← ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
Health and Fitness Update Plus 'Are Organic Foods Worth It?' with Dr. Bobby Dubois | Ep 577
01:09:51
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Hello and welcome to Choose A Five. Today on the show we have an episode all about health. So this originally started when Dr. Bobby Dubois reached out to me and said that he thought it would be really interesting to do a segment on organic foods and is it really worth it? And we recorded that segment, which will be on the backside of this episode. And I was brainstorming what would round this episode out and of course we're going to touch on a little bit of overarching food principles. And we really touched on this way back in episod seven of ChooseFi. So you can always find that just scroll back way back in your podcast to episode seven from 2017. It was tips to reduce your grocery expenses or just go to choosefi007. That'll get you there. But I'm also going to talk a little bit about my current health journey and what I'm doing in my life. I know a lot of you have reached out to me with some interest over the years when I've talked, especially in the last couple of years, about the muscle building journey that I've been on, plus some of the other health things that I've sprinkled in here and there. So I thought now would be a good time to give an update as we're closing out 2025. So I think this is going to be a really interesting episode. And with that, welcome to Choose Fi. Before we get started, I keep this podcast entirely ad free for two reasons. First, first, this is a five podcast and I don't want to promote products that I don't want you to buy in the first place. And second, I really like the clean listening experience of a show where you don't have to fast forward ads to keep it ad free. All I ask of you as a listener is the next time you open a travel rewards credit card, go to choosefi.com cards and with that, onto the show. All right, so this is a rare solo segment for me, but for anyone who is not acquainted with me, I'm Brad Barrett. I'm a CPA in a former life. I've been the host of the Choose a Vibe podcast and co founder for the last nine years. And I am really on a journey towards living a better life. And I think a lot of that starts with our health and wellness. And at this point I am 46 years old and I am in by far the best shape of my life. And it's not even close to. And I was a decent athlete growing up. I've been a soccer player all my life. But I really have been working hard at this because I want to live a healthy life into my 70s, 80s, and 90s. And I think it starts in our. Really, it starts at the beginning, but it starts in our 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s to get you there. So this has been a very long, very long journey. And of course, just like any journey, I'm constantly learning. So, first, let me say, obviously I'm not a doctor. I am someone who cares deeply about my health and I've experimented a lot, but this is not medical advice. It's not even close. I can't even imagine that you. You would mistake it for medical advice. But nevertheless, I wanted to give that caveat at the outset. So, all right, what am I doing? I have talked on a couple episodes where I had my personal trainer, Dean Turner on, and that was episodes 480 and 5 16. So that second one was a masterclass on muscle building. And I've been doing this quote unquote, new workout for about three years now, which is hard to believe that I'm at it that long. And it is just the most incredibly effective workout that I've ever seen. I think, frankly, if you listen to the next five minutes and really take this in and implement it in your life and implement it at the gym, you will see better results than 99% of people who go to the gym four or five times a week, Genuinely. Even people who hire personal trainers, because I think the incentives are such that when you go to a gym and hire a personal trainer, they want you to leave feeling like you worked out, that you're all sweaty and you're tired and you feel like this was a great workout. And frankly, I think those of us in the fight community, and certainly myself, I'm looking for effectiveness. And this workout that Dean turned me onto years ago is something that I think is just the most brutally effective workout you can imagine. So, okay, some principles. And like I said, you're going to take this in, you're hopefully going to apply it at your gym, and I almost guarantee you you're going to see success in some way, shape or form. And certainly if you've been treading water at the gym for years, you don't look any different in the mirror, you're not really progressing, then I guarantee this will be beneficial to you. Because it gave me the principles that I didn't have. And I was somebody who worked out. I went to CrossFit, I worked out all the time, but I didn't have the principles that were needed to Build long term success. So, okay, here's basically what I do. I go to my local gym and it can be anything from a Crunch Fitness, Gold's Gym, Planet Fitness, any other type of gym you have locally. Okay. I actually prioritize machines now. Not free weights, not barbells, dumbbells somewhat, but really not barbells at all. I'm using the machines and my workouts take me about an hour. And interestingly, I'm only working for about 10 to 12 of those 60 minutes. The rest of the time I am literally resting. I'm walking around the gym just resting. So this is not something I don't think in the last three years I've ever walked out of the gym sweaty from this type of workout, but yet I built more muscle than I could possibly imagine. And this is for a guy in his 40s when supposedly biology is taking you the other way. So I can tell you this has worked exceptionally well for me. It was funny. I was listening to the Mile High Five podcast a couple weeks ago and Carl Jensen was on as a guest. He was the former co host. And Doug was saying to him, he's like, carl, you look amazing. What is going on? I've never seen you like this. And he's like, well, actually I had this conversation with Brad Barrett in Breckenridge a year and a half ago and it basically changed my life. And he, I mean, Carl just followed this and I think he's right around 50 and he looks unbelievable. So I know this works. I know Brian Feroldi's and other past guests who's been on a bunch of times. He's been doing this to great success. A lot of people in my personal life, et cetera. So I know this works. Just please trust me on this. So you show up to the gym, let's say we're going to, we're going to talk about upper body. So you're doing six exercises. That's it. Okay. You're doing two sets of each exercise. And like I said, you're prioritizing machines because they isolate those muscles and they also don't allow you to do stupid things. If you look at just any normal gym, you see people doing all sorts of wacky things. They're swinging weights around that they have no business lifting. It's just ego. They're not actually doing anything. They're just moving a weight with their body in some way. Is that better than sitting on the couch? Yeah, marginally. And I'm tongue in cheek, of course it's better than Sitting on the couch, but they're not going to see any progress during that. It's literally, it's doing essentially nothing. Whereas if you go, you have to go very slow. Tempo is really, really, really important, and control of the weight is essential. So every repetition, every time you move the weight, you want it to be fully controlled, both on the up, which, let's say, you know, push or pull, depending what you do, where you. They call that the concentric. It's basically when you're doing the work, as we would think about it. So a bicep curl would be pulling the weight towards you to the top position. That would be the concentric, or in a bench press, it would be pushing it away from you. And then the lowering of the weight is known as the eccentric. Okay? And now that you want exceptionally controlled and slow. So the lowering of the weight, you want to be about two seconds. All right? So like I said, we're doing six exercises, two sets per exercise. Now, one of the absolute keys is that you want to be in the 5 to 10 rep range. In each of those sets, if you can't get to 5, the weight is too heavy and you have to lower it. If you're at or over 10, the weight is too light, and then the next set, you just increase the weight. Okay? And I implore you, when you start this, do not lift too heavy. The key is perfect form and perfect tempo. So you're going to want to hear the exercises that I tell you about. You're going to want to watch the YouTube videos, go to your gym, see what the machine is. So the chest press machine, see what brand it is, and then just Google that, let's say, techno gym chest press. And you just literally, you watch some videos on how people use this machine, and you do that exactly because form is essential. Okay? The last rep. Now, this is what makes a set worthwhile, and this is what helps you build the muscle, is the last rep or two, it slows down, basically against your will. I say slows down involuntarily. Okay? So what's happening is you are just doing a set, and then you will get tired. And as long as you can do that last rep or two again with perfect form, it will slow down. And that's when you know you basically can't get to that next rep without compromising your form or just failing entirely. That is when you. You stop the set. So when you believe you cannot do one more rep without perfect form and without failing, basically. All right, then this is where an interesting Part comes in is you are resting. So, no joke. I turn the clock, the timer on my phone, I hit start and I walk around the gym. I leave the machine, I leave my stuff there, so it's obvious that I'm on it. And I just walk around the gym for somewhere between three and five minutes. But three is the absolute bare minimum. Okay? You walk around the gym, you're not doing anything else. You're not getting on a treadmill and running. You're not doing leg exercises just for giggles. You are just resting. Okay? Because you're basically resting your central nervous system. A lot of people you'll see at the gym, they'll do a set, they just stop for no discernible reason. It's not like it slowed down or got hard. They just pick some random number and then they just pick the weights back up 30 seconds later and it's like, what on earth are you doing? I promise that's not doing anything to you. It's just not. To get a successful set, the Last rep or 2 has to slow down. It has to be hard. So that means eventually you're going to have to lift heavy. But it doesn't start that way. It starts with a white belt mentality of I'm going to get this form down exactly right. I went in there three years ago when I started and I was lifting small amounts of weight. Now I started increasing really quickly because I got to 10 reps or more and I was still going. But I didn't try to go in there with an ego. I just started from zero. Okay? And I think that was a great benefit to myself. And it just started working. And then of course, you're going to get to the point where you're kind of locked in. All right, I can do 8 reps of this weight on the first set. Well, then maybe I get six or seven on the second set with a three to five minute rest. That's pretty plausible. If you took a 30 second rest, you. You'd be lucky to do one or two. It just, it doesn't work that way. You need to literally rest. So that's absolutely critical. Like I said, you're not doing anything else. You're just resting. And I think it's really, really important to keep track of this. So I have a physical notebook, but I think you can definitely do this on a Google spreadsheet or some other app, but you don't want to reinvent the wheel every time. You need to know what you did last time, the exact weight you need to Write down the machine that you use. That should become fairly self explanatory. But write down if the seat was on, click number four and the arms were on, some of them have arm adjustments were on click number five. Well, just write that down. You don't want to have to reinvent the wheel every time. You write down the exact weight you used and the reps you use for set one and set two. So it's just there and you just try to beat it the next time. So like I said, the first couple times you're going to go in there, you're not going to know what weights err on the side of being light and then kind of stop around 15 reps. If you get to more than 15, you're not doing 70 until you get to the last rep. Slowing down involuntarily. Just realize, all right, look, that I'm kind of done here, I'm going to raise the weight the next time. You could even do a third set that first time or two just to get you into getting more effective sets. But I think realistically it's just about getting this down mentally. So I mean, that basically is about it. You just, you show up, you're doing six exercises. Now for me and everybody's different, but for me, my upper body is a chest press. So I have a chest press machine at the gym. Again, you don't want to use barbells because realistically the muscle is built in those Last rep or 2 where it slows down involuntarily. And if you did like a barbell bench press, that's basically just for ego because if you think about it, you're sitting down on a bench press and unless you have a spotter, which most people don't, you are doing a fraction of the weight you can use and a fraction of the reps because literally you don't want to die, right? You don't want the weight to get stuck on your, on your neck and chest. So just by definition, a barbell bench press is really not doing what we think it's doing. So that's kind of to illustrate why we're using machines because you can get that last rep where honestly it takes me sometimes five to ten seconds to move that weight the last time. And that's a really effective repetition, but also that larger set. So I do a chest press, I'll do a lat pull down, sometimes I'll do assisted pull ups. So literally the assisted pull up machine, obviously I can do pull ups, but the assisted pull up machine it allows you to focus on the part of the pull up, the muscle building in your back and your lats and such that you actually want to focus on as opposed to a lot of people will do pull ups where they just throw themselves up there and you see all sorts of wacky things and it's like what on earth are you doing? What, what do you think that is doing to yourself other than just proving some random number that you can do it? It does nothing. So chest press, lat pull down. Then I find a shoulder press machine and then a row. But I, I like the chest supported row. And in every instance where you can, you want to support all the other body parts and don't allow them to move and then just focus on the muscle groups that you're actually working. So that's again why we use machines. Then I'll use a tricep machine. So it usually looks like it's might be called a triceps machine or tricep dip machine or something like that. Alternately, I do this cable press down that's a little bit harder and outside the scope of this. But triceps machine is great. Most commercial gyms have one of those. And then I do some type of bicep exercise. Now this is the one time where I actually will do a dumbbell. Sometimes I'll do a dumbbell hammer curl or just a dumbbell curl and I would just google a bunch of different exercises like this and see what comes up. And just again, if you use those principles of you are isolating a muscle, you're going slowly and you're using tempo, it's pretty hard to screw that up. So I would definitely Google and YouTube. Are your friends there? So that's it. I'm doing six exercises, two sets per exercise. I'm resting three minutes or more between sets and I'm just walking around the gym, that's it. And keep track of everything in a notebook. And realistically you're going to walk out of there an hour later and you're going to know you worked hard, but you're not going to be sweating. You're going to be able to go about your day and I almost guarantee you that this is going to be over three to 12 months. The most incredible transformation you've seen with your body. If I'm of any indication of Carl Jensen's any indication if a bunch of people in my life, it just works. The other, just slightly outside the scope thing, but it's important is you have to eat protein to build muscle. I shoot for 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. So I'm actually going for like 180 grams of protein a day, which is a lot. But Oikos triple zero Greek yogurt is a great option. I eat a lot of chicken thighs. I do eat some protein bars. I use Quest protein bars, but those are just the ones I like for taste. I'm trying to not eat a ton of calories, try to get the most effective protein I can. Obviously you could eat peanut butter, but that's not. While people think that's a protein laden food, it's a lot of calories. So you could wind up eating 3, 4, 5,000 calories a day just to get some protein from peanut butter. As much as I love it, but eating protein is really important and resting. So like I said the three to five minutes between sets. But also you want to take two full calendar days off between upper body workouts. So if you worked out on a Monday, the next day would be a Thursday that you could work out upper body and then lower body. Same deal. I take two days off between. I. I didn't mention the exercises I do for that but I would start out with the leg extension machine for quads. I would do the leg curl for hamstrings. So leg curl machine, you can either do the lying one or I like the one where I'm seated. Then something else for quads. So a leg press machine would be good. Hack squat would be best if your gym has it. Or even something like weighted lunges, weighted walking lunges. And then you probably want to do a second hamstring. So maybe, maybe, maybe if you know the form. This is real tough. Like a deadlift or Romanian deadlift would be good. A 45 degree extension machine, if you google this and learn how to use it would be another option. If none of these work, you can skip that second hamstring and then I actually do a calf exercise and then the adductor, adductor machine, which is the one where you sit. It's like a. Maybe it looks like the old thymester thing, but this is another one that Dean Turner loves. So I would be remiss if I didn't say that Dean was on again, episodes 480 and 516. He has a website@deanturnertraining.com and he has a lot of training programs. He also has a monthly group coaching that's only $25 a month now as we record this on November 20th. And he's amazing so would highly recommend just like Anything I'm going to mention in this episode, I have no relationship with him or any of the things that I mentioned this episode. So I make zero dollars. Let's be entirely clear. But Dean is remarkable. So that is what I'm doing. As far as weights, as far as cardio and such goes, I try to walk as much as I can. So I'm taking multiple walks a day. I am shooting for 10,000 steps, not because I think it's a magic number, but just because it's really denotes to me that I'm getting up and moving. Because you have to make a really concerted effort to walk 10,000 steps in a day. You have to take probably one to two dedicated walks in a day to get anywhere near 10,000. So I think it's important just not to be sedentary. Another thing that I'm doing that's brand new is I'm trying to do Zone two cardio training. Now, if anybody follows Peter Tia or Andrew Huberman, which both have really popular health podcasts, you've heard about Zone two and it's basically a cardio where you're kind of at your all day pace, which is you can really do this probably for hours, but you're at a heart rate where you can talk, you could probably have a conversation, but you really wouldn't want to. That's really the most effective way to know if you're in or around zone two. And it doesn't have to be that precise. It's just most walks you're not even close to that. Your heart rate's in the probably around 100 to 110 for me as zone two, I'm actually getting on the treadmill. And not that it's any better than others, if I was able to go on a concept two rower or a stationary bike for that long, I would probably do those. But I put my treadmill on like a 12 to 15 incline and I just walk slowly. I walk at like 3 to 3.5 miles per hour and I'll just do that for 40 plus minutes, 40 to 60 minutes. And I'm doing that about three times a week now. I just put my headphones in, I listen to some podcasts or some music and I just walk. And I have a whoop band which is a trackable for some health metrics and sleep and such. So I'm able to see what my heart rate is. My zone 2 is probably in the 1-30s or thereabouts. So I just, yeah, really just try to keep it in that Range and the nice thing about zone two is you're ultimately trying to get that all day pace where it's more efficient. So for the runners out there, this would be again a white belt mentality of starting over and saying, all right, look, I can probably run a seven minute mile for five miles, but I'm kind of gassed at the end of it. Well, zone two training in theory is to widen that base. So ultimately your peak is better. But that's, that's something different. That would be like a zone five training. But, but zone two is, let's say for runners out there, you would just start over and you'd start, okay, I'm going to do a 10 or 11 minute pace where I can do this all day, I can talk, but it's a little uncomfortable. And then let's say you start at 10 minutes. Okay, well now a week later, can you do 9:50, can you do 9:40 per mile? Can you do 9 minutes 3 months from now? And then you eventually get to the point where that pace, that all day pace is just much more efficient and maybe you're back down at the 7 minutes per mile and then your actual peak in a race might be 5:30 or something like that. So it's a long term thing. But frankly those of us in the FI community, we think long term, this is what we do, this is what we're good at. So this is gonna take you a couple years, but it's really, really worth it. So that is the majority of what I'm doing as far as working out goes. I probably, I'm looking to add in some high intensity interval like that zone five. I've been doing the air assault bike a little bit, but that's pretty darn hard to do all out for more than about 30 seconds. So I'm probably going to do some kind of rowing where I'll do like a four minutes on, four minutes off and repeat that. They call that the Norwegian 4x4 I think is what it's called. So that might be worth googling. But yeah, I'd like to do something maybe once a week that does that. I'm also adding some swimming in. This new gym that I go to has a pool so you can reserve a swim lane and I'm trying to add that into my, my weekly repertoire as well. So yeah, that really is the big part for fitness. This gym also has a sauna and a hot tub. So I'm trying to go there maybe sauna three times a week. I listened to this amazing Tim ferriss episode with Dr. Rhonda Patrick, which was episode 8 19. And she talked about a lot of the benefits, both cardiovascular and really risk reduction of all cause mortality, as they call it. So death basically really amazing benefits from going in sauna or even hot tubs a couple times a week. So definitely adding that in. Another big thing that I'm doing is just taking walks after meals. I think this is interestingly one of the best ways we can control our blood sugar spikes. And, and there's a continuous glucose monitor company called Levels and this was one of their biggest tips years ago. And I've really internalized it. And they basically said when they aggregate across all their clients, like one of the best things you can possibly do to control your blood sugar, which is important for all of us, let's be frank, not just for people with diabetes, is just to take a simple walk can be as short as just a handful of minutes after you eat and it's gonna avoid a lot of those spikes and the crashes. So if you wanna talk about like a low friction way to just make your life a lot better, that's it. That's a really cool thing. I personally have been going towards a much lower carbohydrate diet, bordering on keto because yeah, we have family, family diabetes. And I also have been taking some blood tests. So again, no relation to any of these companies, but Function Health is one that I used for a couple years and now I'm using a company called Superpower. They charge it's $199. When I signed up for like a hundred plus biomarkers, which is really awesome. And I noticed that some of my cardiovascular risk and coronary artery disease markers are potentially a little bit on the higher side. So the genetic one is called LP and then there's another one called apob. Apob and mine are just a little higher than I'd like them to be. So I'm really trying to do all I can to not have coronary artery disease, basically as I get older. And I wound up taking, and I think I mentioned this in the Bobby segment at the end of this episode, I wound up signing up for two tests that assess basically what's going on in your arteries. So there's one called the coronary artery calcium CT and this actually cost me only $129 out of pocket. It was, it's cash only, which in almost all health systems that I've heard people talk about this, it's cash only. So I called up my local hospital imaging center Asked about. It's a CAC coronary artery calcium Connecticut scan. And they got me in two days later for $129 out of pocket. And that basically tells you do you have some. Regardless of what your genetics imply or if your cholesterol is high or apob, which a lot of doctors think this is a better marker of, of what's going on with cholesterol, are there actual issues? So for most of us on that cac, you want it to show up as zero. If it's not zero, you need to do some research. Again, I'm not a doctor, but I would start googling Dr. Peter Attia a T T I A and just look that up and figure out with your own doctor what you should do. But if it's not zero, you probably need to consider an intervention. So mine thankfully came back at zero. I also did a carotid artery ultrasound. Unfortunately, the company I used I cannot recommend. I haven't gotten my results back yet. But I'm hopeful that that's also going to show up in a, in a positive way. So yeah, I mean that really is what I'm doing. I think, I think realistically if I can use those blood tests once a year from superpower for about 200 bucks, probably will consider it. I won't do that CT scan every year. Certainly it's not the greatest idea to do a ct. So that'll be something I'll probably do every three or four years. The ultrasound is, is a lot less of an issue. So that might be something I keep on a DEXA scan. DXA is another thing that I might do. So I'm probably looking at. I think many of us in the FI community, if we're curious about our health, you could probably spend four or five hundred dollars a year and get those blood tests, get a DEXA scan and maybe get one of those, the carotid artery ultrasound or something like that. That's what I'm doing and I think that's going to help me really stay on top of this. And I'm sure I could talk about a whole host of other things that I'm doing as far as my health goes. And if you have questions, if you have follow ups, you can always send them into feedback@choosea5.com or really the best way is to get on my newsletter. This is, I think, a really, really helpful weekly newsletter to stay on top of the pulse of the FI community. Just go to Choose a Vicom. Subscribe. I personally write that I try to read every response that comes into me, you can just hit reply to that. And that goes to feedbackooseay.com but also our next guest, as I mentioned, Dr. Bobby, he was on episode 4, 98 where we talked about the six pillars of health. I think that's a really important episode. And, and he's incredible. He's a Harvard grad, he has a medical degree from Johns Hopkins, he has 180 published academic papers and he's a physician scientist who's focused on what works for patients and what doesn't. Bobby has a podcast that I think is really great. It's called Live Long and well with Dr. Bobby. And yeah, in this segment, which before we get there, I'm going to talk a little bit more about food, but in this segment we talk about organic food and is it worth it? And I think it's a really interesting fi cost benefit analysis. And while this is not just a short five minute segment on organics, is it worth it or not? I, I think it's really a thought process and I love that about Bobby. I think that's what's, what really sets him apart. And I think you're going to find it an exceptionally interesting segment here. But before we get into that, I, I did want to highlight some of the things from way back in that episode seven because I think a lot of us, and this really almost certainly deserves its own separate episode and I will do that in 2026. But saving on food is really important. Food expense is really one of the big three expenses in our budgets, along with housing and transportation. And for a lot of us there's a lot of low hanging fruit, no pun intended obviously, but there's just a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of easy savings. And I think so many of us, we don't plan and I think that is one of the easiest ways you can save on food is just planning ahead. Think about how many times you've been scrambling at the last minute for food choices. And that means you have to go to fast food, which is not so cheap these days, or go to the local hot bar at your grocery store, Whole Foods or whatever. And that certainly is not cheap. So it's not cheap in money and it's not cheap in time either. It sounds like, oh, we're just going to go to fast food. Oh, we'll just run to the grocery store. But that's 20 or 30 minutes almost invariably and that's if you live close to the stores. So we need to be really efficient. You have so Little time in the scheme of things, especially if you're working to waste it because you didn't plan. It just seems really, really silly. So I think planning is essential. I think meal planning and cooking for multiple nights, again with being efficient. You can cook at home and you're almost always going to save money. And that's especially true if you take a recipe and double or triple it and then you're just embracing leftovers, right? This is part of your week is you make one dinner on Sunday night that's then going to be good for two or three more nights. You can also freeze things. If for some reason I, I joked way back when on that episode about like, what are you, a king? Like you or queen? You don't want leftover. You can't deal with leftovers. Like, give me a break. Like, if you're someone who says, like, oh, I don't eat leftovers, like, who the heck are you? Honestly, like that? That's not like, I don't think that's an agile mind. I think that's just someone who's really close minded. And it's like, I just hate those monolithic things. In this instance, I've decreed that I don't eat leftovers. It's just, it's just silly, frankly. And I just, I can't deal with that. So I think embracing leftovers. And again, if you get tired of things, you can just freeze it, have it left over five or six days later. It's the same difference. Ultimately, it's just in your case, maybe a little more optimized for whatever works for you in essence. So I think another thing is to curate a recipe index. And this is so you have goto so you're not scrambling. We talked about this on the episode with Emily and Emily recently about having adventure lists of things that you want to do. Because when you have an afternoon off and you look at each other, you're like, what should we do? And sometimes you just shake your head and say, I have no idea. And then you have to plan. Having that list ahead of time is going to make it a whole heck of a lot easier. It's the same with food, okay? If you have even five or 10 recipes or meals, doesn't have to be a recipe, it can just be a meal. Like for us, it's, it's chicken thighs and roasted broccoli. All right? That's something we eat fairly often. Or hamburgers. This is not some amazing plan. It's just we have a list of the things that we go to salmon from Trader Joe's, which is a two minute walk for me. That's on the list. Even though it should be fairly self explanatory. It's that in that moment you don't want to scramble and you want to know what are my options. Or when you wake up that morning when you need to take something, we have a whole bunch of ground beef and chicken and pork in the freezer because we buy in bulk. Well, I take it out that morning after we decide what we're going to have. And it's just, it is that easy. Okay, so planning is essential. Having that recipe index is essential. Freezing large quantity of things, buying in bulk, right. You can save a lot of money that way. I think you really need to be intentional about this. And the most obvious one is trying to cut down going out to eat. And now this is not for deprivation purposes or the ramit say to you like, yo, those fire people are just misers. Like it's nothing like that. It's frankly, going out to eat takes up a ton of time, it costs a lot of money and it's really unhealthy. So I try to prioritize going out to eat as few times as possible. Since I've moved into my new place two months ago, I've literally gone out to eat twice and that's it. And it's not like that makes me some admirable person, but I'm eating incredibly well in my place and I just don't have a hankering for going out and wasting all that time and money and eating something that I just know is not good for me. So I think it's planning and repetition is good. It's not bad. It can be to your great benefit. And I think just using those principles, I can almost bet that you're going to save a hundred or more dollars a month for even just for yourself. But if you have a family of two, four or five people in your family, whatever it is, you're going to save hundreds of dollars. And as we've discussed, little things are the big things. With fi, for every hundred dollars you cut out of your budget every single month, that's $30,000 less. You need to reach financial independence, okay? Because that's a $1,200 a year annual expense multiplied by 25, which is to get to the FI number because you're reducing that out of your phone number, that's $30,000. And not to mention you're investing that a hundred dollars every single month. And as I've Discussed on previous episodes. That adds up to tens of thousands of dollars. So literally, for every hundred dollars you cut from your budget over a 20 to 30 year period, this is a 50 to $100,000 swing because you'll have that extra net worth and you won't need that extra $30,000 to reach Fi. So I think this can be beneficial in a ton of ways and your health is really gonna. Thank you. Okay, we're on to Dr. Bobby to talk about organic foods. I think you're really gonna enjoy this segment with Dr. Bobby, and thanks for listening. And as I said, send your feedback in and we can almost undoubtedly do another episode on health and fitness. Bobby, thank you for coming back to Choose a Vibe. I love having you on the show. Absolutely love it.
- [34:41]
B
And I love being here and I love chatting with your audience and it's wonderful. Again.
- [34:47]
A
Yeah. Well, again, really appreciate it. We have a community who's interested in living better lives. And I think the umbrella is financial independence. The umbrella is once you have your finances straight, you have a little lower ambient stress and you can focus on what really matters in life, in my estimation, which is your health, your relationships, connections, adding value to the world. And yeah, again, really appreciate you lending your expertise for health. So this is an episode where we're basically talking about food and how to save on food costs or how to think about food costs. It's not necessarily saving, frankly. And I think something that we talked about offline was about organic food. I think a lot of people don't know what to make of it. I think, frankly, that's even a larger question is people don't know what to make about processed foods. Are they horrible for us? Is it worthwhile to shop at stores like Whole Foods or even more niche places like we just simply don't know. Probably we don't have the expertise. It's so confusing walking into a grocery store. I'll go to Wegmans and I'll see the organic ground beef and the regular ground beef, and I simply don't know what the difference is. I don't know. I'm someone who is the case study for I'm willing to spend money on my health and I simply don't even know where to start. So I'm going to throw it to you and I suspect I'm going to be doing a lot of listening in this the next little bit. So how would you start on the question about organics?
- [36:12]
B
Well, food is a critical issue and you're raising a broader topic than just organic versus Conventional. You're asking the question about just in general, what foods should I be buying? Another related topic is ultra processed foods. And I, by the time this episode comes out, my episode on ultra processed foods on Live Long and well with Dr. Bobby will be out and people can learn about that. So the issue of organic foods, there are two key facts. One, organic food costs more money. The costs are real. And that's the beauty of, I think this topic for your audience is they care about money and they care about life and they care about trade offs. So the costs are obviously higher for organic food. We'll get into the numbers behind that. The other piece of the puzzle is what are the benefits of organic versus conventional? And as we get into the data, the benefits aren't so clear. So there's lots of hype, but I'm not quite sure that the data supports the concerns and almost the religious zeal that people have around organic foods.
- [37:17]
A
Yeah, it's funny, as you were talking there, I wrote just hype question mark and then you literally, you said almost the exact words. It's, it's hard to discern if it is just height. And I think something you said in there embedded was, was really critical, which is we need to make choices. Right? I think we're always making choices with our lives with limited resources. And I think that's what's so confounding about this, about food in general is if it was clear cut, then at least you'd be able to make a decision with eyes wide open. But it's not clear cut at all. Again, I simply don't know what I'm getting.
- [37:50]
B
Let's explore exactly that. And ultimately we are going to net out too. It costs thousands of dollars more per family each year for organic. And is that the best use of those dollars? Because ultimately we could use that to have a gym membership or hire a personal trainer or get a better bed to sleep better, or get a home heart rate monitor or put that money away and retire earlier, which has got to improve our health as well. So, so that's where we're heading. So maybe the beginning point is to help people understand what exactly does organic food mean? Organic doesn't mean safe. Organic food means that there's no synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. Doesn't mean there can't be fertilizers and pesticides. They just can't be synthetic and organic. There are some things that can be used to protect the crops that, that aren't all that safe. Conversely, conventional non organic doesn't mean it's unsafe. And we're going to go through the data on just that. There's a lot of wonderful food from local farmers that isn't labeled organic. Because to get the USDA label for organic, you got to jump through a whole lot of hoops. So again, let's start with the assumption organic has some characteristics, but but not necessarily that it's that much better for you. And yes, if the costs were the same, yeah, who wants pesticides? Of course, let's not eat food that might have pesticides. But the costs aren't the same. So that's when we're going to get into the trade offs.
- [39:35]
A
Okay, but right, obviously the costs are.
- [39:37]
B
Not the same, which is exactly, I think the beginning of this. So the USDA basically has measured that we as Americans spend about a trillion dollars a year on food at home. Now this doesn't include restaurants and eating out, but that's about $3,100 a person for food. So if you're a family of four, it's $1,000 a month to $1,600 a month. It's a huge part of our expenditures. And lots of studies have shown that organic foods cost about 50% more. There's some work by Lending Tree and Consumer Reports, but over and over and over again that's what you Learned. And about 15% of all fruits and vegetables in the US in fact are organic. So as I always like to do, I like to go to my local market and see what the prices were for me. So when I looked at Fuji apples, they were a $.42 a pound for conventional and $2.70 a pound. 20 for organic all purpose flour, $3 for conventional, $6 for a five pound bag for organic grass fed beef. Similarly increase prices when you get the grass fed versus the conventional. For chicken, free range is like $9 a pound versus $5 a pound. And wild caught versus farm raised salmon $8 versus $17 a pound. So the costs are real. And it's been estimated that for a family of four to go organic is about three to six thousand dollars more a year. So it's a real number that, you know, you may quibble, it's you know, 2500, you might quibble at 7000 for a family extra. But it's real because it is about 50% of the, you know, 12,000 or more that we spend on food a year as a family.
- [41:35]
A
Yeah, that is a massive difference. Right. So that thousand to $1,600 a month is what you said the USDA assumes so. Right. That's $12,000 a year to about $19,000 a year. So, yeah, when you add three to 6,000, that is a material difference by any definition, obviously. And yeah, just looking at your items here, it looks like you had six. It's 50 to 100% or more difference just for this label of organic.
- [42:01]
B
And it's even worse if you love to go to farmer's markets. I love to go to farmer's markets. You know, support your local people. But, you know, it may be triple the price. I mean, I was spending several dollars for one zucchini at a farmer's market. It's just the nature of the beast.
- [42:18]
A
Huh. Okay, and now going back just quickly to the definition. So you said organic is grown without synthetic fertilizers and most pesticides, but there can be natural pesticides. So. Yes. It's not even like you're getting it pesticide free necessarily.
- [42:33]
B
Well, you're not getting pesticide free, number one. And number two, you're assuming that conventional food has pesticides in it. So now I think we're segueing into what are the benefits of organic? And are there enough of them to pay for that extra costs?
- [42:50]
A
Yeah.
- [42:51]
B
So if you ask Americans, 85% will say, pesticides, hunger, I hate them. I think that's a problem. But in reality, if you take most fruits and vegetables, they really don't have any pesticide residue still left on them. Now, it varies. I mean, if you get certain foods from some countries, maybe they have more residue or less residue. So it's not that organic has none, and conventional has lots. Most of them don't have pesticide residues, so. So why do people get scared about all this? Well, there's a couple sources of fear. The one that generally gets touted is studies in rats and mice. And if you feed them high doses of pesticides, bad things seem to happen to the poor mice. But like all mice studies, you're giving them hundredfold, thousandfold more than what most people would get. But that's the first piece of the puzzle. Okay? You know, the poor mice don't like pesticides. Let's get rid of them for people. And then they say, well, yeah, there are some people exposed to pesticides and they have an increased risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and cancer and fertility issues. And then you ask the question, well, who are those people? Those are farm workers who are spraying crops with pesticides and other things.
- [44:13]
A
And.
- [44:14]
B
And it gets on their clothes. They take it home. Their kids might be exposed to it. But again, these are high quantities of the material. So you can be scared of the rodent studies or the farm worker studies, but I don't think that tells us much. I think what we got to do is look at non farm workers, just average people like you and me and your audience. And that's where I think the data start to get interesting and, and not so clear.
- [44:42]
A
All right, so yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Obviously, sure, it's all well and good to give rodents a hundred x the normal amount and farm workers, but ultimately what matters is people like me and you. So let's go into the analysis of that.
- [44:55]
B
There's lots of studies. There was a 20, 23 meta analysis, which is a summary of studies, and there were 23 observational studies and 27 sort of clinical trial type studies. Okay, so what did we learn from the sort of aggregate of this information? And let me pause by saying what I'm sharing is the literature that's available today. Now, it may turn out In a year, five years, 10 years, we'll learn something new. But these are the data that are available today upon which you can make your cost benefit decisions. Okay, so they took people and randomized them and says, okay, some of you, you get organic tomatoes this week, some of you get conventional or same with apples. And then we're going to reverse it and we're going to measure your blood and see if there are pesticide levels that are higher when you had conventional and there were somewhat higher doses of pesticides in the blood. Does it mean much? I don't know. But yes, there are some pesticides on the food and some of that will get into you. But does it make a difference in our health? So there have been studies that say people who eat organic food have a lower bmi. Oh my God, I better eat organic because I don't want to be fat. Well, as anyone probably has thought about this is, wait a second. Organic people are not the same as conventional. They care about health, they're willing to spend money on their health. They, they're probably more healthy, they go to the gym, they don't drink a lot of alcohol, they don't smoke. So observing that people who eat organic do better doesn't tell us that much.
- [46:39]
A
Right. That's the epitome of selection bias. Right.
- [46:42]
B
And confounding all of that. And that's the same stories you get with allergies and reproductive problems and sperm counts where I think people get the most scared. And I think, let's hit this Straight on is cancer. So by eating conventional, am I at higher risk of cancer? Now, there's been no clinical trial. You're not going to say to these people, okay, for the next 30 years, you're eating organic, and this other group, you're eating conventional. We'll see what the rates of cancer would have to be a really big study. It's never been done. I doubt it will ever be done. So these are observational studies. So in one of these large observational studies, they compared people who ate a lot of organic versus not. They looked at 15 types of cancer, and one of them showed a relationship with somewhat higher cancer if they ate conventional. But as we may have talked about before in a prior episode, if you do 15 tests, likely one's going to end up abnormal anyways. So I don't make much out of that. But there was another observational study with about 68,000 people, and they asked questionnaires about, do you always eat organic? Sometimes, you know, occasionally. And they did find a relationship between lower cancer and higher use of organic foods. Now, again, as I said in this study, the organic people tended to be more likely to be vegetarian, less likely to smoke, younger, thinner, probably exercised more, slept better. So we're not really sure what we're measuring, but what they did find was that the number of cancers, the risk of cancer was 1.9% in the conventional people and 1.3% in the people who had a lot of organic. So 0.6%. Now, that's if you believe the data. I don't necessarily believe the data, but once you have that number, then you have to ask the question, well, what does that mean? So that means 6 fewer cancers per thousand people who ate organic. Okay. It's not doubling the risk. It's not raising the risk by 50%. It's 6 fewer cancers per thousand people who ate organic. And what people who are listening are probably thinking, so I had to feed 1,000 people an extra three to six thousand dollars more expensive food to prevent a small number of cancers. Now, I didn't say death from cancer. I just said cancers. So if you do the math, basically, you have to give 160 people organic food to reduce the risk of cancer by 1. Or if you do the math, again, because we know how much organic food costs, it's about $300,000 to avoid one case of cancer. So that kind of begins to bring the data together on the risk side and the benefit side. And I'm sure we'll get into kind of the key wrinkle here that I think undoes most of this.
- [49:48]
A
Wow. And that is 300,000 to avoid one case. Not a death. It's just one case.
- [49:53]
B
One case.
- [49:54]
A
Okay.
- [49:54]
B
And that's your money. That's not the government's money. That's you spending it year in, year out for your family on the hopes that there would be one less cancer.
- [50:07]
A
Wow. Yeah. That is really interesting. I'd love. Once you finish here, obviously you kind of alluded to at the beginning saying, all right, what are the other things that I could spend? If I was willing to spend three to six thousand dollars a year, what could I spend it on? I'd love to plant that seed. So maybe we come back to that in five or 10 minutes.
- [50:26]
B
Absolutely, come back to that. So, okay, I have financial means. You have financial means. Most of the audience has financial means. But when I go to the market and my dear wife says, can you buy me some organic blueberries? And for me, they're $9 for a container versus, you know, three or four dollars for a conventional. I'll buy her a thing of blueberries for $9. I might even buy her two, but I'm not buying her three, four, or five. I'm not spending $40 on blueberries.
- [50:58]
A
And.
- [50:58]
B
And I can afford it. So what does this mean? It means that people who buy organic may be buying less fruits and vegetables because they are so expensive. And so here's the kicker. Study meta analysis looked at people who ate five servings a day of fruits and vegetables versus two. Now, this had nothing to do with organic. It's just people who had a lot of fruits and vegetables versus very few. And there was a reduction in cancer not by 0.6%, but by 35% merely by having more fruits and vegetables. And there was a 13% reduction in mortality. So the benefit is eat more fruits and vegetables, forget about whether they're organic or not. Now, of course, this was an observational study. So the same problem applies that people who eat lots of fruits and veggies are. Are probably healthier in general. But I think there's a real signal here, which is eating a lot of fruits and veggies is a great way to go. And guess what? 80% of Americans don't get enough fruits and veggies. So the low hanging fruit isn't to buy organic. The low hanging fruit is just use some of that $6,000 to buy more fruits and veggies.
- [52:15]
A
I love that. Yeah, I love obvious answers that aren't obvious. Right. Until you actually get into the data. I think this is one of the hallmarks of is we try to look at a problem a little bit differently. And yeah, the reflexive answer is bio organic, buy organic. But as you're deducing here, if the goal is really to reduce cancer and it's this tiny reduction out of a thousand people at a cost of $300,000 in total, and you can, if 80% of people aren't getting enough fruits and veggies and you can reduce your likelihood of cancer by 35% by eating more, that seems like the epitome of low hanging fruit. And pun intended.
- [52:51]
B
Absolutely. And there was a study that says, okay, what if we're not gonna get everybody to eat five or seven fruits and veggies a day, but what if we got them to eat one more per day? They model that for the US if half the US did this, there'd be 20,000 fewer cancer cases. And that's just eating more fruits and vegetables. That has nothing to do with organic. So we can make a lot of progress if we allocate some of that saved money to. To buy a few more fruits and veggies.
- [53:20]
A
I love that, Bobby. So as an aside, is this a monolithic fruits and veggies, or are there particular ones that you would recommend? Just generally speaking, are there some that have proven to be better for reducing cancer, or is it just simply to say, like, okay, let's not get bogged down. This is an 8020 analysis. Just eat more fruits and veggies generally?
- [53:41]
B
Well, I think eat more fruits and veggies in general is a slam dunk. Everyone should think about that. But there are. Some people are like, yeah, Dr. Bobby, I buy the concept, but God, I really want to maybe have some organic foods. So there's been the Environmental Working Group. It's an advocacy pro organic group. But, you know, I think actually their categorization makes sense. And they've said there's the Dirty dozen foods and there's the clean 15. So the dirty dozen are things that don't have a peel or a shell. Spinach and strawberries and kale and grapes and blackberries. Okay, so if you want to spend some money on organic, maybe buy that organic. But then there are things that they call the clean 15. Well, if you buy a pineapple, it's got a very thick skin, and corn has a husk and avocado has a strong peel, and a banana, you can take it out of the banana peel, et cetera, et cetera. So those you might be like, huh, I'm not Buying organic because they're generally going to be safe regardless. So I tend not to do a lot of organic food buying. Gail likes some, so I, of course, buy it for her. But, you know, if I care, then I will actually focus on avoiding the conventional for some of that. Dirty Dozen.
- [55:02]
A
Okay, that is good information. So. Right. We can all just very easily Google dirty dozen and clean 15, and those lists show up pretty instantly. So that's a great place to start. I like that, Bobby.
- [55:13]
B
Well, we should come back to your question you raised a few minutes ago. So how should we spend that money? So I'm making the argument that organic food, $6,000 a year more, isn't the best use of your money. And I've spent maybe $500 of that, 6,000 on suggesting you buy more fruits and vegetables in general. So now you got $5,500 to spend or save. So, yes, if you're not a member of a gym and you're like, God, I don't want to spend $1,000 a year. You've got your fun money bank account. You know, spend a thousand on that. Or if you're like me and you don't get your strength training in. I have a trainer, so I'm spending some of that money for my trainer. There's many things in the health arena you can spend it on that I think have a higher ROI than. And then. I know it's funny to say this, but I think it's real. So if you put away $6,000 a year starting at age 35, how much earlier can you retire? You know, I haven't done the present value math, but I suspect it's real amount of time. It might be a year earlier, might be six months, might be two years earlier. Of course, it depends on your spending level, but 30 years times 6,000 a year, you know, with compounding of interest, that's real money. That I believe could be something to consider. It's like, I'm consciously not going to buy organic. I'm consciously going to put this money in my, you know, ira, and this will allow me to retire early. It sounds humorous, but it's something to think about because the money's real and it's your money. You're not spending somebody else's money. This is yours.
- [57:01]
A
Yeah, Bobby, while you were saying that, I just quickly called up a compound interest calculator and basically said, I'm making a $6,000 annual contribution at a rough 8% annual return over 30 years. At the end of those 30 years, you have $718,000. That is not insignificant by any measure. Most people at the end of their lifetimes don't have that kind of money, period. Not less. This is just the difference between making one decision.
- [57:29]
B
It's extraordinary. And that amount of money would allow you to retire sooner, and that's got to have some impact on your health. When you retire early, you can focus on health more. And knowing that you're retiring earlier because of this wonderful thing you're doing might make you happier for all those years. It's just something to think about.
- [57:51]
A
Yeah, I love that. So, okay, let's actually dive a little bit more into the better roi. So obviously you are not anyone's doctor here on this podcast, myself or any of the listeners nobody's expecting. This is not advice from you by any means, but just things that I am even thinking about. Okay, if I was talking about $6,000, that's a massive thing. Like, I can get blood tests. I know just in general, not even for cancer, but just generally speaking. I know there's function health. There's a company called Superpower that I just signed up for. It's only like $199 a year, and you get 100 plus blood markers. Like, that seems pretty good. Like you said, a better bed or some kind of sleep is so critical. Like, get an oura ring or whoop band or something and track what actually makes a difference for your sleep. Something I just signed up for. I told you. It was a coronary artery calcium test. That was like $129 at the local hospital, because those don't go through. It's so interesting, Bobby. Like, most CT scans that you get are a couple thousand dollars when it goes through insurance. For some bizarre reason, that CAC test in any hospital system I've ever seen doesn't go through insurance. So it's cash pay only. And it's shockingly inexpensive. It was $129, so, you know, that's something. And then these are a little bit outside of the scope, obviously, but we talked about. There's a test. I think the company is grail. It's the gallery test. It's like 800 to a thousand dollars for cancer. We. We're not advocating that, but that would be interesting. Whole body MRI I've even seen. Again, I'm not putting words in your mouth, Bobby, by any means, but, like, those are a couple thousand dollars. Like, is there potentially more value in doing that than eating organic? Maybe, maybe not. And I'm sure you are chomping at the bit to talk here, but there are lots of things we can do. I think the critical part is A, all of us doing our research. Right. So just because I'm flippantly mentioning a couple things on a podcast, please don't go out and do this, obviously. But B, there are finite resources and we have to make decisions based on those finite resources and looking in totality. And I think if people get nothing else from this segment of this podcast, then just think a little bit differently. I think that's what Bobby has done so beautifully here, is look at the overall effect. Like, yeah, you hear this word organic, but does it actually produce results based on the actual real money you are spending? That is real money that is leaving your bank account and your net worth every single year. Are you getting the results from it? I think, Bobby, that's an interesting operating thesis for how to make decisions just in life generally?
- [60:23]
B
Absolutely. I said at the outset that the costs are real. Anybody can verify them for themselves when they go to the market, and the benefits are not so real. And so when you have a lot of costs and not some clear benefits, you really have an opportunity to say what is the best use of the money. So I totally agree. If your sleep is a problem, buy a better mattress. Buy an oura ring. Really work on your sleep. It's what I call the unsung hero. I have an episode on sleep and please listen to it. And Dr. Bobby, live long and well. I think things like a heart rate monitor. If you don't have a heart rate monitor for exercise, that adds a lot of information. We were chatting earlier about how often even people who think they're pretty darn healthy, their blood sugar may be a little higher than they would like. You can now do continuous glucose monitors. Yes, you can get it from your doctor to order it for you, but you can also get it over the counter. You know, maybe it's a hundred bucks a month. You do it for a month or two just to learn about your own blood and how, you know, does ice cream make a difference for me when I. I have a glucose monitor, when I have ice cream, doesn't make any difference to my blood sugar. When I have pizza, doesn't make any difference. When I had popcorn and orange juice that went through the roof. So knowing what might affect your blood sugar, that could be a use for your money. And that's a whole other discussion. Does it matter when your blood sugar shoots up with your popcorn? But that's something you might do. So I think I'm very wary of doing screening tests. Look, you have a headache and it's bad and the doctor says, ooh, you might have a brain tumor, by all means you need a CT or an MRI scan. But to do a whole body mri, to do these large panels of blood tests, I worry about that because and again, I have a whole episode called to test or not to test. You're gonna end up with a lot of false positives. You're gonna chase after things that scare you and may turn out to be nothing. And you may end up with a whole bunch of kind of invasive tests to figure that out. And I wouldn't feel obligated to spend the money. So putting that away is a really, really good thing. Yeah, of course you can use that money for a trip. You know, maybe you do a yoga retreat or something with the money. But I think there's some inexpensive things that are definitely worth considering.
- [62:47]
A
Yeah. And just real quick, and I love how you mentioned that about the testing and I certainly was not advocating that it was. It's just these things exist. And if you're talking about spending in this crazy amount of money that's you're locked in, which you are not locked in, which you so beautifully said, you can just save this money. You're not required to spend this on your health by any means. And to Bobby's point, if you're going to reach 5x number of years earlier, because this not insignificant amount of money you've just deposited into your net worth and hopefully into your brokerage account, you're probably going to have significantly more time to spend on your health. You're going to have significantly more time to take walks. You, you're gonna have significantly more time to go to the gym and to relax and do other things that are gonna be beneficial long term for your health. And yeah, Bobby, the this is outside the scope of talking about CGMs necessarily. But yeah, it's interesting just the little things you notice. And I, I signed up. So the two over the counter ones. Now if people are interested in googling this, Dexcom has one called Stello S T E L O and Abbott just came out with one called Lingo. But I learned the hard way that it is iOS only. So if you have an Android phone, please do not buy it. You will get these in the mail and you will be very disappointed that it does not work on your phone. So please don't make the same stupid mistake that I did. But I noticed something and by following the company levels, which also has a CGM they talk for years about something simple like taking a walk after your meals. Like, they aggregated all the data across millions and millions and millions of data points. And like, one of the most effective things that people could do for their blood sugar to blunt some of the blood sugar spikes was just simply taking a three to ten minute walk after meals. And Bobby, it was really that, that's what's fun about a CGM is you can actually see this in real time. And you can, one day you can eat the same meal, not walk, and the next day you can eat the meal and walk. And of course there are additional factors. Let's be clear, right? We're, we're complex systems, but nevertheless, it's pretty cool to see this and make some type of hypothesis and test it in real time, right?
- [64:48]
B
And what you're talking about is the n of one approach to testing things in yourself. And I have a podcast episode on this too. But basically there are things that you can test. Does salt affect my blood pressure? Because some people it does, some people it doesn't. Does eating a lot of saturated fat affect my cholesterol levels or does taking a walk reduce the spikes after I eat? Now, these are all theoretical. You can go to literature and say, does this happen? And what you'll get is a bunch of averages that may confuse you, but test it in yourself. The beauty of all these things is you can get an answer quickly. Okay, I'm going to try not eating after 6pm and see if my sleep is better rather than eating at 9pm it doesn't take a year to figure that out. You try it, you measure something. There's various ways to measure your sleep. Could be the oura ring, could be a questionnaire like the Pittsburgh Sleep Questionnaire. And then you figure it out. So you have your cgm. Okay, well, let me try eating and then walking. Okay, now I'm going to try eating and not walking. Then I'm going to try eating and walking again. And you do it on, off, on, off, and you get real answers. So I think the money is not that much to buy some of these. But the mindset is so powerful because we all want to take control of our health. We want to have agency and to have those numbers in front of us. I learned, you know what? I can have all the salt I want, doesn't budge my blood pressure and I can have all the gelato I want. Well, I might get fat, but it's not going to affect particularly my blood sugar. Why, people might ask, because it has A lot of sugar is. It's full of fat. And when you eat gelato and you have sugar and fat, the fat dulls how quickly your body takes up the sugar.
- [66:38]
A
So.
- [66:38]
B
So for me, and this may not be true for everybody, it doesn't affect it, and I can enjoy my gelato without worry.
- [66:45]
A
Love it. All right, Bobby, so just in closing here, I know you have a ranch called the Madrone Springs Ranch where people can actually stay. So you can check it out, just Google that. And one of your pages here is embark on a culinary journey with Chef Dr. Bobby. And you have this lovely picture of you here serving food. So I know cooking is a significant passion of yours. And ultimately my question to you is going back to this, the entire episode here, you've mentioned you don't especially put a lot of stock in organics for yourself. I know you mentioned Gail a couple of times is a little more into it. And you also mentioned farmer's markets. How do you personally think about buying food for yourself and your guests? Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding kind of deal for your own situation. Like when you go to the grocery store, how do you think about it?
- [67:38]
B
So I think you're asking whether I'm buying for myself or I'm buying for guests at the ranch. So at the ranch, my six pillars of exercise and sleep and nutrition and exposure to heat and cold and social relationships and mind body harmony, we've tried to build that into the experience. So food nutrition is one of them. I have a garden, so if it's the right time of year, stuff comes out of the garden and there are no pesticides. Our chickens lay lots of eggs and those are free range chickens and they're eating all the bugs they can find. So to some extent it's a non issue because it comes from the land. But when I go to the market, I mean, part of it is I'm sensitive to my guests. Some of them are gluten free, so I'm going to obviously cook differently. Some of them, you know, are dairy free and or not allergic. So I got to be worried about that. And they may share with me that organic is a big deal, in which case I will do what matters to them. But in general, I don't worry about it a lot. I think that the healthy homemade, because everything that we eat here is all homemade, way outweighs any tiny, tiny organic risk. That's kind of how I net it out. And of course, you know, money amounts to people, you know, if they're going to have to pay A lot more for a meal. They might be like, yeah, okay, I'll go with the conventional version, but I'm not serving Twinkies, Chips Ahoy Doritos, or, you know, Stouffer's lasagna. I mean, that's not car.
- [69:05]
A
Oh, man. Okay. That is great. Absolutely love that answer. Bobby, as always, thank you so much for coming on. Like I mentioned to you, I would love to make it to your ranch one of these days. It looks just like an absolutely beautiful place, an incredible experience.
- [69:17]
B
Come play with the kangaroos and the alpacas and everything else. It's a lot of fun. We love it.
- [69:21]
A
That sounds great. So, as you mentioned a couple times, live long and well with Dr. Bobby is the podcast. I've said repeatedly here on the show. I've mentioned you in the newsletter a number of times. It's a phenomenal podcast. It's really a great way. Usually the episodes are fairly short. They're about 30 minutes plus or minus, and they're action packed and you get the information you need. So this is a health podcast that I personally listen to and highly recommend. So, Bobby, is there anywhere else you want to send people or where people can find you? Now?
- [69:52]
B
They can go to my website, drbobby livelongandwell.com or just, you know, anywhere. Just type in Dr. Bobby. You'll probably find me and you know, reach out if you have any questions or listen to the podcast, my podcast, if you want to learn a lot, there's about 50 some odd episodes now, so lots of topics you might find fun. Thanks for having me on. It's always a great pleasure and delight.
- [70:14]
A
Yeah. Well, I appreciate you and until next time, thanks for being here.