Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com.
Today I've got special guest Nick Weary on the line.
He is a competitive eater and he is absolutely killing.
I've never had a competitive eater athlete on the podcast.
So super interesting story, super interesting sport.
He was a competitive bodybuilder initially and then from that
that catalyzed him into becoming a competitive eater.
He's been doing that for seven plus years.
He just got none eating like the tremendous insane amount of hot
dogs. He's got a blueberry eating
contest coming up. He's eaten 70 plus Bratwurst,
you know, multiple doughnuts, cream pie, all kinds of crazy
stuff, but kind of diving into what got him into that sport,
how that sport is conducted, how he trains and prepares for that.
Talk a little bit about metabolism, talk a little bit
about hunger and satiety signalling.
Very interesting conversation, very thought provoking, very
insightful. I've got no doubt he will take
something from this and the world of competitive eating.
So without further delay, sit back, relax, enjoy the
conversation with Nick and we're live.
Nick, how are you, brother? Can't complain man, I have a
pretty good day so far. Just kind of getting over
Nathan's on the 4th and just ready to move on to the next
contest. Love it.
I love it. Well, I have had people from all
different competitive backgrounds on the podcast,
Bodybuilders, endurance athletes.
But you are the first competitive eater I've had on
the podcast. So what is that exactly?
So I travel all over the United States and the world, I guess,
you know, just doing different eating contests, typically
between 6:00 and 12:00 minutes occasionally like charitable
components and, and things like that.
And basically we'll line up food of choice.
Like for example this weekend will be blueberries in 5 LB
bowls and see who can finish the most blueberries in eight
minutes. For example this weekend.
So I'm assuming that'll probably be somewhere between 13 to 20
lbs will be the winner this weekend.
That's insane, man. So what I want to get, you know,
all the nuts and bolts uncovered here because this is all new to
me, but what, what compelled you to go the route of competitive
in that what, what is the catalyst for that sport of
choice? Oh, that's tough.
And I think everybody, we always joke around that like you don't
find competitive eating, it finds you.
I think it's kind of like if you're 6 foot 10, somebody's
going to put you on a basketball court, you know.
So for me, I was a competitive bodybuilder for about 10-11
years, you know, and, and my body weight went from starting
around 162 all the way up to around 24242.
My heaviest wasn't pretty 242, but I was up there and you know,
to to gain that 80 ish pounds obviously took a a good amount
of food and increasing appetite and food capacity.
So after I stopped bodybuilding, or at least competitively, my
appetite kind of became a running joke amongst my friends
and and they're like, hey, dude, what is wrong with you?
And they're like, what do you mean?
You know, I didn't realize and they encouraged me to enter with
a punch key eating contest, like pull a Shelly Donuts around Fat
Tuesday. And I said no.
And they said, but you can win money.
You get free Donuts and they're raising money for a sick little
girl. And I'm like, OK, I'm in, I'm
in. And I went and and I won
handily. And then things just kind of
spiraled from there because like, I love winning.
I like money and I also like free food and I love raising
money for charity. So it was, it was a nice, you
know, perfect storm. No totally man.
So, so you and I have the the bodybuilding background as
common ground there. And as most bodybuilders would
know, like when you get down in a prep and you're depleted, your
body fat slow, your leptin and ground hormones are all kinds of
jacked up. When you come out of that prep,
you're pretty much insatiable. Like I can put down 10,000
calories on a whim, no big deal post competition.
And you're pretty much doing that outside of competitive
season, which is, that's what I kind of want to figure out
'cause like when you're in a bodybuilder prep, I mean, that
just kind of comes to the territory.
There's, there's significantly more bodybuilders with some form
of disorder eating than not. I would say would probably
agree. Oh yeah, Oh yeah, 100%.
You know, especially, you know, male and female side of things,
depending on coaches, cause some coaches, you know, you, I'm sure
you've seen it. We've all seen it.
They don't care. They're going to get you lean
one way or another. And by the time you get out of
that prep, a lot of people, I know it's still looked as a
theory, but believe in body fat's that point theory.
So you spend the majority of your adult life around a similar
body fat percentage. If you're not, you know,
competitive. And once you get fairly out of
that, away from that, your, your body can actually block like
satiety signals, you know, particularly when you're super
lean, you know, so I, I know coming out of my prep, my last
show was, I want to say 2018 Garden States.
And I, you would eat almost to the point of you're not even
aware you're eating, you're just doing it.
And all of a sudden you realize, like, oh, I just ate a 4 LB bag
of bird's eye, you know, broccoli to go along with my
full pound of chicken breast. And then I ate like 2 quarts of
ice cream. And you're, you're almost like
come to after that. And, and that was kind of my, my
realization that my appetite had become insane.
My capacity had gone up. So what I did realize when I got
into competitive eating, like how am I going to maintain this?
I don't want to say appetite because it's not all about
appetite, but the ability to eat is I stay relatively lean year
round. You know, I don't have as many
fluctuations as I used to have when I was competing.
I was, there was pretty, pretty high fluctuations there.
I would say other people would say I'm probably around like,
you know, 10%. I'd say I'm close to like 12,
but they kind of it, it depends on, on the week and, and once I
get closer to Nathan's, I probably get closer to single
digits, you know, maybe, maybe 9-8 and a half nine.
And and as you know, if you if you're sticking in single
digits, you're going to be pretty hungry most of the time.
So before you started competitive eating from like a
caloric standpoint, like what would be your, you know,
building phase calories? How low would you take those
into prep? Like what were what were some of
those numbers looking like? So when I was when I was
competing, I was always way more aggressive with myself and
experimental than I would be with clients when I was prepping
them because it was kind of like I could, I didn't feel bad
about, you know, forcing calories or depleting calories.
I would do it in a much healthier manner.
So I don't condone any of this behavior.
Just preface, my calories would get a low, probably below 1500
by the end of a prep. And that when I say below 1500,
I mean it's below 1500. I'm still doing cardio.
I competed NPC, so I was including things, you know,
extracurricular to, to burn extra calories, whether that be
high mass caffeine, ephedra, clenbuterol, what have you never
used thyroid hormone or anything like that to, to shut that down.
But you know, and then over the counter things like grains of
paradise and yo him buying HCLI would I would do upwards of like
15 to 20 milligrams a day, you know, so I was, I remember being
freezing cold in my basement, pouring sweat on the bike, but
I'm freezing cold, you know, so it was like I probably overdid
it because I would do my own prep because I'm too, I never
trusted anybody to do the press. So I always did it myself.
So they probably below 1500 by the end, probably 12 to 1400,
which again, if you're an adult male, you probably don't need to
get to that point. But I want to be inside out at
the bowl at the peak of a quilt bulk, which the 242 is kind of
sloppy. I, I could walk around the two
20s relatively lean to maintain around 220, probably around 4600
calories, 4700 calories 'cause I was also pretty active and
mostly from, you know, I'm not a huge fan of the term, but clean
food sources. So traditional bodyguing foods
like oatmeal, rice, chicken, eggs, a lot of those things,
predominantly chicken 'cause I was always cheap, trying to save
money, not a lot of beef and stuff.
And I was competing. And what I would do was days I
would train, my carbohydrates would be upwards of 600, seven,
100 grams. And protein probably somewhere
closer to like 250 to 300, depending on the day.
And then fats would be relatively trace for that
amount, talking like 50 grams, right?
60 grams, which like as you know, when you're putting
together that many carbohydrates and proteins, that basically
means you're incorporating no fats into your diet because
that's just trace fat that are adding up there.
And then days I wouldn't train. So like, let's say two days a
week typically and an offseason, my fats would go upwards like
100 to 120 grams. I would have no starchy
carbohydrates, only from the veg that would be included, and my
protein would stay consistent. But I had pretty high
fluctuations. And what I found was I felt much
better 'cause when I tried to just do high carbohydrates and
low fats, very quickly my body turned on me.
I was like, yeah, dude, we need hormonal balance.
This is not OK, you know? So it was not a good idea, but
it was. I was always kind of very
aggressive with my experimenting with myself, but it it, I guess
I could say it paid off in the long run.
Yeah. And from like a a sheer food
volume standpoint, like if you're eating 6-7 hundred, 800
grams of carbohydrates, like that's a lot of food volume.
Like I could put down, you know, 4555 hundred calories relatively
easily from fats and proteins. But if I'm taking in 75% of my
calories coming from fats, that's not near as much actual
food volume as what you're getting.
Yeah, yeah, because when it because like, you know, an
average breakfast when because people a lot of times I know
like particularly pro bodybuilders with a lot of in
the social media age, people like to buffer what they eat and
say, oh, I can eat 25,000 calories.
I could. None of them do for the most
part, like having eaten that many calories in one sitting.
I can tell you right now, I don't believe there's an IFBD
pro in the world that could eat 25,000 calories without
carefully planning it out and recording it with jump cuts.
You know, that's that's way too much food for most normal
humans. But yeah, like the oatmeal
alone, you know, if you're doing 2 cups dry, that is a boatload
of oatmeal once it's cooked, or like 3 cups cooked of rice along
with eight ounces of chicken. Most people just don't have the
capacity to do things like that. So what ended up usually
happening is I was taking in 600 grams of carbohydrates.
I typically ate 6:00-ish times a day.
If you include shakes around my training, probably 350 of those
would be in the peri workout window, 350 to 400.
So I was pretty aggressive with that window, not because I was,
I wasn't on exogenous things to kind of, you know like insulin
or anything like that to drive those.
But what I would do was I just had a very high belief in the
nutrient repartitioning effect around training and believed I'd
be the most efficient. And then I would kind of book at
the end of my day a high carbohydrate day.
If I had fats that didn't need to be traced, that's when they
would be in the carbohydrates would would drop just to not
really because I'm like, oh, you're going to store them
because it's night time. More so just to get my pancreas
and break from the beating that it's been taking all day.
No totally man makes total sense.
So when you when you stopped competing or after these shows
and your friends were compelling you to do a, a competitive
eating contest, like do you think that you were struggling
with some form of disorder eating and then the competitive
eating was a way to leverage that to your benefit or what was
the the psychology behind that? I think it was the, the eating
becomes disordered. I think it, I don't want to say
it has to, that sounds terrible. But when bodybuilding gets to an
extreme and you're pushing, you know, my body weight was 33%
above what it was when I graduated high school.
When you start doing those things and you're trying to do
things, whether you're natural or enhanced, like let's just say
super physiologically, things your body doesn't want to do,
basically, I think your behaviors need to be disordered
and that sounds terrible. You know, and I think a lot of
competitors be like, no, they don't.
It's like, well, look at anything done at a really high
level or attempted to be done at a really high level, whether
that's business or athletics or what have you.
Those people typically aren't socially super normal, you know,
because you have to change. I think that's why sidebar, I
think that's why Michael Jordan will be looked at as a, a better
winner than LeBron James or maybe a better basketball
player, because I don't think LeBron is a killer and a bad
human being. Or then Michael, like compared
to Michael Jordan, you know, I think he's, I think he loves his
kids. I think he loves his wife.
I think he wants to be involved with his with his friends and
his family. And I think that makes him
lesser on the court, to be honest, which sounds weird and
terrible. But so for me, yeah, it was
probably slightly disordered in my behaviors, whether it was
just obsessing about the next meal or I was probably sleeping
on average 3 1/2 to four hours a night, tops.
Some garbage sleep. And some of that came with the
weight and some of that came with other things.
So if you're awake 20 hours and you're constantly pretty lean.
And I remember coming out of a few preps and I had buddies that
were like, dude, you need to put body fat on.
You need to start gaining weight.
And I'm like, no, no, no, 'cause like once you, once you can
grate cheese on your glutes, you don't want any fat back there.
After a while, it's really hard to accept that, you know, was
for me. So I think the competitive
eating was mainly just, I think it was a byproduct of that.
And also I'd played baseball competitively.
I'd done bodybuilding a long time competitively.
It was like my first love. And now all of a sudden I was, I
had a little bit of a gift at something, you know, I didn't
have a great genetic predisposal for bodybuilding.
I was very vascular, kind of gross looking, but I wasn't
going to, I wasn't going to be winning nationals.
And I was good at it and I could make money instead of spending
money and I could still spend time with my kids and be dad.
And, and that was actually the biggest transition was I
realized bodybuilding was taking away and I, I couldn't really do
that anymore because my middle one, my now six year old was
right around one. My daughter was right around 4.
And I'm like, OK, I need to be around for a while.
And, and this allowed me to do that.
So yeah, I think, I think it's, it was a different transition,
but somehow, somehow it worked. No, it's super cool man.
And your wife does it with you too, right?
Yeah, she's so behind me in the dining room there are 10 giant
pink belts cuz she is now after this weekend, the ten time
Nathan's hot dog eating champion.
So she broke her own record and aged 51 in 10 minutes.
And yeah, so she's she's ranked, I believe 4th, 4th or 5th in the
world. Yeah, Pretty, pretty insane.
Very, very good. That's also a nice thing that we
can kind of, we can do this together and you know, still be
the just a very strange family. No, totally, man.
So, so when it comes to competitive eating, like I want
to understand the actual nuts and bolts because like I can eat
a lot of food. I think it comes to territory as
a bodybuilder and I I look at why I'm hungry, what the tide
is, things of that nature. But like from a competitive
eating standpoint, like I'm sure there's a freaking science
behind it, just like there is a bodybuilding.
So like, what is the prep protocol?
What is the goal? Like when you're preparing for a
a meat or a, what is it even called?
The contest, I guess. Yeah, just contest.
Just contest like what? What does the the prep work
leading up to that consistent? I would assume that you'd want
to to dip into some form of deficit, but at the same time
you kind of want to condition your digestive tract to be able
to withstand a bolus of food. Like how does that look like?
Yeah, so it's a, it's a tough balance, I'm not going to lie,
because like obviously the day of a contest, if I'm going to
eat 70 bratwursts, you're probably looking at, you know,
somewhere between 10 and 14,000 calories depending on the brand.
And do you can't really, what I learned very quickly is my super
high carbohydrate diet and very low fat diet wasn't going to
work because I believe I can almost guarantee that my life
based production was down after a lot of my bodybuilding because
I would get reflux even just eating the most basic of
digestible fats like avocado or peanut butters.
And I had to kind of slowly almost reverse diet fats back
into my diet. And that wasn't going to work if
you ate 70 drops worse and something like that.
So that's part of it. And then the other part is like
most days where at around 190 lbs right now, I could maintain
probably at around 2800 to three, probably 3000 calories.
I would maintain my weight if I wasn't going to have the insane
surpluses. So most days I'd probably end up
closer to 2500 with a practice every, let's say 10:00-ish days,
you know? So then I'm creating a 45145
hundred to maybe 7500 calorie deficit just via diet.
And then occasionally I'll up my cardio going in or after a
contest. Now obviously it's slightly
leaner. I'll try to remove some of that
subcutaneous layer of fat because that kind of allows my
stomach to expand a little bit better and I'll feel a little
bit better. And then I won't have to quote
worry about the caloric surplus that I'm going to get battered
with in the contest. And the practice will pretty
much be practice like you play. So in the case of Donuts, for
example, we'll do five Donuts to a plate and I try to get ones
that are, you know, gram for gram, similar to ones we're
going to get in the contest with the plates out.
I'm going to put 5060 Donuts out, set the time on the clock.
It's going to be for the contest or even maybe a little bit extra
time so I can try to push through and then set up my, if
it's a dunking contest, my dunking liquids.
If it's not set up my drinking liquids and put some time in the
clock and go, you know, it's it's and then maybe watch the
footage back to see, OK, why was I slow or what went well, what
was efficient? So for some people that might be
swallowing larger pieces of food.
For some people that maybe you use too much fluid and you took
up too much real estate in the actual bag that is your stomach.
For some people, it may be you just didn't keep your hands
moving. So appetite is a part of it.
But The thing is, you're not going to want doughnut #60 you
know, if you've already had 59. So appetite's not the biggest
thing. The biggest thing I think is
capacity for discomfort. I think it's huge.
Ignoring flavor fatigue, I think it's enormous.
And then just who's the best prepared And, and there's, there
is somewhat of a progressive overload aspect to it.
So the first time I ever did brats, I think I did 43.
And the next time I was in the 50s and the next time it was 70
and and that just came from overtime doing more and more
contest. That bag has to extend if you if
you keep pushing it, you know, to to its limits.
So there there is some similar stuff to a progressive overload
style training. So to be.
No, that makes total sense. So you're you're trying to
operate at a relative caloric deficit with these training high
days every 10 days or so to keep that kind of in your system and
you're doing an actual competition how frequently?
It's tough because you're like December, January, February, we
might have like 3 total, you know, one a month or that once
you get into April through by September we could have as many
as like three or four in a month.
Usually I'd say it's close to like two a month.
I I probably end up doing maybe 20 to 24 a year.
Wow, that's crazy, man. And like as, as you and I both,
there's not really money in bodybuilding unless you're like
on the upper echelon there. Is there money like can you make
a living competitive eating? Is that a thing?
You can so like my wife, for example, she's been fortunate
enough where it's been her, you know, primary source, you know,
if you come and she'd be able to like a living at it myself.
It's a side source, you know. But with that said, I, I, I
could tell you right now, I never thought I would have made
the money I make off of eating food and stuff like that.
And then you get some really cool stuff too.
Like I was in Thailand last year, getting paid to be in
Thailand for a week or went to Milan, Italy for this or, or
Toronto. And you're like, is this real
life? Like, is this really, you know,
happening right now? I know in bodybuilding no one's
ever like, we're going to fly out to Thailand.
Is it in for me? So it's I've been super
fortunate to, to raise a ton of money for charity to get paid to
do this. You know, your average contest
winnings, if you're the winner, usually like top six get paid,
you're going to be anywhere between 2010 thousand for the
winner. And then kind of it kind of
halves all the way down. And then sometimes you get
appearance fees or some people have sponsors.
We're almost like our own, you know, NASCAR or independent
contractor, so to speak. So so a lot of it's outside of
that. It's why I think why a lot of
people have like their YouTube channels and what have you,
because that's a different Ave. to maybe maybe competition is in
your thing. Maybe you'd rather go eat a lot,
but slowly so you don't have to go as fast or or whatever.
So there are a few different avenues you can make money.
No, very cool, man, very cool. So it comes like the different
types of foods, like independent of the actual competitions or
training days in which you're eating the food that you're
going to be consuming at the competition.
What is your normal daily intake?
Is it like like as far as types of foods goes, is it more like
low carb? Is it more like a mixed diet?
Like what is your? What do you gravitate too
naturally? So now it's, it's much, much,
much lower carbohydrates than it was.
I never really had issues. Like people always thought that
the carbohydrates are super high.
You're like, oh, what's your like, you know, resting blood
glucose or like when you wake up and what have you.
I've I've never even tested over 100, You know, which obviously
it starts to get into danger zone, but you would think
somebody just battering 700 grams of carbs of hydra, grams
of carbs a day would have gotten up there.
But I think staying lean definitely helps that staying
active. But for the most part, like my
breakfast will typically be like 15 grams of veggie protein, like
vegetarian from like pee and rice, 20 grams of whey isolate
and two old pasteurized eggs, not mixed together obviously,
but like something like that. And then usually like 3 to 4G of
fish oil. So basically no carbohydrates
other than a greens powder that I'll mix in the protein shakes,
about negligible 3 grams of carbohydrates, something like
that in there. And then ashwagandha, rhodiola,
few other supplements like that, saffron and you just try to have
a pretty nutrient dense breakfast.
And then throughout the day I'll typically do another way.
I select shake. It'll typically have some type
of nut butter. I really like sesame butter.
I just love the flavor. And my I, I started getting it
because they wouldn't let peanut butter in my kids daycare
because of allergies. And I'm like, so I got that
they'd allow it and I'm like, wow, this is really good.
This taste really good. So I started just stealing that
from the kids stash with something like that, a way I
slit shake and one other meal during the day will typically be
like 8 to 10 ounces of chicken breast and a whole avocado.
And then breakfast will typically be or excuse me,
dinner will typically be maybe like a pound of grass fed beef
or bison. I really, really like when I can
find it on sale like a game meets.
I'm a huge fan of the leanness of that will vary.
If I get a super lean cut and it was a training day or a yeah
training day, I might incorporate carbohydrates there.
It's a non training day. I'll typically use a fattier cut
and incorporate like some spinach or something cooked into
the side or just throw it in the blender and drink it and that's
and then another dose of fish oil.
I like to do pretty heavy doses of Omega threes and then some
more supplements on a training day.
The way that's going to change is basically take the eggs out
of the morning breakfast and have grits or cream or rice,
maybe 30 to 50 grams intra workout carbohydrate.
It's from like a carbolin or a something of that nature.
Some type of easy to digest. Like I never did well with the
tar go, but I was kind of set heavy with me in dextrose.
I feel it on my teeth and excuse me now and then EA as and
creatine monohydrate. Then I'll do like a good amount
of whatever the warm cereal is, post workout cream, rice grits
pretty and then pretty much everything stays the same
throughout the rest of the day. Maybe you know, the shake with
peanut butter, maybe another whatever.
But so the biggest difference is basically the calories from fat
will be replaced with a slightly more calories and they'll be
replaced with carbohydrates on training days.
So really I train probably four days a week now, like weight
train. So three days a week, my
carbohydrates are easily sub 100 grams by sub 60 grams most days.
And then four days a week my carbohydrates are probably only
about 200, which I understand that's not only to some people,
but for me, you know? And and it takes a good amount
of restriction too, because bear in mind somebody can fit 20 lbs
of something one time that does 200 grams of carbohydrates don't
go a long way. Satiating me like I'm almost
never satiated during the week. Normally until it gets closer to
a training day it then it's just very very hungry all the time.
Yeah. I mean, I would imagine
especially with you being as lean as you are, like you're,
you're probably producing a pretty significant degree of
ketones on your your off days from training when the carbs are
super low. So I would imagine you're you're
the body's fat metabolism is relatively on par with someone
that's following a pretty well ketogenic diet.
When you eat like that and then you crash 50 plus Donuts, you
know like is that is that causing any massive GI distress
for you? Yeah, but I, I think I'm, I, I
would like to see like a study done.
I would love to go into like a, some type of university and, and
kind of be a test monkey, so to speak and see like what happens
with me compared to obviously you can't have a regular person
eat 60 moon pies. But I would like to be able to
check like, OK, when we gave a regular person this much food
versus when we gave Nick this much food.
How fast is like gastric emptying?
What's the hormone production? What's the enzyme production?
Because I imagine I have to imagine doing this for seven
years, I've formed some form of adaptation to that discomfort or
even like my body is, it's not as foreign to my body to dump
in, you know, 200 chicken wings or something of that nature.
So there's definitely some discomfort.
Some foods are worse than others.
Sweets can be pretty rough. Just your body can't produce
basically enough insulin if you eat 9 1/2 lbs of fudge and or
something like that, salty or savoury or fatty food, so to
speak, they can be a little bit more rough just like reflux wise
and what have you. And it's they're probably,
they're definitely a little bit harder for your body to break
down like the meaty foods. But I think varying my diet and
I take a pretty, pretty decently dosed prebiotic and probiotic
supplement and enzymes around my contest and stuff.
And then so I think keeping my GI track healthy and efficient
is super duper important. That's, that's basically like
doing oil changes in a car for, for a NASCAR driver or something
like that. Do you feel like?
Like do you go train like weight train the day after a contest or
like and if you do you notice like just typically pumps?
Yeah, typically I will, depending on the contest, if
it's a heavy meat contest, I'll typically do slightly more
cardio and I'll, I'll, I'll weight train.
But it's what I would refer to just pushing blood around almost
like, you know, the day after a body blink show you're like you
don't want to tear something. So because typically that's
still kind of sitting in my GI tract and pumps are OK.
I just more so feel bloated because there's so much blood
flow in my GI tract now after like Donuts, like 61 Donuts in
DC and about 30 hours later, like later in the day, the next
day I went and trained and I felt like I was going to burst,
you know, like that was that was a pump and a half in, in my
face, in my hands, you know, everything like really good
forearm pumps. So, so yeah, some days it's
really, really solid. But but I've kind of just
learned for me, there's always experimenting and what have you.
So like this year I did some experimenting and going into a
podcast, like how can I be not starving so that I can be
efficient at the table? Because I still, it's crazy.
What we do is you're still pushing your body to the limit
for 6:00 to 12:00 minutes at a time.
And if you don't have any calories in there and you're
completely faster, you have no electrolytes.
Like things are not going to go well.
Because I've tried, I've tried it.
It's just not. So it's one of those things
where, like you go to, you can feel yourself going slow and
you're like, and here we go and go fast and your body's like,
yeah, dude, no, I don't want to play.
And so that's actually this year where I started incorporating
kind of keto bricks into the mix.
And they really like kind of how things have been going.
Yeah, like I said, I mean, I've talked to people from all
different competitive backgrounds.
I know people that use the bricks for all different
competitive backgrounds, but when I, I don't even know how we
got in contact, I guess to Instagram initially and you were
using the bricks in preparation for these contests.
And I never in a million years would have imagined that being a
use case scenario. So like how, how do you do that?
Like what's? What's been the benefit there?
So for me it's, it's like I want a decent amount of calories and
I want my electrolytes and I also want to maintain mental
focus, but basically have a virtually empty GI tract.
That's my goal. And that's a really tough
balance because it kind of doesn't add up.
So for a long time, all that what I would do is about 24
hours out, give or take, I would drink some mag citrate, make
sure everybody leaves the GI tract.
And then I would kind of live on, you know, Gatorades, coconut
waters, things of that nature. And I'd absolutely love coconut
water, especially like I think harmless hardest and and there's
one more brand like those are insanely good.
Coco Joy. That's the other one.
I absolutely love it. But two things.
If you drink a ton of coconut water, it leaves as fast as it
goes in A&B, your blood sugar doesn't balance out great.
If you're doing it for 24 hours, you kind of get a good amount of
peaks of valleys and in which case your focus is typically not
as good as it should be. So I'm like, OK, how do I find
that balance to where everything in my brain is firing
efficiently, but I still have, I can maintain electrolyte balance
and all that. And I, I think I came across
them because Dominic d'agostino had posted and huge fan of DOMS.
Just as a human being, he's phenomenal and just he's
insanely in hell yeah, dude's insane.
Like he's the nicest guy ever, most soft spoken guy I've ever
seen just go over and like a rip 675 off the ground like it's a
toy and a pair of jeans and like a button down T-shirt.
Yeah, yeah, you know, Oh, OK, you're you're superhuman.
But he's I'm like, OK, if Dom recommends it, this is not going
to be a guy who's going to just like chill Prada and whatever.
It's because he truly believes in it.
So I'm like, let me give these a shot.
Ordered a few, I think the first one I ordered was the steak
shake one, the Mark Bell one. You know, I guess it's super
interesting. I love the idea of some organ
meats and stuff in there. And I got it and I'm like, OK,
firstly, this tastes awesome because I wasn't sure what to
expect. I'm like, is this going to taste
like I'm eating, you know, like Palmer's cocoa butter like this
is really good. And I found is like, I could
still, I, I still will drink maybe a, I'll take like mag
citrate or magnesium glycinate. It just powdered now in a
smaller, a much smaller dose. And I could do that maybe that
let's say I was doing hot dogs at noon the next day, the night
before, I could have maybe 20% of a brick.
So get a couple 100 calories before I go to bed, wake up,
still have a reasonable like bowel movement.
And then I'll even melt like maybe a 10th of a brick, give or
take. Obviously I'm not measuring it
out, but pretty damn close into my cough that I have in the
morning and it just melts into the coffee And that flavour
melted into coffee is like ridiculous.
So good melts into the coffee drink that.
And basically, obviously it's going to take up some form of
room because that oil is going to slightly re solidify, you
know, as it goes through. But almost no room in my GI
tract. And what I found is the ounce of
space that maybe it takes up in my, in my intestine or my colon,
the trade off to the mental focus I got the first time and
not feeling like there's nothing in the tank.
I felt faster, I felt more focused.
And then, and again, if we listening to this, I'm not
saying that there's something magic in the keto brick.
I'm saying it just fit perfectly for what I was trying to do
because it it, it gave me that energy and it gave me, I still
could have some like sodium, potassium, magnesium coursing
through me and not feel like, OK, I woke up at 5:30 in the
morning with my 2 year old. I'm dying by noon and want to
rip someone's head off, but not in a positive competitive way
like that. So it's just been, it's been
awesome for that. It's just that I, and I never
would have expected it because obviously fats are going to
process slightly slower than than carbohydrates.
So the way I always thought is like how fast can they get
something through my system? So it was always, you know, way
isolates EA as and I still incorporate EA as basically with
some electrolytes as I sip on them.
But by doing this, my insulin level staying steady just seems
to put me in a much better mind state, almost even more
important than ones doing physically at which obviously
important mentally I feel much better and much clearer going
into the contest. So you're literally having less
than half a brick 24 hours prior to the contest.
And that's the use case scenario for you to kind of prime the
pump, so to speak, but give you the electrolytes and just some
form of easily digestible fat source that's given your brain
and your body kind of like a primer for what's about to come.
Yeah, I would say depending on the contest and what I'm going
to do, like if it's what I would refer to as a non full capacity
contest, like I know I'm not going to need all my my real
estate. I'll probably do closer to a
whole brick and it's somewhere between half and a whole brick,
probably where it's going to fall depending on how late in
the day I'm going if we're traveling the contest itself.
But just I just feel much better mentally.
It, it just, it just pans out for me to be able to have that
fuel that's not taking up any space.
So for me, it's been absolutely phenomenal.
And then it's if my 6 year old and my 6 year old is a string
being the kid eats constantly. The string being, it's also just
been a great tool for him because he thinks he's basically
effectively getting a chocolate bar.
And I'm just giving the kids some healthy sources of fats
and, you know, trace proteins and carbohydrates.
And he's just psyched. So I'm like, OK, dude, perfect.
You know, so he he uses it for different purposes, but but for
me it's been been awesome in the prep itself.
No. Very cool, man.
Very cool. Yeah, I feel like they from,
from a competitive eating standpoint, I'd be curious to
see the bricks be used as the item to consume.
I mean, when it comes to food sources, I mean, you talk about
blueberries here coming up, you talk about the hot dogs, the
Bratwurst. Like what what is the, what is
the, the most challenging component?
Is it just like the total calories or the volume?
Like what? Cause like obviously the
blueberries are gonna have significantly less calories in
the Bratwurst, but quite a bit more volume.
So like, how do you kind of you know what, what, what is harder?
That's tough. You know, I think it depends on
the person. Everyone's got different
strengths and weaknesses, but I from what I've seen, there
hasn't really been studies done on competitive eaters because
we're kind of a pretty niche group.
But I would say there's some down regulation of receptors
that sense calorie load because they're almost has to versus
like mechano receptors will always fire, but we kind of
you're trained to fight against that.
But those receptors that sense space, they they are eventually
going to go slow down, slow down, slow down.
OK, no room, you know, but the ones that sense calorie load,
obviously after I've eaten 10 hot dogs and I'm 3000 calories
deep, there's no reason for me to eat more, but I still got to
try to pack another 40 or 50 in there.
So I would say it's, it's really about space.
Total space is probably the most challenging.
Sometimes it's like obviously it's chicken wings or ribs.
That's very much technique, figuring out how you can de meat
a rib or chicken wing the fastest.
But for, for other foods like brats or fudge or, you know,
poutine we're going to be doing in Toronto next month.
It's really about how fast can you get the food down and how
well can you tolerate it. Because like when I first
started, I could probably fit about, I'd say about 8 lbs with
my top capacity. Now I'd say it's close to like
18 to 20, probably top capacity depending on the density of the
food. That's insane, man.
I mean, like, from a sheer calorie standpoint, it'd be
crazy to see like a competition done on bricks because that's
obviously not near such volume. But I mean the 1000 calories per
brick. How many bricks do you think you
can eat in the sitting? Oh man, they're like a little
over 5 oz, probably 3 pounds, maybe something maybe like 4045
or something like that for my body to start.
Filing calories in a sitting man that would be that's.
True. Way too many.
It'd be way too many. Yeah.
I think my body may start to fight me ahead of that when my
enzyme production is like, you know, you know, when you're in a
submarine, like those movies where the red lights are going
off, like we, we. That probably would happen
before that. It's crazy because like there's
been a few people that have tried to do like bricks only for
like a week or something. And I've never condoned that.
Like I'm like, it's, it's in addition to a quality meat
source is how I've always advocated for it.
But like, I would be curious to see you eat 45 bricks in a
sitting. And I, I wouldn't recommend
people do that. But I mean, I would pay to see
that, you know? Oh dude, yeah, that'd be it.
Would definitely be interesting. I know when I did like the 9 1/2
lbs of fudge, my body was not psyched because I also use
coffee as my drinking liquid because it was bitter and I
didn't want more sweet. So it kind of it helps with the
flavor fatigue. I'll use bitter stuff against
sweets and I'll use sweet stuff against like salty.
And basically what that ended up being was like probably half a
gallon of coffee to go along with 9 1/2 lbs of fudge.
You can imagine my body was a little confused on what to do
next. So do you get to pick your own
drink like you get to pick whatever you want?
Yeah. Yeah, you can put pretty much
any any beverage of choice you can use for for the contest.
And I would imagine like for me, if I'm going to get a ton of
food, like when I come out of my preps, like I typically go to a
Brazilian steakhouse as my celebratory meal, 'cause it's
what I found after my first competition.
I lost 80 lbs in 12 weeks for that show and I went to Red
Lobster. This was before I was keto and I
literally put on 20 lbs overnight.
I just binged on everything. I didn't know what a rebound
was. I was clueless.
But since then and since being keto, like I've always defaulted
to going to Brazilian Steakhouse as my last show's celebratory
meal. And I've had that I could eat
like, I mean, I could eat like this last one.
I tracked everything. I ate 8000 calories, 7700
calories after that last show and I lost weight the next day,
which was trippy, you know? But like the, the types of foods
make such a drastic impact on the types of flu retention you
can expect, etcetera, etcetera. But I would imagine like when
I'm eating like that, I don't typically drink a lot of fluid.
Like I like to just consume, you know, food.
And I would imagine if you're eating, you know, 70 brats, if
you're drinking a lot of fluid as well, like there's like a, a
tipping point there in which you got to have enough lubrication,
I'm, I'm assuming to wash everything down.
But if you drink too much, like you're just defeating the
purpose. Yeah.
No, man, it's it's tough man, because you want to be able to
do minimum amount of fluid possible in order to to get
everything down because you want to save your real estate.
Gotcha. OK, that makes sense.
That makes sense. Does some people like some
people do this, like some competitors that you're amongst,
like they purge after these massive intakes or do they keep
it all down? I mean, I can't speak for other
people. I know personally, that's not my
thing because I don't want to like kind of breathe that
reflex, you know, over time because your body will be like,
Oh, I know how to feel better and what have you.
And so it's not my deal, but I, I can't speak for everybody, you
know, but I know like for the most part, we, it's a job
hazard. You're going to eat 15,000
calories. You got to deal with the
repercussions, eating, you know, whatever, 60 Moon Pies or what
have you. Man, yeah, I would imagine, I
mean, like, 'cause I used to do that when I was struggling with
disorder eating in, you know, early bodybuilding days.
And it's like you certainly don't want to advocate for that.
You almost just got to like, let your body process it.
But a lot of people too, they are under the assumption that if
you eat, you know, massive bowls of food like that, your body
can't possibly absorb that many calories in one acute setting.
So that's kind of how they justified.
Do you have a, a stance on that? Like if you eat 15,000 calories
in Moon Pies like is your body? I'm sure your pet, Yeah.
No, I'm sure your pet. I mean, you're absorbing it in
the sense that you're going to pass it, but I'm sure you're
going to pass some of it. There's only so much you can
break down at one time, I believe.
Yeah, and that's wild, man. What what's been the the most
challenging food that was chosen for a competition?
Like what's what's the the nightmare food for you?
Spam was pretty tough. Spam out of the can was.
Pretty tough, could you like was it just plain spam can after
can? Oh yeah, yeah, just can after.
I mean, they took it out of the can for us.
It was just spam on a plate. Oh man, that's that's wild man.
What's what's been the best one? Which one do you actually like?
Enjoy the process of. I mean, I love chicken wings.
I love ribs. They're two my favorite
contests. Patios was fun, Bratwurst and
Cincinnati was a lot of fun. I mean, it's it's tough and a
lot of them are fun for different reasons.
You get to experience cultures, you get to meet cool people.
Like it's fun. Very cool, man.
And the one you get coming up is the hot dog one, right?
The Nathan's hot dog. That was July 4th was Nathan's
now I got blueberries July 13th, I got chicken Nuggets on the
26th and then poutine on August 9th.
Is there like how, how much lead time do they give you as far as
like the food that's going to be coming?
It depends like sometimes a couple months, sometimes it's
like a month, sometimes we know like five months in advance.
And it depends on the context, like probably when the you know
when they figure out the logistics.
And this is maybe just, you know, going into the esoteric on
this, but like in in the keto low carb carnivore space, like
there's a lot of there's a lot of fear mongering around certain
foods, which I'm not really an advocate for.
I'm all for people consuming the best quarter they can.
But like right now, you know, seed oils is obviously on
everybody's lips. It's like the freaking next
thing to the demon Satan or something, which is likely grown
out of proportion to some extent.
They're probably some truth to everything, but like when you
consume like a whole bunch of chicken Nuggets, like I'm
assuming these are probably not quality top and high shelf
chicken Nuggets. It's probably like the bottom of
the barrel I'm assuming, right? Oh, it's a Wendy's contest.
So as far as fast food goes, like I love Wendy's like spicy
nugs, you know, they're really good.
These are not going to be non spicy, but but yeah, it depends
on the contest. I do think Wendy's actually uses
white meat chicken in theirs compared to some some places.
So I think as far as fast food goes, we're probably on top of
the top shell. But but yeah, it, it really
depends. Like I said, we we do all these
different contests. And I really think the biggest
thing is, like you said, you don't like to demonize food is
like the habit is more important than the singular source.
Yeah. You know, if, if you're drinking
a bottle of canola oil every day, it's probably going to be a
problem. If you cook your kids brownies
once a month with canola oil or vegetable oil or something like
that, it's likely not going to be an issue because a lot of
times people throwing those things around were like, oh,
canola oil is going to kill you. Are the same people that like
smoke or maybe drink or, or they're fifteen, 2030 lbs
overweight or what have you. So like, I think ultimately it's
just going to be about like total habit.
No, that makes total sense man. I completely agree.
Is it like a specific phenotype that describes most compositions
of competitive leaders? Like most of them are not as
jacked as you right? No, most of them are in probably
average or slightly better than average shape.
You know, there's getting into 6 to 8 used to play college
basketball. There's, you know, Mickey's
super active. My wife, you know, Joey just
kind of looks like a guy and is really active around the
contest. Jeff Esper used to do, I think
he used to do amateur strongman contest.
James Webb played I believe, collegiate soccer.
So there's some people, there's typically some athletes and and
people who are probably slightly above average shape that do it
at a high level. They're probably not that many
obese competitive leaders, I wouldn't think, because then
from like a metabolic standpoint, like you're not
going to really have the appetite in that acute setting,
I wouldn't think. Yeah.
No, no, there's, there's a couple obviously just like
anything, but there's, there's definitely not too, too many.
Very interesting. Well, I'm super intrigued, man.
Is this stuff televised? Like what?
Can I watch you slam a bunch of blueberries?
Yeah, I know there's a the television sometimes like check
out majorleagueeating.com and they'll give you any updates and
things like that. If you're doing live streams and
what have you or people follow people follow me on on Instagram
or any social media thing, just my name, Nick Weary, and I try
to tell those things or if I know if one of the other
competitors is live streaming it, I'll try to share the link.
Very cool, man. Well, I love what you're doing.
I'm I'm super intrigued, but I think it's awesome that you come
from the bodybuilding background.
You've been able to lean into this competitive eating as a
competitive outlet. If there's everything I can do,
man, you just let me know. I'm I'm happy to keep supplying
you bricks because using that in your use case scenarios is just
cool in my opinion. So keep rocking it, brother.
Appreciate you man. Thank you so much.
You bet Nick, have a good man and best of luck.
Yeah, you too later. See you bud.