118.) Dr. Nick Barringer | Optimizing Parenthood | Sustainable Eating Habits for Parents & Kids

And so when you get that right, it's easier to be like, "Okay, I'm well rested, this is what I need to do." Oh yeah, I need to exercise, I need to do that. Whereas if you're running on fumes, talking to you about like exercising and eating right, it ain't gonna happen. Same with kids, right? With my kids. If I don't let them get enough sleep, and I wake up and you got cranky kids, good luck trying to get them to make healthy choices or to do anything you'd like to do with them. Hey, hey, how we doing? This is Brendan Stickels from O2X Human Performance, and you are listening to optimizing parenting, the O2X podcast where we talk about the world's toughest leadership challenge, raising little humans, and today, we are gonna talk about what's for dinner. We are talking nutrition with Dr. Nick Baranger. Before then, let me tell you a little true story from the Stickels family. Once I was taking my two sons to play golf. They were 11 and eight at the time, and it was a rainy, cloudy, overcast day, and we went to Army Navy Country Club, and we were on the driving range by ourselves. And I look over at the putting green, and I see a tall, lanky, left-handed golfer with a couple security guards. That person starts walking over towards us on the range, and I realize that it's former president Barack Obama. He walks by us on the range, and as he does, I decide to shoot my shot, and I say, Mr. President, look, we got another little lefty golfer here, just like you, and he watches my son Jack hit a golf ball, and he says, wow, it's a nice swing. You're gonna be way better than me. And Jack laughs and says, thank you. And then I point to my eight-year-old, and I say, hey, this is Declan, and President Obama says, hey, Declan, you got a nice swing too. Looking good, buddy. And with that, he goes off on his way. So me and the boys go play golf. And after we play golf, we go get ice cream, which was our tradition. And after the ice cream, we decide to call my father, who was a US history teacher, and obviously never met the president of the United States before, and no, it would be excited to hear the story. So we call my dad, get him on speakerphone, and I say, boys, tell Grandpa what happened today. And Declan, like with all the enthusiasm in the world, says, Grandpa, we got ice cream. And I say, no, before the ice cream. And Jack says, we played golf. And I was like, dude, it's before the golf. And then together, they both say, oh yeah, we met Obama. And I joked about it, and my father was excited, less about the ice cream in the golf, and more about meeting the former president of the United States. But it's a reminder for me that when you're raising little humans, nothing on Earth, and there's nobody you can meet that is more exciting than getting ice cream, and nothing more fun than spending time with your dad. So with that, let's talk to Nick. So Dr. Nick Baringer, as a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, he was the first dietician nutritionist to go through Ranger School and serve in the 75th Ranger Regiment, deployed to book Iraq and Afghanistan. He only goes to schools that are good at football. So he got his undergraduate from Georgia, and his Georgia Bulldog. And then I got his PhD from Texas A&M. He taught a paler. He taught at West Point. And frankly, is the embodiment of a great O2 specialist. He's got PhD level knowledge, practitioner experience. But he comes at it with an emotional intelligence and humility that is so impressive. He's really a lot of fun to talk to. The two things I love about Nick when he teaches class is that he will name drop researcher or a study off the top of his head that is really impressive and can go an inch wide and 10 miles deep with regards to nutrition. But more important than that is I've seen him dozens of times get asked a question. And he thinks about it. He says, you know what? I don't actually know what the current research says. Let me get back to you. And then he'll ping me the next day with a sighted, very eloquent answer for me to get back to the clients with. So I really admire that. But my main takeaway from this conversation is with regards to children and nutrition and what you're going to feed these little kids for dinner. He is incredibly thoughtful, but also simple and basic. I took some actionable takeaways for raising a little human being, putting food on the table, giving the kids a little bit of grace. And then he also served as a reminder that nothing in a child's life is more important than ice cream and spending time with your dad. So with that, enjoy my conversation with Dr. Nick Barringer on this, the O2X Raising Little Humans podcast. All right, Nick, welcome to O2X. How are you doing, my friend? - I'm doing wonderful, buddy. How are you doing? - I'm doing good. Good to see you. I do have a bit of a bone to pick with you. I was going to eat an MRA during this conversation since it's about lunchtime here in Washington, DC. And I went down the rabbit hole and it turns out that MRAs have a shelf life of seven years. And as a dietician and the first army dietician to go through Ranger School, but also a staunch believer in not eating processed foods and eating healthy. How do you rectify your work with MREs for the army with your career as a dietician? - Well, one, the MREs are a, I mean, they're a scientific feat. Shout out to combat feeding there and native Massachusetts because they do a great work. You know, again, when you're talking about something that can get shipped over to the desert or, you know, get shipped over somewhere in the cold or wherever, all those different, you know, temperature extremes and still hold up their nutritional value and be consumable. That's a feat that very few other armies have. And so I'll give the MRE a shout out there. And then here's the other piece. I'll give you a little research. So there's a guy, Dr. Phil Parle. There's a lot of research on the gut microbiome there in New Serium. He had soldiers eat the MRE for like, you know, 21 straight days and looked at like gut health, et cetera, to see if there was any like gut leakiness and things, didn't find it with MREs. And a lot of when they looked at the health kind of score of the diet for those soldiers pre and post, they ate healthier on the MREs. They gone with fiber, et cetera. Because a lot of soldiers were shooting fast food and things like that. The MREs are not ideal for, you know, for your eating fruits and vegetables all the time. But for what they are, they're pretty good. So for anybody who hasn't been in the army, MRE is short for meal ready to eat, which like it comes in a plastic package with some sort of chemical reaction to water that heats it up. And it's been a long time since I had an MRE, but it also comes with a little Tabasco bottle that always brought me much joy. What does your go to? And it's usually randomized in the army, right? You get handed one, you don't get a choice. Did you have one that felt like Christmas morning when you got? Yeah, so I mean, man, it's been a while. The chickens, because here's the thing, because I think of like, obviously, when did I consume the most was in Ranger School, right? And most all the chicken omurries, I don't know if this is still the standard, had M&Ms. So if you got the chicken, you knew you were getting M&Ms. And the M&Ms, you can trade for anything. Oh, hell yeah. It's a package of M&Ms. It's like a pack of cigarettes in prison there. It's like cigarettes in prison. If you had M&Ms that were only in watch this, I really nerd you out here. There are 210 calories. I could trade for a dairy shake that was 400 calories. So now I'm closing my caloric window. That was the game I played in Ranger School. So I would trade flavor for calories. Oh, yeah, that's dietician 101 right there. Yeah, yeah. All right, so backing up before you became the first dietician to go through Ranger School, I said in the introduction, you're like very impressive bio before all of that. Like tell me a little bit about where you grew up Nick. What kind of kid were you? We're gonna talk about parenting. But tell me about you as a kid. Like what led you down this road, this career path? I was a kid, 80s kid. I guess like man, like GI Joe, playing in the woods, building forts, active, did sports. I grew up a little bit in Tennessee up in the 4th grade, but didn't like my formative years in Georgia or Georgia. And got into athletics and sports. I wasn't very athletic. So I would always look kind of for that like that tactical advantage. Awesome. So that's how I discovered lifting weights, exercise and nutrition. 'Cause I also wrestled weight class for anybody that's wrestled, that'll get you interested in nutrition really quick. So I think wrestling was my gateway drug for kind of going down the nutrition radical. Super cool. Were you into food as a kid? Or like what did you guys eat in your house? Was it a meat and potatoes? No, so that is, I mean, I do get to give a shout out to my parents because, so my dad was in the food business. He sold food to restaurants. Large scale. He was the guy that sold the chicken wings, the pizza hun. He was like 90s, the first like all these different things. So he would bring home all sorts of different types of food that we would eat and try. So he was really in the food. And my dad was the one that, my mom can cook, but he was the one that really cooked. And so yeah, I tried a lot of different stuff growing up. No, that's awesome. I made fun of Katie Turner about being the all-American field hockey goalie, but the second best goalie at the dinner table. And I like to make fun of you when I introduce you at O2X events that you're a world-class soldier, but probably one of the second best soldier at your own dinner table. When did you and your wife get married? When do we get married, man? Do you really cook me on the spot? No, you don't have to give me your dinner table. No, no, no, no, I'm not so idiot. I was at Texas A&M, you know, my research, my PhD, they are through the army, and then she was doing company command for a third CR out there at Fort Hood. So it was really perfect because neither one of us had much Tom. Yeah, so we just like, date on the weekends, and that was our, you know, our Tom together. And then as I graduated, she finished command. We got married and we both got stationed at Joint Base San Antonio together. And then she later got out when I went up to New Syria. Awesome. And then were you on active duty when your first child was born? Yes, we were in San Antonio. Had her at Brook Army Medical Center, great place, you know, in the army, if you want to have a kid. Yeah, Brook Army Medical Center, so yeah. Now, I mentioned in the introduction of you that since leaving the army, you've worked with professional athletes, Olympians, tactical athletes, the general population, people of all ages. I don't know how you're going to answer this. I'm curious, which professional athlete do you find the most intellectually stimulating to work with as a dietician? Is it like somebody in the weight class management sports where you need to get somebody strong, but have to keep them small? Is it a giant football player where you just go on mass and getting big? Is it like the bodybuilder or is it like the CrossFit guy? Like, what charges your batteries the most to work with in that community? The weight class, I really like, I like that. But then also, I love learning. Like, you know, I told you I'd work at the Bob Slider. I never worked at the Bob Slider before. I was able to work at Bob Slider this past year. And it was great because I was learning from that athlete. I would ask about it. Like, oh, what does this mean? Well, you look at it here and stuff. So that was great. Typically, what lights my fire is the mixed martial artist. I do the dietician next day is named Jim Miller. One of the greatest has the most fights in the UFC. I really like working with him because he is such an intelligent human athlete. He keeps me on my toes. He's reading stuff and asking questions. And so that's when it's really exciting is when you have that kind of back and forth with the athlete. In the Bob Slider too, she's been a tremendous athlete for a long period of time. And so same thing, like, there was stuff that was said about nutrition to me. And I was like, oh, I need to look that up. And I didn't even know it. But she had come across it through all her years of training. So it's fun whenever you get that kind of relationship. What I find so funny about your career, both in the army, you and your wife being soldiers, thinking about you swapping out the M&Ms for something with more protein and thinking about you and your wife managing careers, deployments overseas, being at the top of your game with regards to nutrition. And then all of a sudden, three little kids show up in your house and you got to make lunches, you got to have breakfast, you got to get people to eat. And so for the rest of this, I'd like to dive into that different level of tactical experience. And so I'm going to put you on the spot right now. What did your family have for dinner last night? - Last night was pretty good. I mean, it was chicken, broccoli and rice. It was pretty simple. And all credit goes to my wife on that one. She's great about going to the grocery store. We've got the chicken, we usually have the meat. We got the rice cooker, she'll throw it in. And then broccoli, simple, you've heard me a lot of nutrition classes. We keep a lot of frozen broccoli in the house 'cause you just throw it in like a minute. We like to get other vegetables to roast sometimes, but my daughter's getting ready to do a play. So they're like practicing every day this week. My son had soccer last night. So kids getting home at 7.30. It was one of those days trying to feed him and then turn around and get him to bed. It's all the things. - So let's do some basic math for anybody who's listening who hasn't heard one of the classes that I've been fortunate enough to hear you teach. But like nutrition 101 for me as a 200 pound person. Just talk me through generally what my plate should look like, what I should think about over the course of the day with regards to proteins, carbs, fat and hydration. And then I'm gonna ask you just some questions about how that formula might change. A, if I was a woman, B, if I was a 16 year old athlete, if I was a middle schooler going through puberty, or how you think about that with kids in your own family. Again, this is not, I know you're not a pediatrician. This is like slightly outside of your probably comfort zone and expertise, but I think it would be beneficial for the tactile athletes who listen to the O2X podcast to just walk through that basic math. So can we start with the basic math for a 200 pound human? - Yeah, I mean, let me do this. - Yeah, rather than do macros, right? You can calculate out and hand, you know, and now we're breaking down on half and stuff, let's just use the plate. - Yeah. - Let's just use the plate. And this is what I use is take your plate, right? Cut it in half and then quarter the other half of the session. Put your protein, your vegetables and your starch in a quarter. If you didn't do anything, now you're a big runner. I know, but let's say that you didn't do a big run, like that's what your plate looks like. Most of your plate should be fruits and vegetables, little quarter bit, getting protein. And then that's where you get your starch, that's where you get your rice here, et cetera. Where I adjust is if you did a 12 mile run, 10 mile run, right? I start opening up that starch. So that rice, that potato, you know, the pasta, you're gonna get more of that. And if the run's long enough, right, or the exercise is long enough, it might be half your plate. - Yeah. - Post-act. And so I fluctuate the carbohydrate and take based off activity. And I think really for the season, kind of tactical athletes who've been around, that's the biggest thing. Carbohydrates are great. I'm not saying they're bad. I just want most people to get it from fruits and vegetables, whereas like, you think of like the average convenient foods, where people are getting it from a lot of carbohydrates or, you know, chips, pretzels, snacks. Those we do have to respect because it's easy to overeat those. With hydration, now we got our water in the mix. I just say take hactor body weight, drink that announces. That's the starting point. Again, somebody like you, somebody who's running, if it's in the heat, I'm in Houston, Texas. We might adjust. That's why I like to have people weigh themselves before and after a run or anything. And so they know, okay, I got to drink 16 to 20 ounces for every pound loss, so I stay hydrated. That's the basic. It doesn't have to be complicated. I guess that's what I want to tell people, because I feel like when I start doing the math and the macros, it gets a little overwhelming, but when I just tell people, all right, this is what your plate should look like, they're like, okay, I can do that. And that's what I do, honestly. - And you say how many calories I ate yesterday? - You can't, I mean, that's a little surprising for me. You don't know. - Okay, okay, I can't say how many grams of carbs I ate. - Yeah, I can't say it. - But you use the plate technique and you can eyeball it for three meals a day and a snack, probably, is that the basic rundown? - Yeah, that's the basic for me. I do breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then, yeah, usually a snack, sometimes in the afternoon, but again, I think if we listen to our bodies and it can be a little more intuitive. Now, starting out for some people, it can be helpful to measure it out, to weigh the food, to see, okay, that's what three ounces looks like, that's what four ounces look like. Or if you're really into that, you know, you want to get on my fitness pile or whatever tracker you're using and tracker calories, all means do that. But if you're just like, that's too much for me, just use your plate. - Yeah, so now talk to me about the three little human beings that live in your house. Are you using the same plate technique for them? The challenge of that is when you say, hey, listen to your body, if my kids listen to their body, we would still be just crushing Halloween candy and Coca-Cola. So how does that plate technique in the 50% hydration model translate to the three school-age children that you live with? - Yeah, so I mean, it challenges like anybody, right? Like Halloween, we just add Halloween as well. Kids got candy, all like that. We do a certain exchange where if you leave your candy out, you get money, some people might do that. I just heard somebody, a colleague of mine, call it the candy cap, which I might be using in the future. So they get their candy and then, 'cause you're always gonna have some leftover, then there's like some sort of exchange. You can be a toy, it can be some money, if they leave it out, it gets taken away, and then you don't have to worry. 'Cause a lot of it is just keeping stuff out of the house. - Yeah. - More you keep your house that easier, the easier the battle is, to your point like with sodas, like we don't have sodas in the house. - Yeah. - It makes it easy, right? So most of my kids, they want water, they want milk, and they have that. So that's the simple piece of it. As far as getting them to eat stuff, getting them involved, letting them have a choice, that's the biggest thing, which can be, it can be hard, because we know what they're supposed to have, especially me as a dietician, like I'm like, all right, I want you to have this or I want you to eat more, but you just, you don't wanna add stress to the eating situation. - Totally. - Let 'em pick. - You know, for us, like, as long as they try it, if they try it, they don't like it, that's fine. Okay, you try the broccoli, you don't like it. Okay, that's fine. We'll try something else, another vegetable. I've looked up, and all my kids actually like broccoli. I've looked up. So, you know, like Brussels sprouts, we had roasted Brussels sprouts. One likes Brussels sprouts, one doesn't like Brussels sprouts, but they'll do broccoli, so you find. - I've gotta give a shout out to my friend Justin Halligan, who, on my last deployment, I got a package in the mail right around Thanksgiving, and it was from his sister's children, who sent me all their Halloween candy, with the saddest note you've ever read. That was like, dear commander's dickles, thank you so much for serving our country. My mom made me send you my candy, but I hope you enjoy it, like fighting the terrorists. I think instead, well, I think it's probably a little bit better to keep the peace and just pay off the mafia, and buy that candy back. Yeah, start the candy cat. - I've heard you talk with our clients about the 80/20 rule. Can you talk about what that 80/20 rule is with regards to making good decisions, and whether or not you apply that in your own family? - Yeah, so the 80/20 rule is 80% of the time, we're trying to follow, you know, the track or whatever our goal we're going down. The 20% is that food is associated with a lot of other things besides fuel, right? - That's right. - Family time, you know, joy, all of those factors. And so for us, in this household, like we have pancakes Saturday morning, typically, and a lot of times, although lately we haven't been doing pizza Friday night, it's been a little crazy, but we'll have pizza, right? And so we have our times and okay, this is what we're going to do. It's the same with the kids, the same sort of thing. There are certain times we go out. Now, it doesn't always have to be, you know, extreme in terms of the example I'll give with the pancakes, we'll still use like a protein pancake base or a higher fiber, or I'll sneak some vegetables in that pizza. Like the pizza's not, I never slum it and go with it, the fast food. I mean, judgment-free zone, I get it, but if you go with it, it's difficult. Fast food pizza places, it's great to me. That's just a waste of an opportunity for a really good pizza. So I get it more or make myself. - You're not going with the Papa John's garlic, butter sauce, drizzled, oh my. - There's not one like dominant, none of those, does anybody take me? I'm going to find a good local place and get it. Or you prefer making myself. - Yeah, and that, I mean, you've probably done that with kids. Parents, if you haven't done that with your kids, have them make their own pizza, it like lights 'em up. Like, I have my nieces over. We get all the little like many pizza doughs, we roll those out, I have the toppings and all, and they make their own pizza. It always is success. - How about when your kids were super young? So your kids just start eating solid foods and you're in a house with two busy professionals but also passionate about this. Were you guys making your own baby food? Were you starting the kids on like real food earlier? What was it like when the kids were babies? - Yeah, I mean, no. We just chose the best baby food we could get. You know, that's the other thing. It's like, we just have this conversation with somebody about like, so she's really busy, physician and all. She was talking about how she tried to make her own yogurt but it's like the last night or four kids. Like, okay, I'm going to do that. She did it for a few weeks. It was like, no, there's no way. I mean, here's a reality component. - That's right. We just try to collect the best, you know, simplest ingredient, whatever baby foods we could get and do those. And then yeah, when we started introducing solids, it was a lot of chopped up broccoli, meat, you know, fish, that, and then seeing. And you know, where are they going to choose? Where are they going to eat? There's no hack, right? - That's what you just said. - I love how I've heard you talk also about like ingredients and I really appreciate how you make everything simple. And like, when you check ingredients, if you can pronounce and recognize the list of ingredients, you're probably like going in the right direction. - I never want to freak you about, too, is like, you know, some people would be like, oh man, a scorpic acid or whatever, you know, it's like vitamin C. So you can make things complicated. But yeah, I try to keep it the simple. If I recognize the ingredient, then we're gonna, you know, the better. But also don't want parents to like beat themselves up as they get, you know, get some mac and cheese or something like that. Like, again, like, do the best you can't. Or if you do mac and cheese and, hey, I've done mac and cheese, I'll do like a bonds of brand, like a chick pea base. So now you're getting a little more fiber, you're getting a little more protein. And then obviously, sneak some more broccoli in there, vegetable in there, or, you know, what have you. - You're hiding the vegetables in the ice cream, basically. - Yeah, you just, you know, you got to do. - What about, so with a lot of the tactical athletes that you and I work with, we have a long discussion about supplementation. Talk to me a little bit about vitamins and then supplementation. I've got to middle school or I have a high school boy and a middle school boy. And so we're having discussions now about like protein shakes, when to start kids on creatine. Like nothing crazy, but at the same time, we're out of the Flintstone vitamin stage and into the more, and into the more thoughtful stage. So big picture, like what are your thoughts on supplementation? - Yeah, so supplementation is just that. It's a supplement, right? It's not to replace anything. You know, the American Academy of Pediatrics kind of touched on that with your statement, but I mean, they don't recommend a multivitamix. I think you should be able to get it all through nutrition. Reality is, I see a Flintstone, whatever. Hey, if that's an insurance policy, I don't think you're doing any harm there. Things to look at is if you have a child who's like a really extreme picky eater or for whatever reasons like vegan or vegetarian, then that would be okay. Let's look at the vitamin status. Let's look at iron status. Also vitamin D is something to look at specifically. Let's say you have a kid who's not, he can't have any milk products or cheese products or you're getting most of your vitamin D. You know, you can do mushrooms at vitamin D, but it's not very bioavailable. So in that instance, you might want to check that, their vitamin D levels that they're, you know, have the pediatrician do their blood work and then you could supplement with that 600 eye use a day, right? Something really easy. Would you give the older kids like you that it is challenging because I get asked like, okay, when do you start creatine? When can you start those things? For me, like 14 things, right? I don't have any like hard science. And that's a challenge. It's kind of like it was creatine monohydrate. There's been a lot of studies in pediatric populations. It's just the guidelines aren't out there. The only population that, to my knowledge, they haven't published looking at creatine and is breastfeeding mothers, which I don't think it would hurt, but just because of there hasn't been any research with that, that's precaution. But there are papers out there with kids, you know, using creatine. - Yeah, I know there's been positive response with regards to like traumatic brain injury and all sorts of secondary things that, you know, as kids are throwing themselves around and playing football, playing the cross, might also be beneficial, but at the same time, I get nervous that some of that stuff falls into the fat and is just trying to get me to buy something else that costs 50 bucks to give my kids. How about the interaction? What do you think about the interaction both for children of their relationship with food with regards to like sleep and stress? I know at O2X, we talk a lot about the inner connectivity of those pillars of human performance. Do you think about that at all with your own athletes? Like how those other aspects of performance might impact their caloric intake and their fueling for performance? - Yes, oh yeah. I mean, I always talk about this as, you know, sleep is where I start with a lot of, and I'm not Dr. Jamie Tarrer. Like I don't try to get to that level of detail, but what I found is, if you're sleeping four hours a night, five hours a night, and I need you to make nutritional changes, it's really hard. - It's really hard when you're sleep deprived. - Why is that? Why do you say that? - Well, just think about your inhibitory ability to see a stimulus of something sweet, of something sugary when you're sleep deprived. Anybody who's been there? And to say no, first is when you've got eight or nine hours, right, or just even like you're moved in general to deal with situations. So if you don't have that foundationally, it's very challenging. And so when you get that right, it's easier to be like, okay, I'm well rested. This is what I need to do. Oh yeah, I need to exercise, I need to do that. Whereas if you're running on fumes, talking to you about like exercising and eating, right? It ain't gonna happen. Same with kids, right, with my kids. If I don't let them get enough sleep, and I wake up and you got cranky kids, get a lot trying to get them to make healthy choices or to do anything and track it with them. - O2X's podcast is brought to you by Building Homes for Heroes. Building Homes for Heroes is an absolutely incredible organization that O2X is lucky enough to partner with. Their main mission is to build or modify homes and then give them mortgage free to injured veterans and first responders. They also provide support services to enable these populations to build better and brighter lives and reach new heights. Through partnership with Building Homes for Heroes, a variety of military, veteran, and first responder populations will receive access to O2X's training and education and allow us to create positive impact on each respective organization. Be sure to visit buildinghomesforheroes.org which can be found in the episode description and donate to their incredible cause. - No, that makes a lot of sense. I have one question just kind of ripped from the headlines. What did you guys do as a family with regards to introducing peanuts to your kids? Like nuts to your kids? - We did early on, we did early on. - I think it's great that literature is going now that yeah, from the headlines for those maybe you haven't read is, it's been shown now that exposing them early on to those nuts can help. And if you hold the longer you hold back, you could put them at higher risk of having nut allergies. - It's interesting. - The challenge we ran into was daycares, right? We would have to do in peanuts when things at home, but then you go to the daycare and it's like you can't have any nuts. And so, you know, out of respect for other kids. That was when we had to limit our nuts, as it really is, as much as like when they were going to daycares. - Totally. So let's run through a couple other tactical questions for parents that are nutrition conscious. But I do really like the idea of thinking of kids as fueling little athletes, you know? Like just like going to school, like the cognitive requirements, running around, being happy and healthy children. So like instead of, you know, training for an Olympic Bob's letter, we're training for a little six year old. What do you guys do with regards to school lunch versus packing lunch? What's a lunch look like in the barrens your house when a kid leaves and goes to the bus? - So we pack ours and I say we, my wife, this is just half of that in the mornings. I would like me making breakfast and she'll pack lunches. So it's not complicated. It'll be, you know, eggs, some fruit. - Hard boiled eggs. - Hard boiled eggs to even, we'll scramble 'em for my youngest. We'll scramble 'em and kind of like, cut 'em up and like put 'em in there. Also like the protein pancakes, they travel well. Like kids like those, we'll cut those up and put 'em in. All sorts of different fruits, blueberries, raspberries, bananas for snacks, crackers. Sometimes there aren't, you know, some chips. We'll try to get a baked chip or something like that, but sometimes you have some chips in there for a snack. Vegetable sticks, right? You know, carrots, celery. - Yeah. - It's not fancy, right? - Yeah, yeah. - Little bento, we do the little bento box with a bottle of water and cinnamon on their way. - Is that what you do? You send the kids with water? I know you also said you're a milk family. You guys drink milk in the house, is that right? - Yeah. - Whole milk. - What kind of milk? - Now we do 2%. But yeah, my kids will through the milk. - You think milk is good for both the protein and the vitamins, is that correct? - Yes, yeah. I mean, you look at the nutritional composition of milk. If you can tolerate it, right? Hey, you know, if you have dairy allergies or things like that, that's a different thing. But luckily none of my kids do. They like their milk and so we do that. You know, we did have a moment with one of our kids. They were over, we had to start limiting the milk because it was causing them to eat less kind of. And then once we kind of did that, it helped with the food as well. - What was that? - Yeah, so you guys are not a juice family. You don't have orange juice or apple juice in your house. What do you have thoughts on that? It's the similar amount of calories to soda, right? - Yeah, yeah. Again, I think it's, seven of the kids up is like you're not drinking your calories. Now, there might be some families out there who don't make you know, if you're drinking orange juice and you're having a little six-out glass or four-ounce glass and that's it, it's just the temptation, right? If we have a juice, it's not say our kids have never had juice. They come out on occasion, but it's a treat, right? Whereas I just feel like we have it in the house. Now the sudden we're drinking juice and there's better ways to spin our calories. - No, 100%. I was just thinking of my family plowed through with some apple cider yesterday and then nobody ate their dinner. So I do think if you don't drink your calories, it's good advice for 48-year-old men as well as 12-year-old children. - I mean, hey, part of it, even for me, it's a lack of temptation, helps me control. I'll tell them myself, so I just had my birthday at the end of October, right? - Happy birthday. - Thank you, I love cookie cake. Like I do, like if I'm gonna have a sweet, I like the cookie, you know, chocolate chip cookie cake. And so we had cookie cake for our birthday 'cause my wife's amazing, she got it, whatever. And I was upstairs, I put the kids to bed and I was like, I'm thirsty, I'm gonna go get a glass of water or whatever, tell me why I've left. I was going to, I come back, she's like, where have you been? Whatever, I went downstairs. I was like, get it for a glass of water, I was thirsty. I look over, I see the cookie cake. I'm like, well, you know, come on, let's do it. - Let's go. - So I had a little cookie cake and some milk. But if it wasn't there, I don't have that temptation. - Yeah, that's right. - It's gone now. I actually didn't have to point out the other half. But yeah, now when I go downstairs, like the get a glass of water, like if I do that tonight, I'm not gonna have cookie cake and milk because it's not there. - That's right. - But if it's there, even me, I'm like, oh, I can have cookie cake and milk not as well. - That's right. I think that like sometimes people can think that discipline is having that stuff in the house and not consuming it. But part of discipline is not having in the house in the first place. I wholeheartedly agree with you. - Yeah, yeah, you gotta set yourself up for success, right? - Also, I got one ripped from the headlines for you. What are your thoughts? If you have any on Mexican Coke. So, there's a little bit of a political push here in Washington, D.C. That says that Coke is better with cane sugar as opposed to high fructose corn syrup. And I will tell you, since you probably haven't had a Coke in about 25 years, that it is indeed, it tastes better. Mexican Coke in a bottle is wonderful. But is there, in your mind, if somebody's gonna focus that 20%, should we care about high fructose corn syrup as a country? - I haven't seen the literature to support it. It's all bad. Hey, if you're gonna have a Coke, get the one you enjoy. But I haven't seen the literature to say that if I switch, you know, corn syrup for cane sugar, I mean, you're still getting sugar, right? It's still the same. Your body is gonna get glucose in your bloodstream. There's no real difference. So. - I wanna ask you a couple of questions about those things you're passionate about. So, like I'd like to talk gut health if that's cool. Maybe not necessarily with like specific to children. But maybe because there's like such a tendency to put kids on antibiotics, so like maybe we can talk about that. And then also blood glucose. I saw something that Skittles ranked as like the highest glucose, I don't know if I'm saying it correctly, but basically like the highest impact a pack of skittles can completely throw your blood glucose totally out to lunch. So let's start there. What exactly is blood glucose? And how does it affect you as a human being over the course of a day? - I mean, it's just a sugar in your blood, and it's a fuel force. Your brain runs off of it. You know, your body runs off of it. It's just, we kind of wanna be in this 80 to 120 range, typically. And then you'll have some spikes at your meal and get some insulin released. But if we're way high, you have something, if you go to your blood check, you know, you're A1C, right, and that's your long term. If it's continuous hot, it's like you have diabetes and that can damage blood vessels and you know, cause all these issues. But also just on a smaller scale, when we think about cognitive function, energy levels, you know, if you go really high, your body released a bunch of insulin and then you get a big crash, you kind of, what does that make you do? It might trigger you to eat more. Try to chase that high again. So tend to overeat with some talk of maybe, you know, store more body fat with that insulin release. Although, ultimately, we know with weight gain, it's mostly excess calories, right? So that's the blood glucose story. Do you think that relates to kids? So like, if I'm sending my kids out to school, is that why the phrase, you know, breakfast is most important to me all the day, whether or not that's true or not. But like, is that part of the deal? Is that we're trying to set our kids up with that blood glucose between 80 and 120 for their performance with the course of the day? - There's something to be said for, you know, a few, especially those little brands, how much they're working. And this gives back to, you know, the breakfast research where, you know, kids that had breakfast and went to school did better on tests, et cetera, compared to kids who didn't. Now, there's other factors, socio-economic and other things that you can consider. But overall, yeah, you know, those little brains are, you know, they're pulling about 20% of our total calories. And so those little brains are really working. - Is that true? Your brain pulls 20% of your total calories? - Yeah, pretty wild, huh? - Yeah. - You could chew up a lot of glucose. And so, you know, having those kids fed, so they don't get hangry is very important. - That's amazing. Well, that's cool. And then talk to me about the growing and emerging science of gut health, which I know that you have done a little bit of research on, but does that impact children at all? Or is that just something that we should all educate ourselves on as we get older? - Everybody kids, everything. I mean, you know, we look at like serotonin and like 90% of it's producing the gut. You know, you talk about neurotransmitters. There's so much interesting with the microbes and everything that goes on in the gut. Now, I will say, how much we understand it, there's a lot we don't understand. You know, we know this goes there. And that was the big takeaway. I was lucky enough to, the guy who did the MRE research, which actually I mentioned, Dr. Phil Carl, if anybody wants to look up his research and nerd out, he does a lot of the gut microbiome stuff for the military. And, you know, what I learned from him is very interesting, but we don't know a lot of things definitively. Like, okay, if you take this or that, there's certain ones, we know we're good, there's certain ones we know about. But overall, like, okay, what's the best advice? What's the actual information you can get if you're listening to this? All right, try to eat a variety of, you know, fermented foods, whether that's yogurt, whether that's sour crowd, kimchi, kombucha, you know, all those different things. Respect, like you said, like the antibiotics use, especially after you're coming off antibiotics, when you're on antibiotics, trying to get yogurt, trying to get those things in there to kind of repopulate fiber is another. 'Cause a lot of people talk about probiotics. So, probiotics are the bacteria that's, you know, in your gut, but the prebiotic is the fiber and the stuff it feeds off of, right, that's the fuel source. And so, that's where eating your vegetables, eating your fruits, whole grains, that's gonna help also with gut health. But important for kids as well, you know, my kids, I try to, we've got the little yogurt pouches and things like that to encourage that intake, 'cause I haven't sold them on sour crowd. Yeah, we get the giggles. Yeah, there's not a lot of kimchi consumed in the stickles house. I'll be honest with you. Yeah, yeah. My daughter will go for a little bit of it, but not much. So, everybody's kid is gonna go become a professional baseball player or go to the Olympics or be in the NFL. So, like, I'm sure that all three of your children will also be there as well. Mine, what should I think about as a parent with a little athlete? And then also as little athletes going through puberty. So, like, does the, I assume that, you know, obviously like them growing means that they need to not just fuel for the 24 hours, the 20% of their calories that are going towards their brain, but it also needs to, their body is physically growing. So, how do you think that affects calculus? And then also, I mean, I went and watched my youngest son's flag football game yesterday. And even before the game, the kids are sprinting at a school. They're running around like the amount of, I wanna put a GPS tracker on a seventh grader and just see what the mileage is because it's enormous. So, how do you think about nutrition with regards to fueling those young athletes, both on the field and just in the game of life? - Love it. Let me go back and just because I've recently watched some parents at a soccer game, really coached their kids really hard. And so, I do wanna point this out to the level of playing field. If you're listening to this, and you think your kid's gonna go to the next level, whatever. I want you to do this exercise for me. So, you know, my doctor, the exercise science, I've been around high-level athletes and I know what, you know, kind of make something. You ready for this? This is very scientific. Was your wife a collegiate athlete? Okay, that's one. Were you a collegiate athlete? That's two. If the answer's no to both those questions, statistically speaking, kid ain't calling playing in college. (laughing) I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry to bust your bubble. And I say that not to you bread a bit like, for some parents, because I see now that my kids are in the sports and that's great. I see some parents out there, they're coaching hard. They're not coaching the team. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking, they're coaching these kids hard. And so, hopefully we don't lose like, what athletics is for? Like I never had the idea that I was gonna be a professional football player at a wrestler. I knew my parents were. So, it was for discipline, it was for teamwork, it was for fun. So, I will say, like, please parents, if you're here in this, think about that, right? Like, think about kids probably not gonna make it to the next level. Now, if those of you, if you just answered yes, or like both of you were a Lampian or something like that, hey, let's dial 'em in, coach 'em up. - Or if you're a single tactical athlete listening to this podcast now, make sure you choose your spouse accordingly to make sure you have the highest likelihood of getting a Clemson football. Or in your case, a Georgia football player someday. - And I'll tell you a little parenting thing that we ran into about that exact same kind of situation with the story was, one of my daughter's friends, when we were, you know, in another duty station, her parents both were Olympic level athletes. And my daughter was racing this girl, and she was like, could never be, and she was so determined to try it. But, excuse me, and you know, I didn't have the heart, she's like, "Daddy, I'm gonna work hard. I'm gonna do that." And I didn't have the heart to tell her. - That's right. - You know, as a parent, you're like, maybe you're never catching her. - That's it. - There's not enough vegetables and protein that we can have as a family. - I can't afford it. - I can't, but with all that being said, yeah, you know, fueling them, giving them opportunities that eat is key, right? Like, you know, I'm sure a lot of parents, now I think we do a better job of it, at least than I did growing up, like with the water bottles. My kids don't leave a house without a water bottle. Like, whether they're going to tutoring, whether they're going to tennis, whether they're going to soccer, wherever they're going. So keep your kids with the opportunity to hydrate, 'cause up until puberty, the kids sweating, their ability to sweat versus the surface area of their body, puts them at a greater risk for heat injury, up until puberty then an adult. So that's why you really need to stay on top of them with hydration as much as possible, particularly places like Texas. - Can you say that one more time, 'cause I had never heard that before. When are you at a greater risk of. - Up until puberty, little kids. They can't, so up until puberty, kids can't really like thermoregulate as well as adults. So you really need to stay on top of them. You know, they can have a heat injury pretty quickly. So stay on top of them with that cool water, et cetera. And especially having, you know, kids, 'cause you're talking about like, you see 'em running around. If it's hot, they'll just keep going. They'll go until they fall over. So just being cognizant of that, having the cool water, cool them down, to help keep them cool. That's a good one. - What about with kids and post-workout recovery? So like if you were gonna coach a Bob Slider, I'm sure you would tell them within X amount of time of a hard workout, you're gonna get, you know, have a protein shake or some sort of recovery. Do you think about that with young athletes or do you think their bodies are so adaptable that just like the normal three meals in a snack and then focusing on hydration is enough for them to develop appropriately? - Yeah, I mean, I'm not worried about like that anabolic window with the kids. It's more, they're usually ravenous, so I'm ready for 'em. I have the snacks, I have the, because they're gonna eat something. And so whether it's to cut up fruit or what have you, I'll catch 'em after those opportunities to feed 'em. I'm not thinking about like protein synthesis, glycogenic synthesis, all like that. I'm thinking, you know, just to get 'em fueled. And to make sure that, you know, that hunger's not used for something else that isn't as good for 'em. - Yeah. - Well Nick, even before this conversation, I've talked a lot about raising kids and being a dad and what a privilege and adventure it is. Is there anything that like being a dad has taught you about your field of expertise about diet and nutrition that either was a surprise or has changed the way you think about your subject? - Yeah, I mean, it definitely has given me more like humility and empathy, right? Because as a 23-year-old, when you have no responsibility by yourself and you can work out and you can do the protein shake right after you can do all this and you can look around at other people you know, maybe you're working with as a young dietician or a young fitness professional or a young human performance in the space and you're like, what, it's easy. Why don't you just do it? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, you're like, you know what I'm talking about? Like, 'cause you have all the hours in the day like you're not at soccer games on weekends or running or events and, you know, all those factors. And so when you have that chaos introduced into your routine and I you're like, man, I gotta, you know, it's seven o'clock and I haven't worked out yet, crap. You know, I jump on the bike or what can I do? Or, you know, my daughter, she's home at 7.30 and she's got to eat, you know, crap. I just fed the boys dinner, do I heat something up? What do we, you know, and so you realize like life and then like the single mother, like, bless her heart or the single father, like single parents, like, holy smokes, man. I don't know how they do it, right? So you see how it can become a challenge. So if I'm working with an individual who's trying to lose weight or trying to do that, I have that level of empathy of like, hey, I get it. You're doing a lot, let's see where we can find that, Tom. But then on the flip side, like having kids is also, as you know, like, man, it's the greatest gift, right? You could have like, I could have a bad day, but I always had that perspective of like, hey, my kids are healthy. You know, they're good, they get all their fingers and toes like that, like, they wasn't that bad. Yeah, am I gonna freak out? - I know you do a little, my favorite O2X term is doing some research where you like basically try different things on yourself. Can you talk to me a little bit about like how as a parent, like, as a parent now, I've always like to take care of myself, I like to exercise, but now as a parent, I also want to like make sure that I'm living for as long as possible so that I can continue to see these little human beings grow up and like be a part of their lives and do all those things. And so as a parent, how have you adjusted your own health and well-being with regards to not just being the jacked army ranger that you still are, but also with regards to like longevity and continued cognitive performance, like preventing disease, all the stuff that men of our age are starting to think about. - Yeah, no, it is a little scary, right? 'Cause you know, I'm just turning 46 and I think about when I look at my peers or even folks that are from my high school, whatever, you know, there's some folks, there's some heart attacks, there's some, you know, things that's like, oh man, I'm of that age, right? So you start looking. So I've done things like a continuous glucose monitor. We talked a little bit about glucose. I was like, okay, let me see what's going on on my blood sugar. - So that's like what? - Yeah, I bet it's where it's a tricep. - Yeah, you just put it in your tricep, you can order a gut, but it's about, you know, well, they might not see this, but you know, three inches, I mean, very small, just smack it on there and then, you know, get an app on your phone and it's doing readings every so often and you're, you know, on what's going on. I wanted to nerd out on food, right? That's what I thought. I was like, oh, let me see what effects my blood glucose. And honestly, there was no surprises. Like, I didn't have skittles, but if I had something sweet or sugary, my blood glucose went out. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I had, you know, protein and fiber, or I started out with something with protein and fiber and then a carbohydrates, I had a less of a response. - Wait, explain that one more time. The order that you ate, the order you ate in that back to that plate model, the plate is quartered. The order you ate, the quarters affected your blood glucose. Is that correct? - Yes, yeah. And there's research to support this. And I've done it personally. There was another O2X person who did it. So like, if you had the, you know, the chicken rice and broccoli when my kids had last night, you start with the chicken and the broccoli and then you go to the rice, you have a more stable blood glucose release versus starting with the rice. - Interesting. So in the theory on that is the fiber probably gets bound to some of those things and causes a release. Protein also can blunt that signal as well. So, you know, another little tool to use. But for me, what was the biggest telltale kind of interesting thing was my kids were having an argument, which I'm sure note, you know, parent, your kids never have arguments. But I was like separating them and my blood glucose monitor went off. And then I got stuck in traffic the other day. Same thing, like my blood glucose monitor went off. Neither one I was freaking out externally. I was keeping it all internal. But I still, I had to not break that strength. - The dad strength, the dad. - Yeah, yeah. And so what that told me that was really great feedback was, even though I'm not yelling, I'm not cursing, I'm keeping it. My reaction is still like that, that I'm dumping so much cortisol in my blood ocean stress hormone. - Yeah. - That I'm causing like a fight or flat response. And my blood glucose is shooting up. - Interesting. - It's pretty wild, which over the course of a day, like, you know, if you have like a situation where you really need to fight or flight, great. You need to save your kids from a bear. You want that, right? - Yeah. - I want to do in that. These were like things that happen every day. So I had to look at like some of the O2X that like the box breeding and doing that to kind of like help kind of calm the center, 'cause I was just too like high strong. So that was one of the most interesting things I got out of the continuous glucose monitor was how I was handling stress was not healthy. - That's awesome. So I mean, we find that a lot. That like this podcast series we're doing five separate conversations, but just like everything at O2X, like the overlap is enormous. You can't talk about nutrition and not talk about sleep, like you said, like the foundation or the handling of stress. And that manifests itself right with stress eating or stress not eating. Like all of those things are probably natural physical responses to that fight or flight. - Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you know too, like you know, having a stroke or things like that. If you're constantly you know stressed and got to hold that at edge, like your body's not good. It's not good in long term, so. - Yeah, let's close with two things. A, give me three non-negotiables that a family should think about. Like I'm gonna go to the grocery store right now and I'm gonna meal for the week. I've got a two school-aged kids and a teenager. I'm like, what are three non-negotiables as a mom or dad in a house? Should I think about each Sunday while I'm planning out the week? - Yeah, for me and I like to keep it simple and practical. I go with this, like hopefully your kids eat broccoli but you can go with any frozen, like green vegetables. Go stock up on some frozen vegetables because why do I say that? And inevitably there's gonna be a time 'cause some people like, why not fresh? You're gonna come home, you ain't gonna have time. You need to throw it in the microwave and go. So let's go with broccoli. I like blueberries. We always keep the frozen blueberries. Same thing, I can throw those in the microwave. Now I can throw them in oatmeal. I can throw them in a breakfast cereal. I can throw it. Now I've got a fruit, I've got some color. I can add to it. And then after that, all right, what's your protein source, right, you know, Elaine? And it can be, there are some like baked chicken nuggets you can buy and things like. It doesn't always have to be just like a plain chicken breast. - Yeah. - It can have some breading on it. If your kids like it, you can find some great options. I know with it, here we have HEB, listeners might have different stores, but every store is gonna have a pretty lean breaded chicken breast you can get. But if you just wanna do the playing, do that. And then you have your basics that you can, you can kinda rotate through. - Love it. And then in the spirit of O2X and 1% sustainable, small changes that make a big difference over time. Is there anything about family nutrition, either from a dad perspective that dads should think about, mom should think about, or families or children. What's one or two, 1% changes that you think could make a big difference in somebody's life? - The biggest, and this was in the literature. And I went through it for this podcast. We're gonna kind of the pediatric literature on nutrition. And you know, it's eating together. And hey, I'm guilty of it. And my wife's called me out on it. There's been times I'm standing, and I'm eating, because I'm thinking, okay, I need to run back and do that. She's like, can you sit down and say, well, this is hell. Yes, ma'am. But you look at the research on it and it's huge, right? Because our kids, those little humans model us. Like where do they learn all their behaviors from? We hate to think of it that way, but. So if we're sitting down and we're eating a meal, and we're mindful, and they see us trying the different foods, they see the color on our plates. They want to eat it. I mean, so much so, my youngest son, you know, whatever I'm eating, he wants to eat. He wants to get on my lap and he wants to eat it. - Yeah. - And so that's really telling in that, okay, I need to model what I want them to do. And then the other piece of it, and this requires a little patience, but it's so worth it, is get them involved in the meal prep. When you can, I realize, you know, risk. But I started doing that with my daughter. And it really reed dividends in that, you know, I tell the story of like, we've had, you know, cow tongue tacos, we've had octopus. We've got my kids love octopus. They will tear up some real octopus. But why is that is we would just go to the grocery store and make an adventure. I'd be like, hey, pick something out new that we're gonna eat. And so she saw the cow tongue, and for some reason, like she wanted to eat it. I'm like, okay. - Of course. - And he honestly did. That was my first time preparing cow tongue. Like I'm not a cow tongue connoisseur, but it turned out pretty good. But yeah, so once they're invested in the selection and the preparation of the food, they'll at least try it. Now sometimes they might be like, you know, hey, that's not my thing. But a lot of times, okay, they love it. And now, you know, once you have something weird, like octopus and we've all seen octopus, and it doesn't look delicious. You know, now that they've had that and they're like, okay, that looked really, really weird. But it tasted good. You know, broccoli, brussel sprouts, whatever, they'll at least try it. - That's awesome. Well Nick, this is a super fun to talk to you as always. My favorite thing about the way you frame the subject is that you can get into the weeds and talk about the research and the studies. You and I have joked that eggs has gone back and forth about 35 times as to whether or not that eggs are good or bad, even in our lifetime. But I love how you just make it simple and practical and tactical with your heart and the right place, like taking care of those kids, and wonderful soldier, wonderful scholar, but even better family man. So thanks so much for the taking the time, my friend. It was great to talk to you. - Awesome, my pleasure, Vernon. Thank you. (upbeat music)