Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto, savage.com
and today I've got special guest Doug Evans on the line.
Doug is a master Sprouter, so he's been sprouting his own
greens for quite some time now. He went through an experiment
where he ate exclusively sprouts that he had grown and I just
wanted to kind of get him on the podcast and pick his brain as to
what sprouts are, what the nutritional benefits of sprouts
entail, how you can grow your own sprouts.
I've been getting big into the homesteading and just becoming
as self-sufficient as possible. So the fact that you can grow
these and they have a much faster turn around period than
traditional gardens and vegetation that you would grow
was appealing to me. But yeah, I just wanted to get
him on here, pick his brain about sprouts, how he
incorporates them, how he recommends people in court
incorporate them and just learn a little bit more from someone
that's following a different diet than myself.
So thoroughly enjoy the conversation.
I've got no doubt that you will take something from it if you
have any interest whatsoever in sprouts.
So without further delay, sit back, relax and enjoy.
And we are live. Doug, how are you Sir?
I am the best ever. Thank you.
I love it man. I love it.
Well, I'm excited to be learning from your day.
You are a an aficionado when it comes to sprouting your own
food, which is something I know nothing about, so I'm excited to
learn from you. But before we get into that,
man, give me some back story. What got you interested in
sprouting your own food to begin with?
You know, I first saw sprouts 25 years ago, 30 years ago in New
York City and I was at the farmer's market and there was 1
vendor who was growing sprouts and wheat grass.
And out of. Everything in the market, this
was the the thing that resonated with me and let me, let me up.
It was almost like the vibrancy of the green was.
So. Powerful that it drew me to it.
I was attracted to it. So 30 years ago I started
sprouting and eating sprouts, and for these last 30 years I
always thought of sprouts as a side dish or as a garnish or as
this nutritionally dense vegetable.
And that was just in my mindset. And then seven years ago I moved
to the desert. So I live on a Hot Springs
called Wonder Valley Hot Springs near Joshua Tree in Southern
California. And when I moved here for the
first time I was having food scarcity issues.
There were no health food stores, no restaurants, no
farmers markets. Like I was in the middle of
nowhere and I wanted to be here because I wanted to be in
nature. But it was a stark reality that
it takes weeks or months or years to grow your own food.
And so I needed to eat immediately and then while
staring at the universe. And we have really dark skies
here. So we could see the Milky Way.
We could see all the stars in the Galaxy.
I was staring at the stars and I got this idea.
I was like, oh, I could grow sprouts.
I could eat sprouts. And so I I received the download
that night, which turned into writing the Sprout book, and the
the premise fell into three parts #1 sprouts were vegetables
and vegetables are food, and I never thought of sprouts as
food. I always thought of them as a
side dish and here I was thinking of them as food #2.
Sprouts were vitamins and minerals, which I thought in
small quantities they were just healthy.
I didn't realize the nutritional density of the sprouts that in
1/4 cup of garbanzo bean sprouts.
At least the latest data that came was in 1/4 cup there's 9
grams of protein, so in a cup 36 grams of protein.
Now the lowest research I had was 20 grams of protein in a cup
of sprouted chickpeas and that was really, really powerful for
me. But additionally, there are 10s
of thousands of phytonutrients in the sprouts.
There's polyphenols, there are great prebiotic and there's such
a variety of sprouts that you could dial in the nutrition to
whatever you want to be. So if you want to be high fat,
you could get high higher levels of fat, you could get higher
levels of protein and if you wanted to get, you know, higher
carbs ratio. So there's such a variety of
sprouts that they were nutritional access and then the
third. And this really.
Blew my mind was that sprouts were medicine and that there
were thousands of peer reviewed published studies on the
medicinal properties of sprouts, that they had anti cancer
properties. They could help regulate insulin
levels in diabetics. They could create heat shock
proteins in the brain similar to that of going in a sauna.
And so I was very curious. I end up writing the Sprout book
and because I was learning so quickly and I couldn't believe
that this information was being repressed, that no one knew
about it, no one was talking about it.
There hadn't been any energy behind sprouts yet.
There's documented history of sprouts as food that goes back
3000 years BC. Why do you think there was so
much repression of it? Like what would be the the
reason for that? Well, from an economic
perspective, sprouts have a very short shelf life.
They require refrigerated transportation and there's not
money behind it. So if we think about the food
system and the pharma system, people around food systems about
making money, you go into Walmart or supermarket and 90
plus percent of the food is packaged, has additives, has
preservatives, has food coloring, is genetically
modified as shelf stabilizers on it is pasteurized.
So you think about sprouts. They're a low margin, fresh
product and they just get grossly overlooked.
And there are no national sprouting companies like.
You'll see a soda commercial, you'll see a water commercial,
you'll see a beer commercial, you'll see a potato chip
commercial and a cereal commercial.
No one's advertising sprouts. Now for the the uninformed
listener, can you just define what is a sprout?
I mean, I guess just the the vegetation that stems forth from
a freshly germinated plant I guess is a pretty simple
overview, right? Yeah, yeah.
I mean, sprouts, sprouts and sprouting are the process of
taking a seed and it could be a nut or a seed or a legume.
And when you soak it, you are triggering the germination
process. And then within days the seed
transforms through a metabolic transformation into a vegetable
and it shoots out, shoots up a shoot and a root comes from the
bottom. And that is the sprouting
process. Now when we talk about sprouts
as a food source, very common in America, alfalfa sprouts are
used in salads and used and on wraps and sandwiches, and mung
bean sprouts are popular in Asian cuisine, in soups and in
stir fries. But what I went into and what I
now consume are alfalfa sprouts, radish sprouts, broccoli
sprouts, lentils, sprouts of all sorts from French lentils to
green lentils to red lentils to peas and green peas and yellow
peas. And if you think about, you know
a lot of the protein mixes. The plant protein mixes are made
using pea pro peas to make pea protein.
So in my world, rather than eating a protein powder, I would
rather eat the whole pea because the whole pea has this vitality
to it. First of all, it's living.
Secondly, it has these active enzymes 3.
It has antioxidants and the green peas in particular have
chlorophyll. And so this complete food source
to me is better than having an isolated protein source.
So I think it it's really about the money that that's why they
were repressed. And when you look at other
cultures, I was just in Tokyo and believe it or not, they sell
1 billion with AB as in boy, $1 billion a year in broccoli
sprouts alone. Wow.
That's. Crazy.
They're available in 20,000 retail stores.
People are selling broccoli sprouts.
Well, I I don't need a lot of greens personally, but I I do
like like it's appealing to me that you can grow them in the
comfort of your own home so you can be self-sufficient in that
regard. Plus, because you're growing
them in such a short time frame, you know you're you're able to
recoup that relatively quickly and you're not having them
sprayed with, you know, Roundup and all the stuff you're
typically going to have on any vegetation that you pick up at a
grocery store. So that that's appealing to me.
Yeah, I mean you you mentioned Roundup.
The technical chemical within Roundup is called the
glyphosate, and glyphosate creates all sorts of havoc in
the body from causing cancer. There's now major class action
suits against, you know, the makers of Roundup and
glyphosate. And I was so concerned with the
seed source and having them clear that when Mike Posner and
I started the sprouting company, we committed to testing all of
the seeds to make sure there was no glyphosate, no roundup on any
of the seeds. Very nice.
So, so all the seeds are organic, but in addition to
being organic, they're tested additionally for glyphosate.
They're also tested for high germination.
Rate so that. We know that when you soak them,
they will sprout because if they're not sprouting, you know,
you're just having a waterlogged wet seed.
Not very good. So we're testing them for high
germination rate. And then the third is we're
testing them for pathogens to make sure that there's no
detectable source of pathogens, you know, on the seeds because
if you're consuming it. But then when you grow them at
home, you know, using a glass jar, you know, I use the
sprouting company's jar because it's bigger and has a stainless
steel filter and it has great drainage.
But I make sure that I'm properly washing my sprouting
equipment with hot soapy water as to make sure that I'm
starting with something sanitary.
And then I'm using these fresh high quality seeds that are
going through this four part testing for organic, for high
germination, for glyphosate free and for the the residue.
So I know that where my food is coming from, right?
So we're getting US grown seeds that we're sprouting at home And
what what most people don't know and you know, you raised your
hand early in this process, is it you can grow these sprouts
without soil, without sunshine, without fertilizer and they grow
in days. So within two days to seven days
you can have an edible crop. So this means you know from a
level of you know, no one really took food safe food security
very seriously until COVID hit. And then people were freaking
out. They couldn't get toilet paper.
They couldn't get their macaroni and cheese.
They couldn't get their favorite cereals and I was not even
worried about it because I had hundreds of pounds of seeds on
reserve. So even if I was staying in my
bunker with my water source and my seeds, I was able to live.
And what I know for a fact, because I did it, was I lived
very healthily and very happily on an exclusive Sprout diet.
You know, for a 30 day stint. Yeah.
So I was actually just going to ask you, so you are, are you
eating exclusively sprouts currently or that was just for
that experiment? I'm eating right now sprouts and
fruit, so I eat fresh fruit and I eat sprouts and I'll have some
sea vegetables, so like nori seaweed when it's available and
that's my diet. Are you out of curiosity?
Are you tracking your intake? Like, do you have any idea how
many calories you're consuming? How many grams of protein, fat,
carbs, etcetera. I don't track on a very frequent
basis. The thing that is most important
to me, the biggest factor is how do I feel?
What is my energy level? But I'll tell you, and I know
that you're a savage there. In 2023, I committed to making
that my most active year ever. So I was running three to five
miles a day, at least three days a week, and I was averaging over
275 push ups a day, which totalled to 100,000 push ups I
did in 2023. And now I'm I'm up to about 400
push ups a day and I'm doing somebody weight squats and you
know maybe anywhere from 15 to 30 pull ups a day.
So I'm doing body weight exercise and if I were to look
at my fat, protein, carb breakdown using a chronometer, I
would probably be somewhere around 80 to 90% carbs, 5 to 10%
protein, and five to 10% fat in my current state.
Now when I was doing higher levels of protein, I was able to
be somewhere around 30% protein by consuming the high protein
sprouts. The mung bean sprouts, the pea
sprouts, the the garbanzo bean sprouts, the lentil sprouts were
very much higher levels of protein.
But right now what, you know, the way that this machine is
presently running, it's doing much lower levels and of protein
and fat and higher levels of this active vegetable part.
And it's the first time I've ever been shredded.
I feel, I know we're doing audio only, but I feel like taking off
my shirt for you because I'm in this shredded state and I know
you want to be the leanest guy. And you know our our, our mutual
friend Ben Greenfield, you know, he, as you mentioned, he tries a
lot of different things, but he's eating broccoli sprouts and
he's eating garbanzo bean sprouts and he's adding them to
his smoothies and he's adding them, you know, to the salads
that he's eating. So what I love about sprouts is
that they can fit into a high protein diet and they could fit
into every other diet because you can literally dial in the
specific sprouts that you're looking for based on the
nutritional profile. Yeah, and I would imagine like
the if you're just eating the sprouts and not the seeds that
come with it, I mean your your fiber intake's gonna be higher,
but like you're not consuming that many carbohydrates.
Well, I guess you know you are. That's predominantly your entire
diet. But if someone's just using this
as an add on to their diet, they can just have that as a as a
vegetation source and they. Won't be consuming that.
They're great. They're a great vegetation
source. And when you sprout, for
example, you, you know lentils. When you're sprouting lentils,
you're doubling the antioxidant levels and you're tripling the
vitamin C and you're lowering the lectins, you're lowering the
phytic acid and you're lowering the enzyme inhibitors.
So you're able to get this very fine-tuned part.
But I would say most of my carbs, like if we look in the
ratio, comes from eating fruit. So if you're eating a lot of
fruit, you're getting the high carbs.
The sprouts are very neutral, and if you're looking at the
more concentrated protein ones like you know, a soy gets a very
bad name. Like for some reason, you know,
people like to mock soy, but the nutritional profile, you know of
a soybean is very high. I'll just open it up right now
of soy soybeans and when you sprout the soybeans, but you
know once one, One Cup of soybeans raw, right, it's 830
calories, 37 grams of fat, 25% saturated fat, no cholesterol,
low sodium, 4G of sodium, incredible levels, three, 3422
milligrams of potassium. It has a good amount of carbs,
right as 56 grams of carbs, but it has 68 grams of protein and
it also has, you know, 162% of the iron, 51% RJ of calcium and
130% of magnesium. So, you know, they're really
powerful, you know, when you think about that.
And to me, the only soy that I will eat are soy sprouted
soybeans because the sprouted soybeans, you know, are this
nutritionally active body. So when you sprout them, you're
shifting the the whole profile to make them more bioavailable.
But it's very, very interesting to find out.
Like no one would have ever believed that you could get all
of this, you know, protein and even fat in a bean.
Yeah, now I know one of the knocks from, you know, against
plant based nutrition from a a protein source is that a lot of
the the plant sources lack a complete amino acid profile and
a lot of people will make up for that by just having, you know,
different variations of different plants to complete
that amino acid profile. I guess you could do the same
thing with the sprouts. Yeah, I mean it's it's very
interesting and I think that information is also biased
because the the latest research the you know that's coming out
you know from on this on the sprouts and other vegetables is
that they're all vegetables have all amino acids to form complete
profiles. They have them in varying
levels. So it's not as divinely perfect
as one would look at, you know, if you're looking at a piece of,
you know, grass fed beef. But the reality is they all have
the the complete amino profile, amino acid profile.
It's just a matter of getting, as you said, enough of them in
variety, which is also important for the microbiome.
So how much are you looking and and at microbiome as a
consideration in the diet? Me personally.
Yeah. Quite a bit.
I mean, I don't eat much vegetation, but I mean your
body's able to create butyrate through other means besides just
consuming prebiotics and probiotics.
I mean like when fatty acids breakdown, you're able to get
butyrate through that delivery vehicle.
I mean, I consume hardly any vegetation currently.
I'll go through periods where I'll have some periods where I
don't have much at all. I'll kind of play around with
carnivore, carnivoresque diets, but then there'll be times where
I'll have some vegetation. But honestly I just focus more
so on how I feel as well. I feel like I've got a very
robust digestive tract and I haven't had any issues from a GI
standpoint since keeping things pretty simple with a an animal
based diet. But you know, to each their own.
Like, I'm I'm not knocking anybody that finds better
success from a GI standpoint by including a much higher variety
of vegetation. And Robert, how long have you
been doing this? About eight years now, I guess.
And and how much are you in the gym now?
Every day. Every day.
Are you? Are you?
Do you have a rest day or you're
just working different parts of the body?
Yeah, different parts of the body.
I'll sometimes have one rest day a week, but I'm pretty active.
Like I'm we've we've got some land, so if I'm not in the gym
training I'm out driving fence posts or working animals or
something. So I'm active seven days a week,
but I may not be in the gym, but six days of those.
And are you Are you competing or what?
What's your goal of your workouts?
Yeah, Yeah. So I just finished the
competition prep. I I competed all throughout
2023, did 5 competitions, and then now I'm in the reverse that
phase. So right now I'm basically just
bringing my calories up, focusing on putting on more lean
tissue, getting stronger, and building more muscles that next
time I compete I'll be bigger and better than I was this last
time. Wow and and when?
When does competition start? So I take several years off in
between competition season. I mean, it's very taxing on the
body hormonally, metabolically, psychologically to go through a
prep. So I typically take a few years
off in between competitive seasons so that I can put on
more lean tissue, especially as a natural athlete.
I mean, if you're not using performance dancing drugs and
you're a mature lifter, your body doesn't put on a ton of
lean tissue year after year. So I mean, it takes quite a bit
of time. So I want to look markedly
better every time I step on stage.
So I'll typically take two 3-4 years off in between competitive
cycles. Oh, how old are you now?
32. 32 Wow And are you doing this work?
So the work you do, are you working on the farm or do you
ever put on a a a suit and go to the office?
What's your day like? Yeah, I'm a I'm in the office a
lot. I wake up early, I work on the
computer quite a bit. We make a meal replacement bar.
I do podcasting, a lot of content creation.
So yeah, I'm I'm pretty much. I have a computer more often
than not, But when I'm not at a computer I'm either in the gym
or on the farm. All right.
And in terms of the the the workouts, do you have a trainer
or like how are you, how are you chiseling your physique, so to
speak? I know I've been my own trainer
for as long as I can remember. I I pretty much do all my own
training, all my own nutrition. I I coach others.
I am a trainer for others. But the things that I'm doing,
I'm kind of, you know, tip of the spear, figuring them out as
I go, testing new things, experimenting with things, and
then basing my training and nutrition off of those
experimentations. So I've developed my own
protocol for nutrition around competition prep, and I'm I'm
teaching others how to implement it, but I'm not gaining that
from anybody, specifically because I kind of designed the
protocol, so to speak. That's interesting.
And what is the heart when when you're working out, what's the
hardest part for you of your training protocol?
Honestly, man, I just love it. Like there's not really, like a
lot of people struggle with motivation in the gym, but I I
just love being in the gym. I love seeing changes take
place. When you're in a prep and your
calories are low, it's hard to push yourself and recovery's
hindered things of that nature. But it's all just part of the
process. I I I don't really have a a part
that is dreadful. And there's.
I mean, everything that I do, I look forward to.
So when, when, when you're lifting, do you have a do you
have someone there spotting you or are you pushing yourself to
failure? Yeah, yeah.
So I've got one of my employees comes in with me in trains in
the morning, So often times work out with him and we'll spot each
other when we're getting into our failure sets.
But a lot of it you could do solo as well.
I do a lot of dumbbell work, so spotting is less of an issue
with that. But when I'm doing heavy barbell
work and I'm going to failure, I'll have my employee there.
And how's your flexibility? Pretty good man, pretty good
idea. One of my signature poses when I
compete is the split. So pretty, pretty flexible, I
feel. Wow, so you do a full split?
Yep, Yep. Wow, have you seen Juju, Juju
Mufu? I have not see a competitor.
I don't know if he's a competitor.
He's a he's a like a a kind of a Acrobat guy but he's extremely
flexible and and he got his fame.
I think he went on America's Got Talent and he did a split, you
know, with must have been, you know, 135 lbs or 225 lbs on a
dumbbell on 2 chairs splitting. Nice.
Yeah. Flexibility is important, man.
A lot of bodybuilders get a bad rap because people just assume
they're not flexible. And some of them aren't
flexible. But flexibility, Mobility,
longevity, these are all things that I want to make sure that
I'm working into my training regimen.
So that's all stuff that I try to prioritize.
And and you're doing, do you do any cardio, Yeah.
Yeah, I'll do cardio. I don't do as much in a building
phase, but I'll do cardio certainly when I'm cutting down,
I'll do Stairmaster for cardio. I also do like a lot of running
and hiking and backpacking, things of that nature.
I do a lot of hunting out West, so that's pretty, pretty cardio
intensive as well. And and what's your height?
I AM 57 and 1/2. So, so you're very, very solid
and and what's your present weight like 151 Sixty?
I got down to 151, was my lightest in competition.
On stage I was like 155. Currently I'm about 170.
Oh, OK, so in the offseason, you're bulking up?
Yeah, yeah, you gotta put on, I mean, 'cause I get down to 3.9%
body fat in my my competition. So you can't really sustain that
indefinitely from a hormonal or or a metabolic standpoint or
health standpoint. So yeah, I'm I'm putting on more
body fat now, putting on more lean tissue now and my walking
around weight in the building phase is usually between 170 to
180 somewhere in that window. And what's your end goal?
What's motivating you? Be the best I can be man every
single day. Be the best I can be.
Get better every single day, both with the training, the
nutrition and the one I'm able to put out for the public to to
benefit them from. Add more value than I take you
know. Yeah.
And where are you physically based?
I'm in Northwest Arkansas. Isn't that you where you grew
up? Or how did you get to Arkansas?
Yeah, pretty much. Grew up in Arkansas.
I was born in Minnesota, but grew up in Arkansas.
Bounced around a little bit, moved in, lived in Washington
state for a while. That's where I met my wife.
Brought her back to Arkansas. And we just love it here in the
Ozarks, ma'am. It's a beautiful country.
That's that's really, that's really incredible.
And so are are you growing? Where do you get so you're not
eating a lot of vegetables. Are you open to seeing what it's
like eating a lot of sprouts? Yeah, I mean I, I, I try
anything. So we have a, we've got like a
little homestead operation now, so we're raising you know, sheep
and we've got chickens, We're going to get some pigs and some
cattle eventually, but we have a garden as well.
So, but I like the idea of sprouting food because it has
such a quicker, a faster turn around than you know a
traditional garden. So that would make sense for
sure. Yeah.
I mean, I think that, you know it, it sounds like you're very
disciplined. Yeah, discipline is the key
thing. And were you in the military?
No, no military. I just anything that I've ever
seen success with in life has come from doing hard things and
being disciplined in doing those hard things.
So the bodybuilding embodies that.
The business and entrepreneurship embodies that.
And just discipline has been a pinnacle and a pillar for every
success I've seen since I started seeing any success in
life. So I definitely, I'm an advocate
for discipline. Wow.
And what do you you, what do you love outside of working out like
that? That motivates you, you know,
totally out of the the workout world.
What do you enjoy? I love businessman, like
business, entrepreneurship, community, building, networking,
creating something with my own two hands and offering it to
people and just being a part of something bigger than myself is
is very motivating and I think business is a great vehicle to
accomplish that. And honestly that the
homesteading that we've been doing, I really love that.
Like we plugged into the homesteading community around
here. We're we're talking with people
about, you know, how to properly raise animals for meats, how to
have chickens for farm fresh eggs, how to grow gardens.
Like just becoming more self-sufficient from the ground
up, I think has been really, really fulfilling as well.
Wow. And you have one.
You have one boy. Yep, Yep, we got one son at the
moment. We'll probably have more in the
future, but just just the one right now.
And how old is he? He's about to turn 2.
Oh wow, he's just a little older than I've got an 18 month old
daughter. Yeah, he's he's the best man.
I I love him to pieces. And it's cool with him, too,
because, like, we've prioritized his health and nutrition, like
we were on top of my wife's nutrition before she ever even
got pregnant. All throughout her pregnancy,
all the stuff that we feed him and he's just growing perfectly.
Everything is developing just fine.
His mental acuity is on point. Like, it's just cool to know
what I know about nutrition to be able to provide that for
future generations. What was your feeling on
breastfeeding? I mean, that's definitely the
the optimal way to go as opposed to the alternative of, you know,
bottle feeding. Granted, some people can't
breastfeed. There's a lot of, you know, a
lot of debate on that, but not going the formula route, if
given the possibility or given the option has been key.
I mean, Crystal, my wife breast fed up until just recently, so
pretty much two years old and you know, he's been eating real
food since day one. So his his nutrition has been on
point from the very beginning. Wow, are you homeschooling or is
he in play? Like, how is he developing with
other kids? Yeah, we'll probably do
homeschool. I mean, he's just two now, so we
haven't started that yet. But he, he's great with other
kids. I mean, he's super inquisitive,
very well versed and just, you know, manners and how to behave
around other people. He's very observant, takes
everything in, learns very quickly, picks up on words and
meanings very quickly. So yeah, I'm pretty excited to
start the Schooling chapter with him for sure.
Yeah, I mean, look, I think that, you know, you're watching
how he's developing, you know, every day, you know, there's
some other clue, some other scales.
Like, I'm watching my daughter, you know, she climbed up a rock
in a rock climbing wall yesterday for the first time.
And, you know, she was so determined and she'd never done
it before. And you know, she's using, you
know, her hands in new ways and she's using her feet and she's
using her knees. And as I'm talking to her, you
know, and I'm coaching her, she's listening.
So there's all of this growth going on, which is exceptional,
you know, to see and you know if I, if I translate that into the
sprouting world, like that's what's happening.
Like when you're doing the sprouts, you start off with a
seed that looks like it could be a Pebble or something.
And then before you know it, you know it's this green leafy
vegetable that has a whole new, you know, dynamic.
And what I can tell you, you know, and you could still stay
in ketosis on this like if you just did a day of, you know, you
might you you you probably wouldn't be getting the, the
Calor the calories you need, but you'd certainly get lean.
But it would be really interesting for you to sprout,
you know, and do a day of sprouted alfalfa and sprouted,
you know, green peas and sprouted broccoli, broccoli
sprouts and sprouted lentils, you know.
And since you're disciplined and many people aren't disciplined,
you know, you could make sure you're getting, what are you
eating, about 3004 thousand calories a day.
Yeah, probably about 4000 calories a day on average right
now, So quite a bit. Yeah, so if you could have the
discipline to just eat, you'd probably have to eat about 16
cups of vegetables. So you'll probably have the most
epic poop you've ever had in your life.
But you would, you could stay with low carb and keto on that
formulation, but the the energy you're feeling because you are
alive like you're an electric energetic body, there's no
question about the electrical impulses that are flown through
the body when you're consuming the sprouts.
It's just a whole new level and I think would be fascinating for
you to experiment with that. And you know, we can talk
offline on how to get set up, but I would say with just two or
three sprouting jars and like the protein mix and some of the
salad mixes, you know, you could totally keep, you know your
focus you know on, on keto and on the sprouts.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not opposed to incorporating that into my my
dietary protocol. I probably wouldn't have that
exclusively. I would probably have that in
tandem with the meat that I'm eating.
Like I eat a ton of meat, but I don't think there would be any
mutually exclusivity factor at play there.
Like, I don't think there would be any inherent benefit for not
having the meat if you had the sprouts.
No I I. I wouldn't.
I wouldn't discard you from having your your meat.
I would just say from an experiment of just seeing how
you feel like the lightness factor because you are already
tuned in so you know how you feel.
So you know, it would just be interesting to feel the
lightness. Like I almost feel like I'm
walking around in a levitating state because I'm, I'm light,
I'm five, like I'm 5 foot 10 and I'm 151 right now.
And you know, last year and obviously I was the same 5 foot
10, but I was like 180. So I really kind of shredded and
shedded all of the extra fat. That I've been carrying around
my waist, Around my waist for, you know, 20-30 years.
I'm 57 years old. I had all this fat around my
waist and my ass and you know, all that just left, you know,
when I started to pay attention, you know, to getting more of the
sprouts into the body and I had the energy to do the workout.
And unlike you, I don't enjoy the workouts.
Yeah, like I enjoy the business. You know, I enjoy spending time
with my daughter. But the workout, it is total
grit and discipline for me because I don't love it.
You know? I do it because I have to do it.
And you know, I want, like it's important for me to be
physically, mentally, spiritually in shape.
So I do it for that reason, but I don't love it.
Like it's much more. It's much easier to sit on my
butt and be on the phone. Yeah, so right.
So I gotta force myself to do it and.
Do do you have any idea what your caloric intake has been
like to drop that much weight? I'm just, I know you're not
tracking. Yeah, no, I think, I think, I I
think I dropped my caloric intake to about 2000 calories.
OK. So you went from 180 to 150 and
you're still eating 2000. Did you modulate that much that
that time or do you just pretty much drop straight to 2000 and
just have held that consistent? Well, I increased my my workout,
right? I I increased you know, to me
like I I do the, I do my push ups almost like a cardio
workout, but I do them till exhaustion.
So I do sets of up to 70 push ups till I can't even move,
right, And then and then I'll do a 70, then a sixty, then A50,
and I spread them out, and then also by increasing the cardio.
But what allowed me was just I used to eat more fat, I used to
eat more oils. And a lot of like the people
that are doing the raw food diet, you know, they're eating a
lot of a lot of oils, a lot of avocados and those things.
And I just let those go, 'cause I like them too much.
So that was also, you know, the grid to say, hey, how can I do
increase my sprout content? But you know, 1 cup of the
garbanzo bean sprouts is 250 calories, right?
So if I'm having eight cups of the sprouts, you know, I'm
getting 2000 calories. Like it's that.
It's that clear. But when you start to add other
stuff on top of it and you're more sedentary, you know, and
you're not burning it off, you know, it just turns into fat,
you know, and a bad fat and slows you down.
I'd be super curious if like you could take some DEXA scans to
have a proxy for what your, you know, lean tissue has done as
you've gone from you know periods of higher intake to
lower intake exclusively eating sprouts.
Like I'd be curious to see what that's doing.
I mean you're you're training your your progressive
overloading, your your push ups, your your body weight squats and
all that, which is great. But like if that was held
relatively constant, I'd be curious to see what your lean
tissue does over time. If you're eating, you know
pretty much exclusively sprouts and fruit.
Yeah, yeah, look, you know my my nutritionist suggested the DEXA
scan. So which one do you recommend?
Do I do the full, the full set or or the light one?
I would definitely do like the full body.
I mean there's there's two main brands for the DEXA scans, GE
and I forget the other one off the top of my head and there's
going to be a little variance with it.
But generally speaking they're much more accurate than like an
in body machine which is going to have a fluctuation based off
of fluid retention and that would be great too.
I mean you could do an in body machine that'd be more
accessible to you. So you could do something like
that on a somewhat regular basis.
But I would definitely be curious to see what your lean
tissue does over time as you have you know exclusive, you
know Sprout as your as your primary intake.
Yeah, let me just find. So the IT looks like there's a
company nearby body spec. Yeah, yeah.
That has track muscles gain and loss.
Yeah. Body specs, right?
Body Yeah, body spec DEXA scans are are the one so.
Yeah, jump on that. And they're, I mean they're
pretty reasonably priced. You can do that you know every
every three months or so would be a pretty good proxy if you
got in a DEXA scan every three months and you can kind of see
what your lean tissue is doing. You know we're not getting any
younger. So the more we can do to
preserve that lean tissue as we age as key and I would just be
curious to see if you're eating exclusively sprouts and fruit,
what what that does to things over time.
Yeah, I'd be very. I'd be very happy to to share
that you know, and see how we can, you know, optimize,
because, you know, I'm very happy to be a science project.
Yeah, me too. Me too.
Well, talk to me a little bit about the, the, the whole
process. Like if somebody's listening to
this then OK, I want to, I want to grow some sprouts.
Like, what does that look like? They buy some some Mason jars,
put some water and see in there, flip them upside down like,
how's that look? Yeah.
So you know, it used to be pretty rogue.
Like people have been sprouting in jars for hundreds of years.
And So what I did was, you know, when I was writing all the book,
when I was writing the book and I was sprouting in those stages,
it was very hard to get the right equipment.
So, you know, I'm a very curious guy and I knew what I wanted to
do. So basically I put together a
few people, you know, and some designers and figured out how we
could get our own, you know, product.
So we formed, you know, we bought every product on the
market. We ran it through the lab and we
said this is good, this isn't good.
How do we take it further? And so we made, you know, a
company called the Sprouting company and the product is very
simple and very elegant, but it's a glass jar.
It's a stainless steel filter that's used as a screen.
And then with that, there's a stand and a drip tray.
And the most important part is the seeds.
So, you know, we sourced alfalfa seeds, broccoli seeds, lentil
seeds, peas, mong beans, and then made some blends.
So there's a salad blend and there's a protein blend so that
people can make it easy to have the formulations.
And you so you get the seeds comes with the measuring cup.
So there's 1/4 cup. So which looks like, you know, a
heaping scoop of protein powder that you add in and you take
that scoop of seeds, you put it into the jar, you soak them
overnight and then you rinse them, you know, with the best
water you have. You know I'm using filtered
water. And then you put them in the
stand. And the protein sprouts you can
start to eat in, you know, two to three days.
The vegetable other sprouts, you can eat in three to seven days.
And you're literally getting the sprouts fresh from the, you
know, from the jar. And you can have a countertop
garden and growing your own crop.
So right now in my setup, I've got 8 jars going, but I started
with one and then I just started to build And you know, I do
intermittent fasting. So I start to eat the sprouts
around noon and then, you know, I close my feeding window around
6:00 PM. Well, I'm on your website now
and I definitely like the look of it.
It looks super clean the the sprouting kit looks very
streamlined which which I like. So if I'm if I'm wanting to
consume, you know, a substantial meal from sprouts, you know,
like if I want to like have a, you know, a 2 lbs of steak and
then throw some sprouts in there with it.
I would need to have probably a jar for each day of the week
basically, and then just kind of have that rotation basically
right? Yeah, I mean you could start
small and grow. So what I would suggest is you
know if you got one, you know one jar will give you 6
servings, you know of sprouts to just increase your phytonutrient
content. And you know, you could also do
a jar a day and that would be 6, you know, 6 jars based on a six
day crop. And that's the, you know where
you'll get to. They don't take a lot of space
in the countertop and you know, it's interesting, you know how
fast they grow. But I could tell you the they
taste great, plain and unseasoned, and they make
anything that you're eating more nutritious.
And is there like, I know you've got an app as well, Does that
app show like the nutritional breakdown of a serving of
whatever variety of sprouts I was to purchase?
I can double check on the nutrition there.
We're right now working with the labs on getting the full profile
because we were using USDA data and it wasn't as comprehensive.
And what I'm finding, and this is kind of I consider it a real
miracle, is that the sprouts have a different nutrition
profile every single day. So from day one to day 2 to day
three, the the profiles changing.
So I want to start getting a a very fine granular level of
specificity around every spout on every day so I can answer
that more accurately because right now I think if there's any
data we have, it's just more generic.
That would be super cool. Like if I can look into an app
and say, OK, I've got this strain of sprouts growing right
now, this weight of this. You know, if I would probably
measure it by the way I put on a food scale or something.
OK, so this Oz quantity of sprouted alfalfa on this day
yields this nutritional breakdown like that would be
pretty pretty insightful, pretty interesting.
Yeah, I I think you'll love it. I mean, you know, it looks like
you're a scientist, you know, working on your own body and the
fine tuning and you know, if you want to be really lean I think
and and healthy, right, because it'd be lean and not healthy.
I think the sprouts will really kind of fit right into your,
into your former, into your framework.
Well I just love being self-sufficient man.
So the honestly, the fact that you can, you know, grow them
relatively quickly with nothing more than a jar and some water,
you don't even need like sunlight or anything like that.
So how's that work? They work without sunlight at
all. Yeah, I mean basically the
miracle of sprouting is that these seeds are complete living
organisms living in a dormant state and the in nature.
You know I would imagine that an animal you know would be eating
a fruit or eating a pod or eating the the vegetable and
then the seed would go through the digestive tract of the
animal and then would be pooped out.
And then you know in the in the waste would be like a compost
and then from the waste and from the soil it would sprout out.
So the seed itself contains an endosperm and an embryo and this
concentrated, aggregated nutritional source so that it's
able to grow from zero to about seven days without the without
fertilizer, without soil and other inputs beyond water,
carbon and oxygen. Very cool.
Out of curiosity, are you? You said you're not eating any
any meat right now. Is there a particular reason for
that? You just feel good without it.
You know, for for me, I grew up eating meat, you know, and I I
ate a lot of meat. And you know, when I, when I,
when I did my first shift into eating plants, I felt liked, you
know, it almost felt like I was high.
And that feeling when whenever I would introduce anything, even
cooked, by the way, you know, I'm eating raw fruits and
vegetables, so I'm not even eating cooked vegetables.
So I'm eating this raw stuff and it makes me, you know, mental
clarity, energy, clarity. So I feel that anything, you
know, cooked anything's kind of weighs me down, slows me down
and you know, look, whatever research you read and I could
tell you this for sure that whatever your information you
are seeking, you will find 100. Percent.
If you want to find the good information about vegetables,
you'll find it. You want to find the good
information about sprouts? You'll find it.
You want to find bad information.
You'll find you know things of people say it's the worst,
vegetables are the worst. They've got anti nutrition.
They're trying to kill you. And you know where I panned out
was I want to have a low carbon footprint and you know you're
homesteading so you're, you know right there on the
self-reliance. So turns out I'm in the desert.
I can grow, you know, normal vegetables here.
You can't, you know, you can't have cattle, can't have
chickens. You know, the coyotes here,
look, you know, so frail. I just feel bad for them.
I don't know if you eat coyotes. So it just didn't resonate with
me, you know, anymore. Like one day, you know, I guess,
you know, my mom had stomach cancer.
My father had heart disease. My uncle had a heart disease and
died. My aunt had Type 2 diabetes and
they chopped off both of her feet.
And, you know, her diet was kind of candy bread, pizza, pasta,
you know, and meat. And so, you know, it's hard to
isolate. I can't point to a single thing,
you know, that that looks at it. But I think from the large
bodies of research that I looked at, that came to me that said,
the healthiest food for my longevity would be living fruits
and vegetables and sprouts. And sprouts are 20 to 100 times
more nutrient dense than mature vegetables.
So that really motivated me to consume more sprouts than other
vegetables. Yeah, that that's an interesting
fact for sure. Like, do you getting much more
concentrated nutrition from the sprouts than you would from the
food once it reaches maturity, which is, which is, like I said,
super interesting. Are you adding any sauces or
seasonings or anything to these? Or are you just opening up the
jar and going to town? I've added a lot and when I have
other people coming by, you know my staple dressing is made from
tahini, you know, which is high protein and high calcium based
and fermented miso and and fermented sauerkrauts.
So I would use ferments along with the tahini to make a
dressing, you know, with lemon as an assiduant.
But basically, I like to eat the sprouts plain.
Like, I took a drive yesterday from LA and I ate a pound of
sprouted green peas. You know, right out of the jar.
You know, on the way home, the way other people would be eating
popcorn. Yeah, I definitely think not
eating the processed foods, the carb like the the junk carbs,
the sugars, the popcorn, I think, I think we're in
agreement that that's probably not optimal.
So I'm all for swapping out popcorn for some sprouted
sprouted greens. Yeah, I think, I think it makes
a lot, I think it makes a lot of sense and I think you could you
could do it. I'm I'm really excited, you
know, to see you, you know, experimenting with the sprouts.
Yeah, no, I mean, like I said, I we we've got a garden, we'll
we'll do some homesteading. I don't need a ton of
vegetation, but when I do, I would.
I would much rather eat something that I've grown myself
and know where it's come from for sure.
And I like the idea of being able to have a quick turn around
as opposed to fooling around in a garden for months on end, so
that the idea of sprouting certainly appeals to me.
I would definitely be putting it on the plate beside a big old
juicy grass finished steak though, as opposed to in
isolation only eating sprouts personally.
But yeah, I'm excited to give him a shot, man.
Yeah, well, look, I think, you know, when you eat the sprouts,
they're very, you know, you're going to like the freshness and
you're going to like the texture.
And you know, the it'll be up to you whether you want to eat more
of them or less of them. So I don't tell people what to
do. I encourage them to eat them.
But from a profile perspective, you know if you're going to eat
vegetables, you know my goal is to have the most nutritious,
dense vegetables you can get. No 100% man, 100% so.
So where do people go to find out more about your company and
dive into the sprouting game if they so choose?
Yeah. So I'm on Instagram, you know
under my name Doug Evans and the sprouting company is you know
that's the the, the name of it, the sprouting company on
Instagram, the website isthesproutingcompany.com and
Tiktok is the sprouting company and.
You know, I encourage people just, you know, be sprout,
curious, and see how it feels. But this is, you know, what I
consider nature's first food. No, for sure, man makes sense.
Well, I I definitely will give it a try.
I I like trying anything, so I'll certainly give it a try for
sure. So I'm excited to to start
sprouting some greens and we'll see how it goes, man.
I can't thank you enough for taking the time and enlighten me
enlightening me on the sprouts. Hey, well, look, I have a lot of
respect for you and you know, I I looked at your body and I'm,
I'm saying I don't want to ask him if he's a natty.
So the fact that you came forth because I think the, you know,
performance enhancing drugs are, you know, very dangerous and
toxic. They are.
They are a lot of people. I mean, I'm not one to judge,
but there's a lot of people getting into the sport for the
wrong reasons and not paying any mind to true health and
longevity. And if you start going down that
route and abusing those drugs, it's not often times going to
bode well for you. So I've always tried to figure
out the best way to go about things naturally for the long
haul, and I haven't felt any need to deviate from that thus
far. So I have no intentions of doing
so do. They test you.
Do you perform in competitions with people on PEDs?
Yeah, I certainly have. I try and compete predominantly
in natural federations though. So those they test every, every
competitor, they polygraph every competitor and then if you win,
they do a urinalysis test on you.
They've got random drug tests throughout the year.
So yeah, all of my federations are drug tested.
Terrific. Well, I think that's good.
Well, anyway, Robert, you are a savage.
You're doing great stuff, and I'm so glad that you took the
time to learn about sprouts this morning.
Hey, my pleasure, Doug. I really appreciate the insight.
I will certainly give it a shot, see if I'm if I've got a green
thumb when it comes to the sprouts, and if there's
everything I do for you, man, just let me know.
OK, I appreciate. I think you're going to be a
Sprouting master. Well, if I have any questions,
I'll certainly know who to turn to.
OK my friend. Take care.
Bye, bye.
Yeah.