How To Save Time Eating SANE and Exercising Smarter
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CARRIE: Hell everyone – this is Carrie Brown and I’m with Jonathan Bailor in a lovely warm studio in sunny Seattle.
JONATHAN: It is sunny and it is Seattle and I couldn’t think of another S.
CARRIE: We’re not sleepless.
JONATHAN: And we’re not sleepless and we are extremely SANE and I’m excited about today’s show Carrie.
CARRIE: Why?
JONATHAN: Because –
CARRIE: Wait — you get excited about everything Jonathan, everything.
JONATHAN: This is – well, that’s not true. Remember we talked about this – baseball.
CARRIE: Oh, you don’t get excited about baseball?
JONATHAN: I do not get excited about baseball.
CARRIE: Me either.
JONATHAN: Never – I mean – I don’t want to throw baseball people under the bus, but it’s never been my – never been my cup of tea.
CARRIE: Yes, me either.
JONATHAN: So, what –
CARRIE: Still don’t understand cricket.
JONATHAN: Don’t get me started on cricket. The thing that does get me excited though, Carrie, is one of the most common – and I think listeners, we’ve definitely touched on this in previous podcasts, but I wanted to dedicate one podcast to it so it could just be the place we could direct people to when they have feedback. So, if they have feedback, this feedback direct them to this show, because it will be the definitive resource for – ways to save time or arguments for the fact that going SANE not only once you get the hang of it, does not take more time, but actually saves you time versus eating a conventional western inSANE diet.
CARRIE: Oh, I love that. That’s a brilliant topic. I love saving time. Love, love, love – saving time.
JONATHAN: So, first and foremost, then we’ll just go back and forth here, Carrie, I’ll go in order of biggest chunk of time saved and hopefully if we do this correctly, because again, listeners, as you know we don’t really plan these episodes, we just give you our heart and soul essentially live and uncut, because you know what, life is live and uncut, so why not be that way on the air?
CARRIE: Mine certainly is.
JONATHAN: So, okay, first and foremost. Big rock number one – if you exercise according to conventional wisdom, it will take you 10 to 15 hours per week to meet those requirements. I’m including travel time to the gym, all the extra time you have a random creepy guy who wants to talk to you at the gym and you’re too nice to just tell him to buzz off so that takes another 15 minutes of your time so right away if you’re following the convention eat less — exercise more wisdom, you’ve got 10 to 15 hours per week you’re spending exercising, when you get Eccentric that falls to at most – at most 1 hour per week, so right there, so we’re already – we’re starting out at plus 9 to 14 hours.
CARRIE: Booom –
JONATHAN: Boom right there – right there –
CARRIE: I frightened you then didn’t I?
JONATHAN: You did. You kind of hurt my ear a little bit. So, right from the get-go, again, remember, it’s not just about eating, it’s not just about exercise, it’s about living smarter and part of living smarter is exercising smarter and when you exercise smarter, we could basically end the podcast right now because technically if you took even a third of the time you’ve spent exercising, on buying and preparing whole foods, you would get better results and you would still have six hours left over.
CARRIE: By far.
JONATHAN: By far. So let’s keep going though — and also let me give one disclaimer here Carrie. Obviously like I’m going to contrast this to – the conventional wisdom about how to be healthy. Just eating candy bars and playing video games all day is going to take less time, right? We’re not comparing this to –
CARRIE: Well, I don’t know. Video games, not that I’ve ever played one ever – the video games can be an enormous time suck.
JONATHAN: But, I guess the point I’m trying to make is, it will be — as listeners, you will see as you’ve experienced, because you live this lifestyle – when comparing eating more and exercising less, but smarter, to eating less and exercising more, but harder – it is incredibly easy to show how that is a more Efficient, how our smarter approach is a more Efficient approach, however, if the thing is like go to someone who doesn’t care about their health in any way, shape, or form, and tell them that they can spend less time doing this lifestyle –that is going to be a harder thing, but I guess I’m not comparing us to – like people who don’t care, don’t care — and they’re not going to care, so what we’re here to provide is for the people who do care a more effective and efficient approach. If you’re just one of these people like I was talking to someone the other day and they’re just like – they literally don’t care and there are some people who don’t care like there are some people who smoke, know that it’s killing them and don’t care.
CARRIE: And that’s fine.
JONATHAN: That’s totally fine, right? I don’t think the burden of proof – there will probably never be — not exercising at all, by definition, take less time than any exercise program.
CARRIE: If you’re listening to this show, you care.
JONATHAN: Exactly, so I guess I can stop babbling about that and say –
CARRIE: Yes. Stop babbling Jonathan.
JONATHAN: The point though, listeners, if you’re going to use this as a resource for other people, just understand that we’re comparing it to doing something — aka the conventional approach, not comparing it to –
CARRIE: Doing nothing.
JONATHAN: Feeling completely apathetic. There you go — okay. Because obviously if you’re not exercising, you didn’t save yourself any time because you’re not exercising already. All right, so exercise Carrie. What would you put next on the list in terms of just a big chunk of time you can save when you do it smarter?
CARRIE: For me – trips to the store. I am – for those of you who follow my blog, or Facebook will know that I’m a bit of a hermit – and so for me – for hermity reasons, but also for the mass amount of stuff I have to get done in every week, cutting down trips to the store is a huge time and money saver for me, so go to Costco once, go to Trader Joe’s once, call it good, I don’t and I’m very effective about — I go to the store on the way home from my day job. I don’t go home and then make a separate trip, so I do – I plan my driving – I do everything on the way to or from somewhere that I have to be. So, I do all my trips to the store on the way home from my day job or on the way to my day job and I go as few times as possible and when I’m there I stock up.
JONATHAN: So, regardless of how many people are in your family it is entirely possible as Carrie is saying to go SANE, assuming you’re buying in bulk, which you’ve talk about is key to not only saving time, but also saving money — to go to the grocery store one time per week, so you go one time per week. Let’s quickly do the math, I would say if you’re saving yourself minimum two trips to the store. Each one of those trips will take minimum an hour and a half. I mean you’ve got to get in your car, you’ve got to drive, you’ve got to walk around, you got to pay the cashier, you’ve got to drive back plus people usually don’t factor in the – anytime you switch a task if you geek out on productivity literature at all, task switching takes time. So, if you’re organizing your bookshelf and then you want to go start vacuuming just the act mentally of making that transition takes time, so I would say easily Carrie, if you’re avoiding two trips to the store you are saving a total of – is three hours reasonable?
CARRIE: Yes and that’s for with me is my hermity single self who does not have children or a spouse to waylay me when I’m trying to get around the grocery store so for me that would be a good number. If you have children and you have to take them with you and all of that entails –
JONATHAN: Get them ready, get them dressed –
CARRIE: Get them ready and then of course I have been to Costco with a girlfriend and her child and that trip to Costco took twice as long because — and she’s a delightful child and she’s very well behaved, but she had to eat and she had to drink and she had to pee and can I say pee on the show? Anyway –
JONATHAN: Well, it’s like you said, it’s not only children that eat, drink and pee. I mean I do that too so –
CARRIE: Right. If you add children to that, the whole shopping experience takes longer and so the less of them that you can do the more time you’re going to save.
JONATHAN: Brilliant. No, I love that. So, Carrie, I’ve actually taken the exercise and said, when we live this smarter lifestyle, eating more and exercising less, we save ourselves 9 to 14 hours per week on exercise and we save ourselves 3 to 5 hours per week on trips to the store. So the thing I’ll add is when you’re – this is called batching, so you batch stuff. You do everything at once. So, you batch your trips to the store and then I would highly recommend especially if you’re comfortable with assembly, but even if you’re not, you can still do this, is batching your cooking.
CARRIE: Oh, absolutely and assembly or real cooking. Sorry Jonathan, I have to tease you about that. Batch cooking is absolutely the way to go if you want to save time and money.
JONATHAN: And to me this is one that is really underestimated by most people because let’s take – this is a place where I think we can win even when compared to doing “nothing,” because here’s what a standard western diet approach to lunch at the workplace is. You leave your desk, you go, you drive someplace else, you wait in a drive-thru window at lunch time, so you’re sitting in your car for at least 20 minutes, at least – and then you drive back. The act of acquiring your lunch, let alone eating it, is an hour.
CARRIE: And you could make soup, fabulous SANE perfect soup for the entire week in less than an hour.
JONATHAN: Easily. And this is so key folks because even – it takes no longer to microwave a recipe that you cooked in bulk on Sunday afternoon than it does to microwave a processed frozen dinner.
CARRIE: Absolutely right.
JONATHAN: You can make your own frozen dinners and in fact, if you do that, this is one thing Carrie, which I have seen – it’s not universal, but it’s pretty close to universal that people who are able to live their optimal life do cooking in bulk. It just can’t be oh, it’s dinner, what are we going to do? Oh, what do we do? Let’s order pizza. Forget about it. It’s just – and it doesn’t even have to be every day, even if you have a big family – depending on the size or the number of people you are feeding, one to three days a week, you set aside one to three hours, depending on how elaborate you’re cooking and –
CARRIE: Or how much you’re cooking.
JONATHAN: Or how much you’re cooking – and you are literally — every single day then you’re ready and food preparation takes seconds because you’re good to go.
CARRIE: And for me, I make soups, in bulk, put them in the freezer or if I’m just making them for one week, just put them in the frig, but then dinner, lunch, and dinner literally takes two minutes.
JONATHAN: And even if you cook alacarte, like you’re not cooking in bulk, the key components or constituents of this lifestyle are a delicious whole foot fats, nutrient dense proteins and non-starchy vegetables, so a go-to alacarte meal is just saying, okay, let’s assemble those if you’re not into elaborate things. So get some fish, poach it, bake it, sauté it, get some vegetables, steam them, roast them, sauté them, have some whole food fats, either on your vegetables or marinate your chicken in it or have some avocado on the side or have some macadamias or have a delicious SANE dessert, half with cocoa and coconut, Step 1, Step 2, Step 3. That takes five minutes. Instead of putting pasta in the bowl and letting it boil and then putting pasta sauce on top of it, put some freaking vegetables in the bowl, and then put a little bit salmon on the stove and you’re, it’s SANE and it took no more time than putting a hot dog in the microwave.
CARRIE: And there are a bunch of recipes on my website, which is carriebrown.com, which are fast, ten minute dinners, which are — for those of you who enjoy cooking or who want to cook or want the variety, who don’t want poached fish and sauté vegetables all the time, there’s lots of options out there, you just need to spend a little time working out the ones that work for you and then you’re good to go. Once you’ve made them a couple of times, you’ll know how to do it without reading the recipe, it’s fast, it’s simple, delicious, SANE, fantastic.
JONATHAN: And remember friends, this is not – anyone who says, I don’t have time to do this, is really saying, I don’t have time to eat things other than starches and sweets, which doesn’t make any sense because most of the time, most people unless you’re eating Ramon noodles for dinner and toast for breakfast, there is something else going on. We don’t just eat starches and sweets, so all we’re saying – all we say when we say eat more, but smarter, is eat so much of the other stuff that you’re too full for the starches and sweets. That’s it. So, like it’s literally — this isn’t a raw diet where you have to only eat raw foods and you have to shop at certain stores, no – this is literally just saying, eat so many non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole food fats and low fructose fruits that you’re too full for starches and sweets. Most of us already do that. We just don’t eat enough of them to fill us up so that we’re too full for starches and sweets, so it might just be a non-issue completely like just do what you’re doing, just cook more of the good stuff so that you’re too full for the bad stuff.
CARRIE: And just one thing when we were talking just a minute ago about making one trip to the store. One of the potential problems with that is storage. I have an extra freezer in the garage. I have an extra frig in the garage, and it’s just me. I’m just single girl and I use those and I use them specifically to save me time. That’s what they’re there for. They’re timesavers because it means I can go to the store less frequently and it means that I can cook less often if I need to because I can prepare food, freeze it or put it in the frig and it’s ready to go, then when hunger strikes, the fastest option is actually SANE not inSANE and when the fastest option is SANE, life’s just easy.
JONATHAN: Yes, so Carrie, we’ve already – so with just these things, so by exercising smarter, when compared to the traditional approach, by taking one or as few trips to the store as possible and by cooking in bulk, we’re already at a minimum of 15 hours saved and an upper bound of 24 hours, an entire day’s worth of time savings and I think the key distinction — at least Carrie in doing this conversation with you here is I think people underestimate the amount of time it takes to east inSANEly.
CARRIE: Yes.
JONATHAN: I just don’t think people – standing at McDonald’s takes time, but I guess because we don’t prepare the Big Mac, we don’t realize –
CARRIE: Don’t calculate that time –
JONATHAN: That that took time.
CARRIE: Yep.
JONATHAN: Because we’re not performing the action, but really folks, think about all the other time that goes into being inSANE. This is kind of a funny example, I come from a very, very frugal family. Very frugal family. I appreciate that very much and one of the things that my mother was very, very “good” about, and you’ll understand why in a second, growing was clipping coupons, but coupons are a marketing strategy for edible products. You will very rarely find a coupon for –
CARRIE: Real food.
JONATHAN: Real food. It’s just not like this could buy one head of lettuce, get another one for $.50 cents off, generally farmers don’t have coupons. Edible product manufacturers release coupons. So, my mom would go to the store so often, she’d spend all this time clipping coupons to save money and really the amount of money she spent on edible products, the amount of time she spent trying to save money on edible products, if she would just shop the perimeter and get non-starchy vegetables, nutrient dense protein, whole food fats and low fructose fruits like clockwork, it is not only less expensive, but it is absolutely less time consuming.
CARRIE: And when you add on the things that we don’t like to think about, like downtime when you’re sick, downtime when you’re at the ER, downtime when you have a heart attack, or if you are diabetic, the amount of time that that takes for you to manage that and there’s a whole bunch of time there that we don’t think about, but it’s true, if we don’t have to spend time taking care of a health crisis because we don’t get to crisis point, that’s more time in our little bank account.
JONATHAN: Absolutely and –
CARRIE: And money –
JONATHAN: Absolutely and compounding that even further when we realize the research is bearing this out now that willpower, aka the amount of effort were able to put forward is a fixed resource. At some point, we’re just like – we’re done. If we no longer have to force ourselves to exercise, even if it takes a little bit of effort to start thinking this way and acting this way, again, you don’t have to be spending that time and that willpower on just go to the gym, just stay on the treadmill for another hour, just do it – and then you get home and you’re like oh, forget about it, I’m just going to eat icecream because I’m exhausted, I’m tired, I just went through that horrible ordeal – you don’t have to do that anymore, so you can use the freed up willpower to – because at the end of the day Carrie, the fact is that it does not take that much time. We’ve broken it down here. It’s not a time issue. I think and I don’t want to sound –
CARRIE: It’s a perception –
JONATHAN: It’s a perception and it’s a priority issue.
CARRIE: Yes.
JONATHAN: And I hate to do this because this sounds like you said, it’s a little bit more of the dark side, but in terms of priority, just some statistics that I think might be helpful really quick and I don’t want to get too dark here, but these are just the facts. So I compiled a top 10 list of the — both the compelling reasons to stay SANE, and avoid inSANEity. Carrie let’s just kind of alternate these to maybe help get those priorities lined up with reality. So the first reason is that the rate of obesity has more than doubled since 1980.
CARRIE: There are now about as many overweight people alive as there were total people alive a century ago.
JONATHAN: More than 40 million children under five are overweight.
CARRIE: Childhood obesity is now the number one health concern among U.S. parents topping drug abuse and smoking.
JONATHAN: The rate of Diabetes and pre-Diabetes has increased about 100,000 percent in the last 100 years.
CARRIE: Diet and lifestyle related diseases have overtaken tobacco as the leading cause of death in the U.S. and account for over 190 billion U.S. dollars a year in healthcare spending.
JONATHAN: Four more. Obesity is shortening average lifespans more than accidents, homicides, and suicides combined.
CARRIE: About one and three American kids are overweight or obese.
JONATHAN: Overweight children have a 70 percent chance of struggling excess body fat for the rest of their lives and last and most heartbreaking –
CARRIE: Thanks to the obesity and Diabetes epidemics, for the first time in U.S. history, today’s children are expected to die at a younger age than their parents.
JONATHAN: So, again, while it may seem like gloom and doom, I think the opposite should be perceived here. One, we all know that we’re in a crisis situation and we all know we just outlined how going SANE when compared to eating less and exercising more, the conventional wisdom that got us into this problem can save us upwards of a day – a whole day of our life per week, in addition to saving lives on a mass scale as Carrie and I just elucidated with that top ten list, so we’ve got the facts on our side, we’ve got time on our side and I think it’s pretty clear where our priorities should be.
CARRIE: Can I say something that will – upset people?
JONATHAN: Yes.
CARRIE: Turn off the TV.
JONATHAN: Yes. But, keep the radio and the podcasts and the shows and iTunes on. This week, and every week after — eat smarter, exercise smarter, and live better. We’ll chat with you soon.
CARRIE: See ya.