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Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
The Vegan Debate: Science vs. Simplicity
The age-old debate of plant-based versus omnivorous diets takes center stage in this riveting conversation between host Anthony Amen and guest Tyler, creator of the "Full Vegan Belly" program. What begins as a friendly discussion quickly evolves into a fascinating exploration of nutritional science, evolutionary biology, and the psychology behind sustainable dietary habits.
Tyler shares his unexpected journey from frustrated meat-eater to vegan advocate after experiencing remarkable changes just days into his plant-based experiment. His program promises 97% complete nutrition through carefully selected whole foods condensed into a simple, accessible meal plan requiring minimal cooking skills. The comprehensive approach focuses on nutrient density rather than restriction, offering a refreshing departure from more complicated vegan regimens.
Anthony brings critical counterpoints to the conversation, challenging veganism's nutritional completeness by highlighting vitamin B12 deficiency concerns and the complexity of obtaining complete proteins from plant sources. His provocative "survival guide diet" perspective – explaining why 90% of plants are potentially dangerous while 90% of animals are safe to eat – adds a compelling evolutionary dimension that even has Tyler reconsidering certain assumptions.
What emerges isn't a clear "winner" in the dietary debate, but rather a thoughtful exploration of balance. Both agree that processed foods (including many commercial vegan products) undermine health regardless of dietary philosophy. They find common ground in advocating for whole foods, simple preparation methods, and the 80-20 approach to sustainability – being disciplined most of the time while allowing flexibility to enjoy life.
Whether you're a committed omnivore, curious about plant-based eating, or somewhere in between, this episode delivers valuable insights without dogma. You'll walk away with practical nutrition knowledge, a deeper understanding of different dietary perspectives, and perhaps most importantly, permission to find your own balanced path to better health without the pressure of perfection.
Ready to challenge your assumptions about diet and nutrition? Listen now and discover how small, consistent changes might be more powerful than radical transformations in your journey toward optimal health.
Learn More at: www.Redefine-Fitness.com
Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony. Amen and welcome to another exciting episode for all of you.
Speaker 1:Before we hop into today's episode with our lovely guest Tyler, who's here with us, little updates for you guys, and I want to know your opinion on this because I'm thinking of a complete big change of pace for this show, Something way more in the depth, in detail and at our studio. So my idea is to start eventually bringing local people to Redefine Fitness local practitioners, our trainers, our clients and make it all about redefined inside of our studio as opposed to like we've typically done for the last five and a half years, having people all over the world, or maybe a combination of both, something we're working on, really excited for it, kind of to see where it takes. But I want to know from our listeners you guys guys, reach out, let us know, love to hear your thoughts and feedbacks. Anyway, moving on to today's guest, tyler Tyler, it's a pleasure to have you on. Before we hop into the topic, just tell us a little bit about what yourself and what got you into the fitness realm.
Speaker 2:Hey, so my name is Tyler. I have something great to show you. It's all about health. It's maybe not what fitness people like, but I'm going to tell you it. You got to eat your fruit and vegetable, okay. So, yeah, it's great to be on your show. I uh, I uh, been developing this uh vegan product for the past five years now. Uh, it's finally done, perfected, uh, and I can't wait to tell you more about it.
Speaker 1:What got you into it? What got you to start at Dentalist Dream in the first place?
Speaker 2:Yeah well, so I've always been a meat eater, but something happened to my metabolism and I gained a belly, which I could not be satisfied with. Anyone in the fitness if they ever saw their sexiness, you know they would do anything to get it back. So that's what I did. So first, you know, I started dieting. I was eating like a thousand calories a day and it just I couldn't do it because I loved eating so much.
Speaker 2:So I went to the extreme, and that was vegan for me, and I fell in love with it and I was like, oh my God, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life and I've created something genius.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit about why veganism. Like you talked about how you went from eating meat and then jumped into a thousand calories, why the jump to veganism? What was calling you to it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the dieting wasn't working. Um and uh, and nothing was working. I mean, I was like God, do I have to be a vegetarian, now a vegan, and like, and so I just kind of jumped into it and literally in the first like two days I was like Whoa, I feel so good. I could have the biggest belly. Right now, I don't care, because I feel so nice.
Speaker 1:I got you, so it was more just trying something out, seeing if you liked it, tried it for a couple days, felt good about it and decided this is something you want to do. Is that accurate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know it was really cool too because, like it really only involved me eating, like you know, the foods that we already know, like apple and carrot and stuff. I was like I just exchanged that for, you know, the regular burrito I had every day and I'm a cook too, so that made it really easy.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Is that what you do, full-time chef? Yeah Well, I'm just a home home cook.
Speaker 1:Gotcha yeah, I know it. Love it, man. And then, what specifically about the vegan diet do you want to share with people, and why do you think it's something that people should change over to?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So veganism is like it's to me personally. It's too broad, there's too many like words people throw out, like you know, plant based vegan burgers. It's it's way too broad, and so what I've created is the perfect vegan diet, and I've condensed it all into a one-day meal plan, so it's perfect because of three reasons.
Speaker 2:First, it tastes delicious, it's so rich. Second, it has perfect nutrition, uh. And third, it's uh, it's really easy to make, uh, and you know, I think I'd really like to talk to tell you about the nutrition part first yeah, yeah, please.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was measuring the nutrients in foods and the USDA has this evaluation that shows you how many nutrients like vitamins you need. Say, you need like 500 vitamin A ounces or whatever. It tells you everything. It tells you like that, for all your vitamins, your proteins, the macronutrients. So what I was doing is I was measuring the nutrients in food. I chose the foods that create your 100% nutrition. So it's crazy. I mean, like I even measured. I measured like the nutrition in like the standard American diet and like it came out to like 65 percent complete. But the full vegan belly is what I I've created is 97 percent so what metrics, though?
Speaker 1:so what exactly are they using, on this scale, to track this full nutrition?
Speaker 2:uh, yeah, so it's this usda. They have this um evaluation thing like you can put in like height, weight, gender, and then it tells you everything all the vitamins, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Got it. So let's start with that in and of itself, and you can definitely throw your opinion into this. As listeners of the show know, and how I personally feel, the USDA in and of itself isn't a good example of what's a healthy food, and what I mean by that is metrics they're going off of are old, outdated and poorly done in studies. Good examples of this have been over the decades, for example, them telling us in the 70s, 80s, as like the Kickstarterstarter, that it's fats that are causing the issue, not sugar, and we found that years later that that was sponsored by the coca-cola company. Like no, they wanted to find that as results of the study. And then, as things started changing and evolving, you started seeing pushback about what's wrong, what's right. And then you go over to 2008, 2010, error we talked about this a lot a couple episodes ago. But Michelle Obama coming out and saying, hey, we need to change school lunches and everyone's saying something wrong with school lunches and they're like we serve enough veggies and look, we have pizza and there's tomato paste on pizza and that counts as a veggie. So, like a lot of this misconstrued science that the USDA recommends and pushes, I think is the big reason that people don't eat healthy, and I think it's a big reason that our society is as sick as it is.
Speaker 1:As a business owner and this is something I put on my Instagram actually today, when I talk to people, they tell me they eat relatively healthy. All the time, every assessment it's relatively healthy. Oh, you're pretty good. I asked them a simple question what did you eat yesterday? And they start going through what they think I want to hear. They want to hear salads, I want to hear that they only had half a sandwich and that they ate too little. And I just tell them like point blank what you think is healthy is wrong. So therefore, you're following bad metrics and you can't say you're eating healthy because you're not even evaluating against what actually is healthy. So when you compare your metrics to an actual thing of what tells you is healthy or tells you is not healthy, it's important to know your source and it's important to know that information of itself is accurate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I trust them. Uh, because when you say like, uh, you know, you know and like, the information that I'm like I was using isn't kind of like, it's not like stuff that says like you shouldn't do it, uh, it's, the information I was using is like the simple like how many, how much vitamins, how much of this vitamin do you need? And that information is pretty general, like if you look up, like on google, if you say like, okay, how much vitamin c do I need, it's, it's pretty much. It's gonna give you the same answer is what the usda has.
Speaker 1:But like proteins and stuff like that, that stuff, uh, yeah, they cover all that stuff too so let's talk about two, two pitfalls, in my opinion, of the vegan diet yeah I'm ready. There's a lot, but there's two big ones, okay I'll start with the easy one vitamin b12 is a good example okay, um, it's not found
Speaker 1:anything besides animal products, unless it's added into something later after being processed, so you can't it's impossible to find it naturally in without eating an animal product, so therefore you will be deficient for it unless you're getting foods fortified in it or supplementing with it.
Speaker 2:So my argument. There's a really good story behind the vitamin b12 and why it's missing. Do you want to hear it? Yeah, go for it okay, it so yeah, it was, I think some like I don't know, it was like 50 years ago we were getting cholera and so what we did was we put fluoride into the waters and it pretty much just killed off all the vitamin B12. And so, yeah, it's vitamin B12. That's a stinky one, but it's definitely. You definitely need it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, even if that example vitamin B, all the B vitamins for those that don't know are water soluble vitamins. What that means is that they use water to go through our bodies. So if you have too much of it, a good example for this, and I'm sure if your experience is like everything you've been. So if you have too much of it, a good example for this, and I'm sure if you experienced like everything. Even when you have too much of it, your pee reeks. It's all the vitamin B being pissed out because your body goes I have enough of it, let's flush it out. It prevents it from having too much and over-toxifying from it. So my argument being maybe, but you still need to eat it because your body's going to constantly flush it out. It's going to just keep. You have to keep reintroducing it in your body because I'm good and flush out the excess. Eat it again. I'm good, flush out the excess. So it kind of leads you in that realm of I have to eat the supplement for it or find foods that are fortified in it. Therefore, can this diet be good? Because I to supplement.
Speaker 1:I believe in trying to limit supplementation as much as possible and to only do it if you're looking for a specific outcome. A good example of this is we're starting a supplement beta program inside of our facility as well, but we're doing I'm doing the exact opposite of every other practitioner out there. Period, instead of being like you have these deficiencies, here's these vitamins. First I'm going to make a lifestyle change, then I'm going to make a food change, and if you absolutely need an outcome from something, then we can add one specific supplement and have something that's not a liver detox with 16 other ingredients. I mean one ingredient, one vitamin. Keep it simple. Keep it clean.
Speaker 2:You know what I hate about supplements, man, is that they abuse it so hard. You remember the multivitamins you had when you were a kid the little dinosaurs. Oh yeah, remember how bad those tasted. They're horrible for you.
Speaker 1:No, they tasted awful.
Speaker 2:But there's supplements that I have today and they're like, wow, that is a sweet cherry taste. Uh, I'm like, oh my gosh, like those are so bad yeah, I I agree.
Speaker 1:The supplement industry isn't regulated by the fda and I think even if it was, it wouldn't matter all right.
Speaker 2:So what's the what's the second? What's the second thing? You got against the vegan?
Speaker 1:macronutrient deficiencies, uh similarly related to proteins yeah, that's a big one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the four uh carbs, fiber, protein and fat. But full vegan belly is genius. In these four uh, specifically it, it, uh, it makes each one 100, except for fat. It's around 75. So that's why it's so smart is because I've really selected the foods that are like, have a perfect like, like they work together perfectly and you can really only do it in one day. That's why it's like I fit everything, all those foods, in the one day.
Speaker 1:I mean, I love the ease of it. Right, that's, that's, it's everything. But why protein, specifically? As an example, let's take peanut butter, cause I just love picking in the peanut butter industry, cause it's so easy.
Speaker 1:You look at a label it says seven grams of protein and people upload that to my fitness pal and say, oh, I had seven grams of protein today. No, you had zero. And they look at me and go, what do you mean? You had zero. I'm like it doesn't count. Why doesn't it count, anthony? Well, it's something called essential amino acids, and those are the amino acids in protein that your body does not produce, meaning you have to get them from outside sources. You have to get them from outside sources.
Speaker 1:All fruits and veggies, besides four specific products, are not full amino acid profile proteins, meaning if you don't combine them specifically or make sure you're really weighing with what's in what, you're not going to get your protein goals because you have to specifically combine things. A good example of this rice and beans. There's a reason rice and beans are always pushed together Each of them has different amino acid profiles that the other one does not have, but therefore together create a complete amino acid profile. And then, if you're wondering, anthony, what are the four things that are complete proteins that I can get in a vegan diet? You just have to eat a ton of them.
Speaker 1:One, spirulina, which huge fan of. Uh, it tastes just tastes like the other one I can't pronounce, it's like ash gawa, the other one's buckwheat, and then the other one of. The fourth one is quinoa, which I think is probably the most commercially known one. But if it's not one of those four things, it is not a complete protein. And then you have to specifically tailor your food, your proteins. You're eating in specific fruits and veggies to make sure they get a complete amino acid profile, because otherwise you're eating almost no protein.
Speaker 2:All right, I got something cool to tell you. So full vegan belly is only whole foods too. There's no processed like peanut butter foods at all. You're eating completely the food straight from the branch. Yeah, I think that's cool, right.
Speaker 1:No, that's awesome, man. I think it's awesome that it's all whole, natural foods and I think it's important to do. There are things that people do need to eat more foods and veggies. I completely agree. I'm not disagreeing with that whatsoever. It's just how people go about diving into something that they don't truly understand because they think they hear it mainstream. I mean, I have the same examples with the keto diet. People always tell me I'm doing keto because it sounds cool. I think keto diet is one of the worst diets in the world. I mean, it's been proven to take seven years off your life. Diet is one of the worst diets in the world. I mean it's been proven to take seven years off your life.
Speaker 1:So when you're looking at things and have an understanding, you need to eat healthier. Veganism is a good example, and I know you've mentioned this and this is something I'm happy you're doing, because a lot of people don't do this is they throw vegan on the label and have plant burgers or all these fake meat products which you read the ingredients and there's 35 chemicals. Half of them are carcinogens, half of them just going to wreck your gut, and you're going to say you're eating healthy because it's vegan on them. I mean personally myself, because I can relate to this when I go out and I want to treat myself to pizza for those that know, I am severely lactose intolerant. So I eat vegan pizza only because I know it's dairy free. But that cheese horrible for you. So I'm not going to sit here and say eating vegan cheese is great, no, it's absolutely garbage. You're better off eating real cheese, and I do it once in a while, as a treat, kind of like once in a while I'm going to have a donut. You know like it's just understanding that everything, life and balance.
Speaker 1:But don't piggy to these foods and say that you're eating healthy, because at the end of the day, they're just complete trash. Anything you're going to pull out of a freezer and that's going to be processed. I'm going to have a long staple shelf life you shouldn't be eating, which is why I like that. You like what you said you're having more whole, natural foods because, realistically, that's what people need more of. You need more pre and probiotics, which you can only get from living things, so that could be fruits, veggies or animal products that aren't super preserved or super cooked off. Those things need to exist on it. You need to pull an apple off a tree and not scrub it clean. Elite, you should do that for the pesticides ones that are buying from farm hands who don't know what they're touching. But if you're growing your own and it's got some fucking dirt on it, that's great. You want that. You need all those extra bacteria and organisms on it because it does help regulate your gut and that's what we've been doing for thousands of years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh my gosh, you know a lot about all the science. Man, I'm strictly grab it and go.
Speaker 1:I get it. You know what. I am one in a billion and I understand that and I understand that and I understand that there's a lot of things people don't understand about nutrition and my biggest pet peeve about everything is what we're taught as a society, because people learn bad science and therefore do bad things and jump from extremes to defining a normality. A good example of this is most people under eat. Meaning you don't eat enough. Under 1200 calories is textbook anorexia. So if people want to tell me that they're eating great because they're eating under a thousand or 800 or whatever the doctor recommended 700 calories, I'm like your doctor's trying to kill you, like there's things we need to understand as a society that too few calories doesn't mean you're eating healthy.
Speaker 1:Jumping to an extreme of a diet doesn't mean you're healthy. It's understanding and learning about the foods and trying to eat more whole, natural foods, like you said. And that's really where we need to be and we need to really focus on macronutrients and those in itself that we can get from nature. And if you really want to break it down and go into more Anthony science, I live and die by a survival guide diet. If you want to label it, what the hell is a survival guide? Tyler, if I took you right now and I threw you in the middle of the forest in Africa right there's and I said, survive, that First of all, that's fucked up on my part. I shouldn't do that. If I did throw you, you there, and I said, survive, what would you eat?
Speaker 2:Oh my Well, I'd probably eat water for a while.
Speaker 1:Water great, but you need food. You're going to die if you just have water. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I don't know, I guess you know, look for something colorful until it tastes like it's poisonous to stop.
Speaker 1:You'd be dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why do I say that?
Speaker 2:well, uh you know, I I guess, I guess, uh, if I think you can taste, if it's poison, if it has poison or not yeah I, I think that's how it works. They say like you know, if you're, if you get like a rash or something, and after licking it, then don't continue eating it in order to eat plants.
Speaker 1:You need a week per plant to decide if it's poison. They're gonna cut you. And what I mean by that? A you gotta, you got to find it. B you got to touch it and then go 24 hours Just touch it with your skin. C rub it under your lips, wait 24 hours, see if you have a reaction. D chew it up, spit it out, wait 24 hours, see if you have a reaction. C take a little bite, swallow it, wait 24 hours, see if you have a reaction. After that, that food is probably generally safe to eat and you're not going to have any issues and it's good.
Speaker 1:The issue and the reason that is a problem is because 90% of plants are poisonous. They will kill you. Some will kill you within minutes, right, and you're just going to just absolutely die. On top of that for those, especially the mushroom kingdom, you can look at two plants, man, and they look almost identical, like to the normal, untrained eye, you're not going to see the really subtle differences inside those plants. One of those is safe. The other one will kill you in about three seconds.
Speaker 1:So, generally speaking, in survival terms, you can't eat plants. You don't have the time, the energy. To eat plants. You need the water, like you said first. Yes, but then your next step is to turn to animals. Why? 90% of animals are safe to eat, as opposed to 90% of plants being unsafe to eat. So generally I can find insects that I can easily tell what's a spider to what's a worm. Right, I can eat that worm and have absolutely no problem down the line and then move up to a slightly bigger game. I can eat rabbits, I can eat birds, all of these things I can have around me to survive on. So I even get to a bigger game and I can start hunting once I start creating tools and have the energy and stuff to do that.
Speaker 1:So if we look about being that way, like we were for thousands and thousands of years, we didn't eat fruits and veggies like everyone thinks we do. We ate meat. We learned how to preserve meat for long periods of time, aka by smoking it. Smoking was something a lot of early tribes started to preserve meat for months. There was other things, especially like refrigeration stuff came out, but there was other tactics. People used to help make sure the meat stayed fresh. On top of that, if you lived in, let's say, europe, north America, or you were super South South America. You have winter months. What do you do in the dead of winter? I live in New York. What do you do? Everything's dead. For three months, there's no plants. You'll be dead. The only thing you can eat is game. That's it, and you got to find it. It's so hard to find. That's why I wanted to try it in the winter.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I'm watching Game of Thrones right now. Boom Perfect, I've just gotten to the episode where they show the cannibals and yeah, man. It was great. It's great man anyway, dude.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the topic is a great show, minus the last season yeah, anyway, dude, I.
Speaker 2:there's two more things I gotta tell you about this, this diet that I think you're gonna love, uh. So one of them is that it's easy to make, uh, and it's crazy how easy it is. I mean, it's literally like for dinner, the hardest thing to do is setting your microwave to 10 minutes and that's cooking sweet potato. But it's completely oil-free too. So, like it's crazy, like it allows pretty much anybody to eat this food yeah, people who don't even know how to cook. Like there's no problem there. It's really nice.
Speaker 1:I mean, I love that. I think it's something you can implement and make it so. Food should be easy to teach. Food should be easy to understand Because, turning to, apps like Lose it or MyFitnessPal are overwhelming, make no sense. You can type in sweet potato and get 2,000 different varieties and calorie intakes. You have no idea what's accurate because it's all user ad. So if you have something that you're more in control of, that you can put more accurate information in.
Speaker 1:I love. I love keeping things Keep it simple. Stupid is my mentality when it comes to like eating right. My biggest thing is 80-20. Be 80% good, 20% not because you want something that you're going to be able to sustain for the rest of your life. Don't sit here and try to live a bodybuilder mentality eating picture perfect to be 3%. Ask any bodybuilder six months before a show. They hate their lives because it's not fun. You literally can't do anything. So you're trying to be so perfect. So do something that's more on the easier side and more on the perfect side to help make it more sustainable, so you can feel better and still enjoy life and not feel super stressed out because you're running around like a lunatic trying to make sure you constantly eat 100% healthy.
Speaker 1:I made examples about how I eat. I don't eat picture perfect. I'm not gonna worry about every little tiny thing. Can I optimize my nutrition and optimize my fitness and make things even better? Absolutely. But you know what? The best part would be? Just to start like it doesn't matter if it's perfect, it doesn't matter if it's just a little bit. Just do something. Just start being better tomorrow than you were today, and that's ultimately what's going to get you in the right going.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's worth for even myself to sit here and write the super perfect exercise plan to make sure that every single muscle gets hit in the exact same way so I can make sure I'm optimizing every single muscle fiber. No, I'm gonna work out because I enjoyed it. I'm just gonna do things I'll enjoy. More than a little bit need, because it keeps me coming back and that is the most important part is to make sure that I show up again this week to do another round of workouts, to keep moving forward, to keep feeling better. That's more important than sitting there and trying to make everything 100% perfect. So, to your point, keeping things easy is way better. Keeping things fun. I'm all in for Keeping things fun and engaging let's do it.
Speaker 1:Keeping things fun and engaging, let's do it. Being more on that side is where I think we need to go and push health and fitness as all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, and if I was going to go work out, I would bring an apple in one pocket and a carrot in the next. And it's easy, man, it just fills you with that energy. And it's easy, man, like, it just fills you with that energy. Like you know, it's like instant, uh, instant jazz to like and like literally as soon as you're done, just throw that carrot in there and boom, I'm ready.
Speaker 1:I'm ready to go. No sugars you get from fruits and veggies definitely help. I had a potaille bowl prior to working out today. It was great. I'm a big believer in getting your vitamins and nutrients from your fruits and veggies. I think you need it. I just don't think it should be your sole purpose. I think meat's more important than fruits and veggies. I do think you need all of them, but I can't say you should have 100% of one and not the other. And that's really where I differ from a lot of people. I live more in a moderate state than more of an extreme state of certain things. Maybe my wife thinks differently as far as my health nut craze, but you never know. But I appreciate it. Tyler, just to start wrapping this up, I'm going to ask you two final questions I ask everyone. The first one would be is if you were to summarize this episode in one or two sentences, what would be your take home message?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a start to the first battle Veganism versus everything else.
Speaker 1:I love it, man. And then the second question, easiest of all how can people find you, get a hold of you and learn more about what you do?
Speaker 2:yeah, so uh, check me out, uh, at fullveganbellycom. And here is the free access coupon code, because I want you to eat your fruit and vegetable, okay, so the code is 100 d e v 100DEV. Yes, that's the coupon code. And what?
Speaker 1:was the web address. One more time FullVeganBellycom. Love it. Tyler, thank you for coming on. Thank you, guys, for listening to the Sweet Steps of Health and Fitness Redefined. Don't forget, share this, blow this up, let me know what you think of my idea of moving this more in-house and local. And don't forget, fitness is medicine. Until next time, thank you. Outro Music.
