In this episode, Derek Berkey talks to Dr. Trevor Kashey, Ph.D., founder of Trevor Kashey Nutrition, about the power of ‘cognitive nutrition’, building healthy routines and habits, and how to structure lifestyle changes to achieve sustainable weight loss.
Trevor explains how understanding the science behind nutrition and weight loss can help clients make better dietary choices and offers practical advice on effective lifestyle modifications to promote healthy habits. Don’t miss out on this insightful conversation, as Trevor shares his unique approach to solving problems and offers valuable advice on how to start your weight loss journey today.
The Invigor Medical podcast’s mission is to provide personalized medical care through scientifically backed education and wellness solutions. The show is hosted by Derek Berkey.
TIMESTAMPS
- 01:25 – Trevor’s background and path to biochemistry and nutrition
- 12:02 – “Dad bods” and how men judge each other and themselves
- 15:09 – How Trevor helps patients solve a problem
- 17:50 – Setting goals vs solving problems, rules of nature vs laws of culture
- 24:00 – Processed foods, modified environments
- 25:23 – Regulating yourself – day-to-day vs. “exceptions”
- 32:25 – Athletes and protocols – can regular people use their methods
- 35:04 – Pre-workout chain of events that helps you stick to your workout routine
- 37:50 -How bad habits start, and replacing your bad habits
- 47:50 – Cognitive nutrition – what we think, what we believe, what you eat & why you eat it
- 49:50 – Kuchishabisii or ‘bored mouth’
- 53:00 – Biochemistry vs. environment, dopamine, cortisol, fuzzy feelings
- 56:15 – Five pillars of health
- 58:55 – Common dad bod goals and the desire to be shredded – a direction for each goal
- 1:02 – Losing a percentage of body weight, aiming for “super-medium”
- 1:05 – Focusing on what you prioritize – flexibility, strength, stamina, body fat, etc.
- 1:09 – Choosing when to die, anti-aging, longevity, lifespan, healthspan, workspan
- 1:19 – Rewarding healthy habits with healthy rewards, building routines
- 1:25 – Advice for starting – the Hawthorne effect – observing yourself, you have the skills
- 1:28 – Reach out to Trevor and let him know you heard him on The Invigor Medical Podcast
Dr. Trevor Kashey: We all sit in boxes. We sleep in a box, we get in a box with wheels. We go into a box with wings. We, like, get over yourself, man.
Derek Berkey: We look into boxes of light and talk to other people in other boxes.
Dr. Trevor Kashey: Yeah, exactly. All of them engineered to get us to do things. And, so, how about instead of doing things in somebody else’s box that they engineered to make you do stuff, you engineer your own dang box!
Welcome to the Invigor Medical Podcast where we sit down with medical professionals and discuss a full spectrum of health related subjects. It all starts in three, two, one.
Derek: Hello and welcome to the Invigor Medical Podcast. Today we have Dr. Trevor Kashey. Dr. Kashey is the founder of Trevor Kashey Nutrition.
He received his PhD in biochemistry and has put that knowledge to work over the last 15 years helping people create lasting results in their life. Dr. Kashey, welcome to the show.
Trevor: Thank you so much for welcoming me. So pleased to be here. How do you do today, my friend?
Derek: I’m doing very good. How are you doing?
Trevor: Love it. Fantastic. Wonderful day. Wonderful day.
Derek: It’s a great day.
Trevor: Love to see a smiling face, by the way. So many people welcome. So like, like yeah. Again, like even, even your sad face makes me smile. So, thank you for that. Hard to buy that.
Derek: Yeah, man. Well, hey, I did a lot of research for the show and I’m very interested to hear more about you and your story.
I read your bio a little bit and kind of got into that a little bit, but can you explain to the audience here how you got into biochemistry and how that actually led you to nutrition and to doing everything that you’re doing currently?
Trevor: Okay, I will. I will tell you about the science related stuff first. Happened very young, super young. I think if I remember correctly or what my mother remembers correctly, you know, the Human Genome Project basically ended at like the year 2000. And a lot of hype started happening around that time.
You know, Craig Venter, like all these, like, I wanna erase the government and patent the genome. This whole like, you know, civil arms race for genetic material, fun stuff happening. In any case, you know, little dude me gets a hold of this, like, they made a glow in the dark monkey. And I managed to like, sound out, like, the little dude me, like recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid. It took me like five minutes, I guess, to figure it out.
And then, it just literally started there, I think. And then, you know, fast forward a little bit, you see like little kids, especially little boys, they like, they want to be X-men for Halloween.
Right? Like, I wanna be, I wanna be Wolverine. And, you had me, like, the comic book villain in the corner going, “How did they get the metal into his bones?”
That guy, you talk to that guy. And so, that sort of, you know, started this whole deal of, like, the biology thing happened on accident, really. The glow in the dark monkey, just as a little kid. Just like, whoa. Okay. And cause they put, you know, I think, blue fluorescent pro, they put jellyfish DNA in the monkey.
Derek: Right, right.
Trevor: And so you get the idea. That got me super interested. Now, fast forward, I turn into the most annoying kid on planet Earth.
Derek: Ask a million questions. I’ve got two of those at home. One of them is talking.
Trevor: If you punish that, I will personally come over and make your life miserable. Okay? So, very good.
And, lucked out with some few mentors. Got into collegiate levels, science courses, literature. This is very early on in life. So, I got to start that very early, got into cancer research relatively young. That cancer research ended up transitioning into biophysics where, for lack of a better term, I shot lasers at green sludge and you go, what does it have to do with nutrition?
And then you realize we eat lots of green stuff, or at least some of us.
Derek: True.
Trevor: And that, you know, the green stuff has things in it good for us, but to also turn out to have use in plants and so, or algae or heliobacteria or whatever you end up shooting green lasers at.
And so, that ended up, like, in conjunction with my father coming back into my life, who, for lack of a better term, spent time in a different kind of cell than I studied. We have very little in common, and so, you know, as the sort of kid he beat up, what can we do? Yeah. We actually started lifting weights as a way to bond.
Derek: There you go.
Trevor: And so, that sort of, intersected with, like, exercise and strength training and biochemistry, like very fast, like almost immediate. Like, okay, I can do these things. I can do these things together. And, it went very fast into the nutrition realm. Spent time in nutraceuticals and did relatively well in the sport that I competed at the amateur level.
You know, had some, some reputation in that crowd. Ended up working with some athletes there and that ended up, frankly speaking, exploding into me working on the other side of the planet for working as a physiologist for the 2016 Olympics, for Rio de Janeiro.
Derek: Wow.
Trevor: Who worked with many hundreds of, like, crazy, from a bunch of different countries. Fantastic time, interesting stuff went down there. I’ll just leave the story there unless you wanna dive into it some other time. But I worked as a physiologist for many different countries, mainly based in Baku, Azerbaijan, where I spent a lot of the time, but worked, I wanna say, Mongolians, Georgians, Turkish, Syrians…
Derek: The whole gambit.
Trevor: Yes. Lots of stans. Lots of stans because they all like, they all had this sort of training pack that they had. And, that got me even gnarlier to the clinical side of nutrition cuz I ended up going the route of doing the, my Biochemistry Doctoral Degree and also pursuing the license for the Registered Dietician.
And I went through the clinical stuff for that, went through the coursework, did the rotations, et cetera. And then when I, like, read the fine print, I realized that, like, well, the license for this actually limits me more than it helps really. And so, yes,, that turns into a different conversation. But I realized because of that, I actually just, I just ignored getting the licensure and took the clinical education with me.
And after I came back from that part of the world, I settled in Florida. And cuz of, with one of the athletes that I worked with for a long time, he owned a facility there that catered to actually the exact same crowd that you cater yourself to. Or that you cater, they, whatever, whoever caters who we have lots of similarities.
Okay. Thanks. Yes. And so, there I got to work with a lot of people in person. Very different sort of situation and context outside of like the robotic athlete that must get a gold medal, or else.
Derek: Right.
Trevor: Very interesting situation, by the way. Lots of fun physiology there. But, really, it turned out that I got to have my first, man, I get emotional about this.
I got to have my first experience working with a child.
Derek: Oh, wow.
Trevor: And, even now. Very serious medical condition that, you know, I worked with a pediatrician, et cetera. We came with a plan. Basically a little while later, the little boy came back into my office, like six. He goes, “Dr. Kashey, my tummy doesn’t hurt anymore.”
Derek: Wow.
Trevor: He just like, yeah. Like, I think he was a, like, as a father, just like, I think people listening is like, what else matters in life than that?
Derek: Yeah. Taking care of, just like this…
Trevor: This child, like, his pain went away even now. Like, wow. That really just, it literally changed the direction of my life.
So, I worked a lot from working, like, with the robotic hyper elite athlete, must get gold medal or else types. To like, okay, what actually makes life worth living here?
Derek: Right.
Trevor: And so, that introduced me, really, more to what people call the general population. And, I actually really have a strong objection to that term.
I take Garrett Harden’s approach that, you know, an expert in one person makes a lay person in all others.
Derek: Right.
Trevor: And so, like, because really general population gets like it, it works. It works as a synonym for dumb people and that just sucks.
Derek: Yeah.
Trevor: So, basically I do this thing, they do that thing. I help people solve problems in that realm.
Mostly with nutrition related stuff, because before then, like, I got spoiled, frankly, by working with the hyper adherent robot types.
Derek: Right.
Trevor: And then when I got to work with like humans that have other things in their life going on, cuz I literally, like, slept in a bear. I lived with them.
Derek: Right.
Trevor: They actually offered me like a fancy penthouse or whatever. I’m like, no. I just, I lived with the soldiers and we shared beds and we ate together so I could watch everything they did. And, they live and breathe the sport.
Derek: Yeah.
Trevor: They have like religion up here and then fighting like there.
Derek: Right there.
Trevor: Yeah. And so, they get sponsored by the government. And so, everything that they have got taken care of and, just had a totally different sort of vibe from like, I want to work with this person that, you know, their kid has booboo belly, or like, I’ll just leave it at that.
Derek: Yeah.
Trevor: For the sake of our conversation. Okey?
Derek: Well, and there’s lots of situations, right? So people that are…
Trevor: Yes.
Derek: That want to lose weight or that want to get…
Trevor: Correct.
Derek: A good, they can go to the beach in the summer and not be embarrassed, you know?
Trevor: Yes, exactly correct. So I ended up learning a ton from people that had serious medical conditions that then transferred over to the, well, just for the sake of conversation, call it the general population, everybody else, and there, strictly speaking, adherence turned into a…
Where it turned into, like, I had limited communication, they had limited skills, and between us it made it look like you’re a stupid idiot who’s resistant to everything I say, because a lot of professionals act that way.
Derek: Right.
Trevor: If you go to a physician, what do they do? First? They say you did a bad thing. Like, thanks. No wonder people hate going to physicians. You get punished every time you go, like they give you bad news and then tell you to do something that hurts. I would avoid the office too.
Derek: Right.
Trevor: And so I love having an opportunity to have conversations like this because physicians in particular, they do want to help and I think they get upset for the people they work with.
And then it comes off very difficult because, like, maybe if I just educate this person, it will help, but like, let’s just, for, use the derogatory term, fat people already know to walk around the block and eat vegetables.
Derek: Right.
Trevor: So telling them 50 times before they leave will just make them hate you.
Derek: And we’ll just guilt trip them. Right?
Trevor: Exactly. Correct. Right. And so, that guilt trip I label as punishment. And what does punishment cause people to do? Avoid the situations that cause punishment and then you, that actually comes out of your pocketbook as a physician. You have those people come back fewer times.
Derek: Right.
Trevor: Cause they know when they come in you will punish them. Or guilt trip. Right?
Derek: Right. Exactly.
Trevor: So I ended up working with a lot of physicians too, as far as like, what do they call it? Bedside manner? Something silly. I just say like, why do you punish the people that pay you, like silly goose.
Derek: Yeah.
Trevor: In any case, they got me much more integrated into the behavior side of things because I realize that now, like, well, the actual biochemistry of the situation, I understand well enough, for the sake of our conversation.
And I will tell you that talking about, you know, three carbon metabolism for Suzy in the car has really done absolutely nothing to help. And even simplifying it to walking around the block and eating vegetables has done absolutely nothing. And so this comes down to what sort of context do you put yourself in so that it raises the probability of doing the things that help you.
Derek: Right.
Trevor: And so that kind of gives you like the to like how I ended up here
[00:11:12] Derek Berkey: doing what you’re currently doing, why I have the sort of philosophy
[00:11:15] Dr. Trevor Kashey: I have around like, well, what problem do you wanna solve and
[00:11:18] Derek Berkey: does it help you live a better life? You know, one point that you brought up that I kinda wanted to talk a little bit more about, you talk about the general population.
I think maybe a good way to frame that, because obviously one individual is, is so unique that it’s, it’s hard to say this is the general population, but the, the, the statistics, the average man does not exist. Right. Well, and, and you know, there, there are bell curves, but it’s like, yeah. The, the one person here has some other difference that makes them fully unique in the area.
Yeah. Literally the
[00:11:45] Dr. Trevor Kashey: average of everything going on. Does that ever
[00:11:48] Derek Berkey: happen? No. Yeah. Now, except the Idiocracy. I guess that being said, there are common, um, ideas or there are common like concerns that, that do end up happening. Right? I think one of the big ones, uh, that I wanted to talk to you about was this idea of having a dad bot.
Okay. Right. It’s so prevalent in our society at the moment and like, it’s to the point where, um, I think in a recent survey that was done to a whole bunch of women, 70% of the women said like they prefer their men to have a dad bod versus like being shredded. Okay. What I kinda wanted to hear from you is, If we look at the stats, right?
75% of American men are overweight or obese. And, and that can come with serious health repercussions. And obviously we don’t wanna like guilt trip people into like trying to like, Hey, you need to walk, you need to eat vegetables, because they’ve already heard that. But like from what I’ve seen, being able to show people the negative repercussions of like, if you continue this path, this is a bad thing that’s gonna happen.
Yes. And if you go down this other path, these are the good results that are gonna happen. So maybe can we, uh, dive into that a little bit more? They know they have a dad bo a father figure. Yes.
[00:12:52] Dr. Trevor Kashey: They know they want to look better and believe you me, I will put my, my, my brick in the wall by saying men want to look better for other men.
Men want to look shredded
[00:13:03] Derek Berkey: and men look up
[00:13:04] Dr. Trevor Kashey: to shredded men. Therefore, men want to look shredded, right? And so really, like I will say it has very little
[00:13:11] Derek Berkey: to do with women because so many other factors besides looks, determine whether or not you have a satisfactory relationship. Like so many other things.
Yeah.
[00:13:20] Dr. Trevor Kashey: And so really this has to do, in my opinion, with that with other men more than it has to do with women. So this may sound super silly and sexist, but like, do do what women think really matter here. Probably not. If we have the, if we have the argument that really men compete with other men and then women come along, even if they compete with each other for women, right.
Then it comes down to how do men determine not how women determine. And so this issue has nothing to do with women, in my opinion. Everything to do with how men judge each
[00:13:47] Derek Berkey: other. Yeah. And, and how they judge themselves. Exactly. Win. Same difference. You look in the mirror, you’re like, exactly, man, you fat sl, you need to go to the gym.
Right? Right. And, and you’re guilt tripping yourself.
[00:13:56] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Right. So if this, if this 205 pound potato walks up next to the 225 pound Greek statue. Yeah. But women, ladies, no. You shrivel dude.
[00:14:07] Derek Berkey: You shriveled. You absolutely shrivel. Right. I’ve seen it every day. So, so, so, so speaking to that, people that, that, that come to you, that, that have a dad, bo right?
They’re, they’re in decent shape and they’re like, man, I want to get to this point where, where I can look at myself in a, the mirror and be like, yeah, this is, this is where I wanna be. How would you take care of a a or help a, a person like that? Okay.
[00:14:27] Dr. Trevor Kashey: E excellent question. I, again, start, try to start every conversation as humanly possible with what problem do you wanna solve?
And so they, they come presenting with a problem. And I still like to ask it again cuz like, you, you even hinted at it like, does this really have to do with the dad thought or does it have to do with
[00:14:43] Derek Berkey: a hate looking
[00:14:44] Dr. Trevor Kashey: at myself? Right? And so that ends up really making a
[00:14:47] Derek Berkey: difference with the sort of intervention.
Well, and, and it, and another factor is like, maybe, maybe they look at the mirror and they don’t hate themselves, but they know that the long-term health repercussions are so good are, you know, gonna do this and this and this to, to not be conducive with the way they wanna go. I would say from
[00:15:01] Dr. Trevor Kashey: a success standpoint, that person, that person stays successful for longer.
Right. I would say that they take longer to reach the result that they want. They keep it for longer though. And this has to do with the sort of perfectionistic behaviors that the people have when they look in the mirror and they hate themselves, that they must change it right now or else.
[00:15:21] Derek Berkey: Right. And that can lead to body dysmorphia and on all these other kinds, all’s
[00:15:25] Dr. Trevor Kashey: interesting stuff.
Correct. And, and then you end up getting to this interesting, you know, restriction binge sort of situation where like you make one mistake and then you see like, well, let’s say you do get abs. Well then an AB goes away and then you punish yourself. And how do you punish yourself by doing all sorts of silly stuff.
A lot of it involves eating and drinking. And so then you regress even more and then you look worse and then you spiral back. And so to, to that point, I would say, Do, would I consider you behaviorally healthy enough to even get to the situation you want to go to? Because if you, like, we discussed a little bit.
If you operate outta fear, if you say, if you wake up in the morning and basically say, I want to avoid bad stuff, you’ll find bad stuff everywhere you, everywhere you look, you will find a bad thing to avoid and what does that mean? Right? Maybe end up hiding in the corner, doing nothing. Yeah. And so this whole idea of the dad bo and hating yourself and looking in the mirror, et cetera, like the, well, we’ll just call it the intentions, like where do you get the reward from?
If you feel okay with yourself, well then that puts you in a better position to like, I can make myself better. And that dives into the difference that, that maybe we talked about a little bit already of like solving a problem versus reaching a goal. Right. And I consider that a semantic difference. And if you do too, great.
I use it as a, as a
[00:16:40] Derek Berkey: framing sort of coaching technique. I actually read that, uh, blog post before, before I, uh, came into this. Got it. So I, I really like that approach. Before, before the audience, I haven’t read it yet. Can you, can you kind of dive into the difference between Yes. Setting goals and solving problems?
Yeah.
[00:16:54] Dr. Trevor Kashey: So I, I will tell you that they look the same. Okay. Whatever. I would say that from a, from a behavior standpoint, I look at it in the context of like positive and negative reinforcement. The end result might look the
[00:17:07] Derek Berkey: same, although it happens on the inside, differs a lot. One of the things I would actually argue as well is, and this is, this goes back to like how we are wired as people.
Yeah. Is our dopamine system is very much like if you set a goal for yourself of like, this is the destination of going, you arrive at that goal and your dopamine crashes. It’s just like flat lines. And so, and then at that point you have to find yourself another goal and you have to like climb. You have to like almost start from zero and climb yourself back up again.
Yes.
[00:17:33] Dr. Trevor Kashey: And at the same time, putting, putting some common sense that I would say if you have motivation to do a thing and you do it, why would you stay motivated to do it? Right. I got to this place, why would I stay motivated like I’ve already gotten here, how do I get to here again?
[00:17:47] Derek Berkey: Yeah. And so it, I
[00:17:48] Dr. Trevor Kashey: would say just from a common sense standpoint, I would say the programming too.
Well you did the thing, I will now retract the directions, the instructions to do the thing That makes a lot of sense. And it happens in mice just as much as it happens in men. If you set a goal for a mouse, if the mouse has a mouse conversation with itself and it does a thing, well, it actually, the behavior that behavior slows down depending on how you end up rewarding the behavior.
So the curve, the, the speed of the behavior ends up making like a scalloped sort of thing, which in humans it looks like, man, I
[00:18:18] Derek Berkey: did a big thing now I’ll take a break. Right. But mice do it too. So
[00:18:21] Dr. Trevor Kashey: that actually exists as like a lawful sort of behavior. I find that interesting because we like to talk about humans acting so fancy, but like the mouse does it too.
So does the mouse set a goal
[00:18:32] Derek Berkey: or is it, or is, or does the mouse just want the cheese at the end of the maze? Does it want anything?
[00:18:36] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Right. And so it, it asks an interesting question of the nature of why we do things because it makes it, since we have language, it makes it easy to, to put intentionality into things.
Yeah. Like, because you set a goal. Now this happened, but it also happens in mice. So does that mean mic set goals? And if not, well that makes more sense from an evolutionary standpoint for us to operate closer to
[00:18:56] Derek Berkey: them. Yeah. In my opinion, so biologically. Yeah. And, and Correct. We’ve got a cortex and so we can like do a lot of prefrontal lobe things that, that mice can’t do.
Right.
[00:19:05] Dr. Trevor Kashey: And so, well that’s the same question again. If you subtract language, does this still happen? Yes. Yeah. And can you set goals minus language?
[00:19:14] Derek Berkey: I would argue not. Well, so that then, and that’s kind of a good question. Like, you know, can you, can you, uh, draw a picture of a mammoth and, and, and your hunting squad going and killing the mammoth for food, does that constitute a goal?
Does that constitute language? Is that Well,
[00:19:27] Dr. Trevor Kashey: exactly. And so, so that, like before we get too far into the
[00:19:29] Derek Berkey: philosophy, now we’re getting into the weeds. Yeah.
[00:19:32] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Well, I, I will finish with this. And I think people often confuse the rules of culture and the laws of nature. And so because we can
[00:19:38] Derek Berkey: explain it with language that makes it look like language caused it.
Yeah. And
[00:19:42] Dr. Trevor Kashey: so I, I’ll leave it there, but I’d love to look at animal models for analogous behaviors because that makes the intervention of the behavior to help change it.
[00:19:50] Derek Berkey: More applicable. Yeah. Because Myas
[00:19:52] Dr. Trevor Kashey: operate in simpler systems than we do, but if, if in this situation we act like a mouse, well then let’s start there first.
So otherwise you get into this weird philosophy talking stuff, and it gets way over complicated and then nobody gets anywhere. So, uh, again, we got a little bit into the weeds, but basically like, do you do this because you wanna get away from a bad thing or do you do this because you wanna go towards a good thing?
Yeah. And the solving a problem operates with the person who, who primarily lives to get away from bad stuff. They have problems they wanna solve. Okay. Yeah. Now, in that, in that sort of context, I operate with the theory of constraints. Like, let’s look at the lowest hanging fruit here. And see what limits you from doing the thing you wanna do or more.
In a lot of instances we get into this circular sort of, because of our amazing way with language, we give ourselves instructions to do silly things. How do you structure your own language and tell yourself to do silly stuff? And a lot of times, so I call it like you hit the brake and you hit the gas at the same time.
And a lot of people in the situation kinda operate that way. Like they rev the engine.
[00:20:58] Derek Berkey: Right.
[00:20:59] Dr. Trevor Kashey: And you can also call that anxiety. Yeah. Okay. And so now the problem solving approach, I aim to help a person take their foot off the brink so the person with the dad ball that hates him, hates himself. If that person can feel okay looking in the mirror, like legit, well now they can set a
[00:21:15] Derek Berkey: goal to make themselves better.
Right. They can get their break because,
[00:21:18] Dr. Trevor Kashey: cause like we’ve, we’ve taken them out of the frame of like, I, I have to not hate myself versus, okay, I can do better. Let’s do better. Yeah. And that, that frame allows you, allows them to appreciate the sort of progress they make. And then, uh, and helps them retain the sort of progress they make with any sort of intervention, whether nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, behavioral, nutritional,
[00:21:43] Derek Berkey: whatever, whatever it be.
[00:21:44] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Yeah. Yeah. And because like as soon as they start to regress in some way, that perfectionistic behavior starts to come back and we relapse and et cetera. So the, the idea that like, I will get punished if I do the wrong thing. Well, we punish
[00:22:00] Derek Berkey: ourselves. Yeah. Well, although, you know, I’m, I’m thinking, I’m thinking to a certain degree we do punish ourselves and it’s almost like if we’re, if we’re looking at the analogy of like the mouse, sure.
The mouse wants the cheese at the end of the tunnel, but what the mouses and know is that it’s an artificial environment. Scientists have set up with little trapped doors and shockers and all these things that are going on. Yeah. To, to extend that analogy to us, we live in a society where the food that you can go buy at the grocery store, which arguably is a food, is it?
Or is it a food substitute? Right. Is like loaded with high. I look at molecules, man, all the same to me. Yeah, well, true, true. Uh, but you know, you’ve got, you’ve got things like, uh, just like things that are so full of all these chemicals and hights, corn syrup and all these things, all the, all the being so processed.
Yeah. And so like, so hyper palatable. It seems like, you know, we could be trying our very best and if you don’t have the resources or don’t have the knowledge, You could be just like running on a treadmill and not going anywhere at all. Yes. You make an absolutely fantastic
[00:22:58] Dr. Trevor Kashey: point to which I reply
[00:22:59] Derek Berkey: with skills matter.
Yeah. Yes. And you also make another amazing point that
[00:23:04] Dr. Trevor Kashey: like, well, you can put the mouse into Skinner box and control the environment however you want. What also turns out you can make your own Skinner box. You sit in a room with padded walls, the electrical wires everywhere, talking to this weird guy through a box.
[00:23:16] Derek Berkey: You’ve, you have modified your
[00:23:17] Dr. Trevor Kashey: environment so that it makes this thing you
[00:23:20] Derek Berkey: want easier to do. Right. And so
[00:23:23] Dr. Trevor Kashey: speaking with people to understand that frame, I mean, you guys spent like 15 minutes partnering around to get things perfect. Yeah. And so if you can do it for that, then you can also do it for this.
And so I say that less of a, as a jab and more is like you already have the capacity to do the things you wanna do when you want to do them. It just comes down to having a strategy to modify your environment, to raise the probability you get the result you
[00:23:47] Derek Berkey: want. Exactly. And that also in and of itself takes skills.
So, so one thing that, that, uh, and I’ve talked about this on the podcast before and I’d be interested to hear your opinion about this, is, uh, um, for me, the way that I kind of modify my environment is through intermittent fasting. Right. Okay. For me, it’s, it’s a lot easier to say, I’m not going to eat except for when I’m at home.
I’m not gonna eat at work. And, uh, that prevents me from like, snacking on things I shouldn’t snack on. That, uh, allows me to then be able to spend the money that I would’ve spent on breakfast and lunch and put all, allocate all those resources into very high quality ingredients and nutrients when I, when I get home to eat.
And so, like, are there any other modalities or, or tools like that, behavioral tools that you’ve seen have really helped a lot of people? Change their environment to the point where like they can make an effective change in their own life. So you make an excellent, I like the, I like the rule that you created for yourself.
That you, you
[00:24:39] Dr. Trevor Kashey: only in this place. Yeah. And so we could use a fancy
[00:24:41] Derek Berkey: term for that called stimulus discrimination. It means that
[00:24:45] Dr. Trevor Kashey: this something in your house when you walk in, combined with
[00:24:49] Derek Berkey: the time of day raises the probability you do food eating stuff. Right. And if you do that enough times,
[00:24:55] Dr. Trevor Kashey: then it raises the, each time it raises the
[00:24:57] Derek Berkey: probability you do it again.
Because food rewards the thing that does that happens just before it. Right, exactly.
[00:25:01] Dr. Trevor Kashey: So this sort of situation, I start like ground zero. I actually have a person keep track of what they already do. And that does a couple of different things. One, it makes a
[00:25:12] Derek Berkey: person aware what they do. Two, it gets me data.
Right. And three,
[00:25:17] Dr. Trevor Kashey: we can take advantage of observer and or Hawthorne effects. In other words, like I think the strongest behavioral tool for the person with limited skills comes down to what did you do today? And then keeping track and going, whoa, I
[00:25:31] Derek Berkey: did a dumb thing. Maybe I could do a smart thing next time.
Don’t we all? Well,
[00:25:37] Dr. Trevor Kashey: you only know, I mean, people have a general, I they have a general, I like I could do better. Right. And I, I, I said that in a mocking tone, but I really like people, people know.
[00:25:46] Derek Berkey: Right. And I get irritated for them. Yeah. You know, and
[00:25:49] Dr. Trevor Kashey: so by really like putting pen to paper, what did I do? And when did I do it?
Where did I do it? And when you have those things, then you could go, oh, I could change the before. I could change the during and I can change the after. I can modify the environment to raise the probability. So for a lot of people, I say, what do you do right now? And, and frankly, for most people, they do just fine.
Things get out of whack when their normal environment changes. So now you probably do fine day to day,
[00:26:17] Derek Berkey: but maybe you operate different if you travel. Yeah. Right. Cause of the the, the variables change. Yeah. Correctamundo. And
[00:26:23] Dr. Trevor Kashey: so now I know that you have the skill to eat in a specific time, in a specific place, but if you change the context, do the stimuli generalize?
And most times no. Right. And so people do just fine day to day, but then they go to a friend’s house, then they have the holidays and they have all these other things happen that interrupt. So I would say by and large people do a fantastic job food-wise, of regulating their own behavior on a day-to-day basis because of the way our culture operates, I would say arbitrarily, once every 10
[00:26:50] Derek Berkey: days, something changes the environment someone brings lunch to.
Right. That one day to work. Yeah.
[00:26:56] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Right. And so when you look at a graph, it shows like, look, I, you eat 50 calories a day extra on it. Like no, you have like one big bloop once in a while where it sticks right. Multiply that about 500 times and now you look at, you look like Michelin man. You get your dad bought.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so understanding that on a day-to-day basis, you probably do okay. Things get weird when the environment changes. And so keeping track of what you do on a day-to-day basis shows you like, okay, I regulate myself. Okay. And these conditions, when these conditions occur, I do different stuff.
That hurts me. Yeah. And showing that
[00:27:30] Derek Berkey: discrepancy helps. How do you help people or coach people be able to anticipate those and like, uh, create contingency plans? Oh, actually very, and I like
[00:27:39] Dr. Trevor Kashey: the term contingency plan. My favorite way, my absolute favorite way. Like I, I’ll just go back to like the, the scientist in a box.
Like people say it sort of a derogatory way, like the mouse in the box, but like we all sit in box. We sleep in a box, we get in a box with wheels, we go into a a box with wings. We go like give you, like get over
[00:27:57] Derek Berkey: yourself, man. We look into boxes of light and talk to other people in other boxes. Yeah, exactly.
All of them engineered to get
[00:28:04] Dr. Trevor Kashey: us to do things. Yeah. And so how about instead of doing, doing things in somebody else’s box that they engineered to make you do stuff, you engineer your own dang box. So in this context, we look at, well, we know in this situation things act goofy. So let’s create the situation on purpose.
Now, having artificial environments the box so that you can practice race is a probability. You do the right thing at the right time. I love to give the example of little kids in fire drills. Now if you ring the, you know, you wait a few minutes, all little kids run outside and stand in line. Now if an actual fire happens and the fire alarm goes off, And you raise and you turn on the fire alarm, you raise the probability of the little kids go, cannot sign.
And so the idea of practice, of practicing these things to a lot of people sound silly, but anybody who has ever gotten good at anything has turned it into a skill and figured out a way to structure an artificial environment to practice and get feedback. Right? Like anybody good at anything, surgeons, you think they’re just like, no, I don’t need practice.
Let me get right in there, drill them. No, they literally spend years of supervision. Fake stuff, real
[00:29:06] Derek Berkey: stuff. Animals getting things signed off on. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
[00:29:10] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Correct. Pilots, military, they all have extreme levels of artificial environments so that they can do the right thing in the real world.
And those people do good at the things they do. So I take the position if you wanna do good at a thing, you structure an environment so that you can get feedback on what you do in a regular, quick and useful way so that when the situation presents itself, you can do the right thing at the right time.
And so this might mean like, Maybe you have issues eating out at restaurants. Maybe that means instead of going with a bunch of friends, you go to that same restaurant with me, knowing that you have issues at restaurants and now we can have a conversation like this. You can regulate your behavior because we both know what happens and we do it on purpose.
You get a win. If you’ve subscribed to Al Bandura, you’ve built self-efficacy, you’ve got evidence,
[00:30:01] Derek Berkey: you can do the right thing. Right.
[00:30:02] Dr. Trevor Kashey: It’s a good thing. And do that enough times. Maybe next time we bring another person and then we do approximations. Now you can make it as complicated as you want, but really comes down to if I respect that, I can regulate myself in my own bubble and I act weird outside my bubble.
What about my outside bubble causes me to act weird? And how do I bring
[00:30:19] Derek Berkey: some of that in my bubble? And expand your Yeah, expand your influence. Exactly. Correct. Also known as learning stuff. Yep. You mentioned that you worked with very high level athletes. How have you seen these high level athletes that competed at like the Olympic levels?
How do they implement thing? Uh, these types of protocols? They live the protocol. Yeah. They’re robots, right? Exactly. Correct. Like
[00:30:41] Dr. Trevor Kashey: in the, in the environment they have like a command line prompt, like an old dos computer
[00:30:45] Derek Berkey: with a cursor, like input command. Right. Okay. Some of them anyway. So I guess maybe a better question is then yeah, like how can we, how can we take some of what they do and like translate it to the general public or Right.
Yeah. Or just something that’s a little bit more easily, uh, adhered to for, for yes. For that audience.
[00:31:01] Dr. Trevor Kashey: So that kinda happens on a case by case basis, but I still start with like, let’s take a week or so and just keep track of what you do and you’ll see I do well here. I get weird there. And then we can hone in on those areas.
You do weird and see, let’s do those things on purpose. What a specific sort of objective in mind and know that we can tone it down and get some success. Hmm. So I think I, I, I mean if, if I gave a bad example telling me, but I would say like the restaurant situation I think presents a good sort of example.
Yeah. If I overdo it at restaurants, Especially with friends, I might go to a restaurant on purpose with a supportive friend that helps
[00:31:38] Derek Berkey: me regulate what I eat at a restaurant and coaches you and really says like that. Exactly. Correct. Let, let’s think about what you just ordered there, right? Right. This, you ordered the nachos with the, with the extra nacho cheese.
Let’s, let’s think about what that says to your arteries, right. And,
[00:31:49] Dr. Trevor Kashey: and, and understanding that you have an artificial environment. Yeah. That raises the probability, again, like each time you consider like a learning point, you know, that you stick in the right area versus like, I have a plan. I’ll go in and I’ll use my willpower, whatever people say
[00:32:04] Derek Berkey: Yeah.
To
[00:32:05] Dr. Trevor Kashey: like do the right, but like really if you, I consider things skills,
[00:32:09] Derek Berkey: like I learned to do
[00:32:10] Dr. Trevor Kashey: this, you learned to eat this way with other people. You learn to eat this way when you travel. And if you learn one way, then you can
[00:32:17] Derek Berkey: learn another. Right. And then at that point it’s just about repetition. Exactly.
Correct. Now you may have
[00:32:22] Dr. Trevor Kashey: learned on accident. Right. And I would then I just argue, okay, we can learn on purpose. And so I think looking at this from a, like in the context of skills, like you have skills at home, do you have skills in a foreign country? Probably not. Like you would learn the language. So I see that as a similar like, oh, I, I, I can, I learn to eat here, so I can also learn to eat there.
I can learn to exercise here, I learn to exercise there. And that just comes from generalizing, like figuring out what in your home environment raises the probability of exercise. And for that reason, I like things like dietary supplements. You can create a chain that sort of gives you momentum. For instance, you’ve probably heard
[00:33:01] Derek Berkey: of like pre-workouts, right?
[00:33:03] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Okay. Now pre-workouts have stimulants and all sorts of other crazy stuff in them. But let’s just take the idea of a pre-workout minus the ingredients for a second. If you take a pre-workout, it raises the probability you will exercise. Right? And from that alone, pre-workouts good, right? Even if you just fill the whole thing with,
[00:33:20] Derek Berkey: with whatever, packing peanuts or whatever.
Okay.
[00:33:24] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Because you have this as a sort of like, Discriminating sim, like a dis, like a stimulus to exercise, then it helps you, right? Even for integrating the supplement into your day, I would consider immensely beneficial, whether it
[00:33:38] Derek Berkey: has a pharmaceutical effect or not. So it’s funny that you bring that up, uh, because there’s something that else that I do personally where, so I have two kids and they wake up very early.
They usually up by six o’clock. Okay. And my wife doesn’t like having to deal with them by, by herself, right? So what I do is I wake up at about four o’clock every morning to go work out. And I don’t know if you’re an early riser and, and I’m sure you’ve met many people that are early risers, it’s can be difficult to get up and going.
And so I have an alarm on my phone and in order to turn it off, I have to take a. Picture of the barcode on the pre-workout. And so I’m, I’m awake at four o’clock, like grog is all hell, right? And I’m looking at this pre-workout, I’m like, oh, okay, great. I guess I, and you know, of course the night before I set up my clothes right next to where the pre-workout get put up.
Exactly. Correct. Yes. I’m looking at it and I’m like, I guess I need to go workout all, drink it. And I’m all jittery and I’m like, okay, let’s go to the gym. And I, and I knock it out. Yeah. Yes. And I
[00:34:31] Dr. Trevor Kashey: love it. And, and the, you, you bring up the language aspect of this, where you give yourself directions. Although if you do that with a mouse, it will still happen.
Right. And so for that reason, I find it super valuable that what you do, I would consider lawful. Yeah. Like you use
[00:34:45] Derek Berkey: scientific
[00:34:46] Dr. Trevor Kashey: principles to raise the probability you help
[00:34:48] Derek Berkey: yourself. And that makes me feel good. Well, and it takes willpower out of it. Right? I don’t, I don’t have to think about it anymore. I just, my, my, my phone makes a really loud annoying noise that if I don’t turn it off, it’ll wake my wife up and she’ll kill me.
Absolutely. Right? Absolutely. Yes. And then I, and then I go put stimulants in my body and I go work my heart and do very good what I need to do. Yeah. Yep. So for me, I actually put my, I put my alarm in the other room. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I have to get up and I put it, I put on the toilet.
[00:35:13] Dr. Trevor Kashey: So like, I basically have
[00:35:14] Derek Berkey: to go into the bathroom to pee to get my alarm.
Exactly. And then that ends up starting the cycle of the day. Yep. And so, very good. Yeah. Love it. So proud of you, by the way. Thanks. Like for real though. Like, yeah. Yeah. I think right now we’ve, we’ve kind of, uh, delved a little bit out of the, the commentary of nutrition. And we’re talking, kind of talking more about behavioral protocols.
Yes. And like, and the habits and, and the building up of those habits. Can we maybe talk a little bit more about like, how do these bad habits. You know, we, we kind of talked about the idea of like, if, if you don’t intentionally create your habits, you are, you’re gonna learn something and you’re gonna do something very good.
Yes. Can, can we talk about like, how do these bad dietary habits come up in the first place and what can we do to now like, intentionally, like think about, okay, I, I, I go to McDonald’s every day, I need to replace this with X, but like, how do we actually do that? Okay. So you, you bring up a very, very good point.
I, I think of Nche says something like, if, you know, you, you don’t govern your govern yourself, somebody else will. Yep. Uh, very sort of similar situation where I, I will say that
[00:36:18] Dr. Trevor Kashey: I think your, your question leads to an interesting
[00:36:21] Derek Berkey: place about like
[00:36:21] Dr. Trevor Kashey: what causes this and to some degree, I actually, again, I think I coined the phrase, but if you found it somewhere else, please show me the information.
I call it the root cause fallacy. Okay. Basically, I think for intelligent people, for sure, that wanting to know the cause of something ends up distracting them from solving the problem. Like, if I know what caused this, then the
[00:36:42] Derek Berkey: problem will solve itself basically. Yeah.
[00:36:44] Dr. Trevor Kashey: And really I maintain that what solves a problem differs from what maintains it.
And so for me, really what solves a problem happened way, way. What, what started a problem happened way long ago. Like, can you do anything about way long ago? Not really right now. Something today raised the probability. If you’re going to
[00:37:01] Derek Berkey: McDonald’s, we can look at that. Yeah. And so just to,
[00:37:04] Dr. Trevor Kashey: to give a frame shift here.
Like do I co, do I really personally care what caused you to start liking McDonald’s? Not really. Does it really help us? I think not, not on purpose anyway. Maybe on accident. Yeah. And so now it might mean, for instance, if we look at this as a chain, you can do something as simple as taking a different route home.
And so really on the way driving you, you, you have these, you have these cues, right? You’ve automated this like, okay, golden arches. Why do you, you think you have these giant golden arches? Yeah. Well if you took a different route, even if a little bit longer before you start substituting, if you go a different way, it lowers the probability you do the thing.
But that also means that you can reward yourself with wholesome healthy food and you get home, right? And so now you end up doing a, you end up doing a, I’ll say funny word, blockchain. You end up basically cutting, you cut the head off, right? Like if you, if you look at this, I also like to make the joke of like, people think they have a binge at night problem, but maybe you have a cabinet opening problem.
Yeah. So that sort of vibe here that like, if you could modify it just a little bit, go a different route home, and then you can, you can set yourself up for success that way by changing the environments a little bit. Does that, something like that follow Yeah.
[00:38:14] Derek Berkey: That’s just like a sort of knee jerk sort of
thing
[00:38:16] Derek Berkey: to do.
No, I, I, I think that this touches into something that I’ve read a lot about where it’s kind of like the most powerful habits that you can build are, are not, they’re, they’re not like the massive accomplishments. Like if you do one massive accomplishment, it takes up a ton of energy and effort and it doesn’t really stick.
Whereas if you really just hone in and focus in on the micro habits of like, okay, you, you don’t need to like, Kill yourself that if you don’t complete a full workout, like you don’t have to go crazy, but all you have to do is you gotta get your gym clothes on and you gotta get to the gym. Right. As long as you walk through that gym, let’s say you don’t even work out, but as long as you walk through that gym Exactly.
Correct. You are establishing the habit of like, I am here and I am, I am ingraining this habit even deeper. Yes. And eventually I’ll turn into it. I may as well do something. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And I might as well do something that’s actually useful for me. Yes, exactly. Correct. And you
[00:39:06] Dr. Trevor Kashey: have, you have like 100% hit the nail on the head.
And I will say in situations like that, working out with people, doing all these other things really helps. Like from the, from the nutrition side. I agree with the hyper
[00:39:16] Derek Berkey: palatable food it does. I mean, it tastes better. You, you have a higher probability of something that tastes better than you do with something that tastes worse.
So like one, one big thing that I like personally, uh, that I am a huge proponent of is people cooking meals at home. And, and yeah, obviously it’s, that’s a skill. Like you have to learn how to do that. Absolutely. But I’ve spent the, you know, I, I actually spent a whole year specifically dedicated to learning how to cook meat and steak and barbecue and all that kinda thing.
And then I spent the last year learning how to make bread from scratching and all that. And so I’ve got some sourdough starting right now. I mean, you talk to a biochemist man for Yeah. You wanna talk about all the, all the little microbiota down there. It’s, it’s, it’s so much fun. You love it. And just like, Like sourdough from different places taste different cuz you have different foodies.
It’s awesome, dude. I feel like we could just like jam out about sourdough for, for a couple hours. We do. Yes.
[00:40:05] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Absolutely. I I love it. I absolutely
[00:40:07] Derek Berkey: love it. All, all that being said, um, you know, like there’s a lot of controversy about how, you know, hyper palatability and how the food industry uses things like, like M s G, uh, monso.
You can glutamate. And so what I do is for my own kids is I actually, I put M s G in my own food, right? Because if you actually look at the studies, there’s like no scientific data actually backing up that like, MSSG is bad for you. Glutamate for things. Oh. For all kinds of things. And so, but my, my logic behind it is, is like if my kids love my food, then I know that the food that they’re, that they’re wanting to eat is healthy.
And so I’m using those mechanisms that the food industry is essentially weaponizing against us. Defending my kids from, from whatever, you know, the crap that they wanna put into. I love that you said weaponizing against us because I actually, I put the onus on the consumer, like if consumers bought like
[00:40:55] Dr. Trevor Kashey: in, in so far as like it looks like
[00:40:59] Derek Berkey: they do it to, to do things to us.
Yeah. But
[00:41:02] Dr. Trevor Kashey: really like, If nobody
[00:41:04] Derek Berkey: bought it, would they make it? But it’s kinda like a chicken and egg thing where it’s like, like would they buy it if the M mssg wasn’t in it? And then it might be No, and then no, it just goes, you have to buy it first. Right. I mean, true. Well, I mean,
[00:41:14] Dr. Trevor Kashey: like, so I, I understand what you mean, but basically like the, the media has gotten crazy because people watch crazy media, right?
[00:41:22] Derek Berkey: Yeah. And so I agree that they feed on each other. Yeah. I also think that like, if people had a problem with it, would ha would it have succeeded?
[00:41:29] Dr. Trevor Kashey: And so like more, I more bring this up because I think, I think fault and intention
[00:41:35] Derek Berkey: confuses the intervention. Yeah. I should write that down because it might, you should.
Yeah. Made that up. Put it on the front page of your website, making
[00:41:43] Dr. Trevor Kashey: them bad guys. Like does that really help anything? No. It just makes you hate more people. Just hating more people
[00:41:48] Derek Berkey: help anybody. I would argue not, I guess, but it, it’s not necessarily about hating, but it’s like trying to identify the world as that actually exist.
Are, do you think that there are actually food CEOs that are out there that basically wanna monetize, uh, someone’s addiction to Doritos that are like, these are so good? Yeah, absolutely. Now
[00:42:07] Dr. Trevor Kashey: do I think the person on the factory,
[00:42:09] Derek Berkey: do they want to do that? No. Yeah, they, no, they, they’re just doing the job by, if you take swings at an organization, you take swings at the people feeding their families.
That’s true. That’s true, frankly. And so, like, again, we agree and so we just agree with different words.
[00:42:22] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Yeah. And by like, do I agree that’s corporate CEOs to get up on buildings doing corporatey CEO things? Absolutely. Like do I think the ground level worker doing the work, does that stuff? Not
[00:42:34] Derek Berkey: really. Yeah, not really.
So I would say
[00:42:37] Dr. Trevor Kashey: that, Maybe you, you call out the c e o
[00:42:40] Derek Berkey: by name.
Oh man. Or whoever made the decision to put MG Food,
[00:42:48] Dr. Trevor Kashey: like how many farmers exist because CocaCola, because Coca-Cola supports them. Yeah. You know, so I, I like So from a public health standpoint, very much
[00:42:56] Derek Berkey: from a private health standpoint, by the way. Yeah.
[00:42:58] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Very different that I agree that from a private health standpoint, gnarly.
Yeah. Add whatever, you know, negative term you want to use from a public health standpoint, it asks a different question because if we look at like dietary recommendations for the individual person, that gets easy. And then I ask the question, can you multiply that by 10 billion? If not, then why even bother making the
[00:43:20] Derek Berkey: recommendation?
And that the discussion Yeah. That it it to to, to try and average out. This goes back to our whole bell curve thing of the general public. How do you make good recommendations? Well,
[00:43:31] Dr. Trevor Kashey: and frankly, the government has done an OK job. People just
[00:43:34] Derek Berkey: hate the government because government, right? Yeah. Frankly. But really, like I read the research
[00:43:39] Dr. Trevor Kashey: that they provided to create the guidelines and so like, it does it, like it does an okay job given the circumstances.
And when you look at it in context, like everybody should eat, you know, you know the dried up kale and the beat and all like, yeah, I think that stuff would kill it. That like, I mean
[00:43:57] Derek Berkey: the opposite of kill it, make it live. Right. Right. Exactly. Multiply
[00:44:00] Dr. Trevor Kashey: it by 500 million. Does it fly? If not, then like I think it would help if we had another conversation about
[00:44:08] Derek Berkey: recommendations.
Right? Definitely.
[00:44:10] Dr. Trevor Kashey: So I tried to take both sides here. We’re like, okay, if you got five grand a month to spend on crazy food and blood tests and all this other stuff, we can go ham. Right? Hard as mfs. Like we do whatever you want. I also care about this person who like what about, how do I work with a person that has to survive on snap?
[00:44:28] Derek Berkey: Yeah. Interesting. And different conversation.
[00:44:30] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Definitely. And so if I can help a person that survives on government cheese literally, and they can have amazing results, well then it behooves me to then That makes sense. Because I think that
[00:44:42] Derek Berkey: would scale on a relative basis. Right?
[00:44:44] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Versus like telling this person, they have to get, they have to get the organic kale, the grass-fed steak, the, all these interesting things that I do think have their own benefit.
That, that, that sets that person up to lose. Right.
[00:44:57] Derek Berkey: And we have more of those people, my friend. Yeah, we do. There there is a good handful. Yeah, exactly. Correct. Yeah. So, uh, a question that kind of connects to this, I think, and I, I’d be curious cuz I, I, uh, saw it on your site and I was curious to hear what your thoughts are more on and expound on it.
Um, you talk about cognitive nutrition, how exactly does it, does it work?
[00:45:18] Dr. Trevor Kashey: So, excellent question. So obviously, you know, I have this behavioral ilk. Mm-hmm. Okay. I have this, this ilk of behavior because the skills that I learned in the laboratory, good luck translating them to everyday life. Okay. And I have to scratch my science edge somehow.
So this allows me to do sciencey things, although I digress a little bit. But really the cognitive part of things has to do with the fact that a lot of my coaching,
[00:45:40] Derek Berkey: a lot of the things I do, a lot
[00:45:42] Dr. Trevor Kashey: of the things coaches do, the work that they do only works if they do it outside of the office. Okay. So really the cognitive side of things.
C you can make it synonymous with like verbal. And so cognitive really means like, what?
[00:45:57] Derek Berkey: Right? What do you
[00:45:57] Dr. Trevor Kashey: think? What do you believe? And so
[00:45:59] Derek Berkey: I I, I think that we talk to
[00:46:02] Dr. Trevor Kashey: ourselves and that we tell ourselves to do thing. Well, I may as well
[00:46:05] Derek Berkey: work out even said it right? Right. You might have done it covertly, but you literally told yourself to do a thing.
Yeah. And you did it
[00:46:14] Dr. Trevor Kashey: right. And so I take the position that, you might call it cognitive restructuring. What other sort of, you know, fancy sort of term you want to use? It basically means people give themselves directions to do things either implicit or explicit. And if you bring the instructions that you give yourself out into the open and look at them and go, did I give myself good instructions there?
Maybe yes, maybe no. And so the cognitive nutrition aspects of things really has to do with less with what you eat and more with how you eat. Yeah. And,
[00:46:46] Derek Berkey: and, and why you eat it. Yeah, definitely. You know, so there’s a, um, this is something that, uh, Andrew Huberman on the Huberman Live podcast talking about Okay.
With one of his guests. I, I forget her name, and I, I feel bad about that. But essentially the, the concept that got brought up is like, point of view or like the paradigm that you have with food. You know, if you, if you view food is like this healthy thing that you need to eat because it’s good for you, and it’s kind of like Yeah.
Whatever you, the, the adherence to actually eating that goes down. Whereas if you view it as like, let’s say that, you know, beans are generally mm-hmm. Fairly healthy and good for your guys. Sure. Lot of different things. Yeah. If you view like. Eating a really good homemade hummus is like this luxurious experience.
It’s something that’s like, Ooh, I get, I get to eat this. This is so great. Yeah. And, and if you’re able to essentially convince yourself and get yourself in that right mindset, then all of a sudden you are looking forward to, and, and, and really reframing like, I want to do this. Like I’m excited to go and eat my vegetables.
And so, and then all of a sudden it doesn’t become the doctor shaming in you to say like, eat your damn vegetables. It’s more of like, I want to eat these vegetables cuz man, like when I cook ’em this way, it just tastes so good. You know? And I, I wanna really get more of that. Yes. A legitimate skill and also a sort of chicken egg issue because people who
[00:47:57] Dr. Trevor Kashey: do regulate their eating behaviors, well operate
[00:48:00] Derek Berkey: that way.
Right. And so then it, then it raises the
[00:48:02] Dr. Trevor Kashey: question of like, what raises the probability you do that? Because frankly, a lot of people would just end up lying to themselves and that
[00:48:08] Derek Berkey: causes its own set of. Yeah.
[00:48:10] Dr. Trevor Kashey: You said the term convince yourself. Well, technically speaking, does that happen? I think it creates an ironic process.
True. Where you lie to
[00:48:17] Derek Berkey: yourself, then you ask, did I lie to myself? Then you say yes. And so like that’s where like skill learning of like learning how to cook. Exactly. That’s where that really becomes massive. That’s correct. And so now
[00:48:29] Dr. Trevor Kashey: you, you extract
[00:48:30] Derek Berkey: reward in different ways, like the cooking skill.
[00:48:34] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Like maybe you make it and give it to someone and they love it.
Right. I’ll put it this way. If you, if you ask yourself, what do I want to eat for
[00:48:41] Derek Berkey: lunch? You can wait. Yeah.
[00:48:44] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Period. And I think if like from an interesting sort of behavior, like really nutrition standpoint in general, if like a microwaved dry, bland potato sounds good,
[00:48:57] Derek Berkey: it will taste
[00:48:57] Dr. Trevor Kashey: good. Right? That’s true.
And that just might mean waiting a little bit longer than you normally do. And so that brings up the question of like, do I eat because I have a bored
[00:49:05] Derek Berkey: mouth? I think is, there’s a word for that in Japanese. Yeah. What is it called? You, you remember what it’s called? It’s like, no, my wife knows it. Yeah. I love that.
I have a bored mouth, but like, I use that too. There. There’s a, there’s one in, uh, there’s one in German as well. I, it’s called kuk, which just means like sad bacon. Okay, so it’s bacon that you eat when you’re sad. Yes. Ok. Ok.
[00:49:27] Dr. Trevor Kashey: So really that comes down to like, do I, do I, what sort of deprivation do I have?
Yeah. So if we look at this as a satiation deprivation sort of thing, from a nutrition standpoint, it also applies to other things too. Physiologically, you might just have a stimulation issue versus a,
[00:49:44] Derek Berkey: like a stimulation deficiency, so to speak, versus a food deficiency. So, on a, uh, sorry, I, I kinda wanted to, to dive a little bit into the, the bi, the biochemistry of this.
Sure, sure. So it be, it could be essentially, it’s not necessarily gre. Or leptin. It, it might be a dopamine thing maybe. So. Yeah. Correct.
[00:50:00] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Yes. And it gets trained either way. Like these, they, they have, they have connections between each other. Yeah.
[00:50:07] Derek Berkey: Because of like the gustatory physiology, like you can look at food
[00:50:11] Dr. Trevor Kashey: and then that stuff starts to happen.
So thank you for bringing you back to the biochemistry. It happens because like, well, let’s say your ghrelin does grow up. What do you do? Right? Do you change your ghrelin? Do you like, do you, do you go, do you cut the person’s head open and change? No. No. What do you do? You do something different. Yeah. And so to that point, like if you’ve engineered the environment so that these hormonal responses occur, which you can, and my favorite, my favorite example of this, maybe I even said it already.
If I hold up ahead of broccoli, have I done this yet? No, not yet. My favorite. If I hold up ahead of broccoli and punch you in the face a bunch of times. What happens when you go to the supermarket and look at broccoli the next day
[00:50:49] Derek Berkey: it gonna be get ptsd. I’m like, right, right. So sugar cashy, man, you beat me up man.
He was holy broccoli. Alright.
[00:50:56] Dr. Trevor Kashey: You
[00:50:57] Derek Berkey: have, you have glucocorticoids coming out.
[00:50:59] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Yeah. You have cortisol coming out, you have epinephrine coming out. You have all sorts of interesting things occurring. Now, what does broccoli have to do with that? Absolutely nothing
[00:51:09] Derek Berkey: until you pair the two. Until things together.
Until you go all pav lob on there. Yes. And so that, right.
[00:51:14] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Exactly. Correct. And so that, that happens though whether we want it to or not. And so you can manipulate those sorts of conditions to,
[00:51:21] Derek Berkey: to train yourself a way to do something else. And so you can also do that in a positive context. Absolutely correct.
[00:51:27] Dr. Trevor Kashey: You can just like when somebody says, I love you, you feel fuzzy.
[00:51:30] Derek Berkey: Right? Same thing. Or like you, I might have just gotten a little bit fuzzy there maybe. So it’s transfer whether you want it to or not. Right. One. My favorite
[00:51:39] Dr. Trevor Kashey: thing about it. Yeah. And so like with your kids, to your point, you put m sg in your food, they might go out 30 years from now and have something with m sg and go, this reminds me of dance.
Yeah.
[00:51:49] Derek Berkey: You laugh, but like you’ve probably experienced something similar. Yeah. Maybe different things for you, but like that, that will happen. Definitely. Yeah. And
[00:51:56] Dr. Trevor Kashey: so to that end, basically I’ve just learned to appreciate more and more the the environment physiology interaction. And so I respect the biochemistry, obviously.
Yeah. And I want to change the biochemistry and so that leaves us with two
[00:52:12] Derek Berkey: options. It leaves us with, we take
[00:52:15] Dr. Trevor Kashey: drugs or we change the environment. Yeah. With the day-to-day person you have, like, unless you cut the head, their head open or inject them with the drug, they mo they, they change their physiology by cha by doing something else different around them.
Right. The other stuff I do agree, it just comes down to like talking to that person. Like if
[00:52:33] Derek Berkey: you can change your physiology with drugs and it would help you here, like Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Sure. Yes. And I feel totally cool with that. Again, I
[00:52:41] Dr. Trevor Kashey: just, I just default there cuz I, I end up doing the combination, the so-called combination
[00:52:46] Derek Berkey: therapy anyway.
Right. So we’ve talked about this on the podcast multiple times. We’re like, we believe in the five pillars of health, which is essentially like get good sleep. Get good exercise, have a good diet, interact with other people in a good way. And then like if for some reason you’re suffering and you’re not getting what you need from those four, then you may need to rely on like supplementation of pharmacology.
Right? Yeah. So, so for example, one of the, one of the examples that we use is like, as you get older, it can be very difficult to get b12, vitamin B12 from your food because your stomach literally stops producing the chemical that’s needed to digest it. And so, you know, in that situation, as you get older into your fifties, sixties, you become vitamin B12 deficient.
And at that point you may need a vitamin B12 injection or a supplement of some sort to be able to get to, yeah, a base level, uh, baseline level that helps you feel good and, and fill at the point where you want to be at. Absolutely correct.
[00:53:37] Dr. Trevor Kashey: And again, like some people get weird about now get everything from food.
Well, let’s say that maybe they would eat too
[00:53:43] Derek Berkey: many calories or instance, or would eat entirely too many heads of broccoli. Yeah, for sure. Exactly. Correct.
[00:53:50] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Yes. And cause a whole host of other issues. Yeah. And then again with, with the populations that get above 50, like they produce less saliva, they feel hungry less often.
They have other things going on that change the way they interact with food, which then also lends them to higher palatability foods because to get enough nutrition for the amount of hunger they have, you end up going towards density. Yeah. And so if you can sort of bridge the gap, that also helps a hunger a lot too, because we can have really selective hunger, kind of like if you have a deficiency in something, you might eat more food in general so that you can replete that thing.
And so finding those sorts of deficiencies if like, again, the silver bullet situation. Yeah. If you have like a single thing going on and you have, and you have like, if you have a key to the slot, well then buy,
[00:54:37] Derek Berkey: golly. Like that’s, that makes too much key in that slot. Yeah. That dude. Like, come
[00:54:41] Dr. Trevor Kashey: on. Yeah. Yeah.
Make your life so much simpler. And that frees you up to use your time for more
[00:54:46] Derek Berkey: interesting things than sitting around eating heads of broccoli. I’m thinking about, yeah, thinking about, uh, yeah. How to cook it, how to, how to get yourself, yeah. How to get that volume of broccoli into your stomach. Yes. Is, is, uh, not a good use of time.
Yeah. I, I feel the pain,
[00:54:58] Dr. Trevor Kashey: and again, this the silver bullet situation, I find that stuff, uh, most effective. Yeah, definitely. The, the, the general quality of life stuff then absolutely goes into
[00:55:07] Derek Berkey: the combination of, uh, you feel bad for more reasons than this, although this will make you
[00:55:11] Dr. Trevor Kashey: feel better. It’ll actually protract how long you let this
[00:55:15] Derek Berkey: make you feel bad.
Yeah, definitely. So, something I kinda wanted to talk about, and we talked about this a little bit before we actually started the show, uh, but essentially I kinda wanted to, to talk more about like, let’s say someone now has this dad bought, and they want to, they want to get to a point, but they’re trying to determine what point do they want to go to.
Um, there’s, there’s a couple of different avenues, and I’m sure there’s actually a multitude. There’s multitude in this path that people can go down, but like being able to just, uh, like. Three common ones are I want to look shredded. Right, okay. Which is a lot of shredded people on your website showing off their six week apps, which is great.
Yeah. And I love that. Um, yeah. And then you have people that just basically want to be stronger or more functional. Mm-hmm. And then you have other people that, that wanna work out for longevity. Can you talk a little bit about each one of those individually and, and kind of different approaches that you would take with someone that, that wants to go down each one of those different kind of pathways?
Absolutely.
[00:56:06] Dr. Trevor Kashey: So I will tell you that the Shredded Nest actually has very little to do with how you exercise and everything to do with nutrition. Yeah. The question that turns into how much muscle mass do you want to have when your body fat gets that low? Yeah. And so that, that adds that as two interesting questions that end up taking like, again, a combination sort of approach.
And so what I have found a vast majority of the time, The people with the, the daddies of dad bods, they want to get super shredded. Yeah. Although they realize about at about 7% total body weight loss. At that point, they start to get an idea of, okay, I actually want to get here. Yeah. Because really you, if you have zero point of reference, you just go to like, okay, what does everybody else want?
Yeah. And so I enter, frankly I’ll just, I entertain it. Like, oh, right, let’s get shredded. Okay. And then what do I do? I check in, do
[00:56:57] Derek Berkey: you still want this? Do you still want this? Do you still want this? Well, and at a certain point people, like you hear all the time that like people that are on the cover of magazines and that are competing in these competitions that are at that low of body fat levels, they feel like crap.
Yeah. And you just don’t feel good. They call it an off season for a reason. Yeah. Like nobody, nobody really hides that. Yeah. And so I also find that
[00:57:19] Dr. Trevor Kashey: interesting and fun that like, have you ever talked to one of those people? Maybe that would give you an idea. Yeah. And so to that end, like they have off seasons.
I get fatter during this time on purpose. Yeah. And so the shredded aspect of things, I go by basically seven to 10%, uh, drops in body weight per
[00:57:38] Derek Berkey: six month period. Okay. And I do that for clinical
[00:57:41] Dr. Trevor Kashey: reasons, because it just, uh, I, I prefer that Okay. Fine. That if it happens faster. Okay. But really, I, I aim for 10% of total body weight over six
[00:57:51] Derek Berkey: months.
Hold on. It’s more sustainable, right? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:57:54] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Sure. Yeah. Get I, I prefer that, that rate. And, uh, then we do a check in, like, okay, you’ve lost 10% of your body weight. What do you wanna do? And then we, we just, I just ask that question over and over. And then the leaner they get, the shorter we make those cycles.
Hmm. Then it might go to three
[00:58:08] Derek Berkey: weeks, then
[00:58:09] Dr. Trevor Kashey: it, or then it, then it, excuse me. Then it might go to three
[00:58:11] Derek Berkey: months, then it might go to six weeks. Gotcha. And so then I start doing, and then I might go to every two weeks, like doing check-ins every two weeks. Like, you
[00:58:19] Dr. Trevor Kashey: still wanna do this? And then at that point I will have the, okay.
Let’s do something fun to reward that you did a great job here and then we can start getting, gaining weight on purpose again. Except when you start gaining weight on purpose and you do it the right way, you actually distribute the fat in a more even way. Gotcha. Lots of people when they get super lean and then they, they they lapse and they go crazy on pizza and beer and gains tons of weight back.
It goes back in crappy places.
[00:58:46] Derek Berkey: Yeah. Right. Where everybody doesn’t want it. Yeah. Be exactly correct. And I will tell you that
[00:58:50] Dr. Trevor Kashey: if you, if you put the weight back on slowly and on purpose, the fat distributes in a more even way for you. It actually, the person actually ends up looking way better when they put fat on.
When they put fat on purpose in a calculated way. Yeah. The fact gets more distributed and so it actually makes you look far more
[00:59:08] Derek Berkey: muscular. Well even cause you, you look bigger. What, what I’ve heard is, uh, essentially when you cut like. You look really good when your shirt’s off and, and when you have the right lighting, but as soon as you put your shirt back on, it’s like, man, that guy over.
There’s so skinny beauty. Right. You look, yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly correct. Yes.
[00:59:24] Dr. Trevor Kashey: If, if you have limited weight training experience,
[00:59:29] Derek Berkey: then you’ll have limited muscle mass when you get lean. Exactly. Yeah.
[00:59:33] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Correct. And so you end up actually looking quite bad in clothes. Mm-hmm. Looking impressive with clothes off.
And so I tell people to aim for a,
[00:59:40] Derek Berkey: I call it super medium,
[00:59:42] Dr. Trevor Kashey: okay. Where I’ve, I have worked with a lot of special forces guys. And work with them to maintain their body weight and body fat to maintain their optimal performance. And I just ended up calling
[00:59:53] Derek Berkey: it super medium. Well, and so that kind of brings up a whole different, uh, the different pathway of like yes.
People that are training for functionality. What, so someone with a dad bod that knows they have a dad bod, and obviously do they, we’ve got, we’ve gotten, let’s say we’ve gotten them past the point where they’re, they’re done hating themselves, but they just wanna be healthier. Yes. Yes. Um, and they wanna get down to functionality.
Yes. And so I, I love the
[01:00:11] Dr. Trevor Kashey: path of, like, again, I asked the question, what problem do you wanna solve? But I, now I put it towards like, what do you wanna do? A lot of people say, I wanna make myself more functional. Well, like, frankly, if you do anything more than open a can jar of pickles, you
[01:00:23] Derek Berkey: just show off. So like, let’s get real here.
What do you wanna do? Well, we’re, we’re, we’re in a society, in fact, so it’s funny, me and my brother, uh, we’re, we’re both very similar. Um, we’ve, we’re into fitness and all those kind of things. I’m very much about functionality and Okay. He’s very much about looks. And so every time we meet up, we always kind of have like this kind of small debate between each other.
And then we always kind of conclude. It’s like, well, I’m glad that’s working for you, man. And then, then, you know, we, we disagree, disagree, uh, uh, uh, uh, in a nice way. But the argument he always makes to me that I’m always kind of like struggling in the point that you bring up is it’s like, okay, you’re, so, you’re trading for functionality like.
What do you actually do on a day-to-day basis that does that? I’m like, well, I, I hope my friends move a lot, so that’s helpful. But you know, other than that, like on a day-to-day basis, I drive to work, I do my thing, I drive back home, I might hop, I have to open up a pickle jar and you know, at that point it’s just like keeping up with my kids, you know?
Yes. So
[01:01:15] Dr. Trevor Kashey: to, to that point, I find, and, and I like that. So the, the funny thing turns into like, looking better
[01:01:19] Derek Berkey: actually has more function.
[01:01:21] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Interesting. I’ll argue that on a day-to-day level looking, looking, sexier has more
[01:01:25] Derek Berkey: function than not. Well, so, and this is another point cuz I think we’ve talked about this before with my brother, is that the two kind of overlap.
If you are trading to look better, just by being there, by yourself, you have the more capable you’re gonna, you’re gonna be more functional. And if you’re more, if you’re training to be more functional by association, you’re, you are gonna look better than you would if you didn’t before. Absolutely. The difference just turns into how many calories do you eat.
Exactly. Yeah. Yes, correct. And if you like
[01:01:50] Dr. Trevor Kashey: to have a heavier
[01:01:51] Derek Berkey: body, which, which has its own benefits, If you
[01:01:54] Dr. Trevor Kashey: enjoy those benefits and know them well, then I feel all for it. I like, I understand,
[01:02:00] Derek Berkey: I weigh a lot, I weigh like 250 pounds. I also know I can pick up a car. How big are you? How tall are you? Sorry. Six feet tall.
Six feet tall. So well skinny, 250 pound man champion. So I’m six foot two and I’m 270, so, uh, 270. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:02:16] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Super heavy. Yeah. And so like for me, to you, I would say like I would consider it a dumb decision if you ran,
[01:02:22] Derek Berkey: but slap a backpack on yourself and go ruing and walking and Yes, exactly it. Correct.
I love it. Yeah. And so
[01:02:28] Dr. Trevor Kashey: there we look at like, again, what do, so for those situations say like, okay, do you care about flexibility? Do you care about speed? Do you care about strength? Do you care about power? I basically, this is a different sort of, you know,
[01:02:40] Derek Berkey: functions of fitness Yeah. And athletic athleticism.
Yeah, exactly. Yes, exactly. Thank you,
[01:02:45] Dr. Trevor Kashey: by the way. Uh, and then go from there to, to tailor training. And then you can, you can also tailor the nutrition around that training, which helps,
[01:02:54] Derek Berkey: uh, with, with adherence basically, right? Yeah. And so at, at the level of the, the,
[01:02:59] Dr. Trevor Kashey: the keyboard warrior, that sort of detailed nutrition plan, I think has limited effect on performance.
On scientific paper basis. Right? Really like
[01:03:08] Derek Berkey: it makes your life better. So let’s do this. Yeah. You, you know, that reminds me, it’s kind of a clickbait title. I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw this thing. It is like sci, the scientifically best workout that, that, whatever it is. And I’m like, okay, I’m curious.
So I click on it and of course the answer is, the answer is, uh, the best workout is the one that you will do. And. Get outta here, you guys, are you kidding me? But, but, but there’s something to it, right? It’s like, oh, I, I, I I pull that card all the time. Yeah. Either that or I just say walking because everyone, everyone can walk.
Yeah. I mean, I guess I, I guess I shouldn’t say that. Most everybody can walk the, the, I understand the general population can walk. Yes. If you can walk, then you can walk. Yeah, exactly. Yes, yes. And, and I mean that seriously rather than as a joke. Yeah. Uh, although it doubles, so Yes. Yeah. Yes.
[01:03:54] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Agreed. So that, so that I care, like what sort of function do you want?
Because on a day-to-day basis, having a better looking body has
[01:04:02] Derek Berkey: more at a day-to-day, like you get utility. Yeah. Get more rewards for that.
[01:04:06] Dr. Trevor Kashey: And so if you want to jump higher, run faster, lift heavier
[01:04:10] Derek Berkey: stuff, walk farther, that turns exactly correct. That turns into the function.
[01:04:14] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Okay. Now, for the longevity standpoint, that again turns into what problem do you really wanna solve?
If you just like only care about living as long as possible, I would probably refer you out. Because I care about what do you wanna do with your life? Yeah, not, not how many heart, how not how many times can you poop and eat before your heart stops? Because I just have a, a philosophical
[01:04:36] Derek Berkey: conflict with that, you know, so there’s this book I read, um, that I absolutely love.
Uh, it, it’s called Being Mortal by a guy named UL Gowane. I don’t know if you love it, ever heard of it, but No. But, but basically the concept of it, it, the whole book is about like, um, coming to terms that we’re all gonna die someday. Yeah. Um, and, and I know that’s kind of took a turn, but like at the very end he talked about two different conditions where, you know, there’s this lifesaving procedure, but the, but the end result is that whoever, when you get it, like you’re stuck on a couch and you all you can do is watch TV and eat chips and, you know, one person might say, yeah, that that’s all I want outta life for the rest of of my life.
And as long as I can do that, I’m happy. Whereas you might have someone else who’s like a very high level executive and is like saying, if I can’t contribute to my community, I don’t want to live. And, and so basically they, they conscientiously make that choice. Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. And this, this can get
[01:05:27] Dr. Trevor Kashey: extreme too, but I, I.
I guess you have the magic of editing,
[01:05:31] Derek Berkey: so
[01:05:31] Dr. Trevor Kashey: I’ll, I’ll let you decide, but this will get extreme, but I have this philosophy that like, let’s say I wish 100% of people died by suicide. Okay. Now this sounds
[01:05:39] Derek Berkey: strange. Yeah. At first glance,
[01:05:41] Dr. Trevor Kashey: it also means 100% of people choose when they die. Yeah. It just sounds strange because only sick people kill themselves.
Yeah. The way that you have the label, but you just asked an interesting question. Can you make the rational decision to live or die? Yeah. And so you have a living will where you make a rational decision to live or die. But on the other hand, if you choose to live or die, you
[01:06:04] Derek Berkey: have a mental
[01:06:04] Dr. Trevor Kashey: illness. Right.
And so I find the interesting sort of ethical question here that like, if I had a choice, I would rather everybody chose
[01:06:11] Derek Berkey: to, to go when they wanted to. Well, it it kind of like, let’s say that, that our, the anti-aging science, it progresses to a point now Sure. Where, where people can live to be 200 and, and they, they get to that point and they’re like, Well, the question then is, do you actually wanna live for 200 years?
Yes. People still, so
[01:06:27] Dr. Trevor Kashey: yes. That, that you ask. K So this brings up an interesting point of, I care less about how long you live and how much you age. So people really, if
[01:06:36] Derek Berkey: you dig
[01:06:37] Dr. Trevor Kashey: a centimeter under the ground, if, if it, it, it means that like we care less about anti-aging and more about, well, more about extending life,
[01:06:48] Derek Berkey: less about longevity and more about anti-aging.
Yes. Basically you want to extend your
[01:06:52] Dr. Trevor Kashey: youth span. If we want to go, these are the spans. How long can you stay? 25? Yeah.
[01:06:57] Derek Berkey: Right.
[01:06:57] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Because I mean, 150 year old person will look like a 150
[01:07:01] Derek Berkey: year old person Yeah. On their skin and all the, all the different kinda things. Yeah. Like if,
[01:07:06] Dr. Trevor Kashey: if aging changes to change the lifespan, well then I would still maintain the same philosophy and just make a proportional difference.
If that, by default, if you double lifespan, if it by default doubles work spann, then we would have
[01:07:19] Derek Berkey: the same conversation here. No, that just, so we talked about work spann before we started a recording, but uh, for the new, for people that are listening, can we talk a little more about that? I think
[01:07:28] Dr. Trevor Kashey: most of us have an operational understanding of like, you live and you die.
Yeah. Right. But we call that lifespan. How many beats
[01:07:34] Derek Berkey: do you have breaths? Do you take, et cetera before they come? Births do you take Yeah, exactly. Yes.
[01:07:38] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Correct. And then I think most people too have, have an operational understanding of health span, basically how long
[01:07:45] Derek Berkey: before you start dying.
[01:07:48] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Yeah. And that can take decades, right?
So essentially your health at this point has literally started to go downhill and you know, right. Because it, it, you improve in performance and then you maintain performance and your performance starts to go down until it hits zero. Right. Now I propose a third ray, which, which I would bet exists somewhere else.
So please, if somebody knows, please tell me. I call it work spann, which essentially means how long do you stay useful. And to me that, that raises an interesting sort of bioethical question because a person might live to a hundred, but maybe their usefulness, they, they stopped doing anything useful and they started waiting to die basically at 60.
Now, let’s say another person, they die at 85, but they, they go out like they, they kick and scream and cause a ruckus and do useful things till 80. Yeah. I would argue that person lived
[01:08:38] Derek Berkey: 20 years longer. Theodore Roosevelt, I don’t know how much you know about him. Very rambunctious individual. Right. He, he like did all kinds of stuff.
He climbed trees. Yeah. So while he was present, he would like climb a tree or like someone would walk into the, into the office and he would like do some jujitsu, move on them, and just like, insane dude. Yes. But, uh, so he died in his sleep. And so some essentially somebody, somebody commented on it and said, well, he had to die in his sleep because if he hadn’t have died in his sleep, he would’ve fought death while he was awake.
He would’ve like taken the, taken him on head on, so. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And so it
[01:09:12] Dr. Trevor Kashey: brings up an interesting conversation with us biotically with supplements and pharmaceuticals, et cetera, of like, I would argue, like does it make it sense to burn the candle on the other end to extend your work span?
Yeah. To stay useful. To have a good life. To have a good life for longer rather than having more heartbeats. Yeah, and I will personally, I will take a stance that I would argue for a better life for longer than more heartbeats. Because I think we will have sufficient technology to extend heartbeats quite a long time to protract as
[01:09:44] Derek Berkey: much misery as humanly possible.
Right.
[01:09:46] Dr. Trevor Kashey: If you can stay useful, whatever that means to you, and I mean that and I, and I mean that seriously, well, then it makes sense to make that last as long as you
[01:09:54] Derek Berkey: can. Definitely. You know, so going back to this book by a tool, Gowane, one of the things he, what that a study that he brought up was essentially that the, there was two groups of people that had terminal cancer and they had two kind of, and, and they were part of study groups.
They had two routes that that go down, whether that they do experimental cancer treatments mm-hmm. Or they decided to go on hospice care. Yeah. What’s crazy is not only so. Intuitively like you think, okay, the people that go to the hospice are out. They, they have greater quality of life. What counterintuitively they actually also have greater, uh, they, they live longer.
Right? Which is you contribute
[01:10:29] Dr. Trevor Kashey: to the body. Like I, so if I had that choice, I would put myself in experimental science all day long because it makes me
[01:10:34] Derek Berkey: useful, right? Yeah, yeah. But, but some people, but some people might just want to be able to like, live out the rest of their days Yeah. Their family and, and, and be able to be useful in a different capacity of like, I’m gonna use my last days, like loving my family and, and they find great meaning and, and use out of that.
Whereas somebody that’s more scientifically inclined is like, contribute my body to science. You know, and like, and
[01:10:57] Dr. Trevor Kashey: so for that reason I considered an individual thing and, and if that person really does get value out of the hospice care, well then fantastic for them. Absolutely. I think if a, if a person, if a person has something to do, they will do it longer than
[01:11:13] Derek Berkey: somebody who does not.
Yeah. This, sorry, I, I, I keep quoting all these books cuz, but like, bringing stuff up, Victor Frankl, uh, man, man Search For Meaning one of my absolute favorite books. He talked about how in December, uh, of, of the war, uh, that there’s all, all the people in the concentration camp, basically, uh, they were looking forward, they were saying, I’m just gonna make it till Christmas.
We’re gonna get out by Christmas. Yep. And then Christmas came and went and, and the amount of people that lived, like, the amount of people that, that weren’t able to hold on after that, like dropped off. So just being able to have something to look forward to is like this life sustaining thing that, that Yes.
Is incredible. I would argue that you only live if you do things. Right. If you stop doing things, you die well and your brain literally gets smaller and Yeah. All these kind of crazy things. Yeah. I, I would argue that a dead person does
[01:12:01] Dr. Trevor Kashey: nothing and so doing something, you will live longer. Yeah. And again, it sounds silly, but I, I tried like the redneck logic sort of conversation we have my favorite, one of my favorite parts about that book by the way he go, he said something
[01:12:11] Derek Berkey: to the effect of, I paraphrase, nobody had insomnia.
Yeah. I think my
[01:12:16] Dr. Trevor Kashey: favorite part of the book. Yeah, no. Like
[01:12:18] Derek Berkey: everybody fell asleep
[01:12:19] Dr. Trevor Kashey: before they hit the pillow. Yeah. And for whatever reason, that really stuck with me, especially like with the sort of culture we have now, like peeling away the, the atrocity aspect of this and looking at the environmental conditions, why would all of them fall asleep before they hit the pillow?
And so you can make all sorts of an interesting arguments, but I found that as the most interesting one because
[01:12:36] Derek Berkey: insomnia has such
prevalence
[01:12:37] Dr. Trevor Kashey: now. Mm-hmm. And like, and just, just how, how else can you extract utility of anma? Like it has so many u useful things. And that one I just found so interesting
[01:12:47] Derek Berkey: that like they all worked all day.
Yeah. For instance, You know, like they exhausted themselves.
[01:12:52] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Like, I mean, obviously all sorts of other things going on, but it just goes to show that like
[01:12:57] Derek Berkey: physical activity to some extent will contribute to these things. Yeah. Well it, there’s a, there’s this cliche, you know, work poster quote that I, that I, I am a sucker for good inspirational quotes.
You know, it’s just like, yeah. I, I love like, man, but essentially there’s this inspirational quote that’s like, you have to work with conviction. Yeah. Okay. In order to go to bed with satisfaction. Right. Oh, have fun. And it’s like, it’s like, you know, when you hit the day hard and you go a hundred percent, when you hit that bed, you’re like out and just blissful sleep.
It’s like, I love that. Yep. My dad, the, my dad, the
[01:13:27] Dr. Trevor Kashey: carpenter would say,
[01:13:28] Derek Berkey: you earn your shower. Yeah. Go to bed empty, like lots of idioms or, or like when you go and work out and you come back home and you eat your, your, your post-workout meal, no meal tastes any better than that meal. No. It’s like, it tastes so good.
Yes. Yeah. And we
[01:13:43] Dr. Trevor Kashey: even call it the post-workout meal, which I love. Yeah. So going back to healthy habits, But like you have the pre-workout. If you have the pre-workout, it raises
[01:13:51] Derek Berkey: the probability you will train. Yeah. If you have the post-workout, it also raises the probability you will trade. Right. You create those, those markers, those landmarks you cut out, that you cut
[01:14:00] Dr. Trevor Kashey: out the best meal of the
[01:14:01] Derek Berkey: day.
Come on. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:14:04] Dr. Trevor Kashey: But really like that helps chain it all together, man. So to kind of bring that back, like absolutely correct, it’s just, just another way to like, how do I use nutrition to my advantage? And I, I think it in the context of like, I consider nutrition rewarding. Absolutely.
Yeah. And so if you eat five times a day, that means you reward yourself five times a day. What
[01:14:26] Derek Berkey: do you reward yourself for doing? Right.
[01:14:28] Dr. Trevor Kashey: And so that means to your point of like, how do we raise the probability of useful stuff happening? Maybe your meal timing or your activities around meals change so that you reward yourself for doing something useful.
Yeah. The post-workout meal is the single best example. Yeah. You literally reward yourself for doing something healthy with something healthy. Right. Can you get any better? Not much in my opinion. Not, not much. Not really. Unless you continue to gain. Right? Right. And so this, this gives an excellent starting point, uh, for that sort of like longevity, right?
And that, uh, the, the nutrition aspect of things that when you have a balanced diet of healthy foods and that, that, that reward you. Right? Now you have that to your point as a weapon, right? You can wield it
[01:15:14] Derek Berkey: like
[01:15:14] Dr. Trevor Kashey: a tool. Yeah. Now, wherever I place this, whatever I do right before it, I’ll probably do it
[01:15:20] Derek Berkey: again.
Yeah. And
[01:15:21] Dr. Trevor Kashey: so now if you, for instance, time your meals, okay, like the intermittent fasting thing, we can lose another interesting modality that I’ve used before, more with
[01:15:29] Derek Berkey: business owners, but still like, I mean, a bunch of other people too. I just like to give the business owner example.
[01:15:34] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Yeah. Like how can you time your meals around, for instance, the part, the, the parts of the day where you have work you
[01:15:42] Derek Berkey: hate the most.
Yeah. And that does more than nothing. Oh, it
[01:15:46] Dr. Trevor Kashey: does that? Yeah. You know that like, I know if I get through this meeting, I can eat. Right. What do you do? You get through the meeting. Yeah. And so we can make up all of this mumbo jumbo about like the, like all the psychology going on, but really like you rewarded yourself for going through the meeting with healthy food.
And so you did something that helped your business and your family and then you rewarded yourself with something healthy for doing it. And then you have your pre-workout and then you train. And so like you can actually chain the events of your entire day so that you could use something like food, something naturally rewarding.
As a way to, to, to keep
[01:16:19] Derek Berkey: prompting all of those other healthy things and just continuing to kind of build it in a modular way. Yeah, exactly. Correct.
[01:16:24] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Yeah. And, and I love that term module. Yes.
[01:16:26] Derek Berkey: I use chain links. So like very, very similar sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, I, I, uh, I, I think this is in one of those books about habits that I read.
I can’t remember which one it was, but essentially that, um, two, if, if you’re able to tie in a habit to one that you’ve already have existing, the likelihood that you’ll adhere to it increases by, by a, a large amount. And so being able to Yeah. Have the, have the pre-workout and then you, and then the workout, and then the post-workout, like being able to tie things into that is gonna set you up for, for greatest success.
Exactly. Correct. And in, and in, in layman’s terms, we call it a routine. Yep. It just, people tend
[01:17:03] Dr. Trevor Kashey: to truncate routines into a small period
[01:17:05] Derek Berkey: of time, but you can have a routine for a whole week. Yeah. For a whole month. Yeah.
[01:17:10] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Or for an Olympic
[01:17:11] Derek Berkey: athlete, a four year routine. Yeah, true.
[01:17:13] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Right. So, uh, so excellent point that you bring up there.
So what do you, what successful things do you already do
[01:17:20] Derek Berkey: and how can you take advantage of those things? So, uh, a couple of of of final questions that I kinda wanna to ask you. Sure. First is, uh, we we’re talking about like, you have to know where Your’re going and, and what your, what your overall goal is.
Right. I kinda wanna ask you, I mean, I’ve really, really enjoyed this conversation and get to know you and your personality and all these things. Very good. Um, and I would love to have you back, back on the show at some point Absolutely. And have an opinion of a conversation like this. Absolutely. But for you personally, what, what is, what is your drive?
What is your goal? Like, you know, in, in towards the end of your life where, wherever you end up being, what, what is, what does that look like for you? I love to answer that. I will go the path of least resistance. Hmm. But that really means anything. Right? And so, I mean, go where the wind blows me. Like whatever sort
[01:18:05] Dr. Trevor Kashey: of term I will tell you that I will maintain a scholarly capacity
[01:18:09] Derek Berkey: until I die.
Yeah. And so this brings up this
[01:18:12] Dr. Trevor Kashey: concept of loyalty that I’ve started building out, but basically like what things do I do the most depending on the sort of sit, like no matter the situation. And so those things, I want to keep around as much as I can. Yeah. And if I went to Mars or I went to Kentucky, or I went to China, what would I still do over there?
And I want to then sort of looking at that, how can I keep doing that and how can I get better at those things? And so I, I consider it like having skills, having as many skills as I possibly can and getting as skilled at those skills as I possibly can. I actually consider the sort of secret
[01:18:51] Derek Berkey: two, a good life, so to speak.
Right.
[01:18:53] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Basically I just see this doing useful stuff. Rewards you and other people. Yeah. So the more ways I can do useful stuff, the better life I will have. Yeah. And so to, to that end, like. I see myself sitting in the cave riding, doing like if, if you look at crazy academic dudes, like they give their last lecture a week before they die.
Yeah. Count me in. Absolutely. Count me in. So like the Fineman last lecture, two weeks before he died, Albert DUIs last lecture a week before he died. Like these guys, they stay useful literally until they’re dying. Breaths.
[01:19:29] Derek Berkey: Yeah. And so
[01:19:31] Dr. Trevor Kashey: to your point, I care to stay useful, die in my sleep or fight death. Yeah.
Like holy cow. You know? And doing the things that I have gotten good at. So I will tell you that I care that I can get good enough at things to make them useful. Whatever that thing, because maybe I do have a stroke and I lose function and all my biochemistry goes out the window and I’ll do it and then like, okay, now I have
[01:19:54] Derek Berkey: to get good at something else.
That’s another problem. And another problem to solve, and Exactly correct. Just
[01:19:59] Dr. Trevor Kashey: as long as I have that capacity where I can get good at something and I can get good enough to make it useful, I will plug on, absolutely.
[01:20:06] Derek Berkey: Plug on man. Violently is possible. That’s great. I resonate with that on a very deep level, so that’s, that’s fantastic.
Cool. Yeah, for real.
[01:20:14] Dr. Trevor Kashey: And I’ll do whatever, whatever it takes, whatever drug, whatever supplement, whatever. Crazy. Like, you know, I, I will, I will do it all. I will do it all twice just to make
[01:20:22] Derek Berkey: sure I hear it. There you go, man. So then I guess last piece of advice, so sure. Someone that’s at the very beginning of all this that’s listening to this and it’s like, I want to get started, but like I, I just don’t quite know what next step to take.
What is, what is the one piece of advice that, that you want them to remember that can really help ’em propel forward? So I will, I
[01:20:42] Dr. Trevor Kashey: will, I will default back to.
[01:20:45] Derek Berkey: Hawthorne effect.
[01:20:46] Dr. Trevor Kashey: Okay. So I, I talk to everybody and
[01:20:50] Derek Berkey: consider them intelligent and educated. Every single one a, a And I get violent about that too.
[01:20:55] Dr. Trevor Kashey: I believe in my bones. You already know what to do, and I already believe in my bones. You know how to do it. That really you do maybe to varying degrees. You still know though. Yeah. And so by getting aware of yourself, by watching, by observing yourself, do things you will automatically see like, where do I go next?
And so the first step to me goes, where do I stand right now? And as soon as you figure out where you stand, man, the path will build itself. I promise. I promise. Because you already know, you know that, you know the things. You can do this stuff. I know you can. And I know you know you can because you made it this far, right?
And that,
[01:21:37] Derek Berkey: and if you
[01:21:38] Dr. Trevor Kashey: made it, if you made it to 20,
[01:21:39] Derek Berkey: to 30, to
[01:21:40] Dr. Trevor Kashey: 40, to 50, to 60, to 70, you already have everything. Like, do you like, how can, how can anybody firmly believe
[01:21:46] Derek Berkey: they do something wrong? At 60? You made it to 60. Yeah. Man,
[01:21:50] Dr. Trevor Kashey: you went 60 years. If you did something wrong, you are like, come on. Yeah. And so you did things good enough and I consider things good enough, good enough.
Could you get better? Probably we could all get better at things. And so by having a, an actual understanding of, of where you stand, what you do, the observer effects, the Hawthorne effect, that you start paying attention to yourself. You will know like, okay, I absolutely know I can make this better and I have
[01:22:17] Derek Berkey: the tools and skills to make this better already.
Yeah.
[01:22:19] Dr. Trevor Kashey: And so it turns into a, it turns into a self-perpetuating machine. It just turns just the energy gap of like, man, I, I know if I
[01:22:28] Derek Berkey: pay attention to what I do,
[01:22:29] Dr. Trevor Kashey: I know I’ll find weird stuff. So having a little bit of support helps, but really, like, the more weird you feel about that, the more resistance you feel about keeping track of what you do, or keeping a log or measuring or observing whatever term you want to use.
[01:22:42] Derek Berkey: Mort will help you. Hmm. Otherwise, somebody else will. Right. And if they know what you do and you don’t, they can control what you do. Yeah. So it turns into this interesting sort of like, who do I want
[01:22:54] Dr. Trevor Kashey: running my life? Yeah. And so it goes into lots of different directions there. But basically I would say step number one, what, whatever level you feel comfortable, keep track of what you do, keep track of what you eat, keep track of what you, of how much you sleep.
Keep track of when you yell at somebody or you get yelled at or what, you know, whatever you choose to keep track of, keep track of that thing for a couple of weeks or a week, and you will learn amazing things about yourself. I promise from, from little kids to soccer moms, to gold medal athletes, to presidents.
I’ve only ever gotten positive, net positive feedback from observing yourself and your
[01:23:30] Derek Berkey: natural environment. That’s fantastic advice, man. And, uh, I’m sure it’s appreciated by everyone that that’s gonna see this. Good. So I, I wanted to thank you again for, for joining the show. Where, where can people find you in your work?
So
[01:23:43] Dr. Trevor Kashey: you can find me@trevorcashynutrition.com. You can find some of my antics on Instagram, TikTok, et cetera. Uh, with, at Dr. Cashy, I make short little videos talking about doing, doing more smart stuff and less dumb stuff as often as I can. And if you have any questions, I have, uh, a staff of a few dozen people.
So you will get a human responding to things. And, uh, I’ll, I only know to answer your question if you ask, you know, and we will take the time with anybody that inquires. So for, for anybody that comes from, from here, please make sure you let us know, because then I can give your boy a little tip. You know, I, I appreciate this very much.
I had a wonderful time and I would love to give your host credit for garnering interest and this sorts of philosophy and Waverly.
Podcast Guests
Dr. Trevor Kashey
Podcast Hosts
Derek Berkey
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