How to Eat for Maximum Energy (and Where to Find the Time to Do It)

By: Matt Frazier

It’s been just over a year since we launched the No Meat Athlete Academy, where each month we dive into a new plant-based fitness, nutrition, or lifestyle topic — often with the help of a guest expert.

In that time we’ve accumulated almost 16 hours of audio seminar content, plus another 20 hours of live Q&A recordings, all of it available forever inside the Academy.

To celebrate the Academy’s birthday — and, okay okay, to whet your appetite in anticipation of a relaunch we’ll be doing soon — today I’m excited to share some clips from a few of my favorite seminars we’ve done over the course of the past year.

(Most recently, we welcomed plant-based superstar Rich Roll as our guest for an hour-long seminar and a followup Q&A. I’ve got some clips from that seminar coming soon, or you can get them now by subscribing to No Meat Athlete Radio on iTunes.)

We put these clips in the form of two NMA Radio episodes, each clocking in at 42 minutes. You can stream them right from the blog, or if you prefer, download them to your device.

Players and links are below — enjoy these interviews!

Episode 1: The Optimal Diet for Health and Energy?

In the first episode, you’ll hear in-depth clips from two of our early guests.

First, elite ultrarunner Michael Arnstein shares his enthusiasm for a diet based almost entirely on raw fruits and vegetables. A fruitarian diet sounds extreme, no doubt, but it’s hard not to be excited when you hear Mike talk about the dramatic improvements to his running he experienced when he switched from a cooked vegan diet to his current raw one.

(And before you write off an 80/10/10 diet — 80 carbohydrate, 10 percent fat, 10 percent protein — as pure craziness, you might be surprised to learn that in his most recent book, Whole, Dr. T. Colin Campbell, author of the famed China Study, recommends exactly this ratio, though not completely raw.)

But let’s face it: most people aren’t going to eat this way, and many would argue that in the long term, a certain amount of cooked food (and more fat than 10 percent of calories) is both protective against disease and more realistic than a fully raw one. And that’s the focus of the next clip, with Sid Garza-Hillman, author and nutritionist at The Stanford Inn: a high-raw, whole-food diet that still includes plenty of cooked food and a little more wiggle room.

You can check out the clips from both Mike and Sid’s interviews in the first episode, called The Optimal Diet for Health and Energy, here:

Or download the episode here (you may need to right click and “Save link as”).

Episode 2: How to Create All the Time You Need

Understanding what to eat is one thing, but making it work in the real world is quite another.

In this second episode you’ll hear advice from Jeff Sanders, host of the popular 5AM Miracle podcast (and who happens also to be my weekly accountability partner), and Heather Crosby, author of Yum Universe, on building habits to create the time you need in order to make health a priority.

With Jeff, I discuss his “5AM Miracle” system for waking early (even if not at that ungodly hour) and blocking off time in your day that’s just for you — to work on something that brings you joy and energy, whether it’s running, cooking, or something entirely unrelated.

With Heather, we focus more specifically on food, diving into some time-saving kitchen tips and a general approach to kitchen management that will help you make healthy food a priority.

Click the button below to listen to these sections of my interviews with Jeff and Heather in this episode, called How to Create All the Time You Need:

Or download the episode here (you may need to right click and “Save link as”).

There’s more to come …

If this is the first you’ve listened to No Meat Athlete Radio and you like what you hear, you can subscribe to the show on iTunes. As you’ll hear just about every podcast host say (over and over), ratings and reviews on iTunes are extremely helpful in getting our show heard by new people, so please do me a favor and leave one while you’re there. Thanks!

And in a few days, I’ll be back with a sneak peek at our seminar with Rich Roll! Until then …