A Game Changer! Featured in the famed Film, The Game Changers, Dr. James Loomis, Director of the Barnard Medical Center is on Awesome Vegans to discuss how YOU can EAT LIKE AN ATHLETE!
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5:30 Dr. James Loomis helped open the Barnard Medical Center five years ago and its mission is to practice evidence-based primary care medicine. Their evidence is centered around lifestyle, in particular plant based nutrition, to help patients prevent and reverse their chronic diseases. “We really focus on helping our patients understand at the fundamental level the importance of nutrition, in particular, plant based nutrition.” Throughout the pandemic the Barnard Medical Center has taken advantage of the use of telehealth and it has helped them expand their practice and assist more patients. Dr. Loomis really tries to empower his patients by reminding them that they are in control of their health and eating well can make such a difference.
12:00 Dr. James Loomis is incredibly proud to be a part of The Game Changers documentary which has over 100 million views on Netflix. He believes it is so important to get the message that you don’t need meat to perform as an athlete out into the world. “It’s just the simple fact that we as human beings are designed to run on plants and when we do what we’re supposed to do we can perform on a high level and everyone benefits.” The movie truly provides the solution for the environment, the solution for animals, the solution for your own health, and the solution for the healthcare system.
20:00 As an internist for the St. Louis Rams and the St. Louis Cardinals, Dr. James Loomis has learned so much about the mindset of professional athletes and their relationship with food and nutrition. He explains how athletes would copy the diet of their strong and fast teammates and those diets usually consisted of lots of meat because often their strength and conditioning coaches would tell them they needed it. Dr. Loomis also emphasizes the fact that at our core we are all athletes. “We all evolved to be athletes, because we had to be able to perform physical activities to survive because we had to hunt and gather food or run away [from other animals].” He concludes that there really isn’t such a thing as “sports nutrition” because the only difference between an amateur athlete and a professional athlete is the number of calories they should be eating.
32:00 According to Dr. Loomis, the key element of diet is to eat the foods we are designed to eat as human beings. As hunter gatherers our ancestors ate unprocessed whole food plant based sources of energy. “It was roots and stems and leaves and seeds and fruits and nuts and vegetables and various legumes. I mean there was no white flour tree or canola oil bush or Dr. Pepper nut right?” Through talking to athletes he met through The Game Changers, Dr. Loomis has found that every kind of athlete’s ability to recover increases exponentially once they switch to a plant based diet. “A whole food plant based diet has about 15% plant based protein, which is plenty of protein to fuel an athlete. So the key, if you’re athletic, is not more protein, it’s more calories.” As for the younger athletes in high school and college, Dr. Loomis recommends having their family watch The Game Changers and educate themselves. He also mentions how there are plenty of resources online to find healthy inexpensive recipes that are easy to follow for beginners. “There’s so much information out there, you’ve just gotta find it and share it and educate yourself and empower yourself. That’s the most important thing.”
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