Highlights of the Podcast:
00:33 – Mark recounts what he did on his holiday to stay on track with fat loss goals
02:08 – If you can, do not check in baggage when you go on holiday
03:06 – With fat loss, it is about choosing the right or better option
03:26 – Make sure you get a good protein and fat breakfast
05:03 – Dab a bit of hand wash underneath your nose to keep the colds away
06:41 – Drink lots of water when traveling
06:58 – Don’t bring huge containers of fluid when flying
07:45 – Stay at a self-catering apartment
09:54 – Coconut water is great for rehydration
11:30 – Stick to a relatively good lunch
12:45 – Gauge how you feel after eating a certain food
13:22 – Have a better lunch than you do dinner
13:33 – If you’re going to have carbs, eat them in the evening
14:28 – Natural full fat yoghurt with fresh fruits is a great snack
16:27 – Stay clear of all the tourist attraction restaurants
17:36 – Italian people store less body fat because of their diet
18:28 – Because of estrogen, British people store more fat on their legs
18:47 – Eat more natural foods and have good fats like the Italians
19:18 – Snack on some nuts and fruit to keep your mood and energy up
20:12 – Eat a bit more strategically in terms of when you choose to gorge
21:41 – Mark didn’t bring any supplements on his recent trip as an experiment
22:34 – Mark slept through the night without magnesium because he was stress-free
23:35 – We need to take supplements to deal with stress
23:55 – Steer clear from stressful situations and environments
24:44 – You will now be able to leave voice messages on TheDVCC.com
Transcript:
Mark Gray: Hi! This is Mark from TheDVCC.com with this week’s podcast. Now, today, I am without Stephen. He is otherwise engaged. Basically, he’s playing rugby again and he’s kind of hurt his neck a little bit again. I think he’s just getting too old, to be honest, and I think we should all tell him. But he’s basically having to see a physio just to get it clicked in place because he’s going to be playing on Saturday so he needs to get that sorted.
So, unfortunately, he has left me. Well, fortunately, I think. Left me to speak with you. And basically, I thought what I would do is recount my last week because I’ve actually been away. It was our 31st – oh God, I don’t like saying that! Our 31st birthday last week or the week before last. About seven days ago on a Wednesday. And for my birthday, my girlfriend surprised me with a trip to Rome. So we went on Sunday, the Sunday gone, and we were in Rome until today. Early this morning. And basically, I thought it would be helpful for you if I recounted what I did. Because obviously, when you go on a holiday, especially in Rome, somewhere like Rome where it’s pretty much dominated by pasta and pizza and things like that and wine and things, it’s quite hard sometimes to travel to these destinations and stick with your fat loss goals. So I thought you would find it helpful if I discussed with you what I managed to do to limit what could be a highly fattening holiday.
So anyway, basically, we flew early. I think I was up at kind of 5 o’clock. We flew very early. And it was actually too early for me to eat breakfast so I didn’t eat breakfast. But when I got to the airport everything was all checked in. So you can online check in and all of that. And I think it’s changed from even the last time I flew where basically, you just went straight to the gate, effectively. So everything was printed out. We didn’t even have to – we didn’t check in any luggage.
And actually, that’s probably one of my first tips, especially to somewhere like Rome. If you can, not to check in baggage. Because obviously, it shortens the time that it takes for you to travel, and that actually helps with your eating patterns and all that kind of stuff and that is one of the main things that I find you lose when you travel. And so, I’ll come back to that. But anyway, we set off. So we actually had time when we were at the airport to grab breakfast. And there’s loads of places now. We were flying from Gatwick and there’s a lot of places there where you can get a good healthy breakfast. Now, I had scrambled eggs, sausages, tomatoes and mushrooms. Basically, my usual. I mean, to be fair, I don’t think they were gluten-free sausages and I did ask, but they didn’t have them. And the thing with holidays and with this kind of things is people would go, “Oh, we should’ve had gluten-free sausages!” But, basically, it was the better option.
So, that’s the whole thing with fat loss. It’s basically making sure that you make the right options or the better options. So, between that and cereal, which I could’ve had, that was the much better option. And actually, my girlfriend managed to have – she always has salmon and eggs and she had salmon and eggs and that was perfect. It took literally 15 minutes and you can get the bill to come with you or come with the food.
So that was probably my first tip, is actually just to make sure you get a good breakfast. And even when you’re traveling early, a good protein and fat breakfast, which we always kind of go on about, but it just makes such a massive difference because it’s proven that you’re less likely to overeat for the rest of the day, your cognitive function is going to be made better. And cognitive function is obviously a brain function, and if your brain is working properly, you’re much more likely to firstly be happy because of serotonin and everything. All the kind of hormones you make are made properly, to kind of condense it down. But also, you find that it’s a lot less stressed. When your blood sugar is stable and it’s not shooting up and down, it’s a lot less stressful to handle what can be kind of a stressful situation, traveling, because you are cooped up in an airplane and you are potentially traveling for a long period of time, and it’s kind of tiring. So that was my first tip and that’s the first thing we did, and I always make sure – because I’ve traveled a fair bit now – that we always start the day with a good breakfast.
So, the next thing. Obviously, on the plane. We didn’t have any plane food. It’s quite a short trip to Rome, if you’ve been. I think it was two hours, two-and-a-half hours, and I pretty much read and listened to a few podcasts, actually. A few POV podcasts. I’ve said most of these, but from some of our mentors, top strength coaches and nutritionists. And we kind of got there pretty quickly without too much bother. I’m not too keen on the old turbulence, but there wasn’t too much, which is quite good.
Another thing I remember, another tip that we utilized, and Stephen and I both utilize for a long period of time now whenever we’re going to kind of buildup areas, is you know the hand wash, the disinfectant hand wash that you use to wash your hands when you’re going to the hospital or whatever, if you get a little bit of that and dab it underneath your nose, or when you’re going on to an airplane or when you’re going to a hospital or wherever, basically, that stops the chances of you developing a cold because basically for the cold to take hold, as it were, it has to go through your nose, in through your mouth and around and it’s kind of a circular motion. And if you put the disinfectant there, obviously, it kills it. That’s the whole point of a disinfectant. It kills it. So it stops basically it circulating, which is how you develop a cold. So that actually is a way of stopping you getting a cold. Obviously, you hear a lot of people talking about catching a cold after being on a plane or flu or whatever, and that will help you not to catch it next time.
So, we got off the plane and we actually got picked up. My girlfriend has arranged for a pickup, which is awesome. It was so much easier. And like I always say these things, that if you can get picked up, it’s so much easier because just think how long it took from door to door or from eating breakfast through to kind of getting to the apartment, and it wasn’t really too – maybe four hours – and most people can kind of go without kind of indulging in really bad food and being low blood sugar for about four hours as long as they’ve had a good breakfast. And that’s why I say have the protein and fat breakfast, because it makes a massive difference.
And obviously, always the key when flying is to drink lots of water. Don’t be shy if you’re having to pop to the toilet because drinking water, especially in an air-coned kind of flight is really, really important. You’ll dehydrate really quickly. Like I got through a hell of a lot of water. And obviously, you have to buy it once you’re through customs because I didn’t realize – here’s another tip for you – that even if you – so actually, it was an aftershave I had. A big aftershave thing. Like a Paco Rabanne or something. And basically, it was nearly empty. So it’s definitely less than 100 ml, but I think it was like one of them really big ones. But because it says – I think it was 750 or whatever is was ml on the outside – even if it doesn’t have that on the inside, they still make you throw it away. So that was a swift £80 into the bin there because I didn’t realize. So yeah, there’s your tip. Even if you have less than 100 ml of water or whatever is it in the bottle, but the bottle is say 500 ml, they’ll still make you throw it away. So that’s a quick, quick tip.
Anyway, so basically, the key for I think enjoyment for me in this whole trip was the fact it was a self-catering apartment. Like I’ve stayed in a few hotels and things before. Not in Rome, but in other cities. And I’ve just found that the hotel’s breakfast just aren’t really anywhere near as good as you can make or as enjoyable as you can make in your own apartment. So, basically, that was probably the coolest thing, was that it was a self-catering apartment. So, basically, it allowed me to have eggs and I had ham, which is kind of refined, I’ll admit, and probably not 100% because you shouldn’t really have refined meats if you can. But, like I say, the thing with fat loss and all these things, like we always try and say, is it is about taking the better option. So that or going out and eating, which pretty much it seemed like the breakfast was croissant, which I thought was just in France. But it was pretty much croissant, some kind of pastries in Rome, it seemed. So having eggs or that choice was much, much better. So, if you can, try and go for a self-catering apartment, even if it’s just for your breakfast. Because obviously, like we ate out every other meal but the breakfast.
And I think I might have mentioned this in a previous podcast because when I went to Paris, that’s what I learned, is that I can’t handle my days just nowhere near as good if I have pastries and other really sugary things for breakfast because like I’ve said before, that’s the whole point, is your blood sugar shoots up and down massively if you have sugar to start the day. So, even if you’re on holiday, I really suggest that you start with fat and protein for breakfast, and you will find that you will enjoy the whole day far, far better.
So, obviously, it’s really hot in Rome. Weirdly. I didn’t actually get around the town because I was walking around and pretty much looking for shade the whole time because it was so hot in the city that you just couldn’t stand out in it. Even when we were going to the Colosseum and things, I’d nip out for a photo, and then back into the shade because it was so hot. But, what I did find was coconut water. And so, I just drank that throughout the day because I was – I didn’t actually the first – I think it was the first afternoon. I didn’t have any and I was dehydrated with a massive headache for kind of the evening because I hadn’t drunk enough water.
So that’s another thing, and we’ve said this before, but water is the basis of all your enzyme processes, so you can’t lose fat if you’re not hydrated enough. But conversely, if you’re dehydrated when you’re trying to have an enjoyable holiday, everything else doesn’t function as well as it could or should. So, that’s what I found. I got coconut water for the rest of the holiday and I just kind of had that for the most part of the day and kind of sipped it and that was a lot better because coconut water is a really good way of hydrating quickly. It’s actually a good tip to use after a workout or actually during a workout, is have coconut water. You can just dilute it. So you can chuck some coconut water in, and then dilute it with normal water to kind of prolong it. But that is really good for rehydrating you and that’s important.
So, probably – what was it I was going to say? The thing that maybe made the biggest difference in allowing me to enjoy the holiday – relaxed, but not to probably put as much fat on as I would have done. And the leaner you are, the less fat you’ll put on when you eat badly, but even going away, it’s really tough going to Rome and not to kind of put on some fat.
And I’m going to admit that I’m not probably at the best I’ve ever been, but the thing that I find and that I’ve found is that if I try and stick to a relatively good lunch, I’m much better and enjoy myself much more when I have an evening meal. I call it a “cheat meal,” basically. But if I have that at lunch, I just don’t enjoy it as much and my afternoon is spent basically – literally, one of these days, I had pizza and ciabattas. What is a ciabatta? You know, the tomato and mozzarella on bruschetta for lunch. And I was asleep at 4 o’clock. I went home to kind of freshen up and things, and actually, I fell asleep at 4. I was asleep. I think it was three hours. And then, I took her for dinner. Which isn’t kind of what you want when you should be walking around Rome and enjoying all of the sights. But I laid on my bed to read my book and I was asleep and my girlfriend kind of left me to recover. But that’s not the kind of the thing you’d be wanting. And really, that kind of shows how the food I had for lunch really didn’t help me in that basically I went to sleep.
So, obviously, like we’ve said before, if you eat a certain food, you really want to try and gauge how you feel after it, after you’ve eaten it, maybe an hour to two hours after. And if you feel sleepy, then generally, you’re not going to do very well on that food because obviously, you want food that should be rejuvenating. It should give you energy and make you feel a lot stronger and a lot more actively aware as opposed to feeling sleepy and lethargic like the pizza and the bruschetta did for me. So, that’s my I think probably the second biggest takeaway, was if you can, have a better lunch than you do dinner if you’re going to kind of choose between the two.
And then, in the evening I did, like I say, I ate kind of what I wanted. The point is it doesn’t really matter if you get sleepy because you should be heading to sleep. And that’s the whole thing with carbs, because that’s pretty much obviously what I was having. And when I say “cheating” or eating not necessarily brilliantly, is I was having lots of carbohydrates. And we’ve said this before, but they help release serotonin, so I felt really good and really sleepy. That’s the problem with them. That’s why you should never really have them for breakfast if you’re trying to lose weight or body fat. Because they help release serotonin, the feel good hormone, and then you’ll basically find yourself feeling much more lethargic kind of a couple of hours after. Whereas when you have protein and fats, your energy levels are much more stable for a lot, lot longer. And that’s why it’s better to have them in the evening.
So, I was asked by a couple of people – actually email – the ladies that knew I was away in Rome what I managed to snack on because a couple have actually been to Rome. And while a few people have been to Rome – Lira and Adam went to Rome, but it wasn’t actually they that asked me – but they asked me what I’d managed to snack on. And actually, I found a really good snack this time, and it was basically just full fat yoghurt because they have really good natural full fat yoghurt there, and I just kind of chopped up bananas and blueberries and had them kind of midmorning. So I’d have my breakfast, kind of go out for a little bit and come back in and have that. Really nice, really refreshing. I probably wouldn’t necessarily have that in the UK, but I am on holiday. The thing, the only thing that I’ll tell you is that a punnet of blueberries is €5.00. That absolutely dominated me. I went and wanted two bananas and a punnet of blueberries, and it was €5.80, which is pretty much – like I’ve just realized that euros aren’t play money and it’s pretty much one for one. So that’s €5.80 basically, and the €5.00 was for the blueberries. So €5.00 for a punnet of blueberries.
So yeah, just be aware. That, and also green tea. If you go to a restaurant or a coffee shop and order a green tea, firstly, they look at you kind of funny. Secondly, if your partner or who you’re with doesn’t order one, they kind of look at you even more funnily. And then next, they charge you €4.00 for one green tea. And that is when a box of green tea over there costs €2.59. So €4.00 for one teabag when you can get a box of 50 for €2.59. Which is kind of yeah, it hurts the wallet a little bit, but you kind of got to persevere with the health. So, I still have my green teas, and that’s why it all adds up.
Anyway, I kind of wanted to give you a few other options on what you can do when you go to this kind of cities to try and firstly get better food. Secondly, to probably enjoy yourself more. And that is – and you probably hear this a lot – but try and stay clear of all the tourist attraction restaurants. So if you go to the coliseum or you go to the Colosseum or you go to the Spanish Steps, all the different ones in Rome especially, if you eat at the restaurants nearby, you’ll find that they’re very – kind of they’re catered for the tourists. But therefore, if food is catered for the tourists, then they’re kind of cheaper or they’re more mass-produced, and the quality of the food is a lot, lot worse than the quality if you go off on the beaten track.
So, actually, where we ate a lot – pretty much 99% of the time – was all kind of down the little backstreets, a fair way away from all of the big attractions, and the food was of a far greater quality than the ones near the tourist spots. So that makes a difference. And if you actually look, you might not realize this, but Italian people, native Italian people, store less body fat proportionally compared to British. And we’ve talked about this before, but that’s because of the estrogen in the water in the UK. But also, due to their nutrition, their diet, their food. The more natural produced food. I mean, that’s obviously Italy is known for their food, but that’s one of the main reasons. You’ll see that people in Rome or in Italy store less fat in their legs.
And I’ve seen this quite a few times when we’ve done what’s called the BioSignature Modulation. Which is, of course, we’ve done a fair few times. We’ve talked about it before, but that’s basically about where you store fat and why you store fat on your body. Whenever we do these courses, sometimes we’ve done them in Sweden, sometimes we’ve done them in the UK and America. But whenever the person getting tested is from Italy or Germany or Sweden or somewhere like that, they invariably don’t have the same issues as the people in the UK, and people in the UK, it’s always an estrogen issue, which means that they always store fat on their legs. That’s men and women. So there’s a point, is if we want to kind of steer away from storing fat on our legs, we kind of want to be doing more of what say the Italians are doing, and that’s eating more natural foods and having good fats – olive oil, avocado, and they have a lot of that. And mozzarella, buffalo mozzarella. A lot of buffalo mozzarella. But that’s why they tend to store less fat on their legs. They have less of an estrogen issue, which is a good, interesting point there.
Just another quick kind of thing that I managed to do, basically, my girlfriend’s kind of realized – and actually, this was started by my sister when we were younger – that if I go out for the day with anyone, I kind of need my snacks. Otherwise, I’m not the party person. I’m not the happiest guy around if I don’t have some good snacks with me. And so, in the afternoon, I would have some nuts and we kind of buy an apple because you can buy it on the street corners or wherever. And I’d have it with her or have it myself. An apple and nuts, and that kind of get me going until dinner. And the difference, the marked difference between when I ate that compared to when I say had the pizza and stuff at lunch, was huge. I was actually awake at 4 o’clock in the afternoon as opposed to being asleep on my holiday, which is obviously what you want.
So that’s one of the keys, is even if you – like I know when people go away, they’re like, “Oh, I’m going to eat whatever I want!” It’s just cool, but you won’t enjoy it as much if you do that all day, and I defy you to say that you will because first things first, you feel a lot worse if you’re eating foods that you don’t normally do, foods that don’t make you feel good inside. As in you’d feel bloated. So if you can just eat slightly a bit more strategically in terms of when you choose to kind of gorge. And generally, if you can leave that for the evening when it doesn’t matter if you feel a bit bloated or it doesn’t matter if you kind of feel sleepy, and you’re going to find that you have a lot happier and healthier holiday and you’re going to come back from holiday without – limiting the damage, basically, because you shouldn’t be putting on massive amounts of body fat when you’re away. And it’s not good for your body if you do and it’s not good for how you feel if you do either.
So yeah. That’s one of the key things, is don’t just take it as a chance to go and eat terribly all day, or do. Actually, do that for a day and see how you feel. If you go and eat what you wouldn’t normally do all day, and then see how you feel and compare that to how I’ve just discussed – having a good breakfast and a relatively good lunch, and then if you want to gorge yourself, have it at dinner. You’ll feel a lot, lot better and you will have more fun on your holiday.
One other thing before I wrap up, because I kind of talked about my holiday enough and I’m sure most of you probably have had your holidays now, but if you are going away on holiday, do try and utilize these tips if you can. But basically, a lot of people always ask, “Oh, you take supplements. So how do you take them away with you?” And actually, it’s interesting. I didn’t take any supplements away with me this time just because the strip search gets a bit awkward sometimes when they’re flipping on the gloves and asking you to bend over. It kind of gets a bit awkward with the strip search. But basically, I decided not to. I wanted to kind of do a little test. So normally I take what’s called Magnesium which helps me deal with stress and it basically helps me sleep. And normally, if I stop taking that when I’m back at home, I don’t sleep. I don’t sleep very well at all. I will be up once or twice in the night, which you shouldn’t be. You should sleep all the way through.
This time, I decided not to, and actually slept straight through really well. And that’s because the stressors or the things that you generally have to deal with in the UK weren’t there. And that’s one of the key things with Magnesium, is that it helps you deal with stress. But if you remove that stress from yourself, then you don’t necessarily need to take the same supplement. So that’s what they say about supplements, is that a supplement is designed to supplement what you eat. And when you have people that say, “Oh, but you can get everything you need from the food that you eat and you shouldn’t need to supplement with any vitamins or whatever,” that’s correct if we live in a world that is stress-free, all of the food is natural, it doesn’t have any chemicals in it at all. That was the case maybe – or actually, probably not even 2,000 years ago or 1,000 years ago, 100 years ago because there was still stress. But if that was the case, then you’d be able to not have to take supplements.
But unfortunately, most of us encounter stress every day. And therefore, that’s why you need to supplement. But, my point is that actually, for this short period of time, I’m carrying on sleeping and I have no worries because I removed the stress from my day or from my life, effectively, for that short period of time. So it was kind of a good reminder to me that always one of the ways of having less stress is to kind of remove yourself from that environment that causes the stress. So if it’s a stressful job or a stressful person in your life or whatever it is, sometimes if you can, try and remove yourself from that, and you’ll find that it’s a lot easier to remove the stress rather than have to kind of battle to handle it more, if that makes sense.
So, anyway, I wanted just to kind of leave you with that and give you hopefully a few helpful tips if you’re going on holiday. Give me your opinions, actually. I’ll be interested to see how you found your holidays this year or if you have a holiday planned. And if you put on weight, how much weight did you put on because that would be interesting.
And one last thing is we’re actually going to be putting on a little thing on the website, on TheDVCC.com, where you’ll be able to leave messages, leave kind of voicemails. It’s free over the Internet. You can leave a message. We’ll play them out on the podcast. And if it’s a question, we’ll be able to answer it there. If it’s just a comment, a disagreement or whatever it is, record it. And then, we’ll be happy to play it on here. We’ve got – gosh! How many? Literally, over 10,000, or I think it’s like 15,000 episodes of this podcast being downloaded now. So if you have a point of view, it will be good to hear it. Otherwise, Stephen should be back next week. So I’ll have my little compadre. And then, we will speak to you then! This is Mark from TheDVCC.com.
