The basis of the sugar diet, the honey diet, what was found in
some of the studies was your body produces something called
FGF 21 and they believe that FGF 21 helps to boost your
metabolism. The what they saw was what they
believed to be about a 20% increase in your metabolism.
I do think that fructose and carbohydrate can be really
beneficial. We're talking about glucose,
right? So just because I'm mentioning
carbohydrates, I'm talking about dietary carbohydrates, it
doesn't mean that because you do your style of diet where you're
doing a ketogenic diet and you're not consuming, you're not
consuming carbohydrate, you still have glucose.
One of the reasons why I think it's good idea to look at what
bodybuilders do is because they do put that muscle mass on and
they'll lose fat and they'll try to hold on to as much muscle as
they can for you. Have you noticed if you drive
your protein up, do you tend to get a little bit better pump?
How does that work for you I. I get a good pump, more so just
with electrolyte manipulation, so I can be high fat or high
protein and the main thing I'm manipulating is the
electrolytes. I do notice though that if I
have a super heavy, I mean, I probably had, I don't know,
probably 400, maybe not four and about 300 grams of protein last
night for sure. I didn't count that one and I
noticed that my glucose, you know, significantly increases
and my ketones drop considerably with a heavy protein meal like
that. But then it's back to normal the
next day. I think we unfortunately have a
tendency to look at things as if they're bad.
You know, I've heard people kind of recently saying they think
that, you know, protein and maybe a saturated fat diet can
cause some type of insulin resistance.
But but you know, maybe there's like a reason for it.
And maybe it's like we just tend to think that we we tend to put
things in a category or we say things for the masses.
That isn't true for like a large subset of people as well.
You know, sometimes, you know, making a statement like that,
like that might not be true for you.
Like your markers of blood and stuff like that might be not
indicating any of those things. I mean, what's what's been your
experience? Because you coach a lot of
people with this diet too. What everything needs just
further defining cause like insulin resistance is a bad
thing, quote UN quote. But I mean, there's a difference
between physiological insulin, insulin resistance and
pathological insulin resistance. It's like my wife, we just had
our second kid and pregnant women, you know, appreciate it,
man. You know, pregnant women, they
have to take a, you know, glucose test.
They'd give you like 50 or 100 grams of pure, you know, glucose
to see if you're going to have gestational diabetes.
And she having not had carbs and almost as long as me would
technically fail that test. So she just wore glucometer for
two weeks and or CGM rather than past it and flying colors with
that data. But like if your body's
adaptable, so it's going to make the most of whatever you give
it. And if you're not giving up many
carbs and then those pathways are going to be down regulated.
But it doesn't necessarily a bad thing as long as you're giving
it the right stuff, you know, from everything else.
So yeah, defining everything is, is key, man.
Like people throw labels, social media is bad.
People just want to go for like the, you know, the the
headlines, the sound bites. I mean, you get shade thrown at
you all the time for the sugar dad stuff especially.
But I mean, every time I've talked to you been super
reasonable. You're always just a Guinea pig
self experimenting. And we need that in the world
for the most part, because people need to know what's
possible, and they need to be smart enough to recognize that,
you know, your results may not be the same for everybody, but
you're doing it because you're curious.
And curiosity is a key. And I've done some things in the
past, you know, I've done even in the, the book I wrote, The
War on Carbs, I talked about like a fat fast and just
primarily like running off fat and just, you know, I guess like
experimenting and see what that'll do for you.
But it can be inconvenient. You know, sometimes things are
out of convenience. And something I shared with
people for years is that some of what I've chosen over the years
has to do with convenience. I utilized the ketogenic diet
because I didn't want to be tethered to my food.
I didn't want to have to walk around.
Like at least that was my understanding of bodybuilding
and a bodybuilding style diet. And as I lost weight, I'm like,
forget all this meal prep stuff, man.
I don't want to be any part of that.
I don't want to, you know, cook up bunch of chicken breast or
whatever it is on Sunday and have that day be shot.
I have two kids, you know, I'd rather be around my family
rather than just sitting there prepping meals all day.
And so I just started to kind of figure out like, well, what
diet's going to work for me that's going to allow me more
distance away from my food. And that for me at the time was
high protein, high fat, because the fat is not only satiating
and satisfying, but it has a delayed response in your body,
takes longer to break down, longer to digest, makes all the
other foods that you're consuming take longer to digest
and so forth as well. So that's the style of diet I
went with and I used to tell people I chose this because it's
easier and I know that you can take that diet and make it
difficult and you can get ready for a bodybuilding show.
But most of the time what I saw most bodybuilders do, I was
like, that looks like I don't want to count calories.
I don't want to be like trapped in trying to bring bring around
my 6 pack bags or whatever with all the Tupperware and
everything in there. And I'd rather find something
that's going to allow me to eat a little differently.
So I did those diets for years, and I've been experimenting with
diets pretty much ever since. And even when I did carnivore,
my brother and I went on the Joe Rogan show and we talked about
how we modified the carnivore diet.
And then Rogan was kind of like, well, that's not carnivore
anymore because you're adding in fruit, you know?
And then you got Saladino and some other people kind of found
similar things. It's because you experiment, and
that's why people end up with similar protocols.
So I'm imagining people in the keto world that do a
bodybuilding style diet, they probably end up having to follow
a lot of your rules and principles because there's not
that many different ways to get like completely shredded when
you're talking about the specifics of a particular diet.
And on the other side of things, when I've done a bodybuilding
show before, I did do a bodybuilding diet and it was
like just cut and dry. Like you're going to do some
cardio, you're going to eat carbs, you're going to lower
your fats and this is how you're going to, this is how you're
going to do it. And when I ask questions,
they're like, Nope, I say, hey, what about?
They're like, Nope, can't do that, can't do intermittent
fasting, can't do this, can't do that.
And so there's a lot of rules associated when you're putting
yourself on the line like that and you're putting yourself on a
stage. But for average people who are
just want to look better, feel good, be lean, I think they have
a lot of options when it comes to different diets that they
want to select. Yeah, 100% agreement.
And I feel like sustainability and convenience go hand in hand.
And I mean, I used to do the whole bro diet too, like 6-7
meals a day. I'd carry that came my gym bag,
my book bag in college, and another duffel bag full of
Tupperware. Eat every two or three hours,
just being a slave to the clock. And I didn't like that.
That's why I went keto. And for me, I'm more productive
throughout the day because I can typically have like a fatty
coffee and then maybe a brick or something post work count.
And then I'll be good until dinner and have typically 2
meals a day and not be fixated on food the rest of the day.
And that was liberating. But yeah, you're right when it
comes to like bodybuilding level stage leanness, I mean, when
you're getting sub 5% body fat, like you can't really do that
intuitively because intuition forces you to eat more, you
know? So when you're trying to get to
in human levels of, you know, conditioning, you got to play by
a certain criteria that is not natural.
But nobody in the right mind should argue that that's
healthier, optimal or sustainable long term.
That's why I take two or three years off in between competitive
seasons. Like I don't want to subject my
body to those stressors for too long.
So yeah, that's I mean, it's all about what you want to do.
But people that are just trying to live at a healthy body,
weights, healthy body fat, I mean, they've got all kinds of
options at their fingertips. I think in addition, you know, I
think there's like, I think each person wants to sort of prove
their diet right. You know, no matter how open
minded we are, we want to like prove that our thing works, you
know, So, you know, here I am at 4% body fat or here I am, you
know, at 48 years old, you know, doing these various things.
I really just, I like to encourage people.
I'll, I, I get excited. So when I get excited, I'm going
to talk about something more. But I do think that there are
things that people should consider when they're looking at
certain individuals and what they're doing.
Doctor Sean Baker comes to mind. It's like, well, Doctor Baker is
a bad ass. I don't know, you know, if
people been around the guy, man, that guy is extremely
intelligent. He's fun.
He's also fun. He's fun to talk to.
He's he's kind. He's not a not a Dick.
He may be online, he might be a little bit here and there to the
vegan people that are mean to him, but he's a good dude.
He's got a good heart and he trains really, really hard.
And then on top of that, I have no reason not to believe him.
He he's a natural guy and he's 65 and he's like 250 and he's
able to jump onto a box. It's like 4142 inches and he's
nearly 60 years old. It's like that guy's got my
attention. You know, like, wait a second,
what is this diet that he's doing?
And not to say that he's proving that his diet works, but at
least it seems like the diets working pretty well for him.
And then he has a subset of people that follow him.
And you see the testimonials about people healing, you know,
their skin and autoimmune disorders.
There's a lot of weight loss as well.
So I just don't think it makes sense to really discredit other
diets. I think what we're all trying to
think, I think we're we're all looking for is a way to eat a
lot but still be in really good shape.
And there's different ways to do that.
What you know, that's what I've discovered because I've done a
lot of different style diets. I haven't done them all, but
I've done a lot of different styles of diet.
And the diet that I'm doing now is allowing me to eat a lot of
food and it feels really good. But I also have been in
situations before where I've done keto style diets, carnivore
diet, where I've eaten a lot of meat, two 3 lbs of meat a day,
5-6 eggs every day, some cheese, some bacon.
And it's like, man, that like I right now, I miss a lot of that,
those fats and stuff like that. They are regardless of what they
actually do inside the body, we can't deny how satisfying they
are. They tend to like they, they
tend to like scratch and itch. And maybe that's just because we
have so many calories at our fingertips all the time these
days, but man, does it feel good.
Like I one of my favorite things to eat in the world is a keto
brick. And then also I love omelets.
So like if I was going to die, I would be like, hey, get me an
omelette and get me a keto brick and then you could Take Me Out.
All right, No, didn't keto brick omelette man coming up?
Yeah, I feel like people got to look at what they're wanting to
accomplish and then adapt accordingly.
Like there's a lot of people that do diets because they have
the autoimmune issues and that's going to be a limiting factor
from them trying other other options or, you know,
psychologically speaking, people have, you know, negative
relationships with food. Some things are trigger foods.
Like, I used to have really bad OCD and that was motivating for
me to adopt A ketogenic approach.
You got people like Chris Palmer putting out a bunch of research
for, you know, what's happening in the brain with different
types of diets and what's optimal in that regard.
And I think all that has to go into consideration and figure
out what's sustainable. But people need to just not be
dogmatic. And they're thinking either.
Like, I've done multiple different diets.
I did several different diets before I went to keto.
And in the 1011 years I've been keto, I've played around with
multiple variations of keto, but I don't ever want to be like
living in this information silo that creates this dogmatic
thinking and just backs you into a corner.
And I feel like some people getting these diet war tribes
and then they're just totally unreceptive to anything and
everything outside of that. I think, you know, we see that
online all the time, especially with you.
I mean, you're typically like, there's this weird outrage
within the keto space right now because the popularity of keto
or of sugar diet rather, because it kind of for whatever reason,
hit a lot of people that were hardcore carnivore.
So then you had these people that were jumping ship and doing
the sugar diet from the carnivore community.
So you've got the purest, you know, talking smack and you get
these people that are Guinea pigs doing their thing.
And it's like, to each their own.
Let everybody figure out like some people just have to learn
on their own, and there's nothing wrong with that either.
It might just make you realize that the diet didn't work.
You know, there's a new diet you tried didn't work or did work
and maybe even you try the diet but didn't work for you, but
someone else in your family picks it up and it's effective
for them. You know, there's a lot of
there's a lot of great things that can happen from trying
something new and different as far as like health concerns go.
I mean, I guess you can do something really wacky crazy
with your diet that would make you like sick.
And depending on your previous background, maybe depending on
your your liver health and all these different things that you
might that might go into you trying a new protocol.
Those things. I mean, those things can happen.
I mean, if you're coming from a background where you're
diabetic, if you're coming from a background where you have like
fatty liver already and then you're trying something like the
sugar diet, you're going to have to do so with knowledge you're
going to have to do so with. Because if you just consume,
even even average person who's used to sugar, if they just
randomly eat a bag of candy, they may not feel well, like
they might not get sick, but they might feel like shit.
But for somebody that already has some issues they could set
because potentially send them into a tailspin, they might
have, you know, end up with really high blood sugar or end
up with really low blood sugar. It really just kind of depends
on the person. And I don't think we've had a
lot of situations before where we've kind of instructed people
to, you know, only eat this, you know, only eat just straight.
It's not really ever straight sugar because there's multiple
sugars in just about everything. There's like, you know, fructose
and glucose and there's, there's all kinds of different shit
going on with almost every single thing.
I guess maybe with the exception of like, well, maybe even high
fructose corn syrup has other, other sugars in it.
But it just you have to be a little bit cautious.
And if you are to mix carbohydrates, it actually gets
to be safer. So if you are to have, let's
say, like a rice cake or something, you know, people
think rice cake, oh, the glycemic index is nuts.
It's off the charts. So maybe it's going to make you
not feel so well. But it is does have rice in it
and it has some sugar. And even if you were to dump
honey on it, you're most likely not going to feel like crap from
eating something like that. Depending on how many of them
you ate though. And then the same thing kind of
goes for like juice. Like most people can have 6
ounces of juice, 8 ounces of juice.
But if you take like 12 ounces of juice and you pour it into a
blender and then you blend up a bunch of fruit with it and then
you dump sugar in there and you eat the whole thing in one
sitting. And, and the amount of time it
takes you to eat a smoothie is pretty short.
And now you might have just ingested 600 grams or 400 grams
of carbohydrate kind of out of nowhere.
And so you have to be, So what I'm saying, you got to go into
these things with knowledge. You have to have some sort of
understanding. It's not, it's good to jump into
things. It's good to try new things.
But then you have to try to do so in a reasonable way.
And you might say to yourself, OK, I'm going to try this.
But like, I haven't had 75 grams of carbs and it's sitting in
three years. OK, well then let's start with,
I don't know, 50 grams of carbohydrate.
See how you feel and then you can start to go from there, but
just be kind of cautious whether you're jumping into keto or
jumping into this diet. I think there, I think it's good
that people have the conjecture. I think it's good that people
talk trash. I think it's good that people
get a little angry. I think, I think we should, I
think we should be some, some, you know, red lights should be
going off when somebody's talking about doing something
that you haven't really heard anybody else talk about before.
Because you're like, well, why this guy?
Why did this guy discover this thing that no one else knows
about? And how come everyone else is
talking completely opposite of what this guy's saying?
So I think a lot of that caution is actually a good thing.
So survive. It's the survival thing.
Yeah. No, I think like I like being a
contrarian with certain because there's not many people doing
bodybuilding with a ketogenic approach.
So I'm kind of a contrarian in that regard.
And I liked doing the opposite of what standard wisdom always
was kind of preaching. I like controlling for
variables. So I can kind of tease out what
is the actual catalyst for change and what, what's the
moving piece here that's moving the needle.
So on that note, like with you having done because you you
weren't tracking your macros at all while while you've been in
the sugar now you've been in there for about 6 months now.
I've been doing about six months and I've only tracked a little
bit just using like ChatGPT and just, you know, going back and
forth with that. And I would say, you know, 600
to 1000 grams of carbohydrate, maybe a maybe 1000 is only
something I've done a couple times, but maybe 600 to 800
grams of carbohydrate. Protein was like 100 and 5000
maybe per day ish. And then fat was just like, try
not to eat any. So maybe 30 grams of fat in a
day, depending on how much meat I ate in that day or if I ate
meat at all, because there's some days where I didn't, I
didn't consume anything other than the simple.
Sugars. And so from a total caloric
congestion standpoint, is that about what you were consuming
because you were doing pretty much carnivore prior to this
experiment, right? My, my body's wired pretty good.
You know, I'm going to get the calories like my bot, Like it's
just I, yeah, if I, if I don't eat enough, then the next couple
days I'm I'm so I'm just ravenously hungry.
So my body is calibrated for probably around 3000 to 3500
calories somewhere in that neighborhood.
Yeah, that's typically what I'm doing as well. 3300 or so is my,
my average this I go to Brazilian steak gas and it might
be a little higher, but I was, I was looking at a lot of the
research because I just did a A2 week stint of a similar FGF 21
protocol, but with incredibly high fat and very, you know,
minimal protein, minimal carbohydrates.
Because some assume that the, the efficacy of the sugar diet
is by way more so of the lack of protein.
So like, I think throughout that experiment, I was consuming less
than 9% of my calories coming from protein, which is pretty
low, even though I've often times played around with lower
protein. So do you think the findings
that you've had have been more so a result of the high sugar or
just minimal protein compared to what you're typically consuming?
I think for me personally, because of my background with
mainly eating less carbohydrate, I think that the carbs were
really helpful. I can't say that would be true
of everybody else, but yeah, the basis of the sugar diet, the
honey diet, some of this stuff got kicked around and, and, and
boosted up from all kinds of different spots.
You know, some people believe it's from some of Ray Pete's
work and Ray Pete was into. Talking about, you know, ways to
increase the metabolic rate that didn't include necessarily like
lifting, just included like what you ate, which I think that that
is, that in of itself is really fascinating to me.
I have not really heard many people talk about that.
It's normally like somebody wants to lose weight.
You find a base calorie intake, maybe some coaches take people
up on calories a little bit for a couple weeks or a month and
then they start to bring them back down.
And we always just adhere to this thing of like the calories
are going to have to be a lot lower.
But with this diet, what was found in some of the studies
was, and there's not a lot of studies, I think there's only
one human study and then there's a couple studies on mice.
What they think is happening is your body produces something
called FGF 21 and they believe that FGF 21 helps to boost your
metabolism. The, what they saw was what they
believed to be about a 20% increase in your metabolism.
That's quite a, that's quite a bit, if that's truly what's
happening. I, I don't think anybody truly
knows whether this is exactly what's going on in the body, but
at least in accordance to that study and probably in accordance
to some of the people that have had success on the sugar diet,
maybe that is what's happening. I do think that fructose in
certain amounts, I think can be really, and carbohydrate can be
really beneficial to having the body kind of keep this, you
know, flame, if you will, of keeping the body temperature
maybe a little bit hotter. I don't have anything to support
that. It's just a theory of mind.
I know again, if you go back to repeat, he was really big on
having people measure their. He would have people use a
thermometer in the morning to measure their, yeah, measure
their temperature. And he was saying that people
should be a little bit higher than, I think what 98.6 is
what's usually recommended. And he was saying like they
should be a little bit higher. And he help people figure that
out via not just carbohydrate in particular, but even more
specifically like dairy and a bunch of other things because
the calcium and those kinds of things can help your thyroid
stimulating hormone. I believe I may have some of
this wrong. I'm not like I'm not crazy into
the repeat stuff, but I'd know a little bit about it.
So these are all things that people kind of have proposed.
But yeah, I do think that carbohydrates, at least in my
experience so far, in my experience, when I did do a
bodybuilding show, they seem to increase some sort of thermic
effect for me. And again, sometimes it might be
hard to tell with me because even when I did do a
bodybuilding diet, I was still coming from a keto diet.
So I did a bodybuilding style diet for like 10 weeks, you know
what I'm saying? But I had a preload of, of
being, I guess you'd say, like metabolically flexible.
I also have been a person that even in my keto dieting, I have
used carbohydrates maybe a little bit more like Dominic
Dagostino, where I didn't always just flatline my carbohydrates.
So yeah, that's some of my, that's some of my history.
But I do think the carbohydrates were were helpful and supposedly
they boost FGF 21 as well but I don't really know.
Yeah, everything. I mean, like I said, there's not
a whole lot of studies. Everything I've read up on it,
there was a study done in 2025 S this year looking at
participants and they were not trying to lose weight
necessarily. They just had, they found that
they needed to increase calories by like 20% or whatever to just
maintain weight, but they were doing by it by way of minimal
protein consumption to also boost FGF 21 hormone.
That's kind of what I modeled my experiment off of because I'm
not trying to lose weight right now either.
So I basically went up to 4000 plus calories and then 9% of
which were coming from protein. And over the two weeks span,
like I didn't really gain any weight.
That's not very much time, but my testosterone more than
doubled, which I thought was super interesting.
Yeah. So I'd be curious to see if the
same experiment was done with the higher carbohydrate relative
to fat, but also minimal protein, what its effect on
hormones would be. And I didn't test for FGF 121
specifically, obviously, so I don't know there.
But it did make me think, OK, if we can elevate that by way of
the minimal protein in a short term, you're having a favorable
effect on sex hormones and metabolic rate.
That can be advantageous if you're in a prep or if you're
trying to like cycle that in during a building phase or
something like that. So I've got my client that's in
a prep right now doing that this week actually.
So we're kind of see what the the data shows afterwards.
But but yeah, I'd be, I don't know, man.
Like I'm all about longevity as well.
Like, what can I do and stick with for a lifetime?
And I feel like the low protein, I don't think we need as much
protein as often as you know, suggestion because proteins kind
of seeing its limelight Halo days right now.
Everybody's pushing for more and more protein.
I think you can and should use it as a lever to pull, But I
mean that 9% of calories coming from protein.
For me that was like less than 100 grams a day which probably
wouldn't be optimal long term. You know, I think, you know, if
you're think about like our history, it's not always good to
like dive into our ancestry because like people just ate
whatever they could eat to like stay alive, you know, and we
stayed alive doing a lot of weird stuff.
You know, being drunk is one of them or being high is another
one. You know, like we, we figured
out ways to stay alive, you know, through alcohol and
through coffee and think things that I don't know, things that
are like you wouldn't really not necessarily recognize like being
healthy. But I think that if you're to
think about it, you know, why would, why would there be any
increase in anything in your body if you're not eating
protein? And my only guess would be that
maybe somehow your body's trying to sequester some sort of energy
to give you like a, a second wind, if you will give you more
energy, supply you with energy, allow you to liberate more
energy off of your body so that you can still go and get
protein. Because you, you maybe had to
hunt for it. You had to kill something.
But all you're getting is like these little shrubs and little
berries a little bit here and there.
And you're just, you're barely surviving and you're about to
die. You're on day five of the sugar
diet, you know, 1000 years ago and you're withering down to
nothing. And maybe the metabolic rate
does increase a little bit too, because sometimes when you get
hungrier, right, your focus can increase some, some of us know
this from doing fasting or intermittent fasting or even
being on a ketogenic diet, which sometimes can mimic some of the
results of, of fasting. And you get your, your brain
starts to get like wired in and focused in.
And so maybe it was something that would, you know, help us to
make a last ditch effort to get, to get more food or get more
protein. That's kind of the only thing I
can think of as to like why the body would do it.
But I think the human body is so tricky, you know, and I've
always been kind of touting like, I think it's a mistake to
try to science the body. I think the body is more
beautiful and more it's harder to define than we can even
possibly imagine. Like we have a hard time
defining it now. We had a guest on the show the
other day talking about like fascia and talking about these
different parts of the body and your, your big toe and your,
your, your, your planter fascia and your, and your heel and your
Achilles tendon. He's like, everything's all just
one thing. Like your fascia is just this
like big sack is everything's just like one thing, but we have
to call things a bunch of different names so that we know
what the hell we're talking about.
And he said the ocean is the same way.
You know, there's, there's seven oceans, but they're all, they're
all connected at some point. And so there, it's really just
one, it's just one giant body of water, what we call Atlantic,
Pacific, Indiana and so forth to give us locations to try to give
us things to describe. And I think the human body is
complex that way too, where it's hard to know when somebody comes
online and they say, hey, this is, this is what I'm doing, this
diet that I'm doing and it's really working great for me.
We don't know the other changes that may have happened in that
person's life. First of all, I mean, they could
be on TRT, which they they never mentioned, right?
So that's, you know, that's an obvious one.
But they also could have had just a really big change in
life. Maybe they never really dieted
before. Maybe they never had much of A
diet protocol and now they finally found one that they can
actually stick to. And so the results of that
ketogenic diet or high carb, low fat diet that they just did, it
really had a huge impact on them, not so much because of the
diet. It had a huge impact on them
because they could actually stick to it.
So it's really hard to get the right context and to figure out
who the hell is actually talking about what and what does it
mean? We hear a lot of talk about
vitamin D and then you're like, well, are we talking about like
the vitamin D that's naturally in your body from getting
sunlight? Are we talking about the
supplement vitamin D? Hear the same thing about
creatine. Like you can go in the gym and
do creatine like workouts and have your brain go on fire from
doing explosive movements and training yourself to be more and
more explosive over time. I would say that beats the hell
out of anything you're going to do longevity wise in taking a
creatine supplement. I mean, it's just going to blow
that. There's not even close.
And the same thing with the vitamin D thing.
It's like, get outside, you know?
So it's very hard to like sort of break all these things down
and try to figure out where is any of it coming from.
And on top of that, there's monetary gain that can be
associated with a lot of these things.
So it makes it even more difficult to figure out.
Yeah. No, it's, I mean, you're a
performance athlete, performance athlete where we're trying to
figure out how to solve for that, you know, last 1% and just
reach that next level. And that kind of breaks all the
rules and the things that we do, we wouldn't necessarily
recommend for the masses. But like, I feel like there
should be, I mean, look at other species in the wild, like they
know what to eat, they know how much to eat.
Like you don't see these massive windows of ultra scrawny and
like massively overweight, you know, different animal species,
but you see it in humans. And it makes me think, OK,
we're, we're so far removed from, you know, being in tune
with our body. What are what are natural call
to hunger and satiety and the foods we should eat is, and that
we've just bastardized it completely and we're all running
around not knowing what to consume.
So I feel like we need to kind of hone in on what is the
species appropriate diet for human beings.
And we are credibly adaptable so we can get away with eating all
kinds of shit. But like, most of the population
is not going to dive into the weeds on the research.
They're going to be doing the extreme lifting protocol.
So what does the masses need to move the needle in the right
direction? Because right now, it's
certainly not headed in the right direction.
In modern times, I think we need to probably, we probably need to
use modern stuff, you know, So I think that, you know, as much as
I don't like all the different tracking, you know, some of it
drives me nuts because that's all people rely on.
And then they're not like, again, like sciencing the body.
I just, I makes me sad really. I, I'd, I'd rather people not be
so hooked into that. But then if they're not hooked
into that, then the day gets away from them and then the next
day gets away from them and so on.
And they don't get their steps and they don't get their
movement in their sleep starts to fall off because they're not
tracking their sleep scores anymore And everything just kind
of falls apart. I've seen this happen with a lot
of people and when they have those metrics to look at often
then it it's for some people it's helpful.
And then they can say, OK, yeah, I was off my calories last, you
know, last couple weeks, you know, I, I went off the rails
and, and did AB and C. And so I think that sometimes
those things can be helpful. But what I mean by using like
modern technology is, and I'm not trying to just sell your
product, but like is to use a keto brick, like use modern
technology, utilize a steak shake, utilize a total carnivore
shake, utilize some of these hydration items that are out
there from various companies because it makes things more
convenient. And if we're going to beat, if
we're, if we're going to, if we're going to beat and defeat
obesity, we need to, I used to kind of think we need to beat it
by like turning the clock back, You know, we need to go back to
the basics and back to this and that.
And yes, some of that's true, but I think that the more the
more we can use modern technology, probably the better
off we are just because things are so sideways.
And yes, we do need to recalibrate our taste buds and
we need to recalibrate our hunger signals.
But for now, it's like, man, a lot of people really need these
GLP ones. Like people are in like a lot of
danger. People are in a lot of trouble.
And I wish they didn't necessarily need these things,
but I think that's just where we're at.
And so like, what are other examples of like modern stuff?
Well, let's get some good modern shoes on so that we can get in a
lot of steps every day so we don't hurt our feet, our knees,
our back and our hips. And then like, what's a good
shoe? Have fun going down that rabbit
hole. Because that's a long story too.
Like everything is, everything's so commercialized and everything
is for sale. So it makes it really hard.
What's a healthy food? Like, shit, man, I, I, I don't
even know what strength is anymore.
That's how screwed up things are from seeing so many different
images of strength now with the Internet and seeing people
demonstrate forms of gymnastics or forms of sprinting or
explosive power in other ways that isn't just a bench, squat
and deadlift. You know, when I was a kid, that
was my world. That's all I knew.
I didn't know anything different.
And now we have the Internet and you show shows you like, Oh,
there's other, there's completely other aspects of
strength, there's completely other aspects of nutrition and,
and all these things. And I so I think utilizing some
modern technology, the fact that you can just go to any grocery
store or gas station and get fruit, I think is great.
I think eating fruit is an awesome opportunity to not eat
any fat. I think the same thing of
vegetables. I think the same thing of very
lean sources of protein, although some lean sources of
protein, you come with at least some fat.
But for somebody that wants to go down that, that style of
diet, that's great news that there's not any fat in some of
these things because they are, they're lower in overall
calories and it's going to supply you with a nice amount of
energy. And when you're eating fruit and
eating Whole Foods, I think almost all of us can agree that
a lot of the Whole Foods are critical.
And I that's a form of technology.
That's the fact that it's at every grocery store is a thing
of modern technology. The fact that you can just go
buy chopped up chicken breasts that are in a package is like a
big form of like modern technology.
And so I it would be great if people went and haunted their
own food and stuff like that. But like that stuff's not going
to that. Like we'll never be back.
Well, never say never, but we most likely won't be back to
those situations. And so I think we need to
embrace some of these companies, like my friend Ron Penna, he
owns Legendary Foods and they're trying to make these, these
protein products that are like lower in carbohydrate and and
moderate to modest in the, in the amount of fat that are
that's in them. And he's trying to make them
like 50% protein. It's like, man, if we make
something that's 50, if we ought to make a pop Tart that's 50%
protein and tastes really good, It's like, how are you still
going to be fat? You know, if, if someone can
figure out shit like that, I don't think that's our only
solution. I just think it's part of the
solution because then you get people to start to buy into
other forms, other ideas of nutrition and other ideas of
cleaning up their diet. They know they just can't eat a
keto brick all day. They know they can't just drink
my protein powders all day. They have to have real food
that's going to encourage the body.
Precisely on, you know, how much to eat and all these things.
We need good amounts of protein to help lower our, our satiation
and, and all these things. But I think, again, I think
modern technology is going to be a really key factor to kind of
help us get out of the situation that we're in because it's
pretty nasty. Yeah, I think the technology
will certainly help with the convenience factor.
I think it has to be convenient for it to be applicable to the
masses. And I would love to think, you
know, from a purist standpoint, that people would be motivated
to get their food from the right sources and, you know, put in
some leg work to figure out where their food comes from and,
you know, vote with their dollar in that regard.
Because I mean, me, like I do that.
I know a lot of other people do that.
Like you get quality beef from Piedmont tea is like, we care
about that stuff. I mean, I'm, I'm in Northwest
Arkansas, so I'm like headquarters of Tyson chicken.
And I see those chicken trucks driving all day long.
And it's like, I don't want to support that with my money.
Like I want to find a local farmer, rancher, hunt my own
food or be self-sufficient as possible and help local
community. But I don't know that there's
enough people to think that way to move the needle on a broad
scale. Probably not.
But I think too, I mean like, like humans are motivated for
vanity purposes. And I'm confused as to why more
people aren't motivated to get healthy and eat rights and be
more active. Simply be by way of not wanting
to look like a slob and feel like a slob.
Because I mean, morbidly obese isn't really attractive from a
vanity standpoint. So I don't know why that hasn't
motivated more people to move in the right direction.
I don't know. And it's what's in everybody,
you know, like somebody who's 400 lbs, they see someone who's
in shape and they could agree with other people that that's
attractive. And they also understand that
the, the, the, they also understand that they don't at
400 lbs, they understand that that other people aren't going
to find them attractive for the most part.
You know, hopefully there's somebody for everybody.
But you know what I'm talking about it, it's like in our, you
know, what's what's found attractive amongst men or what's
found attractive amongst women. It's like embedded in our, in
our DNAI mean, sometimes you look at your wife and because
she'll say like, oh, that guy is hot or something, You'll be
like, huh. Because like you and I might not
be able to recognize it right away, but women, the women sure
do. And so do guys.
But guys are like we're we're a little bit more carefree with
how many women we might say are hot because we we want a larger,
a large, larger pool of opportunity, I guess you'd say.
But yeah, it is interesting because I think all of us have
like a lot of fight in US. I actually think that all human
beings have like a a God like feature within them.
Like they have. I think we have that much power.
We have that much strength. It's just that like sometimes
you got to get pressed up against the corner to really,
and people have to be compromised.
They have to really be compromised.
You know, you ever have that buddy who's like, man, I don't
know what I did to my shoulder, but.
It's just killing me and it hurts every week, every time I
bench press. And you're like, hey, why don't
you maybe just not bench press for a few weeks, rehab the
shoulder a little and there they are.
They're still, they're still doing the same thing over and
over again. It's because their their
shoulder actually doesn't hurt enough for them to do anything
about it. Like, oh, you should go to my
buddy and you give him, you give him the number of your like your
chiropractor or your friend that does body work.
And like, Oh yeah, they fixed my elbow and they fixed my knee and
I went for like 3 sessions and it wasn't that expensive and it,
you know, kind of hurts, but it got rid of it.
A person's not going to go until they're compromised enough.
And I've heard they've, they've had some studies before where
people need to have three near death scares before they end up
considering like a full on intervention of before they
consider on their own to make a big change.
And that that's the same with like drug addicts.
That's the same with people that are addicted to food.
So you may have heard of your uncle, you know, he had, you
know, unfortunately he had to go to the emergency room.
He had shortness of breath and he's got something going on, but
then he never gets it checked out any further.
He doesn't, you know, and you could recommend stuff to him and
say, Oh my God, you, you know, I, I listen to Peter Itia's
podcast and here's like a bunch of things you can do.
And he's going to have to get sick again.
He's going to have to get sick again.
And unfortunately, when it comes to something like a heart
attack, a lot of people just have one and that's it.
So you don't get second and third chances with some of
these, some of these like life threatening things that could be
happening to us. So I think it's like, I guess
people are so far removed from stuff that they don't know or
remember, you know, what it feels like to, you know, do a
couple pull ups or hit a baseball when you're 7 or 8
years old and how good it feels to run and Sprint to first base
or how good it felt to, you know, just play kickball in in
PE in school or whatever it might be.
I think it's just people like 20-30 years removed from that.
And now they're so big and they're in a lot of pain.
And I think the kind of the last thing on their mind is like, you
know, going to the gym to understand what a commitment it
is. And I don't blame them because
it is a commitment. The gym is a real bastard and,
and takes many hours of time for you to be able to get a lot of
the results that you're looking for.
And exercise seems very bleak. You know, I think some of the
reports and some of the information about exercise I
think is a little bit on the low end.
Or they'll say, you know, it only makes like a 5 or 10%
difference and stuff like that. I think I think it makes a
bigger difference, especially over time.
And I think it helps with adherence all the way through
with the rest of your life because it causes a cascade of
disciplines to happen. But I do understand why people
like why people don't do it because they're still on the
other side and it's just overwhelming.
They're like, man, this whole thing seems completely
overwhelming. I got a lift and then I got to
do like the special shopping with my food and like you and I
might say like, no, no, it's not really that way, but it is
actually really that way. Like this is a massive overhaul.
This is you changing basically everything about yourself.
Even though it really we're really just talking about food
and really just talking about you changing out the type of
pleasure that you're engaging in, you're still going to have
pleasureful food. And that's why it's great to
have options with diet because you can do a keto style diet or
you can do a high carb, a high carb, low fat style diet.
And you can get, you can pick a flavor that you want, like which
side do you kind of want to be on?
Or if you want, you could even be in the middle.
But then you have to count calories all the time, and that
might be too meticulous for some people.
Yeah, I feel like it's kind of is like a standard issue.
Like our what has been deemed socially acceptable as a
standard has gotten so LAX over the years that there's no really
sense of embarrassment in society because like you and I
have high personal standards for ourselves.
We have high individual standards.
Like if you put on 30 lbs of pure fat, you would be deemed
socially acceptable in society. You would probably still have
pretty solid health markers. Like you wouldn't be shamed for
that. Like you would beat yourself up
internally. But from a society standpoint,
you're looking pretty good still.
And I feel like as individuals, we've kind of gravitated more
towards the socially acceptable standard as opposed to doubling
down on our higher individual standards.
And for that reason, people have just let themselves go more
freely, which is unfortunate. But I don't know how to spark
that in people to double down on what they're capable of and
their own their own personal standards.
I feel like we all need to hold ourselves.
I mean, we, we do have an incredible body.
We have one that's our fortress, our temple, whatever you want to
call it, that's our meat sack for walking around during our
lifetime. And then it's over and done
with. It's gone.
And I feel like we, we don't give that the credit it's due
and we don't treat it as we should.
And it it's enforcement takes 3 near death experiences for
people to wake up to the fact that that's not sustainable.
I, I would like to see a lot of things change, but I don't, I
just don't think that they will like, I don't understand why
there's like such an association with like your dentist.
Like most people that have insurance that like give a shit
about their teeth. They go to the dentist like
twice a year. And what about your kids?
Kids go to the dentist twice a year, right?
But how come there's no other, there's no other medical
intervention at all. I mean, if you have kids and you
give a shit about your kids, like you'll take him to the
doctor for checkups and stuff like that here and there, but
it's not the same. The dentist is twice a year.
They check your teeth twice a year like clockwork.
Every once in a while you miss an appointment and you got to
either reschedule it or you'll see them a year from now rather
than six months from now. But I don't understand why it's
not routine to just go and communicate with the doctor when
you're 171819202325. It should be.
It's maybe a little bit more. You'll see it a little bit more
from women because women with like birth control and like
various things. But yeah, it's just, it's it's
crazy how absent that is. And I'm not saying that doctors
are like the answer or anything necessarily, but it's great to
have some sort of some sort of conversation with somebody that
is trained medically to give you some advice.
I mean, even if they just weigh you and tell you like, hey,
you're 40 lbs overweight or you're 20 lbs overweight now,
they might prescribe you a bunch of stuff and you might not like
that. But hopefully that still leads
to some sort of change where you say, oh man, like I, this guy's
prescribing me statins and I'm only 38.
I don't know if I need those. But like instead of like just
instead of only taking the drug, I'm going to take the doctor's
advice. You know, hopefully he's has
sound advice. I'm going to take his advice.
So I'm going to start an exercise regimen along with it,
You know what I mean? Like, and so I would love to see
some of those changes happen. It does seem like people are
starting to get their blood work done more often.
And that's a pretty good move in the right direction.
But I think that that's still on the newer side of things.
And like, there's probably just, we probably need to continue to
learn more, but man, how great would it be if like if it was
just standard and the standard blood work that you might get
from a regular doctor is usually not very good.
They're just going to check like your cholesterol and like they
don't really check much of anything else.
So there's just seems like there's, there needs to be so
much intervention that it's crazy.
But I think where it all starts is it starts with parenting.
And unfortunately parents to suck.
They're really bad at it. There's so much neglect going on
in this country that it's just like, it's completely
unbelievable. And I think neglect is the most
hurtful thing out of everything. Because if you're only in the
other room and you're not paying attention to me, that's more,
I'd rather, you know, I'd rather have somebody beat me every day
than to like be there all the time but not actually be there
for me. And I think that's what we're
seeing in society right now. And I know that's probably like
a bold statement, but neglect is really hurtful.
I mean, most people that I talked to that as an adult, a
lot of times it's what the parent didn't do for them and
it's not what the parent did to them.
I have friends where their dad beat the shit out of him every
day. And there's some guys that are
like, yeah, my dad just didn't know how to show love and he
drank too much. But I have other friends that
are really hurt and they can't, they can't get out of their own
way these days. And it's because their dad never
congratulated them them. It's because their dad never
told them that they did a job, you know, a job well done.
It's because they're it's because her dad was like their
ish, but just neglected them. And there's so many kids
neglected and they're just like on their tablet or on their or
on their phone and no one's kind of, there's no one leading by
example showing them what a healthy lifestyle looks like.
And a lot of times what I see from a lot of people is people
complain about money, but then they order DoorDash.
People say one thing and they do another and they do it over and
over again. And your, your kids pick up on
all that stuff. They see all these things, they
hear you saying, Oh no, no, hey, don't you know, I'm, I'm
emailing somebody right when they're on their, when the
parent is on the phone. But when the kid is on, when the
kid is on the phone or on the tablet, the parents come in,
they just interrupt right away and they don't ever, there's no
conversation with the kids. Like time to put that away and
they, you know, Chuck it off into the corner or whatever.
And I just, I've seen this happen with, with a lot of
different parents and I'm like, this is a major, this is a major
problem. There's a disconnect between the
parents and between the kids, and they don't have a good role
model in terms of like just what to eat and how to act.
And you don't have to necessarily eat the way that you
and I eat because we're, you know, we're doing, we're doing
stuff that's like, I don't know, 3% or 1% or 001 percent of the
population even cares about, right?
Like, we, we understand that. But what about just showing your
kids there's like just good options, like have some, have
some blueberries in the fridge, have some apples, have like just
a variety of foods around. So your kids see that there's a
lot of options and all these options actually taste good
because people think the only thing that tastes good, like a
lot of kids, a lot of teenagers these days, they think the only
thing that tastes good, like my daughter's friends, you know, if
my daughter's 17, my daughter's like dad, they don't eat real
food like ever. I'm like, shit, he's he's like,
yeah, only, only my daughter said only when they come over
our house, they actually have real food.
So it's it's it's amazing. And it's so I think that we
need, you know, better leadership from parents.
But I think parents feel like they're too far behind.
Parents are sick themselves or they're getting there.
They're fat, they're overweight, they're work.
They're, you know, working all the time.
But I think everyone's just sort of like making their day and
making their life a little bit harder than it needs to.
And they're just like overly stressed out.
They don't know how to deal with the stress.
And if you worked out and if you ate properly, you you'd be able
to handle the stress easier. Maybe the stress would still
bother the hell out of you, and that's fine, but it's going to
be easier to handle it when you're doing other stuff.
Yeah, and some things aren't supposed to necessarily be easy,
like you acclimate to it, like efforts required in life.
You know Bill Schindler. Are you familiar with him?
No, Bill. Schindler's awesome.
I get you connected. He's one of my best friends.
We hunt together. He's he has this company called
modern Stone Age kitchen. But like he's got great kids.
They're all super well mannered, well behaved, great functioning
family unit, which is rare these days.
But he's a big advocate for, you know, everybody working together
to make a meal from scratch, which does require effort.
It's definitely harder than, you know, picking something out of
the freezer and sticking the microwave for a minute and a
half. But like they do that on a
regular basis. They own a restaurant too.
They all work together in that. But simply taking something from
scratch, whether it be a chicken, pork, whatever, you
don't have to go to that extreme with it.
But like all the family preparing it together, a
wholesome, nutrient dense meal as a family unit.
Like if people just simply made that one shift, whether it was,
you know, carbohydrate based or protein based or fat based or
whatever, but they all just did that with predominantly real
food and bonded as they did it. I think that would solve a lot
of problems. That sounds huge.
I'm going to check into the guy. I mean, you said you'll link me
up with him. That would be great.
Have you had Joe, Joe English on your podcast?
Joe Brinley. Yeah, I've had him on twice, I
believe, he and I, It's funny because he and I, he reached out
to me when I very first started putting information out about
keto, like way back in the day, like 2016 or something like
that. And he and I were talking and we
just hit it off. He said that I reminded him and
him when he was my age and just, I don't know, we just had a good
vibes. I've had him on my podcast a few
times. He's done all kinds of crazy
experimentation as well. And he's been like, I respect
people that have been in the sports, been in the space for a
long time and like, they're consistent.
Like he's played around multiple different types of diets, but
his overarching messaging has always been on point.
So yeah, I like Joe a lot. He's a good guy.
Yeah, I know that he, he's got a lot of information about like
the FGF 21 and he's even taking a step further because he, he
did like he ate candy for like 3 months straight.
Yeah. Which is like pretty wild.
He tells me still to this day he'll he's like, I just get busy
and I just like reach for candy. Like I don't know how you do
that without like having your teeth rot out of your head
because like I'll eat, I'll eat candy like a little bit, but I
just doesn't, it doesn't feel right to me.
So I'm like, I, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to end up
having my teeth ripped out of my head or, or end up with any like
toothaches or anything like that.
Yeah, I mean, I used to eat a lot of candy.
My brother, he's 2 1/2 years younger than me.
He's a Boilermaker and he's taller than me, skinnier than
me, didn't have any as much muscle, doesn't lift or
anything. But he's like physically active,
working 12 hour shifts, Welton all day long.
And he eats a ton of candy, man. Like his main staple is gummy
bears. And I'm like, man, you're quote
UN quote healthy on paper right now, but he'll, he'll be the
first to tell you that, you know, his line of work, his lack
of sleep, like he's starting to feel it in his aches and pains
and joints and everything. I'm like, man, you're not giving
your body any real fuel and just reached for that out of, you
know, sugar, dopamine hitting convenience.
But it's like, you can't do that for the next 30 years and expect
to see, you know, health in your future.
So, yeah, I'm, I'm a big like forward thinking longevity
thing. I'm a bit of a purist.
So I like, I'll take that for what it is.
But I want to, you know, know my local farmer, rancher, eat real
food, be somewhat ancestral in that regard.
But I, I want to eat in a way that I'm excited about eating
over the next 50-60, seventy years.
And I feel like if you look through life and the decisions
you make through that lens, that definitely points you on a
narrower path, but a better path, I would argue.
Yeah, you know, and for me, like right now, you know, eating
like, I mean, I'm no stranger to eating like rice.
You know, I've again, even on my lower carb protocols, I've I've
eaten rice, I've eaten potatoes. Talked about this many times
before. I used to actually just eat
potatoes usually instead of rice just because it was easier to
eat less potatoes and rice, You know, for me, it's easy for just
like take out, you know, cups and cut cups of rice.
But you know, I can picture doing this diet for a long time
or at least utilizing it intermittently alongside some
other protocols. I wouldn't be surprised if like
in the winter time, I just want more fat.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. I wouldn't be surprised if in
the winter time I'm like, oh, maybe I'll just do, you know,
more of like a keto style diet or a lower carb diet.
Just bring the fats up for a little while.
I mean, why not, right? I think when you think about,
think about what bodybuilders do and, and again, I, I don't
think, you know, we should just like follow bodybuilders, but I
think that bodybuilders have created a, a cool path for us.
Because I do think that between the ages of, you know, maybe 15
to like 60 almost, I think we should try to put some muscle
mass on or at least hold muscle mass, you know, find a nice
amount of muscle mass to hold onto and either keep it or try
to continue to try to continue to gain, gain some muscle mass.
And, you know, when I think about that and I think about,
you know, the, the different styles of diet that I've
utilized, all of them can work, you know, towards, you know,
holding on the muscle mass, building muscle mass.
I just always felt a little bit more comfortable when it came to
gaining strength and when it came to gaining muscle mass,
eating a little bit more carbohydrate.
That's been my, you know, own experience with that.
And like almost like hydrating the muscles with the
carbohydrates and stuff. And we have to keep in mind,
again, like, what are we talking about here?
So like we're talking about glucose, right?
So just because I'm mentioning carbohydrates, I'm talking about
dietary carbohydrates, it doesn't mean that because you do
your style of diet where you're doing a ketogenic diet and
you're not consuming, you're not consuming carbohydrate, you
still have glucose and you might have the same amount of glucose.
That's what gets weird about this stuff is like you might
have the same amount of glucose running through your bloodstream
as somebody that that follows a diet that has higher
carbohydrate or even high carbohydrate.
But what I, I, what I feel personally is I, I, and I don't
know this for sure, but I feel like that when I eat
carbohydrates, dietary carbohydrates, I feel as if
those carbohydrates when they break down into glucose, I feel
like they're in my muscle tissue.
Whereas when I've done keto, I feel like somebody kind of
sucked the glucose out of my muscle tissue.
I just didn't feel like it was still there the same way.
And I felt, I would feel, I would feel like a little empty.
It wasn't like I couldn't get a pump.
It wasn't like I couldn't have a good workout.
It just in comparison to me having carbohydrate and being
able to fill the muscle tissue up with sodium, potassium and
all the different things that at least what I believe glucose or
yeah, what I believe glucose can help deliver to the muscle
tissues. It just didn't feel like, it
didn't feel like the same thing. And again, I don't have any
proof or evidence that's that's that's the case or not the case,
but it's just a feeling that I've had.
Yeah, I mean there's been studies at the faster studies
show that you're able to repair, replenish and replete muscle
glycogen independent of carbohydrate consumption once
deeply fat adapted. And people will argue all day
long, what is the length of time necessary for depth of fat
adaptation. And I've always said, you know,
six months. I mean, because like when you go
from a carbohydrate based diet or higher carb diet and then you
go keto, you're going to feel pretty flat for the first
several weeks, possibly several months.
And a lot of people, most people don't really have the staying
power to stick with it. You know, six months strictly to
be able to have an accurate comparison.
I mean, I, I used to eat all the carbohydrates.
I know what I felt like then. I know the vascularity I had,
and I've got more vascularity and fullness on stage now when
I'm dialed in for a show than I did back then, but I've been
doing this strictly now for 10 years.
You know, do I think you need to be doing it strictly for 10
years in order to have all those metabolic pathways in place?
Probably not. Nobody would do it if that was
the case. But it is one of those things
where I think it gets better the longer you do do it, and that
you're no longer sacrificing that fullness once that length
of adaptation has been met. What do you think about like
when you burn, When you start to pull body fat off of your body,
you burn fat. Do you think that that fat is a
similar nutrient as compared to dietary fat?
Similar, I mean, when you're doing, when you're burning fat,
whether it's dietary or you know, adipose tissue, like you
can create ketones. People take exogenous ketones.
Now you can have those across the blood brain barrier to
provide cognitive enhancement. But from a cellular standpoint,
I mean, how that interacts with the body is going to be pretty
similar from an energy standpoint.
You know, if I'm taking in, I feel like there's a point of
diminishing returns. Like if I'm ever consuming just
like a massive bolus of energy, whether it's, you know, for my
for my case, it's going to be fat protein.
But if I'm taking in too much fuel, I almost start to feel
lethargic. So that's kind of defeating the
purpose of there. But like, if I'm in an extended
fast or if I'm super depleted or if I'm low body fat, I noticed a
profound benefit from Ebola state day of, you know, higher
dietary fat to provide that influx.
Yeah, I, I, you know, I just like super curious about all
this stuff. Like if you, it seems like a
calorie surplus isn't really, it seems like a calorie surplus is
not necessarily healthy for us, but it's not necessarily healthy
for us over like a long period of time.
Yeah. So again, like kind of looking
at what bodybuilders do, it's like, well, a caloric deficit
also isn't really that healthy either.
Yeah, for sure. And it's, it's context
dependent, right? Like if you have £50 to lose,
well then a caloric deficit sounds like it's going to be one
of the healthier choices you can make because you have to address
weight loss at some point. And then a caloric surplus can
be something that could be great for some people, especially
people that are just very thin or somebody that has been
dieting for a long time to start to bring their calories back up.
And that's what I was going to say earlier.
I kind of lost. My point was that bodybuilders,
they, they build and they lose. They build and they lose.
And what they're trying to do
over time is have their muscle mass just creeping up slowly.
And whether it's a guy that's enhanced or a guy that's
natural, it's going to be super slow anyway.
Because what people don't realize about the guy that's
enhanced, the guy that is enhanced, he's enhanced and now
he's at this higher level. But just because he's enhanced,
he doesn't just go with his muscle mass.
He goes almost just as slow as the other guy.
Now he's got different options. He might be able to change
drugs, might be able to do a little bit more here and there.
But in the end, it's actually the same thing.
We're just talking about somebody that's 2030 lbs heavier
than the person. That's natural.
But one of the reasons why I think it's good idea to look at
what bodybuilders do is because they do put that muscle mass on
and they do lose that fat. They put the muscle mass on and
they do lose. So they may acquire, they'll
acquire more muscle mass and they'll acquire more fat.
And then they'll come back down the other side and they'll lose
fat and they'll try to hold on to as much muscle as they can.
And if they do it correctly, over time they will have created
a situation where they are kind of continually increasing their
muscle mass. Maybe it's just ever so slowly
increase in their muscle mass and continuing to bring that
body fat level down and just create a a body that's just
maybe operates at a little bit higher metabolic rate because
they're mainly just muscle tissue at some point.
Yeah, I think regardless of the diet, people following, there's
extreme health benefits from a metabolic standpoint to have
periods of time when you're in a deficit, period of time when
you're in a surplus, always within a healthy range because
like, you know, in the book Competition Prep for me, I mean,
that was not healthy for that very finite period of time.
But modulating between being in a surplus, being in a deficit is
super advantageous metabolically speaking, and it takes time to
build legitimate skeletal muscle tissue.
So it stands to reason that you should spend more time in a
surplus than in a deficit. So I feel like, you know, like a
three to one ratio or something of that nature.
But if everybody did that, whether they were ever planning
to compete as a bodybuilder or not would benefit would benefit
from it metabolically speaking for sure.
It's really interesting because I bet your body like is trying
to do that anyway. You know, just like your body
intuitively is trying to eat less at certain times of the
year and at certain times of the year or just certain days,
you're just like more hungry or less hungry.
It seems like the body like wants to do it.
And it's interesting to have it like scheduled like, oh, for
these three months, I'm going to like increase my calories for a
little while. It seems to make a lot of sense
That would like make you feel really good.
And then for a period of time you're going to lower your
calories. And for me, it's been kind of
annoying because I've been on this weight loss mission for so
long, I haven't had an opportunity to like come up for
air because, I mean, I've done so a little bit throughout the
years because it's coming down from 3:30.
You know, that was that was like 15 years ago.
So I have, I have kind of staggered it, you know, over
time. But yeah, this last dip down to
like 200 has been a real bitch. And then because I added the
carbohydrates back in and because the, and because of the
way I'm able to work out right now, I'm able to lift heavier,
I'm able to add more volume. So it's like, man, it's getting
going to get harder and harder to get down to that 200 LB mark.
I'm still about £15 off. You 215 right now then?
Yeah, yeah, 2:15. What were you when you and I
were lifting together? Not different, maybe like 210 to
12. Yeah, when you were 330, like
because I look back because I bulked up to 2:30 at my heaviest
pre keto days and I was just like, I didn't have a coach.
I was watching YouTube videos of all like the, you know, lead
priests, you know, all those that era body butters and
they're just all. About enough lead priest is
amazing. Yeah, he's a stud man, but like
all of them like on YouTube that have like they're eating videos
are just like all just, you know, hating the next spoonful
and they're eating and I'm OK. That's what I got to do to get
big. So I did the same thing, man.
I was eating a ton of calories, you know, every two hours.
But just like feeding past the point of satiety and like force
feeding to get bigger. And I got bigger, I got
stronger. But I don't ever really do that
now. But I could eat way more than I
do. Like if I just allow myself to
eat at libidum then I'd probably just get fat even with the
cleanest of keto quality foods, you know?
I just like to eat food. Yeah, I, I, you know, I would
say, you know, for myself too, when I've done a keto diet, even
the carnivore diet, for me, it was a little bit easier.
It felt easier for me to overeat on those diets as opposed to
like what I'm doing now, Although I could probably figure
out ways of overeating on this. But like when you really just
limit the fat, it just gets to be hard.
And then like, to a certain extent things just sort of stop
sounding so appetizing. I mean, how much chicken and
rice are you going to eat? Or how much whitefish and or
scallops and rice or you know, this is like how much this stuff
you're really going to eat. It could become more fun when
you start to add in some other things like I've been having
this such a great combination. I've been having frosted flakes
and rice together. It's like the greatest.
That's from Joe Joe English is the one who who brought that up
to me. And I was like, that sounds
really weird. And I tried it and the guy was
right, man. I was completely unbelievable.
Interesting with. Some with some foods like that,
it, it, it can be easier to like overeat and like demolish food.
But I kind of personally have a hunch or just think that or not
even a hunch. I, I think it's fairly well
known. I think when you're eating fat,
it's a little easier to have that fat become your body fat.
And when you're eating, when you eat a large surplus of
carbohydrate, I think it's harder for the body to, you
know, turn that into body fat in the absence of fat calories, you
know, so I don't, I don't really truly know.
I don't know what the science says on that.
I think I have heard Lane Norton talk about that before where
he's, he felt like it was like maybe 70% of the calories from
fat when you're overdoing your fat can go to stored body fat.
And maybe when it was carbohydrate, maybe it was more
like 40 or something like that. But I'm, I'm pulling some of
those numbers out of my ass. But I remember him talking about
something. I remember that he made like a
graphic because people were coming at him saying hey, if you
eat more fat you burn more fat, which is true, but it's all just
the energy pathway. Like if you eat more carbs, you
burn more carbs, but then the effect on adipose tissue winds
up leveling out or something to that effect.
I'd have to go back and look at it be I remember them.
But yeah, I don't know. I guess just guys like you and
me, man. We lift, lift heavy weights and
we just want to eat a lot of food.
That's just reality of it. Yeah, I love food and I love
exploring. I love exploring these different
diets. I love exploring different
training techniques. I mean, a lot of stuff I do
like, I'll just say this too flat out.
I mean, just to be totally transparent and honest with
people, a lot of stuff I do doesn't even make any sense.
I just do it because I it calls to me.
I just like enjoy it. I did a workout the other day.
I did like leg, I did leg press back and forth with pull ups and
bench press. That's like what workout is
that? I don't know.
I just like I have those machines at my house.
I have a setup at my house where I can kind of bounce around to
different things. And I've done a bunch of
workouts like that before where I might be super setting like
lunges and lateral raises. Like I didn't get it from like a
book or anything. I'm just I'm just training and
and I'm just having fun now. You know, should somebody else
like do that exact same thing, Maybe they would find benefit in
it. Maybe they would like it or
maybe they'd hate it. I don't know.
But for me you're. Not running anymore right now,
right? You hurt your ankle.
Yeah, my foot, my heel is still recovering, but it should be
good. I'm thinking.
I'm thinking sometime next month I should be ready to go because
it's feeling better every day. That kind of it's I'm at the
point right now where I probably could run and so I'm getting
excited, but I'm like, you know what, you still got to give it.
You still got to give a little extra time because I don't want
to get back out to run and then and then just hurt myself.
Yeah. So that's been the other thing
with this diet is I've been able to lean out and without, without
any cardio. I mean, a little, I'll do a
little bit of cardio stuff within some of my workouts, but
I think when I get back to running, I think that's going to
have a huge impact on even getting leaner.
Although running can be really weird because running can make
you look flat and make you look fat in a heart.
Yeah, I don't ever like the way I look when I do a lot of
running. I don't do a ton of running, but
I always feel flat and washed out when I do it.
Like Stairmaster has always been my go to form of cardio, but I
don't do much of that. Like I'm pretty minimal with the
cardio. Yeah, I think, you know, in
terms of some cardio, if I could, you know, run, you know,
2-3 miles a couple times a week along with some sprinting, I
think that will have a, a big impact on my physique.
It's a matter of being able to handle it.
You know, like if it's, if I'm running two or three miles and
I'm my heart rate's 170, then then I'd probably have a
negative impact on me as opposed to if I'm running a little bit
more casual. And then on the days where I'm
sprinting, I'm running much shorter distances.
I think that'll have AAI think that'll create a good
environment for me to get more shredded.
Yeah, more shredded, man. That's to go.
What's gets you excited, man? I know coming up here past hour
mark, but you're about to leave on a trip to Scotland I think,
right? Yeah, I'm going to Scotland and
Ireland. My wife is over there right now.
She's swimming in some of the channels and shit like that in
Scotland. She's bouncing from like island
to island, I guess. And I'm going in a couple days
with the rest of my family. So I'm going with my daughter
and my son, my and my two of my brother in You know, just, you
know, business wise and you know, career wise, I mean, I
always love doing the podcast. I love communicating with the
different people that I get to communicate with.
And it's just, and maybe you found this to be true for
yourself. And I don't know if it's because
we like we cherry pick these things and we make them happen
or if they just actually happen. But it's really weird because
we'll have a guest on the show and the guest on the show might
say, you know, I actually found that, you know, training the
Tibialis is like really key for this particular thing or
whatever, right? And then, you know, a guest or
two comes on and then like the next guest that comes in says
the same thing that that first guy said.
And then I'll be like another guest down the road will mention
something similar to that first guy again.
And you're like, what's going on here?
So it's exciting to me to kind of hear, you know, and even even
with this sugar diet stuff, hearing so many people talk
about their success with low fat diets, I think it's been really
cool. And some people are like, Oh
yeah, I used to do that. And then I, you know, ended up,
you know, switching diets or whatever it is because they just
thought that that wasn't the right thing to do.
They, you know, thought that their hormones would tank or
they thought all these horrible things were going to happen and
they didn't really notice any of that.
But it's just interesting how when I get these different
guests on the show, how these particular ideas that maybe are
sort of forming in my head or forming in the head of Encima,
how that those those things end up.
They kind of just keep swirling around and swirling around to
the point where we're like, Oh yeah, we got to like try that.
We got to go do that. And we get, we get a lot of
encouragement from from those types of things on the show.
Well, you're you're great at just bringing on guests from all
different walks of life. I think that's the key, man,
like open dialogue, open discussion, like not allowing
yourself to become victim to that information silo and
dogmatic and your thinking. So yeah, man, I mean, I, I love
y'all's. I've found some great people
through y'all's show. So keep doing what you're doing
there for sure. Appreciate.
It man, thank you so much. Mark, always a pleasure man.
Enjoy Scotland, wear kilt, do all the good stuff and we'll be
in touch brother. Thank you so much.
See you man.