Dramatically wrong. Like squares are now faster on
cars than wheels are so. If you're not using square
wheels, you're an idiot. Your free diet outside sucks.
But also, women are not blue hippopotamuses.
Yeah, I read Born to Run and it seems like we're pretty
resilient. Box and whisker chart is much.
Linear regression of a model of my When you're a little kid, you
get a pair of new shoes and you're the fastest person on
planet. Say one day we'll be able to
carry our phones around in our pockets and even do video calls
where we can see each other while we talk.
No way, that's weird. Yeah, that's too much.
Why would anyone want to do that?
The really boring, uncomfortable truth is, the right amount of
The thing is the right amount for.
You welcome to the free outside show, the show where we find
interesting people, topics, storylines and try to present
them in an entertaining way. And I think this is a great
episode. So one of the things that I've
noticed and especially is bled into my coaching has been diet
over the years from the early days when I was 20 on the
Pacific Crest Trail on existing on a limited budget.
And that leads to a lot of sugar, a lot of processed foods,
but you're 20, like, what does it even matter?
But over time, it's been this big shift where just being
conscientious of my diet has really helped.
And one of the most unique things of Europe was I felt like
I had to start over walking into a grocery store and looking for
the same things that I've eaten for years.
Just. Didn't really exist in the store
so I went to a lot more bread and things like that.
Just a big shift, but man, their bread was actually incredible.
You'd get to like a Hut in the middle of nowhere and they'd
have fresh baked croissants. Didn't even make sense.
They have way better bread and it's everywhere.
So with that on diet, it's easy to think about diet on papers
like eat, drink carbs, recover protein, boom.
But I think it's way more complicated than that.
And today I have on the Your Diet Sucks podcast with Zoe Rohm
and Kylie Van Horn, and we talked about a number of the
topics involved in diet and it turns into kind of a question
and answer some storytelling, but it was really fun.
Go check out their podcast as well.
They have a number of episodes that like one will hit on keto,
one will hit on calorie counting, one will hit on
carnivore diet. It's just a really good way to
learn about the diet over there. And they do a really good job
editing. It's quite entertaining.
So encourage you to go check that out.
But nutrition, so it's been one of those things that I have
gradually gotten better about. I have a whole document that I
send out to athletes that I coach on nutrition.
How to think about it, how to substitute things in.
Because what we're doing, whether you're through hiking,
backpacking, or trail running, it's something very different
than normal life. It's not like you can just walk
to the cabinet, turn on the stove, cook something up.
It has to be a little more thought out, thought through, so
that these decisions are made ahead of time, so that you have
the tools to be successful. A lot of these races exist in
the middle of nowhere and it's hard to get fuel and calories
and whatever else you may need. Life hack though.
I did take a stove to Europe and was able to luckily find gas to
power that stove, but it opened up a lot more disabilities as
far as like cooking and food that I could take.
So travel hack, I guess if you're going somewhere, if you
can throw a stove in, maybe you can cook on the go.
OK, first before we get into things, I want to thank John G
for supporting the free Outside podcast.
When I was in Europe, I only had two outfits.
I had the Snappy Tracker shirt and AT shirt from John G and
then two pairs of shorts and that's what worked the entire
time. Why do I point out the snappy
trekker? Because it can look semi formal
so you can go into places in the bigger cities of Europe like I
did and not look super out of place.
And I wore it in the 100K that I did over there.
The Zugspits in the Southern Alps in Germany and Bavaria and
it worked great there. So I would encourage you to go
check it out. They are dropping some more
stuff soon on the Jonji website. So JANJ i.com use code free
outside for 10% off. And I want to throw out garage
grown gear because they're also a sponsor of the show.
But this water bottle here, the Mazama Amigo water bottle, so it
has this larger top that you can take off and that makes it easy
to fill. And then they have this smaller
cap on top that's perfectly designed to fit a filter.
So you can save some of those, some of those disposable water
bottles, the smart water bottles that everyone filters out of and
get one of these reusable ones. There's also a lot of other
companies that are making similar products.
So I would encourage you to think about that as we're
starting to get into backpacking season.
Hopefully smoke is not impacting you too much.
I just finished a workout. Things are good, but I've had to
turn into a morning runner. Why you ask?
Because I'm on this doxycycline medicine.
We caught Lyme disease really quite early, like within 8 days
of it actually of it, me contracting it or whatever when
the bruise forms and stuff. So that's really good news.
But it's been really annoying because one of the side effects
of this medication is that you have sun sensitivity.
And it was like, OK, that can't be a real thing.
But I went out one day and absolutely cooked myself.
It was only like 10 or 11:00 AM, but the sun was out and wow, sun
sensitivity is a real thing. I was like overheated.
I felt awful. So we've avoided that since
then, and I've become a morning runner.
Everyone seems a little more worried about Lyme than I am,
but I think that's just my personality.
I'm taking it seriously, taking my medication and we'll get on
the right side of this. Still have some cool plans for
maybe an FKT later in this year. Have a lot of athletes I coach
going after big things in the near future, so that is exciting
as well. All right, let's get into the
podcast and if you want to leave a rating or a review, I would
really appreciate that. And me and Allison Powell, my
fiance, started a podcast called Free Inside if you like this
content. And somehow we built an audience
of over 5000 active listeners. So that's pretty awesome.
So you can go check out that other podcast because you know,
we're just building an empire and monopoly here on the ears of
the nation as, as we would say, World Cup final today.
And I have loved watching the best try their hardest.
I think I feel that about every single sport.
I don't watch a lot of regular season, I pretty much don't
sports. But when it comes to
championships or big events like this, it is so fun.
No matter of the sport, watching the best people at it play is
very cool. So this will be after the World
Cup happens. What's my pick?
I think I think, I think the World Cup, FIFA wants Argentina
to win, but I think that Spain will win.
I think it will be 3 to 1 Spain. All right.
With that, let's dive into the episode.
Today on the free Outside podcast we have on the Co host
of the Your Diet Sucks podcast and while on my run today I was
thinking what if we combine the two names and it would be Your
Free Diet Outside Sucks. So maybe that's the name of
this? Episode amazing podcast.
Yeah, it'd be like very niche, but it might be really good.
So we have on Zoe, Zoe Rome. Did I get that OK?
It's Rome or ROM. It just scared me looking at it
just now and then. So what prompted you guys to
start a podcast and call it Your Diet Sucks?
First of. All.
Well, I guess to the name of it all.
I wanted to give it a title that was kind of cheeky and lovingly
provocative. And I really like the word.
Well, I love hate the word diet because when you see it in the
scientific literature, what it actually means is like a pattern
of eating. Like, it's not like, you know,
diet, but the way that many people experience that word is
like diet in the sense of a super restrictive specific way
of eating rather than like how I eat as a person.
And so I thought it would be a fun catch all.
That was sort of like the way I hear it in my head is like your
stupid diet, like whatever, like dumb thing you're currently
trying that you read about on TikTok that you're doing.
That's stupid. But the broader pattern of your
eating is great. But a lot of the people who most
need the podcaster people that are already a little bit maybe
down on themselves or are trying to find a way to re engage
positively with the style of eating.
And so I hoped the title as a double entendre would sort of
speak to folks no matter where they are on their on their food
journey. Totally.
Yeah. And you have like 75 ish
episodes and they're all kind of centered around different diets
or topics. So it's pretty incredible all
the research you must have done for the past year or so.
Yeah, we, I mean, you know, I think one of the things that's
amazing is that Kylie sort of comes in with this huge body of
research. But as a science communicator
myself, I think I looked around at a lot of the podcasts that
were available in our world and I was not exactly blown away by
the density of facts and research.
And so I wanted to provide something that was a little bit
different and brought in the socio political context that
brought in the history and used all of that to engage with the
science. Because as much as we like to
think that we're making decisions based on like, oh, I
read this study and like, this is what the science says, a lot
of us are really running off vibes and feels, which is like
we're vibes and feels machines. That's what we were evolved to
do. And so bringing in both the
rational and slightly less rational side of things to give
people something that feels grounded and in conversation
with, like the reality of a human life was really important
to. Us yeah, definitely.
And I've been, I don't want to say a victim.
I've been Privy or like been pulled into some of the fads,
especially my early 20s of like intermittent fasting or been
fascinated by like the keto world or like there's so many
things. And what makes it really hard,
especially me growing up, I didn't really have any key
figures or knowledge around my life.
It was starting to be this age where you could find any
information on the Internet you wanted to support what you
wanted it to mean. And I think that's a big thing.
And an issue that bothers me now especially is we have all these,
we have experts and we have people who spend years educating
themselves. And then we also have all these
studies that are funded and the structure is is good for
information. But then we have these people
that are less educated that may not take these studies that are
putting the information out into the world because audience and
attention span apparently means more than accuracy these days.
Does that feel like something that you're fighting against to
with with your podcast is like correcting some of these things
that especially I think some of the young males are getting
sucked into? I mean if accuracy was easily
monetizable we'd be bajillionaires, but
unfortunately algorithm is a little bit the fingers on the
scale against accuracy and in favor of attention capture.
Whatever has the best lives because again, we're all kind of
flying by the seat of our pants and responding with our primate
brains to a lot of the stimulus. But you know, I think, like you
said, it can be really easy, particularly in the realm of
nutrition and exercise science, because science is hard, right?
It's really hard to find robust studies that aren't just
observational. So it's really hard to find
great bodies of evidence to draw super specific prescriptions
from. And I feel like most of our work
exists in the sort of messy middle between decent science
and really shitty prescriptions because a lot of the
prescription, you know, like intermittent fasting, like
there's actually fascinating science on autophagy and the
different mechanisms that link that to longevity, to particular
metabolic outcomes. The unfortunate truth of those
is when you look at those studies for longer than 90
seconds, you realize most of them are done on fruit flies and
yeast. I don't identify as either of
those groups. And therefore, the science is
going to have really limited relevancy to my life.
And so doesn't mean we burn the studies down and throw it out
the window. It means that we have to be
really careful and diligent with that translation.
And I'd be curious to hear from Kylie how you think about taking
those things from like the like the bird's eye view of evidence
and seeing how that applies to like the actual humans that you
work with in a clinical context. Yeah, No, I, I feel like what we
do a good job of doing is combining like giving a kind of
perspective on where we lie with the research.
And we try to look, we try to look at both sides, give a
nuanced look at things. And then we leave people with
the option of kind of making a decision themselves on what they
can do with that information on that particular topic.
The hard part with that is that people really like to have
simple explanations for what they should be doing.
And because we don't give them a rule book or a playbook, I think
people struggle with that a little bit because they're they
want to be told like, all right, here are the six steps to this
like outcome. And that's kind of what social
media does. And except then it doesn't
consider all the nuances. So we're trying to provide all
of the nuance there and then allow for people to make the
decision themselves. And I think sometimes we get
pushed back because people only hear what they want to hear if
they have a particular opinion about something.
And so we get we end up getting like the negative end of the
stick because they don't listen to the whole episode or they
only hear what they want to hear on the nuance perspective.
And because like to be frank, our scientific literacy as a
country is not fallen at this current time.
And like, sure, you can find maybe even a relatively mid
quality study about whatever your particular perspective on
like the keto diet is. But it's you can't just like
point at one study and then say, and we need to update praxis
accordingly. Like you need to change how you,
Jeff, as a person with these constraints, this bandwidth,
these financial resources, these goals, objectives, background,
whatever your current body composition is, age, all of
these things. And like try to shoehorn that
into this random study. So I think it comes down to like
the public not always understanding what it means for
something to be evidence based. And So what you see is a lot of
influencers, podcasters, you know, there's our industry,
certainly not above reproach in this.
And like they might gesture at studies, gesturing at evidence
without context isn't scientific.
Anyone who's actually correctly communicating around the
evidence will always heavily caveat it, specify the
limitations, and be really clear about how it does or doesn't
result in updated prescriptions. OK so I'm really curious on
which topics or diets in general you guys have had the most,
Maybe engagement, curiosity or even push back on what are like
the hot ones that people want to know more about I guess.
Depends on who who we're serving, right?
No, I mean, you would know most about the popularity of like,
downloads or listens maybe, But I've gotten feedback from people
that are listeners that they're like, oh, yeah, I love that.
Like the episode where we talked about protein because that's
something where, like, people are seeing protein and like all
the snacks and the chips and like all the stuff, they're
like, do we really need that much?
And so our episode on that did it really well, Did a deep dive
on that. But even we did an episode on
religion and diet and we got really thoughtful feedback on
it, even though it might not have like looked as popular if
you were just like numbers based.
So I think sometimes it's hard to tell like what is the most
popular, right? I mean the protein.
One is the most popular and then other pattern.
I mean, because and also because of dumb reasons like AI and SEO.
Like what are people Googling? They're Googling.
Should I be eating protein pop tarts?
Like I don't know what to tell you.
Like I wish as a journalist, I wish people did literally all
the things different, but they don't in the world we live in
and onwards we go. But there's also definitely a
little bit of a trend of we talked to a lot of people who
are trying to navigate out of diet culture, out of restrictive
eating, out of disordered eating and eating disorders.
So episodes about the psychology and Physiology of hunger have
been really popular. And our second most popular
episode ever was the calorie counting episode, which I was
kind of shocked by because I had always thought that was, I mean,
kind of boring, frankly. The history is fascinating, but
I think it shows that there's a pattern of people realizing that
the way that culturally we've been operating isn't
sustainable, isn't a good place to live life from, and certainly
is it a good place to fuel any athletic pursuit from.
And so I think that there's a clear, forgive the pun, hunger
on the part of people to dive into science and cultural
analysis that looks at the how and the why and isn't just like
we interviewed one other menopause expert about her
favorite fruits to eat on the 13th day of the month.
So I think that people are really fascinated to understand
why do I feel this way? How can I maybe go forward and
feel different is my optimistic reading.
My less optimistic reading is still SEO based and these people
come in thinking they're still going to find weight loss advice
and then 7 minutes and they're enraged and they've chucked
their iPhone into the ocean from hearing my voice.
Wow, that would they might go through a lot of iPhones if
that's how they react. Contrary opinions these.
Days responsible for, yeah, intensive resource extraction in
China. That's on us, guys.
Yeah, just fueling manufacturing worldwide.
But to dive into things a little more, what?
So we can start there with protein.
What what did you find on on the protein aspect of things?
Because it is like protein maxing is probably like a
buzzword or a domain URL that some influencer has at the
moment. I'm sure they do.
Yeah. Well, yes, everything, Max.
Oh yeah, yeah. Well, exactly.
To that point, there's this belief on the part of our
culture, and I think it becomes even more intensified in sport,
athletics, endurance culture particularly of like more is
always better, more fiber, more protein, more iron.
And the really boring, uncomfortable truth is the right
amount of The thing is the right amount for you.
And just getting infinite more amounts of protein, infinite
more amounts of Max magnesium, infinite more amounts of vitamin
C. These things have diminishing
returns, right? Like you can't just like biohack
your way into a completely different understanding of like
muscle protein synthesis. But it's a nice idea, It's a
nice narrative that if you just really double down on this one
specific thing and you get 400 grams of protein every single
day, then you will live longer, recover better when western
states finish hiking the AT like, insert whatever
achievement is meaningful to you.
The appeal of anything maxing is that doing one simple change and
just doing it to the most extreme extent is a way to
circumvent like really normal boring nutrition advice like eat
enough, eat consistently, sleep, manage stress, have a meaningful
contact with other human beings in the world.
And then probably just get more sleep and drink more water again
as well. But I'd be I'd be curious to
hear your take on the protein, specifically because you work
with people on the ground. Well, I think with the, we
mentioned this a little bit with the current administration
that's been a little bit tough too because whatever RFK junior
is kind of promoting or kind of emphasizing the, the trends tend
to go in that direction. I would say with like hello and
deep frying turkeys and things like that and if.
You're not Allo maxing or you even try.
Well, it's kind of and then we're, we're like minimum, it's
this circle where we overemphasize 1 macro nutrient
and then we're like, oh, but and carbs are evil and we're eating
too many of them. And so it's not something where,
again, we can have this like balanced conversation about it.
It's more like, you know, where we had like, the low fat craze
in the 80s and now it's high protein.
And so we kind of go through each macro nutrient.
I feel like it goes in a circle. Yeah.
Like which one are we on now, you know?
Yeah. I mean, to that point when you
like historically sort of look at how our culture is related to
these different macro nutrients, whoever's been doing PR for
protein deserves a raise because protein has been largely
unscathed from diet culture. It's never really had any
negative press the way we're like with sugar.
There's been periods where we've demonized sugar born.
A lot of people are carrying a lot of cultural baggage about
that and carbohydrates. And then like Kylie mentioned,
the low fat snack wells cursed era of diet culture, but protein
has sort of limped along until it's sort of like the, you know,
sort of the gasoline of Wellness culture met the match of RFK's
batshit ideas about what a human diet should look like.
Someone who only eats meat and ferments, by the way, which is
an insane way to live ones life. And it's sort of like kaboomed
into this thing where one thing we found on our protein podcast
is that the even just putting protein on a food label creates
this health Halo. And it creates a permission
structure where people who may not allow themselves to have a
pop tart or a plate of pasta or a bag of chips when they see
protein on it and bewitches us into thinking, well, this is
health food now. And like, we love pasta, we love
pop tarts, we love chips just 'cause they have protein that
does not fundamentally change the nature and healthfulness of
those foods. If you want chips, eat chips.
But we cannot allow protein to take on this health Halo that
hypnotizes us into thinking that it can like fundamentally change
the utility and function of hyperpalatable ultra processed
foods. Again, there's a all foods fit
in our perspective in particular amounts and depending on the
individual's background, experience and all of those
lovely things. But a pop Tart's still a pop
tart. And we need people to not just
see protein as like like a a glow that makes everything OK or
somehow you have to be eating more to reach these insane
protein levels, particularly if it doesn't make sense given the
amount of training and activity you're doing.
Yeah, I think it's a really interesting issue we're at where
now you can pretty easily find numbers or recommendations from
influencers or podcasters or anyone out there that puts
things out there. But individually, we operate on
so little individual information, whether it's
athletes that don't know, like they're sweat, sodium, sweat
content or something like that. It's almost like we take
information from other people and just assume it's right for
ourselves. So Kylie, how if someone were
working with you, how would you go about that?
Would you encourage them to get answers to those numbers or go
more by feel or how? How should we operate in a world
where we can find information that probably is right to some
people but not to ourselves? Ideally right talk.
I always tell people that when I, when I'm working with them
on, on their like macronutrient consumption in relation to their
training, I'm always saying like, these are guidelines, not
prescriptions. And so we're trying to kind of
get you in the right box with some of these things, like we
can use them as a guide. And then when you get yourself
closer to some of the guidelines, then you also have
to be able to interpret how your body signals, right?
And the signals can be interpreted by it's complex for
hunger and fullness, but like also recovery or your sleep,
etcetera. And then also through like
legitimately getting blood work, you can see like are that some
of the changes you're making are things you're doing.
How is that affecting you internally?
And then the hard part too is like there's a genetic
component. So there's that.
But we don't necessarily, you know, how can, I don't think we
know enough genomically for people to be able to look at
their genome and be like, Oh yeah, like, this is the specific
thing you need to do. Especially if you're not trying
to win the Tour de France, like if you're just trying to pay for
your marathon, like we don't need to sequence your genome,
you're probably going to do all right on like the normie stuff.
Yeah. And I think so.
I think it's OK to take guidelines and and science based
recommendations and say like, this is not a prescription.
But hey, like maybe because I am only eating 50% of my
carbohydrate intake on a big training day, I probably need to
increase that some, you know, and trying to do some of that
and navigate that and then combine that with how you feel.
And some people like if a specific, maybe weird example
might be like, I will work with someone that's coming off of a
low carb, high fat diet and they're like, I just want to try
to eat more carbs. Like what does that look like?
And so I'll explain to them like here are what the
recommendations are for endurance athletes on different
days of training, but we could try to find a middle ground.
And you're at 50 grams of carbs a day.
So there's a pretty big difference there.
Like let's try to like just work your way up, see how you feel
increasing a little bit and then kind of go from there.
So sometimes depending on what the person's trying to do or
navigate, having some of that guidance from a professional to
help them kind of figure it out versus just like trying to
navigate on their own can be helpful.
Yeah, what if so someone like maybe 22 year old just getting
into running is at home and they want to educate themselves on
maybe these guidelines or some some of the things that we're
talking about. What's like a good method or way
for someone to learn more about this that isn't just search
protein requirements on Tik? T.O.K.
Listen to our podcast No, no, we do talk about a lot of this
stuff on our podcast. I will say I, I mean, I not
trying to plug myself, but I do have a book that I wrote last
year for endurance athletes that's called Practical feeling
for Endurance Athletes. And I specifically made it like,
it's not just like scientific studies that you have to read
through to try and pick out what you need to be doing, but it's
simple, simplified in a way where people can be more like
beginners and be able to apply some of the stuff to their
training in a way that's understandable.
And so I felt like as a the sports dietitian, there wasn't a
good resource out there for people that like did kind of
summarize all of this in a way that wasn't so dry that you just
like fall asleep and you're like, I don't know what to do
with all of this, you know, So, and that's kind of one of the
reasons why like the book I, I feel like for endurance people
is it is a good kind of reference source.
Yeah, I definitely think that's a great source.
I also like looking at IOC position statements, things like
that, or using examine.com, which is a really great resource
for looking at how evidence based various supplements and
dietary interventions are in a like non partisan sort of
untainted way. Because I always get frustrated
when I heard people say like, well, just do your own research
because like I have an English degree, like without getting a
master's degree in science communications, I would have no
idea how to translate these things.
It is a, it is difficult and it is not something that the
layperson can do very easily. And that's OK.
Like these things are not written particularly well and
scientists are typically not the people doling out the
prescriptions anyway. They're like the research is
meant to gather information. And so I think finding those
intermediaries between well reputed evidence like position
statements, potentially like meta analysis, I think trusted
journalistic outlets that like check their facts and site
sources is great. Almost any medium that's more
than 90 seconds long is going to be better than anything that's
90 seconds or less. And looking at where expert
consensus is because science is pretty boring.
It doesn't change quickly. So I think people should always
be innately skeptical of anything that's like, this new
study shows groundbreaking sodium bicarb research.
It's like, yeah, maybe in like 2 dudes on the Tour de France, but
we're not constantly rewriting our understanding of the human
body. And so being really skeptical of
anything that feels new, flashy, seeing how expert consensus like
the International Society of Sports Dietitians response to
things like that. Because those groups are going
to be not industry affiliated the majority of the time with
reputable ones aren't going to be industry affiliated.
So finding folks where there aren't going to be monetary
conflicts of interest that would taint prescriptions, that would
taint translation so that you don't have to go to the source
material because I don't think that's a realistic expectation.
Like if you're a busy parent working a job training for a
marathon like dog, you do not need to be on pub net for hours
a night. Yeah, also the statistical
analysis of some of the results of these studies require like
post secondary education to understand for and if you've
never read a pub Med study, like it's hard to even know where to
start reading. So I think that's what your
podcast does really well too, is like takes these things, does
the work and presents it in a way that is so much more bite
sized than figuring out like linear regression of a model of
mice. And does this study even have
relevance by the time you get to the end of it?
So I think that's the real. Trick box and whisker chart is
much of the next eye. But again, also like without,
you know, there's some there's like this trend of vanity
journals. So these are journals that are
not particularly well reputed and can become like a pay to
play situation. And not all journals are created
equal. So we're always making sure that
we're citing sources that aren't in like Tim Noakes, like, you
know, pay to play low carb extravaganza journal and making
sure that we're presenting things in a balanced, nuanced
way of like, well, we have these meta analysis that indicate this
is true. However, there were a couple
other studies that might complicate that.
And we don't know exactly what the in your life implications
are, but it's worth looking at the science and seeing what
questions it raises rather than like going A to C like a lot of
communicators do. And they're like, the study in
fruit flies shows that eating low carb will make you faster.
And I'm going to just put out a quick TikTok telling marathoners
what that means for them when that makes zero sense.
But again, like there can be things that are in conversation
with each other and they need to be contextualized.
And you always want to look at like, is this The Lancet or is
it some random journal I've never heard of that has like a
horrendous history of retractions?
Because there are like the databases that will track how
often different journals have studies retracted.
And a good journal should have some studies retracted.
Like if you're never updating anything, that's not good.
But if you're constantly retracting your like weird
ivermectin studies like that's not a great place to get your
nutrition advice from. Yeah, probably Nothing involving
ivermectin is great for nutrition.
That's a hard pass on ivermectin and all different horse
medications from whiteness. Yeah, yeah.
If we're not taking fruit fly studies, probably shouldn't take
either. So in, in this very quickly
growing niche of trailer and ultra running now there's become
a number of these products or supplements or things that have
exploded onto the scene, whether it's like ketones or bicarb or
broccoli sprouts. Which, if any of these, I guess
what are your thoughts on these as, as we kind of enter this
world where it seems like you can maybe buy 1% whether it's
your shoes or a supplement and I don't know?
Yeah, or. I think your husband always
makes the joke of like, what do you like call like a a legal
performance enhancing drug, like a placebo?
Like they just don't. There's none of these things
tend to really move the needle at a population.
Well, and I would say like the people that are being marked
like the heavily marketed people for this don't necessarily maybe
need them because they don't have the foundations dialed in.
Like if we're looking at Tour de France athletes, they, we
actually kind of are trying to gain like every little bit,
every little percentage that they can because they're all
competing on a very high level. That's not to say that the
average layperson doesn't like deserve to like perform their
best, but you get like, move the needle with the bigger pieces
first before you get into like a bicarb supplement, you know, or
do the training versus, you know, we run into that too,
because Zoe and I are coaches and it's tough because like some
people try to take shortcuts with the training and they're
like, I'll take a bicarb supplement.
It's like, well, that's not going to replace the training,
you know? So I think that's part of the
challenge too. And there's really only 5
exogenous supplements that are shown to be performance
enhancing and that would be caffeine, beta alanine, sodium
bicarb. What are the two I'm missing?
Nitrates not? What's the next one either way?
But there's really only 5 that are backed by a robust body of
evidence. And even then, not every
supplement is going to be useful.
In every use case. Prince and Beta alanine is shown
to be useful like helping kick at the end of races.
I run 100 milers. It's really not going to be that
useful for me to juice myself to the gills with something that's
like only been studied in 3K runners or the.
Big 1 is like creatine right now.
Yeah. I was like, I think you're
forgetting creatine. I couldn't remember if you
missed creatine but yeah creatine is 1.
I had so many questions about creatine and a lot of them are
coming from female athletes and I think that they're being
heavily marketed to like postmenopausal women as well.
Just like they're like so body comp wise, should I take
creatine? And I'm like, like, I don't know
if that's like exactly what you're it's being intended.
For here, you know, people like to just throw shit at the wall
because they're like it's performance enhancing.
But you know, in the case of caffeine, it is open to a point
and in particular circumstances, if you try to caffeine Max
during your next 100K, you will see and feel God.
And that is not how you want to end your day.
And so I think it's about understanding like does this
like what is my actual goal here?
Because being like, I feel there's a void inside of me that
can only be filled if I drop $60.00 on the feed today.
That's not a very good reason to take a supplement.
Making sure you have a particular outcome in mind,
defining what your version of success would be like before you
start taking it because the mind is powerful.
And making sure that you have your bases dialed in.
Because none of those things are going to be particularly helpful
if you're not consistent with your training.
If your baseline health isn't good, if your mental health
isn't good, if you're not sleeping well, eating enough,
and drinking enough. There's no amount of bicarb,
creatine, beta alanine, nitrate, caffeine supplements that's
going to help you get out of that.
The wild part, the wireless part is when I'll get people there,
like I've been taking this for like a year and I haven't really
noticed a difference. Should I still take this?
I'm like, I don't think so. Okay, you don't even know what
you're looking for, I guess, but right.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the real trick too, is like when
you're a little kid, you get a pair of new shoes and you're the
fastest person on planet. And I think we still have a
little bit in that like you, your feed package shows up and
it's got bicarb. You take it and you just think
you're you're faster or it doesn't feel as bad.
Like placebo is so real, which makes it so tricky for a lot of
these things too. Yeah.
And like, you know, that impact is really strong, like and
randomized controlled double blinded studies, like even the
researchers have to be blinded to this because we know from the
research that that impacts how the experiment is carried out.
And so normies can be forgiven for falling prey to this like
extremely normal, sort of like psychological impulse, but being
blind to it also isn't the answer.
And so again, I think that one of the challenges is
particularly with more affluent populations, there can be this
like, oh, well, what's the harm? And it may not be the most
harmful thing in the world, but with many of these things there
is an opportunity cost. Like the stuff's not free.
So you're spending a lot of money, Yeah.
And the amount of depends that you might need from the
application of said bicarb. And so, you know, maybe one of
the harms is like minimizing your financial bandwidth.
But there can also be an opportunity cost instead of if
you're distracting yourself with these like beetroot supplements
and like chugging a bathtub full of Gnomeo every day, to the
detriment of assessing the overall quality of your diet
from dialing in your sleep from. Addressing any mental health and
well-being issues then like that's just not that.
That can be harmful because people start chasing these
marginal gains to the detriment of those foundational needs.
Yeah, I I think that we're in the the era of marginal gains
have Trump's like longevity, fitness or like training over a
long time. It's like pair of super shoes
that might make me fast next week versus, you know, next year
I I could be faster. Well, the hard part, I think I
one more thing to add to that is just like it, I feel like it
loses, people lose out on the experience of actually like the
training, you know, sharing memories with people and and the
spirit of sport. I feel like has gone a little
bit in a an interesting direction because everything
like everyone's trying to hyper optimize everything and it's
kind of like, well, what about like just going out and like
enjoying a long mountain trail run Instead?
You're like hyper optimizing everything.
And I'm not saying like you can't do some of that, but at
the same time, I feel like it changes how we're approaching
sport a little bit anyway, yeah. I totally agree.
I've given this run to athletes pretty recently.
Like after a longer race where it's like on the weekend, like
just go out and enjoy running. Like we won't worry about your
pace or anything because it has become this thing on like OK,
carbs an hour. I've got to get this much sodium
and I've got to drink this much because it's this hot out.
Like it really has. I don't know it, it seems like
it's a little different than it was like a decade ago where you
don't just leave your house and have a fun time and see where
the wind takes you. You make sure every 30 minutes
you're eating or drinking or fueling.
How do you, especially being in this space, kind of bridge that
gap on like hit the right numbers to take care of
yourself, but also don't let it take over the activity in
general? Yeah.
I mean, I think the other end of the spectrum, like, you know, 10
years ago we might have gone out for a A5 hour run with a single
Snickers bar, which is probably not the best either.
I did. Jolly Ranchers.
Jolly Ranchers 'cause it felt like you were drinking
something. 10. Calories in.
There. Oh my gosh, yeah.
I think giving your, I think it's OK to have some guideline.
Again, going back to the guideline versus prescription
thing, it's like having some intentionality with what you're
doing is not a bad thing. But then when it starts going it
over into like the hyper optimization of like, oh, and
this hour I have to do this exact prescription.
And it's not like to me then it is not taking into account like
the realities of what could happen on race day.
Like you have a fuel plan and you have every hour dialed out
of every little thing to the milligram.
It's like race day happens hour 1, something goes S already and
you're like, oh, crap. Like my plan went to shit.
So yeah, it's kind of like, OK, if you give yourself ranges and
just allow yourself to have a little bit of flexibility with
some of the like the fueling plan stuff, I think that that
can be helpful. Particularly where I see this is
sodium sweat testing now, because people are like, they
get their like sodium sweat test results and they're like, it has
to be exactly this every hour. And I'm like, no, no, no, like
you can't, you can't just like take those results and be like,
it's this exact calculation every hour because what about
resorbing some sodium back into your skin?
How does your sweat rate change over the course of time?
So you have to people are over. From my point of view, people
are overdoing sodium then because of these tests because
they're like, I got to consume 100% of whatever I'm losing.
And that's not necessarily how we want to approach it.
So it's like that's where it starts to become a little
problematic too, is the application of some of the
things that are intending for people to maybe hyper optimize.
Yeah. And I would think about like as
an athlete, the way I would think about this as a coach is
like think about what your values are like.
For me, those are excellent curiosity and play.
So like the amount of optimization that I want to do
to like take those values boxes might look different from
someone else. And making sure that you don't
get like mission creep. Because I think if you don't
define your values like ahead of time, set that line for like, if
I start to feel this way, then I'm going to like if I notice I
am dreading runs, if I am not having fun, if I never get out
with my friends, if I'm doing all my runs alone on my
treadmill so I can hyper control everything and like take exactly
the sodium and the carbs and like just become this really
soul deadening process. If that runs counter to your
values, it's going to feel bad. There might also be other people
for whom what is their happy place and God's, I hope you're
very happy together. And you know, on the other end,
people can get really loosey goosey and then they'll feel
disappointed when they don't get the outcomes they want.
Or they might be leaving potential on the table because
if you're just like Yoloing on like a couple, you know, chips
Ahoy and a prayer, then you're also not going to maybe have as
much fun as you could be having. So thinking about like, what are
my values? What is the delineation between
what I'd be satisfied with and like is in alignment with my
values? And where would I maybe
overshoot that to the detriment of like the soul and the fun of
it all? And where my eye actually, or on
the other end of the spectrum, if you're a little more Chips
Ahoy than sodium bicarb, thinking like, what would it
look like to try to be a bit more structured and intentional
without like turning into a robot?
Yeah, I think that's huge on the way to look at it too.
And I like using the term like don't move the goal posts.
Like once you set your values or your race goal or your plan,
like either moving it backwards or forwards, like that's where
you get into trouble because you're you're operating with,
you know, less thoughtfulness, less aligned with where you're
at, mostly based on the vibes in the feelings thing and some
Chips Ahoy. So I think that that's that's
really good because we all probably lie somewhere within
the like 0% X like aim for being the best in the world to 100%
for the best person in the world.
And it's OK to be anywhere on that spectrum, especially as
long as you're like aware of what you want to get out of this
sport. Because I think we lose sight
that for the vast majority of people, their careers in no way
connected to this sport as well. And it's like a very fun thing
that they do. It's really awesome.
They get to carry their kids across the finish line and that
is really cool. And I think the sport on the day
does a good job celebrating that.
But sometimes in our niche of talking to people, we lose sight
of like, yeah, the finish line is the goal post.
And if it's in 40 hours or 24 hours, that's not as big a deal
as before. And it's like, I think giving
and empowering people when you have your goal, like your goal
is super valid. Lean into that, enjoy it.
Like so training run should be more enjoyable verse more dread.
And I think that that's a big thing that optimization has
worried me about just with athletes and stuff over the past
four or five years, too, is like, not every day has to be
optimized, and in fact, not every athlete has to be
optimized. It should be optimized for what
it does for your life on a whole versus what you're going to run
at your next race. Yeah, exactly.
And I think that if you don't do the hard work of setting those
goals and defining your values, then what happens is like, you
allow bad actors to inadvertently set them for you.
Like supplement companies, nutrition companies, like other
people who have things on their mind that might not be like a
vested, like just interest in Zoe Roams running from the
goodwill of their hearts. They're like, we would love to
tell her from overpriced broccoli juice.
Like that would delight and tickle us.
And so if we can send her a bunch of Instagram ads that make
her feel like she could be faster than like, all the
better. And so like, knowing where your
particular vulnerabilities and sensitivities are so that you're
aware when people are pitching directly into that, whether it's
an influencer trying to capture your attention, telling you that
you need to eat 400 milligrams of protein a day, otherwise
you're not doing menopause right or trying to sell you bicarb
broccoli soup. Yeah.
OK. I'm, I'm curious now what is one
thing or topic where you've either changed your mind on or
maybe science has come out or you've learned more about it and
maybe more accepting to an idea or an aspect of I guess in
general the the whole sport. But yeah.
Do you have any that you have on the tip of your tongue?
Oh gosh, I. Could.
Think on that. Yeah.
Let me think for just a just a SEC.
That's a great question because we're.
Both, yeah. Well, I think we go, well, one
thing I was going to say though, is like when we have a topic
that we go in to covering on our podcast, I think we all go in
with a little bit of like our own perspective.
And we're kind of like, Oh yeah. Like I, I think it's this, like
this is what we're going to find out.
Like when before we do the research or we have like our,
our background influences that have influenced us.
And then when we actually dive into it, you're like, you can
gain some like an alternative perspective that you didn't
realize was actually there. And I know, Zoe, you've said
that a couple of times, like when we have gotten on episodes,
you're like, Oh my gosh, like I came in thinking this, but then
it was more complicated. I think one of, I mean, the
hunger one too, hunger was is super.
It's a lot more nuanced and complicated than like I even
thought. And that it actually made me
change the way that I chat about the topic with some of my
athletes that I work with one-on-one with because it is so
complicated. So I think like a lot of topics
that we cover, you know, in general, we're learning a lot
more about them than what we originally thought even going
into the episode. Yeah, I think, you know, for me,
particularly one of the big ones, this is from an earlier
episode. There's a lot of people making a
ton of digital hay over the idea that females need to train
completely differently and that we need to train completely
differently at different stages of life.
And that's not that we shouldn't adjust and adapt, but you know,
there's that saying that like women are not small men.
And yes, that is true, but also women are not blue
hippopotamuses. And I think that I asked someone
that was raised in an era where there wasn't a lot of science
done on women. There wasn't a lot of research
that centered the female experience and exercise
Physiology. I think that made me and a lot
of women like me really susceptible to the idea that we
need these hyper specific training regimens, diet programs
that you can only have have exactly 12 grams of fructose in
any 36 hour period on the third full moon of the 2nd of March.
And these things that are just hyper specific, this sort of buy
into the vulnerability and in the fundamental truths that like
women haven't been centered in science, they haven't been
centered in medicine. There's a lot of very valid
needs, desires and questions that haven't been answered.
But a lot of times that void is filled by people who also do not
have women's best interests at heart.
Or maybe they do, but they're taking a pretty small and
sometimes shaky base of evidence and getting way out over their
evidentiary skis. Taking a study that looks at
like 12 women who may or may not even have like been training or
whatever. And then extrapolating that to
be like, if you're a woman in menopause and you're not taking
fish oil every three hours, then like you're doing it wrong.
And there might be solid evidence looking at fish oil,
but the prescriptions get so specific and so hyper tailored
in a way that isn't backed up by the evidence.
And the kind of unsexy truth is there's a lot of variation
between individuals that we sometimes underestimate and that
I think we tend to overestimate the variation between sexes.
And that to create this like marketplace of hyper specific
women centered training plans, women centered diets.
And again, that's not to say that there aren't changes and
adaptations that should be made, but we're all humans.
Guys like you do not need some like crazy plant.
Like even if you are navigating menopause, perimenopause, there
are like definitely some adjustments and tweaks.
But women have been made to feel insecure that they're not even
doing being a insecure woman right?
And into that space that people selling training plans and diet
pills and menopause supplements that simply aren't backed by the
preponderance of evidence. And I would certainly love to
see the base of evidence get stronger.
But with what we have now, I think the kind of, like,
fascinating and even more sticky, nuanced truth is like,
humans are humans, you all. And like, yes, hormones
fluctuate. But would we have really made it
this far as a species if we were so vulnerable that we needed to
make all these dramatic changes the second our estrogen
fluctuates up? Yeah, I read Born to Run and it
seems like we're pretty resilient for chasing things,
so. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. So a couple more topics here.
The first one is what are some special considerations for like
vegetarian and vegan athletes that you found?
And you have a pretty good podcast on this too, but just
while we head on it here for a second.
Do you have anything specifically that you get a lot
of questions about that because I could, I mean, that's like I
think a lot of people down the vegetarian.
The two that I think come up a lot are like iron
supplementation and I suspect something will be along the
lines of like blood test or something here, but also like
different types of protein. So it's like animal based
protein versus plant based protein.
And should that impact how athletes change their impact
their diet, I guess in general on the the plant based side
versus the. Well, what I usually say about
the plant based athlete diet is that it can be done.
Zoe does it, it can be done, but you but the volume, you have to
be prepared for the volume of food that you need to consume.
And I think a lot of people are, they just hear like, Oh yeah, I
want to go plant based and then they do it and they're like.
Maybe have no idea how much nutrition they need or how much
protein they need or whatever. And then whenever they learn
that like, oh wow, like I have to eat twice as much tofu
compared to like if I was eating meat, that gets a little tricky
for them, maybe with their protein needs or something.
And so balancing your something like protein needs out with the
fiber consumption can be really challenging to be able to get
the overall energy requirements that you need as a plant based
athlete. And then on the iron side of
things, I you, I mean, you're right, like I always recommend a
blood test before supplementing like full iron panel with
ferritin. But I think, you know, paying
like understanding that the reality is plant based sources
of iron are not absorbed as well as animal sources.
And so knowing that, then the volume of iron foods that you
have to consume also needs to be higher because that absorption
rate is not as good. And a lot of people don't
understand that component and they're like, oh, I'm just going
to take an iron supplement as a supplemental insurance policy.
But the reality is taking too much iron or taking iron long
term can also have some potential downsides on
inflammation and gut health and things like that if you
especially if you don't need it. So that's where like the blood
test can come in. And I think just understanding
like iron itself is the topic we get like 5 billion questions
about. And I think there's just like
this lack of people don't fully understand the scope of iron,
iron absorption exercise, like causes of low iron, causes of
high iron. Like it's just, it is a
complicated topic. And unfortunately, the way that
it's either like communicated on social media or even through a
medical doctor that might not be familiar with endurance athletes
and iron, they just get an answer like, oh, well, you run,
this is normal. Go take an iron supplement.
You know, it's just like, it's unsatisfying, unfortunately,
because then you don't get the nuanced explanation, which is
why people have so many questions about it.
And I think, you know, like highly mentioned, the protein
piece, people can run into trouble.
And I've, you know, I've seen this myself, but we see a lot
like people who are interested in plant based might index even
higher in terms of people who are really interested in and or
hyper vigilant around food nutrition.
And so we'll get a lot of DMS from people that are like, I'm
vegetarian, but I don't want to eat processed foods.
How do I get enough protein? And it's like, girl, they're
just may not beans may not be the answer to all of your
problems. And so sometimes helping people
understand like things like a protein supplement can have, can
and should, I think for a lot of athletes, potentially serve a
function and plugging any of those holes that you might not
be able to reach without way overdoing it on fiber in terms
of the protein. And I say this with love to my
fellow plant eaters and Triceratopsis out there, but
there's this idea that has been kicking around like the Internet
and like the Scott Jurich of it all into the game changers of it
all that like being plant based to somehow performance
enhancing. And we don't have that evidence.
Like I have chosen to eat this way because of my lifestyle and
values. And I think that's a super valid
reason. But the, and I don't, we just, I
think that media and people need to be honest that like promoting
eating plant based as performance enhancing.
We do not have that base of evidence.
We can say it may not hurt your performance and that's great.
That's like plenty, you know, for a lot of folks.
But telling people that they'll become a modern day gladiator if
they start eating only kale tomorrow is, is not it.
And so I think being honest about like the why and the how
behind the diet is super important.
Yeah, OK, last topic here, but it's a big one.
How do you guys chat with runners or athletes, people in
the endurance space about weight loss in conjunction with their
running? Like a lot of people get into
running in this sport to be healthier, but then it's also
very tricky as well. So how do you broach this topic?
Oh gosh. Well, you have another hour.
I'll like you since you. I feel like I mostly do.
I get a lot of emails from folks and I'm like, I have a poetry
degree, so. I mean, I mean, it is a
complicated topic because, you know, looking at we externally,
there's a lot of pressure to, for people to maybe look a
certain way or what they think is like an ideal racing weight
or weigh a certain amount or their doctor just says lose
weight. And it's just, you know, not
there's no context given there. And I think the important piece
is that there is a conversation being had as to like, why do you
want to lose weight? I mean, when I get into that
conversation with people, that's where I start to learn a little
bit more around. You know, would this be
appropriate or not? Because if it's £5 to try and
shave off 30 seconds of your marathon time or something like,
that's maybe not appropriate. I agree.
Yeah, if it's. If it's time based body
composition changes, probably not great.
Yes. Risky whereas doing things like
improving diet quality, improving sleep, like there are
so many things that can be performance enhancing that don't
have the downside of a potential devastating bone injury that
like, let's look at those first. And I think one of my goals with
the project is like, can we like, what would it look like to
create a world where if that was something that someone freely
chose for themselves? And like, I'm not like, I am a
big believer in body liberation and autonomy.
And so it's never correct for me to tell someone what is or isn't
okay to think or feel about their body.
But my question to everyone who is thinking and feeling badly
about their body is how much of that is you?
And how much of that is this exterior?
And what would it look like to create this culture where you
could maybe for the first time, have your own actual thoughts
and feelings about your body that aren't 100% seated by a
culture with a vested interest and making you hate yourself and
dislike yourself? And particularly for people of
marginalized identities, whether it's like a racial,
socioeconomic, gender background, like we're getting
yelled at all the time that the way we show up in the world is
fundamentally not OK. And So what would it look like
to come in from the number one assumption being like you are OK
as you are, What do you want to do next?
Because so often people start with the assumption of like, I'm
not OK as I am, and therefore what I want to do next is shrink
my body. And that is not always and is
honestly a lot of times and rarely the best next thing to do
about that. And so for me, it's like, can we
create the place where we can actually have an honest, open
and genuine conversation? Because I think the water that
we're swimming in right now as a culture is so murky that we're
not making super rational decisions and we're not even
making these decisions for ourselves.
So many of the times we're letting culture and social media
and companies and all manner like RFK Junior dictate these
goals for us rather than getting curious about what our own
values and objectives are and then acting accordingly.
Yeah, no kidding. Wow.
Well, thank you guys for joining.
I think if so, I, I was going to ask what your favorite episode
for people to listen to the your diet sucks podcast.
But I also think it's pretty fun to go to the page and scroll
through and just click one that interests you because it's like
laid out the topic or the diet or any, anything that you talk
about. And like there's even 1, I think
you did one on game changers too.
So it's like you can, you can learn about most of the things
we talked about here and just click one.
That's interesting. But I guess I will ask what
what's your favorite, most interesting one that you got to
research along the way? I really did like the calorie
counting episodes. I went in thinking like, this is
going to be a lot of boring math.
But the history was fascinating. And I think that it sort of goes
to show that so many things that we think are really objective
measures of what's going on inside our bodies are so much
more proximate and messy than we think them be.
And so, you know, our culture has this propensity to sort of
project security and surety onto numbers and metrics in a way
that's not always appropriate and based in the evidence.
And so I think the calorie counting episode is a really
powerful example of the ways in which that sort of logic breaks
down. I kind of like some of the ones
that we do on some actually on like supplements or like like
specific supplements like ketones or something or
cannabis. We did an episode where I am
maybe not quite as familiar with like some of the history behind
some of these things and where they come from.
And I really like how we set up our episodes to have that
component so that people can make that connection of like,
where does this come from? And maybe I need to think about
it a little bit more critically than I have been thinking about
it particularly. I'm not saying pro or anti
cannabis, but like in that world with like the drug testing and
all that kind of stuff, it was interesting to look at the
history of where that came from and where we are at now.
Yeah, Yeah, totally. I mean, I think all of these
things, it's so interesting. And one thing that stood out
earlier is when you talked about how science and some of this
stuff moves way slower than we think, just with how things get
out there. And I think that's just really
important if people hold on to one thing, don't have to
remember 1 Fact is, like a lot of the things that worked 5 or
10 years ago, like a variation of them probably is still
working because science supports it.
It's pretty rare we get some yeah, we're not getting so
dramatically wrong. Like squares are now faster on
cars than wheels are so. Which is part of like, if the
Internet were to be believed, it would be like, if you're not
using square wheels, you're an idiot.
So. That's the hardest thing.
About. Square wheels.
That's the hardest thing in all this messaging.
And like there's so many things on like a hook in your video.
Is it like makes you feel like an idiot if you're not doing the
thing that the video is telling you.
And to everyone out there, you're not an idiot.
You are. You're pretty darn smart on your
own. Don't let a 15 second video
influence how you think about yourself or what you're doing
because it got you this far. Thank you guys for joining.
This was awesome and thanks for putting up with all my
questions. Thank you for listening to the
show. Go check out the Your Diet Sucks
podcast. I actually learned a ton in
researching this episode. It's not just the hour a week or
the two hours a week, I guess now that I put out to you guys,
it's I spend like probably three to five hours researching
episodes as well. So that's a lot.
But I feel like. You know, I come into this and
I'm nervous for every single interview, but by arming myself
with some knowledge, how these how guests talk, what kind of
topics they gravitate, they gravitate to stories.
It helps me have like this backstop of information or
questions that I can lean on if it's gets overwhelming or my
anxiety takes over. And it's like talking to people.
I mean, I started this to get better at the act of engaging
with people, talking and telling stories.
And I feel like we've gotten there.
So if you think so, maybe leave a comment that you enjoy the
show because man, sometimes it's overwhelming to press record,
start recording and just put something out in the world.
And then once you publish it, it's like out there, people can
listen and feel a certain way. And sometimes I'm quite
vulnerable and sometimes that's overwhelming.
But I hope you guys enjoy it. I do this because.
I want to get better and I want to encourage everyone to do the
thing that makes them uncomfortable because for me
it's not Backpacking in grizzly country makes me a little
worried or nervous. It's engaging and talking with
people. Most my 20s I spent living
alone, solitary. I threw hiked and backpacked
21,000 miles from 20 to 30. Maybe even more actually.
But I didn't talk to a ton of people.
I don't have and build a ton of friends or have many
relationships. In fact, for over half that time
I didn't even have a car. So I hitchhiked a lot.
So in my 30s, I'm working on this social aspect, engaging
with the world, embracing what makes us human, and that is
emotions, that is differing opinions, and that is
acceptance. And we really need to change
this world because I cannot believe what's happening in the
United States and over in Europe, people were so nice, but
they were also so concerned for what's happening out here.
So with that, I just encourage you to vote or volunteer or give
money or whatever that may be, or use our public lands and
engage with them, help do trail work, whatever it may be.
Try to embrace the things that make things amazing and then
donate a little time, energy, effort, or money into changing
things that I think the vast majority of us are frustrated
about. All right, with that, thank you
for listening. Stay leap, my friends.