Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto, savage.com.
And today I'm actually a guest on somebody else's podcast.
So I was. Jonathan Griffiths is a great
guy. I've had him on my podcast in
the past. He is the man behind
compositionconsultant.com and Carnivore Muscle on social and I
had him on my podcast several months back and I thoroughly
enjoyed the conversation. He asked a ton of great
questions or I asked him a ton of great questions and he had a
ton of great answers. And he recently had me on his
podcast to kind of go over my competition prep, kind of my
strategy and protocol around nutrition, training, sleep,
recovery, etcetera, etcetera. And I asked him if I'd be able
to just record that audio as well and publish it as another
stand alone podcast episode on my platform.
So that that is what we did. He graciously agreed to allow me
to do that, and I figured it'd be a great way to point any of
my audience towards his platform as well, because like I said,
he's an incredibly knowledgeable individual and asked a ton of
great questions. So definitely check out his
podcast, his website, him as a person, and what he's doing in
the space. He's an accomplished bodybuilder
in and of his own right, so definitely check that out.
But this podcast recording is him asking me questions on his
podcast, so hopefully you take something from it.
Hopefully I shed some light on some questions you may have had
regarding my prep and hope you enjoy.
Without further delay, let's roll the intro.
Hello guys, welcome back to my channel.
So today I'm here with Mr. Robert Sykes, excellent
ketogenic bodybuilder, an absolute pioneer in the field of
ketogenic bodybuilding. He does have some overlap
actually, in terms of his belief system, in terms of like the
carnivore diet, I'd say from my understanding he is pretty much
a carnivore if we're talking about macro nutrients and
grounds ratios and all that sort of thing.
So it makes sense to me, and I'd just like you to briefly outline
yourself and kind of what you're doing at the moment.
What brought you to the ketogenic slash carnivore
lifestyle? Yeah man.
Well thanks for having me. So I've been doing Keto
Carnivore for the last, I guess eight years now.
Coming up on 9. Not really sure exactly what the
start date was, but I started doing natural bodybuilding back
in 2014. Was my first competition and at
that point I was following just a standard bro diet.
Lots of carbs, lots of protein, moderate fat and that worked
well. I built a lot of size, I started
at 115 lbs. I was the scrawny guy, did not
have the genetics for mass by any means.
So I was following the philosophy of eat big to get
big. I was eating a ton of food all
from processed sub poor quality sources and bulked up to about
230 and on my 5 seven frame that was not a good look.
Lost about 80 lbs for my first show in the course of 12 weeks.
Got shredded but suffered a lot of disordered eating tendencies
after that and that plagued me for several years.
And that's when I started diving into just different ways of
eating and kind of stumbled upon Keto by accident by following
John Kiefer's car back loading approach.
And then just noticed that I felt better without the carbs
entirely. So I started doing car back
loading minus the carbs, which lo and behold is pretty much
keto. And that was I guess some point
in 2000. Shoot, probably 14 or 15.
My first show was 2012, my bad, not 2014.
So I started doing Keto Carnivore 2014 fifteen and kind
of refined and polished it. Since then there wasn't a whole
lot of literature, studies or information at that point, so I
would just kind of trial and error figuring things out as I
went and just got deeper, deeper into it.
Did my first prep with a ketogenic protocol in 2017.
I got my pro card there and then have been competed ever since
following a ketogenic protocol. Just got done doing my 2023
season, got a pro card in a different federation and just
been rocking and rolling with a strict keto approach ever since
man. That's some cool stuff.
There's definitely some parallels between us.
The only difference is I fell off the diet a lot sooner than
you did and I gave in to, you know, the emotional eating and
binge eating tendencies a lot sooner.
So it's tough. There we have it.
And a lot of people like people like don't talk about that, but
like it's so prevalent in competitors.
I mean, honestly, I think more competitors have disorder eating
tendencies than not. But very few people talk about
it. Very few people talk about
reverse dieting. Like those are the dark shadows
and the alleys of the sport that just go unsaid.
But I think the more they're brought to light, the better.
Absolutely, yeah. One guy we both know is Colt
Milton. He had the exact same experience
I did. So, you know, you spend all this
time dieting, your carbs are at like 0, your fat's probably
pretty low anyway, Proteins wherever it's at, and you just
don't feel great. You don't know what to do When
you sort of come out these contest preps, You know, you
sort of feel quite good at the start of the diet because you're
getting rid of a lot of the processed food and that sort of
thing. But it seems to be after the
prep, that's when you start to need to.
You need to really sort of make sure we get back on track sooner
rather than later. So you don't, you know, spill
over and all this sort of stuff. Yeah, it's, it's funny, man.
I mean, my last show this season was in November 19th, I believe
was last show. So I'm five weeks into the
reverse diet now. And in a lot of ways, the
reverse diet is harder than the prep itself because there isn't
that date on the calendar, there's not that show date,
there's not that specific goal that you're striving to.
So it's very easy to allow yourself to, you know, justify
derailing and going off course, and a lot of people struggle
with that. I think it's certainly easier
mitigated with a ketogenic low carb approach because you have
less variables coming in from a blood glucose and insulin
response standpoint. You have less urges to Binge On
sugary, you know, sweet craved foods.
But it's still certainly difficult regardless of the diet
you're following. Absolutely.
Makes perfect sense. You know, for some people it's
actually harder to stick to a diet.
It's got five or six different foods in it, but I find it so
much easier. You know, you're not going down
all those endless aisles in the supermarkets.
You know, the grocery stores are thinking if I put this seasoning
of this sauce and this low carb option is going to do this.
And you know, at the end of the day, it's just processed food.
We're just not eating most of it, really.
So it makes sense. Yeah, I feel like so much of the
issue around the store eating stems from guilt.
And if you are eating foods that you feel guilty about, that kind
of it lends itself to binging and purging tendencies.
Whereas if you're eating food that at the end of the day you
can feel pretty good about, even if you're eating it in excess,
it's still real food. Like your body knows how to
process it much better than it does.
You know, a bunch of Twinkies or something of that nature.
And if there's less guilt associated with the food,
there's less likelihood of relapse to binge and purge on it
again. That makes perfect sense.
Yeah, I understand you produced a product, a keto brick.
I know you've probably been making for a few years now and
you know it is a slightly processed fit.
But if you actually look at the ingredients profile off of it,
it's actually quite innocuous in terms of the detriment to your
health. You know, you got a clean source
of fat, clean source of protein, There's not much added extra
stuff on it you don't need. So how did you come to that
idea? Was it just useful tool to add
into your offseason diet? How did that come about?
Yeah, honestly, man, it was never meant to be a product that
I sold to the market. Like, I made that out of my own
self-interest during my 2017 competition prep because I
wanted a way to hit the ketogenic macro targets I was
striving for, streamline my meal prep, be shelf stable and just
take the guesswork out of it. So I was, you know, formulating
this brick. I made the brick.
I was documenting my prep on YouTube.
People kept asking about it. So I want to just make it into a
product. So it's kind of made to scratch
my own itch so to speak. But yeah, I mean we we do all
the production in house. We have from day one.
We're not using a Co pack or outsourcing any of it.
So I have 100% oversight over the quality and integrity of the
ingredients. We have, you know, grass
finished, grass finished, grass fed, grass finished whey protein
concentrate and some of the flavours.
We do have a vegan protein blend if people want to go that route.
The main ingredient is raw organic cacao butter, which is
the greatest source of stearic acid.
So yeah, I definitely want to minimize the processing and just
put food in the brick. That is in fact real food and it
does great from a satiety signalling standpoint.
From a convenience and portability standpoint, it just
makes meal prep more streamlined.
Absolutely. This makes perfect sense.
Now understand, you've obviously just finished up your Qantas
preparations about 5 weeks ago. I'd kind of like to dig back a
little bit deeper into that. So initially I know as a natural
competitor, a lot of guys, they start competing and actually
start dieting much sooner than a lot of enhanced guys.
So can you sort of take back to how many weeks back or months
back that wasn't what your initial diet was at that point?
Yeah, so I started the prep on April 3rd, I believe was my
official start date. It was 182 lbs and about 15%
body fat and I dieted for 33 weeks was the prep time itself.
So pretty long prep started off with a higher fat ratio at about
80% of my total calories coming from fat.
And the way my protocol works with regards to Prep nutrition
is I'll start off with the high fat ratio at about my
maintenance intake, and then every week I gradually taper my
dietary fat while simultaneously increasing my protein till I'd
establish my unique protein threshold.
From there I start titrating protein and fat down and then
when my calories get pretty low at that point I'll start
introducing ketogenic caloric refeed.
So just a bolus of both fat and protein to kind of help with
metabolism, help make the diet more sustainable and kind of
structure around peaking and doing some trial peak weeks that
brought me up into the weeks of the show.
My first show I believe was the first weekend in September and I
forget what my stage weight was then I believe 159.
And then I just continued that down to that last show on 11:30
and then the whole while manipulating fat and protein.
But carbs stayed very low at about 20 grams total throughout
the day. The types of foods were
consistent throughout. Honestly, when I'm in prep
versus when I'm in a building phase, the types of foods don't
really change, adjust the quantities.
So I pretty much ate a keto brick every single day.
I had eggs pretty much every day and some variation of ground
venison, lamb, bison or elk or beef and just kind of tweaked
the amounts based off of the macro targets, but that was
pretty much the the food types in in consumption.
Absolutely. Yeah, that doesn't make sense as
well. I mean, when we're pretty much
eliminating a whole macro nutrient group, you know, being
carbohydrate for the most part, I can see why there's less to
worry about, less to think about.
So obviously we talk about you know the mass balance model,
macro nutrients, protein, fat that's that's the thing.
There is also the impact of insulin on fat storage.
And I know as well as you know if you're going to sort of go on
a dye and add in say say added 100 grams of carbohydrates that
are drastically throw off your body composition over a period
of time. Although we're physically
active, that's what we're adding in the fat, that's our energy
substrate. So could you like kind of
outline why you find like a ketogenic macronutrient profile
more beneficial for a training performance and perhaps any sort
of mood or satiety benefits? Yeah, I mean the the list is
long on that one man. Like I I I feel blessed to have
done preps with a you know, higher carb approach 'cause I
have that to compare to, but the satiety factor is is a major
one. Like when I'm using fat as my
primary fuel source, I've got my own stored fat to tap into.
I've got my dietary fats tap into.
So there is just a a greater reserve that my body can pull
from. So simply from a satiety
standpoint, I'm not fixated on eating every two or three hours
as I would be if I was consuming carbohydrates.
So by not consuming as frequently, I'm not obsessing
about food as often. So I'll often times transition
to an OMAD approach when my calories get even lower.
And then from a sustainability standpoint, it's just it's one
and done. Like I don't my meals for the
day, I've got it prepped and ready to go.
I have that meal, I enjoy it, but I'm not fixated on food the
rest of the day. So that from a psychological
standpoint is key from a training and performance
standpoint, you know the ketogenic diet, low carb
carnivore diet, there's tons of research that indicates it's
great from a muscle preservation standpoint.
You know ketones themselves are anti cannabolic.
By having ample fat and protein in the system, I'm able to train
hard and train frequently without really risking any
significant muscle loss. And this was, you know, I I went
to the whole prep documenting DEXA scans and body test caliper
measurement strength markers and I didn't experience any dip in
strength whatsoever until probably the last four weeks
remaining of the prep, which that certainly wasn't the case
for me in prior preps. I mean I was able to continue to
hit my top set PRS on all movements up until about four
weeks until the conclusion of the prep.
And I think that speaks to the volume of, you know, the
ketogenic that being anti catabolic and honestly simply
being able to maintain relatively high calories.
I mean for me my maintenance intake is about 3500 calories
and I took my intake down to about 1600 or so, which is
certainly pretty low. But I was competing against
people backstage that were consuming 1500 calories and had
40 lbs on me. They had to go much lower and
they experienced much more, much more tissue loss than I did fat
or muscle tissue loss than I did.
So that was a huge factor there. And then from like a, you know,
just overall health and well-being standpoint, like
since ketones can cross the blood brain barrier and provide
an energy source to the brain, my cognitive function and just
mental acuity was on point throughout the entirety of the
prep. Like, I remember back before
doing a ketogenic diet, I would just feel like a zombie there at
the last several weeks. Whereas the whole time with this
prep I was continuing to podcast.
I was continuing to fulfill my roles as a father, husband,
businessman. Like I never felt dull from a
cognition standpoint. I was sharp the whole way
through and I think that also points to the benefits of a
ketogenic approach. Yeah, I could attest that as
well myself recorded a podcast maybe a couple of months back
and I was saying about, you know, if we're talking about
calories, I was eating 3600 calories at my lowest point,
whereas before in the past I was consuming 2800 on a carb focused
approach. You know, it's definitely said
to be said for, you know, reducing the carbohydrates,
reducing the insulin load and you actually mentioned an
interesting point about transitioning more towards the
OMAD one meal a day approach as you got further into your
contest prep. As I was kind of wondering why
you did that and I kind of understand obviously you need a
certain instant response to encourage the kidneys to shuttle
electrolytes into storage mode, if that makes sense.
So is that why you did it or is it just you preferred one and
done out of the way, you know? The main thing for me was was
psychological. Like for me from a
sustainability standpoint, I would rather consume one large
meal that actually satiates me and and leaves me feeling full
and satisfied as opposed to multiple smaller meals that
always leave me wanting more. So my main reasoning is is
simply psychological. However, you know, you look at
all the research about muscle protein synthesis having
multiple spikes throughout the day.
You know you're going to activate muscle protein
synthesis with your training load, with your meal, with
certain supplementation depending on what you're taking,
essentially amino acids, etcetera, etcetera.
So I would typically train first thing in the morning around 6:00
AM and never have my one and only meal, you know, 2-3 hours
after that, four hours after that.
So I'm still getting 2 spikes in muscle protein synthesis, which
is kind of agreed to be the minimum that you'd want in a 24
hour evolving period. So then I think hedged against
any significant muscle loss. Now, there could be an argument
for me having a better activation of muscle protein
synthesis if I was to break that meal into two meals and just
separate it a little bit further.
But for me, the psychological benefit of actually feeling
satisfied with that one larger meal outweighed that minuscule
uptake in muscle protein synthesis.
Yeah, I think a lot of it's overstated really, kind of in
the carnival community where sort of saying to people, you
know, the people that we kind of listened to, Sean Baker,
Chaffey, Professor Barker. You know, they sort of say, you
know, eat a meal until you're no longer hungry, then eat again
when you're next hungry. You know, you're listening to
your own body signals. So it doesn't make sense.
And I think when you're having 5-6 meals a day and then tiny
little meals, you're never hitting that kind of satiety
threshold. So that that doesn't make sense
to me. And ultimately, I think the
marginal benefit as protein synthesis is very, very minimal.
I I think anyway, a lot of people are now doing 2 meals per
day. I mean, can you, can you speak
at all about what your clients are doing or people we've
coached in the past like what what average are they doing
terms like meal frequency? So it just depends on kind of
where they're at, Like if they're in a building phase and
they're consuming a surplus of calories, then often times that
will be uncomfortable to consume all that in one sitting.
So we'll break that into two or three meals a day, sometimes
even 4 if they're in a pretty significant deficit.
We may transition to that two meals or one meal a day
approach. Honestly, lava just totally
dependent upon the client basis and what they're wanting to
achieve. But generally speaking, when
their calories are in a pretty significant deficit, I find the
most benefit by sticking to that one meal approach.
Because from a psychological standpoint, actually getting the
satiety signals that your body creates once you've consumed
ample calories in a sitting tends to have a more long
lasting effect and just consuming, you know, five or six
very small meals throughout the day that always leave you
wanting more. So when you're that deep into a
deficit and really kind of double down on just the
sustainability factors of it, like what is going to make this
deficit most sustainable for you?
What types of foods? What types of meal frequency?
What types of daily routine? Just going to allow you to
adhere to the rigid goals that we need to stick to for this
finite period of time? Most attainable?
Make sure that makes good sense. Yeah.
Now I know I understand your what I believe you're a
proponent of like measuring ketones.
What kind of benefit have you found that has given you and
what kind of methodology would use?
Is it a blood, urine, things like that or breath even?
I'm not a huge proponent for it, man.
Like I'll I'll measure glucose and ketones if I'm just curious
for some type of self experimentation or introducing a
new food or want to see how my body's responding to a certain
set of things. But I mean, I could go the rest
of my life and never prick my finger or measure glucose and
ketones again, and I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over like I
just I I eat pretty much the same thing.
So I know, based off of how I'm feeling relatively, you know
what what my glucose is, what my ketones are.
Plus, I've been adapting so long, like I don't have
drastically high ketones. The majority of the time that my
body's become so efficient at using ketones as a fuel
substrate, there's not much left in my bloodstream to be, you
know, circulating and and measured because my body's so
efficient at taking that into the cell and using it.
Now, that said, if I'm doing like a a massive ketocaloric
refeed, there's a bolus of dietary fat coming in relative
to protein. I'll certainly see some high
numbers. If I'm doing an extended
fasting, I'll see some pretty profound glucose and ketone
readings then. But I'm not really an advocate
for just becoming a slave to measuring.
These go so more off of how you're feeling.
If you're if you're eating low carb ketogenic and you're not
having those variables added in the 1st place, that even if
you're not producing a ton of ketones as is measured by a
ketone meter in your blood BHP meter, that doesn't mean you're
not any you're not fat adapter using fat as the primary fuel
source. So just being conscious of that
is key. Yeah, I absolutely agree.
I think it's one of those objective measures we can look
at, but it doesn't necessarily mean much.
You know, You know, I know a lot of people say, oh, I feel great
on the ketone level of, I don't know if the units are the same
over there, but four or five, I feel horrendous with that.
I feel anxious. I don't feel great.
I feel my heart's pounding. I feel good when I have measured
them. I'm so between about 0.5 and
one. That's just where I tend to feel
best at. So you know, it doesn't, you
know, ultimately we're chasing a goal, you know, body
composition, goal, health outcome, A cognition kind of
mindset, feeling as well-being, you know, so that could leave
you anywhere between zero and five or six perhaps.
So that makes perfect sense. Yeah, I honestly get more value
out of testing glucose than I do ketones because, I mean, since I
am consuming low carbohydrate indefinitely, like I'm not
really getting, you know, much fluctuation in my ketone
readings. But I'll see changes in my
glucose readings based off of stress levels and that I find to
be pretty interesting as opposed to the ketone readings.
Yeah, I think it's certainly something to be said for like
the psychosomatic effect on the body.
I think it's often ignored. You know, you have a bad day,
perhaps you don't sleep that well at night.
That's going to impact your cortisol levels, your glucose
levels in the morning. Sometimes I've been known to
just skip a workout date just because I don't feel that great
for the bit, you know, wound up about something.
Just so I'm not going to give it my all, regardless of what
measurement I use. With blood glucose measurement,
you know if your mind's not in it, you're not going to be able
to give it your all. So I wanted to ask you as well
about like it does, like macro nutrients, percentage ratios or
have you any kind of measure in your news?
What do you suggest to someone that wants to do a ketogenic
bodybuilding approach? Or is there no real guideline?
So again, it kind of depends on what, what phase of the journey
and like I've got a seven part phase or 7 phases in my protocol
for guiding people through the prep and the reverse down
itself. I'll typically start people at
the higher fat ratio of around 80% of total calories coming
from fat. And then as I'm titrating their
calories down, their protein up, their fat down, you know that
ratio continues to shift and it just depends on the clientele.
But I'll often times see people hit that threshold when they're
in males, they typically go a little bit lower on that fat
ratio than the females due to changes in hormones, et cetera.
But a good general baseline for the masses, Like if you were to
look at it from like an 8020 analysis standpoint, if people
are targeting around a one to one ratio between fat and
protein in grams, that's a pretty good baseline for most
people at a maintenance or building phase.
And then depending on how their body responds in the context of
the deficit, we can titrate one up or down.
But a good general thumb for the masses is, hey, if you're
targeting 1g of fat, 1g of protein with ample calories,
that's a pretty good spot to be. Yeah, I found exactly the same
thing, funny enough, and quite a few people now have as well.
So there we have it from the master himself.
You know, definitely one to one. And perhaps if you're female,
perhaps if you're having some hormonal shoes, you might go,
you know, one protein to 1.11.2 fat.
Makes perfect sense also. Ultimately, we're looking at the
macro nutrient numbers. The ratio is just, it's just a
number that happens to be because of the numbers of macro
grams we're having. So my stuff, I wanted to switch
conversation over a little bit towards like your training
methodology and I understand a lot of natural competitors,
they'll do a lot of, I'm not sure the best way to put it,
like a power building approach. So heavy compound movements,
intense efforts, usually ramp up sets, warm up, stuff like that.
So what does your current training look like in terms of
maybe your exercise selection frequency, maybe reps and sets?
It's funny man. I have trained my whole life
following a traditional bro split.
For all intents and purposes hate that term bro split, but
everybody knows I'm talking about my saying you know body
part split. And I got a question on one of
my AM as ask me Anything episodes and it was about a full
body routine and I've always kind of frowned upon full body
routines. I just had never really done
them. I was kind of talking smack
about them and it occurred to me that I've never actually done a
full body routine and gave it at the time and attention that it
was due. So I decided to try it and that
was a few months prior to me commencing on this prep.
And honestly, I fell in love with it.
Like it worked out really well with my schedule.
So I decided to just continue the full body routine throughout
the prep and that worked incredibly well as well.
I mean, basically how I've structured the full body routine
is I'll train five days a week. Typically each muscle group will
get one dedicated exercise a day and then, you know, I'll do that
the five days a week. So I'm targeting every single
muscle group every single day. I train with one dedicated
exercise, typically within the four to six set range and then 8
to 12 Rep range. Sometimes I'll go lower on the
reps and heavier on the compound movements.
But yeah, basically every, every muscle group getting trained
every day that I train five days a week, which is definitely
higher from a training frequency standpoint, which I think helped
preserve some of the lean tissue as well.
And it felt very enjoyable, like it was not.
I remember in the past I would, I would be in a deficit and it
would be like a leg day or something, for instance.
And man, going into the gym in a depleted state and knowing that
you've got six different exercises for legs is like,
that's a brutal, that's a brutal moment.
But when you go into the gym and you're like, OK, I've got, you
know, four sets of one leg exercise, then I move on to
shoulders or whatever, it was just a easier psychological hump
for me to climb as the calories got lower and lower.
So it had a better sustainability factor in that
regard. But I honestly think the
frequency being higher benefited my muscle preservation as well.
So I was a fan of it for sure. Nice one.
Would you, would you say that same, you talk about the
frequency being important for you to some muscle preservation.
Would you say it's still impactful to actually build
muscle? So for example, would you still
be doing four sets for, I don't know, a squat or a leg press for
example, Five sets per week in a in an offseason mass building
phase? I don't know.
I haven't. I mean I started the full body
just a few months prior to going into the the cut, so I haven't
really tested it out from a muscle building standpoint.
What I'm probably going to do after my reverse to diet
concludes is transition to something else.
Like I've got a an 8 day heavy hypertrophy split that I've
developed that I like quite a bit.
I'll probably transition to that for a period of time while in a
surplus just to give my body a break from the frequency of the
full body. But then after that concludes I
may try to do the full body again in the context of a
surplus and just see how that compares to that eight day
rotational split. I think if all the boxes are
checked, IE you know, ample calories coming in, ample
protein, ample training stimulus, ample recovery,
there's no reason why you couldn't build more link tissue
with the full body. That said, I don't know if that
would be optimal relative to something with a little bit less
frequency, a little bit more intensity.
Yeah, I understand that. I've kind of dipped in and out
of the frequency aspect of it myself.
Like I, you know, I've tried all these things.
I've tried front, my body, back and body, upper, lower, full,
body, row split, freeway split. I kind of default to a freeway
split. It's like a push ball, legs kind
of pattern. I've noticed myself with my
training intensity being near enough 95% plus to absolute
muscular failure. I found I can't train
back-to-back days. That's regardless of whether my
intake's high or not in terms of food.
Now with that being said, so you're doing four sets is that
you know free free warmups, then a heavy set is just a gradual
ramp up and is your your heavy top set for example.
Is that to eccentric muscular failure?
Yeah, so I'll typically do like a 1512108 Rep scheme.
So like for instance dumbbell bench press.
We'll use that as an example. I'll start off at a lighter
weight, Do 15 reps, increase the weight, Do 12 reps, increase
again 10 reps That last set I am struggling to get 8 reps.
Sometimes I may only get 6 reps, 4 reps, whatever, but I'm going
and hitting muscle failure at that point and I'll often times
throw them in a drop set or I'll do a forced negative forced Rep,
something of that nature to truly reach muscle failure from
both an eccentric and concentric you know, standpoint.
So yeah, I'm definitely hitting muscle failure on that and it's
weird man. Like even going to failure every
single day on most of my movements I don't really ever
get sore and I think that is probably a result of me just
training that way for so long. Maybe the fact that I've as fat
adapted as I am. I'm not having near as much
lactic acid build up by not having, you know, the
carbohydrates and by having me having more MCT transporters
throughout my body as being fat adapted as I am to help clear
that lactate. There's a lot of variables at
play here, but I'm able to train to failure on most lifts most
days, and I'm able to pretty much hit it hard the same or the
next day without any issues, which has been good.
That's really cool. You must be some kind of
Superman, because if I hit a hard set, like I record stuff,
just like Europe at some, like, you know, Rep sets, I even count
my time as tension sort of thing.
Rest periods are pretty much identical, you know.
If I do a set to failure on any exercise, I can't do it again to
the same degree, the same schematic, or level until like
four or five days after. Yeah, I I won't do the same
movement the next day. Like for instance this morning I
did sumo deadlifts for lower body.
I won't do sumo deadlifts again until next week, but I will do
some leg movement tomorrow for sure.
So I'm targeting the same muscle every day, but I'm not doing the
exact same movement and I'm trying to have some time in
between, Like I'm not going to do conventional deadlifts today
after doing sumo deadlifts. So I'll try and pick movements
then are targeting the same muscle but from a different
angle, different point of leverage that it's not going to
inhibit recovery of that prior day's training.
And that makes sense, yes. There's there's an element of
like water regulation in that, which is it sounds sensible
because I was just picturing you doing, you know, four sets to
failure on a set to failure on a deadlift like 5 * a week
back-to-back days. I was like, yeah.
No, no, no. No, no.
That would be brutal indeed. Yeah, makes sense.
Yeah. You brought up a really good
point as well about being, you know, fat adapted for a long
time now. You know, sort of.
You said basically along lines of you've done it for such long
time, probably your antioxidants are in good range, your sleep's
good, your recovery's good, your body just fine-tuned like a
machine at this point. Now this seemed like a strange
question. So have you added in
carbohydrates at any point, whether it be deliberate or not?
And did you notice any detrimental training from that
point? I have not added in
carbohydrates acutely with the intent of using those
carbohydrates as a fuel source. So I had carbohydrates, you
know, eight years ago as a primary fuel source before
adopting keto. I'll have carbohydrates now in
trace forms just as a nature of eating more food.
But I won't consume anything that is predominantly
carbohydrates with the intention of using it as a fuel.
So like I don't do targeted keto, I don't do cyclical keto.
Any carbs that I consume now are just simply a byproduct of the
foods that I eat, containing some trace carbs, like eggs or
raw oysters or liver heavy cream, things of that nature.
But I'm not consuming any carbs with the intention of using that
as a fuel source. OK, yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, I've tried it just myself for experimentation
purposes. You know, Kevin's like, you
know, if you don't have carbohydrates at all, you know
you're not going to be able to form well in your top sets.
You know that the idea that you have that need to get this high
level of carbohydrate or glue for some reason, a few workouts
I noticed a net negative, so I added in fruit and honey for
three days. I felt horrendous, my guts were
disturbed, I did not feel great and my train performance in
every marker was was down. So my my weight wasn't as I
wasn't as strong, my form wasn't as good and I absolutely got
more lactic acid from training. So I actually probably decreased
my performance of about estimate between 10 to 15% on a LED cone
leg essential movement that I tested after adding in the fruit
and honey. So yeah, I didn't see it
benefit. There's there's been like this
big push as of late to incorporate fruit and honey.
You know certain prominent people in the space or advocates
for them. And I think like if you're not
as deeply fat adapted, then you can most certainly see a benefit
from including those. Because you know, if your body
is not as fat adapted, then it's still going to be efficiently
using glucose and it can tap into that and have it as a
readily available fuel source. However, if you've been strict
keto, as long as I have for instance, my body doesn't need
that. It doesn't look for that.
It's, it's upregulated all the metabolic pathways to be
incredibly efficient using fat and protein as the primary fuel
source. And it's like there's just no
need. And I've seen so many people go
that route and they kind of stay in limit, limbo, purgatory land
where they're not fully capitalizing on the benefits of
fat metabolism, they're not fully capitalizing on the
benefits of glucose metabolism. So I've always taken the
approach of rather than trying to be the you know, to split
yourself two different ways, just figure out which one you
want to optimize for and double down on that and then don't
second guess it. Yeah, I get that objection a
lot. Like, oh, you know, I can't do
it with that much fat intake. And I kind of say, what's wrong
with your body that you can't eat something that you've been
evolutionary designed and adapted to eat?
Historically speaking, I'm like, I don't think my last 100 years
of ancestry is, you know, completely gone, made my
metabolic engine turn backwards sort of thing.
It doesn't make sense, yeah. It doesn't make any sense to me
either, man. Yeah, I think in some cases
they're trying to like patch up a broken body.
So perhaps they've got some liver damage of some kind.
They can't produce the bile acids to breakdown the fat.
That could be a reason why they're, you know, using the the
carbs as like an add on, like an addition.
I think you said it very, very well.
You know, you pick one fuel source and work on that.
You know, if we combine carbs and fats, like I kind of said
about the carbohydrates, the model, the the body won't run as
well, you know. We just need to pick one one way
for our body to activate its energetic system, you know?
Yeah, and there's a lot of people that, you know, say, hey,
look, if you've got a lot of body fat to lose, then don't
consume much dietary fat. But if someone is coming from a
place of like a standard American diet where they've not
been consuming much dietary fat relative to other macro
nutrients, those metabolic pathways aren't functioning at
high rates. So you almost have to, even if
you have a lot of body fat to lose, I think there's a benefit
to starting out with a relatively high dietary fat
ratio so your body can preferentially build up those
metabolic pathways. Then you can titrate that
dietary fat and take down as needed.
But like there's been this massive push for protein is key.
Which protein is incredibly important, don't get me wrong,
but if you remove both fuel sources, like if you remove
carbohydrates and fat entirely, then and your body's not yet
efficient using your stored fat, then you're not going to find
the diet sustainable or thrive there in the beginning and
you're likely to deviate right at the gates.
Yeah, I understand a lot of people like that that come to
comes. People like us, perhaps that
bodybuilders have tried the high carb thing to lose fat.
They've not been that successful.
My brother, right now, he's right in the other room.
His version of the ketogenic diet is, you know, quite high
protein, low carb and quite low fat, believe it or not.
So like, yeah, no wonder why you must have flat Cos you're, you
know, if we're talking about calories, you're eighteen, 2500
calories for four now you're eighteen 1600.
So you've got a massive drop off in terms you've got engine take,
you're not getting fat adapted and you're still training or
trying to train just as hard and you've had it in cardio.
So it's like you're trying to you're kind of working backwards
against yourself there, I think. Yeah, totally, man.
I say all the time people, they want to transition to keto low
carb carnivore, they'll try to take a high protein approach
because that's what's popular right now.
They'll remove the carbs, they remove the fat and they don't
even connect the dots that they've literally just cut out
half of their calorie intake. And you know, there's a whole
lot of debate as to, you know, law, thermodynamics, how
impactful calories are. Is it hormones?
Is it calorie intake? And we can have a whole podcast
on that conversation alone. But if you just simply look at
calories as fuel, which it is, and you cut your fuel intake in
half regardless of what the the macronutrient breakup or
breakdown of that fuel is like, you are not going to perform
optimally if you are consuming half the fuel in an acute period
of time. Yeah that makes sense.
In terms of like the carbohydrate intake, if you're
someone's to follow ketogenic style approach, what would you
say would be like the cut off the individual or if you want to
might be damn sure like a surefire way to say you know
you're, you know with enough fat you're going to be in a
ketogenic sort of state. What is that carb cut off like?
I've had twenty 3050 grams for example.
Yeah. So I mean everyone's going to be
a little bit different based off of, you know, how much muscle
they have, how insulin sensitive they are.
If someone's just starting for the first time they're coming
from a standard American diet, then I would just say, hey,
look, try and consume a total carb intake of, you know, 2030
grams tops from all sources and then focus on your fat and
protein. Then everything else should work
out. Now, I know people like myself
included, I could probably consume upwards of 100 grams of
carbohydrates throughout the course of a day and still stay
in a ketotic state the entire time.
I don't because I don't want those carbohydrates.
I don't think it's optimal, but everyone's going to have their
own unique carbohydrate threshold and carbohydrate
ceiling. But if you're trying to optimize
for fat metabolism, rather than seeing what you can get away
with, IE how much carb can you consume and still stain ketosis,
I would argue the better use of your time is to figure out what
you can optimize for. And in general terms, what I've
found is the lower that is, the better because then your body is
preferentially using the fat and protein as opposed to additional
trace carbs coming in to kind of deviate and distract from the
equation. Yeah, that makes sense.
That's a sensible approach and I always tried to preach that to
people as well. You know, take it back as far as
you can and see what benefit you can get.
You know, a lot of people get initial benefits when they first
start this sort of diet and they think or two weeks in, I'll feel
a bit better now, my digestion's a bit better.
You know, we should always try to up the ante.
And as you know, coaches ourselves, we want the best for
our clients. So we have an enormous ethical
obligation to offer them the best suggestion.
You know, the, the plan A is be as strict as possible, do this,
do that, see what benefits you get.
Because it might be that they just want to be a bit more LAX,
then they notice the benefit, then they think, oh, actually
I'm going to be a bit stricter now, so that doesn't make
perfect sense. Just totally changing the
thought process from hey, what can I get away with versus what
can I optimize for. And if you do that like that
kind of paints the picture as to what you want to take the
trajectory with in the 1st place.
And when you're trying to optimize fat metabolism and and
burning on fat and protein for fuel then then there's not
really any need to try and include more and more
carbohydrates. Absolutely.
I wanted to ask you well about food choices.
No. For a lot of people, beef is a
good staple. For a lot of people around the
world, it's quite accessible, quite cheap for the most part.
If you're to pick say 5 top food choices overall for the average
population, what do you suggest them to eat?
Yeah, I mean ruminants are going to be able to up regulate the
nutrition they eat better than a monogastric animal.
So we can go down the rabbit hole on like you know you are
what you eat and based off of what they're eating that's going
to have some that's going to get stored in their fats.
So then maybe stored in what you're consuming, which then
could have a negative impact on you.
So a ruminant animal is likely going to have better nutrient
density and be able to upcycle their nutrition.
So going with something like venison, beef, lamb, something
of that nature, a ruminant animal, ideally finding one that
is fed a quality diet as well is going to be key.
But like for me personally, I'll have some variation of ground
beef, ground venison, ground lamb or bison on pretty much
daily basis. And then I'll have some of those
are leaner sources. Like venison is incredibly lean,
so I'll supplement with fat sources like fajito brick for
one with a stearic acid in it. Beef tallow, duck fat, quality
butter, something of that nature.
But I'll just good quality animal based sources for the
most part. I don't really consume much
vegetation every once in a while.
I have some greens but I am not consuming a high percentage of
my calories from vegetation, so pretty much just sticking with
the quality fats, proteins man. Yeah, that makes sense to me as
well. And contrast to that.
I've got a question related to training, which is I should have
asked earlier, believe or not, but it will.
It will do the viewers just fine I think.
So if you're to pick say 5 exercises that you had to do or
want to do in the gym and that was all you could do for some
reason, what would they be? So you can't go wrong with just
the basics, man, I like the basics.
If I could pick five, I don't probably just stick with like
the compound movement. So I have a squat, A deadlift, a
sumo deadlift, probably like a a row, and then either like a
chest press or a shoulder press variation.
So that'd be 5 right there, five or six, And they all can be done
with a basic barbell or dumbbells.
I mean, super simple. Like, I've been training in my
own gym for the past five years now, exclusively, except for
when I'm traveling. And I've got just the basic
equipment. Like, you don't have to
overthink the training, you don't have to have all the fancy
bells and whistles, and my body seems to be pretty well
symmetrical in proportion using just those basic movements.
So definitely don't need to overthink it.
Nice one. Yeah, I had a question about,
well, obviously I understand you got very lean in your last
contest. Now for someone that hasn't done
that before, they might not understand how difficult it is
on the body. Is there any sort of peculiar
things or quirks that you notice when you got that lean?
So obviously you're walking around with like striated glutes
and hamstrings popping everywhere.
Like, was sitting down painful? Did your feet hurt?
You know? No, sitting down was never
painful. My feet didn't hurt, but I was.
I mean I still am, man. I mean I'm pretty much I could
step on stage right now. I've got the same competition
waiting for the most part. But yeah, I was sub 4% body fan.
And when you get down to when you get down to like sub 6% body
fat, weird things start happening.
Like my testosterone definitely did take a drop.
Testosterone's going to be very highly impacted by total caloric
intake and body fat percentage. So once I got down to the low
single digits, you know, my testosterone really started
tanking. I felt incredibly great
considering how low my testosterone got.
So I thought that was interesting, but certainly not
optimal from a health standpoint.
But when you're that depleted, like your hair stops growing,
your fingernails stop growing, you stop producing as much waste
because your body is using it all.
So your bathroom visits are less significant.
But yeah, you just have, like you get light headed a little
bit more easily, especially if you haven't quite gotten your
electrolytes and fluid intake dialed in.
There's just like your sleep starts to get shifted.
I mean your your body is in a a sympathetic state much more
often than not, so it's harder to stay asleep longer and
there's certain ways to hedge against that.
But I mean when you are that depleted, your body is
definitely in go mode and it is trying to find the next kill to
fuel itself. So you have to have the mental
fortitude to not indulge in the the tendency to overeat as your
body wants you to, because what you're trying to accomplish is
very far removed from what is found in nature.
But that's probably the way I didn't see many 4% body fat
troglomides running around in Paleolithic times either.
For sure, yeah. I think the average person wants
to be comfortable with their body.
I give most men a range of about 10 to 20% body fat, and that's
probably quite healthy for the most part the average person.
Some people maintain a leaner body than that, perhaps their
fitness model, which case go for it, but I don't.
I don't see many blood panels with optimized testosterone,
subtemps and body fat. Personally, yeah, this is
probably a good segue towards talking about the recovery side
of it. And I just mentioned like your
sleep is trash. You don't feel great when you're
sleeping. Was there any real benefit you
found from adding in any different supplements at all?
Tubby sleep, you know, or any herbal extracts, anything like
that? Sorry, my camera just died so we
switched over to the webcam here.
As far as supplements and sleep goes, honestly man, I kept the
supplementation super basic. All I really supplement with was
electrolytes, potassium, sodium, magnesium.
I had like an organ blend supplement that I would use, but
who knows whether it was actually effective or not.
I would do a creatine monohydrate and that's pretty
much the extent of my supplementation.
As far as sleep hygiene and protocol, I was definitely
trying to optimize that. My sleep quantity was minuscule,
like there were several days where I was getting you know, 4
hours of sleep is pretty much the average.
So I really tried to focus on sleep quality and some things I
would do to ensure that was I actually stopped sleeping in the
same bed as my wife, which some people may have a hard time
doing, but by not having somebody else moving in the bed,
we have a year and a half old son too, so like she would go
get him at night and that would, you know, disturb my sleep.
So I just started sleeping in the guest bedroom as the
calories got lower. That helped.
I would have, you know, the the temperature downturn down to
help with a thermal regulation standpoint.
I would I would have like, I would mouth tape.
I would, I would put in black blackout curtains or like a
sleep cover over my eyes. Try to really just dial that
component in so that when I hit the pillow I was out, and then I
pretty much stayed out until it was time to wake up again.
So I I feel like I got that dialed in, I just simply didn't
get enough total sleep. So as the calories get higher,
and as I'm able to kind of return to some degree of
parasympathetic state, I should see those markers improve.
Yeah, for sure. And now someone who's tried the
enhanced St. and the natural bodybuilding route, I can say
they're both hard. So I expect anyone that does
either one of those ultimately being 4% body fatal low is
really difficult and everyone struggles asleep and there's
only so much you can do in terms of like supplements and like bio
hacks. So it is a tough challenge.
I wouldn't recommend anyone actually just try to body build.
You'll be fighting against yourself and as Robert said
earlier, it's it's a tough task, you know, it's not a natural
thing for your body to do. You have to have the mental
fortitude of a a bloody ox to do it right.
So I applaud you there on that. Yeah, thanks man.
I definitely feel like, you know, it's a mental sport more
so than a physical one. Like when you start getting
deep, deep, deep into a cut and your body is changing, your mind
is changing, you're you're in this deficit.
Like you really just have to zero in on what matters and what
the priorities are. And I always come out of a prep
better for it, Like it. What I experience in the growth
of my mental state far outweighs that of the transformation from
a physical standpoint, but just simply forcing my body and my
mind to go through a period of time of sacrifice.
And you know, going without, it's something that very few
people experience because we live in an area of abundance
where everything comes and people can just easily get what
they want, conveniently. So foregoing those comforts and
just simply pushing yourself beyond what you've ever thought
possible is so incredibly rewarding and it just spills
over into other areas of your life outside the prep and
everything benefits. So I'm a huge, huge advocate for
the sport if done healthfully and done sustainable, Like you
don't want to do that every single year.
But if you transition into a cutting phase and you go that
deep with it, you know, intermittently throughout your
life, I think there's much to be gained from it.
Absolutely. Now as you're sort of on the the
outer side of your Qantas, perhaps, you're probably looking
back at this point, are you now looking forward to thinking, OK,
2025, I'm going to compete again?
And are there any sort of landmarks, milestones or
objectives you must reach Before you say, right, it's April, I'm
going to compete next month or a few months down the line?
What's weird man? Like with the the debut NBF
federation, which is the one I went pro at with this last
season, which is one of the more prestigious natural bodybuilding
federations, They require that pros compete every two years to
maintain pro status, which I do not agree with.
I don't think it is optimal from a health standpoint, especially
if you're doing such a long prep like I am at 33 weeks.
You know, it takes time to build muscle tissue as a natural
athlete, as a mature athlete. So if I'm spending half the year
in deficit, you know, I'm not really having that much time to
build more muscle before I step on stage again if I compete
every two years. So I would like to see them
increase that window of time. What I'll probably wind up doing
is take five years off or so and then put on some legitimate
muscle size and tissue and then have to just regain pro status
to that federation. But I'll be looking better for
it, you know taking that much more time off as far as
milestones that I would want to accomplish before competing
again, there's a lots of milestones from you know other
areas of my life standpoint. I want to focus on the business
more. I want to have another kid in
that time. I want to focus on homesteading
and just some some life goals before I compete again and focus
on the Prem. But from a physical standpoint,
I would love to, you know, put on some more size like I I got
to the conditioning that I needed to to be incredibly
competitive with the season. Like I was consistently the
leanest guy on stage, but I was often times not the largest gown
stage. I don't ever anticipate being
the largest guy, but I was certainly benefit and be more
competitive if I had an additional, you know, 10 lbs of
muscle on my frame. So just simply putting on some
more lean tissue over that time? That makes sense, yeah.
Do you think it's realistic to say you could gain 10 LB more
muscle? Because looking at your frame,
you know you're not sure, but you're shorter guy like have you
looked at other competitors that are in your kind of category,
your kind of height and said, well, they're a bit bigger than
me here I can build my shoulders up or whatever it is.
Do you do you feel that's a realistic goal?
It'd be tough, man. I mean, like, I compete in the
lightweight class. Lightweight is 150 to 165.
I was competing at like one 52153.
So if I added in there 10 lbs, I'd be on the upper end of that
lightweight category, which would be good because I mean
then I would be on the the upper end of the category.
But gaining 10 lbs of actual skeletal tissue in a five year
span, as some of that's been training for as long as I have
would be difficult for sure. I think it could be done,
especially if I'm really aggressive with the intake and
the training load. So I'll certainly make that the
goal, but shoot, I mean even 5 lbs would look.
I mean honestly it's kind of crazy man.
Like, I've got pictures of me from this last competitive
season weighing the same that I weighed during my very first
competition in 2012. Yet my muscle size, shape,
fullness, symmetry was significantly improved.
So you can't really just look at the scale weight in black and
white and say, OK, if I gained this much, I'll look this much
better, 'cause there's a lot of other factors there.
The roundness of the muscle, the definition, the density, all of
these things. I was much leaner this go around
than I was at the same body weight in years prior.
So I've definitely put on lean tissue since then.
But if I could adhere to, you know, focusing on adding that
tissue and coming in at some point in the future with the
same degree of conditioning as I did this year, but with an
additional, you know, 5 lbs of actual skeletal tissue, that
would make a night and day difference.
Yeah, I understand. Like the the scale weight is
just an, it's just a number. It doesn't actually depict what
you are on stage. I compete at the top of my
category in the classic division.
Now if I gained 2 lbs more more weight, but dropped another 2
lbs of fat that looked drastically different on my body
but also compete very very very flat.
So I complete. So I I don't really load up at
all. I just pretty much die down into
the show. When I've got striated glutes.
I then know OK, I need to drop another £5 just to be sure.
Yeah, you know. Totally, man.
Did you find that? Did you find that at all?
Yeah. When you get striated glutes
that is you know you're dialed in at that point because you
know many competitors don't bring that level of
conditioning. So I was, I was surprised to see
that I got as light as I did with this go round.
I think the lightest that came in that was 151.2, so pretty
much 30 lbs down from start weight.
But realistically I mean this was the leanest that I've ever
been before this was the goal with this entire prep was to be
the leanest man alive. So I feel pretty confident I was
able to achieve that to some degree and I'm just excited to
have set a new standard for myself and know what I need to
get better than for the next count go round.
Excellent. Well, I've enjoyed that very
much. I think it's been highly
informative to the viewers and listeners.
Where can people find you if you want to be found?
All things Keto Savage man, Keto savage.com, Keto Savage on
socialketobrick.com, keto brick on social for the bricks.
And we're working on a online course right now that totally
illustrates this dieting protocol, how to optimize for
the stage composition changes, macro manipulations that will be
under a different URL, but that is not yet live.
Excellent. Well, thank you for your time.
Appreciate you coming on and I'll talk to you soon.
Appreciate you, man. Always a pleasure.