my macros by hand. I'm sure there was also body composition goals. I mean, I think most women for stretches of their life have these idealized body comp ideas. But yeah, there's also just some sort of the science aspect of it as well. Yeah, at that point I wasn't chasing any of the weird wellness health claims. You know, whatever that age, you know, in your early 20s, I don't think you're really focused on longevity or wild health claims. Totally. Yeah, that makes sense. It was also pre social media. So there's a little bit less of that craziness at that era. Yeah, I do want to talk about that too a little bit because a lot of people don't remember what life was like without social media. But I do think that exacerbates some of the things we have talked about and that the book is about and what I want to talk to you today about. But okay, so we were doing, you know, 2005, 2006, we kind of found CrossFit. Nutrition is continues to be a part of it. Do you remember when it went beyond macros by hand and like what did that look like? I remember, you know, it's funny. You mentioned the level one.

14:05The first level one that I went to was probably in 2006 or 2007. And that was literally the first time I was ever made to think about nutrition as something other than I eat food when I'm hungry and I stop when I'm full. That was the beginning and end of my consciousness around nutrition. And I remember sitting in the back of the level one, the first one I've ever been to, oddly enough it was here in Maine. And Tony butting gave the what is nutrition or whatever they call that nutrition or that lecture. And the next day everything was different for me. So like, talk to me a little bit about the bridge between like, okay, that period where it was interesting to you, you did macros by hand. No, thank you. But like, why didn't it just stop there? Why did it? What was the next step of like, oh, this is continuing to be interesting to me? Yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the things that's so awesome about CrossFit is, you know, Greg's vision had built in nutrition with it. And so if you were interested in CrossFit, you automatically accepted the value of nutrition.

15:10I mean, it's sort of some of his genius to be quite honest. How effective that was to create some behavior change about one of the hardest things to change for people. Like, hey, you want to get better at CrossFit. You got to think about your fuel. And I think for people that were really interested in CrossFit for the fitness angle, they really viewed it that way. They saw it as fuel. And so it wasn't about necessarily losing weight. Yes, a lot of people improved their body composition, but that got them more pull-ups, that got them faster running. And it was all about how do I fuel this appropriately because I want to be the best CrossFit. So that certainly re-hooked me into nutrition with the zone methodology. At the time, though, there was a little bit of that dueling philosophy within the greater community. It was the paleo bunch, and then it was also the zone. And I think what I struggled with with the zone, even though I'd already done macros by hand at that point, is again, there was the cookie cutter zone block prescriptions that we all remember probably from the journal. And unfortunately, I tried to force myself into a 14 block zone prescription, because that was the largest one they listed for a female, which is just even less calories than where I had been at macros.

16:13Now, I didn't understand it at the time. Like, I was just like, why isn't this working for me? Why can't I sustain this? Why can't I do it? But it was never really sustainable because I was quite literally starving. So I think that's some of the reason that I started kind of falling more into the paleo side of the house, because I was able to eat enough to actually fuel myself. I continue to work out. So yeah, really got into the paleo mindset. Paleo mindset, but with that is I think when the wellness industry hooks and the fears about don't eat this food and never touch this food, really started to kind of grab me and became more of an interest beyond just like feeling the cross at workouts. Yeah, that is paleo is a gateway drug to paranoia, right? Because the whole idea is like, if you eat anything that archaic men and women ancestors didn't have access to suddenly you're poisoning yourself and of course nobody really said it that way. But that was the implicit argument for what the paleo diet was. And so was that did that ultimately become it kind of sounds like it did was that sort of for you the gateway to the fear and the paranoia and they I can be doing this better and cleaner and all these other terms that we've, you know,

17:24obviously heard a bunch of was that did it take a kind of a left hand turn for you that ultimately wasn't helpful. Oh, yeah, because that's like you mentioned there starts to be these exclusions and I'm not I really don't want to try to cite people because I haven't looked back at some of this. The stuff I was reading at the time, but yeah, I mean, I do know that Lorraine, courteins paleo book they would cite studies about beans and how harmful they were, but it was like actually looking at a population of people who were eating raw beans. Or then it was looking at you know rats or something like that like there was just some of these claims that you know I've gotten quite strong on our podcast about disbandling, but at the time I was just reading them as a kind of a lay person in the nutrition world. And so yeah, I started excluding foods and I think that those restrictions out of fear of dairy and grains and legumes was the gateway drug and then continue to expand on that I think, you know, you know about my nightshade phase I also excluded nightshades which include things like tomatoes and peps. And in fact, there's an old video on the CrossFit YouTube when I'm out to eat at a seminar with patch show and I'm not getting tomatoes on my cob salad because they're nightshades.

18:32I mean, just like the complete craziness, but yeah, I think that's one of the reasons with these exclusion diets. Unfortunately, I do think paleo is a gateway to then keep going and keep taking out all these really healthy foods and nothing really happened. I think that's one of the things to highlight. Yes, I got very lean when I did macros by hand, but when I continue to try all these things, which I think we're going to continue to talk about, there was no real revelation for me. And that ultimately was a big learning for me that when I did paleo, nothing really happened. Yes, I'm going to talk about some things, you know, small, but it wasn't like I all of a sudden got a very different body composition where my deadlift went up 50 pounds. Nothing really happened. My mental health, whatever you want to say, nothing really was like, wow, this is really it for me. Which in hindsight, I think was one of the strongest things to happen to me because I didn't latch on to any one idea. Because none of them were the magic bullet that they kind of promised or people promised that they would be. But the downside of that is, and I think this is the sort of the next step, which a lot of people go through, which is like, okay, well, one of two things.

19:35One, there's something wrong with me. This was supposed to fix it and it didn't fix it. But then the next thing is then I need to find the next thing. Okay, paleo didn't do it or zone didn't do it. Maybe it's paleo. Okay, it's not paleo. Then it's something else, right? You have this, you have this implicit belief that if the thing that worked for everybody else or seems to work for everybody else didn't work for me, either I must be doing something wrong or I need to do something differently. Right. And so what was, like, talked to me a little bit about the next phases of like, okay, well, that I didn't feel did anything so I tried this next and then that, then this. Yeah. Yeah, and I also want to say like some of the, quote, failures of let's say paleo or even the zone block prescription. I'm going to say that's a lot of it was the inability to sustain it. Like there are times when you go out to dinner with your family and you just can't, you know, throw all the food on the floor. It's just not part of the experience and what you value, you know, so some of it is also like me coming to this one of the reason why sustainability is such a big thing.

20:39Like this has to work in the long term and I think some of these things I also didn't get results maybe because I don't even know what results I was looking for. And I think that's some sort of nutrition in Nirvana simply because by the time I got to day 14 I just couldn't do it anymore. And that's a great learn because it's like, oh, this thing is actually isn't realistic. But yeah, I think after my initial paleo days, that's when I went down to the deep dive into all of the restrictions. I guess it would be more of the whole 30, which certainly at this point, I don't know if they had officially codified it at that point. I know they were doing seminars and stuff like that, but definitely more of the exclusions of, you know, no anything processed ever. I even started to get into some of the very elimination protocols that people do to then reintroduce foods to test and see if you have any response. And there's some stuff where you eventually get down to only eating lamb and pears because they're the most whatever none in flammatory blah, blah, blah.

21:39And that's the path I was going on. I was also everything I was eating was in class, everything was organic, everything was natural. I mean, you name it that extreme wellness, everything pure and clean, scared of all of the additives. And I was definitely, oh, this is the time when I was carrying, you know, balsamic vinegar and my 311 carry on because I didn't trust, you know, the dressings internationally or even nationally when I ordered salads out. So yeah, all of that super, super wellness clean stuff. Oh, yeah, I probably spent three to four years there. And again, was it, was it a, do you have a sense of what problem you were trying to solve during that? That's I mean, I think that's some of it. I think to be honest, I was fearful at that point of the, they're saying that you're dying because you know, you're insulin spiking and you're dying because this additives giving you cancer. So that that point certainly the fear had gotten to me for sure. I guess you could say it was more health focus, but it was really health focused out of fear. It wasn't that I, you know, set out being like, oh, I really want to do the thing that lowers my cardiovascular disease.

22:43So it was like, oh, wow, this is killing me. I better stop. Without any real like clear sense of you really like defining what it was that you were. Zero definition, zero definition of outcomes. Like it's funny on the podcast. You know, I think sometimes people think, I don't know if they think I have an attitude or whatever, but it's like, no, no, I get so mad at this industry. I was a part of all of this stuff that I say don't do. I did all of it. All of it except for carnivore. I did all of it. So yeah, I was buying all of this fear stuff. There wasn't really social media viral posts. There was blogs and they were using the same tactic fear blogs email list discussion boards and was all the same stuff. You mentioned in the intro talking about blogs a little bit. You mentioned in the intro like you started looking for and listening to and reading M.D.s and PhDs and, you know, people who as a culture, we sort of venerate. We say, okay, like when it comes to things like this, we listen to people like you. And that's changed a little bit. I don't know if it's for the better or worse. But like, talk to me a little bit about that stage where you, you were looking online for solutions to problems that you probably even hadn't really quite defined yet.

23:49What was that like? What was like, talk to me a little bit about that experience and where that went well, maybe given where you are today. Like that was maybe helpful and maybe where it went wrong. Yeah, I don't even know if it was helpful in any way. I mean, maybe the hindsight is the helpful part. But yeah, you know, I had finished a master's at that point. And so I think I knew, you know, the rigors of what it meant to be evidence-based and scientific-minded and all of the stuff of the research. So I just, like, it's so naive. I can't even believe how naive I was to just think that everybody who has a degree is online for the sake of humanity and, like, good outcomes. I'm like, well, of course, this person did an MD. Of course, they're going to put out the good information that they know is evidence-based. Like what? I don't even know. I don't know if I, how out of it I was in terms of, like, capitalism and making money that I just assumed. So that was my experience that, like, you know, I just saw that this person was an MD-PhD. And I just left to the conclusion they must know what they're talking about, which is, again, just in hindsight, just so trusting and so naive.

24:51It's so embarrassing to say. But that was my mindset. And so there wasn't really a screening process. There wasn't me really validating the research. I think in some cases I did open up the study, but I didn't, you know, make the conclusion of, like, oh, this is an animal study that's totally irrelevant. Because my past life was, like, genetic markers and plants. It wasn't nutrition health outcomes. It was just a lot of trust based on credentials, which kind of stinks because I understand the importance of credentials. Like, I value that I have credentials. And I think it is an okay initial screen. I think it's better than no credentials, but it's not a perfect screen. And so it's unfortunate because I do encourage people to still let say go see MDs for medical issues, of course. But that doesn't mean that every MD is going to be the appropriate fit for you. So just some sort of caution around that. And unfortunately, I just, I totally, I don't know, too young to naive, to saw credentials and said, okay, I should listen to this person. And of course, they were popular within the whatever greater community that I was like researching in. So then it just was all trust and credentials.

25:56What were some of the tangible downsides of getting kind of wrapped up in this world of health optimization, diet optimization, like give me a sense of, you know, I always think about, you know, we've got four real investments in our lives. We've got our, the investment of our time, the investment of our effort, the investment of our attention and the investment of our money. So I always use the acronym of team time, effort, attention and money. So talk to me a little bit about like where you feel like you in this period of your life, invested those things in places that one people are still doing that. And a part of a large part of your work is to get them to invest them in better places, but to just like places you feel like looking back, man, I wasted a lot of time doing this. And I wasted a lot of money doing this. All of them, all, take all those team letters, all of them. I mean, it was so front and center for me of, because you know, you're going and eating out and you go without with friends and then you eat a lot of times every day, right? You eat multiple times a day. So it's so front and center.

27:08It's guiding all of those decisions. And then what you can and can't have or when you go home and when you visit people and then you're afraid for your family, I distinctly remember cleaning out my entire parents, you know, covered in kitchen one time and all that stuff throwing everything away. Oh God. So yeah, and tons of money. I did tons of unnecessary tests, tons of unnecessary supplements. And again, like I think I've shared like the vitamin D one, like that was probably the one that was quote most risky. But thankfully, nothing really happened. Thankfully, didn't run into some contaminated subset of supplements like that. But it's a ton of money, a ton of time, a ton of focus on something that was completely a waste of it. And if you think about time as one of our most precious resources, right? It's just sort of like, well, that was a complete waste. That was. Yeah. I don't even know if I could add it all up. I think it would add up to years because across every day, thinking about it and trying to optimize something that was completely irrelevant. Yeah. Thousands of dollars on years. How or what point did you and you sort of mentioned a little bit, but I go, what point did you like pick your head up look around you recognize at least implicitly like gosh, I've been wasting so much time, so much money, so much effort on these things.

28:18Nothing has changed except that I just kind of keep bouncing from one to the next right we talked about paleo you and I long ago did a video for CrossFit about fasting right so like you've tried all these things at some point you picked your head up and said, alright, what the hell, what am I doing? Do you remember was there anything that did that, you know, was there a moment was there a thing was there a decision you made that changed that trajectory or was it just like slowly over time. Eventually you got to the place where you're like, okay, this is all sort of BS sort of the ladder, I think over time I started appreciating the principles of quality and quantity and how they could kind of come together to shape the outcome we want. I still wasn't totally clear on the ideas and but yeah, it started being like, okay, these are variations of different concepts that we see come together and ultimately as part of my role at CrossFit I had the opportunity to pursue the masters and nutrition. I went into that masters I would say not as crazy as I once was but still held some beliefs and some dogma that I thought were going to be affirmed in that program.

29:25And then when presented with data and us actually going through the research and understanding it better I had to kind of. I'm associate myself with those beliefs which was challenging because it was like years of just assuming low-car was better right and assuming that like you know saturated fat is totally fine all the time things like that. And so yeah it was really I wasn't again as crazy as I would say when I entered that program but that program really made me find the research look at the research understand the research to then be able to make claims and I didn't agree with all of the stuff in that program I think there was some other stuff there too but it was the time to then really take due diligence and go through the stuff versus just having another job and reading blogs and social media I guess that point. I want to talk to you about was the time we are in today is not that much different than it was in 2006 the you and I reading blogs and people obviously read you know whatever instagram posts watch tiktok videos more likely.

30:28So it feels to me and then we're moving into an age where like some percentage a high percentage of all the content we see is not going to be a I generate right so it's going to be even harder to discern good information from bad useful information from unhelpful so I'm wondering like given that you've gone through like two distinct phases in terms of just like the way that we talk about nutrition the way we think about nutrition and health in general. What do you see are the big the big lessons from like the the period where you're reading from quote unquote experts to now where we've got people who claim to be experts even without the credentials right so now we've got influencers. We are going to continue to move into a place where like information is literally like we are drowning in information. How do you recommend other than reading the book like how do we get ourselves out of this mess because it feels to me like when you talk when you and I talked about it when we're talking about it today so much of it I can imagine if you couldn't just grab your laptop and type in like should I be eating low carb if you didn't have that as a point of entry.

31:38At some point you would have just been like I don't feel great I'm going to maybe not eat that I'm going to eat more of that or something like some like more in intuition versus I am constantly going to be looking for somebody else to tell me what to eat so that I can feel good about my health and I can feel like I'm making the right decisions. And I think we're getting increasingly I think the distance between that sort of intuition of like this makes sense to me where this doesn't make sense to me and and are the actions we actually take I think they're just like we're stretching them so far apart and so I guess all of that to just ask like how do we get out of the mindsets or the singular mindset that gets somebody into such a rabbit hole that it's like 10 years before they ever escape from it. I don't know it's really challenging because I think there's good content online hence what we do. And so there are good people out there and it's worth following them and you know I hope that I've provided value to people and all of that wonderful stuff.

32:41But there is an element of like I think sometimes people should opt out I mean I don't even want to say it because it's like kind of going against me having a business but I doctor Adrian Chavez who puts out great evidence based content he was answering some questions. And he was answering some stories and he was just like he said this in one of the recent ones he's like a lot of people who he's better if they just turned off social media or at least for nutrition like head just go look at dog content you know and and that's unfortunate because of course I think there's some really great create us out there and some really great information but on a whole what was that thing that we talked about like gosh it was like a year ago something like 2% of information on tiktok was valid for like the truth. Yeah. Yeah. Something like so low that if you just want to you know put a broad brushstroke on it it's overall net negative. And even just knowing that even just maybe knowing that going into that that you're just opening up a tabloid and there might be one little thing in there that's useful by chance but chances are you're actually just getting crap is probably the most healthy way to approach it.

33:41Yeah. And to approach everything like super skeptical and super what is this person selling me now look I sell stuff to I hope people know that I'm selling the education so they don't actually need me anymore but nevertheless like we are all selling something but what are they selling and like what is their motivation here and how do they earn money and what are they saying about it and why you know why is this person so special like what is their hook or whatever you know it's a lot a lot more skepticism. Yeah. And it's interesting it's maybe a little bit cynical but I think about you know people like yourself and Adrian Chavez and like people who you've talked to here on the podcast and you know obviously there's lots more that I've never heard of but so much of your energy has to and you don't do this explicitly but you do it implicitly but so much of the things that you talk about are because people got wrapped up into this misinformation disinformation confusing information half truth. That you then like all the people are doing good work are really just trying to combat the people doing the crappy work and so even to that degree once you recognize like okay even if I find the good people if I find EC plus seven more I'm just like I'm just going to follow them really all they can do in the marketplace of ideas is try to get you out of all the rabbit holes that the other people put you in correct and so even then the best thing to do is probably to just say I'm just going to follow them.

34:59Correct. And so even then the best thing to do is probably to just opt out of it. Because ultimately it's it's just you it's the putting yourself in that room that is the problem it's not like do I set on the couch over there at the table it's like no no the room is the problem. There's no perfect place in this room you're going to be exposed to things you don't need to be exposed to the second you walk into the room and so the only thing we can do is just keep the door closed to a degree. Yeah I think it's unrealistic to be like okay I'm not going on social media but maybe it is maybe the people want done quite well. Yeah I might get there one day but but like just heavy heavy cynicism which is terrible because again there's some great stuff out there but just like this is probably bad should probably incorrect should be the first thought. Yeah that's like walking in with the skepticism I think it's probably healthy. And the one thing I do know I'm going to one more pitch for the book but I do think that if we spent more time reading books and less time reading posts generally speaking not always because we've talked about books before and they don't have a real like deep vetting process but like

36:12the process it takes to write a book and bring a book out in the world and the amount of you know just in years and accumulated knowledge that it takes to deliver a book even a flawed book. There's something about the effort required that I trust more than I trust that I know it just took you two minutes to make that video and I don't know and I can't help but think that the year it took that guy to write the book and the two minutes it took that guy to make a video I am going to trust that there's more value in that book than in that video. And unfortunately the challenge of that is it's so much easier for me to consume that video than it is to consume that book but if we can get ourselves I think to a place where we are recognizing not blanket not all not every time but that the effort it takes to write a book and even to read a book is worth the effort whereas consuming more 30 second tech shock videos we get what we get the effort we put into it right.

37:13I agree I mean of course AI is probably changing that landscape a little bit but no I agree and that's true yep that is true yeah in terms of just overall quality and it kind of goes back to the point about credentials like there are no credential there are no perfect credentials there are no perfect you know books on average are like books aren't perfect I guess I should say credentials aren't perfect but it does kind of imply some sort of level of effort intent that is a first good initiative. So I think it's a good tool for the initial screen even though there's still a lot of the discernment beyond that totally it's a good filter. All right this isn't really fun one more time the book is called a good nutrition book it is out now it is out now if you're listening to this look for the link in the show notes we will link it there again it's going to be an audiobook digital and of course paperback and then or just go to Amazon and type EC's name and or a good nutrition book and you will find it. So I would love to see a bunch of reviews of the next couple weeks so if you get the book please don't forget about it please leave it please leave EC review because that does help new people when they do stumble on it they hear about EC they hear about EC's work as you know anytime you go to Amazon my wife does this all the time she's like I'm going to go get a thing and then she spends 15 minutes reading reviews so this is how people learn if they don't know who EC is already if they like you check out this book and then there's 10 or 12 or 25 really good reviews that helps them know that it's worthwhile it helps back to that idea of trust.

38:32It helps them know that EC is trustworthy so get a book get 10 copies of it and then don't forget to leave review and thank you and your friends for all of those things. And EC and I will be back next week for a new episode of the Consistency Project and Podcast.