Why You Should Listen –
Erin Oprea is a former Marine of nine years, including two tours in Iraq. She lead the first all-female platoon attached to the infantry in a war zone and now is a trainer for over ten years with celebrity clients Carrie Underwood, LeeAnn Womack, Kellie Pickler, Jana Kramer and Jennifer Nettles, just to name a few. She is the author of The 4×4 Diet, which helps people focus their eating in four key areas and create workouts based on Tabata timing for great results. On today’s episode of Bulletproof Radio, Dave and Erin talk about endurance training, high-intensity training, toxic foods, her work with celebrities, her experiences in Iraq, writing a recipe book and more. Enjoy the show!
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Automated: (music) Bulletproof Radio. A state of high performance.
Dave: Hey, it’s Dave Asprey with Bulletproof Radio. Today’s cool fact of the day is that DNA evidence now shows that the myth of the Amazonian woman was actually more likely an aggressive Scythian female warrior who smoked pot, drank a powerful fermented milk, had lots of tattoos, wore pants, and loved men. The Amazonians had fierce battle scars and were buried with their weapons. Okay, that’s badass. I like that as a good, cool fact of the day. It’s particularly important, given who today’s guest is. Warmer weather is finally here. That means it’s time for spring cleaning.
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It’s incredibly simple to get to your bedroom. Plus, you can try it in your home for 100 nights risk-free. If you don’t love it, they’ll pick it up and refund you everything. I love my Caster. Try yours for 100 nights in your own home with free shipping and returns. Go to Casper.com and use code Bulletproof for $50 towards the purchase of your mattress. Casper.com Terms and conditions apply. If you don’t know about Bulletproof Chocolate, there’s two things to know. One is we do the same extensive lab testing on our chocolate that we do on the coffee. We control the fermentation.
This is fermented unlike our coffee, but we control the fermentation by not allowing mixing of chocolate from different places. We’re getting very pure results on the tests. Then, we make it with Bulletproof XCT Oil. It has a very smooth mouth feel and zero sugar because we’re using sugar alcohol like erythitol or xylitol. What you end up with is just this incredibly creamy 78% dark chocolate that is so clean, you eat half a bar and you’re like, “I don’t care about food at all.” Like, “I’m set free.” This is just awesome. It comes in Himalayan salt, coffee, or plain 78% dark. All of them are amazing.
If you take one of these chocolate bars, you break off a piece and you put it with one of the Bulletproof collagen bars, it’s actually … I’m not kidding. One of the best desserts you’ll ever have. It is so good. You got to try it. That’s at Bulletproof.com. That’s Bulletproof Chocolate Fuel Bars. They’re actually really chocolate bars with zero sugar and ketogenic and all that goodness that you’d expect. Now, I’m really excited about today’s guest, because today’s guest is none other than Oprah. Wait. Hold on. Let me read that. Oh, I’m sorry. It’s Erin Oprea. Erin, I apologize.
Erin: Hello.
Dave: Erin’s a former Marine who completed two tours in Iraq. She was the first female platoon leader in a war zone and a certified personal trainer since she was 18 years old. She runs Oprea Fitness where she works with really elite clients like Carrie Underwood. Wait. Carrie Underwood is in super girl now. Right?
Erin: Oh, my gosh. Does she not look amazing right now?
Dave: She totally does. You helped her out, huh?
Erin: Yeah. She looks awesome. She’s worked hard. It’s hard work, dedication. It’s a lot of clean eating. She’s put in the work, too.
Dave: Now, you documented the stuff you do with Carrie and your other celebrity clients in your new book called The Four by Four Diet. I wanted to have you on the show to talk about some of the areas where we agree, and even a couple where we don’t necessarily agree, but you’re all over this high intensity stuff. You look great, too. Let’s talk about this. I think people listening would love to know how do you get the kind of results you get for people who really they get paid to look the way they look? This is where the metal, the rubber hits the road. If metal hits the road it’s screechy. It’s where the rubber hits the road.
Erin: I am about the high intensity. I do like high intensity. Sometimes it’s a more three mile run, though. Off days you want to do that stuff too, but high intensity I’ve seen such a big change in all my clients’ bodies. It’s not just Carrie Underwood. It’s everybody. It fits good into busy lifestyles. It’s fast. The Tabatas make it a fun game. I think that’s what’s probably taken the biggest hit for people is it’s not as boring as a lot of people think a lot of workouts are. When you say, “Oh, it’s 20 seconds. I can do this.” If you can do it in your mind, you can do anything for 20 seconds. That’s what I think changes the aspect of working out is making more of a game out of it.
Dave: For someone listening who doesn’t know about a Tabata, can you walk me through what that is?
Erin: Tobata is my favorite style of training. What it is, is it’s four minutes of high intensity workout. It’s 20 second bursts of exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest for 8 rounds. You can do that with all different exercise. You can do 4 exercises through the 8 rounds. You’d repeat everything twice. You could do two exercises. On the even round, you’d do one exercise. On the odd round, you’d do another exercise, or you can make it really hard and do the same exercise for all 8 rounds.
Dave: That’ll totally kick your butt.
Erin: That’s my favorite. Tabata sprints on a treadmill? Killer. Not to mention push-ups. I can do push-ups for days. I love push-ups. I can do tons of push-ups, but when you do them in that Tabata form they’re a killer. They destroy me. I love them.
Dave: When you’re you doing Tabatas on a treadmill, do you just hop off? You just do it for 20 seconds?
Erin: Yeah. I just raise myself on the side and jump my feet out. I don’t stop the treadmill, otherwise it will take the whole time.
Dave: I always have a hard time with sprints on treadmills because it takes too long to come up to speed. I don’t think spinning or riding a bike does that much. I tend to go outside, but I live in a rain forest. I’m on Vancouver Island, but it is technically a rain forest. It’s just not a tropical forest. You’re like, “I don’t want to go running in the mud. That’s annoying.”
Erin: I don’t like doing sprints as much outside. Maybe if I was on a field, but not through my neighborhood. When I want to do it and timed, I want to be more somewhere where it’s controlled because then I can just stop at the 20 seconds and I don’t have to backtrack. You know what I’m talking about?
Dave: Right, right.
Erin: I’ve got a set path. If I want elevation, the elevation stays the same if I want to put it on the treadmill. Sometimes I do it with hill terrain. Not always sprints. I’ll jack the treadmill up high and run at a good speed, but not a sprint speed. Just do all hills. Man, does it kill you. I’ve seen such a big difference not just in myself, but in all my clients. When I say, “Hey, we’re going to run for 10 minutes,” that means like, “Ahh.” If I say, “Hey, we’re going to get on here. We’re going to do sprints. It’s going to be quick. You’ve have 20 seconds and that is it. Then you get to rest.” They’re like, “Oh, I got this. 20 seconds.” Really, when they get to the end of the 4 minutes, they’re like, “Holy cow. You aren’t kidding. That’s hard.”
Dave: One of the big things I’ve studied a lot is willpower. A big part of the Bulletproof approach is controlling willpower towards food, but willpower towards exercise it’s the same thing. Willpower is a finite resource. If you’re going to go grind out a really long run where you push yourself all the way, it doesn’t matter how well you’ve trained your willpower. It is trainable to a certain point, but everyone hits the wall.
You might move the wall a little bit, but you’re taking it out when you burn the willpower. It doesn’t take very much willpower. It’s one unit of willpower to run for 20 seconds. You’re like, “Okay,” and then you break. It’s not that grind against that. If you burn all your willpower on your workout, you might have got some energy, but you might not want to make a big decision later in the day. You might not want to just bring it all the way because you do burn something that’s vital. Right?
Erin: Right.
Dave: Do you sense that or do you just get more energy from your 5 mile hard run? You might be one of those crazy people.
Erin: I do enjoy long runs, too. I don’t do a lot of them. I’m more of a soccer player. Soccer, boxing, sprinting is more mine, but I do 5 mile runs, too. I mix them in. I’ll do a couple a week.
Dave: Are these slow runs or are these pushing it hard runs?
Erin: No. They’re pretty comfortable pace.
Dave: Okay, cool. That’s a different angle.
Erin: Not a sprint run. I’m not trying to compete on over or anything. Those are my comfortable, just go to a different place in my mind and just relax and go for a stroll. That’s the runs. My longer runs that’s what they are. Then, the high intensity is where I’m like balls to the wall. Let’s hit it.
Dave: How often do you recommend high intensity training?
Erin: You know what? I say, “It depends on what you’re doing.” If you’re doing sprints, obviously you don’t want to do those back to back. Your body needs to recover. I would give myself a two day break between each set of sprints. Tabata sometimes if you are doing them with weights, you could do Tabata the next day, too. You just break up the body parts. I wouldn’t recommend using the same body parts back to back. It depends on what you’re doing your high intensity with. It’s like sprints you break those up. If you’re doing 8 rounds of Tabata curls, what a change I’ve seen in biceps just doing that. It seems basic. It’s not going to be a winding exercise, but I’ve seen such a difference in people’s bodies like the way their muscles have developed.
Dave: A lot of the approaches that I do are Doug McGuff based. It’s high intensity, but it’s not a Tabata with weights. Actually, I’m going to experiment with what you’re doing. I also a lot of where the electrical and machine based, like heavy loading stuff because I have a laboratory for that.
Erin: That’s fun.
Dave: I’m intrigued.
Erin: Lots of toys.
Dave: It’s like I’m having a blast. I’m intrigued just for biceps. If I wanted to do Tabata style bicep curls or for anyone listening wanted to, do I want to be dead at the end of the eighth set? Do I want to be unable to lift it? Maybe it’s a 40 pound dumbbell? How heavy do I want to go for these?
Erin: Let’s just take a female, for example. A lot of times an 8 pound dumbbell for most women if you do 8 rounds of Tabata curls is about all they’re able to do.
Dave: How fast do you do this? Are you flopping this around?
Erin: No, no, no. It’s never flopping. It’s definitely a very controlled manner. You want to make sure you get that good contraction, good squeeze on the biceps. You want to make sure you’re keeping proper form. We don’t want injuries, of course. Sometimes you have to strike for the middle. You might get to round 4 and be like, “I can no longer keep the right form.” You drop the weight if you need to. Form is obviously the most important thing. I’m huge on form and I’m sure you are, too.
Dave: There’s one or two seconds minimum?
Erin: Yeah, just a good controlled … Not holding at the top, not holding at the bottom. Just nice and controlled movements.
Dave: Okay. You’re doing this with weights. You’re doing this with body weight exercise and you’re doing this with sprints. We’re in pretty good alignment on that stuff. High intensity. I would probably think about more recovery, but you’re also dealing with celebrities who have to look lean and ripped in a way that I actually don’t want to look that way. One of my proudest moments, the New York Times called me almost muscular. I’m like, “Win.”
Erin: That’s funny. Almost muscular.
Dave: I’m like, “Great.” I wasn’t flabby. I wasn’t fat. I wasn’t super ripped because that’s not what I want. Right?
Erin: Most of mine are not trying to get super ripped. Most of the female clients are mostly just lean. Most of them are not looking to bulk. I don’t look to get big.
Dave: It’s hard for women to get big anyway. That’s not the deal, unless you’re really working it in a specific way or unless you’re using supplemental stuff.
Erin: Taking something. Yeah. I’m not an advocate of any supplements, really.
Dave: What about bio identical hormones? I’m an anti-aging guy really more than anything else. So many of the celebs I talk to … Even I was just interviewing Mark Sisson the other day. He’s on supplemental testosterone. He’s 63. I took testosterone for eight years when my levels were too low. Do you just not get into that with clients, or … ?
Erin: I do not get into it. I let them deal with the doctors and let all their blood get tested. I do have clients on it, but I don’t …
Dave: Okay. Does it seem to help, or … ?
Erin: Are you talking more males or females?
Dave: Both. It seems for women, once you hit 40 just a little bit of testosterone or a little bit of progesterone.
Erin: Oh, my gosh. Sex drive. I’ve heard that big time. Women that have taken the testosterone. Their sex drive. Their husbands love it.
Dave: I’m on a mission to get women everywhere on testosterone. Just kidding.
Erin: I have never taken it though, but I am definitely intrigued by it. I want to get all of mine tested one day and just see. I don’t know if mine is low or high. I have never said, “You need to take it.” I’ve said if they lack energy and they lack everything, go get it checked. I let the doctor definitely decide on that.
Dave: During heavy training whether you’re a man or a woman, just the very different levels, but having enough testosterone or any of the other hormones, adrenal hormones. It can let you do the high intensity interval training more frequently without hitting an over training zone. You’re dealing with people who fly all over the world. They’re on set with bad food and bad lighting for 18 hours a day. At least the few celebrities that I’ve had a chance to work with are ballers. They have to have it mentally. They have to look good. Just it’s actually punishing what happens there. Do you get over training symptoms in people because of their day job?
Erin: I don’t think so because not every day do we do Tabata. Some days we’ll do a lot of small movements or just little weights and we’re just doing little shoulder presses and things like that. Just small, small tight movements. No flopping. Not burpees. Then, one day we’re going to throw in the high intensity. We alter it all the time. Some days it’s more cardio based. Some days we’re just going to go run and we’re going to do stuff outside. Every day it changes. I really haven’t seen that. Nobody trains every day either. There’s always rest days. The rest days I still want people to move though.
I think our bodies are made to move. Even on your rest day does not mean you lay on the couch for the day. I recommend you still get your 10,000 steps in. Our bodies are built to move. We feel better when we’re moving. That doesn’t mean you need to go get 50,000 steps in a day, but you should move. I feel like I see a change in people’s bodies. Even if you do one hour of exercise, that doesn’t mean that you can sit the rest of the day. Do your one hour, but still continue to get your activity through the day. Our bodies are meant to move. I love to see that.
Dave: What do you recommend for clients when they’re like, “Well, I wanted to move, but I know it’s good to move, but I was on set all day”? I know it’s good to move. I have a standing desk. I have an adjustable height stand desk which I really like. I stand on a little spongy ergo mat that has different terrain. Still there are days when where there really isn’t going to be 10,000 steps. What should I do on those days?
Erin: You know what? That’s days that we all have. I have those days too because sometimes I’m just training. That means sometimes I am standing in one person’s living room the whole time. I’m not getting much steps in myself. A lot of times for me that means I go jump rope. I mix it in. When I can, even for them, they can jump rope sometimes on set, or sometimes it’s just they might not get their 10,000, but try your hardest to get up and move every hour and do some movement just to break from sitting. If you’re on set and you’re on camera, there’s nothing you can do, but just try your hardest to do anything you can in little breaks. If you have those five minutes, walk to the bathroom. Something like that instead of just sitting.
Dave: I built a pull-up bar. It’s actually above the camera. It’s this cool steam, punk looking thing.
Erin: Pull-ups?
Dave: I’ll walk over and do a few pull-ups. I manufacture a whole body vibration plate called the Bulletproof Vibe. Sometimes when I have five minutes if I’m on my headset, I’ll actually go stand on it. My voice is like, “Ahh.”
Erin: That’s funny.
Dave: People usually don’t know. I like to get some movement in.
Erin: What’s wrong with him? That’s hilarious. Yeah. Even Tabatas if you’re working, say you have an office job all day and you’re sitting there. At lunchtime if you pack your lunch, then you have your whole lunch break. You don’t have to drive to a restaurant which not only are you going to save calories, but now you have time to get a quick, little workout in. The bonus is now after lunch, you’re not going to want to take a nap because if you pack a healthy lunch you’re not going to be in the carb overload where you’re just going to want to go to sleep, which is what happens when you load up on a lot of bread and a lot of pasta, stuff like that. You feel heavy and you’re ready for a nap. If you eat a nice, healthy, nutritious lunch, and then you can knock out a couple Tabatas or go for a walk then. Then, you feel rejuvenated for the rest of the day.
Dave: Yeah. Just getting the blood flowing is so big. I’ve recommended it for years for people. If you go to a gym or you go hook up with a trainer, and the trainer only talks about exercise and doesn’t talk about food, you should just get a different trainer. I didn’t know this. I used to weigh 300 pounds.
Erin: Oh, really?
Dave: I worked out an hour and a half a day, six days a week, half weights, half cardio, like 15 degree incline treadmill wearing a backpack. I’m like, “I’m just going to pound this out.” I didn’t lose any weight. I maxed every machine in the gym and I’m fat and inflamed. I did this for more than a year and was just really frustrated. I was angry for a while a long time ago because when I switched the diet, I was able to lose the weight. I’m like, “It’s a combination.” How your muscles look that’s going to be how you exercise. How much body fat you have that’s going to be what you eat for the vast majority of it. Then, that last little bit, the area where you play is that combination of diet and exercise, because getting below whatever your percentage is rough. That’s where celebrities want to be.
Erin: Right, but you know what? You can’t out train a bad diet. It doesn’t matter how much you work out. I’m a big fan of that. You have to eat clean. If you want to see all the hard work that you’ve done, your eating has to be on par. It’s not going to work. You’ve got to tag team both of those together. The movement is going to make you feel better. Nutrition is going to make you feel better, but in order to see all the muscles that you’ve developed, you have to lean out your body. That’s going to be done through eating.
Dave: Yeah. You can’t earn a potato chip. It doesn’t work like that, right?
Erin: No. We’re not dogs. We don’t reward ourself with food.
Dave: I could balance a potato chip on my nose.
Erin: Special talent.
Dave: Now, one thing I like about your book, The Four by Four Diet, is that you’ve got both sides of it. I find that sometimes books are just all food or all exercise. Having both, those are two sides of a coin. You talk about four toxic foods in your book that wreak havoc on your body. What are the four most toxic foods that you deal with?
Erin: It’s not necessarily four foods. It’s four food things. The first one is cutting out starches at night. I feel what I’ve seen through all my clients and just my own body is when I eat starches at night, when I wake up in the morning I’m puffy. I’m swollen. Cutting out the starches in the evening, eating them earlier in the day when you have time to use them, I’ve seen a big difference. Bodies change so fast when they do that. Cutting out the pizzas, the pastas, even like the brown rice and stuff. Those are the great carbs, but eat those starches earlier in the day.
Dave: Pizza and pasta. Aren’t they great for us?
Erin: No, the brown rice. Oh, no, no. Pizza, pasta. We want to cut those out completely. Have a cheat meal. We have to occasionally have something, otherwise people are just going to crash and burn and say, “Forget this. I hate this.” Occasionally having pizza is okay. That’s what makes it a lifestyle, not a diet. We don’t want people to quit. We want them to live like this forever. Yeah. Cutting out the starches at night, even the whole wheat pasta, all that kind of stuff. The sweet potatoes. Just eat them earlier in the day. Then, the second one is sodium. People don’t realize how much sodium … Or, the second one is sugar.
Sugar is in everything. I’m not saying we need to cut sugar out because one, there’s a lot of great sugars. The natural sugars are great. We want to eat our fruits and stuff, but we need to watch all the added sugar which is in everything. Look at that awesome chocolate bar you have. Right? I need to try that out. Yeah. That would be a great one. I bet my clients would love that, too. I’m going to have to share that one around. Everyone wants something sweet after dinner. Berries are always great. Then, dark chocolate. I like dark chocolate dipped in a little bit of peanut butter or almond butter. That’s one of my favorites.
Dave: That’s a classic thing. It has no sugar, depending on how dark the chocolate really is and what else is in it, but if you do it right, it’s zero sugar. It’s good.
Erin: Yeah. Yours is zero sugar. That’s why I want to try that one. I’m really interested in that. That’s very intriguing to me. Then, sodium. Sodium is in so much of our food. We think that we’re eating healthy. You could go to a restaurant and you could order chicken and broccoli and still be at 2,000 milligrams because they just blast everything with so much salt.
Dave: Do you have a recommended minimum and maximum for sodium?
Erin: I try to stay in-between 18 to 2,000. I usually stay on the low side a day.
Dave: That’s pretty low. That’s an area where I’ve definitely have seen different research. What’s the guy’s name? I probably have it off the top of my head. He’s the head of the biggest journal on hypertension who looked at all cosmortality in sodium consumption. What they had found was a U-shaped curve. When you went under a certain amount, your risk of heart attack went up because of an enzyme called renin. When you drop sodium below, it turns out it’s about 2,100. You’re at 2.1 grams. When it drops low there, your renin starts to go up, your heart attack risk goes up. If you go above, somewhere around 4 or 5, your risk starts to go up on the other end of the curve. It was weird because the more stress you’re under, the more your adrenals want salt. I found for myself I was doing everything healthy. I had cut my salt to the point my blood pressure was too low.
Erin: Oh, you weren’t having any salt?
Dave: I wasn’t not having any salt. I was still getting some salt, but I wasn’t having very much salt. I’m a big guy. I don’t need low blood pressure. When you’re as big as I am, it needs to be higher because there’s a bigger distance between your heart and your brain. You don’t want to pass out when you stand up. I found that varying salt based on exercise and stress is important. If you’re getting puffy, you’ve got a problem, but if you’re not getting puffy and you still crave salt, there’s probably a reason you’re craving salt and it might be okay for you. In fact, this might even be good for you.
Erin: Sometimes, though, we crave it because that’s what we’re used to eating, too.
Dave: Totally.
Erin: I was a saltaholic. I salted pizza. I love salt. One day I was like, “You know what? I need to cut this back. This is bad.” I noticed it everywhere. My body from my cheeks to my fingers and stomach. As soon as I started cutting that out … Just obviously, you can’t cut it out. That’s unhealthy, but I just started cutting it way back and what a difference I saw when I did that.
Dave: Yeah. You’ll see a difference in how you look. I find this very individual. Different people have different levels. That was a learning experience for me to go too low. If you’re too high, like I said, you are are going to get bloating. Then, there’s the counteractive things like taking potassium, taking magnesium. The sodium-magnesium ratio is actually pretty important, too. You said you don’t do supplements. You’re not a fan of magnesium or Vitamin D or anything like that?
Erin: Actually, I do take Vitamin D. Yes. I take Vitamin D every other day.
Dave: Actually, you could do it once a week. It doesn’t really matter. It stays in the body pretty well. As long as you don’t take it before bed. It’s not good before bed.
Erin: No. I take it first thing in the morning. I take that and I do Juice Plus. Have you ever heard of it?
Dave: Yeah, I’ve heard of this. Wow. A blast from the past. Right?
Erin: Right. I enjoy it, though. I saw such a change in my hair and my nails.
Dave: Really?
Erin: Yes.
Dave: That’s cool.
Erin: My energy level. As soon as I started taking it, I know it sounds weird, but at first I was like, “Really? I’ll just see. Let’s see what it does.” Man, I do enjoy that product. That’s the only thing I take.
Dave: It’s totally worth trying to see what works. Like you said, if you try it and it works, it doesn’t matter if every study double-blinded out there says, “It can’t possibly work … ”
Erin: If it works for you, why not?
Dave: Like, “I’m sorry. Empirical evidence trumps double-blind studies.” You’re like, “If I smack myself on the head and it hurts, I’m pretty sure that it hurts, even if the studies say it doesn’t hurt or there are no studies.”
Erin: Correct. Everybody reacts differently to everything. Every single person is different. Really, Juice Plus is technically not even a supplement. It’s a food product. It’s not under the supplement list anyways.
Dave: I hear what you’re saying. There’s a lot of things that are foods. I have that same thing with the Brain Octane Oil I make. You could consider it a supplement. It’s hyper critical. Actually, it’s not technically hyper critical, but it’s a very rare extract of coconut oil. You can actually say it’s a supplement or say it’s a food. I think it comes from food. It’s food.
Erin: Does it have a food label on it?
Dave: Yeah. That one does have a food label on it.
Erin: It does?
Dave: Yeah, but it’s one of the things that could be a supplement aisle, it could be in the food aisle. It could go either way. It’s very weird on the regulatory side what happens with all sorts of things. Even chocolate should probably have a supplement label on it when it’s done right.
Erin: I hadn’t even thought about that.
Dave: Chocolate has powerful effects. If you want to talk about the effects, it has to be labeled as a supplement. If you put chocolate in little pellets and make them look like a supplement and label them like a supplement, you could probably say chocolate did good things for your health. I’m not doing that. I’m just saying it tastes good.
Erin: It is healthy, though. There are health benefits to it.
Dave: Now, given this combination that you use of getting rid of these things … Actually, I’ve got to ask one more question before we go into the results that you’re getting. When I work with clients, especially as they’re going low carb, I use a cyclical kenogenic approach. I find that if they don’t have a small amount of carbohydrate in the evening, especially in women, that their sleep quality goes down a lot. You have a different approach where you have more starches earlier in the day. Do you see effects on sleep with the way you’re setting up the day?
Erin: Yeah. I sleep like a champ. Yes. I wear a Fitbit too that monitors my sleep. There’s lots of other brands out there that do that, but that one I happen to wear is Fitbit. I have one or two restless and I don’t eat any starches in the night.
Dave: Cool. It’s totally working for you.
Erin: Yeah. I’ve never had anyone else say that they can’t sleep when they don’t eat starches. Actually, I feel the people that do eat starches at night they say it gives them crazy dreams. I get that a lot.
Dave: Interesting.
Erin: When they don’t eat them and then they eat starches in the evening, they say that their dreams are all weird. Then, they wake up really puffy and then they wake up with a bad taste in their mouth when they eat a bunch of starches.
Dave: Yeast. Both of those symptoms are yeast, right?
Erin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dave: If they’re getting candida growing at night, they get that dragon breath and the weird dreams. Okay. You’re not using ketosis as part of your program, right?
Erin: No.
Dave: Okay, cool. That may be a big difference there, because I find that if they’re in ketosis then they get the sleep issues if they don’t have small amounts of starch. Your clients are having starch earlier in the day. They have enough glycogen and they’re making it through the night.
Erin: Yeah. I definitely don’t believe with cutting out starches. I don’t believe cutting out starch. I feel when you cut out any one thing and you tell someone they can’t have it, that’s all they can think about.
Dave: Yeah. It gets to be really obsessive. That’s one reason I’m going cyclical. I’m like, “Don’t eat them for a few days and then eat them.” You go in and out.
Erin: Do you feel like when you do that, you feel like you go overboard because you’re just like, “Okay. Two more days and I get to have as much as I want. Two more days. Two more days.” Do you feel like when you do have them it’s like a free for all and you can’t stop?
Dave: Not anymore. When I first started doing this stuff more than a decade ago, absolutely. You’re like, “Oh, my God. It’s cheat day. Like, “Tacos and cherry turnovers and burritos.” That doesn’t work because then you’ll have cravings for days and days. With the approach from Bulletproof, it’s that you’re eating a very high, very clean, fat diet with moderate amounts of high quality protein, tons of veggies, but no starch and no sugar. You supplement ketones with Brain Octane. You’re getting into ketosis faster than you normally would biologically. Once you’re in ketosis, you don’t care about food. You lose all cravings. You’re just, “Whatever.” You just don’t want to eat. You do that for three, four, five, six days. Then, when it’s time to come out of ketosis, instead of going crazy, you’re like, “Okay. This is the day where I’m going to eat sweet potatoes.” I do white rice instead of brown because people get bloating from brown.
Erin: They do. I’ve seen that. Actually, I don’t really love rice in general. I would rather have a sweet potato anyways. It makes me feel better. Go ahead. Sorry.
Dave: Yeah. I’m with you on the sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are an amazing food. If you bake them they make really good fries. Right?
Erin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dave: Why would you eat rice if you’ve got sweet potatoes? It’s good to switch up sometimes. You do this. Then, on that day because you’re still in mild ketosis because of the Brain Octane Oil, you’re still, “I don’t need food.” The cravings that used to just plague me when I was obese, I just simply don’t care about food. I could skip my next three meals. By that time, I’d be like, “You know, it’s really about time to eat. I can feel I’m a little hungry, but it’s not like end of the world hunger.” Before it was like, “Oh, my God. I can’t like wait 15 minutes or I’m going to like eat the person in front of me.” That change for me was just what liberated me.
Erin: You know what? I will say I’m pretty active. Actually, I’m extremely active pretty much every day. I’m hyperactive and I’m hungry a lot. I control what I eat. I don’t crave foods. I crave eating, but I don’t crave junk food. I don’t crave pizza. I used to. I broke all the cravings. I have no sugar cravings whatsoever which is really a nice place to be in. It wasn’t easy to get there. Once you get there, it’s like whoa, I don’t need sugar anymore. I don’t need pizza. In October, I decided I’m going to do this October fast thing on Instagram. Give up one thing.
I was eating a whole large pizza one day a week. Yeah, I love to eat. I decided I’m giving up pizza completely. I need to get the cravings out of my mind. I’ve got to stop. I did it for a month. The most? I’ve had two pieces of pizza since October. Those cravings are completely gone. That was my only craving was pizza. Once I broke that, I have zero cravings now which is really nice. I do get hungry. I like to eat. I eat probably about every three or four hours. Sometimes less than that. I just don’t crave junk food.
Dave: It’s amazing what just cleaning up the diet does. People are listening who are super familiar with the approach that I’ve evolved. One of the things that I do on purpose, I interview all sorts of people. I’ve had vegans on, like zero fat vegans because what works for one group of people may not work for another. I really encourage people. “Try different things. Try eating starches earlier in the day. It may completely upgrade everything you do. Try Tabata intervals like in The Four by Four Diet.
If that doesn’t work, if you went for a jog every day that made you feel really good, I would probaby laugh at you and go, ‘Ha, ha, chronic cardio.'” If you’re looking good and feeling good, I actually would respect that so much. It’s totally cool whatever works. People like you who have practiced since you were 18, you can generally point people in a pretty good direction. That one size fits all approach upsets me because I used to follow that when I weighed 300 pounds and it sure didn’t fit me very well and neither did my pants.
Erin: That’s funny. I really feel a lot of it is just cleaning up your eating, getting rid of as much processed food as you can, going to a lot of vegetables, a lot of some raw, some cooked. Just when you can ditch the junk food, the way you feel, the way you look is a total transformation. It just feels so good. That is what I think gives me the energy to do what I do all day long. If eat junk food there’s no way. I’d be so tired.
Dave: It’s really funny. Almost every really successful entrepreneur that I spend time with now has realized that. Some of them, they have their vices occasionally or something, but for the most part, they’ve all noticed that if they are going to run a business successfully, they need to not be eating a lot of junk food because they just don’t make good decisions. They’re tired just like you’re saying. Same with me. You give me junk food, this stuff is like cryptonite for me. I’m going to be a jerk. I’m going to yell at my kids. I’m not going to be very happy if I eat junk food. It’s not worth it.
Erin: Even if I drink wine … I love wine. Wine in moderation is fine. Most men, women, whatever, we all enjoy our alcohol drinks occasionally, but if I were to have two glasses, the next day I feel so awful. Now, I didn’t used to be that way when I drank more often. I didn’t realize the effects of what alcohol did to me. Now, even one glass. I wake up and I just don’t feel the way I normally feel in the morning just from one glass of wine.
Dave: I’ve got to hook you up with a friend, Todd from Dry Farm Wine. I’ll get him to send you some. It’s Bulletproof.com/wine. These guys did the same thing with wine that I did with coffee. They went through and identified all of the sources of toxins in wine. They lab test all their wine. They only work with a few growers. Mark Sisson also is a big fan. I don’t drink wine anymore unless it’s older than me for the same reason. There’s actually a bunch of mold toxins from the fermentation process. There’s biogenic amines. I just don’t process it very well. I don’t perform great the next day, but when I drink wine that’s lab tested that’s made properly and I feel completely normal.
Erin: Do you really?
Dave: Totally. It’s not the alcohol. It’s the other byproducts of yeast in the wine. I’ll get him to send you some.
Erin: I’d love to try it.
Dave: Bulletproof.com/wine for the people listening. Just did a podcast with him. Some people have probably already heard me interview Todd. If you try that, you might just be like, “Oh, my goodness. I can have red wine occasionally and it’s not going to knock me out like it normally does.” It’s nice to have red wine, right?
Erin: Oh, I love it. I love the flavor of wine. I just don’t like the effects of how I feel.
Dave: Oh, we’re going to totally hack that. I’m excited. That’s cool.
Erin: Now, I don’t want to drink wine every day. Come on, now.
Dave: Just one glass, all right?
Erin: That’s all right. Just one glass. I do want to try it though. That sounds pretty cool.
Dave: Now, what are the results you’re getting? Give me a big story about massive results from The Four By Four Diet. Actually, diet and exercise because you’re doing it together.
Erin: Okay. This is someone that was just very thin. She was a very thin woman. People were like, “Oh, you’re so skinny. You’re fine. Why would you work out? You’re skinny already. Why do you need to eat healthy?” She was very thin and she couldn’t even barely make it up the flight of stairs. Just super weak. She drank zero water which I think is really important. Tons of coffee and zero water.
Dave: There’s something to be said for that. I’m just kidding. Don’t do that. Bad idea.
Erin: Bad idea. She wasn’t drinking any water. We started doing the Tobatos. We started very slowly. The first workout we did eight lunges and she puked. She was in such bad shape. Now, she’s a whole new person. She’s playing with her kids. She has more muscle. She feels totally different. She’s upped her water. She’s dropped her coffee. Now, we do not cut coffee back because I love coffee. We dropped drinking 10 cups a day.
Dave: Yeah. 10 cups a day is not a good idea. I tell people. They ask me that, too. I’m like, “No.” Seriously, even though I would make another nickel or something, no. Just don’t do it.
Erin: Did you see the study about coffee where it said, “Six cups of coffee a day is curing all these cancers”? Have you seen that?
Dave: I did see the study.
Erin: I have not studied. I have not read enough about it to know anything about it. What are your thoughts on that?
Dave: I think it was more helping you avoid it rather than cure it.
Erin: Oh, yeah. That’s what I meant. Avoid. Yes, you’re correct.
Dave: I’m not allowed to post this study because I run a coffee company, but I’d like to. I found it was a really interesting study to read.
Erin: It was pancreatic cancer. Right? Was the big one?
Dave: I think it was one of them. There were a bunch of others. There’s no proof that coffee did that. They’ve found a clear association between coffee drinking. There’s a correlation, but not a causation. Still I put coffee in the superfood category because of it’s high polyphenol count. If you just Google coffee and health, the number of studies out there is astounding.
Erin: There is.
Dave: It’s the opposite of tobacco.
Erin: In that one study, they were saying, “Two cups of coffee will prevent this cancer. Four cups of coffee will prevent this cancer,” all the way up to, “Six cups of coffee prevented this cancer.” It was a pretty neat study, though.
Dave: You know what I do? I’d definitely read that. When I started drinking Bulletproof, I went way down on the amount of coffee that I needed because normal coffee you drink it and then you crash. With Bulletproof if you drink it, and then four hours later you land, but you never crash. I drink one or two cups a day and that’s it. I’m like, “I actually want to drink more coffee because of these studies.” I manufactured decaf that I almost never talk about, but it’s the only low mold decaf out there.
Decaf coffee is allowed legally to have a lot more mold in Europe and there’s no limits in the US at all. It’s usually if you want to get a headache, drink decaf. I did all this reengineering. I did a decaf. I’ve started drinking four cups of decaf after doing it, just because I like it. I don’t know if it’s made a difference for me or not, but I’m drinking more coffee now just because I’ve seen all the studies. Maybe I should have another couple cups.
Erin: I love coffee at night. I love to sit on my couch with a cup, especially in the winter.
Dave: With caffeine?
Erin: No. We put the French Crest. We put the decaf and the French Crest. I love that in the evenings.
Dave: That’s the best way to make it because the metal filter it gives you the coffee oils that have some of the effects of coffee. You’re totally rocking the coffee.
Erin: I love it.
Dave: Now, you have this client who is super skinny. She got her muscle mass back. Did she put on fat? It sounds like she needed to.
Erin: I wouldn’t say she needed to put on fat. She just needed to tighten up a little bit. She was what some people refer to as skinny fat. She was thin, but zero muscle. I wouldn’t say she put on fat. She just developed muscle underneath her.
Dave: Skinny fat is such a bad thing. You don’t see it, but it’s not there. When I met my wife, Dr. Lana, she wasn’t skinny fat. She was so skinny. She had a six pack, but she had no butt to the point where when she sat down it hurt. There was not enough padding on her butt and she was cold all the time. She couldn’t put on weight no matter how much she ate or what she ate. We tweaked her diet. Once we got rid of the things that were messing with her, she was able to put on 20 pounds. Some of it was muscle. Some of it was the right fat. “Oh, look. I can sit down and it’s comfy now.”
Erin: That’s awesome.
Dave: My pants fit better and then stopped. It’s interesting that we have such a problem with obesity that people are so focused on that, but the people I know who are extremely lean are like, “No, really. I would love to put on some muscle,” or “I would love to put on just a little bit more body fat because I would feel better.”
Erin: She never really said she wanted to put on body fat or anything. What she wanted was to feel good. That’s all she wanted. She was like, “I want to have energy. I want to be able to … My kids’ bedrooms. I want to be able to walk the stairs. I want to be able to play with my children.” She couldn’t do anything at all. It’s made a world of difference. People forget about the skinny people that still need to become healthy. It’s both sides. Then, I’ve seen people that just want to lose the last 10 pounds. You could do one little tweak. Sometimes that’s just cutting out starches at night. All of a sudden, they’ll see that last bit of weight will just go away.
Dave: All right. There’s a challenge for everyone on the Bulletproof diet. Try switching your starch around. Have it at lunch and see if you get food cravings in the afternoon, which is my prediction. See if you feel better in the morning and you look tighter in the mirror.
Erin: You still do things in your mind that make you feel like you’re eating it. If you just say, “Well, I’m just going to eat vegetables.” That doesn’t work. You could do things like zucchini noodles. That really helps. I love zucchini noodles with some fresh fish on top or whatever you want to put on it. That stuff still makes you feel like you’re getting it without the food cravings being there. You still feel like you’re getting it.
Dave: I do the zucchini, but then I soak it in butter. I’m like, “Oh, yeah.”
Erin: I don’t quite soak it in butter, but I do like a little olive oil. Lots and lots and lots of seasonings.
Dave: There you go.
Erin: I’m a seasoning fanatic.
Dave: What’s your favorite seasoning?
Erin: I’ve been on a dill kick lately.
Dave: Dill? I didn’t think of that one.
Erin: I know. I love, love, love dill and cayenne pepper. If you could see the amount of cayenne pepper I go through … I get the big tubs. It lasts two, three weeks.
Dave: Oh. You’re super into the cayenne.
Erin: Not necessarily for health reasons. I love everything super hot.
Dave: You’re in a part of the world where lots of food is pretty spicy. Right? You’re somewhere down south?
Erin: South. Tennessee. Yeah. I don’t really ever go eat barbecue, but yeah, there’s lots of that here.
Dave: You could probably get it on pizza if you want to.
Erin: No pizza for me. I’m done. I finally got rid of that one. That took a while. That was a hard one for me.
Dave: All right. Let’s talk a little bit about belly fat because that is the bane of every actor or actress who has had to go shirtless. What do you do to get rid of pesky belly fat?
Erin: That’s those starches right there. Alcohol. Starches.
Dave: Alcohol always puffs you out, man. It’s just not a good idea to drink every night if you want to look good.
Erin: No. We all think alcohol is our friend, but it really isn’t. Alcohol will pack on the weight really fast. It will leave you puffy and not feeling your best. It’s a combination of lose, lose right there. You’re going to be puffy. You’re going to gain weight and you’re not going to feel good.
Dave: You have a bunch of recipes in the book. I just came out with a recipe book as well. It’s an enormous amount of work to come up with all those things. How did you go about doing it?
Erin: Just playing. I spent weeks and weeks my mom and I. We did it together. My husband and all of us did. It’s also things that I’ve just cooked over the years. Just things that my family enjoys. Then, I just tweak some things that a lot of people love in our society. I just tweak those to make them a little bit healthier. I didn’t want things that are hard to cook. I don’t love cooking. Actually, I hate cooking. I know it’s part of life. I do cook, but I don’t enjoy cooking. Everything I cook is quick. If it doesn’t take a couple minutes, I’m pretty much not going to do it.
I do a lot of my cooking. I prep it and then I can just warm it up because I’m never really home. Then, I’m on the road all day working. I take all my food with me for the whole day. I prep a lot of food and take it to make life simple. Coming up with most of my recipes are things that I have cooked over the years and things that people, kids like, that you could change to make them a little bit healthier like that which are delicious, chicken tenders. Things like that which are delicious. Everyone loves chicken tenders. It’s just changing them to make them a little bit healthier. What recipes did you do on yours?
Dave: We did 125 recipes.
Erin: That’s a lot of work.
Dave: I actually ended up co-working with a professional chef, actually several professional chefs in order to incorporate the principles of the diet. I know the stuff I make and all my classic recipes I make for my family like creamed vegetables and just a bunch of soups and a bunch of salads that are core to what I do because they’re convenient and easy. Some of the things that we were able to come up with, there’s an Arugula Pear Salad with chocolate on it.
Erin: With chocolate?
Dave: It sounds ridiculous.
Erin: Crazy.
Dave: When the chefs proposed that I’m like, “Well, it meets all our macro goals here. It’s got a little bit of fructose from the fruit, but not too much.” I’m like, “It doesn’t sound like it’s going to do it,” but it’s so amazing that we served it at the last Bulletproof Conference. When you went to a few of the restaurants it was a signature salad. We just got a bunch of local chefs to agree to make things from the book so that people could just go out to dinner and eat Bulletproof.
That thing just still sticks in my mind. I make it occasionally at home. What you do is you put on a normal dressing that’s in the book. Then, you also just do a little drizzling using the Bulletproof chocolate thing. The chocolate flavor just explodes as a counterpoint to the vinegar. You’re like, “Really? This is a zero sugar thing except for the pears?” I don’t know. That one stands out to me. It’s just fantastic.
Erin: You know what I can see is that sweet and tart taste that people love. The combination of those two together, because you get that tartness from the vinegar and the sweetness from the chocolate. It’s sweet and salty like kettle corn.
Dave: What’s your very favorite recipe? It’s a labor of love to make a recipes in a book, unless if you’re listening to this and you’ve never read a recipe book, it’s like painting or something. There’s an art. It’s just a lot of energy goes into it. People just have one like, “Okay, that’s the one.”
Erin: You know what? I would say the zucchini noodles. I am obsessed with zucchini noodles. I love them with salmon on top or talapia. I like them with any fish on top. It’s probably my favorite thing on there.
Dave: You’d do dill and cayenne together on them, or … ?
Erin: I do dill, cayenne, garlic powder. I’ll just pour everything. I’ll take everything except for all the salt ones. I don’t pour any of the salt ones on there, but there’s so many others. Sometimes I’ll do a bunch of cilanthro in there. I change it up every time, but right now I’m on a dill kick.
Dave: Nice. Cilantro is pretty amazing.
Erin: Oh, I love cilantro, too. Yeah. We do through a lot of that. I put that in all my salads pretty much.
Dave: I want to switch gears a bit. I want to talk about your time in the military because you’ve definitely blazed some trails there. I’m really interested in the fight or flight response of humans and so much of what we do throughout the day that gets triggered. People whether they’re trained for combat or not, I have some former soldiers working for Bulletproof at high levels. I’ve interviewed Navy Seals. It’s really interesting when you read books like On Combat and all that. You find that there’s a perspective on combat, and then there’s a perspective on coming out of combat and working in real life. I want to know. What did your combat experience bring to your training or your nutrition or just to your practice when you came out of war? What did you bring with you that was useful and what didn’t work for you?
Erin: Definitely not nutrition … Did not come out of the military. Those MREs were not nutritious.
Dave: Did you ever make an MRE smoothie in the field? No, I’m kidding.
Erin: You know what we made was we opened the cocoa powder that was in the MREs. Have you ever opened an MRE before?
Dave: I have.
Erin: There was always the hot chocolate. We just poured water and that was our pudding. Yeah, that’s so bad. Then, you get Skittles and it was not healthy. Nutrition did not come out of the military. I feel like discipline. That would probably be the main thing. I love my job I have now, but I loved the Marine Corps. I enjoyed my experience. Of course, it has ups and downs just like any job, but it was such a great time of my life. I wouldn’t say war was necessarily fun. It was something I learned a lot from, have been able to carry that for the rest of my life.
It’s discipline. Hard work will get you to where you need to be. That would probably be the biggest thing I took from the military and how to lead. When I was over there, I led the first … The Marines Corps has never had an all female platoon. They formed one when we were in Iraq to search women Iraqis because men couldn’t search them. We formed a female Marine platoon. Then, I became the platoon sergeant of that platoon and we got attached to the infantry. That was a big experience for me. I learned so much. I had to go to a lot of debriefings of colonels and stuff, the real high ranked big dogs because there wasn’t anyone with this platoon. I just learned so much just by being around such high ranking people in the Marine Corps.
Dave: It’s really interesting because I came across something just in the weird reading that I do that back in the Civil War there were at least 250 women who dressed as men and fought in combat. It wouldn’t be okay to fight as a woman back then. Even Lincoln apparently knew about this and was like, “All right. That’s fine. You want to fight? You want to fight? That’s cool.” Those are really early trailblazers. Did you have a hard time with that? This was back in Iraq. This isn’t Afghanistan. This was back when it was still pretty controversial, right?
Erin: Are you talking about women in the Marine Corps or women over there?
Dave: Yes.
Erin: It’s something I have requested mass. I can’t even tell you how many times I fought to stay with my platoon because when we left for war from the states to go over there, they said, “You can’t go. You can’t be with the platoon where only males can go.” I was like, “I’ve trained all these years and you’re telling me I can’t go? Well, that’s BS. That’s not going to work.” They left. I got left here. There was another girl with me. We got left here in the states. I requested mass. Then, they ended up sending us. Where we were going we were just going with someone else. They wouldn’t let us go where our unit was going. When we did get over there, they did finally let us. I finally won and the helicopter flew in and picked us up and took us back to our unit, which is really cool, but I encountered that several times in the Marine Corps.
It’s getting better. I wanted to be part of the Marine Corps recon. I wanted to do all that stuff like GI Jane. That was my dream. That’s the stuff I loved. I was like, “One day, maybe.” Obviously, that was not an option for me in the Marine Corps or in any branch at that point, but now it is changing. I’m like, “Ooh, maybe I can go back in. I want to try that out.”Obviously, I’m too old now, but I think it’s amazing that it’s finally changing for women. I want all women to have the opportunity that men have. I see where they say, “Women can’t because men have a hard time in war scenarios, would want to defend a woman more than maybe would a male.” It would be hard for them. They would be affected more by it, but I feel we’re entitled to the same rights as guys.
Dave: I hear you there. There was an interesting study in 2012 looking at fight or flight response, which is of course why I read it. It said, “Men are genetically programmed with fight or flight.” Run away or kill, but that woman tend to have a hormonal tend and befriend reaction. There’s one argument that says, “Women shouldn’t be in combat,” but there’s another argument that says, “The absence of the male gene would make you a better warrior because you’re not dealing with fight or flight.” Right? The tend and befriend reaction actually lets you act more rationally with more control than the pure blind, “Kill them all,” stuff.
Erin: I don’t know. I could see good in both of those traits. I don’t know which one is better. As long as they’re not too nurturing, obviously. I think that would be a hard trait to have while you’re over there. If you’re more of a nurturer, that probably wouldn’t be as a woman that has that soft, tender heart. Probably not the right place for you, but those people aren’t going to fight in war. Those are not the ones that are signing up. The ones that are signing up have that drive and have that desire. If they don’t, they’re not signing up for the jobs that are going to put them in that spot. They’re signing up for different jobs. I feel the ones that are signing up for the job have the drive to get out there and do the same thing as the men.
Dave: With an all volunteer military, it’s very different than in a draft situation. You signed up for this. You wanted that and you’re doing. it. That’s another big part of it. I find it fascinating because obviously I’m a male. I have a male response to fight or flight stuff. To imagine that you have a different … At least on average, women have a different fight or flight response than men do, especially in combat situations.
I don’t think that’s been studied very well in books like On Combat and On Killing which are just fantastic books about the neurology of what happens in emergency situations. It’s like, “Man, man, man, man, man.” They barely talk about women in those books because most of the history of combat is with men. I think there is great science and research to be done here. It will probably generalize to what female firefighters or female paramedics or emergency room doctors and first responders. Look what they do as well. I hope we do more research on that because I think it would be cool.
Erin: I think it would be very interesting. I would love to be in the military still. It was a great place. The timing was time for me to get out. I think the Marine Corps is amazing. Amazing job. Amazing career to have. I wouldn’t change anything I did.
Dave: You’re still serving in a different way now when you take the time to put together a book that can change people’s lives. That’s another service. I appreciate that as well. Now, we’re up to the end of the show. I’ve got one more question for you. If someone came to you tomorrow and said, “Based on everything you know, you’re a trainer. You’ve been in the military. You’ve done all sorts of other stuff. Based on your entire life’s experience, what are the three pieces of advice you’d have for me so that I can kick more ass at everything I do? If I want to perform better at life, what do I need to know?”
Erin: One, you have to get your eating under control. Number one. I feel that we have to find a way to balance out your eating. If you can eat clean, I feel that you can control so many aspects of your life. We need to move more. When you move, you have more energy. Then, you can do more. Not only are your workouts more productive … I’m just not talking about just strictly working out. I’m talking about just moving in general. Your workouts are more productive. When you sit all day, you get home and you’re exhausted because you sat all day.
Your body is stiff. You’re uncomfortable. Then, it’s hard to work out. The more you move, the better you just feel. Then, discipline. We all have to find discipline. Discipline is what keeps us from eating junk food when maybe we know we want it, but it’s not our time to have it. Discipline is just I think a key to our success. Hard work and discipline are the two things that are going to get you to where you want to be.
Dave: Thanks for your advice. You’ve been listening to Erin Oprea, author of The Four By Four Diet. Erin, where can people find out more about your diet, about your work, about your celebrity clients? Where should they go to learn more?
Erin: You know what? I have a couple places we can go. You can go to my Instagram at Erin Oprea, O-p-r-e-a, or you can check me out on my website, ErinOprea.com, O-p-r-e-a. There’s lots of different spellings on that. There’s a link for my book on my website, The Four By Four Diet. Check that out. Here’s a picture of the cover of it if you guys haven’t seen it yet.
Dave: Oh, nice. Yeah. Hold that up. Hold the camera so we can get it.
Erin: See that? You guys get that? Awesome.
Dave: We’ll include that in the show notes so people can check that out if they want to look at that and check out some of the recipes, and how you’ve written about Tabata intervals which is a really good way to get a good workout. I really appreciate you being on Bulletproof Radio.
Erin: Hey, thanks for having me. It’s been great. It’s wonderful talking to you.
Dave: If you enjoyed today’s show, you know what to do. Actually, there’s a couple of things you could do. One is check out The Four By Four Diet. This is one of those books. You want to really learn about the exercise. You want to look at foods you can avoid, different ideas about timing of nutrients. I’m open to different ideas all the time and you should be, too. There’s a couple other things you could do. One is did I mention the new love of my life? Bulletproof Instamix. If I didn’t, I should have because we just came out with this. I’ve been working on this for about three years to find a powder, a packet that gives you the grass fed butter, the Brain Octane.
You open up the packet. You pour it into your fresh brewed Bulletproof coffee. Shake it. Stir it up and you’ve got real Bulletproof Coffee on the road, in the office. No mess. No stickiness. No nothing. Brain Octane Oil raises ketones way better than MTT Oil. It turns out coconut oil raises ketones less than fasting. Coconut oil doesn’t work. You get a little suppression of hunger. You want to suppress hunger all the way? Use enough Brain Octane to raise your ketones to 0.5 on a blood meter. That is shown in a couple studies to affect levels of CCK which is your fullness hormone and levels of grelin which is your food craving hormone.
If you want to turn off hunger, try some Bulletproof Coffee. You can make it more easily with Instamix. You can subscribe and save a bunch of money. We’ll just send it to you every month. You’re good to go. This has absolutely changed my travel. While you’re ordering that, we already talked about the Chocolate Fuel Bars also infused with Bulletproof XCT Oil and zero sugar. You put these things together, you’ve got super amounts of the right fats. It tastes amazing. Who doesn’t like coffee and chocolate? My God. The kind of living. Have a beautiful day.
