What's going on ladies and gents Robert Sikes keto Savage.com and
today I have a very special guest dr.
Robert service, I met him at the keto Summit Omaha, and he was
speaking on the topic of carbohydrates as an addiction.
And I really just resonated with every single thing.
He said, I appreciated his mindset, and Outlook towards the
whole topic. And I really knew that I had to
get on the podcast, because I love diving deep into mindset.
And we did, we went into so much more in that we went into parent
to me, went to performance-enhancing Drugs
performance, reducing drugs, you know, being athletic on a low
carb diets, having a healthy, sustainable lifestyle, living
the full length of a proper human lifespan.
There's just so much good information here.
I know you're going to enjoy it. So without further Ado, sit back
relax, learn something dr. Roberts Davis
And we're lab, dr. Silas, how are you today, sir?
Oh, great. Robert.
Thank you very much for having me on.
I'm thrilled and excited and honored to be here.
I am honored to have you sir. I listened to your presentation
at the keto Summit here in Omaha few weeks ago and I was blown
away by just your approach to it because I feel like you have a
very unique perspective. In the fact that you're talking
and referring to carb carbohydrates.
Take as an addiction, which I think we all can agree with.
But the way you Illustrated that point was very, very eloquently
done. So, hats off to you on a great
presentation. Well, thank you very much.
And I think there's so much crossover between athletes and
sports people, and kind of that, that side of things, the work
part that this will be a, very interesting conversation.
Both about what we do know that perhaps the general public is
not as aware of, because it's kind of a secret that's being
Without hitting up near the open and then also certain things
where I can tell you that I'd love to have some knowledge and
feedback from your audience, beyond the Obesity side, the
diabetes side, the athletic side, the endurance side, we're
growing every day. Every single day, we're learning
more and I would love feedback in terms of what results people
are finding and all the beauty about this is that the folks are
doing what we're going to be talking about are incredibly
invested in passionate about this.
So the data comes forth, very Ridley.
And a lot of the studies that we're seeing, the formal studies
that we're seeing are either paid for by industry looking for
a particular endpoint or alternatively, there are really
there to support people's biases and what I love about my
audience, my patience and I'm sure your audience as well is
that they are going to give us honest feedback and if you get a
feedback from a variety of different individuals and it's
all kind of in the same track in the same park way, you can
really Synthesized relatively bias, free information, that is
of value to people in that Arena.
So as we go through this, I'm not just going to be the expert.
I'm also going to ask some questions and perhaps get some
feedback over time from folks, as we highlight certain
questions and certain things we just don't know.
Myo means I'm all for that, I'd love to get a little back story
on what made you so passionate about this in the first place,
like what brought you into this Arena?
It kind of an interesting story. I, my background is on the
Pediatric surgeon and we general surgeons, first, adult,
surgeons, and pediatric, surgeons.
And as part of that, I went into the laboratory, and did a PhD
and my PhD with done in the 1990s on sugar in the liver.
And I'll confess we were so full of misconceptions and incorrect
thoughts. And there was a huge clash
between the questions were trying to answer.
You kind of have an idea. Of what the answer should be.
And lo and behold we did studies and we did experiments and they
prove to us exactly the opposite.
We thought that the look that livers performed poorly and
transplantation when they didn't have enough sugar to live off.
And so we created a small although we added sugar to the
river and lo and behold we discovered we were directly
under the microscope, looking at diabetes and action.
We were looking at fatty liver in action.
We were looking at how sugar actually damages the liver
rather than helps the liver and and the liver is an incredibly
resilient powerful organ and yet you can destroy it in a few
hours by feeding it sugar. And that just clashed so heavily
with our bias and it took me a while to take me several years
to understand that what we were looking at what our thoughts
were were completely opposite and wrong.
And then if I correlated my findings in the transported
liver with a broader subset of the population, the Obesity and
the diabetes section, it just made all the sense in the world
that the issue here was actually sugar and the injuries I saw in
my livers, as I studied them, was identical to the injuries
happen in human beings. As they develop a behavior
pattern of chronic excessive carbohydrate consumption,
whether it was for performance under the misguided carb loading
in the misguided carb-loading era or whether it was just
because carbohydrates make us feel Dawn, good.
And we eat more and more of them almost like a smoker smoking or
an alcoholic drinking to the point of excess.
And then we ignore the excess to be the harm from the excess, the
Obesity diabetes, hypertension, the metabolic syndrome.
We Oh, that harm to continue the relationship.
Well, what I just described there is the description of an
addiction. So not only were we seeing the
injury from sugar to the whole human body from the hair to the
toes, but we will also seeing the behavior patterns of people
adopted and it really two streams there were people
looking for a Health Advantage and I want to go down that
stream with our athletes and certainly to notice is the
quintessential Figurehead of it of the people that was heavily
invested in the science of carb, loading, and he has, since
completely recanted and reverse that position in a very humble,
but powerful way. And yet, endured immense
criticism from the people that couldn't get away from the fact
that carbohydrates are a valuable asset in Performance
training. And then, more importantly, for
me, it really, we were looking at the disease spectrum and by
far, the common most ubiquitous reasons why people die in the
world will certainly in the in the North America in the current
ERA is because of the consequences of chronic
excessive carbohydrate consumption and yet nobody dies
because their fact but they died because of the pattern by which
they become fat and that's a so that's also a part that we've
been able to reconcile and as part of that, I began to
practice on the surgeon, but we started to use a ketogenic
Eating plan. First of all low carbohydrate
eating plan. Then as we became more
comfortable, a higher fat, eating plan and then also
introducing intermittent fasting.
It doesn't fasting is not something that You
intentionally, do it kind of happens when you're on a
ketogenic diet if you allow yourself not to eat when you're
not hungry, right? That became the Paradigm before
the word, keto. Before the word is, before the
words, kind of War existed in the late 1990s, early 2000s,
that was our program and we had dr.
Atkins as a powerful resource to lean on, he's kind of the
grandfather and a mentor. And that was kind of our program
that we built for helping people with obesity and diabetes.
Well, as some of our performance athlete, but there were still
some people that like a smoker who just couldn't quit by
themselves, they tried and tried and failed and failed, even
though they knew that was the right way to change, and they
did well when they did it. And as a surgeon, we then
started doing bariatric surgery, not upfront, not to as an
alternative to eating correctly, but a little bit like Chantix
for someone who desperately wants to quit.
Smoking industry is struggling and we learned a huge amount.
And from our bariatric surgical population and I still do some
surgeries. But the coolest part is the more
we invest in our patients in terms of taking personal
responsibility, for themselves and adopting a progressive.
Ketogenic, not diet, better lifestyle of good lifestyle
different than diet diet, all about removal and a lifestyle
transformation is removal and replacement and the most solidly
you replace the role of carbohydrates had in your life
with better healthier more. Endorphin, alternative, the less
likely you are to relapse and the more likely you are to
sustain. This is a way of life being
obesity and diabetes, free. So more and more.
My patients are able to do that and I become very heavily
engaged and involved in. Now, the this nuclear genic
movement but as I said, we've been doing the full or, you
know, 20 plus years and there are mistakes that people are
currently making that we've already made incorrect in the
past. I'm not saying I'm better than
anybody. I've just been down so many.
Any branches of this of this tree and always come back to the
trunk. So maybe we can explore some of
those things as we continue to talk.
But that's my back story. And we've literally dealt with
tens of thousands of people both on the surgical side as well as
on the on the management side. And hopefully I can bring some
of that experience to bear in terms of what the right things
are to do and what the wrong things are to do.
But ultimately the most important things is to
summarize. This Long introduction.
Is that the problem with obesity and the problem with diabetes on
the health side and metabolic syndrome, it's not a food
problem. It's not a nutrition problem,
it's not overeating problem, it's not a calorie problem.
It is a substance abuse problem. Carbohydrates should be in the
same category as crystal meth, crack cocaine, heroin nicotine,
alcohol, vaping, which is nicotine.
The reason why they should be there is number one, the primary
reason we eat them. Is not for health, it's not for
nutrition, it's for pleasure, it gets as high immediate, they've
given us an immediate sense of relaxation Tranquility
gratification and then we have to pay the price for that off to
it. So we look for instant
gratification with a price to be paid for that reward on the back
end and that's a very dysfunctional way to live life,
but the other reason why carbohydrates are a drug is
because they are not necessary. For human survival.
And therefore unlike protein and fat, the human body has no
cyclical stopping point. And if you think about it, when
you drink water, you're thirsty, you drink water.
As soon as your thirst is quenched, you stop and there's
very little incentive to continue to drink water.
When you're drinking alcohol, you have to control how much you
going to drink because you can drink all the way through to
passing out or vomiting. That's not, that's not your body
telling you to stop. That's a toxicity.
So you can drink all the way to harm when it comes to alcohol.
You cannot do that with water. And the reason for that is
because alcohol is a drug that has no necessary value to
humans. We drink it for pleasure and
therefore excess is possible in excess over time.
We do harm. Well, exactly.
The same with carbohydrates, we consume them for pleasure.
They are not necessary for human survival, except perhaps in the
first year of life, and in utero, and then beyond that, we
don't need them. And therefore, there is no
entry. Intrinsic inherent biological
stopping point for eating carbohydrates.
You can be stuffed on eating steak or a salad or vegetables
or chicken and you can't eat any more chicken or steak, but two
minutes later using cheesecake using ice cream using
chocolates. You eating chips, you can even
finish the mashed potatoes, you're not eating, you're
getting high. And if you do that on a chronic,
excessive on, a chronic excess of basis and it doesn't matter
if you're an athlete or not. And this is the key thing
athletes to carb load, even though it's not Done directly
for the mental benefit. Ultimately excess leads to harm
an excess over time causes obesity diabetes, heart attacks
Strokes hypertension, metabolic syndrome and all the common
causes of death information leads to cancer.
We can link The Chronic excessive consumption of
carbohydrates, all those diseases.
So a mind shift is necessary in the population to remove
carbohydrates from the food category.
And put it in the crystal meth category.
And once you do that and you examine your own relationship
with sugar and starch, then you can decide whether you actually
have control of the relationship, and you just want
to relinquish that, that the relationship with carbohydrates
in your life, or in fact, the relationship is, at a point
where it is out of control, just like an alcoholic or someone who
drinks heavily has to make the same decision with alcohol.
And if you realize that, oh my God, all these bad things have
happened because of my relationship with kaabah.
Drake and the best to influence of type 2 diabetes and obesity
that relationship is out of control and then to try to
control it on some diet is ridiculous.
It's like too often an alcoholic to drink, two beers a day.
It's just not going to happen. Because by definition, you are
asking someone who's lost control of their relationship to
now, type the controller relationship, so it's absolutely
ludicrous. And the reason why the ketogenic
approach is so effective is because it really is if it Step
correctly. In the words, the most important
words are a well-formulated ketogenic diet.
One of the really doesn't give you access to carbohydrates, so
we don't want to harm reduction. We all want an addiction
methodology for obese and type 2 diabetic patients.
Then if you can change that relationship, if you can break
the relationship by not doing it and replace it with other thing.
Then it has sustained but then it becomes a lifestyle.
You cannot sustainably change something useful doing if you're
not, it just doesn't work. You have to remove and replace
that addiction management. So that's been our approach and
refined that strategy and we hold our patients by the hand
and we kind of take them down that pathway and we do this
telephonic you all over the world.
I also do it locally in my practice in Florida in
Jacksonville and in West Palm Beach and as athletes have try
to migrate away from Carb loading.
We've also been for certain group triathletes distance
Runners, certain power performers, certain team sport
players. We've been engaged in helping
those folks to transform themselves without losing a huge
step. Any time you make a change in
your diet as an athlete, you step backwards and how do we
minimize that? Step backwards, a step sideways
to gain the advantage and also the Health Advantage, so long
introduction. But we can take it from there.
No, no, I love it, I love it. I think, you know, there's so
many people that they need to hear these bold statements.
I mean, putting carbohydrates in the same category as crack
cocaine is a very, very ballsy statement but I think that's
what we need. Because the current thought
process that people are incorporating is clearly not
working or proving effective. And I feel like for myself
personally having that shift in, you know, thought process
towards the That I'm consuming as an addictive substance was a
pretty a pivotal moment in me recover because I mean, I was
right there with the best time I was, you know, carb-loading I
would binge I would over consume and I would just be caught in
this negative feedback loop that led to, you know, all my eating
disorders and all kinds of issues when I started looking at
food for what it truly was and recognized that I could be much,
much better off by removing that Source, everything got better.
And I feel like if people View, View it that way, with that
degree of severity, that's when their eyes can be open and
actually make an improvement. You're exactly right.
I think, let me ask you this question and it's an interesting
question. If performance-enhancing drugs
steroids, whatever it may be, were not banned substances.
That they were perfectly fine to use.
Would you use them? No.
Okay, a lot of athletes would. Yes.
And yet, whatever Advantage, the performance enhancing drugs and
we see we've seen, I mean, we all know people would have
taken, performance-enhancing drugs and just become beasts,
But ultimately, the greatest liability or the greatest asset
value doesn't come from a performance-enhancing drug.
The greatest asset value for most athletes is To give up what
I call a PR d--. I performance reducing drug
especially if you're going to be in the game for a long time and
the single greatest PRD that almost all athletes in the last
20 years have taken to excess has been carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates, are a performance reducing drugs.
And getting rid of prds is probably far more important than
trying to solve your training, or your size problems with a
pea. A PEB and and yet most athletes
don't understand that, that carbohydrates actually reduce
and reduce not only your performance but your ability to
train the endpoint of human biology are retarded via reduced
by the consumption of carbohydrates on The Chronic
excess of basis and a lot of distance Runners have suffered
from that fatigue is a huge issue.
Wouldn't We use a big issue for the for the distance athletes
and then the diseases that creep in the blood pressure issues,
that I be these issues, the insulin resistance issues, all
of those things, the cramping and it comes down to recovery,
it comes down to muscle regeneration.
It comes down to triage of protein to the right places.
It comes down to cutting. If you're, if you're a
bodybuilder, all those things matter, when you consume
carbohydrates as performance reducing drugs and once an
athlete, And because athletes won every every single
performance Advantage. Once you understand, that
carbohydrates, may give you an initial high.
They make you feel good and perform good for a short period
of time but somewhere a price has to be paid and the price is
massive on the back end. The flip side is to put the
effort in up front and get the reward on the back end and
that's a far far more effective way to go but carbohydrates or
PR. These are ubiquitous you used by
athletes And they reduce performance, it's funny because
I've been preaching that very message for the past five years
that I've been key to adapted and I've been following this
diet strictly. But that, I mean, I've literally
been beaten into everybody's ears that I can get ahold of,
but nobody wants to believe that because I think a lot of it is
just, you know, people that are athletic people that are they
have the the performance they have the look, they're able to
eat, copious amounts of carbohydrates and not look
overweight. But they have this, you know,
Veil over them. So to speak that people just
assume they can do no wrong. Oh, it's working for them.
I mean, they put them on the cereal boxes to motivate people
to eat more carbs to look like this individual.
But when you stop and look at what's actually happening, I
mean, even within the ketogenic Community.
I mean, I've got so many people saying that my performance would
improve if I was to incorporate a cyclical style, ketogenic
diet, or a targeted style ketogenic diet.
Because, you know, there's certain studies that illustrate,
that may be the case. But I've argued and will
continue to argue that by allowing yourself to become
Truly Deeply adapted over a long period of time.
This doesn't happen overnight, but just continually day in day
out, following this protocol and sticking with it and staying
true to it. Your performance is going to be
far and above anything that you could be achieved through some
momentary high, from a cyclical, or targeted, or carb load.
I think you're absolutely right. And how long have you been been
active? Professional.
How long have you been on stage and psychically working yourself
up for a competition? How many competitions over how
many years have been competing? I started training that 10 years
ago. My first competition was in 2012
and I went pro in 2017. And when would you like your
last competition to be a planet? Be honest.
I don't mean I'm gonna be dead sixty eighty, seven years old,
that's what I thought. But right.
And and that is extremely unlikely.
Extremely unlikely. If you were, chronic consumer of
carbohydrate chronically on at least are psychically or not.
Because if you think of the ketogenic lifestyle, I put a
post on my Instagram few little couple of days ago about this.
Is that Studies gets done in rats.
And this, this was on stage, a couple of couple of days ago,
study gets done in rats and they looked at Rats on standard
American diet and rats on the ketogenic diet and they found
that the rats on the ketogenic diet.
Or this is the statement. They said rats on the ketogenic
diet live much longer significantly longer than Rats
on the standard standard American diet.
And that was the conclusion. Is that a correct conclusion?
It sounds like the if the pay if the paper said we feed these
Rats from birth to death, we fed them one group on a standard
American diet. 109 a ketogenic diet and the Rats on the
ketogenic glad I've lived much longer.
Is that a good conclusion for that paper And I mean I'm not a
rat but I'll definitely take that over the carb approach.
No. OK, so let's flip this around
and I didn't I you know, announce that question.
Most people don't. Don't get it.
Like I heard it and I'm not better than anybody else.
This is just my world. That is a completely garbage
statement. Here's the way, the statement
should go. Is that rests on the ketogenic
diet lived, a normal life, span Rats on the standard American
diet, died at a younger age than they should have?
I like that. You see the difference?
Totally? Okay, so 87.
You should still be competing short of non-comedogenic disease
because you are maximizing your omnivorous human potential
people that called load, or use forms of the standard American
diet. May perform well, one
competition over another But ultimately, the longevity, the
disease and we know this categorically is going to
shorten both their whole life. If and their performance left
side, now other smokers that live to 99 and are still
smoking. Of course, you're always going
to find an anecdote, but, but statistically you are shortening
your performance life and your real life, if you are cycling
through carbohydrates, and I will go toe-to-toe with anybody
on that fact. So that rat study actually
showed that the ketogenic diet is normal.
And people on the standard American diet or racks on the
standard American diet are dying earlier and and the problem with
it, With a lot of even the PV Evangelical people in the
supported ketogenic way of life. We don't understand that.
We're look at all the illnesses, but we've got to understand is
that the ketogenic diet is the healthiest diet out that, it
keeps us healthy. And but all the other diseases
that we're dealing with the diabetes obesity, all of Fallout
are really aberrations or moves away from the healthiest diet
for human beings. And every really have to flip
our thinking in that regard. But is that does that make some
sense to you? Absolutely.
I'm just amazed at how people can can hear This research know
that it exists and still sway the opposite direction.
I know that it is the because the addiction but it just it
never ceases to amaze me where people place their priorities.
I mean, I am very much so on the the side of a strict ketogenic,
like, this is my lifestyle. I don't I don't dip my toe in
the water. I'm all in or all out and I'm
all in like I don't Aunt, I don't play around with with the
line because there's no need to cross that line.
I don't feel like I'm sacrificing anything by
following the strict Keygen protocol.
However, I can understand that there are certain people that
would like to incorporate, you know, certain occasional foods
every once in a while, like some type of sentimental value food
which in the first place, I don't ever think it makes that
much since to put such a emotional weight in any type of
food. But that another Point entirely,
when you look at people, Is a crucial point, and I kind of
alluded to this little world while ago.
Would you ever use heroin heroin and no plan on it?
But why would you not use heroin?
Because I don't, I don't desire. I don't feel like I'm missing
something in my life, there's no hole that I need to fill by
desensitizing myself. Well, a lot of people won't use
heroin because they're afraid of dying of the heroin killing
them. That is also this incredibly
powerful instant high that you get from heroin, that's what
addicts people But people, like you and me are never going to go
there because of the risk Ryan. However people that use heroin
are completely ignorant to the risk.
So they are immune to risk, all they're looking for is the
instant high and very willing to roll up their sleeve inject
heroin into their veins even if the risk is turning blue and
dying, okay? Now that's a it's a very harsh
example, but what you just said is exactly the same thing is
that people A willing to consume carbohydrates for what they
believe to be the instant satisfaction, not just the
mental high, but the instant performance gratification, they
wanted they wanted right now and they don't they're immune to the
consequences or the Fallout down the road.
Where's you are? Taking a longer term view at
this, which is the right way to go.
You know, if you don't perform, so great in this performance is
going to be another one and you're going to do better the
next time. These guys are devil.
Look down the road. They looking right now, what
what can maximize my performance right now and if I have to pay
for a price for it on the back end, so be it because they are
very good at ignoring that price.
You're looking at this long-term strategically and that's to my
mind, the healthiest, cook best way to look at it.
People that are using these drugs are either ignorant to it
were using it. Not believe that, the ignorance
cannot be an argument anymore, they're using it because they're
willing to ignore the consequences on the back.
And to have the front end gratification and the positivity
from the front end, just like it no different than a heroin
addict who shoot up now for the high and if something bad
happens on the back end, so be it.
And I'm not being nasty to those folks, that is the reality of
the decision-making. And you've chosen not to take
that risk both of her and, and with carbohydrates, and I
commend you for that. And I just hope that more and
more people understand. But this is about not only They
but also tomorrow and if you're going to have today and tomorrow
isn't that better either? I certainly think.
So I'm curious to get your take on this because I'm I've come to
find that. I'm just a contrarian on this
subject because I am much more excited about the long game.
I'm always preaching about the long game like that's how I run
my business, that's how I, you know, structure my nutrition my
training. Like I don't care about tomorrow
at the expense of ten years from now.
Like I'm trying to be the best for the Long Haul.
Why is it that you think people are so hung up on this concept
of instant gratification like from a deep-rooted psychological
standpoint? Why do you think that is the
case? You know, it's interesting
because I thought it's a very good question.
Let's look, I'm going to use an analogy here.
Let's look at a guy who gets into the ring for a fight.
There's two type. Let's say everybody's pretty
good at fire at boxing but the guy that the two guys that go
into the ring and these are two professional boxes.
The first guy gets into the ring and he's highly emotional, he's
all pumped up and he's totally psyched up and he's adrenaline's
running and he's just crossing adrenaline through his veins and
he's pumped. He's practiced He's 50, he's a
good boxer, and he gets in there.
He just goes ballistic for a little while because he's
running on emotion, but he's ignorant to the technique to the
strategy, his functioning of instinct, and his emotions are
driving his Instinct and if he gets a knock off, having the
first round, he's a winner. Fantastic.
But what happens if he doesn't get a knock out a KO in the
first or the second round. Now we're getting to the third
and fourth, from the It's round and these emotions are
subsiding. And now it's all about long-term
planning. It's about technique.
It's about thinking, how am I going to hit this guy and
analyzing what what his opponent is?
Where the strengths are where the weaknesses are?
And you can stay away from me strength.
Here's his weaknesses that may exploit, that that is now
thinking about intelligent intellectually.
And in a non emotive way about how to win the fight and ensure
the Emotional boxes. Come out there, there my life
people in the first round or two, but those are the guys who
have very short careers because if the other guys able to get
through the first two rounds, now, it's the long game and it's
the intellectual game and it's the issue-driven, how do I win
this fight with my skills game, not the emotion game, and the
other guy gets in the ring and he says, okay, this guy's wired
up, he's all over the place, but did he watch him let live?
And he's a thinker and he's the guy that gets in.
He's got great skills, great. But his emotions are very
tightly in check because this is his job.
This is his business and he goes about the fight bobbing and
weaving, and analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of his
opponent. And the other opponent is coming
with a flurry of Haymakers in the first round.
And if you can do that, if you can Bob and weave and miss those
round, two round three round, four round five, all the way
through, to round 10, he wins every round because he's
thinking and is not firing off. Emotion that defines you as the
thinking guy who trains hard to practice really hard but you
come at the at this, with an intellectual intelligent game
plan. There are other guys that
direction to the gym that have iron like crazy.
They willing to take a bunch of drugs.
They need that instant gratification very want to win
round one. They want to be the biggest best
in the first competition. They get into, where are they?
In the second, third and fourth competitions.
They're injured that in train hard enough.
They don't feel it anymore. They're disappointed by the
result that puff gone, but make some sense to you.
Yes, absolutely. I feel like we've in maybe I'm
totally wrong in thinking this, but I feel like lately like over
like in my lifetime, you know, I'm 28 years old.
So like I feel like my lifetime. My generation is like, at the
peak of this. I feel like the, the, the rise
of just instant gratification and playing the short game, is
that it Time high right now but I don't know why I like from a,
like a generational standpoint. I don't know why or when this
shift occurred, but, you know, I look back and I'm pretty well
read on like, old old Scholars. And I feel like everybody, you
know, 200 years ago. They valued the long game, much
more so than you're seeing these days.
Like, people would be excited about becoming a master of a
craft like they would, they would work at that craft
tirelessly day in Day Out. A out until they are the world's
greatest at that thing. Whereas now you don't see very
many people holding, you know they're their attention towards
any one thing for longer than a week or two.
I'd rather bet is the heart of what we do.
That's called emotion management and ultimately the root cause of
obesity of burn. Out of all, those things is how
we were raised and what skills and what diversity we've
developed to deal with our emotional needs.
So if Me ask you this question. What do you do for pleasure?
What do you do for fun and build businesses?
What else? That and bodybuilding.
I'm a big hunter. I'm an outdoors and I love being
outside and being in nature. Why didn't you tell me that?
The first answer should have been you love to train, but it
wasn't. And the reason is because
training and performance is your job.
And I'm not going. I'm looking at a picture of you
right now, in a pose. And I'm asleep.
You clearly are Don good in your job that you job as hard as you
work at it. And, and this is true for
anybody not just a body builder or a lift or athlete.
This is true in my job. When we invest a lot of effort
into our work and, and we really, when it comes to
productivity Excellence Perfection, top of the game is
what we strive for, but, It's hard work and the byproduct of
that hard work is anxiety, stress, depression, anger, fear,
frustration, boredom, pleasure. All of the emotional Spectrum
together. I call that emotional tension.
It's a little bit like when you drive your car and you drive
your car hard and fast cause performance being productive,
but the byproduct of that cause engine is heat.
And if you look under the hood of your car, you've got the
bigger the engine, the more effective and the bigger the In
system is because in order to keep the engine productive, you
have to have a healthy cooling system and for you and for me,
we train hard, we work hard, that's our job, but the
byproduct is that emotional tension and then we've got a
variety of things. And here's the quintessential
statement that we do to offload that emotional, man, that, that
emotional tension. And when we do things for
endorphin relief, for that serotonin, Loading for that.
Just that relaxation, we have to put a little bit of effort in
what we do. You go hunting, that requires
effort up front, you got to load up your gear, you got to go for
a walk in the woods and then you place a you shoot a deer but
it's taken a lot of effort to get to that point and the reward
is on the back, end of the effort and you feel great on the
other side. If you had a rough day and you
come home and you down a bottle of Jack Daniels or you, as soon
as you walk through the door, you open a tub of Screaming you
eat it. You're getting instant
gratification. But on the back end of that
instant gratification is negativity harm guilt and
repression of some of the issues that are driving your emotions
while you're walking through the woods, chasing the deer or
hunting, the deer, your brain can kind of go into a little bit
of a meditative space because the effort requires some time.
And why are you walking in the woods?
You're hunting, you looking for the buck.
But you also Acting with and processing certain issues with
your life. It might be your business.
It might be your next training session you resolving issues.
It might be a fight with your wife or your girlfriend or
whatever, how do you resolve some of that stuff?
So by the time you come out of the woods, you feeling pumped
because you either got the got the beer, you had a lot of fun
out there so you feeling great. The physical activity is relaxed
you and you're proud of what you've done, but you've also got
a game plan for dealing with certain issues in your life.
If you are living on the emotional edge of a substance or
a Babel, if you go to Vegas, you gamble and you win or you lose,
those are all forms of instant gratification with a price on
the back end, but because there's no meditative time
component, you're not solving and connecting with the issues
in your life, you're repressing them and more, and more we get
Disturbed and more and more. We build up all this emotional
tension and more and more. We look for the highs of instant
gratification to Repress those tensions in those issues that we
don't want to deal with and it's extremely erosive to our
self-esteem and to our self-confidence, if you look at
a lot of the athletes with you perform, again, there's going to
be the people like you whose career it is.
And then the other the other guys that have extremely
fragile, self-esteem and self self confidence, it all pumped
up, they've worked really hard, but they're totally emotional.
And they get on stage and and if they don't win, There's so
deflated that they walk away from the game because they've
looked for the instant high. But they haven't invested the
effort and found the ruled on the back end.
They're looking for the immediate High upfront and
they've got no way to process their emotional needs.
And in fact, people and I, by the way, when I quit my sport, I
gained a bunch of weight because I went from using sport as my
emotion management system to carbohydrates.
So always in the background but never prevalent.
So we were looking for that. Instant ratification.
And over time, the excessive use of an instant gratifying pathway
leads, not only to the harm from the drug, but also to repression
of dealing with issues in your life.
So you become a less effective human being, and that is
incredibly erosive to your self-esteem and your
self-confidence. So now if you can't generate
emotional well-being from within, you have to turn
externally to more and more drugs, and more and more risky
behaviors to You that same high and eventually the whole show
collapses down, it implodes on you and that's addiction.
And how where do you learn effective effort and time based
emotion. Management strategies.
We learn it first and foremost from our parents.
And the effective endorphin or endorphin Alternatives or the
emotional judgment, strategies are physical activity, create a
box, spirituality meditation, and empathetic human connection.
Now, if you look at younger kids, that's happening less and
less as our parents focus on productivity.
In other words, if Little Johnny of four years age or Julie says,
hey Mom, I really want to play soccer.
The first thing we do is we put them on the soccer team and they
go to training and they Play hard and they're either good or
bad. They sitting on the bench if
they win, they feel great. If they lose, they feel
terrible. You basically turn this
wonderful endorphin experience called physical activity into a
Dharma as test and guess what, the avian lose physical activity
as a source of emotional management.
Or if Little Johnny or little Jilly draws, a painting and and
sit there. And painted comes look mom, look
Dad, I've drawn this painting and you say, oh, that's
fabulous. You going to be the next
Picasso. It's brilliantly.
Put on the fridge. What you've done is, you praise
the Excellence. You haven't connected your child
to the effort of the painting. The right answer is, hey, that
looks great. I bet you had a lot of fun
drawing that, because the problem is, when Giglio Johnny
thinks, they're excellent. Now that it is school in, they
go to art class and they paint and they expect the same
response from the art teacher, and the art teacher looks at
that and says man, did your dog show up on the piece of paper or
what? Exactly happened and you've
completely deflated them because their entire emotional situation
is tied into the result, not the pleasure from the effort and
they lose that creative art as a source of emotion management.
If you're the authoritarian parent and always raising the
bar on whatever your kid did, there's no empathy and if a
child doesn't develop empathy as the primary site of human
connection, then they'll become either.
This aggressive or passive. What you want to do is to have
an assertive child one, who can State their case.
But he's willing to listen to reason and willing to explore
things and work things out. Help, use human connection to
process issues. If you take your child at 45
years of age, and you stick them in Sunday school.
You stick them in religious school at a church.
And after supplied be listening to somebody, talking at them for
an hour or two every Sunday, they learn to dislike Like or
recore never connect with religion.
The right way to do it is to teach your child, how to use a
connection with a higher power to sort through stuff in their
lives. And we're doing that, less and
less and less in the electronic era, in the productive era to
these kids develop an absence of emotion management.
And for the first time in human history, we are now feeding our
kids, a highly mural active incredibly To toxic drug before.
The children weren't even born. It's called imprinting.
So, when moms pregnant, and she had a rough day and she wept on
a cup of ice cream. And some Eminem's be hormonal
milieu in that baby is creating exactly the same.
At first, the catecholamines, the adrenaline, everything else
are stressing that baby out just like Mom's dress and then she
eats the tub of ice cream. A blood sugar screams through
the roofer instruments going through the roof that crosses
the placenta. Ah, and the mom relaxes instant
gratification, guess what? That is imprinted that fetus to
connect with sugar and starch, even before that baby's born.
Now, the baby's born and Mom can't breastfeed.
What is she feeding the baby? The formula.
It's called a baby milk. Shake it is a high carbohydrate
low fat mmm, irrelevant protein milk shake And and that baby
before it even knows it's human has connected with sugar and
starch as a way of life, as a way of emotion management
babies. Crying mom plugs in a bottle of
milk shape, battle are older and the kid gets to be a toddler.
What are we calling it? We're calling a treat.
We're giving a child, crystal meth As a treat.
I want to say I agree. I just know that my mind when I
talk about this. No, I totally.
I'm on the same page. I don't have kids yet, but I
look at what you're saying and like, how I would foresee myself
raising children? It's, I mean, I think you're
hitting the nail on the head. I would there's been several
people that argue that the Obesity epidemic is a result of,
you know, hormonal imbalances. Some people say it's all
caloric. You know, you're not exercising
enough and you're eating too much all about calories and
energy expenditure the color of the best Coke.
Amazing job with that, it sounds, it sounds like you were
arguing and I am tending to agree with you right now, that
the reason we're in an obesity epidemic on a grand scale, if
you dive deep is more likely than anything a result of bad
parenting. Well, I think I wouldn't, I
don't like the word bad because nobody teaches a parent how to
parent, right? Right.
Just you know and and addiction the vulnerability of addictive
behavior gets past generation to generation.
It's not genetic but we get raised a certain way.
Even our parents are doing the best they can and they do the
best, they can give them the tools they have, but all the
tools they have is how they were raised.
So we raise our kids a certain way and we want all kids to be
successful, we want them to be productive, but we don't
understand the You have a healthy diverse cooling system,
so we write we get ready to certain way.
We become that person. We raise our own kids the same
way and it repeats generation. So if you look back at our
parents, a lot of them were smokers because smoking was the
prevalent drug in the 1950s and 60s.
And perhaps, their parents were alcoholics, who had were heavy
drinkers. Because 120 years ago, we had
prohibition for a reason because Americans are drinking and let
me Circle back to. This is a very important point
this whole garbage about physical activity.
How how much exercise should somebody do when they're trying
to quit smoking? How much I should try?
Quit smoking. I mean you could do no exercise
correctly, right? And when you're trying to lose
weight and I know this flies in the face of what everyone's is,
it is unnecessary, it is not necessary to do exercise.
So this whole concept of calories in calories out came
from Coca-Cola in the 60s and 70s, particularly the 1970s Coke
in the soda industry would be blamed for obesity.
You got all these calories in your in your dreams.
All this sugar in your drinks and that's causing obesity and
diabetes and Coke said oh no, no no, it's not the sugar not
drinks. It's just an American to become
fat lazy slugs and Coca-Cola invested in a very some, these
guys were brilliant. They invested billions of
dollars in what they called, the move more campaign and they told
Americans you guys are fat and lazy, you need to move more.
And if you can drink our drinks, as long as your exercise, you
won't get fat. That's like telling a smoker to
smoke three cigarettes and go for a run to breathe out the
nicotine, but Coke was incredibly good at this.
And they sponsored sporting events and even today, if you
look, the majority of sporting events are are sponsored by
manufacturers of drugs, sugary drugs and perhaps alcohol.
So a simple little reason, why Coke was completely wrong.
And just a couple of weeks ago with Martin Luther King day and
I happened to see a number of people marching in the Martin
Luther King parade in the 1960s and The majority of the men
would he send black ties and they looked like their ties,
they were skinny black minutes. Not because they were
impoverished to poor or didn't have access to food.
Everybody in the marches were skinny, they went outside people
and then I looked at one of my favorite time of that era coming
kind of coming to to adulthood Ira's with the Woodstock era.
You look at pictures of Woodstock, everyone's got their
shirts off. Every kid is skinny and they
will get six packs. I can assure you.
They were too busy doing doing LSD to ever to ever be
exercising. Those kids didn't get their six
packs from exercising. They just didn't have all this
lard the came from sugar and starch in the subsequent
generation covering their six pack.
That's expect is there we human? It's there.
It may not be a stick in as beautiful as yours, but the six
pack is still there. Okay, you can enhance it but
even if you do very little physical activity, it's about
the carbohydrate. So the role of physical activity
in addiction, man. Mix is not to burn off the
calories, they are toxic when they go in your face.
But physical activity is one of the four cornerstones of healthy
effective, emotion management. And yes, it's got subsidiary
benefits of muscular Health, longevity Mobility, those types
of things, but it is not necessary to exercise to lose
weight. And that's an important read.
This connection, that we have to make after Coca-Cola, made that
connection. And I know that flies the face
of a lot of athletes, but I'm not saying don't exercise, but
use exercise as part of your image of your of rebuilding,
your emotion management system, not to lose weight, not to burn
off calories because then you become a fact.
I like, I was okay, I'm 300 pounds and I was and I go for a
run on a treadmill. Well, I feel like crap when I'm
running because I'm basically dragging another body with me,
but at the end of my little job, the machine says, about 2,000
calories, But I feel awful. And if I screams only 50
calories, it's going to make me feel better.
How the devil is that going to work?
Okay, calories in calories out, and I'm still down eight
hundred. Nine hundred fifty calories, but
I'm still fat know the physical activity replaces at an
endorphin level at a relaxation level.
At an emotion management level. The role of instant
gratification from the consumption of carbohydrates, is
a drug I totally agree. It's funny.
I look at I look at my father, you know, you're talking to him
and I'm thinking of my dad because he is not overweight at
all. He does not give a damn about
exercise. I don't think he's ever picked
up a dumbbell in his life, but he eats.
I mean, he'll eat carbohydrates every once in a while but the
vast majority of his food is just quality food.
Like we raise our own lamb. You know he eats a lot of deer
that he hunts. I mean he eats quality food
heavy and animal-based proteins and vegetables that he grows.
He's in the garden and he has like he's a, he's a PhD
professor of biology. He's a master at his craft
there, but he also sales like his thing right now is sailing.
He's huge into like sailing, and that's his emotional, disconnect
his relaxation and meditation. And he doesn't, he's not, you
know, any health issues, any health concerns whatsoever and
he eats decent food doesn't exercise.
And I feel like a lot of people can resonate more with that than
me. It's weird.
Like I say, say you don't have to exercise with people just
assume that I'm lying to him because I'm a bodybuilder
normally fit the description but like my father farthest thing
from a bodybuilder but a very healthy individual and I feel
like that is so much more obtainable and within grasp than
people give it credit for but it's like they don't want to
open their eyes to the fact that it is an addiction they're
dealing with You're exactly right now, Robert.
You are so, so fortunate. I hope pretty much every evening
you, if you are spiritually, you say a little prayer and say,
thank you for giving me the granting me, the parents that
raised me because it sounds like your father is a very
authoritative person. What do I mean by authoritative
personality? It is one that raises their
children, well, with a diversity of emotion Management Systems.
Clearly, he's raised somebody who's highly productive Is
highly skilled but also is able to enjoy the return of the
investment of effort when they do things for pleasure
irrespective of the outcome. You know if it's five nights or
just to be in the woods hunting than to have to kill a back.
Yeah. If you get something, if you
kill it, that's wonderful. But it's about the pleasure of
being out there and too few people hate hunting because they
don't always get something and I think you should be so thankful
to your sitting from that description of Add because that
is a rarity in modern America and we really just have to
scription as parents. We can learn so much from that
description. I'm sure if you're blessed one
day with a child and I hope you are because Lord knows that's
moving. Darwinism forward, not
backwards. We if you raised your child, the
way you were raised you most likely will you building for the
future? And and that's just become such
a rarity in parenting. Mostly we see the authoritarian
parent, who is really totally focused on productivity and
Excellence or we have the permissive parent who really has
no boundaries, no structure. They have the Nike problem.
They just don't do it and they don't put effort into anything
that don't pull up. Self-esteem self-confidence or
you'll fart, Aaron, people who never ever credit effort,
they're only focused on excellence and Perfection.
And no matter how hard that child tries to achieve that
always falling short and that Little Gap is filled with a
sense of failure. That is highly corrosive to
self-esteem and self-confidence. So at least from that brief
description, and this is kind of my job.
I can tell you that for the most part you should be very, very
thankful for the way you were raised.
I very much. Remember he and I definitely
butted heads grown up but you know when I look back now it's
like I really understand his approach to things and I respect
the hell out of him as a person and I appreciate how he raised
me and my brother And I'm a human my mom both I mean I'm
very blessed to have the family and the parents that I do
without a doubt. I'm curious like with with
earlier you mentioned I think you rattled off for or was it
five different Outlets that people need to have like the
spirituality, the physical and ever there was a for, right?
Yeah. The, the for effort based ones
are and if you have visas fundamental parts to your life
because you know the question I asked a lot of my athletes is
and this is important. To go to, I'll cover the for
the, for our physical activity and it's not exercise physical
activity slightly different than exercise exercise your job.
When you walk in the woods, you being Physically Active, when
you training in the gym, you're doing your job.
They slightly different creative arts, which is anything from
Fashion photography, music, art gardening, anything creative,
spirituality or meditation? It can be a connection with a
higher power or it's more just a meditative experience a night.
I put passive, yo, Agha into that not necessarily Act of
yoga, which more goes to the exercise of the physical
activity side, and then empathetic human connection.
And it is where you can share your story without without
criticism or condemnation. And you can work through things
with friends or family members. Now, if you've got those for or
sore pieces of those for the Cornerstone, then if you have a
rough day and you come home and you have a glass of wine, it's a
very healthy way to dissipate emotional. attention because you
can have a glass of wine and take your dog for a walk, but if
you have none of those for Cornerstone and you get all this
emotional tension built up and you come home and you have that
glass of wine and it relaxes you at a subconscious level, you
start to bond with the relaxation of that alcohol and
slowly over time, you use it more and more to the point of
harm and that is a vulnerability to dictate Behavior or if you
have no other emotion management tools, you discover Rate, you
discover gambling, those are the instant hides or dysfunctional,
sexual behavior. Sex is a one, you know, physical
sexual relationship is one of those cornerstones is part of
the in pathetic human connection, but it can also be
part of this function just like an athlete who trains to a point
of harm to the point of injury and then cannot get their butts
out in the gym or somebody that over trains and never give
themselves a break because they're not training for their
bodies anymore. Very training for the high for
their mind. And so even things in the realm
of of the healthy and often Alternatives, can be taken to
the nth degree, if there's no diversity.
And it's important understand that.
I'm sure you've met and know athletes that have destroyed
themselves because they couldn't get out of the gym when they had
a small injury. Totally, I used to be one Right?
So and you had to find out this to the end, it's okay, nothing.
Bad is going to happen. If you don't go to the gym,
nothing bad is going to happen. If I don't eat a tub of ice
cream tonight, and it's the realm is very, very similar but
you found diversity. And, and that is such a valuable
asset to have. It's funny because I think, you
know, they're definitely some ignorance out there in the
world. There's a lot of it, but I feel
like people inside deep down inside, they know if they're
Contributing to their overall well-being over there or their
overall demise. And when people have a tub of
ice cream just for that quick fix, like, they internally know
that they're not contributing to their health like it's not
bettering them and either. Anyway, I don't believe anybody
is able to just maintain like I look at life through the lens of
you're either getting better or you're getting worse.
I mean, that's just the way it is.
That's just life. And I feel like when you, when
you go for these quick fixes, when you go for these short-term
highs, It's like you kind of alluded to earlier it just it
winds up beating you down, internally start to lose this
confidence in yourself. This motivation to be better and
that is a dangerous dangerous thing to play with because you
only have one life and if you do that for too often for too long
you are you are in a pretty deep pit of despair.
That's very hard to crawl out from You're absolutely correct.
And two points that you brought up there.
The first one is that at exciting, the addicts are immune
to risk. You can train with a guy and you
can hook himself and you see him in the gym the whole time,
hobbling around, and still training, you know, that that
person is kind of addicted to his training or her training
and. But when you go up to talk to
them about it, they're totally ignorant to the fact that maybe
they need to rest. Exactly.
I mean everybody knows that smoking a cigarette is a bad
idea, everybody knows. If you're fat and you're eating
a tub of ice cream, it's probably not a good idea.
However, addicts are immune to risk.
That's the first thing and the second comment you made is such
a important. Comment maintenance is the guy
that fixes the but the boiler in a hotel in a hotel or an
apartment building, that's the maintenance man.
There is no such thing as maintenance in life, it doesn't
exist. So, the way I look at this, is
this way. I bet you you've in your life
walk to run on a treadmill. Yes. okay, so if you walking on
a treadmill, what happens if you're walking along and the
treadmills moving and you suddenly stop, I fall out the
back of the treadmill, right? It shoot, you off the back and
you crash. That's maintenance the minute
you stop. Moving forward.
The to the tread life is moving on.
You don't just stop and step out of the pathway you stop and
addresses you backwards. And you crash life is specially
when it comes to improving ourselves self-improvement and
and really what it's called is self-care.
Self-care is like walking on the treadmill.
It can be a lot of fun, but it It stops.
And the key thing about walking on the treadmill, really self
care in life. There are no goals there.
No end point. There are just Milestones along
the pathway and the parkway of self-care only ends about 10
minutes after you die. Because it's an ongoing process
and the minute you say, hey, I'm at my maintenance weight or hey,
I've been maintaining this. You that guy that just stop
walking on the treadmill. And it ain't gonna last very
long. You're going to rush back and
crash and burn. And the number of times that
I've picked people up who have done a keto diet or they cut out
carbohydrates for our. And now I've lost weight, my
maintenance. No you're not.
And six months later they come in with a head down.
I should have listened to you the first time big Keith the
reason why they're like the word diet when it comes to a
ketogenic lifestyle is because there is no such thing as
maintenance. Maintenance is relapse and every
time you put a carbohydrate in your mouth I love about this.
I can eat some ice cream tomorrow.
Be fine. Tell that to an alcoholic who
had his first beer? It doesn't happen.
Alcoholism wouldn't exist. If someone got get hammered
tonight and be sober for the year after that, it doesn't
happen. And that's why every alcoholic
nose. Don't go there.
It's about the word permission and a large part of dietary
management because we so focused on calories uses, a concept
called harm reduction. You reduce how many calories you
consume. So you lose weight but you're
not addressing the fundamental reason the cause of why you gave
the weight in the first place which is a dysfunctional emotion
management system to replace a deficient one.
And so therefore if Every every calorie content controlling
died, including keto, diet, keto diet, give most people a small
allowance of carbohydrates per day.
Oh, you've got to be under 30. Well, I'm going to save up all
my 30 like Weight Watchers. So I can have some cheesecake
tonight, or am I saving my all up?
So I can have a key, do pizza, or Aikido donut or whatever.
But do not cut me into trouble. I don't care what it's made of,
it's the concept. Yeah.
And what are the key things that we teach our patients is to
develop arrogant Integrity rather than a sense of
deprivation? Why do you think?
And I'm going to say something that may sound Blasphemous up
front. But why do you think vegans
stick to their diet or stick to a vegan way of life?
Far better than the majority of people stick to a ketogenic
diet? I don't know.
That's a good question. Okay, it's very simple.
The reason people go on a ketogenic diet is either to lose
weight or treat their diabetes for the most part.
Okay? And when you do that, you're
giving up something, you feel incredibly deprived.
So, when you offer someone, a ketogenic diet, a piece of cake,
the responses, you do know, I'm not allowed to have that.
It's a very different facial response and then it's just that
one big unexpected, emotional event, Way from accessing that
take again, because they feel deprived when the murder.
The majority of people that start a vegan diet, don't do it
because they're fatter diabetic. They started out of care, out of
misguided, but out of care for the planet.
Oh, climate change. We're going to kill apply
climate tomorrow. The Earth's going to explode or
the prayer animals, how can you kill the animals and their
Evangelical, about the protection of the climate on the
animal. So they're willing to make huge
sacrifices because Cuz they're arrogant about the fact that
that any meat. So, when you offer a vegan
mistake they don't say, oh no. I'm not allowed to have that.
I'm a vegan. They say, damn you.
Why the hell do you kill an animal?
You bad person, you killed Bambi.
They're arrogant about the fact that they don't eat meat and
their arrogance. Sustains them the same way that
an ex-smoker will tell you, that's disgusting how the devil
can you smoke? They don't say oh, I wish I
could have one buttermilk smoke record smoke.
No, they're arrogant in their integrity that they don't do
that thing and if we can build up the same arrogance about
carbohydrates, as people on a ketogenic way of life, that's
disgusting. How can anybody eat ice cream?
You're far. Less vulnerable to going there.
So does that make sense to you? Totally agree.
I tell people all the time. You have to change what you
prioritize like if for me, I prioritize how much better I
feel Function following this ketogenic lifestyle.
Then I do from the momentary high, from any other type of
carbohydrate based food. So like my priority is such that
I don't feel like I'm deprived or I'm sacrificing anything
because I'm winning more than I'm losing and that to me is a
greater, you know, underlying win.
And when you don't feel like you're sacrificing, its I mean,
it's actually sustainable. Otherwise you're going to feel
like you're always deprived You're exactly right.
But that's that's the whole point is that the concept of the
diet? Here's your diet or if you go
cut off carbohydrates, don't eat except once or twice a day
intermittent fasting. Off you go that is for most
people unsustainable primarily because they removed not only
the harm, the carbohydrates do that the asset value, anything
that we do that's addictive has an asset value, carbohydrates
make you feel great and when you remove them, You have to
carbohydrates are unique in the addiction world.
When you quit smoking. The only value of a cigarette of
nicotine is as a an emotion management, a dysfunctional,
emotional management tool. So, when you remove cigarettes
from your life, you're leaving an emotion management Voyager,
21, 21 replacement could adapt the same for almost every other
drug. You know, nobody tells an
alcoholic what they should drink that's kind of natural.
But when it comes to carbohydrates as a bit Of
substances when you remove them, they unique in the fact that
they leave to avoid, they leave a nutritional void and they also
leave an emotion, management void.
And if you're going to remove them in the sustainable way, you
have to replace both voids. So, the ketogenic diet is
heavily focused on replacing carbohydrates, with a more
effective healthier, nutritional whole range.
So, the ketogenic diet foods that Nutritional whole, but it
still leaves a massive, emotion management, hold, by the time
you are obese or diabetic. If you look in the defectors who
are diabetic person that I usually factors, because that's
who I am. My body may not be fat anymore,
but by head. Sure is.
But the point that point is that, if you look in the factors
for type 2 diabetics, emotion management toolkit, by the time
they got. There you open up that toolkit,
there's carbohydrates in cobwebs.
And if you take out the carbohydrates, they've got
nothing. And if you don't help them.
The stand that it's just a question of time either before
they go back to carbohydrates when they find another
dysfunctional drug. So for example, people have
successfully quit smoking the majority of them gain weight
because they didn't go, they didn't just quit smoking.
They didn't in fact they didn't quit smoking.
They just did a drug transfer. They went from nicotine to
carbohydrates. The reason why you've been able
to sustain this in our successful with it is because
you've got a variety of I open up your emotion management
toolkit. It.
It's like a jack-in-the-box everything.
Just jumps out, you've got all this abundance of things that
you do for pleasure, for fun, for emotion management.
And the problem is people like me had to build that we had to
find that, and it's taken me two decades.
And I'm still pretty pathetic at putting things into that emotion
management toolkit. So we're vulnerable to a muscle
memory of going backwards and that's why I try to isolate
myself with insulate myself from access to carbohydrates,
particularly in places. Has where I'm emotionally
relaxing. I can tell you this, absolutely
Robert, if there's ice cream in my fridge tonight, I'm going to
eat it. But I also know absolutely that
it's not there and because I understand my vulnerability to
that addictive behavior, and if you think you've beaten the
addiction, it's just a question of time before you factor
diabetic again. So, stimming off of that, I've
got a question for you. I'm definitely a believer in,
you know, elimination is better than moderation when you're
struggling with any type of addiction whatsoever.
I mean, it's just better to get it out and remove it entirely
and then, you know, build yourself up from ground one.
But if you're no longer addicted, like, for me, for
instance, I have never been an alcoholic and I never will and I
don't really drink at all. However, once in a blue moon
I'll have a glass of wine. Like, when I got I'm married.
I had a glass of wine. So with someone like that, you
know, in the context of whatever it may be, whether it be food,
like, my, my dad, for instance, he's never been addicted to
carbs but every once while have some carbs, I inherently know,
going back to my wine example that I'm not benefiting.
You know, physically my performance is not going to be
enhanced whatsoever from that glass of wine.
Like nothing is moving the needle forward.
If anything is probably going reverse, what would you say
like, in your And in your perspective, what is that?
Like I feel like for me, you know, knowing that I'm not a
dick to knowing that I have no struggle there.
It's like that is my idea of just having the symbiotic moment
where I know I'm not that's just like my, my Bliss relaxation
point, but I'm curious to see what your perspective is on,
things like that, whether it be food or drink or whatever.
I mean, I wouldn't want to do heroin anything by any means.
But something that if it's done in moderation, And if you don't
have an addictive behavior towards that substance.
Maybe it's offering some type of emotional benefit that outweighs
the decrease in performance or whatever, right.
I think you just touched from the fundamental issue in the
entire nutrition. Diet weight loss world and Gary
taubes is a friend of mine actually has a great little talk
about this and and this is, you're exactly right.
When fat people went up Two diabetics, get advice from
otherwise. Healthy people who have never
ever experienced addiction and don't understand the concept of
carbohydrate addiction. Then their whole life is about
moderation. They can those are the people
can have one or two chips from the bag and fold it up and eat
some more tomorrow. They do not have any realm of
understanding of how someone like myself and other fat people
and type 2 diabetics function. That the only way I can stop
eating chips is when the bag is empty.
A and your bag is empty. And and that's an uncontrollable
Behavior to start to ask me to control that is irrational and
impossible. And I think the whole Gayatri
debate. This whole issue of moderation
comes about because people giving other people advice base
it on their own realm of ability.
So that if they're capable without even thinking about it
all moderation, very going to say that.
I just assumed that everybody is capable of moderation, and then
you're telling somebody that they're pathetic that they're
weak that they're terrible. You really are stomping on an
already extremely fragile eroded.
See yourself when you try to tell a fat person that moderate
Is the way to go and we can try, they put a lot of effort into
moderation, but because we can't do it.
We cannot do moderation period. And then we try we successful
for a little while and then we crash and burn.
And then we get beaten up psychologically for being what
we are added, and it is incredibly rosoff.
And if you look at the amount of depression, the amount of
anxiety, the amount of suicide because people are telling us
how pathetic We are that we cannot tolerate moderation.
I love and and just, I'm so envious of people like you that
are able to do this in moderation.
I just know. I can't and the challenges to be
able to tell people that moderation isn't a feasible way
to go. And I think that's the
fundamental part. If you read all these blogs by
these so-called dietary experts, and I think the whole nutrition
education system is based On the concept of moderation tolerance,
you can have a little bit because I have a lot that's why
I never measure anything I eat steak and planful I don't need
ice cream at all. That's my measurement.
And I eat once or twice a day when I'm hungry.
It's not a difficult system to follow but they have to measure
everything. You can have this amount this
amount because moderation is possible for them.
Now, on the flip side, I'm a fat guy.
I have an out-of-control relationship with God.
Carbohydrates that ways will have but I'm not an alcoholic.
I've seen drunk, I've abused alcohol from time to time but
I've never ever lost control of the relationship.
So therefore for me, if I have some of those other things that
I do on a regular basis, I go for my walks with my dog, I run
from time to time. I do a little Jim.
Welcome Physically Active. I'm spiritual.
I'm I have good empathetic human kinetics connections.
I have the like you the most wonderful wife as a human being
in my life. I I just I she is my emotion
management system when it comes to human human beings and I'm
very thankful for that. I have some creative things that
I do. So therefore when I have a
relaxing day or a rough day, I can come home and have a glass
of wine or a beer. And I'm not going to go
ballistic with it because I've never gone ballistic with it
before. And I don't have the need to do
those other things to go ballistic with it.
Now, I have very cognizant awareness.
Is that I am vulnerable to addictive behavior.
So I never drink when I'm alone. I never drink when I'm really
depressed or upset, and I try to have very tight boundaries
around my drinking or at least have somebody else in my
presence that's going to take care of me and help me with
those boundaries. And and if I'm responsible way
that I can enjoy the benefits of alcohol within the realm of a
diverse and often management system to the point that it
doesn't cause me harm, but does that make sense to you?
Yeah, totally. I think all this Kind of the
summed up, like people just need to have self-awareness.
Like, if you have self-awareness as to what your addictive
personality traits are where your strengths are where your
weaknesses are and then mitigate those in the best way possible,
like, like people just need to be self-aware.
Boom, you're exactly right, you're absolutely correct.
And you know, I think that is a piece that we don't talk to
people about and part of it is stepping back from your busy
life, where's yourself? Phone right now.
That's probably dead somewhere. I think it's dead.
Okay. Okay, so stop right there.
That wasn't the answer. I was expecting, but I would
like every member of your audience when they're listening
to this to look around and see where their cell phone is.
What you just given is such a rare answer these days that you
don't even know where it is. People cannot escape from
something simple like their cell phone, and there's a concept
that I spoke about in Boca at the low carb USA conference last
weekend. The title of my talk was
dopamine fasting, and serotonin loading.
We are so focused on productivity on connectivity.
And, you know, if our self-worth look, we don't like in the old
days, go to work and then leave work and go home to And rest our
cell phone comes with us. So we blamed work and social
life. Continuously how many times do
most people not put as social engagement, a chat with their
wife or their family on hold to take a business call or put
their social life on hold to go and send an email or to do
something, you know, more and more.
We're blending productivity into our social life and into our
emotion management life and that's a highly highly toxic
situation. Ation because we never
completely relaxed. So the title of my talk was
called dopamine fasting and serotonin loading and
essentially if you look at it this way but all that
productivity is where the dopamine is the hormone that
could route gets released into your brain.
That helps you to focus helps you to be productive.
Helps you to concentrate. And the normal way that the
human body works every system in the human body works in a
homeostatic feedback negative feedback Cycling way.
So we're focused and concentrating on a subject
dopamine, builds up for about 15 to 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes
and then it we need a relief. We need a brain cells, need a
momentary break. Think about it, like driving in
the rain, you're driving in the way in the water, spilling onto
your windshield. It's getting increasingly
opaque, you hit the windshield wiper and suddenly the
windshield is clean and then the rain gutters again.
And then you hit the windshield. That's how our brains work.
So we build up dope. I mean when you focus and then
we need a windshield wiper and the windshield wiper is
something called serotonin. It's a homer.
It gets released that just rapidly, get rid of dopamine,
you flushed it open and then you rebuild it to you refocus.
And the problem with most people in the modern era is we never
effectively give ourselves serotonin moments.
Or if we have one, we've overused it to the point that
the dopamine system no longer Respect.
So we've developed something called dopamine resistance and
all drugs, are things that activate that serotonin system
at first. So if you have a glass of wine
every now and then it relaxes you.
But if you're an alcoholic drinking all the time the way
your body starts to protect itself is to become resistant to
the effects of alcohol. They need more and more alcohol
to have the same effect and eventually that even wears out
and that's cool, dopamine resistance where we are no
longer able to To relax the dopamine system because we don't
recognize a feel the serotonin high and under those conditions
at part of the addiction methodology.
But it happens in Blended productivity where productivity
spills over into your relaxation life.
So, the title of my talk was dopamine fasting where, and this
comes out of the Silicone Valley, I didn't invent the
concept of a dopamine fast, but it's every now and then maybe
every quarter, every month, whatever, you can afford.
You take a morning or afternoon or ideally, you take a All day
from, when you wake up to, when you go to sleep and you do
nothing, you drink water, if you want to put a bit of salt in it.
That's okay. You want to walk around, you do
that. No cell phone.
No books. No contact with other people.
No major physical activity. Nothing no computers.
No internet, no connection. You dumb down completely you
shut down your entire productive life.
What you can do is write on Not with a pen on paper.
And with the goal of the dopamine, fast is to reconnect
you to the inherent issues in your life because we're battling
a busy all the time. We're incurring pain, we have
physical pain, you may have that from time to time from training
and we have emotional pain, we have emotional tension that
builds up and we never ever get relief from those two things.
So don't mean faster. The morning and Or a day when
you take a complete break from your entire life, but you sit
down with a pen and paper and you get inside your head and you
connect with the painful issues, be they physical pain, or be,
they anxiety or stress or depression.
And you name them, and you write them down and then you're also
write down, how they happened? You look back, you reflect that
you analyze. What happened over the last few
months, how you've gotten to this point?
And it also, you analyze what's going to happen?
What strategy, you can develop starting tomorrow to give
yourself. Those de regular serotonin
breaks with dopamine. So the beautiful description
that this guy uses. Easy says, it's a little bit.
Like somebody riding a donkey if you riding a donkey for life,
the way to get the donkey to move is you put a small carrot
on a stick in your hold it in front of the donkey and the
donkey took be should move toward the character.
The problem is that if The last week, the donkey has been stuck
at a carrot Buffet where it's just got inordinate access to
everything. That makes the don t feel good,
this off while the donkeys feeding at that, Buffet at that
trough and you dangle some pathetic little carrot in front
of it. The donkey's not going to move
because it's full from the trough and if you look at our,
this productive Blended life that crosses over into our
relaxation period, that's like the character faith for the
donkey, the dopamine from fast is a day where you remove the
buffet and you starve your donkey and if you can starve the
donkey for a day and figure out What happened in the past to get
to this point and what's going to happen in the future and you
are intersected in, you relax, then tomorrow, when you hang
that little carrot in front of the donkey, the donkey starts to
move again and it's a way to reset yourself.
So, in the back, end of the first day of dopamine frosting,
is the reset that starving the donkey.
And the next day, you do the same thing.
Except on the second day, you don't work.
We going to feed the donkey you Do some exercise.
You do something charitable. You connect with an old friend
that you haven't spoken to preferably in a humble way.
You maybe give away to charity, something that you value.
Something that's precious to you.
You may do something. Artistic your garden to the
yard, and you, and your weed a little bit or you draw your
paint or you sing. The result is irrelevant, but on
the serotonin laid, loading day, you do the specific thing.
As you engage in the specific and dolphin releasing things,
that make you feel wonderful. And the first thing you do
preferably, get out of bed is pull the covers up at do not
make your bed perfectly. However, as soon as you pull the
covers up stand back from that pat yourself on the chest and
say, damn, I'm good because self recognition of effort is
self-care and the problem is, we become so competitive in our And
so results-focused, we forget to enjoy the return of the
investment of effort, which should be a wonderful sense of
well-being. A wonderful sense of Pride,
irrespective of the outcome. And in little increments that
sense of Pride from effort in little increments builds, up our
self-esteem and self-confidence and most people have forgotten
to do that. So the dopamine fast serotonin A
load today. Reset is a wonderful way to get
back to the basics of effective, diverse effort, based emotion
management. I love it.
And how often do you recommend
doing that? I can I be awesome if you need
to I do it in small fractions. Probably once a week once a
week. I'll take an evening.
We're just opening fast and the next morning I may go for do a
couple of things that I love to do.
Sometimes probably once a season, or if you Twice a year.
You know, you've heard of this essay D or the in the winter,
where everybody gets, how occurring, what the essay b
stands for. But it's a, it's an affective
disorder where just the winter bugs you down.
So sometime in the winter, sometime in the summer, at least
twice a year, I isolate two days.
That's what I do. Leave me alone, don't go there
and, and more and more. The dopamine fasting has taken
hold. In places, like Silicon Valley,
where those guys are on all the time, that's where the dopamine
fought concept originated. And if you really want to hear
it, all you have to do is go to YouTube and type your dopamine
fast. And it's about an 8 minute
YouTube video, it is phenomenal. You jam packed everything in it.
And I, the guy I can't find out what the guys name is.
I'd love to give him credit for it and giving credit to him and
as an anonymous person, but it is a great video.
However, that's only the first part.
The second part is The second day or the second moment is to
figure out and identify and plan what you're going to do on a
regular basis to serotonin load, and it shouldn't involve drugs
or drug like Behavior. You know it's a hard sell at
first for someone that's like really type A driven to think
that they're going to take a couple days off without any you
know quote unquote work or engagement with the cell phone.
I used to struggle with it. I used to you know be resentful
towards that I would shy away from it but then I really
started diving deep into all of what you just described.
I would I would make my time in the woods this outlet for me and
I would go to into the woods for, you know, a few days and
hunt with 0, cell phone, 0 internet, Zero interaction and
my level of productivity after coming out of that was so much
greater than it was going into that that it more than made up
for the two days that I'd be gone.
But actually right and you know, there are places where
variations of this is happening, for example, Google didn't
experiment. And it seemed crazy at first
just like dopamine fasting seems crazy.
They reduce themselves to a four-day week.
And I gave the employees an extra day off.
I guess what happened to their productivity.
It went through the roof. Because people were more
productive in a shorter period of time when we've got longer
periods of time to do things. Are we doing things
continuously? And here's a word that was
created. When I was in medical school yet
small group and we created a friend of mine, shown Mortimer,
who lives in England, created this word, he called it wedding
and Wagga blabbing wab, be ing is work avoidance behavior.
So that we're at work, we look like a working really hard but
we're not doing anything and and our productivity.
He goes down when you web and if you shorten your work periods
that you're focused on the task. And when your task is done, you
take a day off. You're not petrified that you're
not connected and you're much, much more productive?
If you're not webbing, let me ask you this question.
Do you train every single day? No I did like an eight-day
rotation in which I have two days off.
Oh my God. Don't.
Don't don't you like collapsing, your muscles.
Just wither away on today's know quite a bit.
The day you come back is probably one of the Your best
most powerful training days, without a doubt.
The dopamine fast. I love it.
I feel like I'm a I'm cutting into your dopamine fast right
now. This is a Sunday.
We're recording. This is no, this is serotonin
for me. This is what I love to do.
Okay, and I'm blessed that I can do this for a living, but I know
we've gone on for a long time. So, I know you've got things to
do. Well, I definitely certainly do
appreciate the time, dr. Cyrus.
I mean, this, I love diving into the mindset and like deep diving
into psychology as to why people do what they do, why they think
the way they do because at the end, End of day.
It's all stemmed back to mindset and, you know, after hearing
your talk at keto Summit, I knew I wanted to get you on the
podcast because I just recognized and can really relate
with everything you were saying. And then you certainly haven't
disappointed a because, I mean, literally everything you said.
I've just really resonated with and could not agree more with.
So you are definitely fighting the good fight and I encourage
you to just keep doing exactly what you're doing because you're
doing it, right. I really appreciate and thank
you very much for having me on Robert if you don't mind.
Can I just ask? Can I just One thing out there,
which is completely off the based on this topic.
But I think very, very important because this is something that
we don't have knowledge of just briefly.
A lot of athletes are focused on protein intake as part of their
dietary regimen and they take an extraordinary amount of protein
in and and everybody is obviously very fit and very lean
and good-looking but we don't know.
Biochemically what's happening in those people.
I would love to be able to do an experiment where athletes It's
who protein load a lot or eat huge amounts of protein for the
expected result of bodybuilding or muscular building or tissue
repair tissue building. I would love to know what those
folks fasting insulin is. I would love to know how insulin
resistant they are, or are not based upon their protein intake
and while we could design a trial and get an IRB and spend a
million dollars during a trial and then skew the results or
whatever. Maybe I would ask that if
Athletes are high protein, Edith.
The CrossFit is the bodybuilders, endurance
athletes. If you eat a lot of protein and
you are a fat adapted, ketogenic athlete.
If you have health insurance, ask your doctor or you can
contact me, and I can Skype anywhere in the u.s., I can
write a script for for an insulin c-peptide check.
I would love to know because this is very important
information. I would love to know What the
insulin level is because if athletes are taking a lot of
protein and it's resulting in insulin resistance and we don't
know this, if it is resulting in insulin resistance, that's
harmful. That's a very harmful state to
be in potentially and we need to be able to either say not an
issue at all, eat your protein or hey, we've got to do
something different, and the other response would be to
protect the protein by eating, a high fat diet because that'll
put you in ketosis and lower that insulin.
So, I I would like if there's anybody interested in, knowing
letting me know what your fasting insulin is, or
alternatively contacting me are you can either message me or
contact me through my office if you if you need me to send you a
script to check your insulin and and I appreciate you just
hanging on on for that because that's a that's information that
we really need. No totally.
And that's a topic of interest in mind as well.
I think you're just speaking any directly for a second.
I used to eat a ton of protein. I mean, coming from traditional
bro, dieting bodybuilding background, you know, I would be
eating 300-350, sometimes 400 grams of protein and a lot of
people in the keto sphere, they kind of demonized protein and
eat far too little. And that is not good either.
I feel like most of the population probably under eats
protein, however, within the athlete realm.
I do believe there is this massive overconsumption of
protein and me personally, since going keto, I've you know,
increase my dietary fat Take significantly, but I've
moderated my protein intake. I don't think there's any
inherent benefit to over consuming protein.
Your body can only assimilate so much protein anyway, so once you
cross that threshold, there is no advantage to it.
So finally what advantage? And that's the issue there might
be a disadvantage to protein loading exam that would be
mediated through hyperinsulinemia.
Yeah. So I think you know especially
if your key to adapted knowing that you can down regulate that
protein. I mean you don't under consume,
but if you're getting adequate Eat protein and you're able to
continually build muscle and recover, then there's no need to
have three times your body weight in protein.
Right. And that's the intellectual
argument. But the knowledge is going to
come from what your biochemical metrics are.
And as you said, everybody's going to slightly different
threshold and we tend to underestimate how much protein
we eat when we believe protein is important.
You're right. We protein should come along for
the ride. When you eat meat and and got a
nature is taken care of the ratio pretty darn.
Well yeah. So the fact does in a ketogenic
diet a well-formulated, ketogenic diet affect does
balance out the protein. But a lot of guys still use
protein supplements and protein by itself.
And I I'm just interested to know because Tim noakes and I
were talking about this, a few weeks ago, a couple of months
ago, where a lot of highly trained athletes, especially
triathletes, the finding them floating in the water after the
swim their dead and at it's become a big concern, not just
that but athletes in the prime of their existence dropping dead
when they shouldn't be. And there are certain metrics
that we're looking at, we know that.
That carbohydrates in your vascular, blood vessel cells and
can cause heart attacks and strokes which which are in the
fifties and athletes in the not in their 50 and 60 Fifth and six
decades. That's what happens to a lot of
those. But for guys, like yourself, I'd
love to know what their insulin is because insulin is then
triaging the protein toward sugar not toward the tissues,
like you wanted to be and and that may make you hyperglycemic
and that may be a concern in some of these These guys
training and may affect them down the road in terms of their
health after they when they get a little bit older.
So I it's just a number that I would love to know so that I can
increase my concern level or decrease my concern level.
Well I will certainly send you my blood work where can people
reach out and get in touch with you and inquire upon this
further? Yeah.
So the easiest way to get, hold of me.
I'm on YouTube. My channel is called addiction
dark, and I'd love people to subscribe.
You can get me through there or through Facebook.
Facebook or Instagram carbon diction dock, on Facebook,
Robert, Stivers accommodation, documentary on competition dock
on Instagram and you can message me directly on either of those
or you can text me 256 1610 by you know what, five six, one,
six, two, seven four, one zero seven and if you call or text
that number, I can get you a script to get your see peptide.
Check and some of that blood work and I do that for patients
all over the country because those are important starting
metrics whether you starting a ketogenic diet or whether you
want to know what effect your protein is having awesome.
Well, I will definitely link at that.
I'll put that in the show notes that people can easily find find
you, getting getting contact and get these metrics to.
Because I think that is definitely valuable information.
I feel like not enough people in the athletes Vector
specifically. They just assume that they've
got perfect health and they don't really Dive deep.
You know, people have outward issues that are very visible.
It's obvious that they need to, you know, dive deeper and see
what's going on. But I think a lot of athletes
kind of hide behind this veil of just how they look and feel.
They don't think anything's internally wrong but everybody
needs to kind of know what these metrics are.
Exactly right. Exactly, right.
And you know, we just discovering this realm, we now
have the carbohydrate side of things, pretty well worked out
but we really haven't worked out what the appropriate.
Conditions of eating protein and fat are and more is not always
better. Totally agree.
Well dr. Robert Stivers.
I cannot thank you enough for your time.
I've learned a ton and I really, really do appreciate the
conversation because I think we see eye to eye on most things.
Thank you very much and you know, you and I do this because
we care not because of any other reason.
And if anybody needs additional help or additional Deep dive,
please contact me. Absolutely.
Well, thank you again.