Celeb chef Dan Churchill’s top eating tips for improving every day

Oh why, hello there.

Thank you for joining us Healthyish listeners on this daily podcast from Body and Soul. I am your host for listening, halle and joining us today is the legendary Dan Churchill.

Yes he is back. He joins us from New York City. Of course.

He is a chef, athlete and performance coach. He has a new book out called Eat Like a Legend, and we're going to chat about his guidelines today, how he eats like a Legend and how you can too to improve your every day. If you like what you hear from Dan, tune into Extra Healthyish where we talk about how to eat for performance, so you can catch that wherever we get your podcasts. Dan, nice to have you back on Healthish the third time. As you just reminded me, Thanks for coming back.

Mat Always a pleasure speaking to you and listening in on what's going on in the world in Australia.

Yes.

Well, one thing that is going on is that your book just launched and I want to talk about that.

I like it.

This whole philosophy of eating like a Legend. What's this all about?

No, I've you know, before I was a chef, I was a strength and conditioning coach. I left school not want to want, not knowing what I wanted to do, but having to do a master's and exercise science was just natural to me. And I really learned about how athletes looked at their ability to improve their performance through food, and I was someone who helped facilitated that after it

In fact, aesthetics is just one principle behind it.

And so the books really tailored to help people really really optimize their ability to perform through food.

Yeah, and I think it's interesting to put a perspective on this where it's not just performance in fitness, it's performance in the whole of life. I mean, sometimes you know, when we hear people like you and we think, oh, yeah, but you're you know, this amazing athlete yourself, and I can't.

I can never perform with those standards.

But you actually have to perform whether you're a mom or whether you're at work or just getting through life.

Yeah, that's honestly it like it was.

I had a bit of a moment as many years ago, but I was speaking to a mom and she was telling me like what she did in her day, and I'm like, hang on, Like the amount of stuff that she does in her day is nothing like no athlete can compare to. So I'm thinking like, well, she's putting a variety of strain on her body, whereas athletes are very much physical strain focus Like a mother has to, you know, put up with so many last met changes like the stress, the hormonal impacts.

And not just the physical like doing everything.

And so I was like, well, hang on, what if we just apply the same principles to what an athlete would be, to what every principle that every other legend would be.

And that's exactly how it came about.

So, whether you're looking to get a promotion, if you're looking to you know, be better around your family, if you are like a mother who's having to look after like my mom three grown boys. It's like, you should show up for yourself, and a big part of that is putting yourself first. And unfortunately, I'll be honest, I don't think a lot of us do that.

We put ourselves not even just second.

We put ourselves close to the bottom, which means our food and our decisions for our health go to the bottom. Everyone can relate to this. It's like when something comes up in the day, the first thing to go is the decision to look after ourselves and our health.

So absolutely, yeah, we can all relate to that.

And so yes, whether you're a mom, whether you're trying to get a you know, you're giving a presentation, whether you're going out to you know, hang out with your friends socially, just showing up for them and giving your best performance for them. The idea is you should be eating the right foods for you.

Now, you've got these five guidelines in the front of your book for eating like a legend.

Can you talk through these? The first one? Eat good? What's this all about?

I mean, I think I've talked to you about before, but eat good is a very fundamental thing that we can already know.

I'm like everyone listening in knows the answer to this.

Don't eat refined sugar, eat plenty of colorful foods and add the choice of protein that works for you.

That's eating a nutshell right now.

That principles. Okay, that's a pretty basic principle. Dam I'm like cool. I had to say it. If I didn't, it wouldn't like make this book have any credibility. But just to remind people that if you just simply cut out refined sugar alone, that is already half the battle. Considering, like, particularly in America where I'm currently living, the impact on sugar, refined sugar on our health. Whether you know, it's linked to the five major causes of American disease, So that alone is a big one.

Eat easy. What's this all about?

As a chef, I know people think that my job means that I find things a lot easier in the kitchen, and to an extent, yeah, that's true. But in a chefing environment things can be hard, right, So I don't want people to.

Think that we have it easy.

We give ourselves the best position to execute in the most timely manner that still puts out the best quality. So put it out aside for a second, what does eat easy mean. It's like cooking doesn't have to be hard.

For the home cook.

And there's many principles I use in the book to help alleviate this common stress around the hardship or like the requirement to be a chef or a home cook and eat well. So simple things like sheep hands or using the grill are two basic principles to help you know. You understand how you can just apply heat simply with minimal use your time to get the best out of an ingredient. So as you go through the recipe book itself,

And I'll say this last thing.

If I told you to pick one meal from this recipe book and to do it every Tuesday night for the next three weeks, you will undoubtedly cook the meal much better on the third time, much more quicker, and most way doing so because you put the reps in to do so.

I like it. Now eat more. This seems kind of counterintuitive in some ways. But what's this? What does this mean?

Yeah, everyone's like being blame going, well, hang on, I've been told to eat less and need it a deficit and I'm like, yeah, the principle applies for if you're trying to lose weight consistently.

But I will say this, I think if we took.

In account eating the right foods and a large amount of right foods, it is a much better principle to improve our performance and then in turn increase our metabolism than eating the wrong foods but less of If it makes sense, the idea behind this is eating for performance and the vision of doing so. So eating for the

Now, the people I live by, which is.

Eating for performance is if you eat the right foods that help you move physically better, you're going to put out the better work physically in whatever you do, include the gym, which will in turn lead to better aesthetics. So if you're someone who looks at asteaks and doesn't eat the right foods, if you go to the gym, you the right food to support that movement, and then in turn you're not going to get the gains of the results or the weight loss that you want.

So eating for performance over aesthetic is a.

Better way to look at your description of food. And then on top of that, if I look at most people that I deal with, I'm like, I say that I just got off a call with a girl, She's like, she doesn't need enough, simply put. And so eating more doesn't have to mean a lot more, she means eating a little bit more to support that output can be a better way to improve your performance and therefore improve your aesthetics.

Yeah, Dan, thank you for coming on healthy Ish.

Thanks mate.

If you want more of the good stuff from the delightful Dan Churchill, grab his book. It is called Eat Like a Legend, packed with delicious recipes. It is of course out now anything else head body and soolt dot Com, Dodu follows on socials. Grab our print edition, which is out in your local Sunday paper and until tomorrow, Stay Healthy is