Go Un-Pro
Week 24: A Doctor's 52 Week Journey to an Unprocessed Life
Go Un Pro Podcast · Week 24 of 52 Game Day, Rewired Dr. Brent W. Laartz frames Week 24 around a familiar American ritual — football season — and asks whether it has to arrive with beer, chips, gambling and the couch. His answer is to add the healthy things (local produce, a catch in the yard, an N/A beer, seven hours of sleep) until they crowd out what he wants to subtract, while keeping his five pillars — diet, movement, sleep, connection, plastics — moving in parallel. Scene ·Solo podcast studio recap — Week 24 of a physician's 52-week unprocessed-living journey, opening football season Game-day swap · Week 24 challenge Default couch ritual Beer with the game Chips & store-bought dips Sitting through all four quarters Gambling adds stress to every play Anger at the coach / the loss Add-first game day Zero-alcohol beer, invite a friend Carrots, celery, homemade hummus Move between plays / at halftime Less gambling, less stress on the game Backyard catch instead of watching Rule of the season: "play the game, don't watch it" Motivation The Marginal Decade Lartz opens by naming what he is trying to postpone: the "marginal decade" before death, the years when a person can no longer do what they want. The best case, he says, is to push that trough as far into the future as possible. The urgency is clinical, not abstract. That day he had seen a 55-year-old patient — two years younger than himself — with a toe amputation (from trauma, not the disease) and congestive heart failure, whose father had had his first heart attack at 50 and died at 78. The patient had his own first heart attack at 50. Lartz's own parents, considered relatively healthy, had developed diabetes in their 60s. Lartz's stated aim: "manifesting a healthy 100 years of age," 110 as the stretch. Two futures drawn from the same genetic starting point: the patient's early-collapse curve (clay) vs. the delayed-decline aim Lartz is working toward (green). The shaded valley is the "marginal decade." The plan Five Pillars, Week 24 Each week Lartz nudges all five pillars at once rather than overhauling one. Week 24's dials, in his words:15:54 Diet Local + organic Double down on local & organic produce; cut pasta and simple carbs; spaghetti squash instead of pasta. Movement Ease back in Increase variety after a hard work week. Walk first, short run, ramp up. Strength at 12–20 reps to near failure — endurance over max load. Sleep 7+ hrs · 5 days Continue the seven-plus-hour challenge; at most two short nights per week; hold circadian rhythm — no 10–11 a.m. weekend catch-up. Connection Painting, solo Continue the painting challenge — connecting with self also counts. One painting this week: his girlfriend's late dog, chasing a squirrel up a tree. Plastics Fiber swap Continue a 1–2 month rotation to replace polyester clothing with cotton, hemp, bamboo, alpaca, wool — slowly, because it's expensive. Farm→Local store→You Vitamin retention higher Laartz's argument for local: fruit picked pre-ripe and ripened over a 1–2 week transit is a "less effective way of getting vitamins to you," with worse flavor and more contamination points along the way. Eating locally also aligns diet with the growing seasons.10:46 On dressings and dips, the same principle: he makes his own — or skips them — because packaged versions rely on cheap seed oils bought for price, not health. He is not condemning all seed oils, but notes that processed-food companies "are not looking to put the most healthy seed oil in your dressing." Extra virgin olive oil is his preferred base.09:13 Movement gets an ease-in caveat: after several days off, don't jump straight to high-intensity intervals. He also flags what he sees at the gym — heavy kettlebell "elephant swings" done badly, and older lifters who look muscular but, he suspects, carry intramuscular fat — "their bicep would surely look like a prime rib." The takeaway: moderate weight, 12–20 reps, muscular endurance, fewer injuries. Weekly sleep pattern he's tracking By the time a patient is angry about a heart-healthy tray at breakfast, he says, meaningful nutrition education is essentially gone for that moment. As an infectious-disease physician he isn't the ideal messenger about microbiome and diet, but he teaches whoever seems open to it. Two voices Lartz heard this week "Change my diet — I don't want this heart-healthy food. "Typical · heard 3–4 times last week Add, Don't Subtract Vision ＋ Action ＝ Direction·Add healthy→Auto-subtract unhealthy Two lines recur across the episode. First: action without vision has no direction, so name why you want to be healthy — for a grandchild, for a son turning 18, for a future you want to reach. Second: the podcast's working adage — if you add healthy things, they automatically crowd out some of the unhealthy. Bring the carrots and hummus to the tailgate; the chips don't have to leave, they just get less shelf. He closes by treating the week's small failures the same way. A brutal clinic week meant missed intentions and worse sleep scores; his instruction to himself is to notice them, track them, and refuse to dwell — "take the big wins, but take the few small losses and don't dwell on them."34:03 12–20 reps, near failure at lower weight — less injury, longer runway. Looks strong; Lartz suspects fat marbling and higher injury risk with heavy kettlebell swings. Lartz's own metaphor, made visual: he wants muscle that looks like the plain cut on the left, not the marbled cut on the right — a preference for endurance-loaded, lower-weight strength work over ego lifts. Next in the series: Week 25 (a Sunday Science episode), then a Week 26 half-year milestone that he plans to mark in Aspen. Source's own disclaimer, retained: this content is not medical advice and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Consult your own physician, therapist, or nutritionist before applying any diet, exercise, or product discussed. 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