The Thermo Diet Podcast Episode 71 - Travis Harris FNTP - a podcast by UMZU LLC

In this episode of The Thermo diet Podcast Jayton Miller sits down with functional nutrition therapy practitioner and fellow metabolic theory lover Travis Harris. They talk about the individualization of eating and listening to your body, the rate of living theory vs the bioenergetic theory, and the first thousand days of life and proper child nutrition among other things. Check it out and let us know what you think!

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@travisharrisfntp

Travis's website - https://www.travisharrisnutritionaltherapy.com

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Full Transcript:

Jayton Miller:
Welcome back to the Thermo Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Jayton Miller. And today I have on the podcast, functional nutritional therapy practitioner, Travis Harris. So Travis, I found originally on Instagram and he has a great Instagram page. He has a really cool website. He does one-on-one coaching. So if you're interested, make sure to give him a look. In this episode, we talk about the individualization of eating and listening to your body, the rate of living theory versus the bio-energetic theory of health. We talk a little bit about the first thousand days of life and proper child nutrition. And then towards the end of it, we also talk a little bit about psychology and some different strategies that are out there in terms of helping you align your psychological health with your physical health. So I look forward to you listening to this episode and let's dive into it. How's it going today, guys. Today, I'm here with Travis Harris. How you doing today, Travis?

Travis Harris:
I'm doing well. How are you doing Jayton?

Jayton Miller:
I'm doing very well. So for the listeners out there who might not know who you are, do you mind giving them a background?

Travis Harris:
Yeah, so I guess my official working title is functional nutritional therapy practitioner. I got certified through the Nutritional Therapy Association and went a little my own direction through the discovering the work of Ray Peat and bioenergetics. And I work with clients one-on-one and we work on restoring flow of energy through the body, and that looks different for everyone.

Jayton Miller:
Awesome. How long have you been doing that?

Travis Harris:
I've been working one-on-one with clients for about a year now.

Jayton Miller:
Sweet. And you said that you'd been in the realm of bioenergetics for almost a decade now?

Travis Harris:
Not bioenergetics, working on my health for about that long. I don't know. I've probably been into Ray Peat's stuff for about three years now.

Jayton Miller:
Okay. Awesome. So what part of it do you enjoy the most, I would say?

Travis Harris:
There's so much variation and it's a combination of a lot of things I'm interested in. I like the understanding of metabolism and bioenergetics, how that kind of plays out as like a fundamental layer of reality, like the whole interplay of structure and function. It's just a fun thought experiment, but then, it's also super rewarding to be able to work one-on-one with people and then help them understand their bodies, understand what they need, understand that they can live a life free of a lot of restricted diets that keep them down to a certain way of living and yeah, just enjoy helping people find a new way that's sustainable, a new way of eating that they can just continue forever and not have to binge or fall off the wagon and hate themselves.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. You talk about the individualization of eating and listening to your body. Do you mind going into that and why certain things might be different for other people?

Travis Harris:
Yeah. I think everyone I see is usually caught in some kind of cycle of stress, and where we intersect that cycle of stress is going to be different for everyone. Some people are severely allergic to certain foods. Some people have major microbial imbalance in the small intestine. Some people have severe, a lot of people have severe thyroid hypofunction. I can't diagnose anyone with hypothyroid, but I call it thyroid hypofunction. And then some people are just not eating enough and I help people understand, okay, well when your hands and feet are freezing, that's an adrenaline response. You probably need to eat something, something with protein, something with salt, something with a carbohydrate.

Travis Harris:
And because everyone's coming at it from a different set point, I can usually help people find foods that are safe and probably because I know what it's like to not have any safe foods and dug myself out of that hole on my own. So I know, okay, marshmallows, gummies, that may be the only thing you can eat for a little bit with gelatin and the anti-inflammatory protein glycine within the gelatin and simple carbohydrate, whether that's sugar, whether it's honey, whether it's juice to help restore metabolism.

Jayton Miller:
Awesome. What are some of the highest leverage factors that you see pretty consistently whenever you're working with people?

Travis Harris:
Biggest levers, sleep is obviously huge. But then once you go down into looking at sleep, you got to figure out, okay, why is this person not sleeping? Is it because there's some kind of mineral imbalance or is it because they're just not eating enough calories throughout the day, or do they need a bedtime snack or do they have a bunch of other stressors in their life that are contributing to them not being able to calm down and get into a parasympathetic state? So yeah, sleep is huge.

Travis Harris:
A lot of people are eating foods that are hurting them. I used to, I was very much like gluten intolerant, but didn't want to be one of those gluten-free people. So I was continuing to, I used to work in a wood shop and they had free bagels and a beer at the end of the day. So I was every day eating two or three bagels, having two or three beers after work and then always in pain and then just pound an Advil. So I see a lot of people that are just kind of stuck and that they're like, "I don't know what to eat. Everything hurts me." So yes, sleep, eating foods that really support you and not tear you down. And then a lot of people come into it with different ideas, like "I need to do intermittent fasting, or I need to do keto." So yeah, just understanding it helps to have a balance of macronutrients. You actually need all three of them. So yeah, I think those would probably be the top three levers.

Jayton Miller:
Nice. So one of the things you talk about is the rate of living theory versus the bioenergetic theory. Can you go into what those two are and how they're differentiated?

Travis Harris:
Yeah. Well, it's kind of funny. I guess the rate of living theory was popularized by a guy named Raymond Pearl. And then the bioenergetic theory is popularized by a guy named Raymond Peat. So the rate of living theory is what a lot of people in the fitness world or the biohacking world, or most diets, and even probably the allopathic medical system is based on, like you only have a certain amount of heartbeats. So a lower heart rate is good. You need to be like athlete. Look at athletes, they have a heart rate that's 40 beats per minute.

Travis Harris:
And then they of had this idea that will lead to a colder body and they think, "Okay, well, that's fine. 96, maybe we should make 96 degrees Fahrenheit the new average body temperature, maybe the less calories we eat the longer we'll live," because there's all these studies that are like caloric restriction leads to longevity. And again, you probably know this as well, but for the listeners, any study that shows even methionine restriction or even caloric restriction as increasing health or longevity, all of that, if you just add in glycine from gelatin and bone broth and collagen, and those kinds of products, you'll see the same effects that you were seeing from muscle meat restriction or caloric restriction. So that's the rate of living theory, you only have a certain amount of heartbeats, you need to be in a cold body. You got to preserve, preserve, preserve.

Travis Harris:
And then the bio-energetic theory is, in a lot of ways, the opposite of that. So it's we're focusing on a high rate of metabolism and we're focusing on a heartbeat between 70 and 90 and a warm body that's like flowing. I guess the technical definition of bioenergetics would be the study of the transformation of energy in living organisms and then how that energy changes. Yeah, so focusing on higher body temps, higher metabolism. And what that will do in the body, you can rest your gut all day long by fasting or eating a low residue diet. But without the flow of energy to the cells in your gut, you're not going to heal your gut. And that's what I had to realize the hard way is that I could eat all the raw meat and oysters and easily digestible animal foods without carbohydrates and raising that metabolic rate, there wasn't a whole lot of healing happening. I was removing all the challenges, but not actually getting stronger and moving towards a direction where I could eat more food. Does that answer the bioenergetic and?

Jayton Miller:
Definitely, yeah. For me, the rate of living theory is kind of like the reason that it is unappealing, because whenever I'm old and wrinkly, the last thing that I want to be is freezing to death and barely able to move.

Travis Harris:
Exactly. Yeah.

Jayton Miller:
It also reminds me of the abundance mindset versus the mindset of scarcity, and you're kind of looking at that from an energetic perspective, like you can either produce a bunch of energy and have an abundance of it, or you can not produce that much energy and slowly degrade the amount that you're producing.

Travis Harris:
Yeah, exactly. Did you see, I haven't watched all of it, but the latest, long, seven hour interview with Ray Peat?

Jayton Miller:
I was watching it last night. I got halfway through the first one.

Travis Harris:
Yeah. Yeah. That's about where I'm at. But he was talking about how, and I'm also reading The Body Electric, which is a really interesting book, but he was talking about how there's a electromagnetic field coming out a few inches from all your tissues, so like your skin. And the resonance of that electromagnetic field reflects the metabolic rate. There's definitely something to being an energetic person, having the proper flow of energy through the body. I don't know. It's super fascinating, just the whole interplay of structure and energy. I think it was Peat that said structure and energy are interdependent that every level of organization. So you can take that from organelles, cell, tissue, organ, organ system, organism, and then I'm sure it plays beyond the individual organism, because we're all emitting some kind of frequency. I don't want to sound like a total quack, but it's happening whether we realize it or not.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I can't remember if, I want to say it's Dr. Joe Dispenza who is taking measurements of these, but it could be somebody completely different. It's where whenever you have high stress hormones in the body, the amount of space that that electric field takes up will shrink and it'll come in towards the body. And then whenever you have more protective hormones, it will expand and give you like a wider breadth of energy that you're emitting, which is kind of interesting. That's what reminded me whenever he was talking about that.

Travis Harris:
Yeah. That's super fascinating.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. So another thing that you talk really well on is the first 1,000 days of life, whenever it comes to conception of a child, and then possibly up to where they're two, three years old. Can you talk about that and maybe some ways that we can properly feed our children?

Travis Harris:
Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, the first 1,000 days I think is from conception to around two and a half or something, if that makes sense. Yeah. Two, two years old, something like that. And obviously, preconception is hugely important. And I think there's a girl on Instagram, I think you had her on your podcast before, Miranda?

Jayton Miller:
Yeah, Lauren.

Travis Harris:
Yeah. So she amazing at understanding the preconception and fertility and all that. For men, it's not going to get much better than liver and oysters and improving the metabolic rate through easily digestible carbohydrates and getting enough protein and all that. So I think it's just as important for the man to be in a good spot, preconception. That was one thing that really led me towards diving fully into the world of nutrition is my wife got pregnant a few years ago and I was like, "Okay, well, how do we make a decent baby?" I wanted to make a super baby. But I was like, "Okay, how do we just make a kid that's just not sick all the time," because I'm looking around and seeing all these kids that are just so sick.

Travis Harris:
So I think it's critically important to understand that a baby is made of the nutrients that the mom has. And so you have to make sure that the mom is getting everything she needs and keeping the flow of energy through the placenta. And yeah, really, it's like 10% of the minerals that the baby takes from the mom and then the last trimester, there's a massive transfer of nutrients and energy from the mom to the baby. And so, yeah, critically important to have easily digestible carbohydrates, I'd say at least 100 grams of protein, and that should be animal protein because some of the vegetable proteins are not as bioavailable. You're not going to get what you need from almond flour and pea protein.

Travis Harris:
Yeah. And nutrient dense foods like liver and oysters, I think are great for that time. I like raw milk. I don't think it's necessary for it to be raw for everyone, but I'm a big fan of it. So you have the baby and then ideally the mom has been supported enough to where she can breastfeed for at least a year or so. And obviously no shame on anyone that can't do that. But ideally that's where you'd be, you'd be supported enough to do that. Even breastfeeding through two years and beyond I think is good. And then obviously, when you start to introduce solid foods to your kid, I think the Weston A. Price Foundation has some decent stuff. I don't recommend Cod liver oil or anything like that, but I think eggs, like runny egg yolks are usually great. And this is not medical advice for anyone listening. But yeah, runny egg yolks, a little bit of liver if you can, and whatever is a easily digestible carbohydrate for them.

Travis Harris:
So it could look like stewed apples or mashed potatoes. Kids love this way of eating. They'll only eat what you put in front of them. If they've never had goldfish, they're not going to be screaming for goldfish. So yeah, we always just sat the food in front of our kid and he gets to decide how much of it he eats, but we decide what he's eating. But yeah, those first 1,000 days, that sets the tone for the rest of your life. I think you have like a few different times throughout your life where, like pre-puberty is also important because that's when some real epigenetic switches are being turned on or off. In that first 1,000 days is you're kind of going to flipping different epigenetic switches for your kid. And you want the best expression of the genes for your kid to set them up for a life of health and function.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Yeah. I think that's one thing that is very important and I think it's one thing that people don't really take enough time to really investigate whenever it comes down to it. So I really appreciate you putting that information out there. What other kind of things are you diving into right now? What are you interested in?

Travis Harris:
Oh man. I've been exploring a little bit more of what, because we talked about the bioenergetic theory being a fundamental layer of reality, been exploring different ideas of how that plays out in relationships or how it plays out in communities. Even, I just went down a rabbit hole of bioenergetic architecture. I don't know anything about Egypt or anything, besides a few Joe Rogan podcasts. But even the pyramids, I think it was pretty well established that they were conduits of energy and there's some electrical currents and fields going on just based on the structure and then the materials that made it. So that interplay of energy and structure, it's really fun and there's a lot of different areas you could take. It's just so fascinating.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. What was the book that you mentioned earlier?

Travis Harris:
The Body Electric.

Jayton Miller:
Okay. Another one that I really recommend, kind of along that field, is Healing is Voltage.

Travis Harris:
I haven't read that yet.

Jayton Miller:
Yeah, that one's another really good one that highly recommend.

Travis Harris:
I'll write it down.

Jayton Miller:
Awesome.

Travis Harris:
So if we want to go down that route, that's why stuff like acupuncture, people find a lot of benefit in that. People find a lot of benefit and all kinds of different healing modalities because at the end of the day, it is a matter of improving the flow of energy through the body. So I focus on doing that nutritionally. I think that's a pretty good foundation, but for some people, it's going to be releasing trauma, it's going to be doing, well I didn't watch that episode, but you had Lauren and Theresa on there and Meg Langston. But Theresa does a lot of good stuff with the EFT, like the tapping thing. I think whatever strategies you can implement to get into a parasympathetic state are going to improve that flow of energy through the body. It's just cool that there is so many different ways that people have found to really heal and feel good.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. The more that I tend to look into the somatic experience of the body and the health of the body, the more that I tend to hold weight to psychology and just the wellbeing of the mental state of the individual. One thing that I find really interesting is suppression and repression of certain experiences. So whenever something is suppressed, it's at the conscious level, so you can actively suppress it. Whenever something is repressed, it's subconsciously buried.

Travis Harris:
Yeah.

Jayton Miller:
So you're not aware of it. That's kind of where my interest is right now is how do we uncover those states that are stressing us out without us even knowing about it?

Travis Harris:
Yeah.

Jayton Miller:
And then how can we overcome that as quickly as possible?

Travis Harris:
Yeah. That's great. There's a lot of different strategies people use and they're called different things in different communities. I know some people are really into NLP and then there's different Christian communities that do something kind of similar to where you go back and you get in a really relaxed state and view some traumatic memories and reframe them or see yourself moving through that. Or let's say you have basically a movie playing on repeat in your subconscious, and it's some traumatic memory. And trauma can be anything super serious, like our bodies and our minds will place different emphasis on different things based on who we are. So a trauma for one person could be baby games for another person, but you go back and you look at some of those memories and reframe them and see, "I had support then. That wasn't that bad."

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. Do you have any tips for where someone would start with that?

Travis Harris:
Oh, man. I'm not like a master at meditating or anything like that, but taking some time to ask yourself those questions of "Okay, what is something that always brings itself out of nowhere?" And, "What are my trigger? What causes me anxiety? What are conversations that I tend to shut down? Yeah, basically just exploring your triggers and leaning into them. And then if you can get into somewhat of a meditative state, it doesn't have to be super crazy, but just relaxing and closing your eyes and then thinking about, "Okay, what are my triggers? How did they start? When was the first time I was triggered in this way?" And then seeing if you can just talk yourself through it or if you have a friend that you can express those things with, that's always going to be good too.

Jayton Miller:
Definitely. I think the biggest thing in my experience is making sure that I nurture humility. So to know that those things that are triggering me are most likely myself, not exactly the other person.

Travis Harris:
Exactly, yeah.

Jayton Miller:
And then journaling is always good. And I always like to do handwritten journaling versus typing it. I think the interaction with matter makes it a very novel experience. And sometimes it will be half a page, sometimes it'll be three, four or five pages. And depending on the state that you're in, it could come very quickly or it could just take a minute, but something will come out. So that's been very beneficial in my experience.

Travis Harris:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Jayton Miller:
Sweet. So where can people find your work and stuff that you're doing right now?

Travis Harris:
Well I'm on Instagram, TravisHarrisfntp. And my website is TravisHarrisnutritionaltherapy.com. That's pretty much it. I'm on Facebook, but I don't use it.

Jayton Miller:
Sounds good. Well, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for hopping on here. And everybody listening, make sure to go give him a follow and check out his website.

Travis Harris:
Yeah, it was great talking to you, Jayton.

Jayton Miller:
Have a good one.

Travis Harris:
You too.

Jayton Miller:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you haven't already, make sure to hit the like button, subscribe and leave a comment down below if you want us to cover a different topic.

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