Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com.
Today I've got special guest Kirk Shelly on the podcast.
I met Kirk at Keto Con this past year.
He's got an interesting story himself.
He has gone through bariatric surgery and has now adopted A
ketogenic carnivore diet as a way to sustain that weight loss
and also just improve his overall health.
So third and enjoyed this conversation.
I want to kind of get his perspective on the surgery.
I want to get his perspective on Ozempic things that are
shortterm in nature like that, designed to create a lasting
effect and what his take on those lasting effects are.
And also just dive a little bit deeper into how he's adopted the
ketogenic carnivore diet to maintain better health for the
long haul. So like I said, third, enjoy the
conversation. I've got no doubt that you will
take something from it. So that further ado sit back,
relax and do the podcast with Kirk
and we are live. Kirk Shelly.
How are you Sir? I am doing fantastic.
Thanks for having me on. Hey, I'm excited to have you on.
We we met at Keto Con. You swung by the booth and we
have a mutual friend, Brian, who's an amazing individual and
he got us connected and I was talking to you at the booth and
you've got a pretty interesting story yourself.
You were you're doing a carnivore diet, but you've got
experience with bariatric surgery.
And I feel like that is something that doesn't get
enough press time. So I was excited to just get you
on the show and kind of dive deeper into that whole
experience, man. So kind of roll roll back the
curtain and just tell me what led you to feeling the need to
go the route of bariatric surgery to begin with?
Sure. Back when I was 50 years old, I
thought I was kind of a healthy fat guy, weighed about 300 some
odd pounds, didn't have any serious health concerns and.
You know, everything was going great.
When I turned 50. I thought that, you know,
everything was fine. I was just another fat guy that
was kind of healthy because I could walk and do my job while I
was down at the Sugar Bowl of all things.
And I was coming home and I saw these horrible flashing lights
in my eyes and I was really terrified that I was having a
stroke. Well, when I didn't die, I
realized it wasn't a stroke, but I knew I had eye problems.
I want to go see my eye, Doc, and she told me the bad news is
that yes, you, your back of your eyes are all completely mangled
up. You're going to need shots in
the back of your eyes because you've got wet macular
degeneration and if we don't do the shots, you're going to be
blind. So, and I'm going to cut you off
here, but I'm not as well versed in ocular health optometry.
I'm assuming that is a result of poor circulation type.
It is 2 diabetes. Yeah, it's a direct result of
type 2 type diabetes. The veins in the back of the
eyes get weakened, way too much blood sugar and over time it
will wear down your eyes. And it it doesn't completely
blind you, it just takes away the center part of your vision.
So you can't read or anything else kind of akin to type twos
that have to get their toes amptated due to the poor
circulation in those extremities because of that high blood
glucose. Kind of same thing going on from
a from an eye standpoint. Right.
A lot of people actually find out they're Type 2 diabetic
first in their eye, doc, because when they're looking in the back
of the eye, when they dilate it and they look back there,
they're going to see that it's just a mangled mess.
They can see the damage being done to the blood vessels before
it's going to pop up anywhere else in your body.
Gotcha. OK.
Didn't mean to catch you up. I just wanted to clarify that.
Yeah, no problem. So I asked her, I said, well, is
there anything I can do about it besides getting shots in the
back of my eye? And she said, yeah, lose weight.
And that was the entirety of the health advice that I had.
It wasn't that, you know, you're a Type 2 diabetic, not that your
metabolic health is messed up, just that you need to lose
weight. So I started Googling how to
lose weight, and I went to Weight Watchers.
That wasn't working. Calorie restriction wasn't
working. But I found out Cleveland Clinic
had just done a study for five years on people who had
bariatric surgery. And what they had done at that
point was saying, okay, people that have bariatric surgery have
about a 70% chance of losing the weight and keeping it off versus
calorie restriction, which actually only has about a 1%
success rate. So I went with the odds, went
ahead and had bariatric surgery. And there's several different
types. One of them you might be
familiar with is where they rerapture intestines.
That's the, the really horrible one for the really morbidly
obese. But there's another one called a
vertical sleeve surgery where they just cut off about 80% of
your stomach and turn your stomach into a tube.
And that's the one that I had. So, yeah, and I'm very
successful. I'm considered a bariatric
success because I lost. 70% of my weight to my target weight
and kept it off for more than two years.
Wow. So that's that's their high bar
that you get when you have bariatric surgery and you get
your stomach mangled. What are some of the other
variations of bariatric surgery? I know one is just simply tying
a band around the stomach, correct?
There's banding. They can put a balloon in there,
or they can reroute your intestines and cut your stomach.
Did you notice a pretty stark contrast in your appetite and
what you were able to consume immediately after that
operation? Yeah, I took it seriously.
I'm not one of these guys that just jumped into it because
Cleveland Clinic said it worked really well.
I had. I really researched it.
I actually listened to a lot of testimonials from people that
had had the surgery, some of them successful, some of them
not successful. And I learned a lot from the
people that were not successful because they all just went back
to eating standard junk food again.
Bariatric surgery is not a magic wand.
It is a tool. And it's impressive.
I mean, it cuts. You know, most of your hunger
signals come from your stomach, and when you get that cut out,
you just don't get hungry anymore.
So you get a real good sense of fullness.
And what's interesting is. What they were teaching me to do
afterwards was to prioritize protein.
Basically, to get ready for the surgery, you have to do a very
strict keto diet to get rid of the fatty liver.
If you don't, then they can't come in.
They're going to have to move the liver out of the way and
they're going to cause damage to the liver.
So you you can wipe out your fatty liver in less than two
weeks just by following their diet.
I was actually losing so much weight that I actually kind of
second guessed whether I should have the surgery or not because
I was like, why don't I just do this diet that they've got me on
beforehand? I like it.
I'm eating well and I'm losing weight just before I even go
into the surgery. And you were just doing super
high protein at that point, like you were not counting calories
or no. That's why are you there than
protein. Cut out the carbs.
Gotcha. Out of curiosity, what was your
diet like before that point? Like, were you eating a pretty
mixed diet, lots of processed foods?
What led to the need for bariatric surgery?
Right. I was eating the standard
American diet. Actually.
I was following the health pyramid.
I mean, I ate lots of carbs, you know, healthy grains and all
that other good stuff. Ate lots of vegetables, didn't
eat a lot of processed food. It wasn't until, you know, I
went Keto and Carnivore much later.
Once I found out about that. But, you know, unfortunately the
standard American diet is just guaranteed the pack on the
pounds. And you know, if you just go to
Walmart or go to the airport, you take a look at around that,
most people are eating what the government recommends and and
they're kind of like me, you know, you're getting up there,
way up there in the weight and you're not metabolically
healthy. Yeah, it's it's kind of, it's
it's frustrating because a lot of this, a lot of this stigma
against the standard American diet right now is painting
processed foods in a negative light.
And I 100% agree that that should be placed in a negative
light. I'm not advocating for that at
all. But I feel like there is a
massive demographic people that are not really eating the
processed foods. They're just simply eating, you
know, the mixed diet, high in what what, what is deemed as
healthy carbohydrates and they're still gaining the weight
as you're describing here. And that's certainly not not
good. No, it isn't.
It's kind of typical, and it's utterly frustrating.
I mean, it's just part of the what I refer to as a
psychopathic system where everybody behaves of a complete
casual disregard for your health, even though they know
better. Yeah, I mean, just you go into
the doctor and then not really having a discussion around
nutrition at all is is unfortunate.
I mean, they're simply advocating for pills and potions
and shots first and foremost, and then talk of losing weight
and is secondary and changing nutrition is not even in the
conversation. Right.
That's royally frustrating. And you know, and if you only
Google losing weight, what are you going to pop up?
You're going to find bariatric surgery and you're going to find
Ozempic and stuff like that, but you're not going to find it much
and by way of diet and lifestyle, because that's hard.
And my doc? I asked her.
Later on I said, why didn't you tell me that I had type 2
diabetes and that I needed to, that I had metabolic syndrome,
that I had all these other health problems.
And she said, well, because patients don't follow our
advice. She apparently I was the only
patient that had ever lost weight when she told to lose
weight. Yeah, it's.
I mean, I got a I'm trying to be empathetic and I can totally see
the frustration from a doctor standpoint in them advocating
that and not really gaining any traction.
But at the same point, like, you got to at least have that
conversation. I feel like there's certain
people that would most certainly capitalize on that, if they even
consider that as an option. Well, the problem is, is that
doctors just aren't trained in it.
I mean, one of the problems that I keep finding is people go to
their doctor for health advice. And frankly, doctors are not
trained health professionals. They are trained idiopathic
doctors. The only thing that they.
The only tool they have is a prescription pad.
They don't take any classes on diet, they take no classes on
exercise, and they take no classes on sleep.
All they know is eat less, move more, try to get some sleep.
Yeah, and if you can't sleep, we'll give you another pill.
But they're not really taking care of the problem.
You have to get that from other sources.
So when you had the surgery and you were able to successfully
maintain the weight loss, what what other signs and symptoms
and just changes occurred post operation?
Like, was there very much of A downside?
Like, was there? What were the negatives of that
operation? Well, a lot of downsides.
I mean you lose a lot of stomach capacity and so you have to
really plan your meals very carefully it it is self
correcting in a lot of ways you if you try to eat bread you're
just going to puke it up because you're you just don't have a
regular stomach. It is just a tube.
And liquids go running right through it.
So you have to change the way you eat.
You can't drink while you're eating.
So you know there there's rules that you have to follow that go
along with it. And it very much restricts the
amount that you can eat at any given time.
But you you say you keep it off. Well, that's frankly not true.
Yes, you can keep it off. You will lose weight initially
because you have a size restriction.
But. Most people start gaining weight
up to two years later, and I was one of them.
I noticed that my weight was slowly going up even though I'd
had the surgery and I had my first bariatric post bariatric
surgery diet about two years later where I went out of
calorie restrictions to do that and before I found Keto.
And what is most fascinating to me is, you know, after I ran
into a guy by the name of Doctor Stephen Finney who was doing the
lectured on the low carb down under channel and he was the
first guy that really explained how carbohydrates affect the
bloodstream metabolic syndrome. And for the first time, I really
got exposed to keto from somebody that I really trusted.
And when I finally heard that message, I realized, wait a
second, I had been scammed. I've been following the
government's advice, and that has led to all my weight gain.
Let's go ahead and try a different way.
And I remember very distinctly, you know, after about six months
of research on keto, cleaning out my cabinets, going to the
supermarket, buying all low carb food and looking at that big
pile of bacon and beef and avocado oil and all that stuff
going, wow. I was terrified.
I remember the stark terror of looking at this pile of food
going, this is 180. I'm flipping the food pyramid
upside down. I'm either going to really get
healthy or I'm going to die and I don't know which.
I'm just going to go out on faith that this is the right way
to eat. And I haven't looked back.
I have kept my weight remarkably stable.
You know, that was about, I did about three years of very.
Solid Keto actually would check my ketone levels and all that
stuff. And then right before COVID, I
started hearing Doctor Berry talking about carnivore and I
was like okay. That sounds crazy.
And it took me about four or five months before I decided
maybe that makes sense. And then COVID strikes and all
of a sudden I don't want to go to the supermarket.
Once a week to get more vegetables.
So I decided that okay, let's just go ahead and try Carnivore
for a month. I can buy a month's worth of
meat, put it in the freezer, and I don't have to go back to the
supermarket and deal with all these idiots trying to buy
toilet paper. Yeah, so I went ahead and did
that. And the elimination diet.
Worked out really well. I lost about £15 on it, you
know, and everybody else is gaining weight during COVID.
I'm losing weight and getting stronger and realize this really
works and what's been nice about doing and when you do an
elimination diet, you're only the meat and eggs for about two
or three months. If ever you add something back
in, you find out, Oh my gosh, this really does affect me.
You may have experienced this with some of your own clients,
but what's really cool when you go keto is all of a sudden that
those little aches and pains start to go away and you lose a
lot of weight rather rapidly and people will just kind of poo poo
that saying, oh, that's just water weight, Well, that's not
completely true. That's inflammation weight when
you really think about it. So when you get rid of all the
inflammation in your body and you start waking up in the
morning, you don't have to do 15 minutes of stretching and.
All that type of stuff before you feel like getting out, you
know that you're just ready to hit the ground running.
That's the cool thing about this stuff, and you'll never know it
until you try it. It's like my son, swam
competitively at high school level, was one of the top five
in the state and he kept pestering me, trying to get me
the the newest, greatest swimsuits all the time.
And I was talking to his coach about it.
I was kind of laughing. And his coach said no, no, no,
you need to take it seriously. And I said why?
And he said because he's aware of drag.
See, when you're a very you know when you're an average swimmer,
you have no idea how much water is dragging you back, right?
When you get to be that level, you're aware of every bit of
drag on you. Well, I wasn't aware of all the
drag that my diet did to me until after I eliminated
everything. And now I'm aware of.
I mean, I had no idea that spinach kicks me in the rear
end, but it really does. I had a spinach salad a couple
of months ago with some friends and the next day I really felt
hung over, you know, the oxalates that are in that
particular food. Really do a number on me, and
I've been eating that for years. I had no idea that was creating
a problem until after. I'd not had it for a very
extended period of time. Yeah, I definitely think that
any type of elimination that really opens one's eyes to how
much everything else truly impacts things.
And to some extent there's going to be some, you know,
microbiome. They're like if you were to
slowly titrate up your vegetation and take that
microbiome would acclimate and it probably wouldn't affect you
as negatively. But for those that that's not
the case. I mean it really becomes clear
how much some of those can be inflammatory in your body.
So for that reason alone, I think everybody should do an
elimination style that at least, you know, acutely for a finite
period of time just so they can gain that awareness.
So I'm 100% in agreement with you there.
So you were. Doing By the way, I think you
noticed this but I'll I'll point it out.
Whenever you do a lifestyle change, you really have to give
yourself 90 days for the experiment.
Yeah, because that's about how long it's going to take for a
lifestyle intervention to really become clear to you.
Totally. So you were doing so after the
the bariatric surgery, you you were doing pretty much high
protein in preparation for that surgery.
And then how long after that surgery was it before you went
keto? Like how long after that surgery
were you continuing your traditional diet?
Been a year and a half, two years, and you were just
increasing your intake kind of gradually, subconsciously and
that's what was leading to the weight gain and then you decided
to go the route of keto. Right.
Yeah. Just, you know, you're eating,
but you're eating whole grains. You're, you know, you're eating
normally. You're eating the food pyramid,
you're eating the government recommendation, just less of it.
But because you've got a slower metabolism, because you're not
eating as much, etcetera, it's not doing any good.
And it's slowly but surely you'll start to gain the weight
back. Nearly everybody that has
bariatric surgery does experience weight gain.
Again, now that you're just following a carnivore diet, are
you are you tracking your intake much, or are you pretty much
just eating intuitively now? No, I'm probably going to be the
one of the laziest guy. That's the thing I love about
keto. Carnivore.
I'm kind of carnivoreish. I throw in some onions and
spices and stuff like that. Yeah, but for the most part, you
don't have to track them. I mean when you're when you're
eating meat, you know when you're full.
And then you know when you're hungry.
So I only usually eat twice a day.
I'll have like 4 eggs and about 1/2 a pound of meat for the
morning. When I'm full, I quit eating and
then about 435 o'clock I get hungry for dinner.
Then I have about pound of meat at dinner and that's it.
That's all I need. What kind of meat are you doing?
Like a like a ground beef, like a rib eye steak?
And what are you doing there? It depends.
I buy my meat by the cow now, a fantastic rancher that I work
with, so I get this great grass fed grass finish.
No hormones, no vaccination beef.
And it's spectacularly delicious, too.
So yeah, I think if you're going that right, I mean, you're going
to have some days we're eating leaner cuts, some days we're
eating fat ear cuts. But over time, that all kind of
averages out and you're getting a pretty solid, I would imagine,
roughly 1 to one ratio of fat to protein over time.
And I think that's a pretty good sweet spot for most people,
especially if you're eating intuitively, because that's just
pretty much giving your mind everything it needs.
Yeah, and you're absolutely right.
A lot of people want to try to eat low fat sirloins only or.
Low fat hamburger meat and they're not going to get enough
fat, so therefore they're not going to get the energy and
they're not going to get the results.
Your body needs the fat as well as the protein and in order to
absorb it effectively 100%. So in regards to you mentioned
Ozimpicard, I kind of wanted to touch on that cuz that's a
pretty hot topic right now. So a lot of people are turning
to that. I've heard it mentioned on
multiple podcasts. You got some big names like I
think Elon Musk was on it for a while, several celebrities and
actors, They're just dropping weight for you.
Having gone through bariatric surgery, There's some
psychological parallels there between somebody that goes right
of bariatric surgery and one that goes right of taking
something like Ozempic. What?
What's your What's your gut tell
you about something like that Ozempic drug?
Right. Yeah, it's actually goes back a
little bit further. I did the Fen Fen back in the
90s, which was two drugs that work together for weight loss.
That was the big celebrity miracle weight loss cure and it
worked. I mean, I had lost.
I went from close to again, I've always been fat and post 30 and
I got down to, you know, a pretty decent weight.
I was very happy. With the weight loss, the
problem is it created all this mental fog because I wasn't
getting adequate nutrition. I was eating the same food that
I always ate, just much less of it.
And that's probably part of the biggest problem that I see at
the Ozempic part is people keep wanting to eat the same foods
that they're eating. They're not changing their diet,
they're not changing their lifestyle.
And as a result, as soon as they go off the drug, like when they
removed Fen Fen from the market because it turns out that it
killed people. I regained the weight, but what
was really bad was because I was not eating a really good diet
and I wasn't putting in an exercise.
When you look at the weight that I was losing, I was actually
losing almost as much fat as I was lean muscle mass.
And as a result, when you put the weight back on, you're just
putting on that. You've lost the lean muscle
mass. And unless you know how to, put
that back on. You're really completely
screwed. Yeah, I in a.
Very bad way. I haven't honestly done too much
digging into the research of Ozempic, but I I I would assume
that from a body composition standpoint, you know, people
aren't changing their lifestyle factors, their environment,
their nutrition. So they're eating less intake,
which is going to result in a down regulation of their
metabolic rate. They're going to lose lean
tissue and then when they get off that drug, like you're
saying they're going to want to, they're going to increase their
intake and they're going to have a lower metabolic rate to begin
with. So they're just going to put on
more body fats. Their overall composition
actually declines overtime as opposed to improved, which is
the last thing people should want.
Robert, you're dead on, right? It's actually worse than you
might think. The latest research I've seen
shows that people are losing 60% lean muscle with their weight
loss. Because, you know, frankly,
they're just eating, you know, a few chips because meat doesn't
feel good. That makes them a little bit
nauseous. And as a result, they're not
getting adequate protein. And if you're not getting the
adequate protein, you're not going to feel like, like
exercising. And as a result, these people
are walking time bombs. The piper's going to be paid and
it's going to be bad, yeah. As a general rule of thumb, I am
pretty starkly opposed to any any you know shortcut in life,
shortcut with finances and business growth, shortcuts with
weight loss and composition goals.
Like any of that that promises results in a very finite period
of time that usually is a result of cutting corners is not going
to yield the overall mental approach necessary to sustain
anything for good for any length of time.
So for that reason alone, I'm vehemently opposed to it.
I am working with one client that has a horrible carb
addiction. I mean he he can stay clean for
about two weeks and he gets back into it and he goes it's it's
almost like an alcoholic and what he he was very stringent
about it. He wanted to do Ozempic and
we're trying it to use it as a vehicle to help him control his
cravings. But you know, we're trying to
cap them off at two months, so he's going to use as a tool to
help him get over the hump on the carb cravings, hopefully
break those and then be able to switch.
Shouldn't keep to a keto diet. What What is the process to
getting this though? Is it has it has to go through a
prescription I'm assuming, right?
Right. You have to get your doctor's
prescription on that one. There's a couple of different
ways of doing it. You can go to a compounding
pharmacist who can. Create it for you cheaper or you
can buy, you know the the brand names Wachovia or Ozempic and
get the drug. It's very expensive, tough to
get at the moment. A lot of insurance companies
don't want to cover it. So you know you have to jump
through some hoops in order to get it.
But to utilize it just as a short term tool, there's one
dock that I know nationwide is called the Carb Addiction Dock.
That's his channel. And he is using it for that
purposes, to help people as a tool, to do a shortterm thing.
You got a choice, You can do bariatric surgery or you can do
a zippic, you know, and you get to keep your stomach with the
Ozempic as a as a bridge. So if you're using it as a tool
it could be an effective thing. But most people are using it
too, because they want to lose £20.00 for wedding and all
they're going to do is regain the weight and they're going to
lose a lot of lean tissue. Yeah, no, I totally agree.
You you mentioned this client of yours as addicted to
carbohydrates. That in and of itself like that
statement is strangely polarizing to a lot of people
right now. They don't like to view any form
of food group, any macro nutrient as an addictive
substance. I don't have any problem with
that. I think that's a a very fair
statement. I'd love to get your take on
that though. For people that are struggling
with overconsumption of carbohydrates.
Why do you think it should be viewed as an addictive
substance? That because it fires off a part
of the brain that is a reward center.
So much the same way that people are addicted to heroin, cocaine,
alcohol, sex, gambling, anything else at the reward centers in
your brain are wired in such a way that you get this big
dopamine rush every time you eat certain foods or have certain
stimulation. You get addicted to the dopamine
rush. It's not so much the
carbohydrate you're addicted to, you're just addicted to the good
feeling that it gets. And people are weird.
I mean, usually there's some sort of trauma built into their
lives. There's a body, there's a book
called The Body Keeps the Score, which deals with how how to
overcome trauma issues. And because people will not deal
with the trauma issues they start to overcome.
You know, those bad feelings with the dopamine rush and they
that can come in many forms. There's lots of different types
of addictions out there now. Cocaine and alcohol and those
type of addictions actually creates real feelings of
withdrawal. I mean, when you withdrawal
certain drugs from the system, you're going to actually have to
fight that Same thing like with nicotine.
I used to smoke. And you know when you've got two
weeks of feeling like crap when you quit smoking, but after
that, you know, then it becomes a mental battle because you're
not going to be getting that quick hit that used to feel
good. And if that makes sense, and
there's a lot of people that get that kind of cool feeling that
comes from the surge of sugar in their system and then they get
the dopamine rush and they get just addicted to that feeling
and trying to realize that. What does the root causes of
that are are really tough? I mean, I've I've dealt with
people that have had various forms of addiction and it it's
rare that somebody really overcomes an addiction and when
they do, it's time to celebrate as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah. And it's tough with with food
too because if you look at the addiction of a substance like
drugs or alcohol, that's that's clearly a negative.
It's not really offering any benefit, but everybody has to
eat food, right? So it's like it's a much murkier
territory, so to speak. But I think you know, when
you're firing on all these bliss points, when you're getting that
dopamine rush from a food, there's this negative feedback
loop that occurs, especially with all the engineering that's
been done to food to trying to find this bliss point that, you
know, proper combination of sweet and salty and fats.
It just it's not doing anybody favors that is prone to having
that dopamine rush from a substance.
And I feel like there is certainly a demographic people
that can moderate that intake without any negative recourse,
no food disorder, eating issues, none of that which you know more
power to them. But to discredit those that
can't, that that's not a fair justification either.
So for the people that are struggling with the
carbohydrates and the hyper palatable foods, I think of
viewing it as legitimate addiction and then acting
accordingly is the most sensible thing to do.
Right. It's the same thing with alcohol
and the vast majority of people. You know, you're probably one of
those guys that could have a sip of beer and go, wow, that tasted
pretty and you put it down and you forget clean about it.
But you get an alcoholic, man, they they're going to be going,
how can you put that beer down? You know, let me finish that off
for you. You know, their obsession is
very different, so. And what's interesting to me,
there's a really interesting book that deals with the
biochemistry of addiction and much more detailed biochemist
looks at addiction and he found out that most people that smoke
crack can actually take a little bit and walk away from it.
But there's this percentage that become addicts and get
completely wrapped up. So don't disconnect people that
really have. Carb addictions it is.
It's a real thing. It's tough to get rid of over.
It's like overcoming any other addiction.
You need support. 12 step programs help.
Yeah. And no, I totally agree.
I think that is most certainly the right way to view it.
You mentioned nicotine earlier. I'm actually experimenting with
nicotine pouches. Like just pure nicotine, not
tobacco, right. And that that's been interesting
little experiment for me because I'm only doing the three
milligram pouches as a kind of a way to suppress appetite in my
prep right now and then give me some mental focus from doing
like some computer work or something of that nature.
But the, the, the three milligram pouches, I mean I'll
take three or four of those a day.
You know a single cigarette has 8 to 12 milligrams plus all the
negative side effects of the tobacco itself, but I would
never want to become beholden to having to have a certain number
of pouches to make it to the day, like anything in excess is
not good. Right then.
And it will definitely have a negative effect on your
cardiovascular work over time, but the smoking that is.
This makes a poison, yeah, for sure.
For sure. I think you know when it comes
to when it comes to foods, like we all have to consume foods,
but there is no essential carbohydrate like you don't have
to consume carbohydrates. So the notion that you are
missing out by not incorporating them, I think is that that's one
of the big pitfalls to dealing with it and thinking of it as an
addiction because so many people assume that they have to have
it. Whereas when you strip that from
the barrier, when you strip that from the the psychology, rather
it becomes much more graspable to remove it entirely and then,
you know, break free of that negative feedback loop.
Yeah, there, there was an interesting study that just
about last month when it dealt with.
Anorexic and more diet and it the keto carb and elimination
harbs actually helps people real serious food eating disorders
overcome it faster than anything else.
Whenever they try to give them a balanced diet and say eat the
rainbow and stuff like that, they can't do it.
But when you trying to feed somebody just meat, it's
amazing, you know that. We have a need for it.
We'll eat until we're full and then we stop.
One of the videos I did was on how to gain weight.
And there was some really interesting studies that were
done back in the 1960s, back when you could do them, where
they overfed prisoners and the idea was okay.
You know, let's see if we can make it.
We know. Make you know we're we've done
all these days on how to lose weight.
Let's see if we can do a study on how to gain weight And they
took these prisoners and they overfed them carbohydrates and
they had no problem gaining weight on carbs.
Then they tried it with, you know, increase in the amount of
fat and that was a little bit harder because people get kind
of nauseous and they would not want to overeat the fat, but
they could do it. But when they tried to over feed
them on protein, it wouldn't work.
Because people would just get full and they would stop eating
and you could not force them to eat anymore.
So that's the cool thing about, you know, the way we we try to
eat, you know, when we're trying to limit the number of carbs,
you're really are limiting your appetite.
Your body knows when it's got enough protein and it's happy.
Yeah, yeah. From a psychological standpoint,
I think there's a lot of benefit in removing that because a lot
of carbohydrates are hyperpalatable.
Now, if you're just simply eating, you know a plain white
baked potato Or white. Rice, you can probably do that
and moderate it much easier, but there's not really much flavor
in there. But yeah, the hyperpalatable
sweet foods are certainly a crux for a lot of people.
And when it comes to removing that, the physiological benefit
I think is significant as well. And you don't have near the
blood sugar dysregulation, the highs, the lows, that's going to
kind of bode into the need for overconsuming in the 1st place.
But I like when I removed the carbohydrates from my system, my
relationship with food and food, like I just had a more in tune
grasp as to what satiety truly was.
You know, when to eat more, when to eat less, like all that just
kind of seemed to even out. And I feel like when you have
that, like it's very empowering. You don't feel the need.
You don't feel like you're a slave to food anymore.
I think you're absolutely right, and I really do wish more people
would experience that. Because when you get to the
point of total food freedom, when you no longer, you don't
have extreme highs or extreme lows, and you are only aware of
hunger because you're actually hungry.
That's an empowering thing. If you've never have you ever
worn A/C GM for an extended period of time or for a couple
weeks? I have actually got one in right
now. OK, so you you.
It's a fun experiment. I did two weeks with it and when
I the first week I ate my standard diet and my blood
glucose never really varied much.
It was always between 70 and 80, somewhere in that range all the
time. It was almost boring looking
just to see that line go across. The second week I tried some
different foods just to see how they would affect it.
Like, I was out, We went to a sushi restaurant and usually I
just get pure sashimi, you know, salmon.
And I tried a couple of the rolls with rice on it.
Boom, shoots up to 160. I mean, it was just just a
little bit of rice is enough to just shoot that thing up and
then it, you know, then my phone starts blaring because it would
crash down to 50. And I noticed that, yeah, that
stuff was was making me hungry. It was changing my appetite.
That's why when you go to a really good restaurant they give
you, if you're doing a 5 course meal, they're going to give you
something sugary and starchy at the front end to build up your
appetite. Because when you have the carbs
up front, you get hungry. Yeah, I feel like for a while
there everybody was jumping on the CGM bandwagon.
There was a certain population that was kind of poo pooing on
people that were not diabetic using Cgm's.
I don't know if they were worried about they're being in a
run on CGM's or what, Not really sure.
But I think for the general population, simply being
equipped with that knowledge is very, very empowering.
If people like it makes sense to try to strive for stable blood
sugar levels, like there are countless studies that that
illustrate the benefit of having stable blood sugar levels.
So if people were to simply gamify that, and where is CGM?
You know, whether you're diabetic or not, and just simply
eat as you normally would. But then be mindful of what that
data is showing you. And then do the same thing with
the intention of trying to keep that line as stable as possible.
Like that alone would be a pretty, pretty cost effective
way to open people's eyes as to how much their nutrition impacts
their Physiology. Now there's a group of doctors
over at Harvard Medical School. That started that experiment and
it completely changed their paradigm where they started to
realize that certain foods affect them in certain ways.
And that's really important to really start to grasp that.
And I I wanted to do some experiments too, because there's
some people that when they were wearing the CGM and they drink a
diet soda, their brain will actually increase the amount of
insulin and hence they'll have a response where their blood sugar
will go up. Thinking that they're getting
regular soda. Other people, I didn't have any
response at all. I could drink a Diet Mountain
Dew and mine would stay flat. But some people do have a spike
in blood sugar just based on the the sweetness, even though
they're not getting sugar. So that's the important
information to know if you're one of those people that kind of
hyper respond in that way, yeah, this the following phase of
insulin response is interesting. You know people like it really
goes to show how pivotal the brain is in everything that we
do. Like if you consume something
sweet your brains going to turn on a signal to excrete some
degree of insulin. Now for some that may be
negligible, for some it may be a lot, For some, even if they
don't really experience much for blood glucose or insulin
response from a non nutritive sweetened beverage, it often
times leads to the tendency or urge to binge on sweet foods.
And that in and of itself is something you want to avoid,
like even if you don't have a blood sugar response from a non.
Caloric sweetener. Like something with sucralose or
Cecil fan potassium. But if that sweet sensation you
know contributes to the desire and urge to binge on something
else that is sweet, that is a negative in my opinion.
Yeah, that that goes back to the whole carb addiction idea and
understanding what your triggers are and what affects you,
because we're all a little bit different, you know that we're
we're pretty constant. There's certain things that
we've got. We've got a heart and a liver.
But outside of that, you know how people's brains are wired
were all vastly different? Yeah, definitely.
Well, So what? What is the the future hold for
you? What were the things looking
like going forward now that you've pretty well got your keto
carnivore diet dialed in? Are are you weight training now?
Yeah, I actually, well I well thanks to COVID again when they
closed the gyms I actually started.
Trying to figure out how I could work out at home so I could not
get my hands on weights. During that time everybody
bought them all out, but I ran across the X rebar and started
finding out about bands and so and I have a ATRX suspension
system, so between the bands and the the TRXI can actually get.
Much better workouts done at home than I did even when I was
doing CrossFit and stuff like that.
So I found that I can get a lot of work done and really frankly,
in about a 15 minute workout, I can get pretty much everything I
do 15 minutes twice a week on, you know, upper body, lower
body. And then I do Sprint training
using a Schwinn air night bike couple of times a week.
And just by doing that I've been actually able to put on a lot
more muscle mass and my grip strength.
I used to be only be able to hold myself up on a bar for
about a minute. Now I'm up to over 2 minutes and
I've got my pull ups where back when I did the CrossFit I could
do 5. Now I'm up to 15.
So my strength has been only been improving just using those
two modalities. And it's, I'm happy.
I mean, it's 60 years old. I'm stronger than I've ever been
in my life and I've never had a 34 inch waist before.
And while we're down at Keto com, I went and had a DEXTA scan
and I'm like 17% body fat. So, you know, at 60 years old,
that ain't too bad, ain't too bad, man.
I'd say. I'd say keep doing what you're
doing because it's obviously working for you and that's that
goes for everybody. Like when it comes to to lifting
resistance training, you know, like the main thing is to find
what you can adhere to and sustain in some form of fashion
every single week, every single week, indefinitely.
Like if you can figure out what that is and enjoy doing it,
that's going to be far better than just going crazy hard in
the gym doing traditional weightlifting.
You know, for a very finite period of time.
Like if you find what works for you and then you just simply
stick with it that it's sticking with it.
Adherence part. That's the main thing.
Yeah, I think a little bit over time.
Pays a lot more dividends than everything all at once.
And I mean my goals are are simple when it comes to
exercise. I want to put on muscle.
I want to get stronger and I don't want to hurt myself.
And you know that that's it. That's all I want in life.
And if I can get that done with, you know, relatively, you know,
you know, my my workouts are short.
They're 10 to 15 minutes. But they hurt.
I put on a an interval timer and I push as hard as I can for a
solid minute, then give myself 20 seconds off between the next
exercise and then keep up that cycle and by the time I'm done
at the end of that minute, I mean I am about done.
I can't push it all the way anymore and it hurts, but when
it's done it's done the the resistance bands with the X3.
Are you following his protocol of like pretty much one set for
a given exercise to fill just a single set though?
Yeah, I use no the the body by science modality and his and
frankly I think multiple set things work.
I mean, I've listened to Mike Medzner and he gave this lecture
on why his program is the only way to do things.
And I'm sitting there going that makes no sense, Mike, because
frankly there's people that are doing multiple sets and getting
tremendous results. So how can you tell me that it's
only A1 size fits all protocol. But when I for me personally, I
want to be able to get things done quickly and not hurt myself
but still get results. That's the way I do it, the way
I do it, and it and it's been working really darn well.
I definitely do not subscribe to the only one way to do things
mentality. I think there's multiple ways to
skin a cat as a saying goes, especially when it comes to
weight training and nutrition. And you clearly are proof that
whatever you're doing is working quite well for you.
So I would not be 1 to deter you from that at all.
Well, appreciate it, you know and I frantic, you know one of
the things I I think might make sense to you is that if I can
get. 80% of the results that you get, but only have to do 20% of
the work. I'm going to do that because I'm
kind of naturally lazy. And you know, if I wanted to get
that extra 20% of the results, you know, to be like there.
There's guys in my age group that are competing in
bodybuilding and they're naturals and they are
spectacular specimens. One guy just won the Mr.
Michigan. Open.
I mean, he's really incredible, but in order to do what he does,
if I wanted to get to that level, I'd have to do 80% more
work to increase things to get an extra 20% result.
I'm too lazy. I'm just gonna stick to what I'm
doing. No, I totally agree, man.
I think there's definitely a way to view health and nutrition
through this 8020 analysis. And as long as you're able to
find what you know 20% input yields 80% of the results and
you're able to sustain that, I think that is a very, very
healthy and appropriate way for everybody to go through it.
Bodybuilding like my sport, that is definitely not the masses
like that, is that is going after that last 1%, but
certainly not necessary for the general population.
I mean if the general population that you kind of alluded to
earlier that you know you see walking around the airport or
coming out of the grocery store that is Moberly obese and the
furthest thing from healthy, if they just simply did a few minor
tweaks, removed all the carbohydrates, certainly all the
processed carbohydrates and just simply moved more via TRX span
resistant span. Some simple form of weight
training, you know, a few times a week like that would yield
tremendous benefit above their current baseline.
Yeah, let me let me give you a terrifying number, and this
one's true. Roughly 88% of America is
metabolically unhealthy, and the five measures they use is waist
circumference. If your waist is above 38
inches. If your blood glucose is running
above 100. If your blood lipids,
particularly HDL, the supposedly good cholesterol.
If that's real low, like under 30.
Your triglycerides are really high and you know you've got on
your blood pressure. If you have one of those
markers, you're metabolically unhealthy.
I had all five when I was 50. I mean, I had a 46 inch waist,
you know, no HDL, high triglycerides, high blood
pressure, you know, and fasting glucose of over 140.
I've gotten rid of all. I even even my blood pressure is
now normal and you know that's been it took a few years to get
to that point. But it's well worth it.
And it's not that hard and it doesn't, it doesn't cost any
extra money. It just takes a little bit of
time and a little bit of thought on it.
But boy, once you do it, it will change utterly change your life
where you can do the things that you were supposed to do.
I mean our. Part of our birthright as legacy
as human beings is we're supposed to be strong until we
die because we're hunter gatherer stock.
That's where we came from. And if you were not able to
move, if you were not able to feed yourself, you died.
That's you know who we should be.
We should be hunters and gathers right up to the very end.
I completely agree. I think you know we we owe it to
ourselves. I mean, we don't owe it to
ourselves. We owe it to those like our
family members. Like one of the things that I'm
really passionate about is I don't want to be a burden on my
children now that I have children.
Like I don't want to be a burden on them because of my declining
health and well-being as I age. You know, like we should all
strive to be self-sufficient in that regard and be resilient as
we age. So I'm in 100% agreement with
you on that one, Kirk. With one of the I think the the,
the cool lasting legacies and I will put this out for the guys
in particular if you're a dad. This is what's been really cool
in the last three years. When my kids have seen me
transform from this really 300 pound guy to somebody that has
got themselves in really good shape, I'm noticing they're
starting to pick it up. They're they're in their late
20s now and they were kind of in shape, but all of them
realizing, you know, Dad's taking this stuff seriously,
they they don't ask you a lot of questions.
They notice. And they've told me later on
that's, you know, I got inspired because you were doing this type
of stuff, dad. And that may be the best legacy
that you can leave your kids is to be healthy so that you're
encouraging your kids to be healthy.
Because look at families. I mean, you can see the fat mom
and dad and guess what their kids look like, because that's
what they've been modeled. You can model good health for
your kids. And I hope you guys will do it.
Pick up the challenge. I fully intend to do it myself,
and I hope anybody listening is on the same page as well.
But I 100% agree with you Kirk. Well, awesome man.
Where can people go to find out more about you?
Dive deeper into your story and just follow the journey?
Is there? Are you on social media at all?
I am on Twitter. I'm Carnivore Kirk Kirk like
Captain Kirk. I like it.
And if you want to go to my YouTube channel, I try to break
down my videos and. 5 to 15 minutes segments dealing with
that. I've been studying the stuff for
a decade and I try to break all this stuff down into short
digestible points on how to get more healthy, how to, if I do
bariatric surgery, how to do that in most healthy way
possible and explain all these different issues.
So we take, you know, so you've go to the Bariatric Carnivore
and you can find my YouTube channel and that's.
Really, what I've been doing for the last few months, there's
about 80 of them up there and I try to put out a new one every
single work day just on a short topic and keep them short
interesting and hopefully people you know several 100 people are
starting to watch them and I'm enjoying doing awesome.
Well, I will most certainly link out to those channels make it
easy for people to find you and I just encourage you to keep
doing what you're doing. Curriculum and you're making an
impact. You turn your own health around.
You're modeling it to your kids, to their kids.
I mean, you're you're a light in a sea of darkness.
I mean, the fact that you've gone through bariatric surgery,
you're now in your 60s and you're kicking butt.
I mean, that speaks volume. So I I tip my hat to you good
Sir. I appreciate what you're doing.
Great again. Glad Brian got us together while
we were over at Carnivore Con. That was, that's fun group.
Yeah, it definitely is. Hopefully I'll say at some of
the other conferences coming up for sure.
OK. Looking forward to it.
All right, Take care of Kirk.