#1864 Some Sanity In The Food Madness - Simon Hill

day with the keys in it. And I took that golf buggy, who drove it on the road with like five or six friends on the back and hanging off the side of it down to research shops, which were like the closest shops to get fish and chips. And unfortunately we drove past one of our teachers on the way down, so that didn't end so well.

thought through. He's he's not hysterical, he's not pushing an agenda, he's not selling shit. And I love the way that you communicate, and I love the capacity that you have to be able to disseminate what can be complicated ship in a user friendly way. So is that I mean, is that that's obviously how do I share?

the about about us page. And I think I might steal that from you, because honestly, I grew up my dad's a professor of physiology, and so you can imagine what you know when I'm five six, seven eight and at the dinner table and he's talking like an academic, right, I had to very quickly learn to know ask the stupid, dumb questions to get him to kind of make it more accessible, because it's like another language that these guys speak. Whether you're at a conference or you're reading the peer

review studies. That is a giant arms length away from the everyday person who really needs that information. So yeah, that's I've kind of taken I guess, those skills that I learned at the dinner table and use those today to sit down with people like my dad, other professors and get them to kind of translate or share their often thirty forty years of research in a more accessible, more palatable way so that we can myself included, can make sense of it.

a black T shirt. I'm trying to figure out. And then we're having meetings where everybody gets together and talks about their project, in other words, their PhD, like what they're doing in their research, and I literally, for a year didn't understand what anyone was talking about. I had to keep going, what does that mean? What does that mean? What's that word? Like, I'm writing stuff that not a

year but a rock solid six months. And I think sometimes with academia and research for many people, and it's not good or bad, and it's not a it's not a slight on anyone's intelligence, but it's like you're walking into a room where everyone's literally speaking a different language. It's like, I'm you know, like I walk into room and everyone in the room speaks Russian except me. Well, I know I'm not stupid, and I know that they're not necessarily smarter than me, but I don't speak Russian,

so I'm at a massive disadvantage. And everything they're telling me is to them, it's clear and it makes sense, and the research is right and it's logical and it's even relevant to me. But I'm like, that's awesome, but I don't fucking speak Russian. And that's what it's like sometimes, that chasm between research and information that's relevant for so

many people. And that's why I think your stuff is good is great, because that's you're almost like which I try and be too, but you're kind of a conduit between these two disparate sometimes disparate worlds.

this room. And I just stopped and I went and he was so beautiful. He was like this wise spiritual, it's like the insection of spirituality and research and academia. And I said to him, professor, can I tell you something? And he goes, yes, of course, And I'm not smart enough to be in this chat. And then he just laughed and he went, oh, I think you're quite smart.

And then he went I went, oh, I don't know about that, but you know, for me, it's like that, yeah, I've I'd rather just go I need to kind of own up a little bit because I'm not sure what I'm asked. I don't know. I don't even know what to ask you in this moment to make it a good listening experience for the thousands of people that rock up to listen to this every day. And he was so good, he was so and it ended up being

a really good chat. But I just had that moment of terror where I'm I'm thinking, I don't know how to make this okay.

for me, minds and brains are more interesting. And so I'm going to open that door now. And did you start in physio? Am I right with that. You started as a physiotherapist.

with elite athletes. And that was the time actually when Ben Cousins had come back from West Coast and was playing playing with Richmond. He was playing quite a bit of football with Koburg Tigers, so I remember treating him and so I was in that physiotherapy space. And then you know, some years later we ended up going back to university as you know, and I went to Degan University.

beautiful afternoon, we're driving back. My dad lived in King Lake at the time, and he started getting chest pain and I could tell that he was uncomfortable, and he kind of played it down, and we got back to his house in King Lake and we cooked dinner and I checked in on him. He seemed to think that it was dissipating, not as much pain as before, and we had.

of neighborhoods and homes. But back then you drive from kind of r MIT in Bundura up to King Lake. There was not a lot in between. It was mostly just farms, you know. South Brange was all farms. And so they said, look, you're a long way from the

nearest hospital. We're sending a helicopter, and they sent a helicopter to pick up my dad and I went by road in the ambulance trailing them, and by that time my mum and brother because my parents were divorced when I was younger, they made their way over and to the hospital and so we had this long wait to find out like what's happening, and you know, ultimately the cardiologists came out and said, your dad's had a huge heart attack and we've we've managed to save these life.

But his life will look a little different from now on, and he'll be on medications. And you guys, are you know, fifteen and seventeen or eighteen, my brother, you're going to need to really keep a close eye on your cardiovascular health because cardiovasca disease runs in families, which is all true. And at the time we were just grateful that dad was alive. Yeah, of course, but in the aftermath of that, my brother and I just kind of always had this

lingering idea that our heart disease runs in our family. So, you know, Dad's had a hard to take at forty one, and my dad didn't look like My dad wasn't obese, he wasn't eating McDonald's and.

So it was that at this stage, it's forty one.

specific enough to make sense of nutrition science. And so I was reading, and I was confused and going and reading like an article from a supposed reputable source and then seeing another article and they seem very contradictory. And I was in the position that I think a lot of people listening are probably in and continue to be in, especially with social media how that's evolved. Now it's scroll and then scroll up, and you're exposed to contradictory things,

you know, within seconds. So I was like, I need to understand how to read the primary literature here, and that was the curiosity piece. So I went back and applied to Deacon. Thankfully they let me in and I did my master degree there, and my sole goal was I want to understand how to read this literature so I can actually understand how to eat to reduce my

risk of cardiovascular disease. And more and more I got into it, and then you know, started seeing patients speaking to people in my community.

And I understand that it seems like there's all sorts of because everyone can say study show, right, So if Bob saying study show, and Mark saying study show, and Sandra's saying study show, but they're all saying different things, well, clearly the research is just confused.

or opposed. You know, but you're not calling anyone an idiot or a moron, and you're literally just presenting information. And I like that and that's refreshing versus I don't often do this, but I'm going to say one name that you would know, and I think this guy's smart. But Lane Norton obviously you know who that guy is or no, yeah, yeah, Like I sometimes I'm like, dude, I love this, but do you have to call everyone an idiot or a moron? It makes me like you

less Just just like you're smart. You've got a PhD in nutrition, you're smart, and you don't need all the theatrics and the denner grading of everybody who doesn't think like you for me. And I know he has a lot of followers, but and maybe I'd have more followers if I did more of that. I don't know, but I don't care. I'd rather not do it.

And there's a whole lot of things I'm looking for, like certain types of fallacies, you know.

you know, animal studies don't translate to humans. And it's like, well, how can you have that position?

always you know. And it's like, so for me as an excise scientist, when people like this kind of what's the best way, too, right, and then fill in the blank build strength, improve flexibility, range, movement, power, speed, muscular endurance, aerobic endurance or whatever, or what's the best way to eat or what's the best whatever, what's the best supplement, and so apart from the fact that that's not a great question, but you would then go, well, for who,

because what's going to be optimal in terms of you know, nutrition and recovery and exercise and all these various stimuli. All these things that I'm going to do to my body that might work great for me would be a fucking train wreck for Simon because Simon ain't me and I ain't him, and so you know that that's when I'm I'm trying to help people to understand that. And I've had a version of this conversation many times. But like, for example, I've got a bunch of motorbikes. I love

riding motorbikes. For me, it's actually fun and it produces like a good biochemical state in my body, and for me it's healthy. But for somebody else it produces the

opposite response. It's actually doing something bad, you know. And it's even down to you know, the music that I listen to might create a positive internal state for me, you know, on a psychological, emotional, and physiological level, but the same music for someone else will create the opposite response, right and so it's not like is this music good or bad? Is this is this approach to nutrition good or bad? Is this workout good or bad? But rather

how does your body respond to that particular thing? And I think for me, I'm really excited to try and help people to try and understand their own body and the way that it acts and reacts around all these different variables and go, well, you don't need to be a scientist to do something scientific, So why don't you leave everything else the same and for the next two weeks do X unless it's something ridiculous, but try that. Do two weeks of X, don't change anything else. See

what happens. Your body will tell you. You know, we can do that, right right?

And now you start to see like this is why the research can be very confusing, because even at a neutrienter of a food level, you have to be considering for who does compared to what?

And you can imagine like a bell curve. Okay, we all fall somewhere on the Bell curve, right, but we're not average. I mean we could be, but we're probably not average right at the middle of the Bell curve. We could be somewhere along there. So where our own experience, what we get from making some dietary change or some exercise change may not be represented in the average from a clinical study. Does that make sense to you, Yeah, So what we're putting forward at a public health recommendation

is based on the average. So then I think that those are generally good guidelines, and from their people personalize and find a way that's working best for them, and then that brings us to what is working best, like, how do you actually define that or measure it at an individual level?

so I was a big kid and all of this stuff. Anyway, I have this without boring you and my listeners for the million at the time. But this, you know, this moment in time, something happened wasn't horrendous, but it was just like for me psychologically, emotionally and sociologically pretty uncomfortable, and I just went fuck it, like a switch flicked. And that's when and then I lost a whole lot

of weight in a relatively short time. And around that was apart from the weight loss and all those good things. And you know, I was fitter, and I was healthier, and I was more aware, but mentally, emotionally and socially,

like my world changed quite dramatically. And so I've always been interested in the psychology for one of a better term, the psychology of getting in shape right, and understanding the role that my mind plays in physiology and whether that's nutrition or sleep or stress, anxiety or training or adaptation, physical you know, strength, power, all those things, but trying

to understand my mind around all of this. And so I always had this fucking tempestuous relationship with food, right, because for me, food was like because I've never smoked, never drunk never, I've never been drunk, I've never had a beer, I've never been high, right, so whatever that means good, bad, boring. But for me, like food was like my drug. I would eat food all the time that I didn't need because it made me feel fucking

great in the moment. You know, do you think that apart from the knowledge of this is this is what food is about? Or here's some information on micros and macros and intimate and fasting and all of these other things that we explore. Do you ever open the door on what I call our relationship with food, like the sociology, psychology, and emotion that kind of intersects with all of that and in many ways for many of us, dictates what we do and how we do it.

yo dieting or way. You know, diets don't don't often work long term, and you see that in the research when you look at weight loss, you see, you know, we're actually pretty good at losing weight in the first three or six months we are, and there's it's probably some short term willpower, right, But then what you tend to see is that you know, by two years, most of that weight has come back on off and often

more so. I you you just mentioned there that it was like a switch flicked, So I'm interested, like, what have you gone back and double clicked on that and thought about what was that switch? What was what was underlying that that led to sustainable changes to the way that you were eating.

for me, that that very like I remember feeling. I had this feeling that was and I know it's like it's disproportionate when you look in the context of life in the world and people with real problems which I didn't have. But to me at that as that fourteen year old fat kid, that was so fucking painful that I just went, this is never happening again. I'm never doing this again. I'm never going to have this experience again. Like I associated more pain with staying in it than

getting out of it. So whatever I need to do to not be this to not be. And for me, honestly, it was more about aesthetics at that stage, because I just to me anyway, I looked fucking hideous. And I know people go, oh, no, don't say it, but that's

how I felt, right. So of course, the you know, the physiological benefits were great, but I was actually driven more by self esteem and ego or low self esteem and and just wanting to be liked and loved and valued and accepted, and to look not like I looked, so that I'd be more normal. So that was for me. It was like it was very much these internal emotional and psychological drivers.

by myself a lot. My parents were amazing, but they worked, so I would get home from school at three thirty or four and they would get home at six thirty or seven or whatever. So I spent a lot of time alone, and I was probably a little bit socially disconnected and isolated, especially in the younger years kind of you know, seven through ten, eleven, twelve, and I you know, I just I just fed myself and it's like, you know, that little dopamine kind of moment was pretty good, and I'd feel.

I felt good doing that. So I did that, you know, and it's yeah, but I that's why for me, when I'm talking about weight loss for a body or body composition or changing you know, changing how we look feel functional that with I always say to people, yeah, I'm excise scientists, but I'm also talking to you experientially and not just with the thousands of people that I've trained, but also as a person who is not genetically gifted, does not have still does not have massive self esteem,

you know, for me to be you know, for me to be at sixty one with not great genetics and pretty fit and pretty strong and pretty lean. For me, it's and I've created a you know, an operating system that's automatic. So there's not a lot of willpower or

sacrifice or discipline. But it's taken forever to be able to figure out how to make this thing that I live in work really well, you know, And I think that's one of the challenges is which we you know, kind of talking about a minute ago, But how do I build a you know, an automatic kind of operating

system that that just works for my body? Like, what's the thing that I do sometimes when I'm in the middle of inspiration or motivation or whatever that actually just needs to be in all the time, non negotiable, you know. So this is and when I do this thing, I don't need a round of applause or a trophy or an accolade. No, this is just me doing the thing that I need to do. So, yeah, it's that that's

what it's been for me. Anyway. For me, staying in shape is the first book I wrote was about the psychology of getting in shape, and I didn't even really understand fully what I was writing about, but I knew that for me it was it was almost a psychological emotional process with a physical outcome. Even though people would think changing your body is all about your body, for me, not really.

sky high rates of loneliness and isolation. And then on top of that, so you take these people who who do not have optimal mental health and put them in an environment where they're tempted by all of these very high calorie dense foods that are ultra processed and contain all sorts of additives that, as I said, hijack these reward systems, and it's a recipe for chronic disease. And

so to unravel that, I agree with you. I think to unravel that, A we have to think about the way our society is set up to foster better mental health from early age, from early age, and hand in hand, you have to change the way society is set up to reduce the century lifestyle that we're seeing, and to change the food environment. Simply asking people to make the healthy food choice. In a food environment like we live in,

it's hard, right. There is a small percentage of people that can develop the willpower to do that, no doubt about it. You can look around, you can find examples, but most people can't. And so there has to be sure there has to be effort at the individual level.

keep doing it. Right. But people are surprised when I say motivation is motivation is different things too, But in the context of this chat, we're talking about that emotional, heightened inspired state of motivation. You know, it comes and goes, and for many people, when the motivation goes, the behaviors go,

so therefore the results go. And then there's three months of fucking around and then they're like they have of some kind of revelation and then they're inspired again for three weeks and then and then they're fifty and then they sit in front of me and say, this wasn't my plan, And I say, can I see the plan? They're like, what I go the plan of which you speak grasshopper, can I see it? And there is no

fucking plan. There was just an idea of how things would turn out, right, And so I say to people all the time, you know, inspiration and motivation and even discipline and self control will power all of those things. They're definitely not bad things, of course, but they're not the solution. They're not the answer. I'm more interested in what you can do when you're not inspired and motivated.

I'm more interested in what you can do when you don't feel like it, when it's inconvenient, when it's painful, when it's not fun, when it's not quick, when no one's looking, when no one's giving you a fucking round of applause or a medal, and it's And I know this is a little bit hardcore, but there everything that you said about environment I agree with. But most of us don't live in that environment, so we go all right. Nonetheless,

I'm in this environment that isn't conducive. So in this environment, in this reality that I do live, and we don't need to be fucking Olympians or live on lettuce and meditate in a cave. But in the context of where I am, what can I do?

you have a little whisper in your ear. Turn right, okay, turn right, okay, turn left, and so you have some guide it so you can guide your way out of the maze and achieve good health. Essentially, and I mean I I developed a completely free program called the Living Proof Challenge, and there's a PDF on my website. People can people can go and download it. It's free, there's no catches, no cost. And the whole premise of that

challenge was exactly what we're talking about, Craig. It was like, what are the if you distilled it down from a lifestyle, what are like, what are the handful of things that would be good for people to test? Okay, so they kind of understand where the hell's are today, and then what are the handful of things that would be good for people to in their lifestyle?

next three, four, five decades. Okay, we're all going to have We're all going to have days where we fumble whatever that we're human, and then a retest. And so you have this model where you can just continually assess how you're going with very simplified kind of template of key things to measure that we know predict your risk

of chronic disease and longevity. Yeah, and so that was my kind of simple, quote unquote simple solution to this complex problem that you just describe so eloquently when you said that this is the environment we have and it's not changing.

out of the zone. They lose a bit, they gain a bit, they get fitter, they get unfitter, and then they do nothing for six months. And that was my dad, and my dad had a heart attack at seventy two and died and was revived multiple times. So he's now eighty five. So that was thirteen years ago. And obviously, having me as a son, I was always pestering him about his habits, behavior's, lifestyle, you know, fat gut all that,

because I'm a sympathetic son in love of course. But then the guy who was always like yeah, yeah, and yep, and I did yeah. You know, as soon as he had his heart attack, complete paradigm shift, complete thinking shift, like internal reset. And even in the hospital he was saying to me when he was recovering after open heart surgery, which it was back then, he was saying, you need to tell me what I have to do. Like he'd

never spoken to me like that in his life. Now, all of a sudden, the dude, and then obviously he comes out of hospital, he loses twenty five k's, he starts walking every day, he goes to the gym, he gets stronger, he changes his habits and behavior and outcomes. He drinks les booze. It's fucking it's a new it's him two point zero, right. I'm like, Buck, you could have done this anytime. You didn't have to nearly die. Right.

That's the thing that frustrates me sometimes, mate, is that that people actually have the fucking incredible potential to do amazing shit now now, but they wait for the catastrophe, they wait for the terror, you know.

I was when I was young. But what I would say to the listener is that because not everyone's going to have that direct experience, and we want people to make changes earlier in life, I think you need to think of it like essentially savings for retirement right now, If you're going to retire at sixty sixty five, we all know, like it would be far better if you

start saving at twenty five thirty. Yeah, correct, Look if you haven't and it's forty five great, say from now, and you'll still be in a much better position when

you retire. But this is the same thing when it comes to your health and we talk about your risk of chronic disease or you know, your risk of having a fracture, and your bone density and your risk of just having a fall and losing strength as you age, we can we are all going to have a reduction enbonement of density, We're all going to have a reduction in the amount of skelidal muscle, we go going to

have a reduction in strength. But what we can do is we can affect the rate of that reduction dramatically. And the earlier we start in life, the higher we are when we start to have that that decline. And so that's the way that I think I like to explain it to someone who's thinking, you know, why start when I'm thirty or forty, I'll just wait until I'm fifty and have more time.

you might be severely handicapped. And so we're trying to compress that window of years where you are affected by disease and able to do the things you love so that it's a very small period at the end of the life, and then increase all the years that you're in you're in good health. But start early is to take her message there as early as you can. It's never too late, but earlier the better.