Dr. Rhonda Patrick is a scientist who has done extensive research on aging, cancer and nutrition. She has a Ph.D. in biomedical science from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and St. Jude’s children’s Research
Hospital in Memphis TN, a bachelor’s of science degree in biochemistry/chemistry from the University of California San Diego and has trained as a postdoc at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute with Dr. Bruce Ames. Her research on the role of insulin signaling in protein misfolding commonly found in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, was conducted at the prestigious Salk Institute for Biological Sciences.

Rhonda’s podcast and website, both called Found My Fitness, discuss topics such as the role of micronutrient deficiencies in diseases of aging, the benefits of exposing the body to hormetic stressors such as exercise, fasting, sauna use or various forms of cold exposure, and the importance of mindfulness, stress reduction and sleep on health.

In this episode we discuss Rhonda’s new publication on the role of the APOE4 gene in Alzheimer’s Disease, and why eating fish but not taking fish oil DHA supplements help slow the progression of the disease for carriers. We also touch on how we both approach healthy pregnancies and Rhonda’s personal nutrition strategies.

Related Links:

iWi Algae-based omega-3 phospholipids  – fact sheet

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Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

Next week’s Mindful Meal Challenge will start again on Monday. Sign up now to join us!

This week nutrition is not as complex as you think, backyard chickens spreading Salmonella, and diseased farmed salmon infest wild population.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

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For the Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup. 

This week Oreos really are like crack, how genetics impact being vegan, and how to get teens to quit junk food.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

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“With the hustle and bustle of working and being a mom and trying to fulfill all these duties I completely lost myself.” – Rebecca

Although she had never been completely happy with her physique, after having three children within five years Rebecca found herself over 100 lbs heavier than she was before starting a family. It wasn’t until she ran into a friend who had lost 100 lbs of baby weight after working with a personal trainer that she changed her mindset and decided she needed to start investing in her own wellbeing again.

Over a period of eight months Rebecca embraced a new self-care routine of fitness and nutrition and lost all of the weight. The road wasn’t perfectly smooth, and she struggled with some of the struggles that come with dieting including binge eating. Ultimately though, she was able to find balance in her nutrition, stop bingeing and truly enjoy her healthstyle for the benefits it brings her.

Rebecca has also been kind enough to share a before and after picture for us to see her transformation.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Relevant links:

Home Court Habits

After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

Does ‘The Biggest Loser’ Study Prove That Long-term Weight Loss is Impossible?

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If you’d like to be a guest on the show, please fill out the form here and tell us your story.

For the Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup. 

This week stop avoiding white foods, the secret to exercise motivation, and why eating off the floor isn’t so bad.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

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For the Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup. It’s been a few weeks so I went ahead and included 15 excellent articles instead of the usual 10.

This week pilates changes your brain, all your food is fake, and the big problem with people pleasing.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

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For the Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup. 

This week a major magazine vows to stop fat shaming, mental badassery, and the horrors of the pork industry.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

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As a lifelong healthy eater, Sherry wasn’t trying to lose weight. Sure she would have been happy to drop 5-10 lbs, but she was comfortable with her body and health. She even thought she was a mindful eater until a stressful event in her life caused her to start a consistent yoga practice.

Yoga, it turned out, became a catalyst to help her relieve stress and let go of difficult emotions. As she developed this talent during strenuous yoga poses, she noticed it began to translate into her eating behavior.

Without specifically trying to change anything, Sherry became more aware of her eating habits and started to eat more mindfully. As she did this she naturally started eating slower and being more thoughtful about her food choices.

To her surprise, she discovered she had been eating way more food than her body actually wanted or needed. She also started slowly changing the composition of her meals to be more plant-based, since this was more in line with what she was craving.

While she still enjoys sweets like chocolate cake on occasion, Sherry has embraced mindful eating and over the past year lost 16 lbs without actively trying to lose weight.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

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Photo by Enokson

Most people don’t believe me when I say I remember learning about mitosis in 5th grade, but I do.

And I’m not talking about the kind of remembering where I vaguely recollect learning *of* it. I was fascinated by the stages of prophase, metaphase, anaphase and telephase, and couldn’t believe that our chromosomes did such a beautiful dance every time a cell would divide.

I mean, have you seen it?

In high school, biology was always my favorite subject. I even took an extra class in physiology just for funsies.

And after dicking around as an English major for a few years at Berkeley I ultimately graduated with a degree in molecular and cell biology. (I won’t tell you the kinds of grades I got in my MCB classes, because you’d hate me.)

That’s how much I love biology.

As you can imagine, this kind of devotion to the microscopic secrets of the human body added plenty of fuel to the fire of my dieting obsession.

Calories, carbs and fat counts? Couldn’t get enough of ’em. I had piles of notebooks filled with each sinful and virtuous molecule I consumed, and took an embarrassing number of nutritional supplements.

Had the Quantified Self movement been around back then, I would have been a disciple. (Soooooo glad it wasn’t).

I know the temptation to count and quantify what you eat. It feels good.

It feels like control. But it isn’t.

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Ruediger faces one of the most difficult questions related to weight control, which is how to maintain your weight after achieving significant weight loss as a result of strict dieting.

Although he has already made huge progress finding an exercise regimen he enjoys, food is more difficult for him. He has only ever known subsiding on lots of junk food or restricting his calories to just 500 per day. Switching to a more moderate approach based on Real Food and not counting calories is appealing to him in theory, but he worries that he will not be able to maintain control of his weight without strongly restricting his eating habits.

Another issue Ruediger faces is that he has a very limited palate as a result of eating mostly processed and convenience foods for most of his life. He’s concerned that at the age of 44 he will be restricted to the handful of vegetables he actually enjoys and not have adequate nutrition. He also struggles with finding the motivation to prepare nutritious foods at home, since chopping, cooking and cleaning rarely feel worth the effort.

Together we examine the limiting beliefs that make changing his eating habits seem difficult and come up with strategies to overcome them.

Wish you had more time to listen to the podcast? I use an app called Overcast (no affiliation) to play back my favorite podcasts at faster speeds, dynamically shortening silences in talk shows so it doesn’t sound weird. It’s pretty rad.

Links for this episode:

The Foodist’s Plate

The Convenience Illusion

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