Some people kind of recommend a slow and gradual approach.
Go from a standard American diet, for instance, and then
just gradually, conservatively strip away carbohydrates.
But when you do that, you're kind of you're going to spend
more time in nutritional purgatory, limbo land where
you're not really capitalizing on carbs for fuel.
I recommend the stripping the Band-Aid off.
So if you're eating a standard American diet now, higher
carbohydrate, just drop those down to, you know, 20 grams
total carbs. What I personally noticed is
that by following a ketogenic diet, I have less inflammation.
I would do a heavy leg day, for instance, and because of the
inflammation, I was under my knees, my joints, everything
would hurt. Whereas now with ketone ketones
being anti-inflammatory, having ample dietary fat and hormonal
health being productive for inflammation, I can train much
more frequently. What is going on y'all?
Robert Sykes Savage Perspective podcast here and this is going
to be a solo AMA style episode. I have a list of questions that
brought to me from our listeners from y'all wonderful people and
I figured I'd just tackle some of these questions we have got
for those of you who do not know our second son do any day now.
I mean, I might literally get a call as I'm recording saying,
all right, my wife is in labor, time to rock'n'roll.
So as such, I've got several weeks blocked out for being a
dad and supporting her and, you know, helping out where possible
with our newborn. So I've got a couple breaks in
the schedule from having a scheduled podcast guest.
So I've got several in the queue, but there will be some
blocks here in the next few weeks where I'll be stepping in
and doing some solo episodes and just kind of tackling some of
these questions. So on that note, definitely,
definitely feel free to engage with this episode, put comments
questions in the comments because I'll probably be doing a
a few of these over the next few weeks.
So if there's any questions that you want me to do a deep dive
in, whether it's around nutrition or training,
controversial things in the fitness space, business,
entrepreneurship, lifestyle, parenting, spirituality,
religion, things that I know stuff about, things that I don't
know stuff about, I'm happy to tackle any of it.
So let's just dive in with some of these questions.
This specific AMA is going to be primarily ketogenic based
questions, but that's primarily what I'm putting content out
about. But we have several ketogenic
specific questions. So starting from the top, I'm
kind of looking at my computer as I go here.
So if my eyes are shifting around, that's what's going on.
All right. Question #1 how can I
effectively transition to a ketogenic diet?
All right, so this is interesting, and a lot of people
have different takes. Some people kind of recommend a
slow and gradual approach where you, you know, go from a
standard American diet, for instance, and then just
gradually, conservatively strip away carbohydrates.
You kind of transition from high carb to low carb to ketogenic,
but when you do that, you're kind of you're going to spend
more time in nutritional purgatory limbo land where
you're not really capitalizing on carbs for fuel and you're not
really going to be capitalizing for on fat for fuel because it's
going to take you longer to get there.
I'm much more so a RIP the Band-Aid off approach kind of
guy. So I personally recommend this
is going to be largely individualized depending on what
you respond best to from a psychological and sustainability
standpoint more so than a physiological standpoint.
But from a physiological standpoint, I recommend the
stripping the Band-Aid off. So if you're eating a standard
American diet now, higher carbohydrate, just drop those
down to, you know, 20 grams total carbs.
You may be able to tolerate more than that, but most people would
certainly be producing ketones and leveraging fat metabolism if
they get below that 20 gram, you know, ceiling.
So I would recommend just starting there, dropping that
down to 20 grams total carbs a day, and that's total carbs and
not net carbs. And I would be very diligent in
tracking that and knowing where your carbs are coming from
because they can certainly add up, especially if you're not
familiar with eating foods that are ketogenic.
I mean, you might eat, you know, a thing of cream cheese, for
instance, and assume there's no carbs in there, whereas in fact
there are some carbs in there. So be mindful of those trace
carbs. But I recommend just dropping
that down to a 20 gram ceiling and then making the diet
primarily consist of high fat in the beginning and moderate
protein until you're able to get deeply fat adapted.
And then you can start titrating your protein consumption up
until you find your own unique protein threshold.
That's going to be different for everybody.
But if you start at a higher fat ratio, even if you have a lot of
body fat to lose, that is going to give your body the fuel
supply it needs coming in to replace those carbohydrates that
you're removing. So you're not going to be void
of fuel in the beginning, which is important because if you're
removing the carbs and you're not replacing it with fat, and
your body is not yet adapted to using your stored fat, you're
going to feel miserable. And nobody wants to feel
miserable. Being miserable is not
sustainable. So I would recommend having that
higher fat ratio in the beginning and don't even try and
cut calories in the beginning. It may happen by default,
especially as your hunger signaling cues kind of get
acclimated to that shift in macronutrient distribution.
But start without trying to limit your calories.
Just simply eat high fat, moderate protein, very minimal
carbohydrate in the beginning to get deeply fat adapted.
And then you can start playing around with increasing protein,
cutting calories, things like that.
So that would be my, you know, high level initial start to a
ketogenic diet for someone that's not yet fat adapted.
Next question. What are the best workouts for
building muscle on keto? So a lot of people think or
assume that there is a inherent difference between how you
should train if you're fueling with carbohydrates versus fat.
And I've never really understood that.
Yes, there's an argument to be made for some exercises being
more glycolically demanding, but really and truly, I train the
same whether I'm eating carbs or eating fat.
And once your body becomes acclimated too, using fat as the
primary fuel substrate, then your muscle glycogen is able to
be replenished and preserved just fine.
You can do high intensity interval training.
You can do those high, highly glycolytical movements and
exercises without risk of bonking.
I mean, I do Sprint work, I do, I do pretty exhaustive training.
I lift heavy, I lift hard, and I don't really see a decline in my
training performance with keto. Now you will likely see a dip
initially as your body switches that fuel platform over, but I
wouldn't necessarily recommend shifting your training at all.
Some people try and do you know, lower weights, lower intensity,
more reps? I do not recommend that.
The best thing you can do to keep your muscle preserved is to
keep it in demand. So the best way to keep that
muscle in demand is continue using it at the same intensity
level you were previously. So I would recommend trying to
keep those lifts pretty much the exact exact same as what you
were doing with carbohydrate based fuel.
And then your body will acclimate to that new fuel
substrate and you'll be able to get right back up to where you
were hitting those PRS again. So do not feel like you need to
change your training style when you change your fuel substrate.
Next question, how do I track my macros accurately?
So this could be very involved. You want to track macros using
an app of some sorts. I personally use Chronometer.
I have used one called My Macros Plus for years.
I've since switched to Chronometer because it has a
much more involved micronutrient display and just data in that
regard. They all do about the same
thing. My Fitness Pal is probably the
most popular. There's a jillion different apps
out there. They're all again doing about
the same thing. They have a barcode scanning
functionality on it. Most of them do.
So if you're buying a prepackaged item that has a
nutritional barcode on it, and if you scan that, the nutrition
automatically uploads to the app.
You just have to make sure that the serving size that you are
actually consuming is what you are entering into the app
because you might scan an item and it says you know one serving
4 oz and then you may actually be consuming 8 oz.
So make sure that what you're actually consuming is what you
are tracking in your app. That along with weighing food
out and if you're not eating prepackaged items or raw items
that don't contain that you are weighing outs.
Like for instance a pound of ground beef is prepackaged but
you may not be consuming the entire pound and the serving
size in that package may only be 4 ounces of which there's
typically 4 servings in a package.
So you're going to need to weigh out your food.
So use a food scale, you know, weigh that out.
I typically recommend weighing out food that's raw and then
you're tracking that as the raw weight and just make sure you're
consuming any of the fat that is cooked out of that food.
So if you're cooking again, ground beef and there's fat
drippings in the skillet, try and consume those in some form
or fashion. I like to cook my ground beef
and scramble some eggs in with it.
Soak up that fat so that I'm consuming the macros that I am
tracking. So that is the take on how to
track macros. All right, next question, What
are some easy keto meal prep ideas?
All right, so this one's, this one's super simple.
There's so many freaking keto recipes out there, so many keto
cookbooks. None of that existed 10 years
ago. None of that existed even less
than that. But there's a whole bunch of
options now. I've got a few recipes on my
website at ketosavage.com, but there are recipes in abundance
online on YouTube. There's, there's so much, so
much out there for options. There is literally a ketogenic
alternative to every carb based meal.
I mean, my wife makes this delicious keto pizza that I
would honestly put above a traditional carbohydrate based
pizza any day of the week. She makes this keto cheesecake
that's really good. It's not just like, you know,
desserts and stuff like that either.
Like there's literally, literally a keto alternative to
everything. However, when it comes to meal
prep, I tend to recommend keeping things very simple.
If you're meal prepping, you're doing so for a variety of
reasons. One is to, you know, save money
on food, cut the expenses of eating out, cut the variability
from a macro tracking standpoint of eating different meals on a
regular basis. Just streamlining things,
controlling for the variables and getting dialed in, which is
what I recommend if you have a body composition goal you're
trying to reach. So on that note, try and find
foods, try and prep meals that are easily scalable, repeatable
and consistent and also that are easy to track.
So for me, my foundational baseline is pretty much ground
beef and eggs. And then I'm typically adjusting
my macro distribution by like 5 or 10 gram increments.
An egg, for instance, is typically 5 grams of fat and
like 6 grams of protein typically.
So if I'm adjusting in 5g increments, adding or
subtracting an egg makes things super simple.
And then depending on my macro ratio, I'll start with, you
know, again, that higher fat ratio, which means I'll
typically start with a, you know, 7525 ground beef.
And then as my protein is increasing, I might transition
to, you know, an 8020 or an 8515 or maybe even a 9010.
So I'm able to eat a pretty similar amount of food volume
while not having to really reinvent the wheel when it comes
to recreating my meals as my macros change.
So ground beef and eggs as a baseline makes things super
simple. I'm having abundance of keto
bricks, obviously. So I'll typically eat 1 keto
brick a day, which makes getting my fat macros in much easier.
I'm coming from a quality stearic acid course of either
grass finished tallow or organic cacao butter.
So that'll be, you know, pretty much my day is I'll have, you
know, some heavy cream or something in my coffee in the
morning. I'll typically have a keto brick
as my first meal post training. And then I'll have my final
second meal, which is normally ground beef and eggs as the
base. And then I can add butter or,
you know, some type of vegetable if I want to consume a
vegetable. And that's pretty much my go to
from a meal prep standpoint. But again, don't let that be a
manufacturer. There's so many options out
there. You can make, you know, keto
nachos using pork rinds instead of chips.
You can make, you know, multiple different Mexican style themed
foods. There's just so many different
options. So meal prep is easy, but again,
trying to streamline things and just remove variables is key.
So finding foods that are easy to track, that are easy to cook
in batch and ideally, you know, partition throughout the week.
Like when I'm in a prep, I'll typically cook all of my meals
for the coming week on Sunday and then I'll put those in meal
prep, you know, containers and I'll just eat those throughout
the week, grab it and go, go and just have all of that accounted
for and remove the decision fatigue that accompanies trying
to figure out what you're going to eat.
If you already know what you're going to eat because it's
already prepped and ready to rock, then you're more likely to
adhere to the macro goals for the day and not deviate.
So that is very much so the key. All right, next question.
How can I overcome plateaus in my fitness journey?
So plateaus are bound to happen. I mean, you can't implement
progressive overload with your training and then just
continually get stronger indefinitely.
You're going to hit a plateau in some form or fashion, whether it
be a strength based plateau or a compositional based plateau.
The thing to do is to be consistent first and foremost.
But then find a way to add pressure or maybe even alleviate
some pressure and intensity at certain times depending on what
the issue is. So for instance, with weight
training, I will again be be sure to focus on implementing
some form of progressive overload.
And that doesn't necessarily have to mean increasing the
weight on the bar. That can also come from
increased time under tension, forced reps, negative reps, you
know, super sets, things like that.
And if I'm really pushing it hard from an intensity
standpoint and my body is starting to be hindered from a
recovery standpoint, I'll implement A structured deload
week, typically every six to eight weeks, but honestly just
kind of depending on how my body is feeling.
And that will be a week of continued training, but at a
significantly reduced intensity. And that gives my body time to
recover. And I'm often times coming back
stronger the week after that. Deloads.
That certainly helps in, you know, preventing or hedging
against a plateau. Nutritionally speaking, ways you
can overcome plateau is to just simply apply pressure in the
form of increasing your macro nutrient to ramp up your
metabolic rate. Or if you're trying to lose body
weight, you know, being consistent with applying
pressure in the form of decreasing that intake over time
and then obviously manipulating the macro distribution to
whatever is best suited for your goals.
So change prevents or minimizes the likelihood of plateauing.
If you are doing the exact same thing every single day without
deviation, your body has no reason to change and then
therefore will plateau. And while maintenance is a myth,
if you are consistently doing the exact same thing without
change, without applying pressure, without creating a
stimulus, your body is not highly motivated to change
beyond its current state. So that is what a plateau is.
So finding ways to break free of that breakthrough, that is key.
And that is done by applying pressure or alleviating
pressure, just simply creating a new stimulus that your body then
has to respond to and adapt in some form or fashion.
All right, next question, What supplements should I consider
while on keto? So I honestly don't really use
many supplements with me being a natural competitor.
I honestly just get PTSD looking at nutrition or not nutrition
facts but supplement facts because so many of them are you
know, banned in my natural federation.
And I honestly eat really high quality foods on my ketogenic
diet, so there's not much need for supplemental nutrition
because everything that I'm consuming is pretty much
checking all the boxes from a micronutrient and mineral
standpoint. So I don't really take much
supplements. I mean, I use creatine
monhydrate, just a simple creatine monhydrate.
I'll take in a lot of electrolytes.
So sodium, potassium, magnesium, things like that.
Just the basics, caffeine and coffee.
I don't really do pre workouts so my supplementation is pretty
minimal. But for those that are adopting
A ketogenic approach and may have some issues with digestion
or things like that, you know, maybe temporarily supplementing
with Oxfile salts to, you know, ramp up or aid that bowel
production in the beginning until your body's own production
increases may be a safe bet if needed.
But really and true, there's not any specific supplements that I
would say are just, you know, necessary or required once you
adopt A ketogenic approach. So yeah, there's I mean,
supplementations, it's people overthink supplements.
I mean, there is a place for supplements.
But the beautiful thing about a well formulated, well formulated
to be in the key there ketogenic diet is that a lot of those
deficiencies are, you know, made made-up for with the foods
you're eating. So there shouldn't really be
that need to excessively supplement.
I mean, if you're eating ample proteins, then you don't need to
be taking a bunch of branched chain amino acids.
If you're taking in, you know, quality fats, then you don't
need to be something with a bunch of, you know, official
Omega pills. So if you're consuming the right
stuff food wise, you don't need to have that much
supplementation. Now, even if you are consuming a
lot of meat, which naturally has creatine in it, you're not going
to be able to benefit from the, you know, super physiological
levels of creatine that would be beneficial from a performance
standpoint. So supplementing with creatine
makes sense. But again, if you're eating
enough meat, you don't need to be consuming like a protein
powder or something like that. So keep the supplements minimal
if you don't have any deficiencies and you don't
really, I mean you got a test to see if you have those
deficiencies. But honestly just electrolytes
and creatine is pretty much my go to's mean if vitamin D3 and
K2 to play it safe. But really and truly don't
overthink the supplementation side.
Next question we have, how does the ketogenic diet affect
athletic performance? So again, this is going to be
kind of interesting because a lot of the studies that paint
ketogenic dieting into a negative light as it pertains to
athletic performance are done in participants that have not
really been following the the diet for any significant length
of time. Most of these studies are like 2
or 4 week studies taking somebody that's not yet fat
adapted, putting them in a ketogenic diets and then
measuring the outcomes, in which case the outcomes often times
you know, worsen compared to the baseline.
That's not a fair study in my opinion.
Like you have to be looking at someone that's actually fat
adapted. So you're comparing apples to
apples so to speak. So when you first start the
diet, you will likely see a dip in athletic performance.
But after enough time, when those metabolic pathways are put
in place and are up regulated, your fat metabolism is up
regulating those. You know, downsides and
performance should go on the wayside.
This is true across the board from an endurance standpoint,
from a strength output standpoint.
What I personally noticed is that by following a ketogenic
diet, I have less inflammation. So I'm able to train the muscle
as intensely as I was before, but with increased frequency.
Case in point, I used to be, you know, I would do a heavy leg
day, for instance, and because of the inflammation, I was under
my knees, my joints, everything would hurt where I would not be
able to do a heavy leg day for another, you know, week or so.
Whereas now with ketone, ketones being anti-inflammatory, having
ample dietary fat and hormonal health being productive for
inflammation, I can train much more frequently and that
increased frequency allows me to have more total volume
throughout the week in my training and I'm able to recover
better. So my training performance has
only improved upon what it was previously when I was falling a
carbohydrate based diet. So once you become deeply fat
adapted, you probably will notice something similar,
reduced inflammation, a decrease in DOMS, delayed onset muscle
soreness. And also when your weight
training for instance, used to I would have like this, you know,
I hit this lactic acid threshold where I had this burning
sensation that would be the the ceiling to what I can lift
because I would have that burning sensation, I just simply
would not be able to train through that.
Whereas once you become more deeply fat adapted, your body is
able to up regulate your MCT transporters, monocarboxylic
transporters, those are up regulated to help shuttle ketone
bodies through the through your body, but they also help clear
lactate and pyruvate. So you don't really have that
same, you know, lactic burn. That was often times the case,
you know, when you're doing a high Rep set of something
previously. So I can train through that much
more efficiently because I don't really have that anymore.
And I'm pretty much just hindered by my strength for the
given movement once I hit that muscle failure.
So I can train more frequently, have better recovery and I don't
have issues with soreness like I used to.
So in all intensive purposes, my training is only benefited since
adopting A ketogenic diet. Now again, caveat being you have
to give yourself time to actually get adapted and build
up those metabolic, you know, systems of processes that
doesn't happen overnight. So give it the time that it's
due. Next question, what are the best
sources of protein on a keto diet?
So best sources of protein are bioavailable sources.
So preferentially using, you know, animal based sources,
ideally coming from a ruminant animal.
When you look at so there's a couple different ways we can
take this. So when you look at the amino
acid spectrum for instance, a lot of plant based proteins do
not have a complete amino acid profile.
Ideally you want to target protein sources that do.
If you are taking implant proteins, try and pair ones that
have complementary amino acid profiles that you do get the
full spectrum of amino acids. That's why we do that with our
plant based protein powders in the keto bricks.
We have, you know, different sources of plant proteins to
comprise the complete amino acid profile.
Animal proteins are already containing that complete amino
acid spectrum. They're also more bioavailable
to us as humans because we are animals and they typically up
regulate the nutrition they're consuming, at least the ruminant
animals do. So from an amino acid
standpoint, animal based proteins is key.
And then from a ruminant versus monogastric standpoint, I tend
to recommend, you know, just knowing where your meat comes
from, for instance, if you are eating a monogastric animal.
So a single chamber stomach like humans don't eat humans.
I wouldn't recommend that. But if you're eating like
chickens or pork, those have single stomachs as well.
When you're dealing with a monogastric animal, they're more
more so a matter of, you know, what they eat is what is stored
in their fat. So if you're consuming, you
know, chickens or pigs that were fed a very poor quality diet or
in, you know, some part living conditions, any toxins that
they're inundated with or the food they're consuming is going
to be more readily stored in their fat, which then you'll be
consuming as well. Whereas with a ruminant animal,
A4 chambered stomach animal like lamb and venison and cow, and
they're going to up regulate the nutrition they're eating.
So they're going to be grazing on grass, for instance, up
regulating that and turning it into quality meats.
And that's just a better process from a, you know, health and
health standpoint. Now what they eat from a toxin
standpoint is also going to be stored, but they're able to
clear that better through just their digestive tract and up
regulate it more efficiently. And again, it's going to get
stored in the fat. So, you know, this kind of goes
back to the debate of grain finished versus grass finished.
And an important thing to note is that all cows are grass fed.
I mean, any cow is going to consume grass for the majority
of its life, typically 70 to 80% of its lifespan.
What they're finished on dictates, you know, the fat that
they put on that last little bit of their lifespan.
And if you're going to the commodity beef system, they're
going to get paid based off of the weight of that cattle.
So they're incentivized to get as much weight on that animal as
quickly as possible because it costed them money to raise it.
So, you know, factory feed lot systems are in place for that
very reason. They finish those cows on grain
that fattens them up much more quickly in those last, you know,
cycle of their their life cycle and that, you know, grain.
Any toxins associated with that, any, you know, pesticides,
antibiotics, any of that stuff is going to be stored primarily
in that animal's fat. So if you're eating animals from
a poorly sourced location that are, you know, inundated with
more toxins, trying to focus on getting leaner cuts and then
adding quality fat is key. But that just adds more
complexity there. So I always try and just know
where I'm getting my food from. And if I'm sourcing from, you
know, grass finished places where I know what the quality of
that animal feed was consuming. And then I can just rest more,
you know, surely knowing what the quality of that meat that
I'm consuming contains. So kind of a tangent there, but
that would be my thoughts on that.
It was, it was the original question anyways.
Best source of protein. So yeah, best source of protein
is animal based proteins ideally.
And knowing where that food, where, where that animal comes
from and what it was fit. In a perfect world, that would
be the solution. Now I get it, we don't all know
our local form. We're not all hunters.
So we can't always do that and I don't want to get kind of the
weeds like do the best you can with what you have basically.
But I always try and make an effort to know what that animals
life was like and what it was consuming before I consumed it.
All right, next question, how can I stay motivated during my
fitness journey? So motivation is interesting.
Motivation, you know, is it comes and goes, it goes.
It's it's cyclical in nature. There's going to be times where
you can get super motivated and then you know, less than a day
later it's gone. You know, you can watch a really
hyped up 3 minute long YouTube video and be on fire for the
next 30 minutes. But then how do you feel when
you wake up the following morning?
So motivation is great. I'm not going to throw rocks at
motivation by any means, but discipline and you know,
habitual activities is where the rubber meets the road, so to
speak. There's days where I don't feel
like waking up and working out. There's days where I don't want
to hit my macros. There's days where I just, you
know, want to kick my feet up and relax.
But I recognize that that's not going to lead to my betterment.
You know, long term, the day-to-day actions that we make
compounded over our lifetime is going to be what makes or breaks
us. So motivation is all fine and
dandy, but again, discipline is where it's at.
So figuring out what it is that you're trying to accomplish,
making sure that you are working towards that in some form or
fashion in a sustainable manner every single day is key.
I mean, there are days that I have more intense training
sessions in the other, but I typically always get to the gym
unless it's a scheduled off day or if I'm traveling or something
like that. But even when I'm off of my
normal routine, I'm still doing things that are not moving me
away from the overarching goal. So even if I'm outside of my
routine, I'm still trying to move the needle in my favor in
some way or another. So whether that means, you know,
still eating the right food or still getting some movement in
or still, you know, recovering, if it's a recovery day, like
actually trying to rest and recover more so that I can hit
it hard the next day when I return to my routine is key.
But try and find something somehow, some way that moves you
closer to the overarching goal every single day.
And that is the key, ladies and gentlemen.
All right, next question. What are the signs of being in
ketosis? So from a super technical
standpoint, you can do a blood ketone test.
Actually, before we even talk about that, you can do a
urinalysis test. So you can get a ketone strip
that you pee on and that's going to be measuring acetoacetate and
it shows dark purple if you're producing ketones.
Now, people got super excited about that when keto first
started becoming popular. Everybody peed on sticks and
just posting it on social media, that doesn't really tell you
much. I mean, it, it can be useful if
you just need something tangible to get excited about, to get
motivated about like we talked about earlier.
And that's great, but it's not really going to be telling long
term because as your body gets more adapted, you're going to be
excreting less of that ketone in your urine.
So then people typically transition to blood testing,
which is going to be measuring beta hydroxybutyrate and that is
technically in ketosis if you are registering .5 millimolar or
mower or the .5 millimolar or more.
Now, should you become a slave to testing your blood ketones?
Not at all. I typically only test my glucose
and ketones when I'm doing a very involved experiment and I
just want to see how certain foods impact things, how I'm
correlating, how I'm feeling based off what my blood numbers
are. But I don't really put a whole
lot of stock in that as just a day-to-day, you know, baseline.
I'm going off of how I'm feeling, what I'm performing.
Like if I've got good cognition, good mental clarity and energy
throughout the day, if I'm not eating carbohydrates and I'm
feeling great and I'm performing great and I've got good mental
acuity, then I feel confident that I am fat adapted, running
on fat as my primary fuel substrate and in ketosis.
So I would let that be the litmus test that you pretty much
measure everything against. All right, How do I balance
cardio and weight training on keto?
So when it comes to cardio, this is not really necessary specific
to keto. This is just in general, I try
and take a minimum viable dose to cardio, especially from a
compositional standpoint. So changing your composition is
going to come primarily from, you know, weight training and
nutritional manipulations. Cardio is great, and we all want
to have a certain degree of cardiovascular health.
You don't want to be winded doing squats, which hinders your
strength training performance if you're out of shape,
cardiovascularly speaking. So I think having a, you know,
healthy baseline of cardiovascular function is
certainly worthwhile. Like I like to be able to move
and perform and, you know, go go on a hike with my family and
have the, you know, level of fitness that allows me to do
that. But I don't try to become a
slave to doing cardio. Like there's no inherent benefit
to just, you know, spending hours on the treadmill or hours
on the Stairmaster. I take a minimum viable dose
approach to that so that I can preserve muscle glycogen all the
more, not hinder my recovery any more than necessary and focus
primarily on, you know, nutritional manipulations and
performance in the weight room. You know, for me as a as a
bodybuilder now, if I was a ultra marathon runner, I would
have a different answer to that and I would shift my priority
and focus. But most people are probably
asking as it pertains to changing body composition.
So as it pertains to body composition, the cardio should
be the least important lever that you are focusing on.
I mean, typically when I'm in a competition prep and I get down
crazy freaking lean, you know, even at the very depth of my
prep, I'm only doing a few sessions of Stairmaster a week.
It's normally never exceeding 20 minutes per session.
So the vast majority of the focus should be on the weight
training. Next question, what are some
common mistakes to avoid on a ketogenic diet?
Common mistakes to avoid? So I feel like a lot of people
get caught up in the tracking component of like the blood
ketones can, like I talked about earlier.
So again, you don't have to use that as like the, the, the
standard. You can kind of just use that
when you're experimenting with things.
I feel like one of the common pitfalls people make is just
what is popular right now in social media.
So I've been in the space long enough to see in the very
beginning, you know, people were super fearful of protein for
fear of gluconeogenesis and they were just advocating very
minimal protein if they're trying to optimize for ketogenic
time. And that obviously wasn't great
because we need protein. Now here lately it's been, you
know, protein's been given this Halo and everybody's like super
hardcore all about protein to the detriment of ample dietary
fat, which is obviously not good either.
And then here super lately, like in the past month, it's all been
about this sugar diet, in which case the mechanism of action is
very, very, very low protein. So we're kind of going back to
the whole low protein thing. And the mistakes people make is
basically what, what is revealed in the trends and hypes and, you
know, dogma and narrative on social media.
If everybody's talking about, you know, not eating enough
protein, that's what's going to happen.
People aren't going to eat enough protein.
If everybody's talking about, you know, eating too much
protein, then the, the pendulum is going to swing.
So far the opposite direction, people are going to consume too
much protein relative to ample dietary fat and their energy is
going to suffer. Like there is a balance to be
made here and often times the gurus on social media are
advocating like this hyped thing that's just going to lead to
people's detriment is not really sustainable.
So the mistakes people make, the most common mistakes people make
is they let too much noise into their ecosystem.
They just listen to all these conflicting sources of
information, of which I am a source of information.
Like y'all listen to this podcast, this video right now,
and I'm probably saying stuff that is counter to what Thomas
de Lauer or Mark Bell or whoever else is putting stuff out there
is saying. And people just bounce around
from one thing to the next. I'm all about having
information, but information overload is costing people, you
know, action, and they're just bouncing from one thing to the
next too frequently without giving their bodies ample time
to acclimate to anyone manipulation they make.
So that is probably the case with any and every diet, but
that is certainly a common pitfall for sure.
The next question we have is how can I manage cravings while on
keto? So when it comes to cravings,
you know, honestly, your palate changes quite a bit once you
become fat adapted. So if you're a phone of standard
American diets and you're eating a lot of, you know, highly
processed, hyper palatable sugary foods, you crave a lot
more sugary foods. Once you adopt A ketogenic
approach and you remove all of that and you're eating more, you
know, single ingredient, wholesome, nutrient dense real
foods, your palate changes and you find yourself not really
cravings craving the sweet things as much.
Like I definitely prefer, you know, salty and savoury or over
sweet foods. Now where as you know, rewind
the clock back 11 years ago and you know, I was a candy fiend.
That's what I was eating a lot of.
So like your, your palate changes, your cravings change.
Now, when it comes to cravings of just food in general, you
know, hunger, those are often times result of, you know, being
in a caloric deficit, having a skewed leptin and grill and
hormonal regulatory system in which those natural in a tongue
or signaling cues are all jacked up or there because you were in
such a deficit. And that can certainly lead to
some cravings of just eating more food and just consumption
in general. So you have to kind of be
strategic with that. Like when I'm dying down for a
show, you know, my leptin and grill and hormones are impacted
and my cravings for just food in general intensify.
So I've got to take all that into, you know, into account
depending on where I'm at with my goals and you know, hedge the
bets and incorporate hunger hack foods and just do things to make
it sustainable to get to the desired level of body fat.
Now, when it comes to just craving a certain, you know,
taste or texture or flavor variety, again, I'll just point
to the fact that there are so many alternatives for the
ketogenic foods out there. So if you're craving, you know,
fried catfish, for instance, which is something I used to
love eating, you know, I could have fried catfish.
Now I would just swap out and fry that catfish in tallow
instead. And I would use like a pork
panko as a breading instead of you know, cornmeal or something
like that. I would, if I'm craving
cheesecake, I would have my wife's keto cheesecake as
opposed to a legitimate carbohydrate based cheesecake.
So if there's a specific food you're craving, just find the
ketogenic healthy alternative to that and allow yourself that
food. That would be my recommendation
there. Next one, what are the benefits
of intermittent fasting with keto?
So intermittent fasting, time restricted feeding, that is
basically taking a measured approach to how long you're
going between meals. So from an insulin standpoint,
blood glucose regulation standpoint, it it makes sense
for us not to be snacking and just constantly grazing
throughout the day. It's much better if we eat, you
know, if we eat, have a meal, and then have a period of
fasting in between that meal and the next meal, that gives our
digestive system time to breakdown and assimilate that
nutrition. It's not constantly taxing our
digestive system. And if you're eating foods that
absorb and are assimilated much more slowly and don't disrupt
your blood sugar as much, like fats and proteins, you know,
then you'll likely be able to go longer between meals kind of
naturally by default, when you're eating a bunch of, you
know, really sugary foods, you're going to have an increase
in blood sugar. Your body's going to excrete a
bunch of insulin that's going to settle that blood sugar into the
cell. Your blood sugar is going to
drop. Then you're going to be hungry
again. That's not really happening when
you're eating primarily fats and proteins.
Your blood sugar is much more stable, so your hunger and your
energy level is much more even keel.
And because fats absorb so much more slowly than carbohydrates,
you can typically go longer between meals.
And for that reason, people typically go longer between
meals, which, again, is a positive thing.
During that period of fasting, you're also going to be burning
more stored fat. And the dietary fat that you've
consumed, it can be metabolizing fat more readily.
That's going to increase, you know, ketone circulation, which
is going to improve, you know, cognition, clarity, all of the
good things that come with that. Now you're going to want to make
sure that you're not excessive with the fasting.
There are people that go too far with fasting.
Extended fasting has a place, but you know, it's, it's a
stressor on the body nonetheless.
And if you're doing, if you're in a caloric deficit and then
you're also doing extended fasting, you know, excessively,
it's just too many stressors on the body.
I don't really recommend that. Whereas if you're just simply
intermittent fasting and listening to your body's natural
hunger signaling cues and, you know, having more time between
meals, I think that is much more, you know, healthy.
It gives that digestive system the breather it needs.
So I think that is totally conducive to better health.
The next question we have here. I lost my list.
All right, here we go. How do I incorporate cheat meals
into a keto lifestyle? So cheat meals are not really
recommended and here's why. Cheat meals, cheat meals.
I mean, what do we need to treat for what we need to cheat for?
Like, have a goal, work towards that goal, and confidently know
that everything you're doing is in line with that goal.
All right, so I am the strict keto guy for a reason.
I haven't deviated from keto in over a decade because I know
that eating a bunch of hyper palatable processed junk food is
not serving me well. Now, does that mean that I am
super rigid with my tracking at all times?
No, certainly not. There are times we'll have more
food. There's times we're going to
have more, you know, keto treats, so to speak.
You know, treats as they say, something like that celebratory
keto cheesecake. Like if it's the holidays that
I'm not in a prep, I'll certainly have some keto cookies
with my son that will decorate for Christmas.
Like I can do all of those things and I don't feel like I'm
deviating from my life's, you know, positive trajectory by
adhering to the that trip protocol that I know, you know,
fuels me and serves me best. So I don't ever deviate from
that. I don't think it's necessary.
I don't really recommend it, but everybody's a little bit
different. Like everybody's got to figure
out what is sustainable to them. And again, it's going to look
different for everybody out there.
So figure out what that is for you and then double down on it.
But again, I've gone over a decade without having a
carbohydrate based meal. So the notion that you have to
have, you know, these, you know, outside foods to make it
sustainable certainly isn't the case for me or many others.
But figure out what's that looks like for you.
Like have a period of strict tracking and strict adherence to
reach the goal. And then give yourself time to
physic physically and mentally and emotionally, you know, reset
from that before you figure out what the next goal is and double
down on it. That's totally healthy, totally
realistic, totally sustainable. But I am just inherently opposed
to the idea of, you know, cheating on anything and laugh
like I don't want to cheat on tests.
I didn't cheat on tests when I was in school.
I don't cheat in business. I don't backstab people that I
work in business with. I don't cheat on myself with
regards to, you know, my nutrition.
I don't cheat on my wife in our marriage.
Like I don't cheat in life. And it just is strange to me
that people would think, you know, cheating is OK with your
food. Like don't cheat with anything.
Like figure out who you are, figure out what you want to do,
work towards that in some form or fashion every single day.
Never sacrifice your integrity and be able to go to sleep at
night, each night, every night, constantly knowing that you did
your best that day. Boom, that's it, period, full
stop, no questions asked. And that pretty much, ladies and
gents, where I want to end this conversation.
So that was a wrap on the AMA Solo podcast episode.
Again, I'm going to be doing several of these over the next
few weeks with our baby coming due any day now.
So by all means, please submit any questions that you want
answered in the comments and I will certainly address those on
the future solo AMA episodes. Until then, talk to y'all later.