PODCAST - My favorite Junk Food That Doesn’t Wreck My Training
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[00:00:00] Welcome to The Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host, Johnny Havey, an ultra runner, endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone 100K ultra, I proved them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned, from breathing techniques to mindset shifts, to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals despite limitations, let's get started.
Nutrition is extremely important when you're training for anything, or when you're just trying to live a happier and healthier lifestyle. With that being said, I get tired of focusing on all the things that I shouldn't be eating, and I do believe that there is a place in [00:01:00] yours and my training routine and lifestyle to live a little with what you're eating, which is why today on the show, I wanna share with you my favorite junk food that doesn't wreck my training.
I've shared with you that there are different periods of time where I'll go over the top and I'll eat a bunch of sweets. I love soft serve ice cream. I even love to eat courger burgers whenever they come on the menu every year. And yes, I love fried chicken, chile rellenos. I love these foods. But when it comes to the day-to-day and how these foods affect my body, I'm also very, very in tune to how I feel, which is why I can't eat these foods all the time.
But there are foods that I would consider junk foods that I find that I can eat more regularly. And while this episode is not me trying to give you an excuse or me an excuse to continue to eat unhealthy, I do believe that it is important, at least from a [00:02:00] mental perspective, and it can help you stay on your dietary track and even excel even deeper in any of your training or lifestyle pursuits when you give yourself some grace to eat some junk food.
With that being said, I'm not a healthcare professional, and you may be on a strict diet that is incredibly important to your longevity and your health, which is why I have a disclaimer in the show notes and in the YouTube video. You should always talk to your doctor about any sort of changes to your diet, or especially if you're looking at different foods that may not be as healthy for you.
So here are some of the junk foods that I'll actually eat on a weekly basis, and it really starts with one of my favorites of all time. I love corn chips and guacamole Now, I want you to see what I did here. Corn chips are not healthy. Guacamole is healthy. So what we're [00:03:00] doing is pairing something that isn't very healthy with something that is extremely healthy.
And guacamole is so healthy for so many reasons. Avocados are one of the best fat sources that you and I can have. Avocados are extremely good for our brains. Then you throw in red onion, which is a powerful antioxidant; tomatoes, which have a lot of vitamin C; and you throw in some spices, some herbs, oregano, salt.
We all need salt. Did you know that our water, at least here in America, does not have the minerals, the salt and minerals that you and I need in our bodies on a day-to-day basis? Well, guacamole gonna add that salt. And then I either do lime juice or lemon juice, typically lime juice, but if I don't have it, I put lemon juice for a couple of reasons.
One, it helps the guacamole stay fresh, but also lime and lemon juice is extremely powerful for your body. [00:04:00] There's so many nutrients that your body craves in guacamole. So when I look at eating corn chips and I'm pairing it with something healthy like guacamole, this becomes a little less unhealthy. Now, I know that I could probably eat guacamole in other ways, but my favorite way is with corn chips.
So when you're looking at your diet, is there something that's extremely healthy, maybe it's hummus, that you wanna pair with something a little less healthy? Maybe it's pita bread. Well, just know that if you love something and it's extremely good for you, and you're more likely to eat it if you pair it with something that's not as healthy, you may wanna make cuts in your diet in other places, and that's really what I've done.
I'd rather eat corn chips and guacamole every day than have a beer every day. I'd rather have corn chips and guacamole every day than have dairy every day. Corn chips may be my favorite junk food of all time, and I probably have them on average every other day. Now, there are some weeks I'll have guacamole every single day, though.
And then you just gotta decide how spicy you want your [00:05:00] guacamole. You wanna put a jalapeno in it. You wanna put canned peppers in it. But peppers are also extremely powerful antioxidants for you to put into your body. So we got that out of the way. Not every junk food is gonna be able to be paired with something that's really healthy.
And, uh, I don't know about you, but I don't know if I could completely cut this out of my life. Potato chips... When I was growing up, I ate pretty healthy 'cause my mom is a nutritionist, and she kept all of the bad things out of the house. Or if she had them in the house, which I very rarely believe that she did, she kept them away from me.
But anyway, when I discovered Pringles as a kid, my life changed. I was like, "Oh my God, what is this thing?" And into adulthood, a few years ago, I definitely started eating Pringles again. But if you look at the ingredient list of Pringles, there's way too many ingredients for me to research and for you to research to see what the health impact is.
So what I've started to do is look [00:06:00] for potato chips that have less ingredients. Look for potato chips that have healthier ingredients. And my favorite potato chips these days are Kettle brand and Boulder Canyon brand, and specifically, I love sea salt and vinegar. So fricking good. Now, the reason why I like both of these chips, especially the Boulder Canyon has become my absolute favorite, specifically with avocado oil.
'Cause yet again- Avocado, very healthy for you. I'm not saying that they're necessarily healthy, but they're probably less unhealthy than chips that have dozens upon dozens and dozens of ingredients. So that's the next thing that I invite you to do when you're looking at junk foods. Can you eat something that is considered a junk food, like potato chips, but eat a healthier version of it that still tastes good?
I actually think that these chips taste better than the [00:07:00] chips that have all of the ingredients in them. I love both of these chips, and that is an important thing when you're looking at junk food. 'Cause you could just replace your junk food with a healthier food, but if you're not actually enjoying eating that food, then your brain, your body, you're still gonna crave the unhealthy food, and you may end up eating it anyway.
What we're doing here, it's similar to what I've done in my life when it comes to cutting alcohol out, or at least cutting it down to drinking one to two times per year. You have to replace the unhealthy thing with something that's healthier and something that you actually enjoy. Now, I eat potato chips a lot less than I eat corn chips.
But I still probably, on average, have potato chips once per week. Now this next one, when it's in the house, I eat it all the time, and it's really because I grew up with a... Believe it or not, I am cumulatively between Spanish and Native American, about 35 to [00:08:00] 40%. And growing up, my very much Native American and Spanish grandmother would make homemade tortillas, and it was something I really enjoyed doing with her.
And this is something she also taught my mom, so growing up, we had homemade tortillas all the time. To this day, I know that tortillas may not be the healthiest, especially if you look at some of these tortillas you can buy in the store. There are, once again, way too many ingredients. So what I've done...
Well, first of all, I'm grateful that my mom makes homemade, very healthy corn or cassava tortillas. She's gluten free. So she makes these gluten-free tortillas maybe once or twice a month. I'm very grateful for being able to do that with her still. And what I've done is after looking through dozens upon dozens of store-bought tortillas that you and I can buy, I found that Costco has these amazing uncooked Flour tortillas.
And, uh, there's [00:09:00] only a handful of ingredients in these things. Now, I have read online that there are people that love eating these tortillas uncooked. That isn't me. I've actually tried them after I saw that, and I'm like, "Nah, I don't really like this." But oh my gosh, for me, I don't know if there's anything better than a freshly cooked tortilla.
I'll eat it with anything. Eat it with guacamole. I'll actually forego my corn chips and make three or four of these tortillas and just eat guacamole, beans, and tortillas. I love these tortillas. But this is another thing to just think about. There may be a junk food or a type of food that isn't as healthy for you that it's important to, not just because of its taste, but because it might have some roots in your culture.
It might have some roots in your family. Well, you don't necessarily... Unless you really have to for health reasons, you don't necessarily have to 100% cut these things out of your life. Just think of an alternative way to do this. My mom, she's gluten-free now, so she can't do flour [00:10:00] tortillas. So what has she figured out?
She's figured out yellow corn, blue corn, and cassava homemade tortillas that she can make to get her homemade tortilla fix. Another food that is heavily integrated into my family, and probably maybe this is you, too, is ice cream. With that being said, I have asthma, and ice cream for me, dairy for me, causes a lot of issues with inflammation in my body and asthma.
Now, there are certain dairy quality levels, grade A grass-fed, grass-finished, that doesn't bother me, or at least I have to eat a lot of it for it to bother me. But it's really hard to find high quality ice cream. Yet again, my mom being a nutritionist, over the years has perfected a homemade ice cream recipe.
But there's still dairy in it, and, uh, she only makes it a couple times a year. But when she does, I eat all of it. It is so freaking good, and it doesn't bother me as much as other ice cream. The other thing about ice cream, [00:11:00] even if you find dairy-free ice cream at the store, when you look at the nutrition information, I invite you to see how much sugar is in a pint of ice cream.
For me, I don't like having any processed sugar, and even when I have healthier sugars, I still don't like to have a bunch of sugar on a day-to-day basis. And I'm pretty sure that none of us are supposed to have more than 10 grams of processed sugar on a day-to-day basis. Well, these pints of ice cream will sometimes have close to 100 grams of sugar.
So even if you're having a third of a pint of ice cream, you're talking about having 30 grams of sugar, which is crazy. So what I've done is I've figured out how to make my own dairy-free ice cream. And now that I've been able to do this, I find myself eating it weekly. So what this looks like is it's not just dairy-free.
It is also processed- Sugar-free, and is also low sugar. So what does this look like? Well, what I've done is over time really figured out what the best recipe is. And my favorite [00:12:00] is you just pick your favorite fruit, or you could do this without fruit and just have vanilla. But I do find with dairy-free ice cream that having fruit of some sort is the best because the reality is the dairy alternatives have a flavor to them, so when you throw fruit in, it is able to complement that flavor really well.
It's really hard to make a dairy-free vanilla or a dairy-free chocolate ice cream that tastes as good as dairy chocolate ice cream or dairy vanilla just because you're talking about having coconut milk, which has a flavor, and oat milk, which also has some flavor to it. Now, if you just want chocolate or vanilla ice cream and you want it to be dairy-free, I highly recommend you use oat milk and maybe not use any coconut milk because coconut milk does have a really strong flavor, and oat milk plus chocolate tastes really good.
Same with oat milk plus vanilla. But when we're looking at this, the biggest problem I have with ice cream in the store [00:13:00] is the sugar content. So what I do is literally making two pints of ice cream. I'll only put one tablespoon of Manuka honey. Now, you don't have to do Manuka honey. I love Manuka honey.
It's so good. The health benefits of Manuka honey are unmatched when it comes to honey. But that's all. It's just one tablespoon of Manuka honey. And then the other thing that I'll do, and it really depends on what you're going for, is I'll put one banana. Great thing about bananas is they can really help your ice cream feel like ice cream 'cause of the creaminess.
Now, I haven't done this yet, but I have also seen people put avocados in ice cream, and I have put avocados in smoothies in the past. But you could put an avocado in an ice cream and it'll help also with that creaminess. But this is really it. I guess I also add some vanilla, and then we add salt, and then I also like to add collagen.
But this is it. The [00:14:00] sugar is really only coming from the fruit, any sugar that is naturally occurring in the coconut milk, and the Manuka honey. Now, I could go on and on, but the last item I wanna share with you is an alternative to pizza. I love pizza. Here in America, I feel like there's pizza everywhere.
Like, whenever I go to any gathering, I feel like we have pizza. It's crazy. Uh, when we were on our cruise, I got pizza like four days, 'cause it's just so good. You go to Italy, and you have the best pizza ever. Like, pizza is amazing. It's in our culture. It's a thing. The problem is, especially in America, if you have a gluten intolerance, then what are your options?
Another problem, if you have a dairy intolerance, what are your options? What I found... And I know people that make their own homemade pizza, and at some point I'm probably gonna do the same thing. But right now, what my favorite thing to do to really decrease my pizza [00:15:00] intake, or my traditional pizza intake, is eating pizza that has cauliflower crust.
It is actually surprisingly phenomenal, and it has great consistent taste, really good. And then the specific pizza that I like to get has about 50% sheep cheese and 50% cow cheese. Now, I wish it was 100% sheep cheese, but this is the most straightforward, frozen, off-the-shelf pizza. And I also get this at Costco, and specifically called Milton's is the brand.
This checks a lot of boxes. Now, me, I don't necessarily have a gluten intolerance, but I do see that when I eat more and more gluten and wheat and flour, that I feel heavier. I don't have any extreme symptoms, but I can definitely tell when I'm eating a lot of it, and I definitely feel lighter after eating this pizza.
From a cheese perspective, when I have pizza with dairy on it, with [00:16:00] regular cheese on it, I definitely stuff up. When I have this pizza, it's a lot better, and it's delicious. My goal for you is to continue eating as healthy as possible, but also leaving some grace and some room in your diet to enjoy some junk foods, but making sure that the junk foods that you're enjoying are a little bit healthier and they're a little bit better for you and your body.
'Cause we wanna make sure that you're building for the long term. You're not just training for that race. You're not just training for that event. You're training for life. And when you can integrate alternatives, healthier alternatives into your life, you're not even gonna miss the unhealthy things that you used to eat.
Now, one of the best ways to see this improve over time is to embrace one of the three pillars of healthy living that I share in my Healthy Living Guide. Tracking. Tracking your foods, tracking the nutritional value of your foods. And then guess what? You can also integrate [00:17:00] accountability. Working with someone, a friend, a family member, a coach, just to help you keep on track, but also say, "Hey, you've been working really hard.
You deserve to have that dairy-free, processed sugar-free, low sugar, amazing, delicious ice cream. Have a little bit of it. Celebrate a little. You got this." Now, if you wanna learn more about my Healthy Living Guide, I have it for you in the show notes and in the YouTube description. You can also go to www.athletewithasthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your free copy.
I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to The Athlete With Asthma show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection, it's about progress. So I [00:18:00] invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals. And if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's possible
