Episode 340: Cycling, Long Fasts, Electrolytes, BCAAs Vs. EAAs, Creatine, Fiber & Stool Quality, Complete Protein, Halloween, Cell Phone Etiquette, Leucine Threshold, And More!

Intermittent Fasting

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Oct 22

Welcome to Episode 340 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.

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Listener Q&A: Brian - cycling and ADF

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The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #214 - Ulrich Dempfle (CAROL AI Bike)

Listener Q&A: Brooke - What's the difference between BCAAs and EAAs?

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TRANSCRIPT

Melanie Avalon: Welcome to Episode 340 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat not what you eat, with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of What When Wine and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. I'm here with my cohost, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of Keto Essentials and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and ToneLUX red light therapy panels. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So, pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine if it's that time and get ready for The Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Hi, everybody and welcome. This is episode number 340 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast. I’m Melanie Avalon and I'm here with Vanessa Spina.

Vanessa Spina: Hi, everybody.

Melanie Avalon: Vanessa, this actually airs the day before Halloween.

Vanessa Spina: Ooh, spooky.

Melanie Avalon: I know. Do you think you'll be dressing up for it this year?

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, I was just talking with some friends this morning. We met up for coffee and a walk and we were talking about Halloween, and one of our friends who was throwing the Halloween party moved to Brussels. So, we were talking about what we're going to do, costumes, and all of that, and yeah, I guess it gets on everyone's mind around this time of year. We might throw a Halloween party, we'll see. But yeah, I think Halloween is super fun. It was definitely my favorite holiday when I was little. I loved all the candy, [laughs] but the dressing up is really fun, so I don't have a costume in mind right now. I feel like we talked about costumes on a recent episode. Did you have one in mind that you were-- we’re talking about princesses? I think. [laughs]

Melanie Avalon: Mm-hmm. I have since as of yesterday that we were recording this, made my final decisions about costumes, and I'm so excited. I'm going to an aquarium. The aquarium does like this cool Halloween party thing, so I'm going to do that on the weekend and I'm going to dress up like Sleeping Beauty.

Vanessa Spina: Oh, that's awesome.

Melanie Avalon: The costume says, what does it say? It says Sleeping Princess. Because it's like the off label. [laughs] 

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Melanie Avalon: And then for Halloween Halloween my sister and I, I am so excited. We're going to dress up like Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey. It's going to be a vibe.

Vanessa Spina: I wonder who will be who? [laughs]

Melanie Avalon: I know. I don't know. You'll have to wait and see, I know. [laughs] Actually, I'm so excited. I ordered-- because have you seen how she has The Heiress movie coming? Oh, it will have already come out, by the time this airs.

Vanessa Spina: Oh, cool.

Melanie Avalon: The concert movie, which has-- I won't make this a whole Taylor Swift monologue, but it's broken the records for the highest presales of any movie in all of history. It's already made 26 million, I think, and it comes out in October. But regardless, I have ordered all the pieces I need to reconstruct the costume she's wearing on the poster, which is her lover's outfit. It's like this rhinestoney beautiful bathing suit with fishnet stockings and really high boots. So, I ordered the bathing suit, and I'm going to bejewel it myself with rhinestones. And then I ordered seven pairs of boots and I'm going to see which one looks the most like it and then return the others. It's going to be on point.

Vanessa Spina: That's exciting and fun.

Melanie Avalon: I’m very excited and my sister does not like dressing up for Halloween. So, she's excited because she's just going to dress up like a Lana del Rey, like a normal person. So, I can't wait to see if you guys dress up, like, as a family.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, we probably will do a family costume. I think that's going to be how it goes for the next little while. But it's pretty fun. So last year, I wanted to do at first, Cinderella and Pete would be Prince Charming, and Luca would be a pumpkin. It's like the frigging most cute Halloween costume ever for a baby.

Melanie Avalon: I think that was my first costume. I think like personally.

Vanessa Spina: I was really excited about I think I mentioned that Pete was like, he saw the Prince Charming costume, and he was like, “No”. [laughs] So, we intelligible 00:04:59]mixed that, even though I really wanted to see Luca in a pumpkin. But went with the cat theme, like the Cheetah and the lion and that the baby so we'll have to come up with something. Maybe, I could get Pete to do the Prince Charming, we'll see if he'll veto it or not. But yeah, it's really fun to do costumes altogether really, enjoy it. It's a fun reason to go out. We actually had a date night last night, which is very rare for us. [laughs] And we went to see a standup comedian that was here from the US. It was really fun to go out and have a date night. But it was not an enjoyable evening at all [laughs] because when we got there, they made us lock our phones in these pouches and you had to set your phone on vibrate, and you could not take the phone out for any reason except if there was an emergency like, your phone was going off, then you have to leave this huge auditorium, go back down to the lobby, find someone to unlock your pouch. So like-- [chuckles]

Melanie Avalon:  Whoa.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah. So, this is our first-time leaving Luca. We dropped him off at a friend's house, and you know he's two. He's not five or six or whatever. He's only two and his buddy, they had a play day and but it was our first time doing it. It was the first time for them as well. We really trust the parents. We're really close with them, and they're very responsible, and they have a kid the same age, so obviously they know what to do. But Pete and I could not relax the entire time because we had told them, if there's something goes wrong, just call us and the phone will vibrate and we'll leave. But the whole time I was like, “What if my phone's not on right now? What if it doesn't vibrate? What if it doesn't work?” It's all we could think about and it's a weird experience also because you can't even check the time. So, the whole show was delayed by 45 minutes and that 45 minutes, we had no idea what was going on. [chuckles] We were there with some friends, but we couldn't relax at all. It was actually 3 hours total. It felt like 3 hours of torture. [laughs]

We love going to see standup comedy. It was one of the things we did the most before we had Luca. We would go to comedy shows together and you have to be in a relaxed state, right, to laugh and enjoy yourself. And the whole time we were clutching each other's hands, white-knuckling, [laughs] just make the jokes be over. Then we bolted when we thought it was starting to wrap up so that we could just run down to the lobby and not wait in line to have our phones unlocked. But we got over to our friend's house. Luca was having the time of his life, which would have been great to know [laughs] because he was like, not even a single tear. Didn't even notice we were gone. So, we could have been having so much fun, but we couldn't relax the whole time. And then we got home, we were like, “We are never doing that ever again.” If we could have just checked them every half hour and just know that everything was fine, we could have relaxed, but because we couldn't even access them, it was just really stressful. Anyway, that was our first date night in a little while, but it was still nice to just be together by ourselves, I guess.

Melanie Avalon: Wow. Okay, well, first of all, it's very eerie that you're talking about this because I was literally going to talk about this concept.

Vanessa Spina: Oh, really? 

Melanie Avalon: Mm-hmm. Isn't that weird?

Vanessa Spina: Another alignment. Another alignment episode.

Melanie Avalon: Before I say, what I was going to say. So, did they tell you beforehand that was going to be the situation?

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, but we only found out a day before. They sent out an e-blast to everyone who had purchased tickets, and it was very strict, and it was like, “If you're caught taking your phone out from the pouch or whatever, you're going to be escorted out of the venue.” It was really strict and we’re trying to figure out, “Okay, what is going on with this?” Because our friends we were there with said that they thought maybe that this comedian was filming a Netflix special and that they didn't want clips to be leaked, which to me, clips are good for publicity.

But lately in the news, I'm sure you've seen there's been a lot of incidents with performers and audience members and their phones. There was one, I think it was a country singer. She interrupted her concert because of people were taking selfies on their phone. Then, there was some weird interactions recently with someone threw a mic, and the phone, and the drink, and I don't know. So, we're like, I don't know what this is but it was just a weird feeling. If we didn't have a child, I wouldn't have minded. But it was really not practical for people [chuckles] who have little ones. Anyway, your question was, did we know? So, yeah, we knew, but only right before. I would not have bought tickets if I knew that was going to be the scenario.

Melanie Avalon: Wow. That's only happened to me once where they were that intense. It was when I was doing background on an Apple commercial.

Vanessa Spina: Oh.

Melanie Avalon: They took our phones and they made us sign a contract saying we would-- have I told you this story before, saying that “We would never say we’re in this commercial even after it came out.” I was like “that's odd.”

Vanessa Spina:  That is strange. 

Melanie Avalon: They didn't tell us it was Apple. They have a secret code word. But we figured out it was Apple, obviously. [chuckles] The actor was holding an Apple phone.

Vanessa Spina: That's really fun. I've been in some commercial shoots and I did some modeling when I was younger. And those shoots are so long. It's an all-day process and they're so boring.

Melanie Avalon: What's crazy, because I went through my background acting phase where I was literally doing TV shows and commercials every day. Every day, I was on a different TV show or movie or commercial. Sometimes, it'd be so short. You would go and be done in an hour and you get the full day's pay. And those days were the best. And then some days it was literally you rarely went over 16 hours because once you go over 16 hours, it's called golden time. And you start getting a day's rate every hour. So, they don't like to go past 16, but they will go up to 16, so long days, long days. Back to the phone situation. The thing I was going to talk about was I saw-- last night with my dad, we saw Oppenheimer. Have you seen that movie? 

Vanessa Spina: No, but I've heard lots of good things. 

Melanie Avalon: It was very good. It was very long though. But I was just thinking about how going to a movie theater, it's one of the few last things left in the world where people pretty much turn off their phone or don't really look at their phones and are just in the moment. I was thinking about how it was just a completely different experience to experience the world and not be looking at your phone during it, how nice it was. But I think there's definitely a huge difference between even in the movie theater, I can look at the phone. I can check the time if I need, compared to not being able to. Having that taken away is just-- that would create anxiety for me.

Vanessa Spina: That's what I was saying to our friends when we got to their house to pick up Luca. I was like, I went to a movie. We went to see the Barbie movie. I didn't have my phone out. I checked it a couple times again because I have a little one, but I feel as an adult, I can be trusted to put it away. And all they have to do at a show, if they don't want recordings, is just say, “No recordings.” [chuckles] I feel like you can trust people to put their phones away and then they can just check and see if people are turning them on. I don't know, it was just an experience that we will never do again. [laughs]

Melanie Avalon: Oh, man, I'm so sorry.

Vanessa Spina: Not all date nights are successful, but we still had some nice moments, just like, being the two of us and holding hands and just having some romantic time. But we also went away, I have to say, to this incredible place this weekend to visit two castles, and we had the best weekend, I think, of the whole summer. It was so much fun. There's this one castle, I sent you a picture of it once, that is my favorite castle.

Melanie Avalon: Is it the Disney one? 

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, it's the Disney one, but like a real, the original one that Disney takes inspiration from that one and a lot of other castles in Europe. But it's the most amazing castle ever. There's this little town, it's a UNESCO heritage site, and we go there pretty much every year. We figured out this was our sixth time that we've been there because we've been going every summer. But it was so much fun to take Luca there. It was the first time, because once you get in the town, it has this river going through it, and there's a castle and all this fun stuff, but once you get in, there're no cars. So, we didn't even take the stroller out of the car. The whole weekend, Luca was just running around exploring everything, going everywhere. It had so many playgrounds and play areas. And then we did a boat tour and took him up to the castle. The castle has a moat that has these bears in it and and then we took him-- [crosstalk]

Melanie Avalon: Bears in the moat.

Vanessa Spina: It's a moat, but there's no water in it anymore. It's just empty and they have bears living there.  [laughs] Then we took him to the other castle. It was just amazing. I posted on my personal Instagram. I was like, “We used to bar hop, now we castle hop.” [laughs]

Melanie Avalon: That's so funny. 

Vanessa Spina: But we had the best weekend of the summer. So, on a more positive note, I'm feeling pretty good about the weekend despite last night. 

Melanie Avalon: I love seeing all the posts in your videos. Luca's always so cute and he always looks so happy.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, he's a really, really sweet, happy kid. And yeah, I'm definitely getting nervous for what's coming and hoping that he doesn't feel slighted or replaced or any of those things. But in general, he seems pretty excited about the babies. I think he's going to be an amazing brother. So, he's a very happy boy. Hopefully, he'll continue to be that way. [laughs] 

Melanie Avalon: I feel on social media, it always goes one of two ways with the videos. It's always the videos of the kid being upset by the arrival of the new sibling or it's the kid just adoring the new sibling.

Vanessa Spina:  Aww.

Melanie Avalon: I've seen both. They're always funny moments regardless.

Vanessa Spina: I think it's a mix. So, a lot of my friends here have recently had a second child and we all are like half of us just had babies and the other half are having babies. There's one this month, one next month, one in November, and then me in December, and then one in January. [chuckles] We're all just in that phase of life, [chuckles] that season of life. It's really interesting because you definitely see that you have some really challenging moments with tantrums and dealing with the arrival of the new sibling, sharing things, and sharing mummy and daddy and all that. But there's also moments that just take your breath away when the first baby is cuddling the baby or holding the baby or just like they're playing together. All that stuff takes your breath away. So, I think it's definitely a mix of good and bad, but it's all part of the journey. [laughs]

Melanie Avalon: I'm so excited for you. 

Vanessa Spina: Thank you. Did you have a good weekend? 

Melanie Avalon: Yes, it was Labor Day weekend here, so it was longer.

Vanessa Spina: We took the long weekend. That's why we were away. Yeah. 

Melanie Avalon: Oh, you guys have Labor Day weekend as well.

Vanessa Spina: We take all the holidays. We celebrate. [laughs] I mean, our work lines up more with North America than Europe because our businesses are in North America, our clients are in North America. So, we take the same holidays as everyone in North America. Not so much the ones here.

Melanie Avalon: That makes sense. Yeah. I embodied the spirit of Labor Day weekend. I really used it to catch up on work, which was really, really fabulous. I was like, “I need another week of this honestly,” But yes, it was lovely. Shall we jump into questions for today?

Vanessa Spina: Yes, I would love to.

Melanie Avalon: All right, so to start things off, we have a question from Brian and the subject is podcast questions, cycling, and ADF. Brian says, “I have been following ADF, which is alternate-day fasting eating12:00 to 8:00 PM Monday, Wednesday, Friday, fasting Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and have a free day on Sunday. So, it's basically three, 42 hours fasts and one 16-hour fast per week since the end of November and I have lost approximately 60 pounds, around halfway to goal. General low carb, but not super serious about it. I started cycling in early December. I'm in the Phoenix area, so it's not as bad as it sounds. It's really nice right now and I've been riding three to four days per week on average. My question has to do with cardio-type exercise and fasting. Google searching has returned really mixed results. You have to eat, you don't have to eat, you have to eat carbs, etc. I definitely notice a difference biking after I eat, I have a lot more energy on those rides. What are your thoughts and experiences with high energy output exercise like cycling or rowing and longer fasting times? Should you always eat beforehand during carbs or fats or protein? And does any of this interfere with the benefits from longer fasts, like autophagy? How might that be impacted if the amount eaten before is less than the amount burned? Does gender make a difference?”

Vanessa Spina: Wow. Well, congratulations on getting halfway to your goal. That's amazing. And alternate-day fasting is one of the most effective ways to do that. So, it sounds like you found something that's really working well for you and you're feeling good about it. When it comes to fasted workouts, I just say it really depends on your preference. Because, it sounds like you still have 60 pounds of fat that you want to lose, so you have fuel on board. You're not an athlete with too low body fat percentage that's at risk of under fueling. So, I would say fasted workouts are probably fine for you as long as if you're doing really long or extended rides, make sure to supplement with electrolytes because you will lose electrolytes when you're doing that much activity outside in the heat. I think it comes down to how you feel and what your goals are.

So, it sounds like your main goal is fat loss, but then you also brought up autophagy, which you're probably getting into by going all the way to 42 hours on your fast. If you're cycling fasted, you are going to stimulate the biogenesis of more mitochondria, and that can be really amazing for a metabolic health and overall health and wellness. You're definitely going to boost your fat loss because you're going to be fueling those rides with your stored body fat if you are doing those rides fast, and you're going to be definitely ramping up the autophagy on those longer fasts. However, you did say that when you eat and then go biking, so if you bike not in the fasted state, you have a lot more energy on those rides. And that's an important factor as well. I think it really comes down to how you feel, how you prefer to feel, do you prefer to feel more energized?

Some people feel more energized when they do fasted workouts. I tend to be one of those people. I find that my workouts are more powerful and I'm more energetic because my body is not diverting blood flow and energy to breaking down and absorbing and digesting food. So, I think that it depends on what you feel best doing, what you prefer to do, because you'll probably get to your goal either way, the way that you are going so far. I don't think that either doing fasted workouts or not will interfere with your goal. So, I would just go with what you personally prefer to do.

And your other questions were thoughts and experiences with high energy output, like cycling or rowing and longer fasting times, if you should always eat beforehand or during. So, like I said, if you're an athlete with really low body fat, you probably don't have enough fuel on your body to rely on for really extended exercise. But if you have a lot of body fat that you're wanting to burn off, then it depends on you if you want to fuel yourself off of your body fat or off of the food that you eat and n terms of interfering with the benefits of autophagy, I would say if autophagy is a big goal of yours, then just focus on doing the fasting. I would just do your exercise or your bike rides or your workouts, whether it's cycling or rowing on your eating days. Then you don't really have to worry about the fact that your eating could be interfering with either your fat loss or your autophagy goal. So that's pretty much my take on it. In terms of gender, I don't really--

Melanie Avalon: I got that one. 

Vanessa Spina: Okay, go for it. Melanie, what are your thoughts? [laughs]

Melanie Avalon: First of all, I loved your thoughts about all of that. I do agree that it's so individual as far as people finding what works best for them. So, clarification about his terminology because he says high energy output exercise, which immediately makes me think of-- I think of high intensity output or really glycogen demanding output. So, like high intensity interval training or spurts or power lifting or something like that. But he's referring it to cycling, which could also be long slow cardio, but it would be, “High energy” because it would be using a lot of energy. The reason I'm clarifying about that is I think people can do-- they can become fat adapted and do “High energy output” in that long duration but slower energy. So, if you think about somebody like Mark Sisson with his primal endurance concept, he talks about running marathons and stuff and doing lots of endurance-type exercise that is a long time timeline wise, and doing it on a low-carb diet and/or fasting.

But that's different than the high energy output from something like spurts or like I said, like doing intense weightlifting and things like that. So, I just want to properly answer what he's asking. I do think it is possible for people to become really fat adapted and do well with fasting in “High energy output exercises.” I think for some people it takes maybe longer than they might expect to really get into that. But in some people, maybe that just never really is what works for you and maybe you just find more benefit with your workouts, having carbs beforehand or whatever it may be. I personally-- well, I don't really do [chuckles] super long, extensive energy output type exercise.

I do my CAROL Bike, which I am obsessed with, and just walk and move throughout the day and do like EMSculpt for muscle building. CAROL Bike, by the way, gives you a REHIT workout, which is a more optimized, efficient version than high intensity interval training. And it uses AI to adjust resistance on the bike so that you get the ideal form of REHIT in your session and it only lasts eight minutes. Although, I just interviewed the founder and realized it actually can only last six minutes if you want, which was very exciting. That was a whole tangent. But by the way, that's at carolbike.com and the coupon code, MELANIEAVALON gets you $100 off, it's like my favorite thing ever.

Back to Brian's question. So, Vanessa really nailed it as far as intuitively finding what works for you from that, as far as the gender, I always thought this was so interesting because a lot of people, there's like this idea out there that women don't do as well with fasting as men or women don't do as well with keto as men or as low carb as men. When the literature and I can find the studies for this, but I talk about it in my book and I've talked about it with other guests on my other show, the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast, since then.

But women actually, during exercise, more readily burn fat and more of it than men. Men's bodies tend to preferentially burn glycogen, whereas women's bodies more preferentially burn fat, which is I don't know that was not expected to me, but it's pretty consistent in literature. Have you seen that before, Vanessa? 

Vanessa Spina: Now that you mention it, I do feel like I have. But I also love that you brought up the type of exercise and the intensity, because I also wasn't sure. And one thing that I know is that if you are doing any activity that is around 60% to 70% of your VO2 max, you're actually better suited to being fat fueled. So, it does depend like, you could do cycling at 60% to 70% of your VO2 max or rowing and that's list long-distance type of endurance exercise, like marathon running and that thing. You're definitely being fueled from your fat or you're actually better off being fueled from your fat than being fueled from glycogen and hitting that wall, which doesn't happen when you're fat fueled. But if you're doing super high intensity that's higher than 60% to 70% of your VO2 max, then, yeah, you might need those glycolytic reserves.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that up. Definitely friends, check out my interview with the founder of CAROL Bike. His name is Ulrich Dempfle. He's German. We dived so deep into all of this. So, we talked about VO2 max. We talked about different substrates that you burn, how the metabolism works during energy output. It was a fascinating fasting conversation. We talked about how fast glycogen stores are depleted. It was really, really fun.

Vanessa Spina: That sounds amazing. [laughs]

Melanie Avalon: It was so amazing, I'll put a link to it in the show notes. So, hopefully, we answered Brian's question. Feel free to write back Brian and let us know where you ended up landing with everything.

Vanessa Spina: Yes, I'd love to know too.

Melanie Avalon: All righty, so two quick questions for Vanessa and these kind of go together. Brooke wants to know, “What's the difference between BCAAs and EAAs? How do I know which one is better for me to use? Are there certain brands that you like? And then Margaret wants to know, does Vanessa's Tone Protein contain amino acids like creatine in viable amounts so that she will not have to be using two powders?” So, Vanessa, can you educate us a little on amino acids and what these different ones are and what your Tone Protein will contain? Will it have creatine?”

Vanessa Spina: Yes. So, I absolutely can answer that and both of these are great questions. So, in terms of BCAAs, we're talking about branched-chain amino acids, of which there are three that they actually are essential amino acids. So, actually, BCAAs are EAAs because we have leucine, isoleucine, and valine. Those are the three branched-chain amino acids, and they also happen to be part of the nine essential amino acids. So, there isn't fully a difference although the essential amino acids, there are nine of them, so there's six more in addition to that. But the BCAAs are the ones that are often marketed for sport, for growing muscle, etc., because they do play a special role, especially leucine and isoleucine. But leucine being the foremost of the three when it comes to building muscle, because the level of leucine in your blood is this nutrient signal to your body to initiate muscle protein synthesis.

It is a binary process where it's really just like off or on like you're either triggering muscle protein synthesis or you're not. You're either getting enough protein at your meal that you have enough of the amino acid leucine to trigger muscle protein synthesis, which means your body is going to synthesize muscle tissue and that's going to balance out the muscle protein breakdown that happens every day. So, it is really important to get BCAAs, but you can get, and it obviously is really important to get essential amino acids every day because they're essential, because we have to get them from the diet. We can't make them on our own. There are 11 other amino acids that we can make on our own, but only if we have complete protein. So, in terms of supplementing, this is how I tend to look at it. If you are eating enough protein in the day, and by that, I mean, if you're getting at least 30 g of animal protein per meal or 35 to be on the safe side, if you're doing plant proteins, you will get enough of those BCAAs at those meals and you will get enough of those essential amino acids at those meals. So, you don't need to supplement with either. The only time it makes sense to supplement is if you have a meal. This is something I do myself and I also do with my father and some other people, is if I happen to have a meal that had lower protein. So, this usually happens to me when eating out. It doesn't really happen to me at home because I know how much protein to make to make sure that I have 30 g at a meal. But if we're eating out and the options are limited, protein portions tend to be smaller at restaurants, I don't know if it's always the same in the US. I know the portions tend to be bigger, but in Europe they're not as big. Sometimes, I'll have to do like if I get a burger, I'll ask for double meat or go to Chipotle, ask for double meat. 

There are situations when you can get a double serving of protein but if you can't and you know that you had, say, a chicken Caesar salad or something, and you know that you didn't probably get 30 g of protein in that meal, then you could have some essential amino acids or some BCAAs, you can get encapsulated BCAAs, which is something I have, and just take that and that will help top you off so that you hit that 2.5 to 3-g threshold, 3 g, you really optimize and maximize muscle protein synthesis. So, if you take either of those things, BCAAs or essential amino acids outside of a meal where you're trying to top off the levels, it does nothing. It does nothing for you. It literally does zero.

So, I would not use them for any other reason. And the only time that I would take BCAAs in particular is at a meal that you had a lower protein amount. So, my Tone Protein has BCAAs added and a particular leucine added so that it's scientifically formulated to make sure that you hit that amount of leucine that you need every time you have a serving so that you can initiate muscle protein synthesis. In terms of brands of BCAAs and EAAs, I don't really know of any. That's why I'm creating my own protein, because I haven't found anything that meets my standards yet. I do have some encapsulated BCAAs that I found in Europe, so I don't think that something I can really recommend. But yeah, that's something that you can have in your back pocket.

If you don't have BCAAs though and you did have a smaller protein meal, say you were out at a restaurant and all they had was one egg or something like that, sometimes it happens. You can go home and when you get home, have a protein shake and just top that off as well. And you're going to get all the BCAAs and all the EAAs as well. Thank you, Brooke, for your question. So, creatine tends to be present in beef, for example, as well as a lot of other nutrients like carnitine, niacin. There's just so many amazing nutrients in it. One thing I can say about creatine is your body can make it if you have enough glycine and arginine. So basically, if you're taking Tone Protein, your body can make the creatine. So that's something that anytime you're getting a whole or complete protein, you're going to be able to synthesize creatine because you have both glycine and arginine.

There is also S-Adenosyl methionine, which is a derivative of the amino acid methionine that can help with that process of making creatine. So, I don't think you fully need it as like a separate supplement. But we have tweaked Tone Protein so that it is optimized in certain ways and you can find out more about it and get updates on it if you sign up for my email list, which is the exclusive launch discount email list as well at toneprotein.com, you'll be able to get updates on the formulation and the timing of when it's out, as well as getting the launch discount. But in short, just taking Tone Protein itself, because it's a very high-quality protein whey isolate, your body is going to be able to make the creatine from the amino acids in that, so you don't have to take 50 different powders and things with it.

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. So, I think that's pretty mind blowing to people who because I think there's this narrative out there, people think they should be taking BCAAs all the time to protect muscle or while exercising and so is it analogy because what it sounds is sort of like seasoning in that salt and pepper or something. Say you want to have the ideal meal you can add like salt and pepper and seasoning to the meal and optimize your meal, but we wouldn't just take salt and pepper by themselves. It literally would do nothing.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah. So, if you just take the BCAAs on their own, it literally does nothing. It just does nothing. An analogy would be like you're turning the key in the ignition of your car, but you have no gas and no engine. [laughs] 

Melanie Avalon: Ah. Yeah, that's a good analogy.

Vanessa Spina: The engine is the mTOR complex and the amino acids are the fuel. So, if you don't have all the amino acids that you need to make the muscle, you're just revving the engine and you're going nowhere. So, it's a big marketing thing. People take BCAAs in their water before working out and do this and that, but you're sending the signal, but then you're telling your body keep build muscle, but then your body is going to go with what? 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. 

Vanessa Spina: It's a total waste of money. I think there are some purposes with the essential amino acids, but the only time you can take them effectively. So, I talk about this a lot on my podcast, but for older people who need to eat more protein and tend to not, and the statistics on it are really alarming. Most people 70 and above are not even getting the minimum RDA for protein, let alone optimal amounts of protein or what they actually need, because whenever you're aging or you're ill or you're growing, you need more protein. So, what I do is I have people in my family take BCAAs that are encapsulated with their meals and that's going to help them bump up the leucine so that even if they are not eating a lot of protein at the meal, at least they will get muscle protein synthesis initiated and also shakes because a lot of people just don't want to eat that much as they get older. But like a really tasty chocolate or vanilla shake or something can be enticing and can really help with preserving muscle mass. So, I do think there's a role for BCAAs when it comes to that.

Melanie Avalon: Wow. I asked for questions for the show and I didn't integrate any of them into this episode, but so many people were like, “When is Vanessa's protein powder coming?” People are very excited. 

Vanessa Spina: It makes me so happy when I see that because I'm like, “Yay, you're excited as excited as I am.” I definitely think it's going to be worth the wait. It's something that you are all going to love. So, I appreciate your patience in waiting for it and getting excited for it. It'll be here before you know it. So, if you are on the email list, you'll be the first to know when it is out. So, I'll keep you updated there.

Melanie Avalon: Very excited. All right, shall we go to our next question? By the way, that was very educational. I should know more about this, but it's not my-- I think probably because I just eat so much protein that I haven't focused on the specifics of it so much, so I always learned so much hearing that from you, so thank you.

Vanessa Spina: Aww, that's so nice. Thank you. I really appreciate that. I always learn so much from you every episode or every time we talk, so it's definitely mutual [laughs].

Melanie Avalon: Mutual learning pool. 

Vanessa Spina: Yes. So, we have a question from Teresa on Facebook. She says, “Okay, first off, love the two of you together, blue heart.”

Melanie Avalon: She has a lot of emojis.

Vanessa Spina: I love the emojis. “While I don't really do much fasting or follow specific ways of eating, I've always been one to prioritize protein and whole foods, especially since discovering that I can eat gluten in my early 20s. Which leads me to my next question that I just have to ask, laughing emoji. Melanie Avalon, is your GI system completely accustomed to your diet or do you find that you are eliminating blueberry and cucumber fiber like crazy? I'm sorry. I'm sure it's TMI, too much information.”

Melanie Avalon: Never TMI with me.

Vanessa Spina: [laughs] “But even regularly when I eat large amounts of certain fruits/nuts/fibrous foods, I definitely notice massive bulk. I'm sorry if this is too much. I just have always been so curious and hiding her eyes. Lol.”

Melanie Avalon: Yes. She also included the little emoji with I don't know what to call it. The little bowel movement emoji as well.

Vanessa Spina: A poop emoji? [laughs]

Melanie Avalon: Yes.

Vanessa Spina: We love the emojis. Keep them coming.

Melanie Avalon: Yes. Feel free to include in your questions your favorite emoji. I would love to hear people's favorite emojis. I find it really interesting in this whole topic that there're so many people that don't even think about this ever. And then people who are beyond obsessed with this. I tend to fall in the beyond obsessed camp. Cynthia was also very much into bowel movement issues. Where do you land on the [unintelligible [00:43:22]? Did not think about it much, I don't think.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, I think it's definitely important. I remember someone, I think it was my book publisher told me that one of their most popular books was a book just about poop, and it was like it had guides and illustrations and I thought that was hilarious because I was, I mean, people want to know the info.

Melanie Avalon: So funny. I'm having flashbacks when I was little and I had the little book that taught you how to go the bathroom. Does Luca have that book, one of those books? 

Vanessa Spina: We have a book about potty training and he's really into that one right now, so maybe I need to get this other book that you’re talking about. [laughs]

Melanie Avalon: All the books all the time. I don't know if I should tell this story. It's probably not even funny.

Vanessa Spina: Every time you say, I don't know if I should tell this, I'm like, now you have to. [laughs] 

Melanie Avalon: I just know one of our favorite home videos in our family is when we were little-- and I think why it's so powerful to me is I have the memory associated with it. I remember being there and then seeing it on camera is just so funny. So, I must have been at least-- it was in our first house. So, the oldest I could have been was four and then I had my brother and sister, and we were all taking a bath together. One of them, I guess, had a little poop situation in the bath. I distinctly remember being there and seeing the little poop turds floating in the water. I remember telling my dad or whoever was there filming us, nobody believed me. I was right. We have the video and in the video it's like us all playing, and my brother and sister are splashing and I'm splashing and then you see me notice it, and you see me just staring at it, [laughs] and I have a moment.

Vanessa Spina: Family videos are the best. You just laugh so hard until your stomach hurts.

Melanie Avalon: They're so, so great. Yeah, it's laser focus. I'm like, “Yeah.” I remember being vindicated though, finally they believed me. 

Vanessa Spina: You had the evidence.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. I have that memory, though, of seeing it in the water. 

Vanessa Spina: Do you think you have the memory, though, or do you think you have the memory because of the video?

Melanie Avalon: I don't think it's from the video, because when we would watch the video, I was like, “Yes, I remember like I was there, vindication. This is that time that nobody believed me.” 

Vanessa Spina: That's so funny. 

Melanie Avalon: Good times. Good times. Now I want to go watch home videos. Back to the question. So, there is the Bristol Stool Chart people are probably familiar with. So, it has seven types of stool consistencies. You can Google this if you like. They'll say that you should exist in a certain sphere on this chart. So, they say that type 1s to 2 indicate constipation, types 3 to 4 are ideal stools and are easier to pass, and type 5 to 7 may indicate diarrhea and urgency. The thing is, people are all over the spectrum with this. So, on the one hand, you have people on carnivore diets who are eliminating once every few days, maybe, but they don't have any feelings of constipation, and they have easy eliminations. Then you have people on the vegan spectrum who are eliminating multiple times a day, like all this bulk and all this fiber.

And my thoughts on all of this is that so much of it is affected by diet and the gut microbiome. I don't know how much we should hardcore overanalyze or try to achieve some certain ideal stool despite there being a Bristol Stool Chart. I think it's more about do you feel like you're eliminating completely or not. So, when you are having bowel movements, how are you feeling? Do you feel like that was a complete evacuation or do you feel like that it's not moving through slowly? So, I wouldn't get overly fixated on if you're having a lot more fiber and then you're noticing massive bulk in your bowel movements. It really depends on are you having GI distress with that? So, if you're having bulk and you're not having any GI distress, I don't see that there's any issue. But if you're having bulk, you're also constipated, bloated, and having issues, then there's probably something to work on there.

If you want my personal answer in the TMI front, I use a lot of digestive enzymes. I'm a big fan of digestive enzymes. I do plan to launch my own in the future and I'm so excited about them. So, when I take a lot of digestive enzymes, that massively affects the amount of bulk that I will have because those enzymes help break down all of that fiber. If I didn't take any digestive enzymes, I would have probably like she's experiencing the massive bulk, but I use a lot of enzymes, which helps with that. So, the point that I want to make about all of this is that it's a massive spectrum of the stool potential and I would look at a lot of things beyond just the actual chart or look of it and how you actually feel beyond that. Do you have any thoughts, Vanessa?

Vanessa Spina: I mean, she really wanted to know about your bowel movements. [chuckles] So, I don't feel like I have much to add, but I do eat similarly to you. I will say from trying carnivore, I noticed the same thing happening and I found it fascinating because at the time I was really learning as much as I could about the microbiota and what's happening. It's shifting when you eat more carnivore. But also, what I found fascinating is that there's this strange procedure that people can get where they bypass their stomach and they can eat and then it goes into this receptacle. I don't know if you've heard about this.

Melanie Avalon: Is it where they get rid of their colon, their large intestine.

Vanessa Spina: So, it's a fat loss strategy where it's different from that. But you're right though what I was going to say next is that what they found with people who don't have a colon and have to eliminate through this assisted method that when they were eating a lot of protein or mostly protein, there was nothing there, that the body was just basically using everything either for hormones, neurotransmitters. Our body is mostly protein, it's 40% protein. So, everything in your body, from your tissues to many of your hormones, thyroid hormone, insulin hormone, are made of peptides, proteins, so many things and I am like, “All of our cells are just little 3D protein printers.” So, we just use so much of the protein that we consume. So, either we're using it to build muscle, build actual tissue, create any of these different biomolecules or we can actually oxidize it as fuel as well.

There are certain amino acids that just fuel our colonocytes. It's like we use most of the protein. It's really not so much a fuel. Then we have the gut to help us assist and break down fiber and carbohydrate foods and then fat. There're different forms and things, but it really fascinated me that the elimination would go down and that they found that for the most part, people's digestive issues were very much improved with less fiber. Whereas, I found that to be mind-blowing because my whole life I had heard, you need more fiber, you need more fiber for good digestion, you have to have more fiber. Then I tried carnivore, and I was like, “Wait,” maybe digestion can improve this way. I read a lot of stories from people. I found that was really interesting. I don't eat carnivore now, but I eat carnivore-ish style because I eat mostly protein. I do eat similar to you in terms of cucumbers and blueberries and I do a lot of iceberg lettuce too. But, yeah, I mean, she really wanted to know about your bowel movement. [laughs] 

Melanie Avalon: I know it's the hot topic. [laughs]

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, and I get it. You eat a very specific way. I also eat similarly specific way but everyone's different. For some people, you might be eliminating more or less processing, eliminating more or less depending. I think it's great that you mentioned that chart. People can go look it up or get the book and [chuckles] learn about all the different types of stool. But I think it's good to know in general, what does it mean if you're really eliminating in certain ways. You don't want to be constipated, but you don't also want to be on the other end of the spectrum either. So yeah, it's a great question. 

Melanie Avalon: There's a study that people in the carnivore world often reference and I wish there were more studies like this, because it's a very small study, but it was overwhelmingly it might be one of the ones you're talking about. It was only a handful of people, but basically it was people with GI distress, and they went on a zero-fiber diet, and every single person had a complete resolution of constipation.

Vanessa Spina: Yes, yes. There's another one. I interviewed this scientist. He was out of, I think, Germany and they found that they were able to completely heal SIBO with carnivore. And then there's paleo medicine or they have a new name. It's IFM, Institute of Functional Medicine or something in Hungary. They treat cancer very successfully with ketogenic carnivore with lots of organ meats. Yeah, I'm fascinated by carnivore. I think it's an amazing protocol. And also, a lot of it is due from the fact that you're eliminating all the processed foods and the oils and seed oils and all the hyper-processed foods and all the sugar and all the wheat and the grains and everything. And it simplified life so much for me. I really enjoy the simplicity of it, and I still feel like I eat very much carnivore-ish, I was saying, “Is like carnivore plus,” mostly berries, cucumbers, and lettuce.

I feel great. I feel really satisfied from it. It's not for everybody, but I feel great on it. So, I don't feel like changing anything. But I also find it's not limiting. I had the most amazing protein pizza for dinner right before we recorded. It’s one of my favorite meals to make and we usually do pizza night at least one night a week. I get this whole massive pizza. The crust is all made out of egg whites and egg white protein powder, and I put mozzarella on it and ham, chicken, and lots of delicious herbs, olives, mushrooms, sometimes jalapenos and chilies, and it's so satisfying. It's so delicious. And then I make a yogurt dip that's a spicy ranch and it's just so good and it's so satisfying.

There's a lot you can do even though the way that I eat may sound limiting to some people, I feel very satisfied and very happy on it. I'm always very full and nourished. It's just one last thing I wanted to say. We were talking about last week about how I still mostly do two meals a day while pregnant, although, like I said, I would change it up at any time if I didn't feel good on it. But my meals are so nutrient dense that I think that's part of why I can eat this way. Whereas, if I was eating a lot of processed food or food that wasn't nutrient dense, then I probably would need to eat five or six times a day. So, nutrient density is really key. I eat a lot of organ meats and just yeah, lots and lots of nutritious proteins and some of the most nutrient dense plant foods.

Melanie Avalon: I'm curious, do you notice because we talked before about nightshades and food sensitivities. When you put the peppers on the pizza, do you notice any effects from that? 

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, so I was talking last episode about how I had peppers, a couple of nights and I woke up with really bad back pain, and I haven't had them since then. So, on the pizza, I put chili pepper, but it's just very small red chilies, and those don't affect me. It's when I have a big serving of red, yellow bell pepper and the more cooked they are, the more it's an issue. So, sometimes I'll make a salad with bell peppers in it or mini bell peppers and they're raw and I don't wake up with any of that pain. But when I grilled them, it must have released all of the nightshade and the lectins or whichever of the two I reacted to because it was crystal clear that that's what it was. Because it happened to me several years ago a few times, and it happened a few weeks ago, and then I retested it happened again.

I was like, “Aargh, now I have to go all morning feeling this way.” But like I was saying at the beginning, was it this episode or the one before? I don't have pain in my body ever. So, it's very easy to identify the things. But yeah, I just put the tiny little red chili peppers and those don't affect me.

Melanie Avalon: The flakes or the peppers?

Vanessa Spina: The actual peppers I slice them and then sometimes I put jalapenos, but those are from a jar and those also don't bother me. So, it's like you really have to experiment because sometimes if you just rule out everything in that family, you might not realize that some of them you're okay with or you can manage fine.

Melanie Avalon: I need to fact check this, but I think I read that humans are the only species that willingly eat and engage in foods that just create pain with no benefit beyond that, people who love really spicy foods. 

Vanessa Spina: I love spicy food. Do you? 

Melanie Avalon: Not really, no. 

Vanessa Spina: See, I was raised in Southeast Asia and in China, and I love spicy food, like spicy curry. We actually make a lot of curry with coconut milk and red curry, chicken curry, beef curry. It's so good. My husband and I go through so much hot sauce, it's crazy. I just had to buy this whole, it's a 10 liter or something of Frank's hot sauce because it's really hard to get locally. There's this store here in Prague called the American Candy Store and it has a lot of the American-type foods that you can't get here. So, I always get the classic American mustard from there because I love yellow mustard.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, wow. So, they have non-candy stuff too. 

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, it's a lot of candy and a lot of cereal, but they have sauces, juices, drinks, and sodas and all the things that are from the US. They import them in, but then they ran out of our favorite hot sauce. I love Louisiana and Frank's and so I went on Amazon Germany, and they had this, 10-liter bottle of it. So, we have this giant one right now, but we both put hot sauce on everything and yeah, that doesn't bother me either, which is great because that would be very unfortunate. But I love the spice. It's good, thermic effect too for your metabolism. 

Melanie Avalon: That is true. Yeah. I do a lot of turmeric and ginger, but those aren't really spicy.

Vanessa Spina:  They're awesome. Yeah, yeah. I love ginger tea and making dressings with ginger, so good. 

Melanie Avalon: Is Amazon Germany in German? 

Vanessa Spina: But you can change the settings so that it's always in English. And that's the closest Amazon to us here. So that's when I order things, it's usually from there. I order a lot of clothes for Luca on there, like appliances and things.

Melanie Avalon: And are the movies in Czech if you go to a theater?

Vanessa Spina: They have both, so they're usually all English with Czech Subtitles or they'll have it dubbed in Czech for Czech speakers.

Melanie Avalon: When you watch stuff at home, do you put on subtitles? 

Vanessa Spina: Yup. 

Melanie Avalon: Yes. Yeah, me too. 

Vanessa Spina: I can't watch anything without them now. I just feel like it's a more engaging experience and I don't miss anything. I got Pete into it because it used to drive him crazy.

Melanie Avalon: I'm all about it and you don't even see them anymore. It's just part of it because then you go to the movie theater and I'm like, “Oh, there're no subtitles.” 

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, it's true. I'm so used to them because every time we go to the movies, they have them here. But yeah, I can't watch anything without them now. I think it's better for you to have a lower volume anyway and have the subtitles on. But for the Oppenheimer movie, I was going to ask you if it was hard to sit through all that because three hours for me feels too long. I'm like, “I think we have to watch it at home,” even though my parents were like, “You have to see it in the movie theater. I'm like, “I don't think I can.” It's just too long. 

Melanie Avalon: It was longer in the beginning and that I was watching it. I had a moment where I was like, “Okay, I feel like we're two hours in now. I checked my thing and it was only an hour. I was like, “Oh, got ways to go.” And there's definitely a point where two hours in, it feels like it's over, but you still have an hour left and you're like, “Okay, third act.”

Vanessa Spina: Are there intermissions?

Melanie Avalon: No.

Vanessa Spina: No. Yeah, that's rough. I think the last three hour one I saw was Pearl Harbor that was a long time ago and it was long. [laughs] It was really long. 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, it was long. I had my wine though.

Vanessa Spina: Oh, that helped.

Melanie Avalon:  Yeah, well, I didn't start drinking it until the last second half. It's kind of like a boost.

Vanessa Spina: So, how much will you drink in a three-hour movie?

Melanie Avalon: Well, again, I didn't start drinking it until the end of it, so I probably also was drinking a very, very light Dry Farm Wines, which I'll drink more of than if it's like a fuller bodied one probably had a glass and a half. 

Vanessa Spina: Yeah. That would be similar to what I would drink. Because I remember you mentioned once that you'll have just, was it, was it, maybe I'm thinking of the coffee.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, yeah, coffee. I have just a sip.

Vanessa Spina: A sip. But do you ever do that with the wine?

Melanie Avalon: I did that for a year.

Vanessa Spina: That's what I'm thinking of.

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Vanessa Spina:  So, I was like, are you just having one sip? 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah, essentially. I consider it not I say I didn't drink that whole year because I really literally was just a sip for the hormetic potential kind of like as a digestive, I was literally taking it more of like a supplement than a drink. While I'm mentioning, I'll give links for those two things. If I can drink Dry Farm Wines that I'm just so obsessed with, you can get a bottle for a penny at dryfarmwines.com/Ifpodcast and then the coffee I drink is Danger Coffee, which is Dave Asprey's new coffee brand, and it's remineralized with over 50 trace minerals and I am obsessed with it, even though I only drink a little bit, but I really love it. Historically, I was drinking Bulletproof coffee for a decade, but then when he got kicked out of that company and started Danger Coffee, I decided to try that. So, listeners can get a discount with the coupon code MELANIEAVALON at melanieavalon.com/dangercoffee.

Okay, well, on that note, if listeners would like to submit their own questions for the show, they can directly email questions@ifpodcast.com or you can go to ifpodcast.com and you can submit questions there. Feel free to let us know in your questions your favorite emoji, feel free to include emojis. These show notes will be at ifpodcast.com/episode340. Those show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out. Then you can follow us on Instagram. We are @ifpodcast. I am @melanieavalon. Vanessa is @ketogenicgirl. I think that is all the things. Anything from you, Vanessa, before we go?

Vanessa Spina: I had so much fun with you again. Thank you, listeners, for the wonderful questions, for the interest in Tone Protein, and all the things that we do and for being here.

Melanie Avalon: I know I had so much fun. I enjoy our episode so much and I love hearing from the listeners. I wish we could do a live show someday.

Vanessa Spina: Oh, that would be insane.

Melanie Avalon: That'd be fun. With like a, oh, I was thinking like a moderator, but that doesn't really make sense.

Vanessa Spina: I need to put that in my vibrational escrow.

Melanie Avalon: Manifest it. 

Vanessa Spina: I love that. That would be so fun. We could do like a tour.

Melanie Avalon: We could do listener Q&A.

Vanessa Spina: I had the time of my life when I went on my book tour. It was so much fun. I always think about doing a podcast tour, but yeah, together that would be insane.

Melanie Avalon: Oh, my gosh. How many places did you go on your tour.

Vanessa Spina: We had 11 cities and I just presented at all of them. It was so much fun because the very last one I went to from Miami, Connecticut, Arizona, LA, everywhere. The LA one was really fun. They were all really fun. 

Melanie Avalon: Where was the LA one?

Vanessa Spina: It was at this really cool bookstore. It's like I had seen it on Instagram before I even knew that that's where it was going to be. I can't remember the name of it now, but it was like this really cool venue--

Melanie Avalon: It’s a downtown?

Vanessa Spina: Yes, downtown. 

Melanie Avalon: I think I know what you're talking about. 

Vanessa Spina: It was really, really fun to be there. It was a thrill too. I was like--

Melanie Avalon: It's themed, right?

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, I feel like it's called couches and something or something with a C. It's relatively large and it's very unique and everyone's angry hipster working there. But it was a thrill. It was really cool to fly in there and speak there and then went to San Francisco and the very last stop was in Denver, so all my family got to come. And that one, they pretty much were all standing room only, but that one was the most awesome one because all my family was there too. They all came and got to see how well attended it was. It actually was really stormy and rainy that day. So, I was nervous before that like some people would stay home because when the weather is bad, it's less motivating to go out. But everybody came out. Yeah, I had so much fun. So, podcast tour, that would be lit that would be so much fun. 

Melanie Avalon: Was it The Last Bookstore? That's the one I was thinking of.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah. Yeah. Why did I think C? I don't know why, but yeah, it's The Last Bookstore.

Melanie Avalon: I saw that. I was like, wait, but that's not a C. But that's one I was thinking of. Mine was like during my dark time and it was at the Barnes & Noble in LA. There was only a handful of people and it would be interesting. I would love to do that all again now I feel like it would be a completely different experience.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, totally. Because what year was that?

Melanie Avalon: 2018.

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, I think it would be so different to do it now. The comedian that we went to go see last night, he has a podcast. It's in the top 50 or whatever of all podcasts. So many people were there. I kept saying to Pete it's because of his podcast and obviously Netflix and stuff, but it's definitely because of the podcast. I think there was like I don't know, it felt like maybe several thousand people. I know he didn't have that audience before, but he has such a popular podcast, and podcasts are global. They reach so many people. Yeah, I think it would be so cool to do it now because when I went and did that one too yeah, it was way before I had a podcast or anything like that. 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. Wow. I'll work on my travel skills. 

Vanessa Spina: Yeah, [laughs] because that would be a lot of cities we'd have to go to, but we could put it in our vibrational escrow and manifest it.

Melanie Avalon: Manifestation. Well, this has been absolutely wonderful and for now we can just keep our shows virtual. Thank you for the listeners for all the questions and I will talk to you next week.

Vanessa Spina: Talk to you soon.

Melanie Avalon: Bye.

Vanessa Spina: Bye. 

Melanie Avalon: Thank you so much for listening to The Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Please remember everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team, administration by Sharon Merriman, editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, transcripts by SpeechDocs, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and re-composed by Steve Saunders. See you next week.

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]

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