Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 490 - Keto Bodybuilder Robert Sikes

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

Robert Sikes is the “Keto Savage”. Robert is the creator and founder of KetoSavage.com, and is the host of the Keto Savage Podcast & YouTube Channel. Robert is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, and coaching athletes and everyday people to help them become keto adapted and live their best life. He is also the creator of the Keto Brick. A delicious Keto Snack that is shelf stable, high in energy providing calories, and perfect for those following a keto diet, athletes and other high performers, and outdoor enthusiasts. It is the performance brick compared to the snack bar. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

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You can put it in, like, a big gallon jug and drink that all day long like some awesome bodybuilders do. Or you can just, you know, know put in a shaker cup the way i do really you can't go wrong um check out the value bundles because that really is where like where it's at the value is in the value bundle because you get three boxes and they'll send you one absolutely free or if you're not ready to fully commit check out that recharge pack again that's at drink lmnt.com slash powerproject. All they ask is that you cover shipping. Get over there right now. What up Power Project crew? This is Josh Settleage, aka Settlegate, here to introduce you to our next guest, Robert the Keto Savage Sykes. Robert Sykes is the Keto Savage. Robert is the creator and founder of ketosavage.com

and is the host of the Keto Savage podcast and YouTube channel. His YouTube channel features him vlogging about his keto lifestyle, cooking demos, and his own personal training. Robert is a lifetime natural bodybuilder and coaches athletes and everyday people to help them become more keto adapted and to live their best life. Robert is also the creator of one of our favorite snacks, the Keto Brick, a delicious keto snack that is shelf-stable, high in energy, providing calories, and perfect for those following a ketogenic diet, as well as athletes and other high performers and outdoor enthusiasts. It is the performance of brick compared to the typical snack bar. the typical snack bar. On top of that, Robert and his wife, Crystal, have also created a no oatmeal recipe that is essentially oatmeal without the oats. But that's a different story. Maybe one that we'll hear on this episode of The Power Project. Please enjoy this conversation

with Robert Sykes. Like paralyzes you for a moment. It sucks how that happens. Oh my God. Yo, dude. Okay. So my dog will sometimes he'll have a ball are we are we live well uh we're we're on live but we're recording oh we're recording okay so he'll sometimes he'll have a ball right and he'll want me to play some tug of war or bring it towards me so i was sitting on the couch and i was just chilling in my shorts and he brings it he like puts it on like my my dick area i'm like okay but then he's like he opens his mouth to like bite it again i'm like oh shit no he's done that multiple times where i think he almost bit my dick and it is it is a very scary experience i think uh i think pets

and kids have like dick radar because anything they throw or anything they swing back at you it always hits you right in the dick and a dog whenever it like jumps up on you it always hits you right in the dick or if you're sitting down and it jumps on you it like presses its paws all over your dick so that's that's the issue that we have and your dogs are probably pretty heavy dude so like the the biggest one and he's the one that jumps the most and he will jump on you. Uh-huh. Yeah, same thing I'm just like dude like you're you have to be aiming directly For my junk like you got GPS on this shit Wants to cause you a little bit of pain they can smell your wee-wee. That's what it is. They definitely can I Need to bathe more than I guess just stinky

So your nuts from a mile away That's actually how they know When you're home Smells like nuts I think that would be inconvenient To be able to smell The way that a dog could smell That would be horrible

Just think you sometimes get someone's breath You sometimes get someone's BO And there's all these different Things we try to have for our house to make it smell nice and shit like that probably driving you crazy absolutely he's so disrespectful when we go out oh my god that's why sometimes it's hard to go out to stores and have good manners he will go up to woman's butts oh yeah all the time he'll just be like just jams his face jams his face and asses and i'm just like oh i'm sorry oh it's okay you're like hey buddy you find something that you like well they do say it a lot of times a dog mimics its owner quite a bit

i don't be doing that i've heard people say that about their like some people are like yeah you know they they have a certain breed and they're like my dog is so stupid and then someone else will like that knows about dogs are like that breed pretty much just mimics like the owner I'm like oh shit okay I didn't know that

it is funny how like the like the pets will start to resemble their owners yeah I don't know if you remember on a photo shoot there was a lady walking like some some dog and they both they looked alike and you're like i don't want to be mean but no we were all thinking it though yeah you see that a lot like like i don't know if people purposely get dogs that they feel like them or dogs start looking like the owners but you do see that in public like yeah like wow they really look alike sometimes in a good way sometimes they're not so

good yeah here we go oh here we go oh keto brick what's up what's up keto savage how you doing this morning how y'all doing i'm doing dandy how are y'all oh i didn't know we had a beautiful accent going on over here. This is amazing. Oh, yeah, man. I'm from Arkansas. What'd you expect? Andrew, can you contact our translator? Hey, man, thanks.

You can do one of those for sure. Thank you so much for sending out product to us. We appreciate what you did with the Keto Brick. Congratulations on it. I happen to love the product. I know these guys enjoy it too. What led you to make the Keto Brick? Because it's extremely unconventional.

You know, you see these little protein bars and, you know, they're trying to have 180 calories and 20 grams of protein and no carbs. And, you know, they're trying to fulfill a certain macronutrient and have very low calories. But you made a fucking brick and the brick has a thousand calories in it. It just seems so counterintuitive. Why are you trying to fuck everything up so much over there? I'm a disruptor, man. I don't mess around. I just, for me, I made it during my 2017 competition prep and I needed something to hit the macros properly, gave me the right ketogenic macronutrient ratios and just made meal prep easy. So for me, having something that was a solid thousand

calories, had the right profile, just made my life easier. So I kind of made it out of my own need to scratch my own itch basically. And then like when you were, it sounds like you and your wife work on this business somewhat together. Is that right? Yeah. So I met her when I moved up to Washington state and you know, I was bodybuilding prior to that. Um, she was working as a barista in the coffee stand and you know, I made this brick from our competition prep, never planned on making it into a product that was sold, but we were documenting my prep on YouTube. I just started like putting content out there and people kept messaging for, you know, what is this thing? What can I get it?

What can I buy it? How do I make it? And I just, you know, kind of wrote it off. And then my mom was probably my only YouTube subscriber at the time. It's like, man, you got to start making these things. People want them. So Crystal dug into what it takes to have like a, you know, health code up to date and everything. And we started diving into the physical product world and the rest is history, man. We started making these things.

Damn. How do you make a keto brick? Because that thing is like a weapon as well. It's hard. Yeah, it's a literal brick. Yeah, people will ship it out to like northern states when it's in the middle of the wintertime. It's a legit frozen solid brick, and they try biting into it thinking it's like a Quest bar or something. And we got sent out a disclaimer saying,

let it come to room temp before you try to eat this thing. Right. But there's a lot to it. I mean, it's a pretty simple process to make them but but we've been making them for a long time now we just keep make making new flavors coming out with more and kind of tweaking things as we go so you said you kind of needed a certain macronutrient uh requirement like how did you stumble upon you know uh like the cacao butter and the combination, like what made you think that and go there? Well, the macro profile was basically just my need for making the right ratios for my competition prep.

You know, I was during 2017, that was my first prep doing a ketogenic protocol. So I was doing the high fat, moderate protein, low to no carb. So it just made sense to find something in that ratio. And most like the fat bombs out there they're gonna they're gonna use like a coconut oil base so they're gonna melt at room temperature didn't want that obviously cacao butter's got a really high melting point so that seemed like a really solid base plus it's got the stearic acid in there as the primary fat source so it's you know more easily absorbed and assimilated by the body. And then people that like buy the keto brick, what are most people looking for as far as the amount of calories in it? Like what type of,

you know, what type of consumers generally trying to get and use the keto brick? Man, it's honestly gone all over the board. You know what? I made it as a, as a natural body builder. So I'm, I kind of marketed initially in that niche. I mean, all of my branding online is, is, you know, keto savage. So it's kind of like the, the bodybuilder power lifting style theme, but you know, keto itself is really popular amongst the middle-aged women demographics. There was a bunch of middle-aged women buying these bricks. Um, they wouldn't slam a whole brick at a time like I do, but they'll cut it up into pieces at a portion. And now they'll melt them into little fat ball molds and make little smaller portion sizes. But

honestly, it's been appealing to all different kinds of demographics. A lot of people in the backpacking community are, you know, hunters, campers. They like it because it's self-stable and it's pretty dense. So it works out well for them, too. That's cool because I never even thought about that. Like it tastes really good on its own, but I wasn't I guess I'm not smart enough to figure out that that shit can be used in recipes. You can put that stuff in hot coffee. It's like, there's a lot of different uses for it,

but I just bite into it all the time. That's what I do. I don't mess around. I just eat a whole one a day and call it good. But yeah, we've, I mean, people will make recipes out of it. They'll use it as a base for other, other things. So it's pretty versatile in that regard for sure. When you were doing your bodybuilding prep and some of the other shows that you've done, have you done a ketogenic diet the whole way through? Or like what has been your preparation? Because that's unconventional as well. Most of the time we see people utilizing some complex carbohydrates going into a bodybuilding show.

Yeah. So that's that's kind of where I like my approach. I mean, when I started bodybuilding, I was a junior in high school. I was 115 pounds. I was tiny and I started bodybuilding, I was a junior in high school. I was 115 pounds. I was tiny. And I was following traditional bro-diving approaches. You know, I did, you know, six, seven minutes a day. I'd have, you know, the high carbs, carried Tupperware around me everywhere I went. And I would do that. And I bulked up. I did the whole dirty bulk from my first prep. I bulked up to 230. And I'm only 5'7", so I was pretty beefy, 230. 30 and I'm only five seven. So I was pretty beefy two 30. Um, and then I leaned down for my first show. I gave myself 12 weeks to do it. Um, and I lost like 80 pounds in 12 weeks and I just kind of really developed some negative eating disorders. Relationships with food was just not good. Um, so from there I knew there had to be a better way and I'd done several preps kind of following that protocol. And then I stumbled into keto by accident. Uh, when it started before it really

was popular. I mean, there was like, I think, you know, Jimmy Moore had a podcast on it at the time. I think Tim Ferriss had Dom D'Agostino one. Um, and that was the first place I heard about it. There wasn't really any books or literature on the topic. So I started playing around with that. I started doing John Kiefer's carb backloading protocol, um, when it was released way back in 2014 or 15, I want to say. Um, and it was basically keto during the day and then carbs at night. But I noticed that I felt better without the carbs. So I just started phasing those out. I did carb backloading without the carbs.

And that just really worked for me. I was able to perform on the gym. I had no inflammation. I was able to train more frequently. And then from there, I kind of just fine-tuned it and figured out what ratios and macro manipulations work best for my body. And then 2017 was my prep. I did the keto all the way through peak week prep and the off season.

And, you know, I got my pro card that year and I've since just kept it keto ever since. You know, I'm really curious about this because, OK, so, you know, a lot of guys when they're prepping and they do very low fat towards the end of their prep, you'll get a lot of guys that start saying, yo, yo, my libido has gone to, to, to, into the gutter. Um, like even for myself, my libido was down. I was attracted to food more than the person I was with at the time. Like I had, like, it was bad. And after, even after prep, it took a while for me to get that back and start feeling normal. Now for you, since you were like doing keto and you were probably more moderate to high fat, did you have less of those effects? Cause what I've, what I've noticed when people talk

about that, um, when they do higher fat on prep is they don't feel all of those like low fat issues that typically happen. And I think you'd have a really interesting perspective since you've prepped on, you know, doing normal, you know, type of prep, low fat, moderate carb, and you've prepped on keto. It's I mean, I'm never going to go back to a traditional prep having done it this way, because I mean, when you take your calories that low, you're going to have some dip in hormone performance. That's just kind of comes the territory of natural bodybuilding. But I got blood work done pre and post throughout the entire journey. And my numbers were much more stable with the high fat. I mean, when you when you strip the layers back and look at it, I mean, the precursor to testosterone is cholesterol. And if you're taking a high fat ketogenic diet, you're going to have more of that by default in your system.

Yeah. So my numbers did dip a little bit towards the end, but they stayed stable relatively throughout the entire prep for the most part. I mean, there was not near the downside effect. There was not that zombie effect towards the end that a lot of people struggle with, which in turn made the reverse that much more sustainable as well and have near the repercussions that a lot of people in the natural bodybuilding world face when they're coming out of a deficit like that. Do you cut back on the amount of fat that you consume a little bit as you get to be like a month out from the show? Yeah, I cut total calories, you know, throughout. So my fat is titrating down, but I make protein my most manipulated variable. So this is this is pretty controversial within the keto space itself, but especially in traditional mainstream dieting.

But I'll take my protein down very low for a very finite period of time. I mean, I don't want to be pegged as the guy that advocates low protein because a lot of people aren't consuming enough protein. But during that last little bit, I'll take protein down pretty low. Like during my 2017 prep, I think I had, my protein was down to 65 grams the last couple of weeks, 65 grams a day, which is very, very low by most people's standards. But that's for a very finite period of time. I traditionally will titrate protein up.

And then as I hit my protein threshold, I'll start taking both protein and fat down. Um, so that protein ratio will be decreasing, but, uh, yeah, my fat ratio is always North of, uh, you know, 75% of my calories, especially there towards the end. I honestly love people like you, because you're discovering stuff that like, you know, Walter Longo with the fast like mimicking diet and there's Dave Asprey and there's other people that basically say, if you pretty much only consume fat, your body does barely recognizes that as a meal. And that's a little bit of what you were doing, even though it's a short period of time, because it sounds to me like you're predominantly eating fat for that bodybuilding prep. And there was a really low

amount of protein. Yeah. So there's a lot of things that I kind of just, you know, because when I started doing keto, there was not any literature out on the topic that would any podcast or media. So I just kind of, you know, playing around and seeing what worked. And for me, having the high fat ratio helps a lot. So I'll typically start a prep and this is where I'll start my client set to, I'll start with like 80% of their calories coming from fat. And for me, having the high fat ratio helps a lot. So I'll typically start a prep, and this is where I'll start my client set too. I'll start with like 80% of their calories coming from fat. And then if the primary goal is to lose body fat, I'll start dropping protein. I'll start dropping fat down gradually, increasing protein to figure out what that threshold is. And then once we hit that threshold, I'll start dropping both protein and fat. Carbs are

constantly low. I mean, typically I'll be at 10 or 15, sometimes 20 grams of total carbs is it. And that's total carbs, not net carbs. So that's always low. But then towards the end, like that last month, you know, we started incorporating ketogenic refeeds, especially they're close to peak week. So we'll start bumping up calories for those refeed days. But I mean, for the most part, it's very, very contrary to what's most traditional prep protocols are suggesting. So, yeah. What, like, can you explain the reasoning for the low, the periods of very low protein? Cause you know, most people, when they look at prep, they, they'd want to keep the protein high to help with maintaining muscles.

So like, what's the, what does that help with? Cause maybe, maybe there's something that's like being missed there or that i'm missing yeah so uh so in the keto space itself there's a there's a there's multiple different sides of ways of looking at things but a lot of people suggest that hey if you're can if you have a lot of body fat to lose then you want to consume very minimal dietary fat because you want your body to tap into its own stored you know adipose tissue and that sounds really appealing you know it makes sense at first glance. But what I've found in just experimenting over the years

is that the more dietary fat you have, your body, and that's what your primary fuel source is when you're keto, it's not carbs or glucose. So if you have a pretty good ratio of dietary fat, your body's efficiency at using fat in its totality is gonna be significantly enhanced. And that includes your stored fat. So when you're titrating total calories down as you are in a prep and fat ratio is staying high,

your body becomes hyper-focused and sensitive to efficiently using fat as the primary fuel source. And a lot of people, they're going to see an increase in ketones during that time because the dietary fat is high and they're in such a fat burning mode because of the decrease in calories. So their ketone bodies are ramping up. Like, you know, I'm typically measuring, I've measured 7 millimolar towards the end of a prep and those are very muscle sparing. So when my calories are low in the context of the high ketone bodies, because my, my protein is lower, which also kind of enhances that ketone production, my ability to, you know, maintain the muscle and the link tissue I've built

up to that point is enhanced significantly, even in the context of very low dietary protein intake. Yeah, the ketones are protein sparing, they're anti catabolic, and there's a bunch of other things that happen in the system that help you stay anti catabolic. I was just kind of estimating that you maybe would have like 100 grams of fat, but you must have had more than that. Maybe like 200 grams of fat and then 65 grams of protein, something like that. Yeah, yeah. So I think I'm at the reach back memory banks here, but I want to say my total caloric intake at the very end of my 2017 prep was about 1600 calories, I want to say, at the lowest. So, yeah, I think it was, I don't know what that pencil is out to be, but it's 65 grams protein there at the very end.

And then it was definitely over 100 grams of fat. Yeah, it'd be like 200, around 200 grams of fat. That sounds accurate. And then it's really interesting. That's an interesting way to keep your calories really low. Yeah, yeah. And in the context of those really low protein numbers, I am incorporating a weekly refeed, which is going to have a much higher protein intake, which kind of shunts any of

the negative effects of the lower protein overall. So it makes it more sustainable. Did you, when you were starting and you did keto back in 2017 for your prep, I don't know if you mentioned what spurred that, because again, like I know that there's a lot of people doing keto, but there weren't that many people doing keto in the bodybuilding space. Like that's a space where people are just like, no, that's just not a good idea. So was there anyone that you were paying attention to that was doing keto while competing and you're like, I want to try that out? Or what really got you moving in that direction at that time? So I started keto, you know, in 2015, I want to say 2014, 2015.

I did a prep in 2012. And then I prepped in 2014. And then after that's when I did that carb backloading protocol. And then from there, I just felt much better without the carbs. So pretty much from 2015 on, I've been strict keto. And then I decided that, Hey, you know, I want to try to do this with a prep as well, because at the gym I was training at the time, you know, everybody was looking at me like I was crazy, you know, not having the carbs, but my performance wasn't hindered at all. I was hitting PRS on a regular basis and my, my inflammation was down. So I'm like, well, I'm going to try and do a prep with this as well and just see what happens. Um, and there wasn't anybody at the time that had done a

prep following a ketogenic approach that I was aware of. So I just kind of started pulling levers and figured out what worked. Um, but it wasn't really, I wasn't looking at anybody as inspiration or even, you know, information as to how to do this. I just kind of honestly trial and error to figure out what worked for me. Yeah. And then your off season, I'm curious about this because a lot of people, they'll do like very low carb or keto when they're prepping, but in their off season, they'll bring back a moderate amount of carbs or something. But are you also fully keto in the off season too? And how do you, cause like you're trying to gain muscle, right? So how do you navigate all of that while in the context of, I want to put some muscle on? So it's, it's strange that the belief that you can't build muscle on a keto diet has gained as

much momentum as it has, cause it's just not the case. Uh, so yeah, I've been strict keto since 2015. So six years now. Um, and I haven't had any issue putting on muscle. I continue to look bigger and fuller every time I lean down. Uh, so I haven't had any issues in that regard. The main thing has just been to be in a caloric surplus for a long enough period of time while implementing progressive overload with the training. You know, so many people, they do a cut every six months or they lean down for the summertime. And as a natural bodybuilder, and you can attest to this too, I mean, it's just not really effective because you spend, you know, 20 weeks, 22 weeks in a prep. That's, you know, pretty good portion of the

year right there. And then it takes several months to reverse back to maintenance. And then to have any ample time and a surplus to build any lean tissue, you got to take an off season that's oftentimes, you know, two years long. So if you're doing that and you're checking all those boxes, then you can have the right, you could have a well-formed ketogenic diet. And as long as you're implementing that progressive overload, you're going to see increase in muscle tissue. You said that you're on a, you've been on a keto diet for the last six years. Can you define that for us? What's that mean to you? Cause I know there's a little wiggle room within the keto diet for everybody. There's not a whole lot of wiggle room by my definition. I mean, I stay strict keto. I don't do this, the carb ups. I don't do the cyclical

or the targeted keto. I mean, my definition of keto is basically one in which, you know, everything that I consume in a day-to-day basis is designed to optimize my ketogenic performance. So there's not like a lot of people view keto as simply being a metabolic state, which is true by the purest definition of the word. But with that comes a lot of, you know, shades of gray because you can have, you know, some people, especially athletes can take in more carbs while still being in a metabolically keto state. However, I'm not eating rice because I can get away with it. I'm not eating rice simply because it's not conducive to being the best ketogenic athlete I can be. I mean, like most things in life, the more you practice it, the more consistently you're doing it, the better your body or mind's going to be able to get at it.

So for me, I've been able to just adopt that philosophy towards my nutrition. About like sugar alcohols and things like that. You have any foods like that? You have any keto treats? I mean, I know you got your keto brick, but that my understanding is that has all that doesn't have sugar alcohols in it and stuff like that, you have any keto treats? I mean, I know you got your keto brick, but that, um, my understanding is that has all that doesn't have sugar alcohols in it and stuff like that, right? Yeah. There's no sugar alcohols in the brick, just stevia and monk fruit, depending on the flavor. Um, I'll incorporate some, you know, sugar alcohols on occasion. That's not as concerning to me. I try and steer clear of it on the most part, but like, for instance, you know, special occasions I'll have like a keto cheesecake or something like we made keto cheesecake for my wedding. I'll have that and not think twice about it, but I'll not have a regular cheesecake, you know, I'll have legitimate keto cheesecake.

That way I'm not kind of learned the lines. Now, as far as protein is concerned in the off season, how does that, how does that change for you? Because again, like when it comes to people that are strict, like individuals that are really strict keto, they keep their protein levels at a certain place. It's fairly low. Do you also do that, too, even in the off season when you're trying to gain? How does that look? I'll increase everything. I'll increase not carbs.

I'll increase, you know, protein and fat macros. A lot of people, when they're in a surplus, they will see a significant dip in ketone production because by definition, I mean, ketones are kind of there for being in a sense of scarcity. When you're in a surplus, you're going to have a down regulation of your ketone bodies and your blood. However, if my protein and fat is where I'm getting my fuel and not the carbs, I'm not worried about that indicating that I'm any less fat adapted. I'm just simply not producing as much, you know, ketone bodies. So my protein, I mean, in the off season, like I am right now, I think my protein is probably up around, you know, 200 grams, sometimes 225 grams. And I'm weighing in about, you know, 180 right

now. So still pretty solid protein intake. Now my ketones aren't that high, but I'm fine with that because I'm not, I'm not taking any carbs and I feel great. So I'm still fat adapted. What do you think is the most misunderstood thing about keto? Because we have a lot of people in the flexible dieting community and a lot of people in other communities that are like, keto is bullshit, it doesn't work. What do you think? To me, it's usually just education.

Maybe somebody's not that educated on it. But what do you think is maybe some of the bigger misconceptions out there about a ketogenic diet? I think a lot of people view it, I mean, mainstream media doesn't do us any favors when it comes to how we need to view things. I mean, they're always painting keto as the diet to lose a quick 10 pounds versus all just water weight when you're losing it that fast anyways. You know, I think it needs to be painted into the light of more of a lifestyle protocol. Like I said, I've been doing it for six years now. And when you view it that way, it becomes much more sustainable and you don't look for ways to get out of it.

And nowadays, with as popular as keto has been, I mean, there's like a keto alternative for everything you could possibly desire. So I'm not really worried about not having options. People are worried about not having options. There's options everywhere. People just like making excuses. What about flexible dieters or just anybody that tracks macros? have an option there's options everywhere people just like making excuses what about um you know like flexible flexible dieters or just anybody that tracks macros you know they'll they'll tell you often it's calories in calories out there's no magic in keto or just in in a diet period

um so when they see a ketogenic diet they're like well it's a lot of fat fat accumulator accounts for a lot of calories therefore it's probably not going to work for everybody because there is no magic in just a high fat diet but i mean man you're having like some amazing success like your physiques like you look great so what do you have like to say to those people that kind of like they want to crap on the ketogenic diet because they're like, no, it's just calories in, calories out? So it's interesting because the calorie equation questions a really hot topic in the keto space too. And you've got people that are suggesting that it's all hormone based and calories don't matter within the keto space. And I've been screaming from the rooftops from day one that calories absolutely matter. I mean, that's just sheer ignorance on their part, in my opinion.

Now, hormones matter too. And I do feel like if you've got a properly implemented ketogenic diet, your hormones are gonna be much more stable, as I kind of illustrated when I did my prep and my testosterone didn't tank like it had in previous years with a traditional, you know, flexible dieting approach. The quality of the food you're consuming should be placed at a paramount. I mean, you should really focus on that. And there is definitely dirty keto in which people are just eating all kinds of shit and getting away with it. But I encourage people to really focus and prioritize the quality of their nutrition.

And if you're doing that with a well implemented ketogenic diet and you are taking calories into consideration, like when I'm doing a cut, I'm constantly taking calories into consideration. I'm constantly dropping calories. I wouldn't be able to just say it's all hormone and not manipulate my macros and expect to get as lean as I do during a prep. So calories absolutely count. And the flexible dieting community has a lot of good insight to offer in that. I feel like if people just put their heads together on both sides and join forces, we'd probably make a lot more progress as opposed to just hitting our head against the wall. You know, you made it really simple when you were talking about bulking on a

ketogenic diet, because it's like, I mean, it's with any type of diet where you're trying to bulk, you have to be in a caloric surplus and you have to train a progressive overload over time. Right. Um, I know that a lot of individuals who are trying to like be low carb or maybe be keto while doing this are curious about not like specific macros or anything like that, but maybe the protocols for going about it. Because I would assume like a guy that's taking out carbs and that that's going to try this out, they'll be initially concerned because maybe they're not feeling as much of a pump when they're working out. Maybe they're feeling a little bit drained. So there's obviously an adaptation period. But if you were to guide somebody through this process of trying to bulk on extremely low carb or keto, what would be some of the big things that they should take into account while doing this so that their performance doesn't tank so that they can actually make progress doing that?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, when you're in a surplus, your ability to absorb the nutrients you're consuming is absolutely paramount. So if you're consuming a lot of processed food and you're eating right before you go to sleep and you're breaking all the rules in that regard, your body's not going to fully be able to tap into and assimilate the food that you already eat. You're going to get some GI distress, you're not going to feel optimal and you're going to probably gravitate towards more of a maintenance intake. And carbs are easier to process and more quickly processed than fat. So once you become fat adapted,

and there's a big, you know, once you become a statement there, because it doesn't take just 24 hours to become fat adapted. You can start producing ketones in a short amount of time, but it takes a long time to truly tap into that and become efficient at it. So once you do that and through that, you kind of figure out, you need to increase your electrolyte intake, your sodium, your potassium.

That's where the pump's going to come from. So if you're taking in the proper macronutrient ratio and your electrolytes are in check and you're taking in enough water, you're not going to have any issues getting a pump. I mean, the best pumps I've ever had have been on a ketogenic diet. So that shouldn't be a concern there. The main thing is finding foods that you know your body can tolerate well at a surplus, and it's not giving you any kind of digestive upset.

And if you go strictly from eating a heavily processed carbohydrate-dependent diet to a surplus in fats, you're probably going to have a lag time there in your body being able to assimilate that fat. So maybe starting at more of a deficit or maintenance and then kind of titrating calories up as you become fat adapted, it's going to work better for most people. You said earlier 80 pounds, you lost 80 pounds in like 12 weeks. That wasn't good. Don't recommend it.

Yeah. What did you learn from that experience and what do you try to share with people that are really eager to lose weight that you may help help out? I mean, I did everything wrong when I did that first prep. That was my first prep. I was in junior. I was a sophomore in college, I believe. And I was eating, you know, six, seven meals a day. I didn't give myself enough time to do a cut. And I had this weird, like delusional outlook towards how lean I was to begin. I mean, I was two and 30 pounds, like set at five, seven. I thought I was jacked. And the reality was I was just fat. You know, I was strong, but I wasn't healthy. And when I started cutting down, I gave

myself 12 weeks to do it because that's what all the bodybuilding magazines said, you know, 12 week cut protocol. So I'm going through this and I'm just cutting calories, cutting calories, training like a madman, you know, three hours a day. I'd spend, I'd spend all my time on the damn stair master machine. And I was, I was really struggling with obsessive compulsive disorder that time, OCD. And it was like, like, it was just, it was dark. I was depressed for sure. And I would go to the gym, you know, sleep deprived, hadn't studied for exams and just trying to make the most of life. And this OCD would start, you know, sleep deprived, hadn't studied for exams and just trying to make the most of life. And this OCD would start, you know, talking to my mind and I'd have all this negative,

you know, visualization going on in the gym. And I just killed myself. I cut down calories, probably sub 1000 at several points throughout the process. And I lost all that, that weight and I got super shredded and actually won my division in that show. But then because of that, you know, we're going to have to eat that night, you know, celebratory meal after a show, went out to Red Lobster and I ate freaking everything. I ate everything in a big way. I woke up the next day, 24 pounds heavier, looked in the mirror, flip shit. I'm like, man, what did I just do? I just threw away the last 12 weeks of my life for nothing. And that's when I really started spiraling out of control downhill with the eating disorders. And that's when I knew something had to change. Like that, that kind of plagued me for several years thereafter, but that was really and truly

the catalyst as to me finding a more sustainable approach to nutrition. You mentioned eating disorders. I mean, like, okay, so, so from there, what type of eating disorders formed and what is it that kind of, how did you get out of that? Yeah. So the, when I first did that, when I went from being really lean or really fat to really lean, you know, that was the first time in my life where I committed myself wholeheartedly to a cause and saw massive success with it. You know, like I had never done a show before. That was kind of like my identity was fitness at the time. And I poured myself into it and it worked. You know, I looked the part. I got the, you know, competition trophy.

I did everything I set out to do. But then once I totally threw it all away seemingly with that cheat meal and then put on all that water weight, like it really screwed with my head. And I kind of lost my identity. And for me, the eating disorders were, it was kind of a combination of just constantly binging and purging. And like after that specific day, I felt so poorly, both mentally and physically that I just pretty much went on a three day fast

and all I had was six cans of tuna during that time. And I wasn't fat adapted, so it was just not healthy, you know? And then after that, I'm like, okay, I've lost all the water weights and I can eat it again. I'm super hungry. So I'd go and binge again. It just became this negative feedback loop of where I'm binging and purging. And that went on for, for years, honestly. And nobody, like I didn't know anybody in the bodybuilding space that time.

So like my parents didn't have a clue what I was talking about. Like you can't tell your dad who's never struggled with eating disorders that I'm struggling with eating disorders and him expect to know what I'm talking about. So I didn't have anybody to kind of turn to. So I just started playing around with different protocol. That's why I was stumbled upon the carb backloading by John Kiefer that seemed to work really well because it played into that, you know, just basically binge all you want at the end of the day with those high glycemic index carbs. And if you structure it like he that, you know, just basically binge all you want at the end of the day with those high glycemic index carbs. And if you structure it like he suggested, you kind of mitigate the adverse effects.

So that kind of worked well with where I was at that chapter in my life. But I knew that that in itself wasn't really optimal from a health standpoint, at least not for me. So that's kind of when I started playing around with keto. And that I think it kind of worked from a psychological effect and that I was excited about something new and different that seemed to be, you know, getting me to the next day. But also from a physical standpoint, because I do feel like it provided some stabilization in my hormones. I wasn't having the crazy blood sugar spikes and insulin spikes as a result of all the heavily processed carbohydrates. So it allowed me to kind of get enough ahead and make some momentum to see things differently and make a more sustainable approach.

You mentioned being depressed, you know, while you're going to the gym and losing weight and doing all these things. Do you think that depression kind of settled in because you were just going way too hard and way too fast towards your goal? And there was like maybe too much restriction. There was really not like pulled all the joy,

like losing weight can be like joyful. It can be fun. It's like, I'm heading towards my goal. This feels great. Just like gaining strength. In your case, was it just a fact that you were maybe too restricted? Yeah, there was the restriction

definitely played a part for sure. But like simultaneously as all this is going on, you know, like I was going to school for business and I had always aspired to be a successful entrepreneur and a businessman. And I hadn't seen any success in that part of my life yet. And, you know, I had tried all different kinds of business endeavors and nothing panned out. At one point, I dug myself down a quarter million dollars in debt, had all kinds of credit card debt. And I was just in a super dark place in that regard, too. So that combined with the fact that I was just, you know, threw away the one identity I had with the fitness space just really kind of put me over the edge. And that's what made it a very dark place for me. So crawling out of that hill, out of that hole was difficult, but it kind of built the foundations to where I am now. And I wouldn't have done any different if I could. In terms of dirty keto, because I'm curious about this, you know,

a lot of people, when they think about flexible dieting, you know, what dirty flexible dieting is because you see it all over the, you see it all over the place with Instagram. People like to fit these foods in and it's not, you know, you shouldn't be doing that. But when people are thinking about dirty keto, they might not even know what that is or what foods are dirty you know like eating a bunch of bacon that's keto right so so like what what does dirty keto look like so dirty keto is basically it's kind of similar to flexible dining and that all in in like hundred percent the emphasis is placed on the macronutrient profile so like you know it can have the right macros from a fat standpoint very minimal carbs so i mean you

can go to mcdonald's and get the burgers without the bun but it's not really taking into account the quality of that beef it's not really taking into account what types of oils or fats that was cooked in it's not taking into account any of the polyunsaturated fats or anything like that which is just not optimal like you're sitting yourself in the foot basically to try and hit the macros properly, but you're not putting any emphasis on the quality of the foods you're consuming. So for me, you know, placing that emphasis on, you know, where the food's sourced and there's like, you know, keto 1.0 to keto 5.0, depends on how deep you want to go down the rabbit hole. But, you know, in a perfect world, you're getting some organ meats in, you're getting some,

you're eating kind of more of a nose tail approach or you're focusing on the sourcing of those foods. You're cooking it in foods that are, you know, represent the ketogenic diet well and aren't going to be plaguing you with a bunch of polyunsaturated fats. It takes a bit more work and it's a little bit more expensive to do that. And for some people that are just, you know, addicted to carbs, that's probably not where they want to start. You know, maybe dirty keto for them to start, it makes a lot more sense. It kind of bridges the gap. It's a good stepping stone, so to speak.

But it's all just a matter of how far you want to take things. Do you personally eat vegetables or fruit? I don't eat fruit. I'll occasionally have – I mean, people eat berries. My wife, Crystal, still has some berries from time to time. I do eat vegetables on occasion. We're going to start the whole homesteading chapter of our life here soon. We'll start growing our own vegetables and all that good jazz.

So I'll probably eat more vegetables then, but I personally don't crave a ton of vegetables. I don't think you're missing out a ton in life by not having a bunch of vegetables if you've got everything else properly implemented. You've got multiple different trains of thought in that regard you have some people saying you have to have you know eight cups of veggies a day you got some people saying just strict carnivore veggies are you know the plague um i'm probably somewhere in the middle i mean if i'm not going to frown upon people that are eating a salad i'll eat one on occasion and not think twice about it but i don't feel like

it's necessarily you know improving my performance by any means. For just like the everyday person that is going to hop on the ketogenic diet, they'll probably do some research and then they'll see that it's high fat, low protein, low carbs. But should a person go out of their way to try to limit their protein intake? Generally speaking, no. You know, there's some people that do a super high protein version of keto and they'll have significantly more protein than fat. And I would caution against that. Of course, it all kind of depends on what their overall caloric intake is. People need to be metabolically sound and have a good caloric baseline to begin with.

Some people that are chronically under eating in the first place, they're trying to keep their protein down even lower. That's not really a good place to go. down even lower, that's not really a good place to go. But for an average person that's healthy, you know, has a good, healthy functioning metabolism, then they don't need to necessarily concern themselves with under consuming protein. I mean, like I said, I was, I'm consuming 200 grams of protein easy right now, and I weigh less than 200 pounds. So a lot of people, that's a pretty healthy protein intake, even on traditional dieting protocol. So you don't want to steer clear of eating enough protein. But honestly, the best way to do it is just kind of trial and error, self-experimentation, figure out what ratios make them feel optimal. It does stand to reason that if you're taking a pretty high fat ratio, your body is going to become more efficient at using fat, which may kind of streamline the process of getting fat adapted in the first place.

So maybe having lower protein in the beginning and then titrating that up to figure out what ratio you feel best at would be good. But yeah, I definitely caution people against under consuming protein. You know, you mentioned earlier the binging and purging thing. And I'm curious, first off, like what kind of foods you binge on? But then also, did you find that, you know, when you switch to keto and you obviously like got better food choices into your diet, um, do you still ever feel those cravings that you felt before or did your diet change help you out with those types of cravings? Yeah. So as far as when I was binging and purging, man, there's, there's a couple different, um, you know, bragging rights, I guess, but I'm not really proud of them. I walked into IHOP one day, one day and I ordered one of

every single thing on the menu and I ate it all. Nice. You know, I mean, my IHOP bill is pretty staggering. I got one. I mean, they make lots of different pancakes and IHOP and I had every single one of them. So I don't recommend that. And it's crazy because I put down this food. I mean, you've done, you've done press before, you know what it's like to totally destroy your leptin and ghrelin hormones and have no concept of satiety. The funny thing is, if you did that in Arkansas and ordered one of everything on the menu, the guy before you probably did the same thing. Man, these Arkansas jokes are coming in hot today. Yeah, not bad, right?

Not bad. You didn't know I was a comedian on the side. Choo-choo, man. But yeah, so it was just obviously not healthy, not sustainable, not something I would recommend for anybody. Nowadays, like I'll do a prep and I'll, I mean, my left hand ground will be a little skewed from that because I'll be coming out of a deficit. And I'll have cravings, but not necessarily for carbs at all. Like I'll never crave carbs. I'll never binge on carbs. But I'll binge on, or not really binge.

I'll just know that I need to kind of like rein it in a little bit. I've got a lot more control now post-prep. And it's not, I mean, keto probably has a massive part in that. But honestly, just simply having gone through several preps now and just gaining more perspective as a bodybuilder has helped a lot with that as well. I mean, you know how terribly you feel if you totally go off the rails. So you want to mitigate that going forward and you kind of have more self control, more self-discipline. Um, so that's been super healthy, but yeah,

I do think not having the crazy blood sugar spikes and insulin spikes has helped make that much more sustainable. And I don't really crave, like we were going grocery shopping the other day, we were walking right through the bakery aisle and I used to not allow myself to walk through the bakery aisle because it was just too tempting. Now it does nothing for me. Like I don't care. I'm not, I'm not smelling the roses. I'm not smelling the pies and everything and reaching for them. Like it doesn't, doesn't do anything for me. You know, over, over here, like, um, I heard you talk about when you're bulking,

right. On keto electrolytes make it so much easier to get a pump. And like, we do a lot of fasting here and electrolytes were the game changer for me in terms of my performance when I'm on the mats in the gym, like I don't need a lot of carbohydrates like I used to think I did. So electrolytes are obviously a tool that are very, very, very beneficial. But what other tools do you use that you find like, hey, if people add this into their protocol, as far as keto is concerned, their protocol, as far as fasting is concerned, it could be that thing that really shifts the way that they're able to perform. Is there anything else that you use that you think people would be able to get something from? From a fasting standpoint, I mean, mainly it is the hydration and the electrolytes.

I mean, the longest fast I've ever done is five and a half days. And I was doing electrolytes then. And I was training throughout that entire five and a half days. I was doing electrolytes then. I was training throughout that entire five and a half days. I was actually hitting PRs throughout that entire time. It was all just proper hydration and electrolytes. Some of the bouillon cubes, like the salt bouillon cubes, is kind of nice because you can put that in some water. It's like you're drinking a broth,

but there's not really caloric intake there, so it kind of tricks your mind in that regard. That's been kind of helpful from a fasting standpoint. But from like a building standpoint, I mean, I may be a little biased and, you know, take my hat off to the keto brick there, but getting a thousand calories is a little bit easy when you got a brick in your hand. So, yeah, I mean, just honestly finding foods that you know your body responds well to and not creating any GI distress. Like right now, I'm at about 3,500, 3,600 calories a day, which is pretty good intake for me. And I'm to the point where it's like, I don't look

forward to the meals because I'm just full. So I've been doing a lot of like super full fat yogurt and I'll put like a collagen protein powder or something there. I don't ever really use protein powders unless I'm at this point in a building phase where it's just, I need something easy to get the calories in. So I'll do that mixing with the yogurt. And that's a pretty good way to get the calories in. It doesn't really cause any GI distress for me. Today's episode of the podcast is brought to you by Piedmontese Beef.

And Seema, can you tell me what you had for dinner last night? You know what I'm going to definitely tell you and you're going to enjoy it? You'll enjoy it. But I want to quickly mention the holidays are coming so uh pete montes is a really awesome company that if you have a company that has maybe 20 to 500 employees what better gift to give them than the gift of pete montes beef nice pete montes they they partner with companies and they make it easy to help give your employees really healthy meat options as a gift so check that out now in terms of what i had for dinner you know certain people really think that ground beef is like the most i guess boring type of beef

but the thing about the piedmontese 85 15 is that it's just so good so i legit just made that up had some cheese ate the whole pack it was amazing i i, you, I can never go wrong with any cut of beef or especially the ground beef that, uh, that comes from Piedmontese. For more information, please head over to piedmontese.com. That's P I E D M O N T E S E.com at checkout. Enter promo code power project for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 more, you get free two day shipping. Can you explain a little bit of what keto does?

Like what does it do when we diminish the amount of carbohydrates and we start to have a more balanced insulin and glucose levels and we bring the fats up and we engage in a keto diet for a while, what is it actually doing for us? Yeah, I mean, it's basic foundational sense of the word. You're basically changing your body's primary fuel source from carbs and glucose to fat and ketones. So like typically people would have a high fat, high carb, high sugar diet, and they'll have all kinds of crazy numbers because they've got this fat circulating in their bloodstream, but their body doesn't know what to do with it. When you switch over to keto, your body knows exactly what to do with it. it. When you switch over to keto, your body knows exactly what to do with it. So you're just much more efficient at using the fats you consume and also using your stored body fat. So for me, some tangible differences that I noticed right off the bat was that you flush out a lot of water weight, first of all, so you don't have that super thick subcutaneous layer of fluffiness to your skin, which is a plus. I mean, my skin is much thinner, which really is appealing on show day,

peak week, because you want that really thin look. Um, but you also just have less water retention in general. And then your inflammation goes down. Like my ability to squat, uh, more frequently since going keto has been a pretty tangible difference. And the biggest one's probably honestly my, my mental acuity and just energy throughout the day. Like I'll, I'll fast, uh, throughout the morning hours, I'll have much more productivity because I'm not a slave to having to eat every couple of hours. I don't think about food throughout the day. I just, I just get work done. And then when it's time to eat, I eat, eat a big old steak or something like that and call it good. Um, so just honestly more productivity throughout the day has been the most tangible difference

that I've seen from, from it. And then, you know, you're mentioning right now that you're bulking. You're not, um, you, you gotta eat even though you're not feeling hungry. So for a lot of guys that are trying to put on muscle or that are trying to bulk, cause you, you keep it, you know, pretty good body composition as you're bulking. Um, how, how important do you think, uh, that is? Cause a lot of guys aren't willing to like eat well some people are willing to stuff their face but eating every single day and not really wanting to eat because you're not actually that hungry is that common for you or is it just like certain times during the bulking period that that happens it's interesting man i'd be curious to get your take on this too but it's like um you know when you're doing a prep for instance when're in a deficit, you've got to push points past that point of, of, you know, discomfort, like you're hungry

and you got to just have the discipline to keep going even when you're hungry in order to get that freakishly level of leanness that you can't, I mean, that's not a natural level of lean that you have to push past that discomfort. And it stands to reason in my mind that the same would be true in a building phase. Like you, I mean, if you're just gravitating towards maintenance, then you're probably not going to see as much lean mass gain as you could potentially see. Whereas if you're, I'm not suggesting people just like force feed themselves and become slobs. But I mean, it stands to reason there's gonna be a little bit of discomfort on the opposite end of the spectrum as well. So getting those calories in, even when you don't necessarily want it, is going to be a great way to ensure that you're not leaving anything on the table. So I feel like that is important. No, I'd agree too. Like when I was bulking, I ended up getting up to like 276, 277.

It was work to eat, but also I wasn't, I don't think that I was doing it in the, I wouldn't eat a crazy amount of bad food, but I would have foods that made it easy. So your keto brick was my Ben and Jerry's, right? Had a lot of calories. I could shove that in real quick. And it's like I had to do a lot of that because I couldn't eat all of it from a whole food. There was a lot of just uncomfortable eating. But I also didn't like the way I felt. So yeah, I like the way you're doing it more.

And there's a lot of people, don't get me wrong, that they bulk up. Like my first prep, you know, when I bulked up 230, I was delusional and thinking that I had to get that big in order to put on as much lean mass as possible. And yeah, you get different leverage points. Like when you're super heavy, you can move some more weight in certain regards. But like at the end of the day, I feel like being sustainable and being healthy overall is so, so key. And for me now, I'm like I said, eating 3600 calories probably.

And I'm probably at about, you know, 15, 16 percent body fat right now. But I still have I still have cuts in my quads. I still have all my visible abs. I mean, I still have vascularity like I still feel good. And then when I lean down, I'll get down to sub five percent body fat. But it's sustainable for me all the way through, like at no point during the cutting or building phase, I feel like I'm on the verge of jumping off a cliff. And I feel like, you know, that's been a huge thing for me because, you know, in the past when I would get sloppy big in the off season, it's like, you have to work so hard to lose that body fat that you start cutting into your lean tissue

quite a bit in order to make, you know, weight or get lean enough to be competitive on stage. Whereas with keto, especially, and you probably just with without keto too, but for me, it's really worked with keto is that I don't put on near as much just unnecessary fat in the off season. So when I lean down, it's not near as just drastic. You mentioned earlier, uh, having, you know, seven millimolars of ketones and, uh, do you track stuff pretty regularly? And do you suggest for some people that maybe haven't had success before on a ketogenic diet to even like, I guess, quote unquote, like chase ketones? Is it important to like register like a high amount of ketones on one of these ketone meter

things? You don't want to be a slave to it. You know, a lot of people, it's kind of similar to the scale, you know, like people become a slave to the scale and that's their make or break as to what they measure success on. And that's not good to do with the scale.

It's not good to do with ketone readings. But similar to the scale, you can use it as a tool in your arsenal to kind of figure out what your body's doing and why. So I'll use the ketone readings a lot and the glucose readings a lot when I'm titrating protein up, for instance, in a prep to see where that protein threshold is, because as my protein goes higher, my ketones will dip a little bit more and my glucose starts to rise. So I kind of figure out where that tipping point for me is.

But to just simply say, okay, I've got high ketones, I'm doing this right, everything else is a wash is not really a good way to look at it. And it's kind of I mean, it just defeats the purpose of it. I'm all for treating a prep or treating a building phase or just life in general, treating it like a scientific experiment in the sense that I want to figure out, you know, what my body is doing, what what variables I can manipulate, what levers I can pull it really optimized for my goal. But, you know, having that type of analytical outlook on it is not the most sustainable thing for a lot of people. Having that type of analytical outlook on it is not the most sustainable thing for a lot of people. So a lot of people would benefit from more of an intuitive approach, but it's good to have that knowledge kind of as a foundational baseline before they just go full on intuitive. Now, actually, speaking on the whole idea of being intuitive, do you currently like every day, do you track and make sure that you're hitting that caloric goal? Like, do you use a scale with everything you're doing currently as you're bulking? Or do you mix an intuitive eating along with that

since you've tracked for so long? I'm a lot more lax in the off season when it comes to, I mean, I know that I'm hitting that north 3,500 calories on a daily basis just because I've tracked for so long and know what food I'm consuming is. When I'm in a prep, I track everything. I meal prep everything. I leave nothing to chance when I'm in a prep, I track everything. I meal prep everything.

I leave nothing to chance when I'm in a prep. In a bulking phase, I'm a lot more lax with it because it makes it more sustainable. That's another thing too. A lot of people, they never go all in on any one thing. They're always kind of half-assed and everything and they never really see the goal. But for me, having a super strict cutting protocol

is much more sustainable because I'm coming out of a period of a much more lax building protocol from a tracking standpoint. So it makes being super regimented with tracking during a deficit much, much easier because it's a finite period of my life. It gets you prepared for it. Yeah, totally. What about cooking? You know, I think I think this is like a hidden attribute for some people that have successfully lost weight. I mean, I'm sure there's ways of doing it without cooking, but it seems like most of the people that I know that are able to lose weight and keep it off, they end up figuring out good ways to cook food in ways that they really enjoy. So for yourself, has that changed a lot too?

Have you kind of learned how to prepare stuff a little bit better? Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm pretty boring in the kitchen. I'm not saying like I've got a recipe section on the website that we're revamping, but I like keeping things super simple. Like I'm a, I'm a man of simple taste. Uh, so I've got, I got a Traeger grill that is a pretty mean reverse here. I'll throw some steaks on there and do that. And that's a pretty good way, uh the boxes there. Crystal is more so the chef of the family. I cook all the meats. She'll cook everything else. So she uses all the fancy cooking techniques and the vegetables. And anytime we do a baked keto good, she does that. With me, it's honestly keeping it pretty simple. I'll do the ground beef. I'll do the steaks. I'll do things of that nature. I'll get a little bit more

explorative with barbecue and stuff like that. But I'm not a chef by any stretch of the imagination. Probably before you, you know, hopped into this diet, though, you probably, you know, maybe just didn't really even know how to cook a steak that well. Like I think, I think it's a very problematic for people because they think that they have to have foods that don't taste that good when they're on a diet. How, how do the foods taste that you eat on a daily basis on a scale of one to 10? Like how do you, how much do you enjoy them? Oh, I freaking love them. I mean, and your palate changes too, you know, like your palate changes when you're, when you become keto as well. I mean, like the first time y'all probably had a brick before you really become fat adapted,

probably this is not sweet at all. It's kind of gross, you know, but your palate changes as you get more fat adapted. So for me, like I used to, like when I started, I was making all the keto treats. I was making, you know, I was going keto recipe books for a dime a dozen. I'd make all the different recipes. Nowadays, it's just like, you know, I know what I like.

I stick to what I like. I know it fuels me well. I know my body tolerates it well. So I don't really need as much variety. Some changes actually that I'm curious about yourself is, I want to know if you've noticed this with yourself and maybe with other people, um, maybe the first time you did your prep, right? Uh, did you have lines in your legs? Like did, because what I've noticed is that when people probably prep after prep, after prep, their body composition changes and gets more even. And I want like when they gain body fat back. So that's, you see a lot of bodybuilders that are deep in and when they're

15, 16% body fat like yourself, they still have abs and they still have lines, their legs, and they still look like they're really good shape. And I'm thinking that's because of like all the cutting and bulking and the reorganizing of fat when they gain it back. Did you notice that with yourself? Yeah, so my first show, I stepped on stage at, I think, 153. And that's when I had gone like sub-1,000 calories. So I was pretty flat. And once I started really flexing on stage, everything started popping and the graininess and the vascularity was there. But I was super, super flat in the beginning.

And I probably lost a lot of that definition. I definitely lost a lot of that definition as I bulked up now, especially since, you know, being keto for the six years and a half or so, I don't hold as much water weight, like I was saying earlier. So I've got more definition just kind of, you know, throughout the day and day. But yeah, I think you're 100% right in that, you know, as you cycle through these building and cutting phases, you have more muscle maturity. The fat distribution is placed a little bit more efficiently throughout the whole body. Um, you know, typical males, I mean, you get more fat in your, in your ass and in your lower abdomen, lower back and area. Uh, but yeah, I mean, I still have the abs and the

vascular and everything throughout most of my body and I'm at a good healthy body fat percentage that I feel like, you know, it's, it's, it's sustainable. I don't feel super sloppy. All my clothes still feel like before I'd had like a freaking cutting wardrobe and a bulking wardrobe, which is just inefficient. You know, now I've got all my clothes fit year round, which is a plus. What got you into bodybuilding anyway, when you started? Man, I was, like I said, I was 115 pounds when I was a junior in high school. And I was just, I lacked confidence. I lacked, you know, any self-identity or self-worth. And my uncle at the time, still my uncle now, obviously, but he was big into like football. He ran track and he kind of was the more fits person in the family.

Nobody else in the family worked out. And like he was more outgoing. He was just more, you know, boisterous and just more fun loving. And I kind of wanted to emulate that. So he had a bunch of dumbbells and everything. And he showed me how to use a, you know, dumbbells and how to make you do a dumbbell curl, stuff like that. And then I just started going in the rabbit hole of like bodybuilding as a sport, sort of watching all the YouTube videos. Like I never had a coach or anything. I'd watch YouTube videos of how to do these certain movements. And, you know, we live way out in the country. Uh, when I was in high school and I didn't have access to a gym,

I didn't have a vehicle to get me to a gym that was reliable enough to get me there. So I made, I made all these weights out of pieces of steel and tractor equipment that we had laying around the shop. And I was using what I could find that I did that for the first year and a half of working out. So that's what I was built on as a foundational base. And then since then, I just fell in love with the sport. That's pretty cool. What's the deal with your oatless oatmeal? Oatless oatmeal. So the note meal, man, you like go on the website and see that.

I hadn't made that in a long time. So yeah, that's just basically made with flax and chia seeds. It kind of, it's pretty good. Like people, when you go keto and you you forego all the carbs and the textures that carbs provide you i mean i love meat but i'm not a carnivore because eventually i want something different texture wise and just carnivore provides the note meal is kind of like a it's an interesting texture you're not going to get from meat you know it kind of satisfies that that itch for something different uh it it's mostly fiber. So like a lot of people will be constipated when

they first start keto, they don't have their electrolytes in check. They're not hydrated enough. So that's a good way to get things moving too. Well, I really want to know, uh, when you mentioned that, you know, you, you fell into some depression and then you were also 200 quarter million dollars in debt. Um, how did you get there. How did you get there? And how did you get out? All right. So when I was in college, I went to school for business, business finance. I thought I was going to be like on the stock market or Wolf of Wall Street or something.

And that didn't really pan out. After I graduated college, I got a job in the railroad. I was a train master. So basically entry-level manager at the railroad at Burlington, Northern Santa Fe. They had about six months worth of training, and then they stationed me up in Washington State, up in Spokane, Washington. six figures. I felt on top of the world. You know, my, my, my folks were proud of me. My family was, you know, looking to me saying I'm doing things right. But I, it wasn't fulfilling. Like it wasn't me owning my own company. It wasn't me being a businessman that I aspired to be. So I was continually trying to make something else out of that. I started getting into real estate. I tried to build businesses kind of as a side hustle while I was doing the railroad thing. I bought a house with the money I was making from them. Uh, you sort of buying nicer things. And then the railroad got word of me trying to, I think what happened was they got word of me

trying to branch out and start a business or getting the real estate or something as a side hustle. And they didn't really like that much. So they gave me a promotion to go to Gillette, Wyoming, um, as a terminal train master there. And, you know, it was a promotion. It would have come with an increase in salary, all that stuff. But I just got my real estate license in Washington state. And I had just put an offer in on a fourplex. I was going to try and start building up my, my wealth as a real estate investor in this like small apartment complex to begin with. So I just got my real estate license there. And I just basically said, you know, screw y'all. I'm going to, I'm going to just go the entrepreneurial

route. Um, so I quit the railroad and lost a six figure income, had the house payment still had all the other things lost alone on the, on the apartment because I was no longer, you know, able to fund it. And then I started living off of credit cards as I tried to build up businesses and make it in real estate. That's where I got a quarter million dollars in debt. And that's when I was super depressed from a financial standpoint. And that's basically the same time I met Crystal, too. So she was the house that I bought in Washington. She was two blocks up the street working as a coffee barista at that stand.

And I'd go there, drink coffee, met her. And she was seeing me throughout all of this crazy dark depression time, struggling with food and eating disorders. And that was just a very interesting chapter in my life because, you know, I met her who became my wife, started the business, started doing keto and basically started creating something that I could, you know, put my, my flag in the ground. So this is who I am. This is what I stand for. Um, so how I climbed out of that was basically I asked myself, you know, I had all these failed business attempts and I'm like, who am I in life? I walked out in the woods, watched sunset go down and started asking myself these really probing questions. And I asked myself, what am I good at? What am I passionate

about? And how can I add the most value in the world? And at the time I was reading Gary Vaynerchuk's book on Crush It. I don't know if you all read that, but it's a damn good book. And he was all about, you know, build a career path around the things that you enjoy doing because then you would stick to it even on the days you're not making any money. So I'm like, okay, I love bodybuilding, love natural bodybuilding, I love keto. And I feel like I can offer some value in that because there's nothing around that right now. I mean, keto is a thing, but it's not really a popular thing. So I just started hustling content creation. I started putting out YouTube videos, podcast videos, or audio. I didn't have a clue what I was doing with Instagram. I started throwing stuff out there and that started gaining some traction. And then I was in the right place at the right time because 2017 hit and that's when keto blew up and people started finding me and I started doing online coaching. And then from there, uh, the Keto Brook became a thing. So the rest is history. That's an awesome story. Um, you know, I, I often tell people the greatest person you're ever going to interview is yourself, but I think sometimes people don't come to that realization that how important that is to kind of investigate who you are,

uh, where do you want to go? What are the things you're good at? And just simply like evaluate, you know, what, what am you're good at, and just simply evaluate. What am I pretty good at? What do I enjoy? What do I like? And then just stick with that. Try to figure out a way to turn that into something. It might take a while.

You may have to pursue something else while you're doing that because you may need to figure out a way to make a living. So it can be very difficult and challenging, but that's great that you're able to do that. What gave you the confidence to be a person who's speaking on YouTube? Cause that's not an easy thing to do to, to go on social media and to talk. Did you, you were pretty successful with bodybuilding? Is that what gave you maybe some of the confidence to kind of start in the first place? I really was not confident when I started in the first place. I remember filming my first YouTube video. I was using my cell phone as the camera.

Had like a black beach towel as the backdrop. And I did, I think, probably 15 or 20 different takes on that first intro video. And then I just like, man, I'm wasting my time right now trying to figure out how to put this video out there. So I just said, I'm going to run with it and roll with the mistakes and let it be more authentic and less edited.

So I started doing that. You know, I would spend three hours a day watching YouTube tutorials on how to edit a YouTube video. Then I'd spend three hours editing the YouTube video and then three people would watch it if I was lucky. You know, so the first few months there, I was like, man, this is this, how am I, how am I going to climb out of this hole? But hey, it just started gaining some traction. I think when it comes to content creation and building a brand, so many people are so quick to sink their teeth into it for a very short period of time before they see any traction. And for me, it's like, look, there's nowhere that I can't go any lower. I'm already super far and dead.

My relationship with my girlfriend's on the rocks because I don't know who the hell I am in the first place. It can't get any worse than this. So I'm just going to, you know, stick to this no matter what and, you know, fight with it. And lo and behold, it worked. I'm really curious, you know, for yourself as you were developing your business. Did you learn more from what you did in college as far as like your, cause I think you mentioned that you majored in business, right? Did you, did you learn more from that or did you learn more from the education that you did after college in terms of creating a business? And you already know the answer to that question. It was all, it was all after

college. I didn't learn. I mean, I went to school for like finance and, you know, stocks and option trading and commercial banking. And I think that was good because it gave me some perspective as to, you know, what some massive corporations are doing. But for me to actually like get some momentum going in business and entrepreneurship, that all came after, after college, for sure. I mean, honestly, just simply, you know, being a slave to the trial and error experimentation and figuring out what worked and what didn't and kind of living by that ethos was what worked for me. I mean, I'd read so many business books and those were all great. They gave me a perspective as well. But, you know, like they say, the experience is you can't get some you can't get experience from a book. You got to just live that.

You got to go through those flames and figure out if you can come out swinging or not. So, yeah, just honestly learning as I went with that was the main thing. So, being in that much debt and then trying this new business venture, did you have to? Because, I mean, the keto brick, again, it sounds crazy. I'm sure people looked at it and they're like a thousand calorie brick. Like that, where am I going to fit that in my diet? Or they just didn't understand, right? Did you have to be like super patient and just be like, I'm going to trust the process.

And, you know, like, I know I'm already in debt, but God, like, please let this damn business work out. Or did it kind of catch on pretty quick to where, you know, you could actually see some some return on it fairly quickly? So I was working a bunch of other side jobs while I was building the business. So the business itself wasn't really paying me anything at the beginning stages. I launched Keto Savage as a business with the coaching on July 1st, 2016. And I got a whiteboard in the other room of all the money I made month after month for the first several months. And I think it started at like $13 a month, you know, like it was not paying the way by any means. So I was doing multiple different side jobs. I was doing remote accounting for a friend of mine. I was working the front desk at a gym.

I was doing the real estate stuff still. So I was doing all these things kind of on the side trying to, you know, make ends meet. But the keto brick business and the coaching business, I think the coaching business really took off after I got the pro card and, you know, I started getting better at putting out content. And that was kind of the right time because that's when people started getting into keto and they were searching how to build muscle on keto and I was popping up. So that kind of really helped with my coaching. And then the Keto Brick was pretty much a hit right off the bat, except for the fact that we couldn't scale production to meet the demand.

I mean, when we started, Crystal and I were living in a little townhouse. We were living in my house in Washington, and that was before it was a business. We launched Keto Brick as a business in March of 2018. And we started out hand mixing. We'd stay up all night. We had to drive three hours to use the kitchen space. We'd stay up all night making bricks by hand. We had like a production run that took us 16 hours. We made 140 bricks. And then we launched them on a Shopify store, not knowing what was going to happen. And they sold out in three minutes. And we and we're like okay we're about to be on to something here so we drove back down made another production run then we hired my cousin to come there and help then we hired my brother to come there and help then we started building this thing up from the ground organically keeping all the production in house you know from mixing with our hands and a little fork and a measuring cup to using a you know mixer to using a 20 quart mixer to using a 60 quart mixer. We just kept scaling up the production process and people really bought into the story and the backstory and just who we were and what we stood for. And they appreciated the

fact that we weren't, you know, going the co-packing route and outsourcing all the production and just handing it off to somebody else. They appreciated the fact that I would show them the behind the scenes of us staying up all night, making these things by hand. They bought into the story and who we were as individuals. And I think that was where the foundation came from. And then from there, it just grew and grew and grew. And we, we've since invested in, you know, we're, we've got three commercial buildings now that we're making these things out of, and we just bought a massive warehouse space in Northwest Arkansas. That's three times or two times bigger than the three buildings we have now combined. And we're getting that fully renovated. It's going to have a massive gym in

there. It's going to have a massive podcast studio. So that's going to be the new compound 2.0. And we're just going to take over the world. I love it. That's a, that's an amazing, amazing story. I remember some of the original keto bricks. I remember each batch tasted a little different. And I remember that not only did each batch taste different but it depended on where you bit from there was like you know like maybe more of a chunk of salt over here versus versus you know over here had less salt and things like that we had some mistakes for sure when we first started you know we didn't have a clue what we were doing you know we're learning as we go now but it's been it's been a wild ride for sure. When we first started, we had these people working with us, my cousins, my brothers, and they're pretty unreliable employees.

We just refined the process. We invested in more equipment to help with the process. For a while there, we'd wrap all the bricks by hand in tinfoil. That worked out great until the bricks got hot because the cacao butter would melt out and seep through the tinfoil. Then people would be ordering these bricks and they'd be like, what the hell did I just order? It looks terrible. Then we transitioned from that to this custom film where it's kind of like it's called a flow wrapper. So it's basically packaged in a similar package that most bars are packaged in. And it's much more solid there. So just simply learning as we go and getting better over time.

Are there going to be any new flavors coming out? I was just about to ask. Yeah, we've always got something in the pipeline. We're working on a fruity flavor right now. We have never done a fruity flavor. So we're working on a fruity flavor right now. We have never done a fruity flavor. So we're working on a fruity flavor. Um, so that's, that's currently in operation. We've got, um, a savory flavor that we're working on too. Uh, I've actually made a ribeye brick that is super freaking delicious, totally shelf stable. And it's like a Pimmick and basically, however,

the cost to produce a ribeye brick is probably going to be cost prohibitive for most people to want to buy a ribeye brick. So we're probably not going to make that mainstream. Hey, just make them and put them out there. Be like, yeah, it's 25 bucks, bitch. Well, if I make some, I'll send you some for sure. You're going to be the A&A on it. Absolutely. Yeah.

My favorite one. I mean, I keep going back and forth between a bunch of different ones, but the peanut butter cup one that you made recently is my favorite. That one's awesome. Yeah, that's the crowd favorite without a doubt. I mean, we're using, so most of our initial bricks were all made using the vegetable based protein powder, which there was reason we did that for sure. But a lot of people in the keto carnivore space, like I'm not going to touch it if there's any vegetable powder in there at all. So they held out for a whey protein concentrate. So we've got that now. Uh, and the chocolate peanut butter cup is our lowest carb count brick. I mean, you got a thousand

calories at only nine grams of total carbs with that whey protein. So it's, it's pretty hard to beat. It tastes pretty damn good. Yeah. People that are listening, um, you know, this is like we were describing it. It's a, it's a brick, you know, look this thing up online. It's, it's amazing. And if for somebody that likes to like hike or somebody that likes to hunt or something, I can imagine, you know, just checking that in your backpack. It's, it's an easy way to, you know, have some calories with you while you're, while you're doing something that's maybe kind of rigorous and you might need some calories

on your, on your journey. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I'm probably biased cause I make them, but I eat one every single day. I have had one every single day for the past several years and it's only benefited my performance, so I can't complain. I find it, I just laugh so much inside when you're talking about like people

in the keto carnivore space are like, I'm not touching that vegetable protein. I'm like, come on, guys. Come on, it's not that big of a deal. Yeah. It's, it's kind of weird, man. Like I've been in the keto space long enough to kind of see the different hypes rise and fall. Uh, but I never ceased to amaze by how people within the same general genre can just beat each other's throats, which to me seems incredibly kind of productive, but it doesn't stop them nonetheless.

I mean, you got the carnivores that are the high protein, you got the high fat group going at each other, you got all of them going against the vegans. I mean, it's just dangerous territory no matter what. Like, why can't we all just sit down and have a conversation? Will the, I mean, if the ribeye brick comes to fruition, will that have vegan protein or will that have whey protein because i'm just thinking it could be a meat substitute for anybody that doesn't actually want to consume actual beef so the the ribeye brick was actually made without any protein

powder at all like it's legit ribeye okay you know it's it's oh shit nice oh wow never mind Oh, shit. Nice. Oh, wow. Never mind. It's basically a dispel some trade secrets here. So basically, the ribeye brick was made with one of my good friends who's a former client of mine. His brand's called Keto Explorer, and he makes these. It's not dehydrated. It's freeze-dried meat. It's absolutely delicious. I use it when I'm camping a lot. Most of the jerkies and stuff out there, they're great, but there's not any

fat in them, whereas this stuff retains a lot of the fat content, but it doesn't spoil. I basically ground a whole bunch of those up and then bound it to a bacon grease and then made this pemmican with it. It is honestly freaking delicious. Totally shelf-stable and totally effective. This is the greatest commercial ever for

something that you don't currently make yet. Oh my God, That sounds so good. When we get off of here, I'm going to give you a call and we're going to partner up on this thing. We're going to make this fucking thing work because I think everybody needs it. Yeah. That sounds so amazing. It's been cool to see.

I mean, like, like y'all have seen, like I've seen y'all have like the carnivore crisp, the carnivore snacks, like all these, you know, dehydrated or freeze dried meat products, which are super convenient. I mean, that is a great way to get the protein in, in a shelf stable manner. Combine that with the brick is a great way to get the fat in, in a shelf stable manner. And I mean, pretty much all your bases are covered if you're following a low carb approach. I mean, when I'm out hunting, that's what I've got. I get the freeze dried or dehydrated meat source and the brick and I'm solid. Awesome, man. Thank you so much for your time. you working on any uh books or anything like that

because if you're not i think you should be yeah yeah i've got a book uh in the workshop right now it's all about basically doing natural bodybuilding from a ketogenic perspective awesome i'm working on an online course that is going to be like a companion course that goes along with the book you know i'm super excited about natural bodybuilding adopting a ketogenic approach from like a hormonal standpoint alone. I think it makes it much more sustainable and efficient. You're able to get freaking shredded. I think there's a lot more people that would benefit from that dietary protocol.

I'm excited to just put more content out around it. Where can people find it and where can they get some Keto Bricks? That's not live yet, but it will be on KetoSavage.com. The bricks are at KetoBrick.com. Awesome, man. Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. Appreciate you.

Always a pleasure, gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you. Damn, we got another public service announcement on keto. Freaking fantastic. Dang. Rib-eye brick. That rib-eye brick is still on my mind right now.

It sounds so good. Bacon grease. Yeah, initially I was thinking it was just a brick that tasted like rib eye, not that there was actual desiccated rib eye together with bacon grease. I think that people don't mind price if it's convenient

and it works and it tastes good. It's like, I don't know what the other bricks cost, but if another brick is four bucks and this one has to be eight or 12, I can still see people being like, because you're not going to eat that. Every day. Yeah, you're not going to eat it all the time.

And plus the bricks are huge. I mean, the brick is not really, I mean, he eats a whole thing, it sounds like at a time, but it's not really a single serving. Yeah. You know, it's at least two, right? I usually do like half a brick or sometimes I'll do like a third of a brick at a time but it's not really a single serving yeah you know it's at least it's at least two right i usually do like half a brick or sometimes i'll do like a third of a brick at a time because it's a lot of calories like that thing if you have the whole thing at once i've

been filled up like it'll fill you up yeah the last time we were in la podcasting like from sun up sundown and so on and so forth uh that's that's what we survived on i served out survived on like one keto brick for like a whole weekend like it were keto bricks and kratom pretty much yeah keto bricks and kratom and 10 minute walks that lasted 18 hours yeah because we got lost those were terrible and we were sprinting down the street because i remember that yeah we were doing random sprints the side effects of doing these podcasts if people only knew you know the different shit that we're trying we got these fucking voices in our head all

day long uh and we're like oh yeah i should try that i should mess with this and you're like oh my god i'm doing way too many different things at one time i'm gonna keel over it any moment but shoot there's so many things a lot of things end up working really well i've been eating close to bed and i've been feeling pretty good with that yeah it's good nice i'm i'm just like um you know because and this is just the way the podcast universe works uh you don't hear too many people praising keto for bodybuilding but then yesterday on clubhouse we had flex wheeler talking about how he was low carb like yeah just eating meat mainly and crystal crystal light yeah he said he got he just totally got rid of carbs right or was he low carb yeah he he said zero he said zero carbs and then

when he wanted to when he really wanted to get he said uh lit up or something like that he would have like uh one or two cups of um oatmeal and that was it yep yeah obviously genetics is going to play a huge role in that. But I mean, you, you hear it all the time. Like, no, if you want to be a bodybuilder,

you have to have carbs. It's like, here's two dudes, obviously. Yeah. I would, I would think, uh,

you know, one thing to examine is if you're smaller framed, I mean, it sounds like, uh, Robert was smaller frame at a point. You mentioned being on stage at 159 pounds. If you're a smaller frame guy, you might need to go the complex carbs route with the moderate

fat amounts and kind of higher protein. Like that might be a route that you need to go. But I think that once you start to acquire and obtain that muscle, you can probably change your diet a little bit. Yeah. And maybe it's something that helps you with your hormones. Maybe you find it more convenient. You know, I do think a lot of times these things are things that are going to have to

feel good to you and work for you. But I don't mean like really work for your body necessarily. I mean, just they kind of go along with your belief system. Because I know some people are like, man, I can't do anything without carbs. It's like, there's no reason to really change that person. Maybe you offer some advice and say, hey, you know, just cut back on about 50 or a hundred carbs and see how that feels. Cause I bet you that you probably, most likely you probably don't need 400 grams of carbs,

but maybe that particular person does. Maybe, uh, you know, I would say like, if it's a, uh, someone who's more of an ectomorph, there's somebody that's been fairly thin their whole life. Maybe they're able to figure that out. Maybe they're able to eat that amount of carbohydrate and be totally fine and, and feel great during the workouts. Yeah. But you know, I totally, um, agree with him as far as the, the fat amount is concerned

when it comes to prepping and getting really, really lean and having to take your calories low because I mean, everyone you see that's like, Oh, okay. I have to take my fats to 30 grams, 25 grams. They all like, they all feel horrible. Like you're going to feel horrible, but you feel really bad there because that amount of fat for men and women is just not that that's, that'll tank everything. So it's really cool. It's, it's really awesome that he did his blood work, um, to see what would happen, you know, doing a more moderate to high fat approach while cutting and then doing the lower fat approach. It makes it's less of a hit. Yeah. Without fat, you die. I mean, if you don't have fat in your diet, there's a lot of weird stuff

you can do. You know, I'm in the middle of this, I'm at the end of this five day fast. Today's the last day. Hooray. Get to eat tomorrow. But there's a lot of things you can do that are really funky and really weird to kind of trick the system, but you're not going to last very long without fat. You need fat. And then for your hormonal profile, I mean, it's huge. A lot of what he said I really liked because, and he was talking about these different communities, you know, kind of all having the same purpose. Like even vegan, vegetarian, carnivores, keto people, flexible people, all these different people, they really, I think most of the time, are putting information to, to show what they've been able to do. They're excited about what they're doing. And sometimes they step on other people's toes.

Sometimes they go way out of their way to bash somebody else. And none of that's great. But I think for the most part, they're trying to just share their experience. So other people do it. And then what is it all almost always for? I mean, occasionally it's for bulking, but it's almost always for people to lose weight and to share information with people on, Hey, this could be probably a lot easier than you ever possibly thought. Because I know at the moment that you're probably a lot heavier than you want to be. And there's some, there's some changes that I made that were very, that I felt were very simple and I'm not heavy anymore.

And I bet that you can do it too, because I don't feel like I was anybody special to be able to make some of these changes because they really weren't that, they don't feel that bad. They feel like they're not interrupting my life. They actually feel like they're improving my life. Yeah. One thing that's really interesting though, too, is, uh, he mentioned this 5.5, like five and a half day fast.

And that I wonder what he was eating or if he was his 5.5 like five and a half day fast and that i wonder what he was eating or if he was doing something you were like like you because he said he was just having electrolytes and he was hitting prs through that whole thing oh yeah so like well that that's that's really crazy yeah he may have been literally just fasting i know some people have done stuff like that when and you can survive off of that for a bit i mean you know five days seems like a long time but you can run off your own body fat for a while. I also think though, like maybe, maybe he had a bit more body fat at that time because you're pretty damn lean right now. So like, and, and like right now, have you worked out these past few days?

I have, I worked out every day. Um, yesterday was like a really, really light, just like 20 minutes, something or other. Cause I just didn't, I didn't really feel like it, but I'm like, I still want to be able to say I worked out every day. So, uh, I did a little something to the little shoulders and biceps and stuff. I'll do something today. And then tomorrow, um, I'll lift and then I'll eat. That'll be the first, uh, the first meal. I mean, more officially I could eat tonight at like seven,

but I don't want to disrupt my sleep. Yeah. My sleep's been going good. I had another good night of sleep. And, uh, I don't want to disrupt my sleep. Yeah. My sleep's been going good. I had another good night of sleep and, uh, I don't want to mess with that. So I'll just wait till tomorrow after I train. So do you think you'll like from now on just have your last meal be much earlier than it used to be? I'm going to work on it.

Yeah. I'm going to work on it. You know, so it doesn't always work out that way for me. Like just, uh, you know, from a standpoint of like, you know, family stuff, you know, it doesn't always work out that way for me like just uh you know from a standpoint of like you know family stuff you know it doesn't always work out that way and i don't you know i uh i think that it will work out fine like if i just do it most of the time i think that it will reset everything and i think that it won't matter as much i won't be as sensitive to it yeah um but we'll uh we'll see time will tell i'm gonna do you know do whatever i need to do to head in the right direction.

Yeah. I have noticed that because I will like to have a super big protein shake to end my day. If I'm hungry, I'm not able to breathe after that. So I'm not hungry anymore. But I've noticed two times this week that I had the shake a little bit later than I would like to. I have sweat through a shirt completely in the middle of the night. And it is on those nights. Could be coincidence.

Time for a chili pad. Dude, that would be amazing. So some of my understanding of some of this is when you don't sleep well, you build up a lot of adenosine. And I think that that causes more problems down the road. So I think that once you start to recalibrate, I think you start to bring that hormone down. And once you start to bring that hormone down, then everything else gets to be easier from there. But so your question about, you know, am I going to try to do this all, you know,

kind of all the time every night? I don't think it will matter. I think as long as I, you know, bring down, as long as I kind of, uh, I guess unwind some of the maybe damage that I've done, I think, uh, I think I'll be back to, you know, whatever normal is. I don't even know what that is. Yeah. Makes sense. It's going to be interesting.

You might turn into a different person, man. I might turn into a werewolf. You never know. Grow the beard again. Yeah. It's coming in. Coming in. All right, right Andrew take us

on out of here buddy I would love to thank you did you make it missed it couldn't have been further off multiple episodes where you had just not made it it's not even close it's cause the fast yeah it's cause of the fast so what was the last one and it's super windy in Sacramento

my allergies are just killing me that light over there is pretty bright yeah it is. I know. Anyway, thank you everybody for checking out today's podcast. Please make sure you follow the podcast at MarkBell'sPowerProject on Instagram, at MBPowerProject on Twitter.

Make sure you subscribe to the newsletter because that is going to be awesome. A fasting video and a write-up from NSEMA. Don't miss out on that. Uh, my Instagram tick, not tick tock Instagram clubhouse.

Twitter is at, I am Andrew Z and SEMA. Where are you at? I don't use tick tock, but I have one Instagram, YouTube clubhouse, tick tock and SEMA in Yang, Twitter and SEMA.

Yin Yang. What was that other one that we messed with for a little bit? It was like 15 second videos. Ah, shit. That was like 15 second videos. Ah, shit. That was Instagram in the beginning. Remember? It was.

Yeah, it was Instagram in the beginning. Not Vine, but it was like more recent. Really? Vero? I remember Vero. There was a Vero,

but there is something else. I don't remember what it was called. We tried. It died. Sorry. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.