Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Why You Can't Lose Fat "Eating Clean" (Performance Chef Mario Limaduran) | Ep 464

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Why You Can't Lose Fat "Eating Clean" (Performance Chef Mario Limaduran) | Ep 464 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: You know that person who switched to organic everything, cooks at home, eats mostly whole foods, and still can't figure out why they can't lose fat.
• 0:07
  Philip Pape: That might be you.
• 0:09
  Philip Pape: And the problem isn't your food quality.
• 0:12
  Philip Pape: It's how quality and quantity work together or more often don't.
• 0:16
  Philip Pape: Today I'm talking with a chef who's cooked personalized meals for UFC fighters, NFL athletes, and Olympic level competitors.
• 0:25
  Philip Pape: And he's going to explain what he sees go wrong when everyday people try to eat clean without the structure that actually makes it work.
• 0:32
  Philip Pape: Plus, stick around because we're giving away an entire week of free meals.
• 0:36
  Philip Pape: But the catch is you have to listen for the secret word later in this episode.
• 0:40
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, where in every episode we put a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, find the hidden reason it doesn't work, and give you the deceptively simple fix that does.
• 0:56
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today we're examining the claim about eating clean and losing fat.
• 1:03
  Philip Pape: It sounds obvious, eating whole foods, eating lean proteins, lots of vegetables.
• 1:08
  Philip Pape: Nobody argues with that, but a large number of my clients come to me already eating well and they're stuck.
• 1:14
  Philip Pape: They're frustrated because they did the thing everyone said to do.
• 1:18
  Philip Pape: It didn't deliver the body composition or fat loss changes that they expected.
• 1:22
  Philip Pape: So what's missing?
• 1:23
  Philip Pape: My guest today is Chef Mario Lima Duran, culinary director at Trifecta Nutrition.
• 1:29
  Philip Pape: Mario has a degree in culinary nutrition from Johnson and Wales University.
• 1:33
  Philip Pape: He spent his career at the intersection of real cooking, but also sports performance.
• 1:39
  Philip Pape: He was a chef at a two Michelin star restaurant in LA.
• 1:42
  Philip Pape: He cooked for NCAA Division I wrestlers at Cornell.
• 1:46
  Philip Pape: He ran a kitchen for NFL, NHL Olympic athletes.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: Such a resume.
• 1:50
  Philip Pape: He also built and ran the culinary nutrition program for the UFC Performance Institute, cooking personalized meals for fighters during fight weeks around the world.
• 1:59
  Philip Pape: So he's one of the few people around working in commercial meal delivery who has this depth of both culinary training and applied sports nutrition experience.
• 2:09
  Philip Pape: So by the end of this episode, you are going to understand why eating clean without structure might be keeping you from making progress.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: How a performance chef thinks about building meals that are nutrient dense, protein optimized, and of course delicious.
• 2:22
  Philip Pape: And what practical strategies you at home can use, whether you cook yourself or use a meal service to make the nutrition match your health and physique goals.
• 2:31
  Philip Pape: Chef Mario, welcome to the show, my man.
• 2:34
  Mario Limaduran: Philip, pleasure being here.
• 2:35
  Mario Limaduran: Thank you so much.
• 2:36
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 2:36
  Philip Pape: So, you know, we've never had a chef on the show.
• 2:38
  Philip Pape: I was talking about that before we recorded.
• 2:40
  Philip Pape: And I'm just curious about your process, really, to start off.
• 2:43
  Philip Pape: Like when you prep food for someone who is performance-minded specifically, so whether they're an athlete or lifter or somebody listening here, what do you think of first?
• 2:52
  Philip Pape: Like, do you start with macros and micros and then make it fit?
• 2:56
  Philip Pape: Do you look at food quality?
• 2:58
  Philip Pape: Is it taste and preference?
• 2:59
  Philip Pape: Like I'm really curious about your process and the order of operations.
• 3:03
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:04
  Mario Limaduran: That's a great question.
• 3:05
  Mario Limaduran: So when you're cooking for anybody, you got to start with the sourcing of the ingredients, right?
• 3:09
  Mario Limaduran: You go to the supermarket, you go to Costco.
• 3:12
  Mario Limaduran: Um, when I was with the UFC, I would use a lot of uh Amazon delivery from Whole Foods and getting the highest possible quality produce, proteins, starch is essential to create a healthy, nutrient-dense meal, right?
• 3:29
  Mario Limaduran: So uh the sourcing of the food is definitely important.
• 3:33
  Mario Limaduran: Conventional food, um, mainly protein speaking, tends to yield a less nutrient-dense protein.
• 3:42
  Mario Limaduran: Conventional and organic produce, there's no difference in the nutrition density.
• 3:47
  Mario Limaduran: Um, there's some concerns around the um the pesticide use, um, but generally speaking, you can get the same nutrient density from a conventional food or a fruit and vegetable as a as an organic one for half cost too.
• 4:02
  Mario Limaduran: Same goes for starches.
• 4:03
  Mario Limaduran: Sometimes it doesn't really make sense to buy organic, you know, but you still want to source fresh produce, you still want to source uh not overly ripe or underly ripe produce, um, otherwise you're not getting the the the bulk of those nutrients there.
• 4:17
  Mario Limaduran: So we start with that, and then as as a chef, as a cook, um, that's that's definitely a big focus.
• 4:23
  Mario Limaduran: And also, you know, the care with which the food was grown translates into the plate one way or another.
• 4:30
  Mario Limaduran: That's very true.
• 4:31
  Mario Limaduran: So there's some advantages to to you know the the higher end proteins and whatnot.
• 4:36
  Mario Limaduran: And then we work with the athlete to figure out what their macronutrient needs are.
• 4:43
  Mario Limaduran: Macronutrients are proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and that translates to calories.
• 4:47
  Mario Limaduran: And so I typically work with uh registered dietitians who do the intake conversations and the intake interviews, and then they are the ones who help me with that portion, figuring out what their macronutrients are, and then they give me, okay, this is the total daily caloric macronutrient needs.
• 5:09
  Mario Limaduran: Then we break it down into main meals and then snacks.
• 5:12
  Mario Limaduran: And so from there, it's very easy to have the profile of a person and understand, okay, this person needs 28 grams of protein, 30 grams of carbs, and five grams of fat, just for easy numbers there uh per meal.
• 5:26
  Mario Limaduran: And so go ahead and do your magic and play to that way.
• 5:30
  Mario Limaduran: I follow the exchange system.
• 5:32
  Mario Limaduran: Have you ever heard of the exchange system, butchins?
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: I don't think I'm familiar with that one.
• 5:36
  Mario Limaduran: Okay, so the exchange system was originally created by dietitians to help diabetic people learn how to use a weight scale, measuring spoons, and measuring cups, and serve their food in a very consistent basis.
• 5:52
  Mario Limaduran: So essentially, a serving size is equivalent to a certain amount of grams of a micronutrient.
• 5:58
  Mario Limaduran: So, for example, a third cup of rice is equivalent to 15 grams of carbohydrates.
• 6:03
  Mario Limaduran: And so there's the fat, the carb, the protein, and this system is very easy to understand.
• 6:10
  Mario Limaduran: Don't want to give you guys too much information all at once, but I've become very good at understanding that system and have used that system to essentially divide the grams needed per meal into a serving size.
• 6:26
  Mario Limaduran: And so, for example, in this example that we were just talking about, 30 grams of carbohydrates would be equivalent to two-thirds cups of rice.
• 6:33
  Mario Limaduran: Five grams of fat would be equivalent to one tablespoon of a fat-based sauce or uh a quarter of an avocado.
• 6:41
  Mario Limaduran: And you can mix and match with the servings.
• 6:43
  Mario Limaduran: You know, that's that's where the creativity on my part begins to grow, and I can just mix and match based on the serving sizes of the exchange system.
• 6:50
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah, I want to sit on that.
• 6:52
  Philip Pape: You typically draw on food databases.
• 6:54
  Philip Pape: One of the things we talk about is the more you weigh, especially when you normalize it to like grams, the more you can recognize, like in a restaurant, okay, that's 100, you know, 20 grams of whatever.
• 7:03
  Philip Pape: What you're telling me is you essentially have memorized kind of a library of what standard foods and their portions versus the grams.
• 7:09
  Philip Pape: Is that what you're saying?
• 7:10
  Mario Limaduran: Correct.
• 7:10
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah.
• 7:11
  Mario Limaduran: So yeah, first I'll give you a quick example.
• 7:13
  Mario Limaduran: For sweet potatoes, it's half a cup, but for potatoes or and sweet potatoes is half a cup.
• 7:18
  Mario Limaduran: For quinoa is a quarter cup.
• 7:20
  Mario Limaduran: For rice and most of starches and uh grains and legumes is a third cup.
• 7:24
  Mario Limaduran: That it and that serving is equivalent to 15 grams of carbohydrates.
• 7:29
  Mario Limaduran: Um, for fat, one exchange is five grams.
• 7:32
  Mario Limaduran: So a tablespoon of oil would be five grams of fat.
• 7:35
  Mario Limaduran: But you can interchange and use that serving of fat to make sauces and then and we'll get into that in a little bit, and then serve very easily, just grab you know, a chimichuri sauce and serve one tablespoon, and you know that you're giving them five grams.
• 7:49
  Mario Limaduran: Of course, I've done a lot of work on this, and in order to prep for cooking for these athletes, I've analyzed a lot of recipes and I've made sure that the recipe that I'm following is yielding the exact nutrition that I need in order to follow this exchange system.
• 8:04
  Mario Limaduran: So that's pretty much the system that that I follow.
• 8:07
  Mario Limaduran: And then as far as protein, one exchange of protein is equivalent to three ounces or 21 grams of protein.
• 8:14
  Mario Limaduran: The the original system calls for one ounce or seven grams of protein being one exchange of protein.
• 8:21
  Mario Limaduran: But the performance industry has evolved in use that made 21 grams the one one exchange.
• 8:28
  Mario Limaduran: That way we can give people the basic needs of a high protein meal by just uh by just using the the one equals 21 instead of one equals seven.
• 8:38
  Mario Limaduran: So it's three times that original serving size.
• 8:41
  Mario Limaduran: I got it.
• 8:42
  Philip Pape: So then you can have a couple exchanges per meal or whatever to hit that 40 grams.
• 8:46
  Philip Pape: Yeah.
• 8:46
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 8:46
  Philip Pape: Wow, fascinating stuff, man.
• 8:48
  Philip Pape: So what I like is the level of precision.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: It also hits on the fact that it isn't just about what matters, obviously, for quality and like you said, sourcing and all of that.
• 8:58
  Philip Pape: But if you're gonna meet some goal, you know, for energy intake and also for macros, and it sounds like even from a health perspective, if you're diabetic and whatever, that you need to be precise in some way, right?
• 9:08
  Philip Pape: And I think the average person listening kind of generally understands that in terms of tracking calories and macros, but you kind of take it to a another level, right?
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: Like with the RD involved and you involved.
• 9:18
  Philip Pape: So let's segue that into the idea of everyone out there who doesn't want to track or isn't tracking or thinks it's obsessive or whatever, but they have a goal and they think they could just eat certain foods.
• 9:31
  Philip Pape: And that might come in the form of a named diet in a book, like we all know them, you know, keto and carnivore and all of the others, or it might come in the thought of like there's good and bad foods, or there's clean and not clean foods.
• 9:42
  Philip Pape: And by the way, we you know, we take a very agnostic approach here of most foods are perfectly fine as long as they meet your other needs, you know, your nutrient, your calorie, and your macro needs.
• 9:51
  Philip Pape: So, like, what are your thoughts on that whole space?
• 9:54
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, no, 100%.
• 9:55
  Mario Limaduran: I mean, I'm I'm of I'm very much of that same philosophy.
• 9:58
  Mario Limaduran: There's no moral weight to to food, it's not good or bad.
• 10:01
  Mario Limaduran: Um, you know, you can have a fried chicken sandwich.
• 10:03
  Mario Limaduran: I love fried chicken sandwiches and I have them once or twice a month, and I'm still very healthy because I'm keeping track of my diet 80% of the time, right?
• 10:12
  Mario Limaduran: So that allows me for that 20% to be a human being and enjoy the sensual experience of having a food that I really like.
• 10:19
  Mario Limaduran: I also deeply believe that food has a spiritual connection in many ways.
• 10:25
  Mario Limaduran: Like when you eat a good meal, you're just like so joyful, and it just changed it.
• 10:29
  Mario Limaduran: There's some energy there that really heightens the experience of just living, you know.
• 10:34
  Mario Limaduran: So, and then going back to your original question, yeah, I mean, eating clean, um, clean for the lack of a better term, I don't do not like that word, but um, eating healthy and eating, you know, uh high-quality food and healthy meals with vegetables and whole grains and high-quality protein, that's part of the equation.
• 10:57
  Mario Limaduran: But if your body is not getting consistent energy day in and day out for a long period of time, then it doesn't know what to really do with the body composition.
• 11:08
  Mario Limaduran: Because if you're not if you're thinking that you're giving the enough protein to your body to sustain and then help you put on more body uh more muscle mass, you're thinking that, but you really don't know.
• 11:20
  Mario Limaduran: If you think that you're giving your body enough energy through carbohydrates, but really you're over or underdoing it, then that has an effect.
• 11:28
  Mario Limaduran: Same with fat.
• 11:29
  Mario Limaduran: You know, fat has a direct effect to hormone levels in satiety for that matter.
• 11:33
  Mario Limaduran: Um, so if a person is looking to attain a very specific body composition goal, being very consistent with one's diet is an absolute must.
• 11:46
  Mario Limaduran: And that comes with making sure that you're serving yourself the exact amount of food day in and day out.
• 11:51
  Mario Limaduran: Our bodies reward us by being consistent and by getting the exact amount of energy that that the body needs.
• 11:59
  Mario Limaduran: Otherwise, it's gonna stall that progress that that one is is seeking.
• 12:04
  Mario Limaduran: So it depends how bad you want it.
• 12:06
  Mario Limaduran: If you want it really bad, then I say, you know, track and and measure and weigh your food because it's it's that that important.
• 12:13
  Philip Pape: Yeah, there's all there's always effort involved.
• 12:14
  Philip Pape: And I like that you said, look, you're either thinking or guessing, but you don't know, or you know.
• 12:19
  Philip Pape: It's pretty clear.
• 12:21
  Philip Pape: And of course, you can develop a skill or an intuition over time doing it over and over and over again, just like you can kind of probably eyeball portions and know, but you're still knowing because you're measuring it in some way.
• 12:32
  Philip Pape: I want to hit on that consistency factor because I've touched on it lightly over the years on this show when it comes to sleep, when it comes to calorie intake.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: And I've even seen with certain clients where, you know, they try to do this like up and down, either with protein or calories, and average it out for the week, but because of the volatility, something's off, like their metabolism is a bit downregulated.
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: And it's almost like the body's in a dieting state, even when it's not.
• 12:55
  Philip Pape: What do you know about that?
• 12:56
  Philip Pape: Either the science or just from experience?
• 12:58
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, I mean, I'll talk about my experience first.
• 13:01
  Mario Limaduran: I have a culinary nutrition degree.
• 13:03
  Mario Limaduran: I've been in this industry for the last 16 years.
• 13:06
  Mario Limaduran: I'm about to be 34 years old, and just now have I finally figured out what my body wants.
• 13:13
  Mario Limaduran: Like it's, you know, even the experts have an issue applying the the knowledge into one's experience.
• 13:20
  Mario Limaduran: So, and lo and behold, and I hate to admit this, it was consistency.
• 13:25
  Mario Limaduran: You know, it was actually weighing or measuring a cup of rice and six ounces of chicken and a cup and a half of vegetables, and adding the whatever sauce I wanted that led me to have the best composition of my life to date.
• 13:42
  Mario Limaduran: I'm the strongest, I'm I it look great.
• 13:44
  Mario Limaduran: So I'm very proud of that.
• 13:46
  Mario Limaduran: But what I wasn't doing was being consistent with my measuring, even though I knew I had to be, right?
• 13:52
  Mario Limaduran: And I wasn't um I wasn't week in and week out.
• 13:56
  Mario Limaduran: I was being very healthy, then going out and not being too healthy, and then so on and so forth.
• 14:02
  Mario Limaduran: And that I spun my wheels for years and years and years.
• 14:05
  Mario Limaduran: Nutrition doesn't have to be hard.
• 14:07
  Mario Limaduran: It's I think made hard by the amount of over information and disinformation that we have in social media nowadays.
• 14:14
  Mario Limaduran: But consistency and being very thoughtful and knowing your numbers on what your body needs week in and week out for three, six, nine months will get those results.
• 14:27
  Philip Pape: How does that reconcile with nonlinear approaches like carbon calorie cycling and also weekend refeeds?
• 14:34
  Philip Pape: Because there is some research supporting, for example, a weekend refeed during a fat loss phase or a calorie deficit could actually have a slight advantage for lean mass retention versus not.
• 14:44
  Philip Pape: I'm curious about your thoughts.
• 14:46
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, yeah, 100%.
• 14:46
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, no, I that that's the the science is very sound there.
• 14:49
  Mario Limaduran: Um, I I wouldn't say, you know, go cold turkey and just be on a calorie deficit for 52 weeks because that's not healthy.
• 14:57
  Mario Limaduran: I go through refeeding phases, I go through being very strict with my diet, and then one, two weeks I travel and I don't even think about measuring my food, I'm just enjoying food, and then I come back.
• 15:08
  Mario Limaduran: I read somewhere, I forget the name of the paper, but our bodies don't lose muscle mass or gain fat mass as quickly as we think they do.
• 15:21
  Mario Limaduran: So two weeks is not gonna blunt your five-year consistency, you know?
• 15:25
  Mario Limaduran: So going through those motions is also being a human, and again, I mentioned the 80-20 rule.
• 15:31
  Mario Limaduran: If you control 80% of your input of your intake of food and your diets, your sleep, uh, your stress levels, alcohol intake, you can allow yourself to have those strings, those cheap meals, those days where you're off and you just want to eat something, it's fine.
• 15:49
  Mario Limaduran: We're all human, we don't have to be perfect.
• 15:52
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and and that's very consistent with like the brain research on how the brain gets used to certain patterns and finds safety in them.
• 15:59
  Philip Pape: And then, like you said, if if you're doing something 80% of the time, the other 20%, your brain sees it as an anomaly as opposed to something to react to.
• 16:06
  Philip Pape: So that's kind of cool.
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: You mentioned the spiritual connection of food, and that's another topic that's fun to get into, whether it's spiritual or enjoyment of food.
• 16:15
  Philip Pape: I mean, I've had commenters on YouTube be like, you know, food's not for enjoyment, it's just to, you know, for nutrition or food's not right.
• 16:20
  Philip Pape: And you get these weird conflating it with right, because it conflates it with like, um, well, if you enjoy food, that's the problem with you know, we obesity and Western diet, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: So tell us more about the value of just that part of food, like having nothing to do with performance or macros or calories.
• 16:39
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, I mean, humans are social, right?
• 16:41
  Mario Limaduran: We're social beings.
• 16:42
  Mario Limaduran: I think we all can agree that COVID hit everyone super hard because we weren't socializing with people.
• 16:48
  Mario Limaduran: We're all just alone in our homes, maybe with somebody, maybe not.
• 16:51
  Mario Limaduran: But I always think about that time because the enjoyment of going out, having beers with the boys, having drinks with the girls, or just going out with the group and enjoying breaking bread is a historically everlasting you see in every part of history of humanity.
• 17:09
  Mario Limaduran: You know, it's it's just part of who we are.
• 17:11
  Mario Limaduran: And so to me, I mean, to hear somebody say that they don't enjoy food and it's just for nutrition, and I mean, you're missing a big part of enjoying being in this earth, you know.
• 17:23
  Mario Limaduran: There's like Middle Eastern food that's delicious, Asian food that's delicious.
• 17:26
  Mario Limaduran: Like, we are such a rich, I think, race.
• 17:31
  Mario Limaduran: Earth is such a rich race, and we have so much to explore and so many flavor profiles to see.
• 17:37
  Mario Limaduran: It's a little overwhelming when I think about it from the culinary perspective, but also I think it's so beautiful because it's again such a social thing to do.
• 17:47
  Mario Limaduran: And my experience with traveling and going to other countries and eating their cuisine and being part of their culture, it has been very eye-opening in the sense that you know we're really a speck of dust, and it makes me feel more connected with each other, with every other person in the world.
• 18:05
  Mario Limaduran: So there's that social aspect, but I I also feel like the spiritual side is I don't know.
• 18:11
  Mario Limaduran: When I eat something, I get this F VF factor.
• 18:15
  Mario Limaduran: I won't cuss in this podcast, but the FVF factor, that's what I call it.
• 18:19
  Mario Limaduran: It's there's this inner sense of like, damn, this is so like how is this so good?
• 18:25
  Mario Limaduran: How can how can you know?
• 18:26
  Mario Limaduran: And it's just a and maybe it's a chef in me, but it's just a such a joyful thing that just comes up here, and uh, you know, so I think it's just such an important part of being a human.
• 18:39
  Philip Pape: You make me think of so many memories as you talked about traveling the world, like the first time I had really good gnocchi, I think is how it's pronounced, right?
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: In Italy, right?
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: I know my honeymoon, or when I went to Japan years ago and I was very picky back then, I didn't eat vegetables or anything.
• 18:52
  Philip Pape: And the guy I was with like got me to try everything octopus and like vegetables of all kinds and tempura.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: And it was just I'm again, I love food.
• 19:00
  Philip Pape: Montreal, I was so surprised.
• 19:02
  Philip Pape: Montreal is only five hours from here.
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: Like the quality of the food there, breakfast, lunch, dinner, you eat a lot of calories because it's just so good.
• 19:09
  Philip Pape: Um, so yeah, yeah, I think I think we need to lean into that and not like judge ourselves for that as conflated with you know the challenges people face with emotional eating and all that other stuff.
• 19:20
  Philip Pape: Let me ask you this.
• 19:21
  Philip Pape: So, you know, just full disclosure, right?
• 19:23
  Philip Pape: You work for Trifecta, we're an affiliate of Trifecta.
• 19:25
  Philip Pape: If you keep listening to the show later on, we're gonna drop a secret word uh that if you if you go to witsandweights.com slash question and give me that word, you're entered for a giveaway for a full week of free meals from Trifecta.
• 19:36
  Philip Pape: But the reason I bring it up is because I know through Trifecta, there's different ways to filter on food.
• 19:41
  Philip Pape: And one of those is types of diets like keto.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: Um, and I remember when we were setting up our partnership, I said, I don't I don't really want to showcase it that way for me.
• 19:50
  Philip Pape: I want to showcase more about the macros and the foods that are in there and stuff.
• 19:54
  Philip Pape: So is there value or what is the value in these named diets?
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: Like, what are your thoughts on marketing them specifically?
• 20:01
  Philip Pape: Because people want them, I'm sure, um, like versus the value in them.
• 20:05
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 20:07
  Mario Limaduran: So uh I'll start by saying that we have moved away from being a diet-specific company and having diet plant or meal plants around a diet like paleo and keto and um Mediterranean, so on and so forth.
• 20:23
  Mario Limaduran: And now we've moved into what I think is a modernization of the meal delivery industry, a goal outcome meal plan.
• 20:32
  Mario Limaduran: So now we have uh the performance plan or the the uh I forget the names of it, and we just changed them, so apologies on that.
• 20:40
  Mario Limaduran: But essentially it's it's a a higher calorie meal plan for people looking to put on weight, the flex choice program, which is for people looking just to eat healthy um and maintain their weight, and then we have uh a low calorie one, which is for people looking to lose weight.
• 20:54
  Mario Limaduran: We also continue to keep keto uh as part of the rotation and the plan-based, um, since they're so popular, and we've seen we just have a lot of business around this, so it doesn't make sense for us to let go of them.
• 21:05
  Mario Limaduran: And it seems like people have found um success within that.
• 21:09
  Mario Limaduran: The keto diet is very good for specific chronic diseases and illnesses, so we continue to support that diet for that reason.
• 21:17
  Mario Limaduran: And plan-based, you know, it's uh it's here to stay.
• 21:21
  Mario Limaduran: So we we we support people who are vegan and choose that lifestyle as well.
• 21:25
  Mario Limaduran: But I'm happy to say that um this move was something that I pushed that we really needed to move away from diet-specific to goal specific because it's it encompasses more people and it helps more people really more clearly understand what we're offering for them.
• 21:39
  Mario Limaduran: And within that is, of course, every single meal is macro balance, which is the essence of trifecta.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: Love it, man.
• 21:46
  Philip Pape: Yeah, no, I'm glad you made that move, and I didn't know that it wasn't a setup just so the listener knows it wasn't a setup.
• 21:51
  Philip Pape: I'm looking at it right now and I see what you're talking about, right?
• 21:54
  Philip Pape: The protein build meal, get lean, flex choice, goal based is is really the way to do it, right?
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: Because that's right.
• 21:59
  Philip Pape: To left, like here's my goal.
• 22:01
  Philip Pape: Now let me back up into all the variables for my eat food, my training, my everything else.
• 22:05
  Mario Limaduran: Yep.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: All right, cool.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: So actually, you know, one thing came to mind when we were talking keto was you mentioned earlier about satiety and the fat exchange and all that.
• 22:14
  Philip Pape: I think protein technically has the highest satiety, and yet we hear a lot about fat having high satiety and why it's important for that reason.
• 22:21
  Philip Pape: What are your thoughts on the satiety aspect of those two macros?
• 22:24
  Mario Limaduran: Oh, yeah, great question.
• 22:25
  Mario Limaduran: Well, yeah, protein 100%.
• 22:27
  Mario Limaduran: I mean, I just had lunch with six ounces of chicken and I feel phenomenal right now.
• 22:31
  Mario Limaduran: And I'm in a calorie deficit.
• 22:33
  Mario Limaduran: So that's been a huge uh part of having that satiety.
• 22:37
  Mario Limaduran: Also combining it with high volume foods like uh leafy greens and but a lot of vegetables, a lot of like high fiber foods, you know, that helps with uh blunting the hunger cues while when it's in a calorie deficit.
• 22:50
  Mario Limaduran: Now, to answer your question, fat is very calorically dense.
• 22:54
  Mario Limaduran: So we talk about high volume foods, meaning that they occupy a lot of space in your stomach, but don't have a lot of calories.
• 23:02
  Mario Limaduran: They have a lot of nutrients, but not a lot of calories.
• 23:04
  Mario Limaduran: But fat is very caloric dense and calorically dense.
• 23:08
  Mario Limaduran: And per gram of fat you get nine calories.
• 23:13
  Mario Limaduran: Per gram of protein and carbs, you get four.
• 23:15
  Mario Limaduran: So you're almost getting 2.2, 2.1 times the amount of calories per gram, which means that a very small amount of fat will get you a lot of calories.
• 23:27
  Mario Limaduran: And it's very easy to overeat if you're not really measuring those correctly, or if you know that you're eating fat.
• 23:34
  Mario Limaduran: That's why the the fried foods tend to be so unhealthy, right?
• 23:37
  Mario Limaduran: They're delicious, but it's because they just have so much fat in them that you've been cooked in a fat medium that you're not only eating the carbohydrate that was just fried, you're eating copious amounts of fat as well.
• 23:48
  Philip Pape: Yeah, fat is a classic addition to those who are low calorie, right?
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: To get those calories up, uh, especially when we're bulking.
• 23:55
  Philip Pape: But for that same reason, you know, you've got to watch out.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: This goes back to the clean or healthy discussion, the fact that you know, nuts and avocado and salmon are all delicious sources of fat, and they're a little more nutrient dense than some alternatives.
• 24:07
  Philip Pape: So it depends on your calorie needs.
• 24:10
  Philip Pape: Let's get into cooking a little bit here.
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: And for those at home, because again, that's your expertise, who are not the greatest cooks on their own, right?
• 24:18
  Philip Pape: Like I think the the majority of people, I'm gonna just put it that way in general, is the majority of people kind of half-ass their cooking or like, you know, they'll look up recipes online, they'll follow them, and maybe over time with lots of cooking, you get better and better at it, right?
• 24:31
  Philip Pape: Do you have like some top tips?
• 24:33
  Philip Pape: Like, let's say your top three tips for people who just want to cook better food at home that they look forward to.
• 24:38
  Philip Pape: They like to prep, they want it to taste good, but it's not complicated.
• 24:42
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:43
  Mario Limaduran: I mean, my mother, bless her heart, most the smartest woman I know, and she just cannot cook a life for her, uh a meal for her to save her life.
• 24:51
  Mario Limaduran: So um, this is very dear and close to my heart.
• 24:54
  Mario Limaduran: Um, and unshaveful plug-in here.
• 24:56
  Mario Limaduran: I I teach this online in my own social media.
• 24:59
  Mario Limaduran: I teach people how to cook, and this is one of the biggest questions that come to me, you know, like, what do I do?
• 25:04
  Mario Limaduran: I hate cooking or I don't know how to cook.
• 25:06
  Mario Limaduran: So, a few tips.
• 25:08
  Mario Limaduran: Number one, focus on the basics and what you like.
• 25:11
  Mario Limaduran: You don't need to be a Michelin star chef.
• 25:13
  Mario Limaduran: Like, there's no need for that.
• 25:15
  Mario Limaduran: Your cuts don't need to be perfect.
• 25:16
  Mario Limaduran: If you're just starting, focus on learning a few basics and mastering those.
• 25:23
  Mario Limaduran: And those basics need to be things that you like to eat.
• 25:26
  Mario Limaduran: If you are somebody who likes broccoli, rice, and chicken, no shame.
• 25:31
  Mario Limaduran: Double down on that.
• 25:32
  Mario Limaduran: Learn how to cook your chicken well, how to season it well, learn how to use stalks in order to add flavor to your rice, and a couple of onions, you know, a couple of chopped onions in there, saute it, mix it in there.
• 25:43
  Mario Limaduran: You have a delicious rice that doesn't have a lot of calories added to it, or minimal calories added to it.
• 25:47
  Mario Limaduran: And then your broccoli, you learn how to blanch it, learn how to roast it, learn how to uh saute it and experiment with whatever it is that you can stick for for a long period of time without getting bored.
• 25:59
  Mario Limaduran: At the point where you get bored, then you learn something new.
• 26:02
  Mario Limaduran: But by focusing on the basics of cooking, very simple things that you can stick with, that you like, that you enjoy eating, that becomes very simple.
• 26:10
  Mario Limaduran: Number two, if you don't like cooking vegetables, go to Costco, go to Sam's Club, go to your local supermarket and buy frozen vegetables.
• 26:19
  Mario Limaduran: I'm a chef and I'm not ashamed to say that I live off of those frozen vegetables.
• 26:25
  Mario Limaduran: I'm visiting my mom right now in South Florida, and we went to Costco and I bought a whole bag of those vegetables.
• 26:32
  Mario Limaduran: Being here can get really hectic, and I don't have a lot of time to cook.
• 26:35
  Mario Limaduran: So that has been a great addition.
• 26:37
  Mario Limaduran: They have roasted vegetables that have a lot of flavor.
• 26:40
  Mario Limaduran: Um, they're organic as well, so they're you know, there's that added uh unique salon preposition to them.
• 26:45
  Mario Limaduran: And that that saves a lot of time because you can just cook, I don't know, potatoes, rice, quinoa, orzo, whatever your preferred starches, and then grab a protein and then drop it in there.
• 26:55
  Mario Limaduran: Third, I would say proteins is what takes the longest time to learn how to cook well.
• 27:00
  Mario Limaduran: If you're somebody who doesn't have the means or just don't want to cook proteins, there's a lot of really good uh companies out there that are that are selling ready-to-eat proteins that are sous vide and come sauced.
• 27:13
  Mario Limaduran: Uh trifecta, we sell proteins a la carte, so you can buy a pound of proteins from chicken to bison to beef, uh, to salmon, and you can just have that and plate it on your own.
• 27:24
  Mario Limaduran: So we live in a time period where food science is very advanced.
• 27:29
  Mario Limaduran: You know, we are essentially the result of the frozen meal movement that started in the 1960s.
• 27:36
  Mario Limaduran: We are the evolution of that, but we've taken a massive step in making sure that the food that we're providing is not high in sodium, is not high in it, doesn't have any sort of um additive um or preservative MSG, anything of that sort.
• 27:51
  Mario Limaduran: You know, we are a very clean, healthy uh meal delivery.
• 27:54
  Mario Limaduran: So there's always those options.
• 27:55
  Mario Limaduran: So yeah, those are the three things that I would advise.
• 27:58
  Philip Pape: Those are great.
• 27:59
  Philip Pape: And uh those first two, especially the making slight additions to what you like to eat.
• 28:04
  Philip Pape: I was thinking of a dinner my wife just made this week, and she's come a long way.
• 28:07
  Philip Pape: Again, she'll she'll admit that she was not a great cook when she started.
• 28:11
  Philip Pape: But you know, she took pork tenderloin, she put some teriyaki soy sauce type sauce she made from scratch.
• 28:16
  Philip Pape: Delicious.
• 28:17
  Philip Pape: She took rice, added coconut milk, you know, and then she took broccoli and she always roasted in a pan with a little oil and and salt, and that's really all you need.
• 28:25
  Philip Pape: Broccoli's so good, you know.
• 28:26
  Mario Limaduran: Sounds delicious, yeah.
• 28:27
  Philip Pape: And there you go, right?
• 28:28
  Philip Pape: Like it doesn't have to be complicated.
• 28:29
  Philip Pape: Exactly.
• 28:29
  Philip Pape: And I yeah, and I always tell people when they're meal prepping, like, go big, you know, like just just just put huge quantities of stuff.
• 28:35
  Philip Pape: Like if you had to prep a protein, what would be your favorite protein or two to prep in bulk?
• 28:40
  Mario Limaduran: Um, I buy the chicken from Costco in bulk.
• 28:44
  Mario Limaduran: Um like chicken breast or chicken breast.
• 28:46
  Mario Limaduran: Yep, chicken breast.
• 28:47
  Mario Limaduran: Chicken thighs, you can go.
• 28:48
  Mario Limaduran: Uh that's actually, I'm glad you bring that up.
• 28:50
  Mario Limaduran: Um, if if you're somebody just starting to cook, yeah, I mean chicken thighs is very easy to dry out.
• 28:56
  Mario Limaduran: So if you're if you want to eat chicken and you want to eat something that's good all the time, chicken thighs is the way to go.
• 29:01
  Mario Limaduran: I like to change every two weeks and either buy a salmon and just cook the salmon ahead of time, or I buy the steak from Costco and then I just eat steak and that's like my treat to myself.
• 29:14
  Mario Limaduran: So I also do turkey.
• 29:16
  Mario Limaduran: So I I like to change again, it's it's the variety that I try to bring to my life, you know.
• 29:21
  Mario Limaduran: I already know how to cook all these things, so I just experiment from week to week.
• 29:26
  Philip Pape: It's funny with turkey, right?
• 29:27
  Philip Pape: Because at Thanksgiving, they're so inexpensive that I always think, why don't families just buy like 10 turkeys?
• 29:32
  Philip Pape: You know, that'll last, but of course you'll get bored of turkey.
• 29:35
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, totally and need a space for it.
• 29:37
  Philip Pape: Steak.
• 29:38
  Philip Pape: Oh, I want to ask you about steak because I've had a lot of conversations with people about that.
• 29:41
  Philip Pape: So a lot of confusion over the cuts of steak, the marbling, the tenderness, how to prepare it.
• 29:46
  Philip Pape: You know, people that want to get more protein too and don't want it to be too fatty of a cut, like ribeye, which I love ribeye, but you know, much higher fat content.
• 29:54
  Philip Pape: So, what would be the most, I guess, good balance of economics and leanness that's easy to prepare?
• 30:00
  Philip Pape: Because I know some steaks like are super cheap, but then they're really tough and you need to marinate or slow cook or something like that.
• 30:07
  Philip Pape: Like, what are your thoughts on steak?
• 30:08
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, um I personally buy skirt steak, and that is the in between your tenderloin and your short rib.
• 30:19
  Mario Limaduran: You know, um, one's super tough, one is very expensive.
• 30:22
  Mario Limaduran: The skirt steak tends to be the the middle of the ground.
• 30:25
  Mario Limaduran: If you can find Terrace Major, which you don't really see that catu uh too often in supermarkets, it's uh mainly used in commercial food manufacturing, and that's what we use at Trafecta for keto meals in our a la carte.
• 30:40
  Mario Limaduran: It's very tender, surprisingly tender, and it's a very uh economic piece of of meat, also very lean.
• 30:46
  Mario Limaduran: So those two are my my go-tos.
• 30:49
  Philip Pape: Man, skirt steak with chimichuri, I'm thinking, or uh let's see, uh like uh churrasco, or uh what am I trying to think of?
• 30:56
  Philip Pape: You said you're in South Florida.
• 30:58
  Philip Pape: I grew up in Miami, I grew up in Highland.
• 30:59
  Mario Limaduran: Oh, I'm in Miami.
• 31:00
  Philip Pape: That's a lot of food.
• 31:00
  Philip Pape: Okay, go to Miami, Cuban food, Argentinian food, every every Caribbean uh yeah, so good.
• 31:07
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 31:08
  Philip Pape: So speaking of sauces, um, I know you know you mentioned sauces once or twice, and that is another tricky area for folks because they can easily add a lot of flavor and even nutrition in some cases, but also a lot of calories.
• 31:23
  Philip Pape: So best maybe maybe the top few sauces people should always like be making for their food or like really easy ones.
• 31:29
  Philip Pape: Like, what are your thoughts there?
• 31:30
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:31
  Mario Limaduran: Let me uh let me start by saying this.
• 31:32
  Mario Limaduran: So when I think of sauces, I I uh classify them in in three categories calorie neutral, carb forward, and fat forward or fat-based.
• 31:43
  Mario Limaduran: Calorie neutral can be anything like a salsa or a hot sauce.
• 31:47
  Mario Limaduran: There's sauces that come from peppers and vinegar and tomatoes that don't add a lot of calories.
• 31:54
  Mario Limaduran: You know, the the serving size is 10 calories per serving in the nutrition label, but it adds a lot of flavor.
• 32:01
  Mario Limaduran: So if you're looking for a way to if you're in in a cut or if you want to maintain your weight and make sure you're not adding enough a bunch of calories, then uh calorie neutral sauce will be it.
• 32:16
  Mario Limaduran: Now, if you're on the opposite and you're trying to gain muscle weight, the last thing like you to gain muscle, the energy intake needs to be really high, right?
• 32:25
  Mario Limaduran: About 500 calories above your your uh maintenance, uh give or take.
• 32:30
  Mario Limaduran: And so sometimes that can be a lot of food for certain people.
• 32:34
  Mario Limaduran: If we're talking about linebackers that play in the NFL, like these boys eat a lot.
• 32:39
  Mario Limaduran: So, how do you give them enough calories so that they can actually meet their caloric needs, but not be overly full and be sluggish in the field?
• 32:48
  Mario Limaduran: You double down on we kind of touched on this earlier, on liquid calories, but also on carb forward sauces.
• 32:56
  Mario Limaduran: So your teriyakis, your barbecues, your sweet and sours, those are very carb heavy, sugar heavy for the uh for the sake of this argument or of this conversation, that with one tablespoon you're adding 15 carbohydrates of 15 grams of carbohydrates, or with one cup, you're adding you know a bunch of them.
• 33:16
  Philip Pape: That's 60 calories, yeah.
• 33:19
  Mario Limaduran: And then with fat, fat-based um is a great way, fat-based sauces is a great way to add a lot of flavor, but a lot of add a lot of richness to your meal.
• 33:28
  Mario Limaduran: And when you talk about fat-based sauces, think about vinaigrette, think about aiolis or mayo, think about any sort of variation from that.
• 33:38
  Mario Limaduran: For example, if you do chimichuri, like we were just talking, that's really a vinaigrette.
• 33:42
  Mario Limaduran: It's got a three to one ratio of oil to vinegar, uh, maybe a four to one ratio, and that provides a lot of flavor in itself with a lot of nutrients from the herbs and the peppers that you add to it, but it's also adding a lot of calories from fat, right?
• 33:58
  Mario Limaduran: So fat is good because it adds richness.
• 34:00
  Mario Limaduran: So, with those three categories in mind, you know, the most popular, I have a list.
• 34:05
  Mario Limaduran: I wish I was at home, but I have a list in my wall of the most popular because I'm gonna be making videos about these.
• 34:10
  Mario Limaduran: But anything that is fat-based, that can be uh an oil, um like uh olive oil and vinegar, like a zoo sauce, which is essentially just a chimichuri but Asian style.
• 34:21
  Mario Limaduran: You know, it has uh jalapenos, it has cilantro, it has a little bit of oregano and uh coriander, um, whereas chimichuri, it has cilantro, it has parsley, it has a red pepper oil and vinegar.
• 34:34
  Mario Limaduran: Uh Romesco sauce is another delicious sauce that you can do that's fat-based.
• 34:39
  Mario Limaduran: Instead of making it with bread, you can make it with nuts, with almonds, toasted almonds, um, and and olive oil, and you have something delicious.
• 34:46
  Mario Limaduran: Then having your barbecues and your teriyakis, like I mentioned, is something that most households in the United States have.
• 34:53
  Mario Limaduran: Fat-based, you can also have your ranch.
• 34:55
  Mario Limaduran: Ranch in, you know, in the United States is super popular.
• 34:58
  Mario Limaduran: And then your sauces, again, we're gonna go back to that.
• 35:01
  Mario Limaduran: I personally uh add a lot of hot sauce to my food.
• 35:04
  Mario Limaduran: I'm Hispanic, so I love I love heat.
• 35:06
  Mario Limaduran: Um, so that tends to be my seasoning uh when I'm in a rush.
• 35:10
  Mario Limaduran: Um, so having a variety of those, and it doesn't need to be, you don't need to make these at home.
• 35:15
  Mario Limaduran: You can if you want to control the the health and and the caloric and added sugar portion of it, but you can buy them in the supermarket.
• 35:23
  Mario Limaduran: You again, you don't have to do a Michelin star uh chef.
• 35:26
  Philip Pape: So we've made the rounds through a lot of the aspects of cooking of food, of what's in your food, of why we do it, right?
• 35:32
  Philip Pape: To hit our goals.
• 35:33
  Philip Pape: So, you know, food quality matters, like social connection matters, macros matter, taste matters.
• 35:38
  Philip Pape: You bring all these things together for a typical week.
• 35:42
  Philip Pape: My audience, I will say, is like an average person who has a very busy job, very stressed, maybe they have a family and they're trying to make it all work for the week.
• 35:50
  Philip Pape: Is there kind of a not a template or meal plan, but a structure that's time efficient to kind of think of your whole week and putting it together?
• 35:58
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:59
  Mario Limaduran: I'll give you what I do as someone who also lives a very uh occupied life um with a tight schedule.
• 36:06
  Mario Limaduran: I like to understand what I'm craving for a week.
• 36:10
  Mario Limaduran: If it's potatoes, I roast a bunch of potatoes, cut them, roast them.
• 36:14
  Mario Limaduran: I have my my uh vegetables that are bought from Costco, uh frozen vegetables, and then I look at the protein and I typically cook either five to seven days worth of that protein.
• 36:27
  Mario Limaduran: And within two hours, I can have all my my food portion in my containers ready to cool down.
• 36:34
  Mario Limaduran: So I just put it in the fridge, cool it down completely, and then cover it.
• 36:37
  Mario Limaduran: And that's my way of making sure that I have consistency throughout the week.
• 36:42
  Mario Limaduran: If you want to add a little more variety on a meal, your sauces are going to be the differentiating factor because the sauce is the essence of a dish, right?
• 36:50
  Mario Limaduran: The sauce is what makes the dish uh a cuisine.
• 36:53
  Mario Limaduran: So I tend to have a couple of different sauces in my fridge, and I add barbecue to one, I add chimichuri to another one, I add a tabili to another one, and then I just interchange with those three throughout the week until I run out of the sauces.
• 37:06
  Mario Limaduran: Um, and and and that's that.
• 37:08
  Mario Limaduran: So it doesn't need to be complicated and that's it, it doesn't need to be fancy, it just needs to work for what you like.
• 37:13
  Mario Limaduran: And this that's that's essentially you know what I like.
• 37:16
  Philip Pape: That's pretty straightforward.
• 37:18
  Philip Pape: And then for for vegetables, vegetables, it sounds like the frozen veggies are an option, or do you bulk prep starches or vegetables as well, or do you do those more as you go?
• 37:27
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, no, I I tend to uh to bulk prep uh starches as well, um, with rice and potatoes being the number one that I consume.
• 37:35
  Mario Limaduran: So I do.
• 37:35
  Philip Pape: Oh, you mentioned potatoes, yeah.
• 37:36
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, I tend to do five five days at a time because I don't want the food to go bad.
• 37:41
  Mario Limaduran: And of course, you can adjust this based on what your food beliefs are.
• 37:45
  Mario Limaduran: If you don't like to put have something in the fridge for more than two days and just prep the food for exactly for two days.
• 37:51
  Mario Limaduran: Um, if you're okay with five days and prep it for five days.
• 37:54
  Mario Limaduran: Um adjust is needed.
• 37:55
  Mario Limaduran: It does, it's it's just a guideline, it's a blueprint, it's not a law.
• 37:59
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:59
  Philip Pape: And there's always the freezer, and also some of us have cold spots in our fridge.
• 38:03
  Philip Pape: Like I have a very cold spot in the back top, so like things will last a little longer.
• 38:08
  Philip Pape: Yeah, for sure.
• 38:09
  Mario Limaduran: Absolutely.
• 38:10
  Philip Pape: Um so interesting, two different people asked a similar question recently about resistance starch.
• 38:16
  Philip Pape: So we know resistant starch is naturally in some things like white potatoes, which is considered the top satiety food as far as I understand.
• 38:23
  Philip Pape: But then also when you cook rice and then cool it, it converts some of the starch to resistant starch.
• 38:28
  Philip Pape: And there's this uh theory that some people respond really well to uh an increase in resistance starch for a variety of factors.
• 38:36
  Philip Pape: Is this something you're aware of that you think about or not?
• 38:39
  Mario Limaduran: I I don't have enough knowledge on that, so I can't really speak to it.
• 38:42
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah.
• 38:43
  Philip Pape: Yeah, it's an interesting thing.
• 38:44
  Philip Pape: Look into it because um there's a few people I know with certain conditions that have responded well to it nutritionally.
• 38:51
  Philip Pape: I'm like, that's and so there's this whole hot carb versus cold carb thing out there that's I thought it was hogwash initially, and I saw some legitimacy behind it.
• 39:00
  Philip Pape: So interesting.
• 39:02
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, I can't say I've experienced anything with my body, so but yeah, I'll definitely all right.
• 39:06
  Philip Pape: So as far as like the skill of cooking, then what skill or habit like from your experience makes a big difference to learn, whether it's knife skills or using certain equipment or the stove, oven, etc.?
• 39:18
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 39:19
  Mario Limaduran: Um I'll start with two.
• 39:20
  Mario Limaduran: First, always make sure that your cutting board is large enough and that it's secured with uh damp paper cloth underneath.
• 39:27
  Mario Limaduran: Always please start with that.
• 39:29
  Mario Limaduran: That should be your bot baseline safety.
• 39:32
  Mario Limaduran: You know, you don't want a moving cutting board while you're cutting something because you can chop off your fingers very easily.
• 39:38
  Mario Limaduran: And if you haven't done so and you haven't been securing your uh your cutting board up to d up to today, then you're lucky.
• 39:44
  Mario Limaduran: And then number two, organizing your cooking station uh by having a bowl where your waste goes, and then having a bowl or a continuous where your finished product goes, or having the tray where where you're you're gonna be cooking your food in always helps with the flow of your cooking to be better.
• 40:03
  Mario Limaduran: Uh that way you're not jumping from one place to another, you're not going to the trash, you're not, you know, those micro sidesteps actually take a lot of time in the grand scheme of things in cooking.
• 40:14
  Mario Limaduran: And I'll add a third one, um, keeping your knives sharp.
• 40:18
  Mario Limaduran: Like I cannot stress how important this is.
• 40:21
  Mario Limaduran: Buying a sharpener, either a whetstone or one of those automatic sharpening tools, or taking your knives to be sharpened at your local knife company knife company, is something that I cannot stress enough on how important it is.
• 40:36
  Mario Limaduran: A dull knife is ten times more dangerous than a sharp knife, because the sharp knife just goes through the vegetable.
• 40:42
  Mario Limaduran: A dull knife can actually not go through the vegetable, make you stab yourself or make it, you know, cut yourself at the same time.
• 40:49
  Mario Limaduran: So I would say make those three things part of your cooking ritual, and you'll become a much better cook immediately.
• 40:58
  Philip Pape: Those are good tips.
• 40:59
  Philip Pape: A cutting board, I hadn't heard that, so thank you.
• 41:01
  Philip Pape: And then my dad was a butcher, so I've heard about the knives.
• 41:04
  Philip Pape: What do you think of the the knife blocks that have built-in sharpeners?
• 41:09
  Mario Limaduran: Uh yeah, those are great.
• 41:10
  Mario Limaduran: Those are great.
• 41:10
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, if you can store them, yeah, if you can store them at home and you have a place, yeah, absolutely.
• 41:15
  Mario Limaduran: I have I have this, I have the whetstones, of course, um as a professional cook, but at the same time, I also have uh cuisine art, the the one-two sort of like pass you kind of pass the the blade from there's there's these little brown stones and that just sharpens uh the blade.
• 41:32
  Mario Limaduran: So you can get it very affordably in in Amazon, I think, for less than 30 bucks.
• 41:36
  Philip Pape: Cool, man.
• 41:37
  Philip Pape: Yeah, so we've covered a lot today about cooking food and everything else.
• 41:40
  Philip Pape: I mean, at the end of the day, we're all trying to fuel ourselves with our food, and that is the secret word, guys.
• 41:45
  Philip Pape: It's fuel.
• 41:46
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 41:46
  Philip Pape: Um and but I do want to kind of segue into what you do and the company you represent in the form of a question first, and then we can tell people where to find you.
• 41:55
  Philip Pape: But um, where do when does meal delivery make sense?
• 41:59
  Philip Pape: Because for for years I've had a small section of clients who they're just so busy and so stressed.
• 42:04
  Philip Pape: Money isn't as much of an issue for them as, say, time and convenience and stuff.
• 42:09
  Philip Pape: So there's definitely a place for it.
• 42:10
  Philip Pape: What are your thoughts on like the ideal situation people would consider it?
• 42:14
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, 100%.
• 42:14
  Mario Limaduran: Exactly what you just said.
• 42:16
  Mario Limaduran: Uh it's it's it's a tool that we now have, and we should be, I think it's it's very exciting to have and to be in the United States and have it as an option to have a surveys deliver the food that you want to eat every week to your door.
• 42:30
  Mario Limaduran: And so if life gets busy, if something is going on where you can't actually cook, then having this uh meal delivery sent to you ensures that you're staying consistent.
• 42:42
  Mario Limaduran: And it's not something that you need to stay on forever because meal boredom happens, and we see that in our business.
• 42:47
  Mario Limaduran: You can turn it on and off as you see fit.
• 42:50
  Mario Limaduran: But for myself, I've been with with trifecta for the last almost eight years, and um I've eaten trifecta for the great majority of those eight years.
• 43:00
  Mario Limaduran: Um, I get seven meals a week, um, aside from making sure that our kitchens are are producing our food well, um that they're following the recipe.
• 43:08
  Mario Limaduran: Well, I also eat it for my own um health and uh consistency purposes, you know.
• 43:14
  Mario Limaduran: Um I have seven meals that I cook at home, but I have seven meals where if one day for whatever reason I woke up late, I'm sick or whatever, and I have no desire to be in the kitchen, I just reheat this meal and I'm ready to go.
• 43:27
  Mario Limaduran: So it's a beautiful tool to have that helps with convenience, helps bridge the gaps in time and allows you to be consistent over a long period of time.
• 43:36
  Philip Pape: Yeah, and I'll say you could be intentional and plan ahead too without all the time of planning.
• 43:40
  Philip Pape: In other words, you're not going to DoorDash in the last minute and getting some local fast food or pizza.
• 43:45
  Philip Pape: You know, you're thinking about it, and then you guys have the macro balanced meals that people can then log and track and everything.
• 43:51
  Philip Pape: So that's awesome.
• 43:52
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 43:52
  Philip Pape: So people, everybody listening, if you go to wits of weights.com slash question, you can submit a question for the show or For Mario, and you could also drop the word fuel and say, hey, this is the secret word and enter me in the giveaway for a week.
• 44:06
  Mario Limaduran: No, it's so secret anymore.
• 44:08
  Philip Pape: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:08
  Philip Pape: It's secret if you listen to the show, and it's not secret if you listen to it.
• 44:11
  Philip Pape: So um, so anyway, we want to send folks your way as well.
• 44:15
  Philip Pape: I know you have some content online you just mentioned about cooking.
• 44:18
  Philip Pape: Where can people find you?
• 44:19
  Philip Pape: Where do we want to send folks after they listen to this?
• 44:22
  Mario Limaduran: Yeah, yeah, thank you for that.
• 44:23
  Mario Limaduran: Um, I am uh very present on Instagram at Chef Mario is my page.
• 44:27
  Mario Limaduran: I teach the basics of cooking.
• 44:30
  Mario Limaduran: So if you want to improve your cooking and you want to listen to more hacks of this sort, um I I post uh I post weekly.
• 44:38
  Mario Limaduran: Um I'm starting a YouTube channel, um, Mario Lima Duran, my name, and then I'm also on Facebook uh posting the same reels um as Mario Lima Duran.
• 44:46
  Philip Pape: All right, awesome.
• 44:47
  Philip Pape: We're gonna throw all that in the show notes.
• 44:48
  Philip Pape: You guys go check out Mario, Chef Mario, follow him, look at his stuff.
• 44:53
  Philip Pape: I mean, this he has the kind of content that's not your like typical, you know, influencer stuff.
• 44:57
  Philip Pape: It's like super helpful.
• 44:58
  Philip Pape: And if you're looking to cook better and you just want to look at good food too, um, check him out.
• 45:02
  Philip Pape: So thank you again, Mario, for coming on Wits and Weights.
• 45:05
  Philip Pape: It's been a pleasure, man.
• 45:07
  Mario Limaduran: Thanks, folks.
• 45:07
  Mario Limaduran: Appreciate the time.
• 45:08
  Mario Limaduran: Enjoy the conversation, and hopefully your audience also enjoyed it.
• 45:11
  Mario Limaduran: So thank you for having me.
• 45:12
  Philip Pape: Thanks, man.