Episode 424: Liron Kayvan: The Top Nutrition Mistakes to Avoid + Are Seed Oils Bad for You?

0:01Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it. Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up.

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1:54welcome back to fitness fridays and i am joined yet again by my friend liron thank you for coming liron thank you for having me liron also has a gym in la it's called beyond fitness yeah yeah westwood boulevard you think i'd know the name by now but you got a lot of things going I do. I actually do. But it's super easy when you're here because it's so easy. We know each other for so long. We're also neighbors. We're also neighbors. And we just like to blab about all things health and fitness. But today we're going to be covering a lot on nutrition because I think people are making big mistakes with their nutrition.

2:36And because of that, they're not reaching their overall health goals. 80 % of your goals, fitness-wise, body-wise, comes from your nutrition. It's not, you're not going to be making, that's what they say, like, abs are made in the kitchen. They're not made at the gym. And you can be squatting all day. And you can be lunging all night. But if you're not eating properly, then good luck to you. And so I really wanted to do an episode, a fast episode, short episode on, I believe, the top nutrition mistakes that people are making. And then you can tell me what you think, okay? How's that sound? Okay.

3:17Sounds great. I believe some of the top nutrition mistakes that people are making that really can overhaul your overall goals if you just watch on these. The first one is your portions. I think portions is where people always fail. We think we know, we eyeball it, we think, okay, that's a chicken breast or this looks like a normal size of rice or pasta and we're always wrong because if you actually look at what an actual portion is to what we're actually eating, very, very different. And that can make a major difference in your overall calorie intake. So if we are much more mindful of our portions, it will save you a lot of heartache.

3:59That's the first one. Another big one that I think is really important is supplementing. I think that we rely on supplements way too much over our actual nutrition, like what we're actually eating, and it's not making us any healthier. I think if we actually ate the nutrients that our body needs, it would help us with our overall satiation. Yeah. Right? For sure. And another, I know this is another big one, and I know you're going to definitely agree with me on this one, is people are not consuming enough protein. Yeah. Protein is like... That's the number one. That is like the real, that is like the number one.

4:48I mean, protein satiates you, right? If I'm not eating enough protein, I am starving, literally starving. And I think if people would uptake their protein, it's like a game changer. Again, I think that one goes down. I talk about this a lot, but it goes down to evolution. We've evolved to eat protein. So our guts are like protein-seeking machines. And so when they register the amino acids, like that umami flavor of protein, it's just extremely satiating because that's literally just how we're built well well first of all it also regulates my blood sugar like i'm like i shake if i'm if i'm hungry and the second i eat a piece of chicken i feel so much better and i'm a big animal protein person i think that's like the really like to me yeah i you don't have to be an animal protein person you can be eating you can eat other things that are not animal protein you can try you can try but but animal No protein to me is like the number one source for my protein.

5:50Again, it's how we're designed. It's how we're built. Oh, 100%. And like the other really big one is that eliminating food groups is a real mistake, right? Not eating enough carbs, thinking that carbs are going to make you fat. No, it's the portion and the kind of carb will make you fat, not an actual carbohydrate. Eliminating that from your diet is such a bad move. You need fats, carbs, and proteins. At some point, you're going to need to check all those boxes. You have to. In order to be having a balanced plan is what it is, right? Like you can't just eliminate because your body is going to crave it and you're going to eat it somewhere.

6:34You're going to eat something else that's maybe not as good for you, correct? Technically, I think the only one that is not essential, like from a scientific perspective, is carbs because you technically don't need carbs to survive because your body will create carbs out of protein or fat like gluconeogenesis and stuff but in practice everyone needs it and also if you're an athlete and you're working out you also need it for performance your performance is going to suffer tremendously your mental health suffers tremendously without carbs because it boosts serotonin and stuff you feel better so practically speaking you definitely need some form of carbs some form of fat, some form of protein and trying to like shortcut or like cheat the system by just getting rid of one.

7:17It's a nice idea. And a lot of people, especially with carbs, because you lose water weight, they'll lose 10 pounds in a week and they're like, oh, I'm a winner. Yeah, but you lost water and maybe some muscle and actually you're less healthy than you were when you were 10 pounds heavier. So totally agree with you. You're cheating yourself really. Well, I feel like that's a big one, right because people they're not relying on the muscle they're building they're relying on big mistake huge mistake like what's it called like they're overestimating the fat loss and underestimating the muscle gain don't want to lose fat and lose muscle at the same time you only want to lose fat but it's really hard so what i think when you eat carbs like you're saying you may lose that water weight right but your muscles are made of water so you're kind of losing muscle in a way.

8:04So then what would be a good strategy in your opinion where we can balance it, right? Because we don't want to overeat carbs, but for sure, or anything, right? Like, by the way, do you believe in this myth that eating too much protein will be bad for your kidneys? No. You don't believe in that? Not animal protein. Fake, like fake, possibly protein shakes. I doubt it even with protein shakes, if they're animal-based, meaning dairy protein. I doubt it. But like natural, basically natural sources of protein, not a chance, not a chance. I don't believe it for a split second. You don't. Well, I see this is the thing, right?

8:41Like to me, like we talked about protein is so important. People are getting their protein, let's say just from like their shakes. Are they getting enough protein then? Right. Because to me, people are exclusively getting it from their protein shakes. Yeah. Well, Well, to me, I feel like that you can't just exclusively get your protein from a protein shake. I wouldn't advise it. Well, I would think you'd be like, for me, when I have a protein shake, I'm starving 20 minutes later, right? Because I guess maybe because it digests really quickly into your body, whatever. But I feel like animal protein for me is what actually, the animal protein is what satiates me.

9:22If you isolate too much, again, I think protein shakes have their place and I will have them from time to time and I will tell clients to have them. Yeah, me too. Especially if they're learning to get their protein up and they're trying to get their gut to adjust to a high protein diet, which in the early phases, protein is fantastic. Protein shakes have their place. Okay. Listen, I love, by the way, I have a protein shake. I try to have a protein shake on the go. Like I have like my, by the way, I have slate. Literally, yeah. I'm literally going to have this right after this podcast. But I use these a lot for pre-workout, post-workout, or on the go.

10:00But I have other things in addition to that, right? I also use Momentus. I like their chocolate whey protein. I haven't tried that yet. Or the vanilla whey protein. I like that too. You've got to give me that too. It's delicious. Because that's like they have more natural sweeteners and stuff. No, no. But it's just what I like about it, they have this third party tested. Oh, okay. Which I like. And also, I just like the taste of it. I like the ingredient list. I like all of it. But my point is, I do both, right? Because I need the satiation of having animal protein as well. But I feel like where shakes come into place a lot of times is when I need to supplement with more protein.

10:42Right? When I'm busy, when you're on the go, you need to have that. Convenience factor. The convenience factor. Which we've spoken about in other podcasts. Like convenience is an underrated facet of fitness that people need to factor into what they're doing. Things have to work functionally and they have to be convenient for you. Exactly. Now, those to me are like big mistakes that I see all the time. What are other ones that you see that people are making? So I think not focusing on food quality and also not enjoy. I think the biggest one now is like not enjoying their food, like not factoring that in.

11:20And again, this kind of flies in the face of what most people are told. But my theory is, and I'm really fleshing this out. So this might sound a little bit jumbled, but like, I think your brain has a certain, let's say, pleasure point principle where it wants to get a certain amount of pleasure from food. And if it doesn't get that amount of pleasure from food, it will kind of force you to binge later on. So essentially, what's happening is that your brain is seeking pleasure from food. And if it doesn't register that pleasure from food, it will keep asking for more and more food. So by eating something that by only eating things that people don't enjoy or not consciously enjoying the food that they're eating, they're setting themselves up for failure because their body and their brain is kind of storing a little craving for later.

12:09It's like, wait a minute, I didn't actually enjoy that you you better pay me so basically deprive you're saying when you a big mistake is when you deprive yourself yeah it will end up backfiring because you'll end up eating something different or more or badly later on that's what i do that's my big thing i deprive i deprive and then i'll go fucking ape shit on something else like like for example i don't want to eat a lot of sugar but then i'll eat nine pounds of grapes yeah so like that's my thing I love fruit. And I know people say fruit doesn't make you fat. If you have nine pounds of grapes or mango, yeah, well, you may not get fat, but you will gain some weight.

12:51I think it's definitely better to have a more balanced approach. But then ultimately, the truth of it is that you probably should have given yourself the grapes in the first place. And then maybe you would have only had four or five pounds as opposed to nine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the thing is, not even the grapes, I should have given myself something else, because what I'm using is I'm using the grapes as my sugar food. Yeah, sugar food. Because I'm craving sugar, so I'm like, oh, I'll just have grapes, which then really kind of brings us back to portion, right? Portions, portion. That's why I always circle right back to portions.

13:23I think where most people really make that mistake is when they just overeat with that portion. It's not, like I said, it's not so much always just the food. It's the amount. You can gain weight on eating too much healthy food. You know what I mean? And that's what I do, right? Like, I'm like, oh, chicken breast is okay. I'll have seven of them. Or, oh, you know, like grapes are okay. I'll have nine pounds. Still, like overeating is overeating. Yeah, you can overeat good food and you can also overeat bad food. The issue with... You have more wiggle room with eating good food. but you still have to, it's more wiggle room but you still have to be careful.

14:02And that's why things like if it fits your macros and stuff, I don't think people bother with that anymore but that used to be a thing. If it fits your macros, meaning just as long as you're eating your macros it doesn't matter. The problem with that is if you're eating Twinkies as your carb source you're going to go, you're not going to be able to stick to 200 grams of carbs a day or whatever it is because you're just going to rifle through those so fast because they provide no actual nutrition so your body is still craving nutrients and therefore you're going to overeat those foods. So calories in, calories out is completely non-negotiable.

14:34That's how it works. Like you cannot, that's just a mathematical law of the universe. If your calories in more than your calories out, you will store weight. Whether that's muscle or fat is potentially negotiable depending on what you're eating. I don't get why that's even still a controversial topic. No, that's just a fact. It's like gravity. That's just how it works. But that's controversial. Like there's been times where people are like, Like, what are you talking about? Calories in versus calories out? That's not how it works. There's no point arguing about it. I'm like, what are you talking about?

15:02Of course, that's just how it works. It is how it works because I'm a prime example, right? I exercise like a fanatic. I eat very healthy. But if I'm not watching how many calories I'm inputting into my body versus how many I am outputting, I gain weight. I think where the conversation becomes more interesting and nuanced is where you start to talk about, you start to break that down and talk about what does calories in mean versus what does calories out mean. First of all, you would have to absorb the calories in. So if your body, for some reason, decides it doesn't want to absorb those calories, if your gut says, you know what, I'm not absorbing these calories, I'm going straight out, then technically that's not calories in.

15:46It went into your mouth, but it didn't go into your body. So that's not something that happens all the time. But again, it's like, where does that calories in versus calories out equation become relevant? What does calories out mean? Does it only mean walking? No, your calories out could be your growing your hair. It could be your reproductive system. It could be your digestive system. It could be your immunity. So it's so insanely complex, that thing, that to try to reduce it to a mathematical formula that we can predict is, the flip side to it is, you're not really going to be able to do that long-term.

16:23It's too complex. But you have to be aware that that is how it works. Another one I should think is really important too, because again, we talk so much about protein and we seem to be remiss about fiber. Like me, maybe I'm eating a lot of fiber by eating all these grapes and everything else. Sounds sweet. Or I'm a big vegetable and fruit person. But I would say like there's a crazy stat that like I think 90 % of Americans are not eating enough fiber. And fiber is like a major macro ingredient, a macronutrient that's so important. And it helps with keeping you full and your digestion and your gut.

17:02I think your gut even eats certain types of fiber. It literally like pulls energy from the fiber itself. So your gut needs the fiber just to like function well. So besides just making sure you are eating enough protein, make sure you're eating enough fiber. And if you can't eat fiber, then get a supplement that can help you with getting that fiber because it keeps you full longer, faster, not faster, but longer. It helps with your absorption of your nutrients. So if you're not absorbing your nutrients, the other problem is that you may eat more because you don't feel like you're eating properly.

17:43Does that make sense? Yeah. Also in nature, again, it goes back to like my nature kind of binding philosophy for nutrition. Like in nature, fiber is everywhere. You know, every plant has some type of fiber in it in nature. It's only when we live in our modern world that we have the ability to mechanically get rid of fiber that we're not getting enough. So if you were to eat in a more natural way, like as we were built to eat, you should be getting more fiber. And I think they say what? You should be eating between 25 and 30 grams of fiber per day, right? Now, I guess depending on the size of the person.

18:19But I think if you can do that, like that's why incorporating fruits and vegetables is so important. taking a supplement that's where i think where the supplements come like i was saying earlier i think sometimes we're supplementing not for our body but for what people think is like what's popular right like you're taking the the trendiest supplement yeah some really edge obscure thing right versus what your body actually what you actually need like if you know you're somebody's not eating enough fiber then take that as a supplement if you're somebody's not eating enough fats, like fatty fish.

18:50Then you could have like take an omega, like making sure you're supplementing for yourself will help balance out your nutrition or your nutrients properly. That make sense? Makes sense. I think those are good ones. What else did we miss? Eating enough protein, eating enough fiber. Don't overly restrict your calories. That's another big one. I think people sometimes think in order to lose weight, they have to eat less. That's another big common myth. Because sometimes what happens is we end up eating more down the road, because we're trying to eat less at a certain time. That's different than deprivation.

19:29Yeah, I think don't, yeah, you don't want to deprive yourself like... No, that's different though. Like, for example, you're like, okay, I'm only going to have this one egg for breakfast, right? Versus having the egg the avocado the piece of whole grain toast we and that's different than deprivation is like i'm not going to eat that piece of chocolate i'm not gonna eat that piece of chocolate then you end up like you know binging on a chocolate cake this is different i think that like there's a misconception a big nutrition mistake is that like we eating less is more actually sometimes eating more is more yeah especially with regard to like protein i think people need to eat more actual food to avoid snacks and that's why i always go back to the jungle analogy like if you stick to actual food like how you would eat in the jungle if you stick to actual food you'll find yourself satiated a lot but like more with more consistency a lot faster and the whole process is a lot more enjoyable when you try to like have these like clever little tricks and eat these kind of made in a lab foods that everyone seems to be eating now some cool thing that's being pushed on TikTok.

20:36What is it? I just, all of these things. I can't even, I'm so divorced from that stuff that I don't even know the name of it, but I see like, and I'm not going to name names because I don't know, I don't know who's been on this podcast before, but like all these things, like, you know, you know what I mean? Like things made in a lab versus things that are natural. Oh, I know. Well, that to me is a bunch of nonsense. We're going to do a podcast about that right now, which is like these like crazy, like, you know, myths and debunking some of these things. Nobody I know who's in really good shape and no high level athlete consumes more than 20 % of their diet in these kind of edge man-made foods.

21:11Especially athletes. Oh, 100%. Every high performing athlete. And they'll have probably two, three, four foods that they religiously like they almost worship these foods because they think they have these like magical powers to make them function better. And it's because they kind of do. Like every athlete I know has like, whenever I look at what they eat, they always talk about two or three or four foods that they absolutely love. And they're usually, actually, this is one more thing I would say is nutrient density. Like focus, people don't focus enough on like nutrient density, not just macro, but micro.

21:46Like the hidden invisible nutrients inside food. A lot of this has to do with color. So like colorful foods. I was just going to say that, you know, it's funny. I was just going to say that because actually what I was actually going to say what you were saying is like I have and I agree with what you're saying. But I also think that there's a little bit of a caveat to that. And that is it's really important to have. I eat very boring, right? Like I eat the same things over and over again. To someone else it's boring or to you it's boring? To anybody it's boring, right? Like I eat the same thing over and over again.

22:16But I will say that I do, even though I think it's important, I do think that I did my body an injustice, which is like, I think variety actually works better overall for your overall health. Like, because if you're not eating a variety of foods, you might be missing out on some nutrients that you otherwise need. Like for me forever, I would have like, I loved asparagus and chicken or like, you know, or asparagus and salmon. But like, I missed out on a whole, you know, rainbow of other vegetables that are really important. Literally rainbow, like in terms of like colors. Literally rainbow, like all the colors.

22:55Like I feel like it's a really important to incorporate colorful foods into your diet. And again, this goes back to how we're built. Yeah. Why do like candy companies and just food companies in general, so they just recently banned red, whatever. Thank God. red dye red dye number 40 but they're just they're gonna switch it to red dye number 39 or whatever so i don't buy any of this shit to be honest i'm not that excited about we're moving in the right direction but like i'm not trusting the food companies and the food scientists to be my like health star all of a sudden but what i would say is why do they force these dyes into food because it tricks your brain into thinking it's nutrients and your brain wants nutrients especially for kids a bit adults too the reason why they are why are they why do you have to add color to these made in the lab foods because otherwise your brain will be like that's bullshit i don't want that that has no nutrients in it but with the color all of a sudden your brain's like oh give me some of that right well i also think though people do that i think that's also because if it looks good people are it's more enticing for sure because we're wired to look at a red visually You know, I recently went to a restaurant here.

24:07I'm really, I'm so upset about this. I really am. Like, first of all, I go to this restaurant like at least five times a week for, like, this to me was like the thing that I thought it was the cleanest version, right? Like, it was, I get a chicken kebab and salad. And I loved it. I loved the chicken and the garlic sauce on the side. And it was like, it's something that I felt like was the healthiest version, like at the restaurant. So I would, I would like force people to go with me. Like whenever I do go out to eat. The garlic sauce, like the white dip thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My wife loves that stuff.

24:43I love it. I love the garlic sauce with the white. Oh, it's good. It's good. It's delicious. So I would literally force whoever I would be having like a meal with. I'd be like, let's go to this restaurant, right? And recently I found out, and the chicken is like, they grilled the chicken in front of you. like they put it on the barbecue i think i know where this story is gonna go and i'm like and i was like i thought it was super healthy right and i asked them i'm like how what's in the marinade it's so delicious and like i like i've asked a couple of times and i and i got the basics the first time oh it's olive oil we put some yogurt in it olive oil yeah okay no but then they told me that they're like the one guy was like and we use egg color number 40 i'm like huh he's like I'm like, isn't this saffron?

25:31They're like, no, it's yellow egg 40. I'm like, what are you talking about? He goes in the back. I'm like, let me see what you're talking about. He brings out the food coloring that they add to the recipe to make it look yellow to make it look like they're using saffron. Because saffron is really... Saffron's expensive. Saffron's a really expensive spice, right? And I'm paying... You can get Spanish saffron. It's cheaper, but yeah. Okay, but the chicken skewer is$22. It's not like it's so cheap. And I assumed that it was like a spice that they were using. He broke my heart when he brought out the egg color number 40.

26:11To make it a little yellow? To make it yellow. Is that in the chicken or the sauce? No, in the marinade that he marinades the chicken in. And so it took me four people to get me to the actual answer. The first three people just said, oh, it's olive oil and lemon juice. They use all the basic ingredients. So I thought, oh, great. But it was the actual, the guy told me that. Even the olive oil. Look. But wait, isn't that horrible? I'm going to say no. And the reason I'm going to say no is because, look, you have to get out of this idea. By you, I mean everyone, people listening. And I tell my clients, I tell my family, I tell everyone, like, you can't be so naive.

26:46Their job, the restaurant's job, food company's job is not to make you healthy. I know. Their job is to make them profit. And I understand that. Like, I'm a businessman. I am not expecting them to make me healthy. Okay, it's not going to happen. They are going to make as much profit for themselves as possible. So provided they're not overtly poisoning you, and you don't know, never go back or give a bad review on Yelp or whatever, it's not going to hurt their bottom line. What they want to do is lower their expenses, meaning using cheap ingredients. So when they say olive oil. Sure, it's olive oil.