Highlights of the Podcast:
00:40 – Today’s podcast seeks to answer some questions sent in by people
01:26 – Is it okay to eat late at night?
02:29 – It’s okay to eat late at night if you’re eating the right thing
03:14 – Should you not have carbs at night?
03:21 – Carb consumption at night helps you sleep better
04:28 – How many nuts are okay for a portion?
04:49 – A portion is between 6 and 10 nuts and you can have up to 5 portions a day
05:18 – What are some healthy snack options?
05:25 – Guacamole
05:57 – Celery with almond butter
06:49 – Fruit/vegetable mash-up juices
07:59 – What can I do when friends tempt me with unhealthy foods?
08:52 – Eat regularly to avoid getting hungry and making bad food choices
09:16 – You’re the sum of the 5 people you’re with the most so pick your friends wisely
10:56 – Is coffee bad for you?
11:04 – Too much coffee is bad, but drinking coffee regularly is actually a good habit
12:43 – What can I do if I’m getting bored about the food I eat?
13:18 – Be experimental with your sauces and always try new things
Hello and welcome to another new episode of the TheDVCC.com podcast. I am Mark Gray.
Stephen: And I am Stephen.
Mark: So, are you well today, Stephen?
Stephen: I feel well. How are you? I’ve got still a bit of hay fever. It annoys me. I’m being a little bit annoyed, a little bit moody.
Mark: You still got hay fever?
Stephen: Yeah, because of the hay fever. Besides that, not too bad.
Mark: You shouldn’t be moody. That doesn’t help anyone.
Stephen: No, but it’s annoying.
Mark: Moody. Wrong word. You shouldn’t do it. You shouldn’t be it.
Stephen: Okay. I’m miserable.
Mark: Shush! You shouldn’t be miserable either! You look like me, dude! I’m just kidding, everybody. Totally kidding [Laughs]. So, we get a lot of questions emailed in to us, Facebooked, tweeted, LinkedIn all at once and we get these questions, and we normally answer them in the same method that we’ve been contacted in. But, I thought, why don’t we just put them on a podcast? Because then, there’s going to be thousands of people because we have thousands of people who listen to this podcast, which means I have to kind of temper my language sometimes, I just thought. But, why not help them because they’re going to have the same questions, you know? So, I thought we’d go through them, I thought we’d answer them, and hopefully give you some valuable information as we go! Righty-ho!
We had one, and it was, “Is it okay to eat late at night, Stephen?”
Stephen: Is it okay to eat late at night? Well, I actually should answer that because I got home last night at 10:00 PM. I had my first rugby training session and I actually ate at 10 o’clock, 10:00 PM, and bearing in mind I go to bed at 10 normally. So, I went to bed straight after I ate and went to sleep by 10:30. Now, the thing being, what I had to eat was chicken breast. I had a little bit of sweet potato and some vegetables. But, there’s a big difference between having that and having, say, a bagel and cream cheese, for example. Does that make sense, Mark?
Mark: Yeah. That answers the question of what you should have, but it doesn’t answer the question of is it okay to eat late at night.
Stephen: So, my point is it is okay to eat if you’re eating the right thing. So, there is no time of day. It’s a bit of a myth that stopping eating by 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM or whatever it is people say helps you lose fat. That’s incorrect. If you’re eating the right thing, it doesn’t really matter what time of day you’re eating. Having said that, it’s not a good idea to have a big meal before you go to sleep. It was just that I needed the nutrition rather than trying to stick to that rule. So there’s obviously exceptions to every rule. But generally, if you can eat your last meal at least two hours before you go to bed, that should be adequate for most people. But obviously for me, there wasn’t a chance. But it’s not like I do that every single night. Normally, I would eat my last meal about 8:30 PM.
Mark: But Stephen, should you not have carbs at night because you’re going to store them as fat because you don’t have the chance to use them as energy?
Stephen: Incorrect because the carbs in sweet potato, that’s a good form of carbohydrates. So, obviously, it’s important to realize that it’s important, the type of carbohydrates you’re eating. But they actually help produce hormones that help you sleep.
Mark: Serotonin.
Stephen: Correct. So, it’s actually useful to have them then because they help you sleep.
Mark: So conversely, it’s wrong to have carbohydrates at breakfast time and not to have them at dinner. You’re actually having them the wrong way around. You want carbohydrates at dinner, if you’re going to have them and…
Stephen: I’ll say that’s if you’re going to have them. The reason I had them was because I used a lot of glycogen. I did rugby training, which is running around. So yeah, excuse my cold-sounding because we’re outside again, on Mark’s suggestion, because he doesn’t get hay fever like I do.
Mark: No. It is very annoying, his voice. I do apologize for that. So basically, yeah. You want to be starting breakfast with protein and healthy fat. And if you’re going to have sweet potato carbs, you’d have that in the evening because it will help you sleep. So, hopefully that answered that. And moving along swiftly, how many nuts are okay for a portion? So, a portion of nuts, we’re talking cashews, macadamias, brazil nuts, pecans. Name other nuts, Stephen. Pecans. All the ones…
Stephen: Hazelnuts.
Mark: Hazelnuts. Basically, everything apart from peanuts are good for you, and a portion is between 6 and 10. So basically, I’d say 6 for a woman and 10 for a man, and you can generally have up to 5 portions a day. So, 5 portions, and a portion is 6 to 10 nuts – 6 for a female, 10 for a male.
Stephen: And people actually ask about avocado as well because they know that’s a good snack. Half an avocado, I think, is adequate for most people.
Mark: Well that goes to my next question, which is what are some healthy snack options? I moved into that smoothly.
Stephen: My favorite actually, which I kind of found out about not so long ago, was homemade guacamole, as in good quality guacamole. You know what’s in it. You probably make it yourself. And you dip raw vegetables in. So, things like carrots, peppers – sweet peppers. Things like that. You dip them in and that’s your snack because you have a good load of healthy fat. Avocado is very healthy for you. Good quality fat. And then, you have some fibre from the vegetables as well.
Mark: Okay. Any other options? That’s a good one.
Stephen: I also like celery with almond butter down the middle. So you’ll get some almond butter, which you can get from any health food store. I think even Tesco is doing it nowadays. And you can then get a celery. Basically, a stick of celery, and you’ll just spoon the almond butter down the middle and you’ll eat it like that. So it’s quite useful to take. You can wrap it in cling film or what have you to take to work. Put it into a box or whatever and you can eat it wherever you are.
Mark: Now, almond butter or cashew butter, you can use either. Just a word of the wise with cashew butter is once you open it, generally, you eat the whole pot. Or at least I do because it’s so nice. So you need to make sure you’re very strong-willed with that and just put it into the…
Stephen: Almond butter is better, I think, for most people.
Mark: Yes. But cashew is tastier.
Stephen: Yeah.
Mark: Another good option is a juice. And I don’t mean just like fruit juice. I’m talking basically a vegetable mash-up. So, at the moment, I’m going with celery, avocado, carrots. I put kale in. Also, I put half an apple as well. And I’ve been Vitamixing that. That just basically mixes it up very well. I put a bit of coconut water in as well. That’s my water. And some ice, if it’s warm. To have a nice kind of like an ice cooly thing. And that’s good. It gives you healthy fat, good antioxidants and fibre from things like the kale. So that will actually keep you full for long.
I chuck in some casein powder, some protein powder. Basically, there’s two types – whey and casein. Casein is a slow release protein. And obviously, if I’m having it in the day as a snack, then I want a slow release of protein. Oh, there’s a helicopter coming for us! So the casein is a better option as a snack. Whereas whey protein would be better for your protein straight after exercise.
So, on to another question. My friend keeps tempting me with unhealthy foods. What can I do? Stephen?
Stephen: What can you do? Well, there’s a few things. I know the easy thing to say would be to say no. However, it’s much easier to say no to something when you’re not hungry yourself. So if you allow yourself to get hungry, you haven’t eaten adequately, you maybe haven’t had enough protein, which actually keeps you fuller for longer, then it’s much, much more difficult to say no to something. So, for me, if I’ve missed meals and someone puts something in front of me, whether it’s sugary, bad for me or whatever, I’m going to really struggle not to eat it because my blood sugar has dropped and I’m so used to eating regularly, I really notice it if I don’t eat something on time or within enough time.
So that’s one way, I would say, that’s a very good thing. Make sure that you have all your meals prepared and you’ve eaten them. You eat them. So you’re eating regularly, every three hours roughly, and you’re eating the right sort of thing that keep your blood sugar stable. Any other?
Mark: Get rid of them, your friends.
Stephen: Yeah. I knew you’d say that.
Mark: Well, they do say you’re the sum of the 5 people you hang around with most, right? And if 5 people that you hang around with, most of them will probably know that you’re either trying to lose weight or put on a bit of muscle tone, whatever or whichever way it is. And if they’re trying to tempt you all the time to eat bad food, they’re only doing that to make themselves feel better.
Stephen: Actually, it’s a fair point that studies have been done, I think, and the people that are closest around you, if they are bigger, then you’re far more likely to be bigger and vice versa. So, actually, the studies were also done with wealth. The sum of the 5 people, your average amount that you earn is normally the sum of the 5 people you hang around with the most.
Mark: The average.
Stephen: It’s the same thing with weight loss and weight gain. If you’re surrounded by people that are making poor food choices, they aren’t encouraging you in a positive manner, then it’s going to be a lot harder for you to actually lose weight.
Mark: And a lot of people say it’s difficult to get rid of friends. Sure, it is. It’s difficult. But you can distance them or you can choose the times that you see them or realize what they are and what they do. And then, it’s not like they’re doing it maliciously if they’re trying to temp you necessarily. It’s kind of a subconscious thing. I often see it when someone, they’ve got donuts, right? And they want to have them. They’ll try and make sure that someone else will have them as well so they don’t feel bad. Because most people kind of realize that donuts aren’t the best option, and if you’re having them as a reward or whatever, that’s okay and you’ve made the choice. But if you’re doing it just because you kind of get a pang or you feel you should do, then that’s never healthy.
So, another question. Let me bring it up. Is coffee bad for me, Stephen?
Stephen: Well, that’s kind of a double-edged sword of a question because yes and no. Too much coffee can be bad for you, but coffee in general is not. No. Coffee can actually be very good for you. A lot of studies show that it has very beneficial impacts on people’s health. Now, when I’m talking about coffee, I think it’s important to note that it should, if it were 100% possible, be organic coffee because it’s one of the most sprayed crops. So, you want to try and not ingest any toxins and things like that. Pesticides. So, getting organic coffee would be important.
I also really think it’s beneficial to be drinking before exercise. I don’t think the way it raises your cortisol or stress hormone, I don’t think it’s good to be drinking it throughout the day. I think if you’re exercising, it should only be before exercise. And then again, if you’re not exercising, probably no later than 12:00 PM:00 PM or 1 ‘o clock. Probably 12:00 PM is a good time, I would say. So yes, it is a good thing, but I think that it’s one of those things that people do overdo often because I like coffee. I love coffee, in fact. I like trying different types of coffee. But I noticed, when I realized I was having more than I used to, that just cutting back and actually just taking it out actually for a week or two, I noticed a difference. Actually, the fat I held, I lost fat. And also, just the way I felt. My energy levels were better. So then, I reintroduced it, but I was much more limited. I actually did what I say to do rather than having too many.
Mark: Okie dokie. A little answer there. So, one last question, I think, before we wrap it up. And that is I’m getting bored of certain foods. What can I do? Right. So, I kind of hear that a lot. People say, “Oh, I’m bored! What can I have? I’m just going to have chicken tonight or I’m just going to have salmon.” And I kind of ask, “Well, what did you have before?” Well, you’d have maybe salmon and potatoes or salmon and spaghetti or pasta. And like realistically, the pasta doesn’t taste, the spaghetti doesn’t taste, the potatoes doesn’t taste. What tastes is the sauce that they are in.
So, realistically, you don’t stop having sauces or making healthier sauces. They are what make food taste. Chicken and all that kind of stuff generally doesn’t taste that much, apart from the sauce. So, if you’re feeling that you’re bored, it’s simply because you’re not being experimental enough or trialing different sauces to liven up your food. And that would be the same case if you had pasta, rice or whatever as you would have perhaps eaten before. So, it’s not about the fact that you’re getting rid of refined carbohydrates that mean that your food’s bland. It’s just that you’re not putting much thought perhaps into the sauces.
And if you want some ideas for sauces, we can give them to you, but just comment in the Facebook box below. Just say “Yes, I want some sauces” and we’ve got a whole load of really healthy sauces that you can make up using kind of avocado and different herbs and spices and things and they’re really tasty and they’ll liven up any dish. So, you’re just going to have to be a bit more experimental really. I hope that answers that one. Okie dokie. If you have any more of these types of questions, do fire them across because we’ll just answer them in the podcast or videos or whatever and hopefully be able to help everybody. Most people will probably have the same questions. So don’t be shy and let us know what it is. Until next time. Hopefully, Stephen’s nose blockage will be gone and his voice won’t be so “frustrating,” I think is the word. Okay. Until next time. This is Mark and Steve from TheDVCC.com
Stephen: Bye-bye!
