Episode Summary
Roland Denzel joins us to talk about how nutrition can give authors an edge, break through blocks, and write more words.
Episode Notes
You might know Roland Denzel as a health coach, nutritionist, and restorative exercise specialist, but the truth is Roland has always been, at heart, an author first.
Roland created The Indestructible Author in to help authors just like you be more productive and write more books, all while staying healthy, happy, and sane. Today, he joins us to talk about how nutrition can give authors an edge, break through blocks, and write more words.
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Transcript
Kevin Tumlinson [00:00:02]:
You just tuned into the hippest way to start and grow your indie author career. Learn the ins, the outs and all the all arounds of self publishing with the team from D2D and their industry influencing guests. You’re listening to Self publishing insiders with Draft 2 Digital.
Jim Azevedo [00:00:25]:
Well hello everybody and welcome to another edition of Self Publishing Insiders. I am Jim Acevedo. I lead marketing and corporate communications here at Draft2Digital. And today it is my privilege, my honor to welcome to the show Roland Denzel. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time. So let me, let me introduce Roland, giving you guys a little bit of a sense of what he’s all about here. So some of you out there, you might know Roland as a health coach or nutritionist and restorative exercise specialists, but the truth is that Rowland has always been at heart an author. First.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:06]:
Roland’s written over 10 published books, two or three practice novels, dozens of short stories, several thankfully he says, unpublished screenplays, as well as hundreds of blog posts and articles and at least one poem. Roland created the Indestructible Author in 2015 to help authors just like you be more productive and write more books, all while staying healthy, happy, insane. By his own accounts, Roland does not write quickly. I’m in that club and he makes so many typos it hurts. I’m in that club too. Roland, thanks so much for being here. I’m so happy that you’re here to join us today. Welcome.
Roland Denzel [00:01:56]:
Thanks for having me, Jim.
Jim Azevedo [00:01:57]:
Oh, my pleasure. Backstage I was telling Roland that I’ve been looking so forward to this because I’m kind of a nutrition nerd. I just, I stumbled across the topic going back probably about 12 or 15 years now. There are a couple of books. You know, one of the books that really stood out to me was how not to die by Dr. Michael Greger who just, I read that book, it was like a novel. It just, it blew my mind that you could read a nutritional book. I mean literally up at night when a 1:00am, 2:00am in the morning, flip it through the pages like wow.
Jim Azevedo [00:02:40]:
Oh my goodness. And it just really, it changed my life. It changed the way, not only changed the way I eat, but it just changed the way I even, I look at food and consider food when I’m just going about my day to day activities. At least it changed the way I thought about it now. And now I just, I just don’t think about it. I just live my life and eat healthily.
Roland Denzel [00:03:05]:
So Roland haven’t died?
Jim Azevedo [00:03:07]:
No, I clearly haven’t died. But I’m. I’m curious because, you know, looking back, you’ve been doing health and wellness for about 10 years now, right? Or does it go back further than that?
Roland Denzel [00:03:23]:
It was back before that. I mean, if it was sort of like a blur, you know, it started off as personal and then kind of went into, like, helping friends and other, you know, other people who are. I just sort of met online and. Or in my local community and then pretty much gone to where, you know, it was like, it was ingrained in me at that point, and I had, like, educated myself and certifications and. And then after that, then it just became like a business of coaching. Right. So.
Jim Azevedo [00:03:53]:
Okay.
Roland Denzel [00:03:54]:
Yeah. And. And writing more books and. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:03:59]:
Can we talk about that origin story? Are you comfortable with that? Because I did. I did. I did a little digging. And you were a systems analyst at Xerox for What, almost like 25 years, right?
Roland Denzel [00:04:12]:
Yeah. Yes. And, you know. Yeah. So systems analysis 20 for 25 years. It’s actually going on 30 now. Like, so, like, I’m still doing.
Jim Azevedo [00:04:23]:
You’re still doing it.
Roland Denzel [00:04:24]:
And.
Jim Azevedo [00:04:25]:
Okay.
Roland Denzel [00:04:25]:
Yeah. So, like, I, you know, in my day job, I do a lot of sitting and, you know, now a lot of standing because there’s a lot of, you know, you standing and at work a lot of times, visiting customers and clients and helping them with color management and all the stuff that you would do at KDP Printer at Ingram. Like, I help people do that stuff. So, like, I’m, you know, I’m not just a nutrition person. I also know all about the printing industry. So. So if anyone has questions about that and myths and mythologies of that, I’m happy to chat about that at some point in the future. But.
Roland Denzel [00:05:00]:
Yeah, so back in two. So I grew up. So my background is. Even before that, I grew up overweight. So I grew up pretty sedentary, overweight. And at one point, I lost about £110. And I’ve kept it off ever since. So once I kind of figured out what my.
Roland Denzel [00:05:20]:
Like, once I had made that decision that I wanted to lose weight and keep it off, like, I yo yoed for many years in the past.
Jim Azevedo [00:05:27]:
And like, most people.
Roland Denzel [00:05:29]:
Yeah. So, like, I decided, like, this is done. And I kind of, like, did a deep dive into, like, what was the root cause. You know, there’s, like, emotional eating and there’s, you know, whatever trauma backgrounds or, like, all those kinds of things. Right. And one of the things that I had realized was that I was connecting my weight loss to my happiness. So, like, I was like, oh, you know, if I lose weight, I’m going to be happier and I’m going to meet a girl and my shyness is going to go away and all these things. And then, like, I would lose, like, you know, 20 or 30 pounds, and I would go, you know, I don’t really feel any happier.
Roland Denzel [00:06:11]:
And I can sort of see a light at the end of the tunnel. And, like, I’m not feeling any less shy, and I’m still realizing I’m not going to be able to talk to that girl. And suddenly I would just go, like, so what’s the point? And then I just stress out about it, go back to eating. Whether I gave up or got overwhelmed and stressed out about it, I don’t know. Right. So I didn’t do that. I didn’t. I don’t know that part of it.
Roland Denzel [00:06:30]:
But I decided to uncouple, you know, my happiness from my weight loss. I wanted to be happy first and foremost. And then after that, it was much easier for me to lose weight on my own terms. Like, that was a.
Jim Azevedo [00:06:43]:
How did. How did you. How did you manage to do that part? How did you decouple that? That take a lot of just internal work? Because that’s not easy.
Roland Denzel [00:06:55]:
No, it’s not. It’s. So it didn’t happen right away, but, like, I was listening to, you know, back in the day, like, there was no streaming, so it was all like AM talk radio. I. I had a car that only had AM radio for one, for one thing. So that was kind of, you know, say it was sort of limited to AM radio and talk radio. And there was somebody that was talking about happiness, like, so he had psychiatrists and ministers and rabbis and everything on this thing, talking about happiness. Like, this was his theme on, like, Fridays, on the Friday drive.
Roland Denzel [00:07:29]:
And he had a book about happiness and just a bunch of essays. And I just started reading these things. And, you know, one of the things that, like, the first thing. I’m not saying this is the solution, but for me, it was that I had a responsibility to the people around me to not drag them down by me not being happy. So the first thing you do is, like, you put on an air of happiness, sort of like the fake it till you make it kind of a thing. Right? And what I found and what the books and some of the research said is that in certain circumstances, like, depending on why you’re unhappy, like, if you act happy, you can actually. It’s sort of a. A reciprocal thing.
Roland Denzel [00:08:11]:
Like, you act happy, the people around you respond with happiness back. That makes you more happy. And then you can sort of drag yourself out of this. And then there’s, you know, therapy coupled with that as well. And, you know, also all the tools that go with that, you know, mindfulness and meditation. I didn’t have those words for, you know, all these words for it back then. Sure, yeah. But, you know, between I guess choosing to do this and reading the book, listening to people on the radio, finding a therapist that I liked, that helped with that.
Roland Denzel [00:08:47]:
And yeah, so then once that had happened, then I could say, you know what, I want to lose that weight. Now, whether I, and specifically the trigger for losing weight, was sitting with my daughter, who was very small, and she asked for a glass of water, went downstairs, not, you know, just one flight, went downstairs, got a glass of water right back up to her, and she goes, daddy, you didn’t have to run. And I, like, I had not run, but I was like, you know, like I was really like pantsing. And it was when I realized, oh, you know, it’d be kind of cool to be around for my, for my kids, you know, you know. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:09:24]:
Yep.
Roland Denzel [00:09:25]:
So, so then. Yeah, so then. Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:09:28]:
Wow.
Roland Denzel [00:09:29]:
Yeah. So then all of, all of my, all of my books and my nutrition background, like, started to like, yes, I’m a nutritionist. I’ve been like trained to be a nutritionist. But a lot of the stuff that I, that I talk about is the systems and the systems and the processes that you put in place that make life easier to keep those nutrition, the nutrition you choose. And then eventually they become habits and then you don’t have to think about it anymore because once it’s a habit, you don’t have to think about it. Like, we all have bad habits, we just don’t think about it. Right. So.
Roland Denzel [00:10:04]:
But you think everyone has a lot of good habits too, and you don’t think about them. But that’s the key. If you get the things that you want to do to the point where it becomes a habit, or at least much easier to do, you might consciously have to do it, but it’s easier to do. You reduce those barriers and then the rest of it becomes easier.
Jim Azevedo [00:10:24]:
Okay, I’m curious, Roland, when you started your, your weight loss journey, did you get to a point where you felt like, hey, I think I’m on to something, and then it started getting easier for you? Because I, I do recall for me, when I started going down, I’m completely plant based right now, but when I First started that, like you said, it was difficult at first because I didn’t know what I needed to have in the house to make myself feel satisfied and satiated. And like many people, I had, you know, processed foods in the house. And that’s a disaster, because if you don’t know how to keep yourself satisfied, you’re going to go for the quickest thing you can possibly find and scarf that down as quickly as you possibly can. But Then it takes 5 minutes to consume a thousand calories, depending on what you’ve got in the house. So I’m curious for you. Did you get to a point where you’re like, I think. I think I’m onto something? And then at that point, did you notice besides weight loss, other aspects of your life changing from your mood to your. The clarity of mind and.
Jim Azevedo [00:11:33]:
And so on?
Roland Denzel [00:11:35]:
Yeah. So when I first started, it was 2003 ish and very popular. You call it an app, but it was like an app on my Palm Pilot. Right. So those are the. This is how old I am. We had Palm Pilots.
Jim Azevedo [00:11:54]:
I’m right there with your brother.
Roland Denzel [00:11:56]:
All right, so I had this app, and it was called Calorie King. And they actually have, like, in the back then, it might still be around, but they were in, like, the. The magazine section at the grocery store. They had the Calorie King guide. And this was. I’m like, I’m not gonna carry this guide around. But then, like, once I found out they had an app that I was. I’m already carrying the Palm Pilot around, that became easier.
Roland Denzel [00:12:16]:
So it’s. It’s a little bit like my fitness pal, you know, like, if you see the app about My Fitness pal allows you to track your. Your movement and your. Your food intake and count. Count calories. Sure. And, you know, I had a lot of success counting calories. It was.
Roland Denzel [00:12:31]:
It became like, almost gamified for me to count the calories and hit the exact amount of calories and not go over and go under, keep the average for the week, all those kinds of things. But what I found was that eventually that I had gotten pretty skinny, but I was still flabby. And so it’s like they called it skinny fat back then. And part of it was from having been so overweight, I had a lot of sort of excess. Not excess skin so much, but excess, you know, flab, I guess. And I did a little research into that, and I found a. A book by an author named Lou Schueler, who was, you know, managing editor for, I think Men’s health or men’s fitness. Back then he wrote a book called the Testosterone Advantage Plan and it really talked about the benefits of.
Roland Denzel [00:13:21]:
It was not a low carb diet, but it was just a, and it was not a high protein diet, but by the standards back then, it probably was. Right. So it talked about red. Deucing your carbs a little bit and boosting up your protein and keeping healthy fats and because by the, the protein is more satiating than the carbs. So basically kind of it’s like the carbs are the least nutritionally dense foods. They’re calorie rich, nutritionally sparse. Not a lot of nutrition in, in most carbs compared to other things. Right.
Roland Denzel [00:13:54]:
We’re not talking about vegetables. We’re talking about like the, you know, like, like, you know, rice and wheat.
Jim Azevedo [00:14:00]:
Like refined pastas and white rice.
Roland Denzel [00:14:02]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like they’re, they might be delicious, they are delicious, but they’re not, that’s, you know, they’re not the best choice nutritionally. They’re okay to have, but not to base your food on, base your diet on. So by reducing those, bringing the protein up a little bit more, satiating and keeping a healthy level of fat, because fat is also satiating. Like once you have this base level of amount, a certain amount of fat in your diet, it’s all these things equal out, you know, they, they keep you satisfied, satiated or full, feeling longer. So once I did that and started doing more strength training, it kind of reversed that curve and I started to gain muscle and continue to lose fat. And, and, and that was sort of like the big change there, that nutrition is a big deal, not just calories. So calories still important, but nutrition plays a big role in how you can deal with those calories long term, you know, that, you know, where, where you’re not always hungry.
Roland Denzel [00:15:03]:
Because that was the big thing. I wasn’t always hungry anymore because even though it was gamified, I was still hungry, you know, but I was like, oh, it’s okay. I’m, it’s okay if I’m a little hungry because I’m making progress. So by switching things up a little bit, changing the ratios around, I was less hungry, more satisfied, better progress.
Jim Azevedo [00:15:20]:
Interesting. I noticed that, you know, when I switched things around and started eating a cleaner, healthier diet, the brain fog. And the brain fog went away. The afternoon crashes, especially after a big heavy lunch ended like that never happened anymore. And it’s been about 15 years, at least 15 years since I’ve ever had a meal crash A post meal, just crash where I felt like I wanted to sleep. And I love that. So I’m interested in what, in hearing from you. What causes that brain fog? What causes that crash? Is it, is it carbohydrate related? And are all carbohydrates the devil?
Roland Denzel [00:16:06]:
I think that. No, no, no. So no to that last one. So I would say brain fog and the crash are two probably different things. So I’d say the brain fog is, I mean they could be related. You could have an afternoon brain fog which is probably related to the afternoon crash. But I would say like if you have generally brain fog overall then it’s, it’s, it’s probably like a baseline nutritional issue. Well a, a, it’s a huge amount.
Roland Denzel [00:16:35]:
I don’t want to discount sleep, rest and anxiety cuz those are like huge contributors to brain fog. Right, but so that’s always a thing like you can’t eat your way out of four hours of sleep. You know, if you’re only getting four hours of sleep, you know, yeah, your better nutrition is going to help but you still got to address the sleep. If you’re always got anxiety, you’ve got the stress of life going around, you got to find the, the low hanging fruit that you can attack to reduce those anxieties, to get yourself back up. And then of course your nutrition is going to help. So the, the brain fog thing could be, it could be specific things. It could be that you have like high levels of inflammation caused by some sort of nutritional balance. Um, it could be like if everyone’s, if you’ve heard of omega 3s, omega 6s, there’s like this balance you’re trying to get.
Roland Denzel [00:17:29]:
Like the solution is not a ton of omega 3s. The solution is to balance, get a better ratio of omega 3s to omega 6s which is kind of reducing your omega 6. Omega sixes are like the things that are in like soybean oil, you know, like, like soybeans themselves probably not a problem. But soybean oil, a lot of that has so many omega 6. So omega sixes are ubiquitous. They are the cheapest fats made by man. So they’re in everything. So they’re, they in and of themselves are not bad.
Roland Denzel [00:18:04]:
It’s the ratios of them that we eat. And then humans have, historically speaking thousands or hundreds of thousands of millions of years have eaten higher ratios of omega things that have more omega 3s in them, fatty fish or even animals that have these higher levels of fats. And it’s not just the Fact that they ate so much of those, they also ate a lot less of the other things. So yeah, we’ve evolved over time, but we have not evolved so far that we, that we can’t thrive without more of a balance in these healthy fats. So when our fat ratios get out of whack specifically for too long of a period of time, like, you can start to get this, this inflammation. And it could, it’s like, it’s not like inflammation like, oh, it’s hot, like you’ve injured yourself, but it’s just sort of like the systemic kind of inflammation, more scientific word, chronic inflammat. Right. So it’s like not an exact science.
Roland Denzel [00:19:06]:
Like when I say chronic inflammation, you can probably find people that say there’s no such thing as chronic inflammation. So like, there’s probably a better term for it, but it’s like saying there’s no such thing as leaky, leaky gut. There is a, that’s just the slang term we call, you know, those things or like the, you know, chronic fatigue syndrome used to be. Oh, there’s no such thing. But now we know that there is a such thing as chronic fatigue syndrome. So there’s all sorts of things. So forgive me if I speak in sort of like the common man slang terms.
Jim Azevedo [00:19:35]:
No, this is interesting.
Roland Denzel [00:19:37]:
Yeah. So that’s primarily the things that, that tend to cause the brain fog, sleep, rest, anxiety, things out of balance. And then, and if you’re, you’re your nutrition just if you’re vitamin deficient, if you’re, you know, like you’ve too much sugar in general, like you get these things like just over time that keeps your baseline nutrition, healthy nutrition level too low. And then like this brain fog is easier to, to, to, to, to rear its ugly head. Yeah. Okay, so like once you’re at this point, you are closer to your tipping point. Excuse me, you’re closer to this tipping point. Or, and then what happens is after lunch, like a very healthy person should be able to have a high carb lunch and not have the afternoon slump because your body’s resilient enough to deal with that.
Roland Denzel [00:20:33]:
You have good blood sugar control your, your, your glucose sensitivity, which is, is good, which is high. High is a good thing. It’s very sensitive so it can react properly to surges of sugar and maintain that healthy blood sugar balance. But the, the more inflammation you have, the, the lower that nutritional baseline is, the easier it is for your blood sugar to go up in your body to not be able to respond to it. So it responds by too much insulin, which can make a crash or too much cortisol, which can, you know, cause all sorts of cascade of hormonal things which can lead to that sleepiness.
Jim Azevedo [00:21:14]:
Gotcha. So if, if, if, if our inflammatory response is caused to not just fogginess or other chronic illnesses, what are some of the anti inflammatory, anti inflammatory foods that you would recommend that we could snack on? You know, you know, if we’re at our desk for multiple hours a day, what are those, what are the foods that we can keep in mind that have those anti inflammatory properties?
Roland Denzel [00:21:44]:
Well, the first thing I would tell people is to not focus on foods that have anti inflammatory properties, but to focus on the ones that have inflammatory properties and reduce them. Right. Okay. So one of the things that I, I’m not going to s, I’m not going to use the, the, the, the name of the organization anymore, but in November a lot of people like to write a book in a month, right? And so in October people are like, I’m preparing for it. I’m putting all, here’s all this. What snacks should I have in my drawer? Like all these things. And it’s usually like all sorts of, it’s Gummy bears and yeah. Red Vines or Twizzlers depending on your, your whatever you want or it’s, or even if they’re trying to be healthier, it’s like oh, whole grain Triscuits or whole grains, you know, snacks, whole grain things and the, the goal.
Roland Denzel [00:22:37]:
And then it’s like oh, vitamin waters and like all these things that are, in reality, they’re very, again we’re, they’re very high carb. Again carb. Not bad. But if you are already at this level where your nutrition’s not great, those carbs when you’re hungry are just gonna lead you to not writing more, not you know, versus writing less. Right. So, so instead of those kind of snacks, focus on things that have more protein. It could be, you know, like if you, if you’re a salty, salty, crunchy kind of a person, they have, you know, there’s like chickpeas, you know, there’s those crunch. There’s crunchy chickpeas or nuts, seeds.
Roland Denzel [00:23:25]:
That’s my, like if you like a cracker, there’s like seed based crackers. There’s like those grainless crackers, right? So that they do have carbs in them, but if you read the label, they’ve got protein, fat and carbs in a crunchy, salty kind of a thing that appeals to you. But it’s not gonna Cause that hormonal shift as much specifically, you know, so, so those are the kinds of things also if you eat meat, like a beef jerky or turkey jerky, things like that, they even have mushroom jerky, which is. I know, I’ve tried that. Which is kind of a cool thing. Cause it gives you that sort of satisfying chewy thing that you can go for. And a lot of times I recommend for people when they really comes down to like what do you want to snack on? I’d say we’ll just have like the same kind of thing you’d have as a meal but just smaller. Right.
Roland Denzel [00:24:15]:
That’s maybe the perfect thing to have leftovers for because like, oh, that’s not like we. Again this habit of like finish. That’s not enough to save like so you don’t. So you just eat it at night, which is bad. Right. So but like what if you have like, oh, I only have a third of a serving like of a dinner. That’s not enough to save. Well, it’s enough to have a snack.
Roland Denzel [00:24:33]:
So like, you know, save that little bit for a snack. Yeah. And then that’s a great thing to have because it gives you that. It doesn’t. It also sort of psychologically says this is a balanced thing and now it’s just a small lunch or it’s a small dinner and it’s not going to like, oh, it’s not going to encourage more snacking as much as something that you mentally think of just as a snack.
Jim Azevedo [00:24:58]:
That’s good advice. Really good advice. I have so many more questions, but I want to bring up some questions from our audience here. First one’s from Guillaume. Guillaume asks Roland, what drink is suitable to have with a full meal?
Roland Denzel [00:25:16]:
If you, if you’re looking for a drink for a full meal, I would say some sort of like a smoothie where. But not, probably not a fruit smoothie, although there can be some fruit in it. It should be a smoothie that has protein and was kind of doesn’t matter what your protein source is, like your desired protein source. It could be, you know, if you’re, if you can have dairy, whey protein is probably the best one. But then there’s pea protein’s really good. Or on the, on the plant based side. I think the key is there’s certain ones that you just don’t. People just don’t like certain ones that do.
Roland Denzel [00:25:54]:
And there’s also now these, these blends where they get the best sort of the best of both worlds where they can. Because it’s the grittiness and you know, versus the smoothness and the thing settles down. So protein some sort of like vegetables and make sure that there’s some fat in it. So it’s like a full thing but you have to make it to where it can be taste where it tastes good. So choose vegetables that are not gross to you. Like some people like frozen spinach in their smoothies because. And if you’re gonna put, if you’re gonna put spinach in your smoothie, the best one is the frozen one that you buy from already frozen because that’s been blanched frozen. All the cell walls have been broken and disrupted.
Roland Denzel [00:26:41]:
So then when you blend it, it’s much smoother. If you put raw spinach or even spinach you’ve blanched yourself into, it’s going to be so slimy and chalky and you’re going to get that ox that, that. What is that? You know what I’m talking about Jim. Like when you sometimes spinach can be. Give you that astringent. Astringent.
Jim Azevedo [00:27:02]:
Okay.
Roland Denzel [00:27:04]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:27:05]:
Almost like a dry.
Roland Denzel [00:27:07]:
Yeah, it’s like eating a persimmon that’s not ripe.
Jim Azevedo [00:27:10]:
Exactly.
Roland Denzel [00:27:11]:
I should not have done that. Yeah, yeah. So yeah. So it could be healthy fat and it not. Not healthy fat like fish oil because that’s gross in a smoothie. But like it could be. If you have nuts or seeds, those will probably provide the fat right there. But you could add a little bit like not a lot but just a little bit of sort of like olive oil or some sort of healthy oil that would.
Roland Denzel [00:27:33]:
Or butter if you like butter. Just something to give you that level, a little bit of fat, enough protein enough and then the rest is sort of there to make it enjoyable. Some fruit, some vegetables. So you have a lot of fiber to make it make it full. Cuz it really kind of has to be it. It has to have a lot of that stuff at the core. Because our brains don’t register liquids the same way they do solids. And I feel like I’m really going off on the smoothie thing.
Roland Denzel [00:28:05]:
But that’s interesting though.
Jim Azevedo [00:28:08]:
Keep it coming.
Roland Denzel [00:28:08]:
If you drink, if you drink a smoothie, like for me it’s not a meal. For me it’s the calories of a meal. That’s all the nutrition of a meal. But my brain does not register fullness the same way with a smoothie it does right away. But in half an hour I’ll be like, I wish I didn’t have that smoothie because now I want to have an actual meal versus some people I know, they can have a smoothie and they can be, they’ll be fine for four hours until then, until their next meal. They’ll have breakfast smoothie, they’ll be fine. They’ll have a lunch smoothie, they’ll be fine. But for me it’s like that, that liquid doesn’t register.
Jim Azevedo [00:28:45]:
And isn’t it also true that like with some of that, when you add fats to let’s say a salad or to a smoothie, some of those fats also help unlock some of the nutrients.
Roland Denzel [00:28:55]:
Absolutely.
Jim Azevedo [00:28:55]:
And the plant based stuff so that those nutrients become more bioavailable.
Roland Denzel [00:29:00]:
Correct. That’s very, very true.
Jim Azevedo [00:29:03]:
Okay, I want to make sure that I’m answering Guillaume’s question. So he’s asking about what drink is suitable to have with a full meal.
Roland Denzel [00:29:10]:
So I’m sorry.
Jim Azevedo [00:29:12]:
No, no, no, that’s. I like the smoothie answer though too, because that’s, that’s, that’s important. So for me, I’m boring.
Roland Denzel [00:29:21]:
Like I usually just probably out there going, that’s not what I, that’s not what I asked.
Jim Azevedo [00:29:28]:
So what do you think? Like water with green tea?
Roland Denzel [00:29:32]:
Yeah, if you, I mean, I think waters, I think water is great.
Jim Azevedo [00:29:37]:
Shot of whiskey.
Roland Denzel [00:29:40]:
Probably after dinner, probably like at the end of the day. Especially if you want to write. Especially if you want to continue writing. But I would say mean most of your calories should be from your food, not from your drink. So look, pri. Primarily be low or no calorie drinks. So green tea is good. Um, like I grew up with my parents drinking coffee at dinner.
Roland Denzel [00:30:05]:
Like it was like, you know, like the same with the waitress coming by and the topping off the coffee like all until like 8 or 9 o’ clock at night when we finally left the restaurant or even at home making like a pot of coffee at, for, for dinner. Like at dinner. Yeah. So iced tea, green tea. Yeah, water. You know, if you don’t like, let me know. A lot of people don’t just like water. I don’t know, you know, so like you can do like a squeeze of fruit juice in there, squeeze lemon juice in there, that kind of stuff.
Roland Denzel [00:30:37]:
Yeah. But I think as long as pretty much anything is fine. Some people don’t like to drink with meals at all. And that’s fine too, you know, just as long as you’re getting enough throughout the day, you’re, you’re good.
Jim Azevedo [00:30:50]:
Okay, I want to bring up the next question from Nicole. Thanks for this question, Nicole. Nicole asks how to deal with emotional or stressful eating. Do you have any thoughts on that, Roland?
Roland Denzel [00:31:06]:
Okay, I have many. So it, it’s one of those things where, you know, yes, it’s, it’s really easy to say you got to reduce your stress, right? But like that’s not gonna, you know, the fact that people are emotional eating, again, I’m gonna, I get. Can be emotional eater too. So the, the biggest thing for the, for entry level emotional eating, like, it’s like if you can recognize that you’re doing it, that’s, that’s one thing. You know, like one of the things that people say is like if you’re really hungry, like if you were actually hungry, you would eat the turkey breast in the refrigerator, right? But if you’re stress eating or emotional eating, you’re looking, gonna look for something that’s sad, that’s giving you a dopamine response that’s going to, you know, sort of give you, it’s going to distract you from that emotion. Or like. So like if you’re sad or anxious, like you have this thing, I gotta, I gotta get this, I gotta get my serotonin levels up. I get the dopamine hit.
Roland Denzel [00:32:17]:
So you’re gonna go to the refrigerator, like you may not be hungry, but you think you’re hungry. And like no one who’s stressing your emotional eating like stresses eats a salad, right? But you would look at ice cream or you might try for a piece of fruit, but maybe that’s not enough either because part of that stress is that you’re eating something that you’re actually create, you know, you’re actually craving or sometimes it’s because you know it’s wrong on a subconscious level. It’s. So you get this little bit of a thrill. It’s sort of like any other kind of addiction. Like, you know, you know, an alcohol addition or drug addiction. Those are like the extremes. But also like there’s gambling addictions, there’s you know, phone addictions where like, you know, like you get, you know, like where you’re, you’re getting, looking for this dopamine hit serotonin response from scrolling up and down your phone and you just never stop, right? Because you can’t, you can’t get enough.
Roland Denzel [00:33:11]:
And it may not be that you can’t get enough of your phone. It could be like there’s something else and you’re just looking for something to drown out the rest of that world. So there are a couple of. I mean there are certainly some resources. You know, I have people that I typically recommend and there, there are a lot of good books out there on how to get this. But there are ways that you can. I’m not a nervous system response. I’m not a nervous system regulation expert, but there are, but that’s one of the best ways to address it is by finding ways to.
Roland Denzel [00:33:48]:
When you recognize that that’s happening, that you can bring, you can re. You can bring your nervous system back in. You can. Because your nervous system is overly activated during that time for stress and emotional eating. So if you can find a way to regulate it through meditation, through some sort of, you know, mindfulness practices, through. I mean, I want to say, like, using sort of mantras or something, but I don’t know that that’s the, the, the best way. I don’t think that’s, I don’t think I’m using the term right. But that’s sort of like.
Roland Denzel [00:34:24]:
Yeah, so there’s, I mean, those things can certainly help. Right. And because once you start to do that, that’s, that’s, gosh, my voice is going crazy. Those are great ways of addressing it, addressing more of the root cause. Because there’s, when you do these things, there’s like, deep, deep down, like, I hate to say, like, it’s all in your childhood and stuff like that, because it’s not necessarily from the childhood, but it’s almost always something that happened before. So I can trace my emotional eating back to when I was a kid and being lonely as a kid and things like that. And like, when I get, like, that’s the time when I want to eat the most is when I’m lonely.
Jim Azevedo [00:35:06]:
Yeah.
Roland Denzel [00:35:06]:
Not when I’m stressed, not when I’m sick, like, I don’t want to eat as much, but, like, when I feel lonely, that’s when I want to eat the most. So sort of getting to the root of some of those things, but also finding ways to manage them through nervous system regulation.
Jim Azevedo [00:35:22]:
Yeah, that’s really good advice. And what I gleaned from that is it’s all just a practice of becoming more mindful as well, and learning about, and paying attention to how what you’re eating is impacting your life and how it’s making you feel. And I want to remind people out there that, you know, it’s. If you feel like you’re overeating or you get into these situations where, you know you’re eating out of stress or what have you, it’s not necessarily your fault. Because just as Roland was addressing with phones and the addictive nature of phones and Some of these devices that we’re all using, that addictive behavior is literally built into the design of those devices to keep us doing just those things. Just like some of these addictive behaviors are built into the ultra processed foods that we’re eating. Like, they have scientists who are working on these things behind the scenes to ensure that we are just consuming this garbage out there. But it tastes so good.
Jim Azevedo [00:36:27]:
But. Yeah, but, but it’s not the best, you know, feel for, for your body or for your brains if you’re trying to crank out a bunch of, a bunch of books. And I better shot myself there because.
Roland Denzel [00:36:43]:
What you just said reminds me of the behind the scenes thing you mentioned. Like, so it’s not even like it is behind the scenes, but like, there was a. I don’t know if you ever saw, but There was this 60 Minutes interview with these food scientists and you think food scientists sounds pretty good. But these were like scientists, like more like flavor scientists and crunch scientists, texture scientists, and they’re addiction scientists. Yeah, it’s like, don’t give them undue credit. Like, Doritos are dusty enough to. So it gets underneath your fingernails. So like when you, you’ll have that scent, like, I don’t know how conscious they are of doing these specific insidious things, but that’s what it amounts to, right? You have the, you know, this Doritos scent underneath your fingernails or on the tips of your fingers for longer.
Roland Denzel [00:37:28]:
So you’re going to want to eat more Doritos. Like, maybe not now, but it’s going to encourage you to get another bag down the road. Right. You know, the same thing with, like, the biggest thing for me is, the biggest example I have is barbecued potato chips. So if you notice barbecued potato chips, they’re delicious. They have this great barbecue flavor, but there’s not quite enough barbecue flavor on them. Right? So, like, you’re like, oh, I’m. So I’m going to have an.
Roland Denzel [00:37:49]:
I need to have another chip. Because that was, that barbecue chip was amazing. It’s got to be better. I’m going to keep going. Got to keep going, you know? Cause they’ve, they’ve dialed it in. These foods have been engineered to make you go back and it’s almost like they’re in a big collective because, like, just, you know, I might buy Ruffles one day, but I’m gonna buy Lays or like Doritos. Like, I don’t know that they’re made by the same company, but like, you know, you could be addicted to diet Coke. But if, like, Diet Coke isn’t there, you might buy Diet Pepsi.
Jim Azevedo [00:38:20]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The reason I said I gotta stop myself because out of all the books and the classes, I also have nutrition cert. I got two nutrition certs. And the more you learn about how the system is stacked against the consumer, it just, it gets you angry because you’re just like, we’re trying to protect our families. And the large big companies out there are trying to, you know, please their investors. They’re not necessarily in it to make us healthier. But I’ll stop there. Bring up the next comment and question from Layla, who asks, are there some common bad eating habits authors and other jobs that require a lot of stress and creative thinking are prone to.
Jim Azevedo [00:39:04]:
And how do you avoid them?
Roland Denzel [00:39:09]:
Common bad eating habits? Well, there’s a couple. So, like, for people who. People who, people, they’re always busy. So people are always looking for ways to make things quicker so that, you know, like, there are different ways to make things quicker. And in our mind, even though driving out to get fast food, if you add up all the time, it probably takes more time to go get the fast food and come back. But, but the reason that it happens is because you, the time you save is the men. You’re also saving mental energy. Right? So, like, it’s.
Roland Denzel [00:39:46]:
You don’t have to decide. You don’t have to think, what am I going to make? What am I going to clean? What am I going to cook? How long is it going to take to cook? How is the cleanup process like all these things for all. For something. Right. That I’m not going to be as satisfied with, probably because we go back to the food. You know, the, the food, you know, the engineered food, you know, fast food has also been engineered, like that extra sodium, extra fat, you know, all those kinds of things.
Jim Azevedo [00:40:12]:
Yep. So sugar, oil and fat. Or sugar. Oil and. Sorry, sorry.
Roland Denzel [00:40:18]:
Yeah. What is that? Salt. Sugar.
Jim Azevedo [00:40:21]:
Salt, oil and sugar.
Roland Denzel [00:40:22]:
You know, there’s. That there’s a really good book that talks about the science. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the common eating habits that authors have, I think are. We talked about the, the writing in November, like the not wanting to get up from my desk. Like, the goal is to. But we say button chair time. Right.
Roland Denzel [00:40:42]:
That’s like a common slogan that authors say, button, chair. You got to have your butt and chair. Well, that’s great, but it shouldn’t stop you from going to the actual kitchen to get an actual healthy snack or actual healthy meal. Right. And spending some time away. So authors tend to think I don’t want to get out of the groove. I can’t. I’m on.
Roland Denzel [00:41:03]:
I’m in a. In the swing of things and I can’t stop. So I have to have a snack in my drawer, right. And it has to be something that I can eat while I’m. I’m typing, that kind of thing. Um, but it’s a, It’s a vicious circle, right? So, like in, like, if you. That is a habit, but also it could be a habit the other way. Like, you can choose.
Roland Denzel [00:41:25]:
You can. It takes time to develop this habit of taking a break from your writing and not losing your momentum, right? So, like, that’s a skill that you can develop. It’s a skill that I’ve developed. Like, I, you know, some people like the pomodoro, some people hate it, but you can use that type of mentality to train yourself to write in short periods, take a break, and then get back without losing touch, without losing your momentum. So that’s one habit. Like prioritizing convenience over health, because the, Those convenience foods aren’t. And that convenient food mentality isn’t as healthy long term. And so it’s going to lead to poor nutrition, poor health, which is going to make that harder.
Roland Denzel [00:42:12]:
So it’s a vicious, It’s a vicious circle. Yeah, I think that’s probably, probably the biggest one. Okay, so I, I’ve noticed a trend both with some authors who, like, I’m a proponent of batch cooking, not a batch cooking for leftovers. Like, but my batch cooking is on, like Saturday or Sunday. I will make a lot of components that I can put into dishes throughout the week. So it could be like a, you know, like a big roast, or you could buy a rotisserie chicken, or you could make a whole bunch of roasted vegetables. Like, it’s like these things, you cut them up and you make them and you. And you season them.
Roland Denzel [00:42:53]:
And then you can make them into like a rice bowl and a burrito and in tacos, or you could make soup out of all of these things with, like, just a few minutes. So it’s super easy. And then the, the benefit here is that, like, two things are out of your mind. Like, so you don’t have to think about it because now you’ve made, You’ve put all your mental energy in on Saturday or Sunday. And so the other stuff’s pretty much easy. And then the cleanup is easier because you did all that big. The big. Made the big mess on Saturday or Sunday.
Roland Denzel [00:43:25]:
And yeah, so then it makes it Mentally easier to switch. The big pushback I have is that, well, two. One is I don’t like leftovers. Well, so I’m not prepared. I’m not saying leftover leftovers. I’m saying, I’m not saying make a big pot of chili and eat it for five times, you know, three times a day for the rest of the week. I’m saying make these core foods. If you like leftovers, just get into the leftovers, too.
Roland Denzel [00:43:47]:
Or Bix and Match, have some leftovers at some of these core. These core foods, these base foods. But the other pushback I get is like authors being proud of the fact that they make their dinner from scratch every night or their, you know, and I get it. I love to cook. But then I have to ask, well, what, you know, like, it’s not. First of all, I don’t think your family’s going to be, you know, embarrassed by you or, like, going to be like, oh, I can’t believe dad or mom didn’t, you know, cook from scratch tonight. They use this thing, these they made to make tacos, Right?
Jim Azevedo [00:44:21]:
Yeah.
Roland Denzel [00:44:22]:
So it’s a mentality shift. But I have to ask, like, all of these things, is it more important for you to write your books or is it more important for you to cook from scratch every night? Like, which would do you value more? At least in the right now, it’s like something to try. So I think prioritizing other things, prioritizing foods in a way, that’s not the most important thing, if you really think about it. So you kind of have to get in touch with like, what do I really want? What do I really want to do? Right. Do I want to, you know, not to be saying that you can’t have like some special night where you cook something from scratch. You don’t have to eat those core foods every night, but if you can save yourself, like three hours a week by doing the special batch cooking and a leftover thing, like, that’s three hours more writing that you could be doing and.
Jim Azevedo [00:45:08]:
Absolutely.
Roland Denzel [00:45:10]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:45:13]:
Quick, quick comment here from our mutual friend Becca Sim, who says, ah, the resistance of healthy habits. I love this.
Roland Denzel [00:45:20]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:45:22]:
Hey, Becca, thanks. Thanks for joining.
Roland Denzel [00:45:23]:
Yeah.
Jim Azevedo [00:45:26]:
Real quickly, because we’re already. Yeah, it is, it is. And I’m sorry to cut you off, but we’re getting close to time and I wanted to ask you just real quick, Roland, can you, I know it goes by like that. Can you address the difference between a nutritionally dense food versus a calorie dense food? Because when the comment came Up. I think it was from Layla talking about, you know, bad eating habits for those of us who are stuck at our desks all day long, which is basically all of us. Can you address that really quick, the difference between a nutritionally dense food and a calorie dense food?
Roland Denzel [00:46:08]:
Sure. So let’s use two. Two plant foods for an example. Right. We can start with extremes. So like broccoli or kale or Brussels sprouts, any sort of like. Or zucchini, any sort of vegetable. Right.
Roland Denzel [00:46:19]:
Doesn’t have a lot of calories, but per. Per calorie, there’s a lot of nutrition, there’s a lot of vitamins, fiber things per calorie. And. But if you look at the opposite end of the plant spectrum, wheat flour, like, or bread that’s made, you know, so like, it’s got a lot of calories. I mean, you’d be surprised, like, really, if you look at some of these, like hamburger, but like the, like a, like a nice hamburger bun, like they could be like 350, 450 calories. And. But if you look at the. That me.
Roland Denzel [00:46:49]:
Yeah, maybe there’s some fiber on there, but fiber is not really nutrition. There’s like a baseline of fiber you need. Right. But that fiber is just sort of, you know, the, the. The vegetable probably has that much fiber too. And you could beat more of those vegetables for the same amount for way fewer calories and get to get that same amount of fiber. Plus, if you go into, there’s like nutritiondata.com is like a free website you can look at if you’re curious about certain nutrition. You can plug in your favorite vegetable or vegetables that you even kind of like and compare, plug in like wheat flour or bread or something like that, and it will break down all of these.
Roland Denzel [00:47:24]:
And I think you can even compare two foods and it will do like a, you know, charts of the different things, and it’ll be like, wow, there’s so little nutrition for so many calories in some of these things. So obviously there’s a big scale. So, like, there are breads that have more, that are a smaller. Right. Cause you don’t need to have this huge bread. Right. You could have a smaller piece of bread that actually has like the, the sprouted grain breads. They are not vegetables per se, but they’re closer to vegetables because they have the nutrition of something that’s been sprouted, is quite a bit more than just a seed that’s been ground up and, you know, what do you call it? Sorted? You know, we’ve got all the, you know, a lot of the fiber and the germ is, is gone.
Roland Denzel [00:48:10]:
So. Yeah, so like, and even then, like, if you like starchier carbs, like bread is one thing, but then like, you know, rice has different nutrition and so maybe a little bit more dense, then you get to like lentils and beans or the combination of beans and rice, which is like a, they, they, you know, they work synergistically to, you know, to get a lot of the, the proteins that complain create complete sources of protein. So those are going to be more dense than that bread would be. So there’s like a sort of a sliding scale of these things. And that bun makes you satisfied at the time, but not very long term versus the vegetable. Not, maybe not as satisfying emotionally. Right. But it will keep you satiated for longer because it has more, more micronutrition and, and fewer calories.
Jim Azevedo [00:49:09]:
Okay, that’s so interesting. That’s always. That’s what hooked me on this whole pathway in the very first place. When you learn about the calorie density of, say, eating a bag of chips, it’s like, bang. Well, there’s like 500 calories right there, and I finished that bag in two and a half minutes. But then you can have like a whole salad which maybe has, I don’t know, 100, 150 calories, but it’s packed and you’ve got so much nutrition that you’re ingesting during that time, and it’ll keep you satiated with all the fiber and everything, but you also have all of this nutrition that you’ve just ingested to keep yourself healthier. Well, gosh, as always, we are at the end of time, and it went by in a blink. This was a wonderful conversation and I hope that our viewers out there got some good educational value out of it as well.
Jim Azevedo [00:50:03]:
And Roland, I want to thank you for your time and I want to thank all of our viewers out there for joining us week in and week out. If you enjoyed this episode, if you could do us a favor and like the episode and share it with your friends, we really, really appreciate it because it helps us not only expand and get our message out in front of more people, but it also helps us to attract people, guests and experts like Roland. If you bookmark d2dlive.com you can see what our subsequent guests or who our subsequent guests will be and what our topics will be. And then finally, if you are new to the publishing world and you’re thinking about self publishing a book, you can sign up for a free account simply by going to draft2digital.com again. Thanks everybody so much for joining us here today. Roland, thank you so much for your time and energy and care when it comes to your books into this topic specifically. If you can hang out for a second, Roland, I’ll meet you backstage. Got a great.
Jim Azevedo [00:51:08]:
I’m going to play just a quick commercial for everybody else. We’ll see you.
Roland Denzel [00:51:12]:
Thank you everybody. It’s been great. It’s been great. Thank you everybody.
Jim Azevedo [00:51:15]:
Wow. We’re so happy to have you here. We’ll see you all next week.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:51:21]:
Ebooks are great, but there’s just something about having your words in print. Something you can hold in your hands, put on a shelf, sign for a reader. That’s why we created D2D Print, a print on demand service that was built for you. We have free beautiful templates to give your book a pro look and we can even convert your ebook cover into a full wrap around cover for print. So many options for you and your books and you can get started right now at draft2digital.com. That’s it for this week’s Self Publishing Insiders with Draft2Digital. Be sure to subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with your will be author friends and start build and grow your own self publishing career right now@draftadigital.com.