Mark Bell's Power Project - Build Muscle & Improve Fat Loss On a Ketogenic Diet - Thomas DeLauer & Dominic D'Agostino || MBPP Ep. 1052

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

In episode 1052, Thomas DeLauer, Dominic D'Agostino, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about building muscle, recovery and effective fat loss on a ketogenic diet.   Download the free podcast equipment purchasing guide: https://pursuepodcasting.com/power   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   🍆  Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECT Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎 ➢https://emr-tek.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶 ➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/untapped ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza & Get Podcast Guides, Courses and More ➢ https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

How are you guys able to maintain muscle mass on a keto diet? The two biggest drivers of maintaining and building muscle are stimulus and muscle protein synthesis. And I think as long as those needs are met, there's a lot of diets that would work for at least maintaining and building muscle. But if someone's trying to really maximize muscle gain, should they think about carbohydrates in a different way? Two, 300 grams of carbs.

I don't think you're going to get a whole lot of benefits above that. What do you guys got recovery wise? I've always been a fan of just hot water immersion. I take a piping hot bath. Like I just, and I just sit in there until I'm sweating. That's the fastest way to produce hyperthermia. What is the detriments of your head getting hot in a sauna? Superheating the brain could be detrimental. How many grams of fat have you guys eaten? Three, 400 grams a day. 400 grams of fat. That's a lot. Yeah. 400 grams of fat. 300. Yeah, definitely 300. If your poop floats so much that when it hits the water, it bounces back. That's when you need to dial it

back. It could be dangerous out there. So I want to get into how you guys train because both of you guys look amazing. I think a lot of times in a low carb keto side of things, we see some people out there that promote that they do the diet, but then sometimes they don't look that jacked. And if you don't lift, you don't count. So what are you guys doing from a lifting perspective? I believe both of you are natural. Not that we're going to test you on the show, although maybe do we have that testing kit? We do. Okay. We are going to test you on the show. So we'll have the results in before the end of the show and whether you guys are natty or not, but now both of you guys look phenomenal. What are you guys doing training-wise and stuff like that?

I kind of do it all now. I shouldn't say I do it all, but I run a lot. I still lift a lot. I do a lot of Metcons. The running just blows my mind, the level. Probably too much. I think you message like a hundred miles a week or 50 miles a week. No, I mean, I don't know what you do now, but.

It's been a long time since I ever did a hundred miles a week. That was years and years ago. I have been there, but. That stuck into my head. No, I mean, generally speaking, if I'm in a running block, I'll run 40 to 60 per week. That's kind of like a high mileage sweet spot. I've definitely pushed it beyond that. You don't drive that much right now. I'm running like 20 to 25 just cause I'm like not in as much of a running block. I'm doing a lot more rucking. I'm supposed to do, um,

go ruck is doing that D-Day Normandy thing, uh, around D-Day and that's an 80 K. So that's 50 miles, 50 mile ruck with, I think 30 pounds. That's not, not super heavy, but it's long. It's 24 hour, 50 miler in Normandy for D-Day, for 80th anniversary. Not a much weight. I think it's just 30 or 35 pounds. It's not super heavy. I think the weight might be,

like you can go with whatever weight you feel. It's supposed to just be 80 kilometers for the 80th anniversary. So it seems like a really cool thing. So I'm kind of trying to deload my running a little bit and do a little bit more rucking, just to kind of develop those gait patterns a little bit more but i do a lot of cardio i'm a lot different than a lot of the lifters that you know i swim around with um i'm a big runner and a big cardio guy so my lifting is just kind of there at this point

to maintain my size and you said you're like 185 pounds or something like that. Yeah. Soaking wet. Yeah. I'm not that, not that heavy. Um, do a lot of CrossFit style kind of Metcons. I don't do CrossFit officially, but I do a lot of those kinds of workouts mainly because I mentally feel really good doing those. Those are ways for me to, I don't know, get that high intensity that I like. And I like having a, a performance sort of scoring aspect to things because it just makes me happy mentally. Uh, it gives me something to strive for. Um, which I used to do a lot more with my lifting, you know, be more data-driven with my lifting and my metrics there. But as time went on, I kind of shifted gears and made it a little bit more, how can I hybridize my performance? So, I mean, but yeah, kind of everything. Do you usually like lift first or run first or do you care that much?

I really don't like to lift and run in the same block in the same day as much as possible. If I do run, like you probably saw today, we went for seven and a half mile run. And then my lifting was pretty lackadaisical. I don't like to combine them buttoned right next to each other. Just because I feel like I'm compromised. pretty lackadaisical. I don't like to combine them, but end right next to each other. Um, just because I feel like I'm compromised. I feel like after I go for a seven and a half mile run, even if it's slow, I'm not going to put up any weight. That's going to be memorable. My risk of injury is typically a little higher because especially if I'm training lower body after, after going for a run, I feel very stiff after a long run like that. So quads are tight.

I mean, it's just like hips are tight. If I were to, I'd be at serious risk of an injury, I think just with how tight I am. So I just, I might throw some weight around just to kind of stop the catabolism or something. But if I do run and lift in the same day, that would be a two a day where I really try to book into my days with it. I'd run in the morning and lift in the afternoon. Otherwise, like my Metcons, those kinds of workouts, those are done on their own days, you know, typically, because those are a lot of CNS, you know, stimulation going on there. So if I'm doing something where I'm dead lifting and box jumping and sprinting and this and that all in one, like that's not something I usually want to do a volume warrior game with. I mean, I'm just going to get in there,

get that minimum effective dose with that and go. I'm trying right now to do more of an anaerobic day, aerobic day, anaerobic day, aerobic day, and going back to like a really basic fundamental there where it's just like, okay. And my aerobic days are strong aerobic days. I'm not getting into zone four at all. I'm staying super low key and it's going to be going for a run in a 10 minute mile pace, you know, trying to stay in that aerobic zone. So I'm actually still getting a recovery aspect. It's not just a, um, you know, the past, like we were talking, we were running, I'd do a 10 or 12 mile run at a 160, 165 heart rate and think that that was normal and then wonder why I was getting an upper respiratory tract infection every other week, you know? So now it's like, okay, my runs are slow. That's fine. And then the next day I'll go balls to the wall on either lifting or a Metcon and then run, lift,

run, lift. Do you have like a exercise access to exercise, like wherever you're at? I mean, I know that with running, you could literally put on a pair of shoes and we could make our home, our gym and stuff like that. But I mean, do you literally put on a pair of shoes and we could make our home, our gym and stuff like that. But I mean, do you literally have like a little bit of weights at these studios where you've been filming your YouTube videos for a long time? And do you have stuff kind of peppered and scattered throughout so that you can get your exercise in in many different ways? Yeah, for sure. So and I'm kind of obsessive with that. It's like I feel like I need to have, you know, my little domains.

I kind of live between a few places cause I split time between Southern California and Lake Tahoe. So, you know, I do have gyms at each of my houses there. And I know that sounds like a elitist thing, but they're not that comprehensive of setups barbells. You know, it's kind of not too much above what you've just got in your barn. You know, it's like, you know, it's just simple stuff like, uh, barbells and dumbbells and kettlebells. Then my studio where we film, that's the exception. That's a little bit more built out like what you've got here. You know, that's got all my fun toys and things like that.

And which is where I find myself wanting to be most of the time because, um, sometimes I like to train doing kind of idiotic looking things and I want to experiment with things that I might not be very good at that. I might be a little bit like, oh, there's Thomas DeLauer in a public gym. You know, look at him trying to do this weird thing, ends up on Instagram somewhere, some real, you know, so I could just be in the privacy of my own domain doing weird moves. So I tried and I try to keep like BFR bands with me wherever I am, because I feel like if I don't have access to heavy load, that's one thing I don't mind looking stupid doing. I have no problem going to a hotel gym and strapping on BFR cuffs and using 20-pound weights and getting at least the metabolic and sort of chemical effect from a weight training session without a lot of load.

Has there been anything that within the past few years you've added into your resistance training workouts that's been pretty beneficial for you versus how you used to train? name of the game of my training in the last year has been like posterior chain. Like really just trying to like beef that up as much as I can. So many years of running, like I'm such a quad dominant person, you know, it's just, it's really hard to get into that like proper hinge for myself. So anything that I can do to repeat that motion and kind of that kinesthetic awareness there as much as I can. Um, the BFR training has definitely over the last couple of years become a staple for me. Specific moves. I really like handstand pushups lately. Like those have just been, I feel like I can scale those in a lot of different ways. Like, you know, just by where I put my feet, where I position my hands. If I'm doing a, you know, a handstand walk and doing pushups that

way, handstand pushups that way. I feel like that's just a really good, like you've got all these different body weight exercises that you can say are great for, you should be able to do X number of reps with this body weight exercise. And it's a good indicator of your overall strength for your weight and yada, yada. I think handstand pushups kind of take it to another level with that. Yeah. Um, but since I am bigger upper body and i don't have the biggest legs i probably have an advantage okay i'm not having to lift as much weight so i love to pump them out and show off hey someone got a nice calves comment i don't know if it was you or me today i just have the ripped calves you've got the huge ones somebody said hey nice calves i'll take it unless it was

sarcasm towards me it might have been yeah what do you got going on with your lifting and training oh man i'm a minimalist um yeah so i got uh thomas has seen it i got weights in the barn pretty minimalist setup uh and actually roll cow rolls uh we push thousand pound cow rolls sometimes it's a cow roll a cow roll like ever see those big bales of hay yeah absolutely yeah so round bale i guess you can call it um you're doing like real work today yeah yeah i um my overall i think total amount of training that i do with weights per week definitely under two hours sometimes usually like around the hour to an hour and a half total like time i like And, uh, but I'm really big with getting my steps in.

So that was like one of my 2024 goals is to get, you know, 10,000 to 20,000 steps in a day. So, uh, dogs appreciate that too. Uh, so we have pretty big properties. So I just usually just walking around the property, you know, doing laps around the property. Um, and yeah, as far as training, I think I do maybe about 10 to 12 exercises, deadlifts, bent rows, overhead press, incline presses, squats. And then just like some accessory work, I've been doing a lot of hyper extensions and kind of weighted ab work. And that has really helped with sort of stabilizing my lower back, I think, on some deadlift movements. And I've transitioned to deadlifting with maybe over the last three years. I took a year off in 2018 and 19. And when we bought our farm and I was just so busy on the farm, but I was always doing like push-ups and dips and took a year off of lifting weights. But transitioned back to – and someone bought me a bar

and sent it a hex deadlift bar and i've transitioned to that and that uh i've kind of fell in love with that and i rarely lift with a straight bar anymore as far as deadlifts and um so that that has become a big staple i still do squats um and a big fan of doing variety to a body weight exercises. So I have not tried consistently handstand pushups, but, um, but with shoulder, well, actually my favorite exercise was behind the neck press, which I would do pretty heavy, uh, until I injured my shoulder. So now I'm easing back into it and just kind of weight. Are we talking? Cause you're able to move around some pretty awesome weights behind the neck presses.

I would do like two 25 for sets of like 15 or 20 and then even three 15 for like five 365. I think I posted a video of doing like one or two reps with 365, but bring it down to the level of my ears. Yeah. And then, but the two 25 I'd put on you know my traps basically and do like 15 20 with that and it's actually not that much different than

my incline press it's weird so this is an exercise i get a lot of comments about this i've kind of was inspired to start doing again i was watching michael hearn doing it and he was doing it really heavy. And I was like, when I was 19, I did 275 for like eight behind at 19. And then, and actually I think doing it, I started doing behind the neck press, which everybody told me not to do even when I was younger. But even my physical therapist was like, no man, if you've been doing it, then your body basically evolved over time. You've damaged, repaired, damaged, repaired to where your biomechanics have basically adjusted to that exercise working for you. So even after I tore my labrum, tore my pec and tore – had a humeral fracture and everything like that.

And he looked at my MRI and was like, oh, my God, I thought you were going to be a complete mess and you can do all these things. He was like, I'm giving you the go-ah ahead to go back and to do behind the neck presses. So now I'm back to doing like 185 and maybe 225 for a couple and just easing back into it. I got to ask you real quick. You mentioned injuring your shoulder and behind the neck presses very close together. It wasn't the behind the neck presses that injured your shoulder. No, not at all. You injured your shoulder and those were a little bit harder.

Yeah, yeah. So I was, and I think it's a good story to tell too. I was doing incline presses and I had the J hook behind me, racking the weight behind me and it wasn't fully racked and I completely let go and the weight went and it completely, yeah, just ripped. And it popped out, sublocated and then popped back in and um yeah i thought it was in pretty bad shape that must have sucked did because i thought i was like

kind of gone after that but uh but amazingly it recovered like no prp no bpc 157 i didn't use, all I did is just physiotherapy. I'm a huge believer in hangs, like even weighted hangs. So just jumping, getting on a chin bar and just hanging every day. So one thing I didn't mention is that that's, has become a daily staple for me is just hanging, hanging for a certain amount of time or so. Yeah. And I can do the duration of like a song on, you know, like about three minutes or something like that. It's impressive for your body weight too, man. Yeah, it's pretty good. Because I actually do weighted hanks.

So when I was in college and I was training, one of the things that I did, I don't think anybody even thought about it at this time. I would do very heavy weighted hanks with like three, four, 45 pound plates. And I would do my chin ups and then do a lot of lat stretching. And then I would, um, with straps, I would strap onto the bar and hold it, but I would put three to four, 45 pound plates and just hang till my pain threshold, you know, gave out. And, and I did that. And i think that was probably a big contributor to my shoulder not getting i mean i went like two decades 20 years without having an injury you know in the last until this shoulder injury do any sort of uh cardio style training or mainly these short bursts of like lifting yeah i do sprints with the dogs, but yeah, VO2 max is something I need to measure. And I think that's like an amazing, one of the best biomarkers for longevity.

And I think something that I need to pay more attention to just to build my cardio base. I was really big into mountain biking. I actually did it recently with Paul Atiyah, Peter Tia's brother. And we went mountain biking in canada and he didn't kill me i mean he is like an animal uh i've had him over training too he's just like at another level but they did like 47 sets or something because it was well it was his 46th birthday so he did 46 exercises and 46 reps of the so he yeah i mean he's just at another level in regards to training you guys should have him on actually so he, yeah, I mean, he's just at another level in regards to training.

You guys should have him on actually. So he is just wicked smart too. But, but yeah, so I was okay like that. I think you can build muscle memory. I took a year off and it actually just took like a month or two to get back into like moving heavy weights again. And I did a lot of mountain biking growing up. So was kind of uh refreshing to see that you know my stamina kind of as far as my my legs wanted to go but my lungs didn't want to keep up so that's what does your program look like because it looks like you're working on strength but a lot of times when i see a video of you um you're doing like higher reps as well like you're using heavyweight and you're doing higher reps. Yeah, I can.

Well, I can, for my hex bar, I can get six plates on, maybe seven, but the seventh plate kind of falls off. But even with like 645s on, with the raised handles at least, you know, that's like 585 or whatever. I can do that for almost like 20 reps now. But it's almost like a quarter squat, right? I mean, if you have, you know, a hex bar. His arms are practically

down to his mid-shin i my my wing like that's some cardio that takes a lot of wind and it takes a lot of resilience to be able to do something like that it does yeah uh but i will do like singles sometimes um but i do like a periodized program where but it's like super flexible periodized where i took the old ed cohen like templates and i always use that but it's like super flexible periodize where I took the old Ed Cohen like templates and I always use that, but it was just, I'd build like flexibility into it where I'll just program it to increase strength. And usually I, I do add volume too. So if I do like with my shoulder, uh, I had the injury and then I would add sort of a set with the same amount of reps like each week and just kind of build volume in. So I am nowadays have a little bit more time to train. So I've been

adding a little bit more volume in. So I've bumped it up to three, sometimes even four days per week. Uh, but again, I can, I come, I come home from work, I get a dinner started usually, and I go work out and in the timeframe it takes to cook something on the grill, I'm done. And then I go eat. So that's usually my, and then we go, go do the dog walking thing. So do either of you guys have a kind of like similar to your hanging practices that you're doing now within your lifting that's helping keep your body together? Like you mentioned your good mornings, anything else that maybe you wish you were doing a little bit younger, even though you did those hangs a long time ago? Let me think on that for a second. You know, what's funny is, I mean, this is a bad thing

to mention now as I'm nursing a bunch of blown discs, but I mean, deadlifting in general was something that as someone with a bad back, I tended to avoid. And then I realized that, you know, if anyone's got a back issues or, you know, low back issues, you know, that it's just, it just kind of happens a couple of times per year. It's like, it's just going to be a part, sort of accepted as part for the course. Um, and I had avoided deadlifting because I didn't want to hurt my back. And then I realized that I was actually just babying it by doing that. And I started adding deadlifting back in and the instance of when I would throw out my back was significantly less. So, I mean, having deadlifts as a protective movement for me and, uh, just being mindful of the weight. I mean, I'm not trying to impress

anyone these days and just, I mean, I used to all the time, right. But it's now it's who cares. It's just a matter of, uh, how can I feel good doing this and how do I also benefit my running and how do I also benefit my athleticism with my kids? I want to be able to throw a football around with my kids and be able to sprint and not pull something and feel like an idiot. That's really important to me. So deadlifting has kind of bulletproofed that a little bit for me. You know, another one is one that Ben Patrick had showed me was the, uh, the seated wide stance, uh, good morning, that one. And that's what kind of got me into just the good mornings in general. I feel like that was sort of a progression for me where now I feel confident doing it standing

with more weight, but you know, we initially started doing that with holding dumbbells. So it was like, just because like my thoracic was so tight, it was like actually hard for me to get in that position and get much forward hinge when my arms were behind my back. So doing it with dumbbells, it was amazing. Like the instant relief that I would actually get out of that movement and the next day how I would feel. So that just became something that I was doing at least three or four times per week,

even if it was just intermittently throughout the day, not necessarily part of my training. I say the biggest thing that I've shifted towards my training has been treating my corrective exercises as a different supplementation, not part of my workout. Because what used to happen is I would be prescribed these things to do that I knew were really important for me, for my athleticism and for different things I was doing. But I would get really frustrated that it was taking away from my workout because my workout was this time for me to like go balls to the wall. And if I didn't get that in, I just didn't feel like it was enough, right? Mommy issues here, right? Like it wasn't enough. And then I realized, okay, it's going to be hard one

way or the other. I'm going to have to either add it to the end of this workout and it's going to be more time. It's going to be mentally tough because I have to rope it into this workout, or it's going to be tough on my time in the afternoon, having to carve out time to do that. So pick your hard, right? So I was like, you know what? It actually makes more sense for me to treat this as a supplemental piece independent of my other workouts, rather than trying to do like a 30 minute warmup, trying to activate. Right. So, you know, now I take like, cause all my corrective exercises and things that I should be doing. I do a lot of like prone, prone airplanes, like where I'm laying face down and I've got some big yoga blocks and I'm kind of, they call it my SOS position. Cause

I've got a really tight thoracic and I've got some herniated discs in my thoracic spine. So if you can visualize yourself laying in a prone position with your head on the ground flat and you relax, uh, pigeon toe yourself completely relaxed so that your, your toes are just pointed together. Right. And you're kind of trying to disconnect your upper body from your lower body. So breathe diaphragmatically, breathe, relax that lower, those lower limbs. And then your arms are sort of in a prone position like this with your wrists hanging off the edge of a yoga block. So if you vision like how I am right now, but if I was parallel to the floor, it's impossible to be in kyphosis in that state. Like you're not, you're in an SOS position where

you can't be in kyphosis. So in that state, doing some diaphragmatic breaths and holding that position for six minutes and breathing. And then by about three minutes in, you're realizing that suddenly you're dropping your scapula. And suddenly when you move, like you get up from that, you feel like, oh my gosh, I actually feel my scapula moving the way it's supposed to, rather than when I like move my arms, my scapula going, you know, with this whole piece of mass and tissue just moving with it. Now I'm actually feeling the shoulder blades moving the way they're supposed to move. So that's kind of been an SOS position for me. So whenever I get off of an airplane and I've been crammed, that's my thing kyphotic state where I'm restricted breathing. Because for me, everything is coming down to CNS issues for me. When I'm tense, I hunch like this. And when I hunch like this, I get more tense and it steamrolls. And then next

thing I know, I'm breathing shallow. And next thing you know, breathing shallow, then I'm doing this. And then all my lifting patterns and everything is just firing weird. So if I can get into that SOS position, get myself to a state where I can open up diaphragmatically and breathe, then my movement patterns are normal again. So for me, a lot of it is like, how do I get myself out of this constant sympathetic tone that I'm in and try to relax a little bit. You listen to podcasts, but have you ever wondered what it would be like to be on the other side of the speakers? What's up? It's Andrew, co-host and producer

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I believe in buying the right equipment for the job. Join us on this side of podcasting and just pursue it. Are you guys into anything special recovery-wise other than like just sleep, like cold plunging, or are there any practices that you guys have around your workouts? Obviously eating a lot of protein would be one of them. Maybe in your case, maybe the actual ketone products maybe help with recovery. What do you guys got recovery wise walking stretching hanging uh especially uh off days i do hanging so it's off but uh do that and um and sometimes i'll throw in some like unilateral movements like if i'm

walking i'll do like uh walking lunges and things like that so i think just stretching getting the muscle warmed up and doing some stretching stuff. Movement. Yeah, movement. And then, yeah, I do hot tub pretty much every night. Oh, I do swimming. So swim laps.

And I think swimming is a great rehab. I like how sometimes in talking with you guys, because these things are just habits, they're ingrained, you're like, oh, I kind of forgot that I used to mountain bike. That was a big, huge part of your life. Oh, I forgot. Like I'm always in the hot tub. Like that's a meditative relaxation, you know, process that you go through every night. That's the, there's interesting. And when I was talking with Rhonda Patrick a few weeks ago, um, I noticed she's pivoted a little bit on the sauna thing too. And I wouldn't say I've pivoted. I still love my sauna,

but I've always been a fan of just hot water immersion. Like if I don't have access to a sauna, like when I'm in a hotel room, I take a piping hot bath. Like I just, and I just sit in there until I'm sweating. That's the fastest way to produce hyperthermia. Yeah. And you're not heating the head, right?

So do you know, do you still get the glymphatic benefits if your head is not hot? Well, your head is hot because the, you're, you know, you're heating your body and the blood and that blood is going to your head. Actually, you feel, you get in, you feel that head rush when you first get in that's to your head is, but there's like maybe a, a, a one or two or maybe three degree temperature differential. But, uh, yeah, I think just by virtue of just the superheating your body and, um, and all

the hormone response that you get from that, I think, uh, it would enhance your glymphatic flow, but no one, I don't think anyone's ever, uh, but glymphatic flow I think is pretty closely parallel to just like brain blood flow. I haven't seen any convincing data to show that, you know, that they're not tightly coupled. Although someone maybe can convince me otherwise. It's just intracranial pressure from the blood flow, right? I mean, that's essentially like what's affecting it. Yeah.

Wait, quick question, because you mentioned the head getting hot in the last podcast. What is the detriments of your head getting hot in a sauna uh cooking yourself yeah well is it really like are you literally actually cooking yourself you say a sauna for an hour if the temperature's hot enough for sure yeah i'm of the opinion that superheating the brain is not you know a great thing to do i mean just just from experiment i you know as a neuroscientist we just know like i remember just having an experimental preparation and moving the heat up things start to die quick so if you're under any kind of stress and uh your body's under inflammation you're having a viral illness or whatever you know long long whatever so i won't

mention more but uh so uh yeah i just i I think that especially if you're kind of in a fragile state of health that I think superheating the brain could be detrimental and it doesn't, your brain does not have the capacity to recover and, and kind of adapt from injury, like other parts of the body. And I think that's important. But I think you can get all the benefits of when we talk about benefits of sauna we're talking about benefits of elevating your body temperature up to a certain extent and then that activates heat shock proteins

and does a myriad of other things and I think you can get that benefit just by a hot tub and you get there quicker you get there you know I've made my own protocol just measuring my body temperature and just figuring out what time I need to be in there. And I like to jump from there into the pool and that

differential to that contrast, I think is good. We had Dan Garner on the podcast a while back, and he talked about this protocol that he utilized for some fighters to help them kind of regenerate the brain. What are some things, because you mentioned how it can be difficult to regenerate the brain. What are some things, because you mentioned how it can be difficult to regenerate the brain and how you having it recover can be, you know, more difficult than having like your biceps recover. So what are some strategies that you've been able to utilize that we know the ketogenic diet has been a big part of it, but I've heard you also talk about like hyperbaric chambers and things of that nature. What are those things do? Yeah. And just quickly mentioned, just, you know, and I'll jump to the other things, but exercise. So just exercise probably has maybe one of the best track record, right?

Aerobic exercise, if you can't do that, just like fast-paced walking increases BDNF, circulating BDNF correlates to BDNF in the brain, and then overall metabolic health, right? So there's that, but then there's another level would be nutritional or therapeutic ketosis with exogenous ketones. So those ketones then can increase circulation via increasing adenosine, decrease inflammation. Pretty much every psychiatric disease and even epilepsy and even depression are linked to decreased glucose hypometabolism. So meaning that if you do a fluorodeoxyglucose PET scan, a FDG PET scan, and you look at the brains of people with different neurological disorders, it's going to show like reduced glucose availability. One different, you know, a different aspect would be like mania associated with bipolar would be hyperglycolysis.

And that's like another thing to discuss. So the ketones then when they're elevated, they help to just reestablish brain energy and balance the brain. So there's that. And then the anti-inflammatory effects. So with hyperbaric oxygen, the waters are a little bit muddy when it comes to hyperbaric oxygen for injury from like traumatic brain injury, concussion and things like that. But an early intervention of hyperbaric oxygen therapy on the lower spectrum, maybe like 1.5 atmospheres of oxygen in an intervention. So with hyperbaric oxygen therapy for concussion or like blast injury, you're dealing with a scenario where the brain has moved around in its casing, its skull, and you've ruptured like a lot of small blood vessels, like capillaries and things like that. So the brain, there's pockets of brain that are hypoxic

and you have pockets of brain where there's inflammation due to the release of blood from microtrauma and then an excess heme. So, you know, high levels of oxygen could be potentially counterproductive because high levels of oxygen can increase oxidative stress. But you have hyperbaric oxygen has been proven to enhance wound healing. And when you have a traumatic brain injury, that is a wound. So you can reverse hypoxic areas. So areas that are hypoxia, you can stimulate oxygen and blood flow to those areas and just improve overall metabolism. Increasing oxygenation in the brain and elevating the partial pressure of oxygen in the brain

stimulates metabolism, also repair and other things. So in the context of wound healing, you could have an ischemic wound within that wound bed. If you were to take out a sample, the ATP levels could be 90% deficient, right? So something similar is happening in the brain levels could be 90% deficient, right? So something similar is happening in the brain and early intervention in particular when coupled with therapeutic ketosis, which would make hyperbaric oxygen therapy much safer. A limitation of hyperbaric oxygen therapy

is central nervous system oxygen toxicity, which is a limitation for Navy SEAL divers using a closed circuit rebreather, right? So if you put someone into therapeutic ketosis, that has an anti-seizure neuroprotective effect. So if someone has traumatic brain injury, a penetrating traumatic brain injury is associated like 70 to 80% of those guys already have seizures associated with. So you have to be very careful. So a prudent way to go about it is to put them into therapeutic ketosis before giving them hyperbaric oxygen therapy. That's going to further augment the therapeutic efficacy of hyperbaric oxygen therapy by enhancing the antioxidant effect, by preventing

oxygen toxicity seizures, increasing blood flow, and decreasing inflammation. So I think that's an important, you know, thing. And I know people are doing it, but it's not sort of an approved protocol. So I'm kind of cautious and kind of, but I'm putting it out there that, you know, this is theoretically, and I think in practice would be very efficacious in helping people with brain injury. That's kind of how you got into a lot of this research in the first place, was helping Navy SEALs, right? And divers? Yeah.

So for me, as a basic science researcher, my entry into this was, going way, way back, was developing methods to understand cellular and molecular mechanisms of oxygen toxicity seizures. So it developed something called hyperbaric atomic force microscopy and laser scanning confocal microscopy. So it allows you to like optically section like neurons and look at the mitochondria and look at how graded levels of oxygenation changes like oxidative stress within the cells and in tissues and then later in animals and then now in humans so uh so we've moved the the rat research into uh you know controlled human trials that are on clinicaltrials.gov actually being run at duke university uh where subjects are put into

therapeutic ketosis and then we look at the latency to seizures instead of inducing a full blown tonic-clonic seizure as we do in rats, which is quickly reversible. And when you decrease the oxygenation, we look at EEG seizures. So we have humans in there and we push them in ketosis and out of ketosis. And we look at that latency to when they get a seizure. And being in ketosis delays that latency to seizure considerably. And that's a very firm demonstration that the ketones are preventing metabolic dysregulation even in the context of a very high oxidative stress environment. So ketones are making the brain way more resilient in that environment. So I saw that in mitochondria.

I saw that in dissociated cell preparations. I saw that in hippocampal brain slices. And then we saw it in rats. And now we're doing it. So this is how science works. But it took about 10, 12 years to move it from an idea, which is it's an idea that had a lot of legitimacy because ketogenic diet was already used for epilepsy for like 100 years. But experimentally validating it in a whole bunch of different models before actually developing exogenous ketone supplementation and preparations that could be translated. And then in the meantime of doing all this, I communicate with special operations who are already doing it in the field after the rat study.

communicate with special operations who are already doing it in the field after the rat study. For the month of April, you're going to receive 25% off all Vivo Barefoot shoes. And Seema, can you tell us why these shoes are so great? For years on this podcast, we've been talking about the benefit of barefoot shoes. And these are the shoes I used to use back in like 2017, 2018, my old Metcons. They are flat, but they're not very wide and they're very stiff and they don't move. That's why we've been partnering with and we've been using Vivo Barefoot Shoes. These are the Modest Strength shoe because not only are they wide, I have wide ass feet and so do we here on the podcast, especially as our feet have gotten stronger, but they're flexible. So when you're

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now is that time. Head over to vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject, enter the code for April, and receive 25% off your entire order. Link is in the description as well as the podcast show notes. How are you guys able to maintain muscle mass on a keto diet? Because that doesn't seem to be as common. I was mentioning earlier that sometimes the people in the keto space don't seem to have a lot of muscle mass a lot of times. What do you guys think?

Some of that's a byproduct of not deadlifting. What do you guys think? Some of that's a byproduct of not deadlifting? I think sometimes people start doing keto times the ketogenic diet really works very well for sedentary people. So you find it because you're inactive, you don't need to have those glucose spikes, right? So you don't need, so I think just by nature of sort of the swimmer's illusion kind of concept, it's like people that are attracted, people get attracted to a ketogenic diet, but also have a lot of success and they there may be desk workers and things like that, because all of a sudden they're limiting their refined carbs or limiting their carbohydrates. And they lose this weight and they're like, this is great. But they were never people that were

really working out to begin with. So you get a lot of people that are on the ketogenic diet that are perfectly healthy looking people now, but they don't look like they work out. So it's then you translate that over to the fitness space where you've got people talking about keto. They're gonna come at you and say, okay, we got all these people doing keto. They don't look ripped.

Well, you're forgetting the fact that they were 300 pounds before and maybe now they're 180 and maybe they're not jacked and tan, but they're a hell of a lot better looking than they were when they were 300 pounds before and maybe now they're 180 and maybe they're not jacked and tan, but they're a hell of a lot better looking than they were when they were 300 pounds. So I think it's just a matter of context because if you have people, I mean, I know a lot of people that are on keto that train hard and look phenomenal. I think it just depends on the lens that you're looking at it. I also feel like there's a lot of, I don't want to call it misinformation, but this idea that carbohydrates are, well, it's a valid idea. It's real. I mean, carbs are anti-catabolic. I mean, there's nothing that's going to, insulin is going to stop muscle wasting to a certain degree. But with that, I think most people are going to just assume

that carbs are required to maintain muscle, that that's the only anti-catabolic thing. And they forget that, you know, the two biggest drivers of maintaining and building muscle are stimulus and muscle protein synthesis, right? So it's like those two things are the most important keys to building and maintaining muscle. And I think as long as those needs are met, there's a lot of diets that would work for at least maintaining and building muscle. I think both you guys started lifting at young ages as well, right? Yeah, eating pasta.

Like probably long before keto and you were pretty heavy. I don't know, were you ever heavy? I was 1.270. Yeah, at one point yeah that's pretty big um oh what i saw you last i think you were probably like 250 or 260 right weren't you pretty heavy then or maybe two maybe uh maybe i'm not remembering right keto um yeah i would bulk up and my go-to bulk you know as a teenager was pasta because we're italian family and then i switched to then i read the book like the zone by bar Sears, I think.

And I started phasing out the grains and pulling back the carbs a little bit and switched to sweet potato or just potatoes. And then, yeah, but it was on a relative, like moderate carb, very high protein, moderate carb, pretty low fat. I would give all my egg yolks to the dogs and stuff. So I maybe throw one in here and there if I was

bulking, but it was pretty, I could try to keep fat as low as possible. And now you give the egg whites to the dogs, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do, depending on if I'm doing an experiment now, actually I eat about 10 eggs a day and I eat four yolks and I give like three yolks to each of the dogs. And I'm doing some experiments on my LDL. That's kind of like another story. He named his dog LDL. Yeah. Yeah, I know. That's what I'm thinking.

Well, the original name actually was Keto, but then we defaulted back to the, we rescued our dog and defaulted back to his other name, his rescue name. What's this test that you're trying to do? Oh, well, so I am, I kind of loosely fit into the category of lean mass hyper-responder. And I know Sean Baker talked about it a little bit. Nick Norwitz is doing some work.

The Oreo cookie study. Yeah. Dave Feldman is someone you'd want to have on too. Yeah, we've had Dave on before. Yeah. The Citizen Science Foundation, he's got a conference next month. So I'd like to plug that. conference next month. So I'd like to plug that. And that's a pretty, I think he's undertaking a pretty big project in sort of understanding kind of like the atherogenic risk of having elevated

LDL and ApoB in the context of a lean mass hyper-responder where all the biomarkers, I mean, you have an HDL that's like double your triglycerides in some of these guys. So triglycerides like 40, HDL 80, all other biomarkers are like amazing and fantastic, mostly due in part to being on a ketogenic diet. But you have an elevation of LDL cholesterol, which is probably functioning if you believe in the lipid energy model as a carrier for trafficking lipids, especially in the context

of an athlete where they have very high rates of fatty acid oxidation in peripheral tissues. So these lipoproteins are an important part for transporting that fat into the tissues where they can be burned as energy. And he's sort of studying this group of people kind of with the goal of validating the lipid energy model. And I think he's doing it in a pretty unbiased way as much as possible. And he's reached out and got some top-tier cardiologists to do – to sort of spearhead the studies on this. Oh, so that goes back to me. So, yeah, so my cholesterol was pretty high. goes back to me. So I am, so yeah, so my cholesterol was pretty high. ApoB also trending high about 125 to 130, which is a little bit high. So I am doing an experiment to see if I

am a hyper absorber of cholesterol and egg yolks have a lot of cholesterol in them. So I backed off on the egg yolks a little bit, but at the same time using azetamide, which used to be sold as Zetia, which is a Neiman PIK1 receptor blocker, I think. So it plays a role in absorbing the cholesterol in the gut and a very good safety profile, way, way better than like statin drugs and other things. Maybe not the PCSK9 inhibitors, but so just kind of answering this question is if I'm absorbing high rates of cholesterol, which I think I am for various reasons. Because actually when I started using this drug, my poop always sinks very negatively buoyant. But when I started this drug, it was kind of floating, which gives me the indication that the drug is impacting lipid absorption and cholesterol absorption.

So I'm of the understanding that that was probably playing a significant role potentially. So I think there's some truth to it. Send me some pictures. I'm actually an expert in this field so well it got me thinking because yeah as you know and and reading something like if your poop sinks that means you're a hyper absorber of lipids where if your poop floats uh this is a characteristic of people who are tend to be lean or that can eat anything and be lean because they're just not absorbing the fat or the cholesterol in there so So I've read

something about this and I always kind of thought about it and yeah, yeah. And then, you know, I'm, you know, I'm super negatively buoyant if I jump in water, even if I take a deep breath, I think really quick. And apparently like if you, if you absorb a lot of fat, fat is positively buoyant. But if you absorb it all, you pass very little bit out and you tend to have negatively buoyant stools, right? So it sinks to the bottom. Whereas when I started azetamide, it started floating. So it's just an observation. Hell of a testimonial for azetamide.

Yeah. So are you – I'm negatively buoyant too. Yeah. I mean, I just chalked it up to probably being lean. I mean, yeah. Do you think that that's probably why you're negatively buoyant? I don't know. Like I never asked this question a lot, but I went into like, I guess over the last month

or two, just been traveling, I'd go into a stall and someone wouldn't flush. And I was like, oh, that's floating. And then like a couple of days later, I got into another stall and it's like, wow, that's like floating half of it's out. Why is it like, it's super positively buoyant. And I'm thinking like, like mine never, unless I have some kind of. Where do you live that people don't flush their toilets? I was traveling through airports or something like that.

And it's just like. When you have kids, that happens a lot. I made that observation. You walk in, you're like, oh my God. Yeah. And I remember talking about this with somebody who was super lean, who said that they could eat anything. And they, yeah. And somehow the conversation came up where there's like, you know, it was-

So I think there's something- I think I need to do a video on this. Tell people, this is how you know you can just eat whatever you want i mean i guess wasn't there a drug uh something that came out when i was back in college it was like uh olestra like chips and things like that that you just kind of pass it kind of has that orange ruffy effect they put those in like the weird kind of they put them in pringles for a little while right there was like a low fat Pringles or some. I had an early 20s

like phase with those Pringles. They like piloted it with Pringles. I mean of all things to like do a sick and twisted test on, they put it in Pringles. Like they're just like, let's fuck with people, but let's fuck with these people. Just went straight through you.

Going back real quick to the muscle building side of things, because both of you guys started lifting when you were very young. Both of you guys were on probably higher carbohydrate diets at that time when you were building a lot of muscle. We know that it's pretty easy to maintain muscle when you get older, right? So if you're someone who's built muscle and then you do a ketogenic diet, it's not going to be hard to maintain if you do high protein. But if someone's trying to really maximize muscle gain right now and they're

young or whatever age they are, should they think about carbohydrates in a different way when it comes to fueling their workouts to build muscle? Yeah, super good question. Well, your carb tolerance is proportional to your lean body mass and your age. So if you're younger and you're, you know, wanting to build muscle, your carb tolerance is super high, especially if you're like a football player or something. So I would, you know, adjust, you know, just go high protein obviously, and then adjust the carbohydrates to where you feel good. And I think, you know, two, 300 grams of carbs, I don't think you're going to get a whole lot of benefits above that unless you're just putting in crazy amounts of workouts. But yeah, I do think there's a lot of benefits to getting in the right source of carbohydrates for a young athlete who just

has incredibly high carb tolerance, which I did. And it didn't seem to have any negative consequences. If I look back, you know, in my teenage years, I was always super lean and eating lots of pasta and carbs and things like that. Never really had any problem with it. But, you know, as I got older, carb tolerance drops and yeah, and super easy to maintain the muscle once you've built it. So it doesn't take a lot of carbohydrates to get the benefits of carbohydrates. That makes sense. How many grams of fat have you guys uh eaten you know in some of your experimentation has it been you know 100 200 300 because i'm wondering like is there like a little caution that maybe some people should have with how much fat they consume and maybe the amount

the amounts of the types of fat sorry if your poop floats so much that when it hits the water it bounces back be careful be careful that's when you need to dial it back uh 300 grams a day when i did like a strict ketogenic or three 400 grams a day i think with a strict ketogenic diet 400 grams of fat that's intense yeah 400 grams of fat 300 yeah definitely definitely 300 and many days some days like up to upwards of 400 when I was doing like the 4 to 1 ketogenic diet and trying to like gain some weight. But yeah, 250 to 350 grams of fat a day on a clinical ketogenic diet. And that's when my cholesterol really started skyrocketing and went through the roof. I was going to say, could we speculate that it still might not necessarily be unhealthy if somebody wasn't gaining weight?

Or do you think at a certain point, because we could go the other direction, right? We can eat Twinkies and if we're not gaining weight, but maybe those Twinkies are toxic or causing some problem in some other way. So maybe in this case, 300 or 400 grams of fat maybe is excessive and maybe leading to potential issues or. Yeah. Surplus amount of calories. So if you have, if you're gaining weight, you, you have to have a surplus amount of calories. So a question that always kind of comes around, is it safer and healthier to get surplus amount of calories in the form of carbohydrates, in the form of protein, in the form of fat? So if you're on a ketogenic diet, trying to gain weight on a ketogenic diet is probably not optimal to have all those surplus amount of calories in the form of saturated fat.

So that would be my hunch. So I think ketogenic diets really shine in the context of using it in a caloric deficit where it helps to stabilize your satiety, glucose levels, and many other things and getting the benefits of ketones when you can't avoid being hypoglycemic if you're on a calorie deficit, right? But if your ketones are elevated, that can supply your brain with more energy and you're not feeling the glucose dips so much. So I think that's where it kind of shines. Yeah, I've definitely above 250 grams of fat, I start to not digest very well. So I start to find, but with that, there's a huge difference between monounsaturated fats and having 200 plus grams of saturated fat with me.

200 plus grams of saturated fat with me, 200 plus grams of saturated fat, which I have messed around with, that just leads to a lot of pain for me. That doesn't feel good. I actually digestively feel terrible. I have a lot more flexibility if it's olive oil, if it's avocado oil, if it's avocados. I can't say I've really pushed it higher than 250 ever. Even when I'm really strict keto, I'm probably in the ballpark of like 170, you know? So it's still pretty high. But that's just to get purely enough calories in just because there's not like enough volume of food for me to just eat that and lean protein. Right. But I also don't like, I've never digested

pure like animal fat really well. Like if I ate a ribeye and I ate the gristle from it, I'm bloated. I just don't break it down. Well, I've never been that way. So I have to kind of get my fats from other sources that way. I've also always been kind of a fat nerd where I like would try to get specific, specific kinds of fats. So a lot of times like my formulated ketogenic diets for myself, I would usually utilize leaner meats and then add my fats in like a strategic fashion. I was always like,

okay, I don't want more than maybe 20 or 25% of my total fat calories coming from saturated fat. So then I would try to get more in the way of the olive oils and things like that to try to round it out. I'm really trying to limit seed oils as much as I could too, just because what I did find, and there is early kind of evidence to back it up, but I noticed significantly that if my seed oil consumption was higher, I was hungrier. Maybe it's something to do with endocannabinoid receptor or something,

but it did increase my appetite. So I would find that- What kind of seed oils are you eating? I only associate seed oils with like processed foods. Are you adding canola oil? So if there was any kind of like oils are you eating? I only associate seed oils with processed foods. Are you adding canola oil? So if there was any kind of like, if there was, no, for a while I was using pumpkin seed oil, which was an interesting one. And then on a ketogenic diet, when you start getting into the processed foods. So that's what I was doing.

So there's also different variables there. Like with the processed foods, you've got some are cooked in canola oil and stuff like that. So I went through a couple of different experiments with that. And there's obviously variables there. If you've got- Sunflower oil, high oleic sunflower oil. Yeah, exactly. Which is an interesting one because the high oleic is kind of a wolf in sheep's clothing in some ways.

I'm not anti-seed oil, to be honest. I think that there's a lot there that we could unpack, but I'm not one of these guys that goes around saying avoid seed oils. The epidemiological that, yeah, if you're eating seed oils, you're kind of, you're eating processed food, right? Yeah, generally speaking. Yeah, exactly. It's hard to disentangle that. A lot of the keto foods are, yeah, high oleic sunflower oil.

They've moved away from a lot of the canola oils and things like that. But I mean, I think even Catalina Crunch, right? I think that's pretty sure that's sunflower oil. So that's, but that's never been a huge monumental piece of my diet. That being said, um, yeah, I mean, I've always kind of tried to balance it out quite a bit and I don't consider like oils that are coming from almonds or cashews or whatnot. I don't consider those seed oils, right. I mean, those are, I guess technically they're going to make a six seed oil to some people, but I consider them a pretty decent, healthy polyunsaturated fat. So with that, I always felt pretty good with the fats and it would be really hard for me to say, I'm going to get 300 grams of fat coming from

like nuts, right? That's just not exactly in my playbook. Sour cream was my go-to. Like I would just get my macros and figure out like, this is what I have to achieve. And by the end of the day, I didn't hit it. So I would have, I would buy the big, like four pound containers of, uh, from, from Walmart of sour cream. And I would just have like two or three cups of cake, like, and I would just pick up 150 sour cream, but then I would just have like two or three cups of cake. And I would just pick up 150 sour cream, but then I would add like chocolate collagen powder to it or cocoa powder. Or then I would add usually-

That's delicious. Yeah, some wild blueberries to it and cinnamon and a pinch of stevia and stir it up. And then that would be like my nighttime keto mousse that I would have. That sounds really good. Yeah, it's delicious.

I'm telling you. Bulgarian yogurt's another one that's almost like sour cream in a way. Have you had Bulgarian yogurt? Yeah. Yeah, it sounds amazing. I mean, it's such higher fat content. What's your diet look like currently? Because you're super lean right now and you've,

you've been lean for a long time, but you've gotten leaner. It looks like you're ready for a bodybuilder. I probably, I probably need to look. His skin is like tissue paper thin. I have a, I have a hard, hard time like making this concern. Yeah. You're way leaner than when, yeah, no, it's like, I feel like when I'm this lean, I feel it in my joints. I feel it. Um, it's, and like, I feel like when I'm this lean, I feel it in my joints. I feel it. Um, which is interesting because we all kind of know that when you're super lean, it probably isn't, you know, my estradiol is like undetectable, you know, it's like, and that would make sense that that affects the joints. But I was like trying to assemble a lot of research to try to, I actually wanted to do a video on it. And I'm like, what is that kind of the threshold? Like when you're in, how long

at being a certain, there's actually not a lot of data to pull because when you start looking at the literature for like, well, what is too lean? Almost all the research out there in that category is looking at relatively short term or looking at people that were overweight and got lean. So almost everything is glowing beneficial data when I'm like, I guess he's good luck finding the cohort that's going to like be like, okay, this person has been 5% body fat for X amount of time. So it's all kind of drawing inference and like connecting dots and try to, but I can speak from experience that when I, every time I'm lean, anyone that's ever stepped on a bodybuilding stage or who knows that they don't feel great when they're that lean,

right. And then you try to maintain that for a long period of time. It takes a toll on you. But you're not really trying to maintain it. Right. I mean, you're so busy. I'm not trying to. Yeah. And then your diet is such that it prevents you from overeating. So you're probably just struggling to meet your caloric needs, but you're not like orthorexic, right? Like you're not like weighing things out right like you're not like weighing things out like i'm not a big fan of macro counting and like because i think that's you know i mean you can do it it teaches you like yeah you're good but you're not doing that at all like you're not counting you're not you're not trying to be in a deficit but you are probably just by virtue of the

types of foods that you're eating and your dietary pattern, your macronutrient pattern. You know how they say you can't out-train a bad diet? Yeah. I think I'm out-training a good diet, right? Like I feel like I already have a good diet, which in and of itself makes it hard for me to really overeat. And then my training volume is pretty high. So without sitting here making a concerted effort to maybe add some olive oil to my diet to get more calories, just by default, I'm going to be in this deficit for a long time. And then I also just feel really good when I fast on certain days. So I fast a couple days a week for 18 hours or so, which maybe I should take those days and increase my calories. So, uh, you know, just in the last couple of weeks, I'm kind of like, okay, if I want my recovery to be better, I need to make

this concerted effort to like actually eat more. And it was Tommy wood that had kind of told me, he's like, eat as much as you can in the way of whole foods, just as much as you can until you gain a pound of fat. And then that's how, you know, you need to reel it back. Then you just reel it back a tiny bit. That's how, how he kind of suggested finding that balance. Um, so I started doing that like, I don't know, a month ago or so, like, anyway, I just got freaking leaner, you know? So I started like increasing my calories and just like, I had more energy. So then I just worked out more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, well, all right, I guess I don't know what I need to do then. Not, I mean, it's a, it sounds like it sounds like a first world problem to have in that sense.

Yeah, people just got really mad. Well, that's, I mean, he just gave us the secret and Tren and Glenn, of course, but yeah. Just a little bit of that, a little bit of BPC 157, a little bit of, you know. Do you use that? Because you had reached out to me, I think when I tore my shoulder.

I'm keeping that as a tool that I haven't used yet. It's supposed to be fucking confidential, Don. What is he doing? He's releasing these emails on our podcast. No, peptides have been interesting for me. I've, you know, like a decade ago, I had played with like ipamirelin and stuff like that, like a couple of these peptides. And it just seemed like I didn't really get much out of them. But now,

but I'd never even heard of BPC one five seven. And then now a lot of people are talking about it. And Dr. Kyle Gillette, who's my, he's my doctor. Yeah. He,

he was just a speaker at metabolic health. He's awesome. He gave an, he gave an mind. He's literally my doctor. After I, I saw him on Huberman and then I had him come out on my channel. We filmed a bunch of videos. And then I had him come out on my channel,

we filmed a bunch of videos. And then I'm just like, damn, I was like, I'm going to hire you. I want you as my doctor. So he's helped me a ton with the peptide stuff because he takes a very conservative approach. And getting it from legitimate places, not just these research sites where you could be getting whatever, who knows. The BPC one five seven. I had,

I don't know what it was with my shoulder. I couldn't tell you what it was, but it was, you know, going on six, seven weeks of, you know, couldn't bench,

couldn't do anything kind of the typical front, front weird peck minor type thing. And the MRI said what I didn't even do an MRI on it. It was just, you know, I knew enough to know that this was sucks. I couldn't, couldn't venture,

couldn't train chest for six, seven weeks. I'm like BPC, like the risk profile was exceptionally low. I couldn't, couldn't venture, couldn't train chest for six, seven weeks. I'm like BPC, like the risk profile was exceptionally low and, uh, like, okay, do a shot every, I think it was every three days, uh, for 20 days or something like that. I stopped taking it after nine days cause it completely healed up. Like it was pretty, pretty ridiculous. So anecdotally, I had great experience. Had you tried PRP before? Only on my face. Oh, really?

Yeah. You ever done? If they do like a microneedling and they'll do PRP on your face. Yeah. Wow. Just like, oh, I heard it for like your hair. It can make your hair grow. Right?

Yeah. I don't know. Did it do anything good to your face? I have a beard now. There you go. Oh. Oh, okay. I thought you were serious for a second

no this was like a couple years ago that I had PRP on my face but no I haven't done PRP because you have to put a lot in then yeah they take they draw quite a bit

and they you know spin it and then they're swelled up well no they're like so what they do with PRP on your face so like have you ever done

microneedling done where they like take like this oh I do it to my head yeah yourself I do like the microneedle to my they like take like this? Oh, I do it to my head. Yeah. Like yourself? I do like the microneedle to my head and then I put my head on the red light. Okay. So like it made my hair grow.

So like with like, like a Dremel? No, I bought product called hair heads and it's got, it's like a mix of different things. And it came with a little round microneedle thing. So I just go like this and I put it in. Yeah. And then you can feel it and then i i put that stuff on it and then i go in the red light and i do all that stuff and use nice oral shampoo and stuff like that i think i think it works how major was your like hair loss

before you started doing that like what did it look like did you ever see a hairline i go back yeah yeah i go back maybe like 10 years ago and Or before I started doing this, I was like, I definitely had less hair. I started maybe in my late 20s thinning, and then my dad and my brother. I mean, it's kind of in the family, but it has not really led to significant growth. But what it did is basically doing this, if I shake my head in the sink, no hair comes out. Whereas 10 years ago, when I was not using these topical things and shake my head, I would see hair. So I think it's basically just keeping the

hair follicle healthy. I think the red light's really working. They say if you can see the follicles, there's some hope that you can grow some of it back. But if they don't exist anymore, then I don't think there's anything you can do. I think the early intervention stuff.

Do you think the red light on my face can help my beard come in a little thicker and not be kind of this creepy thing? Your beard looks great. What's creepy about it? I don't think beards are creepy. I think it's the mustache. Mustache by itself can be creepy.

I feel like I'm in that gray area where it's just, it's not really a beard yet. And I just look like a, like a prepubescent boy that's trying to grow in. Like, so it's like, when do I draw the line? You just shave it off for what's bad. Okay. Okay. Okay. So like, do you think the red light is actually, I mean, do you think it's going to help with

face fur too or just head? Well, for collagen production, I i mean it penetrates the skin up to like two centimeters you know 80 of it and then it's stimulating the mitochondria to increase blood flow it's releasing nitric oxide stimulating cytochrome c especially if you use the red light with like infrared do and i think all those modalities you know there's not a whole lot of information i think uh there's good information on wound healing so when our dogs were attacked and they had pretty significant wounds i brought our dogs up and i did my red light therapy with the dogs and they like healed and i mean dogs are

so resilient anyway but i think it's really good for the skin for wound healing it's actually been really beneficial for me yeah it's like it's approved for that. Yeah. Yeah. You're probably wondering why am I wearing these glasses? Well, it's because I'm being bathed in blue light and blue light isn't necessarily bad. There's blue light in the sun, but if you're in your office, if you're indoors, if you're in front of a screen during the daytime, it's not a great idea to have your eyes being bathed by blue light all day long. That's why EMR Tech, a company that we've partnered with, has blue light daytime glasses and blue light blocking evening glasses. These glasses right here are meant for you to wear

during the daytime when you're in front of screens, et cetera. But if you're outside, take the glasses off and get the natural sunlight. And if you're at home in the evening when sun sets and you need to be in front of the TV or you need to be in front of your computer or on your phone, these glasses are the ones to get. They also have the best red light therapy devices

on the market. If you stand in front of any of EMR Tech's red light therapy devices, you will actually feel how much stronger the output of the red light is on those devices versus any of the competitors. They also have some of their smaller red light devices like their Fire Wave, Fire Dragon, and Fire Storm.

And then if you want to get some of their bigger panels, they have their Fire Hawk, which is their biggest panel, and the Inferno panel. These are literally the best red light therapy devices on the market. And if you want to save on them, Andrew, how can they do that? Yes, you got to head over to emrtech.com.

That's E-M-R-T-E-C-T-E-K.com. And check out Enter Promo Code Power Project to save 20% off your entire order. Again, that's emrtech.com promo code power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. What do you think about like synapsin peptide? Are you familiar with it?

It's a, it's a methylcobalamin nicotinamide ribose peptide nasal spray. And I've, it's supposedly used in TBIs and that it's, but it's also, um, supposed to be good if you're like brain foggy, I've used it at Kyle prescribed me some, and I've kind of messed around with it on. He tried, he said, you know, use it if you're super brain foggy. So I've used it on a couple of days when I'm just really sleep deprived and then, you know, kids were awake or whatever. Um, and. And again, I never know psychosomatically

like if I'm convincing myself that it's working, but I'll tell you, man, it was like, wow. Okay. My brain fog was within 20 minutes, kind of lifted noticeable effect. And the only stuff that I can find out there really is a couple of dodgy papers and you know, Reddit stuff, you know, but I don't know if you know much about it. No, but now you piqued my interest, so I'm going to go down the rabbit hole tonight. Or Samax and Solank, some of those. Have you heard of those as well?

Yep, I don't know enough about them to talk, but if you tell me the active ingredients, I can kind of give you the rationale. Yeah, Samax or Solank, I don't know. But yeah, the synapsin is, yeah, nicotinamide, ribose, methylcobalamin. Okay. Yeah, I think that's it.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. And I guess it has like a transdermal carrier too. I guess, you know, you can, whatever you shoot up into your nose, even like insulin, you know, they have intranasal kind of insulin spray and that can help facilitate metabolic activity in the brain. facilitate metabolic activity in the brain. It's being used because the blood vessels are very close to the surface and they tend to, you can absorb a lot of things, even like peptides and stuff, transdermally and transnasally. What do you guys think of that study that came out recently where they were talking about the amount of protein that you can absorb? You and I were talking about it a little bit on a run. I found that to be interesting because I think previously

some of the data or some of the information that people would kind of always kick around that if you have more than 30 grams in a meal, that it's like a waste and all these different kinds of things. I think we all knew that empirically or anecdotally, but I think they just validated something a lot of guys already knew. But yeah, I think getting it all in one bolus is just not optimal. I think spreading it out in at least two meals would probably be, uh, ideal, but what we know we don't have to do is actually eat six to eight meals a day, which I did when I was younger, even wake up in the middle of the night, drink a slam of metrics with like half of a rotisserie chicken and go back to bed. Like militant bulk. like half of a rotisserie chicken and go back to bed. Like, I mean, this is- I think it worked.

Militant bulk. It was always my concern with the people that would do OMAD, like one meal a day. Yeah, yeah. That was kind of my concern. It was like, are you, you know, cause they would try to sit down and get 150 grams of protein in a meal.

That's what dads do tonight. And I would have some trepidation as to whether to think they were gonna really absorb all of that. So this gave me a little bit of peace with that because there's been a lot of times where I've been fasting and I've only had time to get one meal and I'm like, all right, I'm just going to town. I'm going to just wolf as much down as I can and get 200 grams of protein in and hope for the best. And I actually would wake up feeling great. Like it wasn't doing anything

bad. Um, the one thing that was kind of interesting, I wanted your opinion on this. So there's, yeah, it was nutrients. I think it was, yeah, December, 2023. I mean, and just to give context for people that don't know what the paper looked like, um, it wasn't, I think it was only 46 subjects, but they, um, they, I soap labeled the aminos, right? So like basically they would give them, they had them work out. They gave them a 25 gram bolus of protein or a 100 gram bolus of protein. It was milk protein, which implies that it's, it's way in case and predominantly case and probably 80% case. And then they, you know, kind of monitored where the aminos went. What they found is like the aminos quote unquote disappeared from the bloodstream. And that's, so at first kind of

like, okay, well, did they oxidize? What happened? But then when they actually labeled them, they saw that it was, leucine was going into the muscle, which is exactly what we want, right? But the caveat that people kind of missed with that, which is a very important piece, was that the 100-gram bolus, the absorption was over the course of 12 hours. So it wasn't like they finished a workout, slammed 100 grams of whey protein,

and had an immediate absorption of 100 grams of protein. They had slow-digesting protein that absorbed over the course of 12 hours. My wonder is if— And that would be expected. I mean, you go and eat like two pounds of meat, you got the meat burps for like six to eight hours, right? You wake up in the morning, sometimes it like beeping burping like meat so but i wonder what would happen if a good day if someone had 100 grams of you know whey isolate or something yeah where it's in a liquid form yeah you know where it's

gonna absorb fast then how much we utilize i would love to see that yeah well the liver is pretty greedy so it'll take up like a lot of amino acids and then titrate it into circulation like as you need it. But like with one bolus, you kind of get this postprandial rise in leucine that would kick on the some might argue would be like, I mean, this is kind of goes back to the work of Donald, Donald Lehman and what Lane actually studied and stuff too. So, but if you're just eating one meal, you don't get that rise. Although if you're eating multiple meals throughout the day, then you become refractory to those relative changes in leucine and almost like anabolic resistance over time. So I think the happy medium is somewhere between two to four meals per day, is my understanding. You never actually answered my question earlier.

I'm pretty upset about it. What are you eating? Where did we end up going with that? I don't know. You just shrugged it off and started talking about you're getting more ripped more food you eat well actually you guys the internet you guys kind of commandeered that one because i think dom went off his tissue paper thing or whatever uh generally speaking uh get up green tea first thing in the morning uh so it's or i'd

say maybe half an hour after i get up i just get like a large thing of green tea first thing in the morning. Uh, so it's, or I'd say maybe a half an hour after I get up, I just get like a large thing of green tea. Um, go train almost always train fast for coffee. You don't, I mean, before water, you just drink tea. Uh, no, I mean, I might, it depends on how thirsty I am. A lot of times I will pound like a, you know, a liter of water or something. Um, but yeah, then it's, you know, it's probably 60 milligrams of caffeine worth of green tea. And then it's, you know, it's probably 60 milligrams of caffeine worth of green tea. And then, um, go to the gym workout or run almost always fasted. At least for my first workout, if I'm doing two a days, it's always at least the first one, um, post-workout usually 25 grams of like a way isolate or a way concentrate.

Sometimes one of your blowed out the ass steak shakes. So I like the promotion of that. That's great. You too can blow it out the ass. All you gotta do is sign up and get our steak shake. No, but seriously, I will. And then you'll blow it out your ass. We've been podcasting for a long time today, so bear with us. we've been podcasting for a long time today so bear with us and then usually another 40 to 60 grams of protein from like a lean ground beef generally like a 96 lean so that's kind of what my post-workout looks like it's usually a shake plus beef um you know sometimes a little bit, sometimes I'll do eggs for breakfast. It all depends, but I'm, I still believe that if after I'm training, I like to have the leaner protein as much as I can, just because it just feels right. It feels weird kind of going really high fat right after my

workout. So sometimes I'll do that. And then maybe an hour or 90 minutes later, I'll have a few eggs. So it's like, I just get that out of it. And then kind of, if I'm hungry enough, then I'll add some eggs afterwards. Otherwise my egg breakfast, if I go that route, it'll be like four whole eggs plus an additional, maybe three whites. Usually some smoked salmon, something like that. Maybe a handful of blueberries, maybe half a cup to three quarters of a cup of blueberries. Kind of lightish on the carbs. Yeah. Almost, almost always in the morning.

I just, if I have carbs in the morning, it's just doesn't really feel good. Yeah. If I'm going to, if I am going to have carbs, they're almost always consolidated to the evening time. I will do some post-workout carbs if it's like a long run. But even then we're talking like a half of a red potato and some fruit, you know, it's like something pretty precise. Um, man, my diet's really pretty boring. It's nothing that exciting. Like lunchtime, it might be like a pound of ground chicken, you know, lean ground chicken

along with maybe a drizzle of olive oil on it. Maybe some more fruit. Um, sometimes I can see why you're not gaining weight. That's a pound of chicken though it's not like you know and then i'm eating so it's just like chicken though yeah well you have fairly lean sources of protein yeah but have you ever had like higher fat ground chicken it tastes like fucking shit like that's exactly why i have it yeah no like no you trust me you want the like but the 99 lean ground chicken is awful like the it's just like the 99 lean you got to go in between yeah you got to get that little bit of fat but like super like poultry fat in ground form does not taste good it's not like beef fat when it's like

good it's just it's gross and it's just like it's not like 97 it tastes like you know after you wash your dog and it's like wet dog dog smell? Yeah. It's that. Tastes like that smell. Yeah. No, it's not good. So then if I do have carbs in the afternoon with that, that's when I might have maybe a six-ounce sweet potato. And I'll sometimes put, depending on how active I am, I might put a tablespoon of honey on it. That's where I might get a little bit of my bulk of my carbs might be with that.

Then mid-afternoon, I might have a couple of chopsticks or something like that. Then dinner time, that's if I'm going to stack up the carbs more, they're going to be consolidated there more. Dinner is a mixed bag. You know, it's usually whatever my wife's making. And she eats pretty low carb too. So a lot of times it's like three nights a week we do this like Mexican skillet thing. Like Trader Joe's has these bags of Mexican cauliflower rice. You know what i'm talking about yeah it's got like the bell peppers and stuff mixed into it so we'll do like a bag of that and then there's the there's like a cotija

cheese that trader joe's has they have one that has like uh like an elote corn that's got we don't really eat a lot of the corn but we like the seasoning pack that comes with it so well i started i started laughing so yeah but before that i was like growing up we did not have one plate of cauliflower or anything yeah being mexican so i was just playing around right you don't even look mexican I actually get that a lot I get a ton of that I thought you were like Slovenian or something yeah I get a lot of like random no I mean not that I mean I don't know how random

that is but like yeah when I tell people I'm Mexican they're like what? Yugoslavian yeah when the kings were hot and Peja Stojakovic was like in town that's what I got a lot of. They're like, Oh, we thought you were whatever he is. Yeah.

That makes a lot of sense. So then anyways, with that. And then like, you know, like for the, for my wife and I and the kids will eat like a small amount of it. So we might do like a pound and a half of like ground beef or ground

chicken with that too. Right. So, and then it like makes a really delicious, like then we'll use maybe like two siate tortillas, you know, like the, either the cassava or the almond ones. I mean, so that's a pretty caloric meal when you actually think about it like that right there is probably a thousand calories for me. So sometimes, you know, that's a little too much. Sometimes it's like tilted where I'm probably eating too much in the evening time, but if it's a busy day,

this is how it stacks. So, I mean, I eat that like three times a week. So, I mean, a lot of my diet is like the same repeat kind of stuff. A lot of sardines, a lot of mackerel. If you were to ask me the carb sources that I typically eat, it's like, I can definitely count them on one hand. Like it's not anything exciting. It's blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, sweet potato, red potato red potato some honey so maybe like six things yeah not much i mean but if you ask sean baker steak yeah that would have been like yeah yeah yeah i don't but yeah i mean you have a good diversity of things so i think that that would be interesting to see like your nutrient profile

in response to like someone who's strict carnivore, you know, uh, cause you're getting a diversity of what you would call almost like an optimal ketogenic diet. Although it's probably a little bit lower in fat, but you're getting a lot of phytonutrients you're getting, you know? Yeah. And that's, I guess that's the other thing I add is like, and people are going to just flame me for this, but like, you know, the, because it's plastic and it's also microwavable, but Trader Joe's has those, you know, those microwavable asparagus and Brussels sprouts that they have. They're just convenient.

I know it's better for me to put it in a skillet. And a lot of times I do, don't get me wrong, but like those four minutes I've got like steamed asparagus. So I'll take that. And then I will put like a tablespoon of coconut oil on that and a whopping bunch of tablespoons of nutritional yeast and mix it all up. If you've never tried that, please don't buy all my like nutritional yeast. And cause sometimes I do those videos and then like the things I like are what is the apple cider vinegar that you always talk about? So that, no, I'll totally mess around with that Where's the apple cider vinegar that you always talk about? No, I'll totally mess around with that. So apple cider vinegar,

I actually started using, I concocted my own pre-workout and that actually was a big part of it. There's like thousands of videos to you talking about apple cider vinegar. Yeah. Or at least they just pop up. So I started, you got me onto it. No, I love that stuff. I mean, as far as blood sugar is concerned, there's

clear impacts with it. So there's no denying that. But I created a, I did a video on just the sourness of apple cider vinegar has this kind of stimulation effect. So I kind of started making my own pre-workout where I would take like beta alanine. I'd take some citrulline. I would take my green tea and my apple cider vinegar, and I'd just kind of make my own concoction with it. And that was like my horrible tasting pre-workout. I think just the taste alone. Got you ready. Works like an ammonia cap. So I think you should do a video on apple cider vinegar for alcohol withdrawal syndrome because that's associated with acetate. So when we drink, so that's what acetic acid will

break down to acetate. So I this theory that uh apple cider vinegar could be uh you know something that one could use for uh of course you know you need to formulate it in a way that you can consume enough of it but um but if you just take a like 12 ounce can of tuna fish chunk like tuna drain the water out and put apple cider vinegar in you can get like 50 milliliters of apple cider vinegar in that and stir it up and then eat the tuna. It makes it much more palatable. There's only like six people in the world that would probably do that. You and I are two of them. You know, yeah, I think it's, well, I used to do it with balsamic vinegar, but then I had apple cider vinegar and I started doing it with that.

Yeah. The, uh, cause I've, I've done videos talking about the, uh, the acetate apple cider vinegar and how it essentially is, you know, like when you're fasting, it can effectively, for all intents and purposes, I mean, on paper, it kind of puts you deeper into a fast because you're kind of having that acetate that's kind of activating that. But I didn't think about it from the same context as we were talking about with like Dr. Chris Palmer and like the acetate for the mitochondria as far as alcohol withdrawal. I think the reducing glucose has to do with whenever you increase the acidity of your stomach. So if you add it to food, when you increase or decrease the pH of your stomach, increase the

acidity, that chyme has to be neutralized before it goes through the pyloric sphincter to the duodenum, right? So you have to basically dump out bicarb. So it delays, the high acidity delays gastric absorption. So it reduces the entrance of food into the small intestine where you'd get that, which would cause a bigger glycemic response. So I think of a lot of the blood glucose lowering effects of acetic acid or apple cider vinegar is due to just

increasing the acidity in the stomach, which needs to be compensated for by your pancreas releasing and dumping bicarb in that to neutralize the pH. So it's kind of, that's my theory, but I don't think, you know, but the response is real. And I think that's important. Exactly. Like even when you combine it with carbs or there's like, it's like if a drug did that, it would be a blockbuster drug. Yeah. Right. So,

yeah. I appreciate you guys so much for doing five hours of podcasting with us today. Really awesome. Thank you guys. Thanks for having us. I wouldn't be able to do it if it wasn't for ketones. That's right.

We would have crapped out at three. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.