The Berman Method
The Berman Method
Episode #185: Berman Basics & Simple Tips
Fundamental nutrition principles are often forgotten in our quest for the latest health trends and fads. Dr. Jake Berman and Jenni Berman, PA-C cut through the noise to deliver essential, actionable advice about protein consumption, hydration, and meal strategies that form the foundation of optimal health.
The podcast tackles common nutrition misconceptions head-on, starting with protein intake. While most health enthusiasts understand protein's importance, few realize the body can only effectively process about 40 grams per sitting. That expensive steakhouse dinner may deliver 100 grams of protein, but your body will likely store more than half as fat rather than muscle. Dr. Berman breaks down appropriate daily protein targets (generally 1-2 grams per kilogram of body weight) and explains why timing matters just as much as quantity.
Water consumption emerges as another misunderstood essential. The Bermans advocate for a gallon daily with proper electrolytes – a recommendation that often raises skepticism. They explain why our modern environment, filled with processed foods and environmental toxins, necessitates more hydration than our ancestors needed, while addressing common concerns about frequent bathroom trips during the adjustment period.
Perhaps most revealing is their breakdown of conventional breakfast wisdom. That "healthy" meal of oatmeal, fruit, toast and juice? It's essentially carbohydrates stacked upon carbohydrates, setting you up for energy crashes rather than sustained fuel. The hosts share practical modifications for both home-cooked and restaurant breakfasts, demonstrating how simple additions can transform nutritional profiles without sacrificing enjoyment.
Ready to stop treating symptoms and start addressing the root causes of health challenges? This episode delivers the foundational knowledge needed to make immediate improvements to your daily nutrition habits. Subscribe, share, and implement these straightforward strategies to take control of your health today.
This is the Berman Method podcast, featuring Dr Jake Berman and physician assistant Jenny Berman. We are here to treat problems and not symptoms. Disclaimer this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and not to treat anyone or to give medical advice. If you are interested in any information that we are giving and would like to use this for yourself, we recommend that you contact your primary care physician or reach out to us and ask us questions about yourself specifically. Enjoy.
Speaker 2:And we are back, baby, with the Berman Method podcast, focused on treating problems, not symptoms. David, going against Goliath, goliath being the corporate medical system, health insurance companies, big pharmaceuticals. They do not have your best interests in mind. A patient cured is a customer lost, so why in the world would they want to cure you? If you get cured, you're out of the system. You no longer spending money. Have you ever thought about why all of these vaccines are free? Think about that. I just saw, just driving to work the other day, cvs had a big sign come in and get your free covid and flu combination vaccine we're in may now, or April it's like what Like?
Speaker 2:why are you giving away free COVID and flu vaccines? Nothing is free. Where's the money coming from? That's true. Pharmaceutical companies don't do anything for free.
Speaker 1:Right. So who's paying them All these premiums that we're paying? Yes?
Speaker 2:you're paying them. It's not free, right, right, I mean, it's absolutely nuts to think that they're just getting away with marketing these quote unquote free vaccines. They're not free. They're these giant multi, multi-billion dollar deals that are happening. Anyways, that's not the point of today's topic. Today's topic, we're going to go over some basic fundamentals. More often you need to be reminded more than you need to hear something new. So in general, you have to hear something at least at least seven times before you remember it, and probably closer to double that before you actually think of it, front of mind. So today we're going to go over some really basic generic statements. So this is not individualized. These are generic, high-level statements. For example, how much protein should we be consuming a day?
Speaker 1:In general, the answer is Well, in general we're going between one to two grams per kilogram. In general, that's a wide range, though One to two grams per kilogram is a wide range, so that's where it becomes a little bit more individualized, based on muscle mass and activity. But, for instance, our general female population in the 50 plus population is getting between 100 to 120 grams of protein per day, and our males in general are somewhere between 140 to 160 grams of protein per day in our 50 plus population.
Speaker 2:Okay, good, those are very general things. I'm trying not to get Jenny, too, in the weeds here right now. And in general, what's the most amount of protein you should consume in a meal?
Speaker 1:About 40 grams of protein per meal is the maximum of what we can break down and utilize for energy, metabolize and utilize for energy.
Speaker 2:Okay. So let me be a male right now and say well, what about that 16 ounce porterhouse steak? How many grams of protein are in that?
Speaker 1:Well, let's see If there's approximately in steak. I'm doing some math here, so that's a pound, right? 16 ounces is a pound and we're looking at 24 grams of protein per quarter. So 20, 40, 60, 80.
Speaker 2:So almost 100 grams of protein in that steak, so I ate it. I got 100 grams of protein in that steak, so I ate it. I got 100 grams in, but what's actually happening if I can only digest and consume 40 grams? What happens to the other?
Speaker 1:60?. You're metabolizing about 40 grams to be put into the sulfur fuel. Then we're storing the other 60 grams, which most likely will turn to fat. Okay, that's all we turn to fat.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's all we needed to hear right there. Again, just very superficial. If you eat 100 grams of protein in one serving, you're going to metabolize 40 of it and, in general, 60 of it is going to be stored as fat. Right. Right, there you go.
Speaker 1:Right there. So here you think that eating more protein is going to help the metabolism to lose weight and burn fat, and that's true if we're doing it the right way. But that does not mean we can go then consume 50, 60 grams of protein per sitting and expect that the metabolism is going to be functioning efficiently.
Speaker 2:And again not to go into the weeds or down a rabbit hole here. This is one of the cons to intermittent fasting. Right. So there's a lot of people that do intermittent fasting and then they try to consume enough protein in two meals. It's like, okay, well, I got 100 grams of protein in.
Speaker 1:Right, right, and I only ate in my eight-hour window. But yeah, intermittent fasting, you're going to struggle either with getting enough protein in or you're consuming too much protein within a short window of time that your metabolism is not actually processing it well, Got it.
Speaker 2:And again, these are very general statements. Of course, there's going to be the one or two out of 10 where this works perfectly, for we're talking about generalities. There's always going to be one person that gets shredded, ripped, nasty and all they eat is cookies, donuts and drink beer. There's always going to be that. That used to be me. I didn't eat that bad.
Speaker 1:Oh, hamburger, helper, cereal, spaghetti, tacos that was your menu when I met you and you were shredded and cookies and full fat milk. Yeah, 2%.
Speaker 2:Not full fat. Oh, I never did full. Oh oh, two gallons a week though.
Speaker 1:Two gallons of milk a week, two boxes of hamburger helper Tacos with corn tortillas Yep, hard shell.
Speaker 2:Spaghetti, spaghetti, at least once a week. And cereal Cereal for dessert every night, uh-huh, and at least 12 cookies.
Speaker 1:At least 12 cookies a week? Yeah, at least. And you were shredded, shredded. So you were that one outlier.
Speaker 2:Okay, anyways anyways, yeah, not able to do it anymore, so we talked about protein. What about water?
Speaker 1:a gallon. Drink a gallon of water with your electrolytes. You know every day a gallon of water with your electrolytes every day.
Speaker 2:A gallon of water a day keeps Jenny Berman away. And don't forget because I question the same thing I'm like well, let's go back to 200 years ago. There's no way water was that readily available that the normal natural thing to do is to drink a gallon of water a day. So why do we have to drink a gallon of water a day today?
Speaker 1:You were also eating fresh fruits, vegetables and proteins 200 years ago, not processed foods.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's. The biggest difference is the food is not the same today as it was 200 years ago, so you have to drink more water to essentially flush out or dilute the crap that we're consuming all day, every day.
Speaker 1:Right Toxins, bacteria, and then I'll have the individuals say well, I eat so clean, then I don't need to be drinking that much water. But again, our environment is different, the pollution is different, the medications, the supplements we're using, I mean, it's all just so different than it was 200 years ago. So, yes, 100 to 128 ounces of water a day is the recommendation, as long as you're getting the right electrolytes. And, of course, this is a generic, blanket statement, not covering people with kidney disease or heart disease.
Speaker 2:This is generic, generic and just to go ahead and squash all the ones saying well, I'll be peeing every 10 minutes. Yes, you will for the first few days, or even week, until your body acclimates to it, so just stick with it. Two weeks later, if you do it every single day, you're not going to be peeing every 10 minutes and you're going to be fine. Next one is breakfast. Still to this day, I mean, I cannot tell you. There's not a week that goes by that I don't hear somebody telling me that they're eating oatmeal, fruit and peanut butter toast with a glass of orange juice for breakfast and thinking that they're doing an amazing job.
Speaker 1:Right, or just not eating breakfast because they weren't hungry, so just don't eat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of those two and I'm going. Oh my gosh, that is horrible. It's such an old school thought process you have to understand. The people that said that was healthy are the ones that came up with the food pyramid. I mean, look at the food pyramid. It came out in the 80s once. There was that huge, huge transition. From when they started to outlaw tobacco is when it happened. So now you've got these multi, multi trillion. We shouldn't even go down this road right now. We could talk about this for hours, but anyways, the people that told you that that's healthy to eat look at the food pyramid. Right.
Speaker 2:Just Google right now. Pull up your phone if you're not driving and Google what is the food pyramid for an elementary school kid in?
Speaker 3:America Right. Remember when we did this a couple of months ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's nuts. They literally say processed sugar should be in the diet.
Speaker 1:Right, which is just nuts. So you know. It's not that oatmeal is bad, but we need some protein with the oatmeal. We need to throw some egg whites into it, throw a protein drink into it instead of using milk. You got to get some protein with the oatmeal to balance the carbohydrates. We should not be having oatmeal, fruit and toast all together at breakfast, because it's just carbs, carbs and carbs. It's not sustaining us, it's not providing energy. If you're going to have the toast with the peanut butter, use the PB2 so you get more protein. Add some eggs to it. Add a protein drink to it. Add some sausage to it Something for protein.
Speaker 2:Yes, and for complete transparency, I eat oatmeal for breakfast five nights a week Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday morning. Five mornings a week, Monday through Friday, but it's Jenny's concoction of egg whites.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't do egg whites for you anymore because we've taken eggs out of your diet, so we're using the lupini flakes, which are very, very protein dense a protein drink or collagen powder included in the oats. And then you also have a protein shake too in the mornings with your oatmeal, so you're getting quality protein.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good, yeah, okay. So we went over. How much protein should you consume a day? How much should you consume in one setting? How much water should you drink a day? What should breakfast look like? Now let's go into one of the fun ones. Oh boy. Dinner at a restaurant. Dinner at a restaurant, or let's just talk about restaurants in general.
Speaker 1:I just posted about this on social media last week. We had two client dinners last week, so we hardly ever eat out during the week. Sunday through Thursday we eat at home, and then we usually eat out Friday Saturday evenings. But last week we had two client dinners so we were out two days.
Speaker 2:You and I were out with our clients two nights last week.
Speaker 1:Yes, Out to eat two nights during the week last week and I had just posted about this a couple of days ago saying you can always modify your meals out we have clients tell us all the time well, we have so many meals out, it's just so hard. It's so hard. You just have to know what to do. Kind of like the last episode where we talked about with the back pain. Back pain is not difficult to work through If you know what you're doing. You have to see the right person know what you're treating. Same thing with the menus. You can always modify menus and 99.9% of the time the restaurants are willing to do it, the clubs are willing to do it. You may have a $5 upcharge or whatever it is, but your health is your investment, right, it's an investment into your health. So you can always modify meals. You just have to know how to modify them. So one of the meals out we had last week with a client dinner we were at the club and-.
Speaker 2:The country club the country club.
Speaker 1:yes, so there were a few gluten-free meals, but then if they were gluten-free, they either were like cauliflower pizza, which doesn't fit my macros, or maybe it has dairy on it and I didn't want to have that. So I had to modify a vegan meal to add fish to it to allow me to have some extra protein on the vegetarian or vegan meal that was on the menu. You can always modify your meals.
Speaker 2:That's huge, right there, absolutely huge. Because every single time we go to a restaurant, there's a lot of times where I won't even look at the menu because I know that there's nothing on there that I'm going to eat. I literally go into a restaurant saying this is what I'm going to have tonight, it's going to be a steak and some type of veggie, and that's what I got at the country club. Right, I didn't even look at them. I did just because I like it. Just, it always entertains me, right, every single time, 99% of the stuff on every single menu is just horrible. It's absolutely horrible. It's just carb, carb, carb, carb, carb, carb, carb. Little bit of protein carb, carb, carb, carb, carb.
Speaker 1:Right, and you know the interesting thing about the country club menu on the sides list, on the one, the one we went to on the sides list, there was one vegetable on the sides. There were 12 sides and one was a vegetable and it was asparagus. But then you look at the menu and there's dishes that have edamame and cabbage and spinach and, I think, lentils, like there were all sorts of vegetables in the meals but you couldn't get them as a side. I was like what in the meals but you couldn't get them as a side. I was like what in the world? But the other 11 sides available were all carbohydrates regular potatoes, sweet potatoes, pasta it was nuts.
Speaker 2:Okay, and just to transition just a little bit still on restaurants. So in general, lunch and dinner menus, you can get by with modifying and getting protein. The things that crack both of us up is breakfast Going out to breakfast. There's somebody listening to this podcast right now where your low-hanging fruit is to modify your breakfast out at the restaurant Every single time you and I go out to breakfast. I'm doing it, you have to be doing it. I just look around at all the tables next to me and I'm not judging. I don't want you to think that I'm judging. I'm observing. I'm observing what everybody else is eating, thinking that they're doing a good job.
Speaker 1:Right, that's the thing. They don't know what they're getting is not optimal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you think you're doing a good job and you're not. You're shooting yourself in the foot. You're getting a 16 ounce glass of orange juice with a blueberry muffin, one egg, one piece of bacon and a pancake Right and think that you got your protein in.
Speaker 1:You got your one piece of bacon and your one egg. There's your eight grams of protein.
Speaker 2:How much protein in one egg at a restaurant? Six grams, six grams, okay.
Speaker 1:If it's a whole egg. If it's a whole egg and if you eat the grams, okay, if it's a whole egg, if it's a whole egg and if you eat the yolk, yep.
Speaker 2:So if you get two eggs, two pieces of bacon, two slices of toast and a 16-ounce glass of orange juice, how much protein in that meal?
Speaker 1:17 grams of protein, because I give one for the slice of toast. So 17 grams of protein and then you're at, let's see 24. 38, 40 grams of carbohydrates.
Speaker 2:Is that a good ratio, 17 to 40?
Speaker 1:No definitely not. What a lot of people don't realize is a glass of orange juice has like 24 grams of sugar in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the crazy part is you have no idea.
Speaker 1:That's a bowl of ice cream. We did a whole podcast on this. We should link that podcast where we went through remember that where we went through and figured out the grams of sugar and carbohydrates to quote-unquote healthy things like orange juice and apple juice versus ice cream and Snickers bars.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember I asked you on that episode. I said what's more healthy a glass of orange juice or a bowl of ice cream?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a bowl of ice cream is healthier. At least it has some calcium in it.
Speaker 2:And protein.
Speaker 1:Jeez, yeah, it's nuts, it's nuts.
Speaker 2:So one of my favorite items to order at breakfast. What's my most favorite item to order at breakfast when I'm trying to do it the right way?
Speaker 1:Corned beef hash. And what? Five eggs over medium.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll get five eggs over medium and corned beef hash.
Speaker 1:And that's it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, there's potatoes in the corned beef hash.
Speaker 1:But at least you're getting 40 grams of protein between the five eggs and the corned beef.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's a lot of people listening to this going five eggs.
Speaker 1:Are you serious? Their cholesterol is skyrocketing just thinking about that Come on.
Speaker 2:That has been killed. It's not true. Eggs do not increase your cholesterol If you still think eggs increase your cholesterol, we've got a problem. You need to go back to episode one of the.
Speaker 2:Berman Method podcast. So, yeah, that's one of my favorite things to do, especially down in Key West I mean Key West. When we go down there, the menus are not great at all, so there's many times that I'll just order six eggs over medium and bacon, or six eggs over medium and sausage. It's like, okay, I'll take a bite or two of this toast or some hash browns, but it's just so bad, right, right.
Speaker 1:And breakfast can certainly be challenging out if you can't eat eggs. If you can't or don't eat eggs, then breakfast out can certainly be challenging, but there's still always ways to modify.
Speaker 2:That's where I'm at right now. Technically, I'm not supposed to be eating eggs, so I'm eating duck eggs and turkey eggs because it's not the same sensitivity, it doesn't respond the same in your body, so I'm eating duck eggs and turkey eggs here at home. However, they don't have those at restaurants, so I'll go out and I'll order corned beef, hash, sausage and bacon.
Speaker 1:Right, a meat platter, essentially, but there are some places that do have oatmeal that maybe you bring a vegan protein drink to mix into the oatmeal, the protein powder, or maybe they have some sort of a plant-based protein option, like there are some places that have the Just Egg, which is the plant-based egg. So there's always, always options to modify when you're out, but you have to make sure you're getting enough protein at breakfast. I am forever, when I go out and order vegetable omelets, adding chicken to it, adding chicken sausage, adding ham, adding some sort of protein to the omelet or to the frittata, the crustless quiche things that we're getting, so having vegetables and having that extra protein.
Speaker 2:Love it, love it, love it. So this is a great episode. Make sure you bookmark this episode, Share this episode. This should probably be one of the most shared episodes that we've ever recorded. It's short, to the point, simple, immediately actionable tactical items on this episode. So please like and subscribe and share this and give us a thumbs up, especially on YouTube. If you're watching this or listening to this on YouTube, give us a thumbs up, share this, because it really does help out the algorithm. People are starting to find us organically. We're getting more and more people that are stumbling across our content and it really does help. If you give us a thumbs up, give us a share because YouTube, Facebook, Instagram they will put us higher in the algorithm and then this will spread more and more and more and we'll start saving more and more lives. Look at that Superman cape on. That was beautiful.
Speaker 1:Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening. Ciao for now. Thank you for subscribing on your social media and podcast platforms to the Berman Method Dr Jake Berman with Berman Physical Therapy and Jenny Berman, physician Assistant, with Berman Health and Wellness. You can find more information on our website wwwbermanptcom for physical therapy. Wwwbermanptcom forward slash wellness for the health and wellness. Wwwdermandptcom forward slash wellness for the health and wellness. You can also find us on social media Facebook, instagram and on your podcast platform. So be sure to follow us, like us, subscribe to us and if you would like any further information, definitely visit our website and reach out to us. You may also find our free reports on the websites as well, where you can download this free information for yourself. Have a great day.