Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 495 - It Takes Guts! Ft. Ashleigh VanHouten

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

Ashleigh VanHouten is the Muscle Maven! Ashleigh is the host of the Muscle Maven Radio show, author of the book, “It Takes Guts”, and a Primal Blueprint Certified Coach. Ashleigh’s current mission is to help others create their own sustainable, primally-aligned lifestyle, to help them be happier and healthier. Get Ashleigh's cook book, It Takes Guts here: https://amzn.to/3t4Gft0 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

What's up, everybody? This episode of Mark Bell's Power Project podcast is brought to you by Piedmontese Beef. Yeah, World Carnivore Month is over, and I think I'm totally done with me. No, you're not. I'm going vegan. You're fibbing. No. That's, no, fake news. Yes, I am actually lying.

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That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com. Check out, enter promo code PowerProject for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 more, you get free two-day shipping what up power project crew this is josh selig aka settle gate here to introduce you to our next guest ashley van houten ashley van houten is the muscle maven ashley is the host of the muscle maven radio show author of the book it takes guts as well as a primal blueprint certified coach ashley's current mission is to help others create their Maven radio show, author of the book, It Takes Guts, as well as a Primal Blueprint certified coach. Ashley's current mission is to help others create their own sustainable, primally aligned lifestyle and to help them be happier and healthier. Her book, It Takes Guts,

is a cookbook containing over 75 healthy nose totail recipes while simultaneously educating readers on the value and benefits of a meat-based diet and a nose-to-tail eating habit. Her book even dives into how certain less popular parts of the animal, including liver and blood, can make for some of the tastiest recipes in a meat-based diet. But the blood recipe is going to be a different story for a different day so please enjoy this conversation with ashley van houten we are rolling fellas oh my god we're gonna be talking a lot about meat today huh meat organ meat and meat dude i was uh watching some of ashley's content the other day and um my mouth was watering because like all of the organ meat dishes that she was talking about and they sound so good yeah oh my god they sound amazing like there's this like blood pudding that she talked about oh i'm excited i'm excited

to hear about like what she's got a lot of it sounds crazy you know um like a sweet bread is like brains i think uh but it's delicious it's like fried and it has usually it actually usually has a little bit of like breadcrumbs on it yeah um and it's like a delicacy um you know figuring out like what to do with like liver and heart and that kind of stuff can be really tough liver has a very like pungent very particular flavor to it. Uh, but our guest today, you know,

she put together an entire book on this recipes and, and everything. And it helps that she looks great. Like she looks jacked. You know, she's got some shoulders, she's got some biceps on her. Um,

I know she's done some, uh, some competitions before. I think some figure competitions on top of that, she was doing some CrossFit type stuff. So I think it's exciting when the people that we talk to, they're not just like researchers, they're not just people that are kind of messing around with a diet.

They're actually people that are out there doing stuff. And I love that. Like the knees over toes guy, he's like, hey, man, I'm not much into research, but I do have a couple, you know, research things to kind of bring up here and there. I'm more of just someone that has done it. And then when you, you can't help but be inspired and motivated by somebody like that because you're like, well, shit, this guy's, you know, he can stick his, his freaking elbow in, in the basketball rim. You know what I mean? Like, that's fucking crazy.

Like, how did he get to do that? And he said that he used to have a vertical of like 20 inches or something. So to have these guests on that are actually people that are actually going out and actively doing stuff is my favorite thing about doing the show. Yeah. And I think Ashley is going to be really cool to talk to because when you hear about like carnivores or people doing this type of diet, like a majority of the people that are talking about it deeply are men. Right. Whereas like women have a lot of different experiences with diet talking about it deeply are men. Right. Whereas like women have a lot of different experiences with diet. Women have more concerns about the diet. So I think that this is going to be a great episode to get into some stuff that both of us or all of us probably haven't heard about.

When it comes to nutrition and when it comes to fitness in general, it's always men that are being looked to. You know, people used to call up Slingshot and they would talk to Andy and Andy knows everything that you can possibly imagine about the Slingshot and how to use it. She knows a lot about powerlifting and they would be like, can I talk to a guy? She'd be like, well, I can help you with whatever you want you know and the guy would be like well no i have a bench question and it wasn't even people that they weren't trying they weren't trying to be assholes that's just that's just the way that people think sometimes like no i i'm and same thing with a with a woman right if it was a woman issue you would think like yeah is there is there female for me to talk to because Cause like, I don't want to, I don't want to say this to a guy like this is too weird. So it's, it's understandable, uh,

how we get to those, uh, situations, but we do need to hear from more women talking about nutrition and talking about fitness and talking about, I think CrossFit was like monumental for, for the, for all of that, having more women deadlifting and doing Olympic lifts and doing things that I think otherwise women maybe themselves didn't even really recognize that they could do. Flipping tires and dragging sleds and I mean the women of CrossFit

and the powerlifting women that we see and they're just... They fucking kill it. They kill it and it embarrasses most of us men so that's why we don't like to talk about it. We got these girls deadlifting 500 pounds and stuff. It's getting to be wild but I'm glad to see that there's more females

coming out and talking and speaking about especially a carnivore diet because it kind of seems for some reason that seems like a dude thing. Yeah. All meat. Like it seems savage. That's what people think when they think about it i'm gonna do these shrooms real quick you guys down mine's already down yours is already down yep done well

i wanted to take one but so we're talking about a carnivore diet and and we're also talking about the uh power the power of plants because today's mario day and what was his yep so he would take a mushroom and he would shoot out fireballs he got huge mushrooms yeah yeah so for mario day we're taking mushrooms bro if i started going downhill on this cast well i this is my second time wait a second maybe all three of us shouldn't have taken it because who's gonna direct this shit yeah so i just know i'll probably end up just being super giggly back here. And so like when that does hit, I'm going

to try to hide so that way I don't set you off because I know. You know, once you get me laughing exactly. It's chaos. Yeah, I'm going to take a picture to remember this day here. I'll just come over there. You got to get it. We got to memorialize.

Memorialize? I just found a new word that i can't say i had to take a photo just so we had got proof that we're getting high on this show actually i don't know if we'll get high we'll see you know what i just forgot though oh you are notorious for like saying hey this actually isn't that bad like i remember there have been there have been times where you're like oh yeah i'm like oh let me let me just try this little bit you're like nah just try this and then i'm just like fuck i'm fucked up you do that and i just did that with this too well i'm an influencer you were were like, do you want? I'm like, yeah, I'll take one. And Mark's like, there's a two capsule limit. Or minimum, sorry.

Oh, man. So this should be fun. People that used to help me at powerlifting meets, I was like, here's some anadrol. And they're like, fuck. Like, what the fuck? Like, what the fuck is this for? I'm like, hey, man, we need all the help we can get today. They're like, well, I'm just, I'm not even lifting.

Like, hey, just trust me. Just fucking take it. I'm just here watching. That's what I just, I'm not even lifting. Like, trust me, just fucking watching. That's what I just gave you. And see, I gave you a bunch of anadrol. Dude, if you just took away my natty status, I'm gonna kill you.

That happened to Dave. That supposedly happened to Dave Tate. Dave Tate was saying that, uh, he was like 16 and he had like a mentor. This guy was training them and, uh, putting them,

putting them through, uh, all the workouts and stuff. And he was getting jacked. Yeah. And Daveave like one day was like he's like man can you imagine what it's gonna be like one day when i take steroids and his coach is like what do you think i've been giving you after after every training session he was like, what? He's like, yeah, you've been on Diana ball for the last six months. That's fucked up. Dude, that's so cool of him to do. I know.

Your cherry's already been popped, buddy. Yeah. He didn't even know. He didn't have no moral dilemma. He didn't have to worry about any of that. I did want to, used to sit on top of the monolift at the old gym, and I just wanted to, like, shoot through a straw, like needles, like, just hit someone in the back of the monolift at the old gym and i just wanted to like shoot through a straw like needles like just hit someone in the back of the neck that's natural

oh man no there's this guy used to uh train people with over or over at 24 and andrew can picture me being so happy that's why he's laughing so hard i can see that um and he said when he's a teenager max muscle he went to the back of the max muscle once you already know where this is going and the guy's like oh yeah try these try try these capsules or whatever he's like oh okay cool he made so many fucking gains in a few months he's like i put on like 20 pounds of muscle and the dude was like oh yeah this, this is good stuff. Apparently it was like something mixed with some Trent or some shit. And he was like, well, what? He didn't realize what he was taking.

Yeah. Max muscle. He didn't realize that. Yeah. Some of the stuff back in the day had some like real shit in it, I guess. It was wild. Yeah. He used to be able to walk into, um, I guess I won't say max muscle, but there were some

stores like that in Sacramento where you can just like, oh like oh check it out here's all the pro hormones and i don't remember if you can do that with sarms but i just remember being like hmm like i don't think that's uh that's not that's not creatine you know like that's gonna fuck you guys up oh creatine yeah everything's creatine yeah if you try hard enough there's lots of creatine and meat oh yeah tons's creatine. Yeah, if you try hard enough. There's lots of creatine in meat. Oh, yeah, tons. Lots of creatine in meat. Tons. Yeah, I'm excited to figure out how to get some more organ meat into my diet.

But I guess I already maybe figured it out. I think so. Some of that steak shake. Oh, yeah. Dude, that stuff is good. Dude, I tried the vanilla, and I'm more of like when it comes protein uh i mean i guess everything like i prefer like a chocolate flavor over vanilla yeah this vanilla is really freaking good though i was saying that yesterday i'm like i'm gonna have to get them both

uh-huh you know like it's really really good i mixed them up last night with some uh ice and some water and just like not a ton of water. And it actually mixed up pretty thick, which I was pretty nice, pretty pumped about. It was almost like a, like drinking like a shake, you know,

that's one thing that usually sucks. Cause usually like when you mix that, it gets super watery and when it's too watery, it's not pleasurable. Right. Wait, but it's just the truth. Sometimes true.

Yeah. That is very true. You want to enjoy your protein shake. But you know what I was curious about doing yesterday? I really am just, I want to know what one scoop of chocolate and one scoop of vanilla tastes like. Chocvilla. Oh.

Chocolate and vanilla. I'm just curious what it tastes like. I've never really mixed protein shake flavors ever. Are you talking about a protein swirl? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That is what I'm speaking about. I don't know why I've never done that.

We could have the ultimate swirl right here on the show. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Chocolate, salted caramel, exactly. That is what I'm speaking about. I don't know why I've never done that. We could have the ultimate swirl right here on the show. Oh, yeah. Chocolate, salted caramel, vanilla. I wouldn't mind trying some of that salted caramel. How about you? Oh, I've tried it, and it's real salty. It's really good. Really salty. Thanks, Daddy. Makes you want more. God damn it. Andrew always pretends he gets uncomfortable but we know the real andrew

off air oh yeah you know what i mean yeah you know what i'm saying i know exactly yeah see it's making me uncomfortable right now um i bet we are is there anything is there anything uh kind of new in daddy life yeah dude all kinds of stuff like uh i mean this will totally like alter this silly conversation but like this morning well and yesterday too it's like so hard to leave the house when he's awake because like in the morning he's like a happy baby so he's just like smiling and like just like you could do anything and he'd just like start smiling even more and so i'm like ah like go back to bed so I can leave, you know, like, it's hard, you know, it's tough, but no, like, I was telling Mark yesterday, like, everything,

you know, seems a little bit more important, you know, not that, like, I was a piece of shit before, it's just that, like, I would cook dinner, and then, like, the dishes would pile up, and be like, man, like, I don't really feel like doing that, now it's like I'm doing, like, 90% of, like, the cooking and cleaning, you know, like, and I don't really feel like doing that now it's like i'm doing like 90 of like the cooking and cleaning you know like and i don't mind it's kind of like uh i don't know it just seems more purposeful yeah not just taking the load off yeah not to like throw anybody under the bus or anything it's just like i you know where i can't step up in regards to like taking care of him like sometimes you know obviously i can't feed him so it's like i feel less uh adequate because of that so like i try to pick up the uh the slack everywhere else i can

yeah and so that sort of thing has made me feel like like oh like this you know like i'm an adult you know like i you know you look at like your parents so you're like you know you with your mom it's like dude how the heck did she do all this? Keep the house clean. Keep my ass in line. And now it's like, oh, because like you get an extra gear, you know, that sort of thing. And it just like I said, it just means a lot more. So just yeah. Meaning is like that's been the biggest thing so far.

Been cool. Shoot. Yeah. I might just make a kit so I can get an extra gear. Yeah. Extra gear sounds great. It extra gear sounds great it's a yeah it's a total uh boost in uh the hangover the guy found a baby a coffee bean right that's what i think so was the baby's name carlos or did i it might have been i think it was or he named him

that i totally forgot yeah that one guy in the in the movie he's like i found a baby once and they were like what and they're and he's like, I found a baby once. And they were like, what? And he's like, yeah, coffee bean. And they just switched topics. They just started talking about something else. He's over it. Yeah. That's a movie I need to rewatch. I haven't seen it more than once.

It's fantastic. I love that and Hot Tub Time Machine. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We got to be serious now. Hey. Hello there.

No, no. Don't be serious. I'm here. That's not fun. What's going on, Ashley? Not much. How are you guys? We're doing fantastic.

It's great to get you on the show. Dr. Gabrielle Lyons has nothing but good things to say about you, so we thought, like, how bad could she be? Let's see if we can get her on the show. Well, we'll see. I'll prove it one way or the other, I suppose. Why don't we kind of kick things off by you telling us about your book? Because, you know, eating liver and heart and brain and all these things is a lot of people view that as being

disgusting, right? It doesn't seem palatable for a lot of people. So where'd the idea come from to even start this book? Yeah, it's an uphill battle for me, certainly. This isn't like the most, you know, I'm not writing a cookbook about ice cream and brownies. So, you know, it's not the easiest sell, but I believe in it. So I'm willing to do the work. I mean, really, it kind of just came as like a natural evolution of the other work that I've been doing in my career for the last decade, which is writing about nutrition and being a coach and being a podcast host where I'm interviewing and

speaking with some of the sort of biggest, most innovative names in health and nutrition and my own journey with eating real food and kind of my background in ancestral eating and paleo and all that kind of stuff, which is sort of where I came from. And the concept that eating real food and eating food that our bodies are physiologically supposed to be eating just always kind of made sense to me. And as I continued to sort of learn more and then kind of dive into more of the sustainability and the ethics and the economics of it all, I started learning a little bit more about true nose to tail eating organ meats and things like that. And I started playing around with it myself. And experimenting, I didn't grow up eating this way. And as I was experimenting, I was kind of

sharing some stuff that I was doing, you know, making some liver, making some chicken hearts or whatever it was that I was doing. And for every person who messaged me barf emojis and told me that I was gross and they were scared of me, which I kind of like, I had some people who were saying like, hey, what are you doing? Like, this is this is interesting. Like, what are you making? Why are you making this? How do you make it? And so I started thinking, OK, maybe there is a little niche out there for me. Maybe probably won't get famous, probably won't get rich writing a cookbook about organ meats, but I really feel strongly about the health benefits and the importance of understanding

this type of eating. And I think that if I can introduce people in an easy, simple way and make it just very accessible and pragmatic and make sense to people, they might be willing to give it a shot. And that's all I'm asking is just that people, you know, give it a shot. So that's why I'm here. What are the, what are some of the main benefits of organ meats that people should, you know, even think about and consider adding these things into our diets? Yeah. I mean, most of us are still, and I know I'm probably speaking to a different crowd here than others, but most of us eat meat, right? We've accepted that meat's a health food and it's good for you and that we need it to grow and thrive. And if you're already on that boat and you're eating meat, it kind of makes sense then again

to look at what are the most nutrient dense types of meat i can eat what's the best bang for my buck that i can get um and that is without a doubt and and this is really kind of scientifically proven not just somebody on the internet like telling you that that meats, especially things like liver, are incredibly nutrient dense and they're incredibly bioavailable. Our bodies are able to take this in and process it and use it. So even if you're somebody who is looking to eat less meat, but you acknowledge that it's an important part of your diet, then instead of maybe, sorry, crushing 12 ounce T-bones, maybe you have a couple ounces of liver

instead because you're getting so much out of it for such a small amount of food. So it's really comes down to me, for me, it's like a pragmatic thing. It's just incredibly nutrient dense. It saves you money. I mean, most of these things are less expensive because they aren't in high demand. You can get really good quality, like local, grass-fed, organic, good quality meat, again, because people aren't, you know, climbing over themselves to get it. And it's easy. I mean, I can debunk so many myths around organ meats that it's easy to find. It's easy to prepare.

It's not that scary. It's not inherently more dangerous. It can be delicious. And even if you don't think it's delicious, I also kind of have the argument that it's like, suck it up because it's good for you. You know, I mean, we all kind of grew up. I think everybody grew up having like parents that made you sit at the table till you finished eating like your gross boiled broccoli or whatever it is that people made you eat. People do it with greens. I was just going to say that. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. And like, but nobody grew up saying, okay, well, these are bad and disgusting and horrible and I'll never eat them. They're like, okay, I'm an adult. I'm going to eat healthy food because it's good for me. So, you know, liver is a better option than broccoli and you can actually make it good. You know, it's like not everything you eat is supposed to be hyper palatable and tastes like chocolate cake. That's not real life. Um, so yeah. You know, on that note, i want to kind of ask you because i was listening to you talking about organ meats on another podcast and i grew up my mom like made liver my mom made gizzards right and i loved that stuff like that stuff wasn't abnormal to me but when i talk about it to other people some people view it as like somewhat barbaric and like oh

that's nasty right but you're even mentioning in one of your interviews that there's something like blood pudding. Right. And from then that that's from Italy. Right. And it's just like, can you talk to us about like how I guess it's not necessarily an abnormal thing to eat organ meats or these foods like around the world? It's perfectly normal. I'm Nigerian and my culture, a lot of that stuff is perfectly normal and it's perfectly healthy. So can you talk to us about that a bit? Yeah. I love that you brought this up because this is like another hill I like to climb up and die on because it makes me really frustrated. But when people talk about this stuff, because there's so much like morality and even, I can even get into like the gendered side of it

too, where it's like it's not ladylike and feminine to eat this kind of food and of course that gets me really uh worked up but really it's we are very unique in north america specifically in north america right now we are like the only uh culture and group that considers this extreme and barbaric. Basically, every other culture and every other culture throughout history has always eaten this way first, because we didn't have social media telling us that plant-based diets were nicer. And we just ate the way we were supposed to. And we inherently knew what was healthy and good for us. And also because it was delicious. And also because we used what was available, we didn't have the privilege of buying, you know, fancy faux

meats, whatever we ate what we had. And so yeah, I get like, you know, again, for every person who sends me a bark emoji, I get somebody saying, Yeah, I love tripe. And I love tongue tacos. And I love all these things. Because yeah, every culture except for ours right now has always eaten this way. So that's one argument I make is that we could all do better as a society by by not considering what we're familiar with as being the only option and the best option, being a little bit more open minded about what other people do or what other people have always done. And also looking at things that are new and maybe unfamiliar as potentially exciting and interesting and good, and not just looking at everything that is different as dangerous or bad. Like I get that there's like a bit of an instinctive thing there too, where you have to kind of be wary of new things because they could be dangerous. But we take that too far, right?

Like food is such a low risk endeavor, you know, like the worst thing that could happen is that you try some tongue tacos or something or some liver and you don't like it. And okay, fine, move on with your life. But if you try it and you like it, and then you're getting health benefits from it, and you've opened your mind to all these different cuisines and and you're trying new things. I mean, that's, that's significant. That's good. So that's kind of what I'm trying to do with the book, too, is not only tell people this is healthy, but also say, this is, it's, it's important, and it's worth your time to be open minded and to try new things and to look at new things like an adventure

instead of like the scary thing, Cause it's different, you know? So what was your, uh, like what's your food background? Like, well, how did you used to eat when you were younger? Um, have you ever been like way into carbohydrates and processed foods and things like that? Well, I grew up, I mean, I had American parents. I grew up in Canada, uh, typical standard American diet. But looking back, I always gravitated towards like a lot of protein and a lot of, I don't know,

more intense protein, I guess, like I was somebody who did not have to learn or overcome the idea that like a rare steak is good, or, you know, seafood and like fishy fish and stuff like that. Like I always kind of liked that stuff. And so when I got older and I started kind of getting more into sports and I, you know, hit whatever age you hit your twenties when you have to like care about what you eat or else. And I started like paying attention. Um, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a far reach for me to to be protein forward and to eat and to to look at things with like with nutrient density first. And, you know, I had moved from Canada to all over the place, but I was living in New York where there's every type of

food you could ever imagine. And I really like took that to heart. Like I went to all the different restaurants and all the different neighborhoods and tried everything. And if there was an animal on the menu or a cut on the menu that I didn't, I had never heard of before, I wasn't like, ew, gross, like chicken feet, whatever. I was like, yeah, bring that over. I'm going to try that. And so I started to, this was happening before I really got into nutrition and wrote the book. So it is something that's kind of always been a part of me where I just felt like it's fun. It's an adventure. It doesn't have to be scary.

And then, of course, if you actually enjoy it and you're getting better health as a result of it, I mean, it's a win-win. But going back to the gender thing, I really am surprised. And I know that we're in kind of like a different bubble of fitness people. like a different bubble of like fitness people. Um, but I really am still surprised at how much, um, friction there still is with women eating meat or being willing to eat more meat or more animal-based protein. Um, like I have to get over that hurdle before I even start asking them to eat liver because, you know, there's this narrative that like steak is heavy and it's dense and that's going to sit in my stomach and it's dense and that's gonna sit in

my stomach and it's gonna make me fat or whatever and there's fat on this food and i have to cut it off and um it's it's crazy and it's unfortunate and it's really praying to that kind of um marketing and then combining it with this morality thing like you're better and kinder and nicer if you eat plant-based, which is not accurate, really speaks to people's insecurities and creates the cycle where people are kind of never satisfied. They're never eating food that actually makes them feel good. But they think that they're the ones doing something wrong. And it just, it's like this whole negative feedback loop, which I'm really trying to get over and help people get over. And it's like, it all starts by just trying to eat some food that actually nourishes you and makes you feel good. I think a big part of that negative feedback loop, a big part of it is that

people, a lot of times men and women, but maybe even more so with women is they don't eat. And then when they do eat, they eat something that's not healthy. They're trying to eat something small, something light, and it's like a snacky processed food type of thing. I see a big mistake from many, many people in doing this. And they're filling their stomach up with things that they're taking up real estate for otherwise something that could have not only a health benefit, but a benefit in terms of satiation, making them feel full, making them feel satisfied with their meal.

You know, luckily for the three of us that are on the show now, we have, you know, we spent a lot of time, you know, learning about nutrition over the years and we spent a lot of time even just learning how to cook. But the way that each one of us cooks is a little different. We're pretty basic. And I think that people, for some reason, they have a disconnect with cooking their own food. And I think that if people just simply cook their own food and they were, as you said earlier, protein forward, I don't think we would have

any obese people. If you cooked your own stuff and you were eating kind of natural foods more often than not, and you were protein forward, protein minded most of the time, I don't think we would have to worry about obesity. Yeah, I mean, it's another, there's a whole host of, I think, issues and challenges we have with our sort of modern approach to eating and nutrition. But a couple of the big issues are that we spend less time and less money on food than we ever have. We don't prioritize it. We want food to be incredibly cheap, incredibly easy and quick to have and eat and make, and also hyper palatable. So we don't want to what used to be like a family bonding thing or a relaxing kind

of meditative thing where you'd prep and cook your food and then share it together. Yeah, that maybe took up some time in your life. But now we spend, you know, watching Netflix or going on our phones or whatever. And we don't we don't respect that that should take some time in our life because it's very important. And also that maybe it should take up maybe more of our funds too. And we don't need to get into, because I know we all have sort of different resources and different availability, but we just think that everything should be incredibly cheap. And it's like, if you're investing in a coach or in clothes or in a car or whatever, would you

expect to pay no money and get a good quality product? But we somehow expect that from our food. So yeah, I mean, there's a whole host of issues there. But I mean, the other thing about this book, too, is that I'm not a chef. I did not go to school to learn how to cook. I didn't know what the hell I was doing for most of my life. I actually remember, I think, the only class in school, like in junior high, this might be aging me, but I had like, there was like a home ec class or something. It's basically like teaching you how to cook dinner. And it was like the only class that I didn't get like an A in. My mom was like, oh shit, you're in trouble. Like I could not cook. And so this was really like a process for me of

empowering me and giving me confidence, not only to cook functional food, because I come from this sort of like power lifting, bodybuilding, eating functional food kind of background. But then I had to like skip right ahead and be like, okay, how do I cook brain and sweetbreads and blood pudding and make it good. And every time I did, it was really like, it was really empowering. I was like, I know how to do this. i know how to nourish myself it doesn't have to be 20 steps like from a french trained chef like you can do it because like trust me if i can do it you can do it but you got to be willing to kind of invest in yourself and take the time and and hang out in the kitchen and actually do it yeah uh as far as like what mark was saying about how like we eat so simply. I remember when

I didn't know how to cook anything, I would put like every store brand, like barbecue sauce on like steak and like all these marinades and it just like came out horrible. And now it's just salt and we're good to go. Yeah. Yeah. But you were saying that like, you know, you didn't really, you didn't necessarily know how to cook all these organ meats. So where did you turn to first? Because I'm really curious. I mean, you have this whole cookbook now and you started from just not knowing. So what was the process in essentially learning how to make these foods that otherwise wouldn't taste good, make them delicious? Yeah. Well, here's the racket. I'll share a trick with with you guys if you want to become an expert on something just pick a topic that no one else knows anything about and then you're good to go because

there's like three organ meat cookbooks in the world like when i was doing i was researching for this and i'm like okay like what else exists out there and there's you know there's like literally a handful of books that are focused on cooking real nose to tail and organ meats. Whereas if you looked up like keto, carnivore, paleo, there's like a billion. And most of them were classically trained French, usually French chefs, who, yeah, I mean, it was very normal to them. And you'd kind of crack open this book, I have a couple of them here. And you literally crack open the cookbook. And it's like, here's how you make sweetbreads, Allah, whatever. And it was just like, so, so beyond what like the average person would feel comfortable,

even getting their head around, right. So I'm like, we need to take this like 10 steps back and talk about the book is like, I want people to read it. I want people to read it like a book, because there's a whole huge section in the front that dives into the history of organ meats and kind of speaking to what you were saying about how, I mean, people ate this stuff, like it was widely available and easy and normal and recipes were passed down in cultures and generations, how it fell out of favor a little bit, the reasons why, and breaking down every single organ that is edible and its benefits and how you generally would prepare it and cook it. So this was all just sort of painstaking research that I was doing. And then I'm like looking up really old,

like Italian cookbooks and French cookbooks and finding all these crazy recipes that were just chock full of organ meats, because that's's what they had and that's what they ate. And then I also kind of spent some time looking at thinking about like food that I liked to eat food that I thought was mainstream and popular and how you could incorporate organ meats into it. So a lot of it was just kind of trial and error. You know, you learn from the experts sort of the basics and then you just just buy the ingredients and play around and have a couple mistakes and keep going. That's how it happened. I want to go back to the female side of things because I messaged quite a few of my female friends, some that are meat-eating, some that are vegan, and there's a lot of like my female friends, some that are, you know, meat eating, some that are vegan. And there's a lot of questions there. Um, I guess since I don't, I don't think you were vegan in the

past, but you've probably, you know, a lot of women that have like been plant-based or vegan have probably messaged you about like maybe hurdles that they're having coming to eating, whether it's adding more protein to their diet or going carnivore or something like that. So what have you noticed are some of the particular hurdles that women deal with on the other side of things that are fixed by adding these things into their diet, like deficiencies or skin issues, et cetera? Like what are the things that you notice that is bigger on that side that we don't know? So many, it's crazy. And so many of them do apply to men. It's just that I think we, we've got a bigger hurdle on the women's side because we are

marketed to so differently in terms of how, what's, what's right and good and healthy for us to eat. Like we're a different species or something. Like we're supposed to only eat yogurts and salad and you guys get the steak it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me it seems very unfair um but i mean a whole host of issues so i mean we know that women have cycles we have menstrual cycles we're losing iron and blood every month um we need to we need to um put that back into our bodies. And when we don't, and we also know that protein and the essential amino acids that make up protein, I consider it the most important macronutrient because it's essential, because you have to put it into your body to survive. I mean,

we can go a long time without eating fat. It would be miserable, but we can do it. We obviously don't need carbs that much. They're mostly just good fuel and delicious, it. We obviously don't need carbs that much. They're mostly just good fuel and delicious, but we need protein literally for our bodies to function and for every part of our body to function. So if we aren't taking in enough, if we're told that we should be eating 30 grams of protein a day and all we're eating is salad and I don't know, a hundred calorie snack packs or whatever, you are literally not even fueling your body to function much less grow the muscle that is required to have that toned look that we're all told we're supposed to have and to have a reproductive cycle that functions properly. I mean, skin is a huge one.

Digestion is a huge one. Every function of your body requires healthy protein, amino acids, and these essential micronutrients that are in abundance in organ meats. And, you know, I tell people too, I'm like, this doesn't have to be so black and white. Like we don't have to be in the carnivore camp and the vegan camp because the internet makes us feel like that's what it is. But most of us are not. Most of us would not really thrive very well long-term, a hundred percent carnivore because it's just not sustainable.

It's not that fun. Sometimes you want to eat something crunchy, whatever. Most people do not thrive very well long-term, completely plant-based because you have to work so hard to try and get those basic nutrients that are required that are found so much more easily in animal protein. So it's like, let's stop trying to put each other in boxes and assign value and intelligence to, you know, what food decisions we make. Like you, if we all eat like omnivore or, you know, whole foods or paleo or whatever you want to call it, your plate's going to look different than mine and his and hers. And, you know, some people might eat a salad with some meat on it. And some people might eat meat with like a little green as a garnish. We're all still

eating whole foods, you know, that nourish our body and that are what we require. But I think women just have so much guilt around eating food that actually feels like they're, they're being nourished, because they're so used to not eating enough, restricting, always being hungry, and being told that that's what you need to get the body that you want. So another thing that I tell like friends and potential clients and stuff that I'm working with, there's a little bit of handholding and like warming up that has to happen. But at a certain point, there's some kind of tough love to where it's like, all right, you've been eating 1000 calories of like granola for three years,

and you feel like shit. And you hate it. And your body doesn't look like what you want it to look like. And I'm eating twice that much. And's mostly meat and I feel pretty good and I'm healthy and I'm building muscle and I'm like thriving and enjoying my life. You came to me because you want some advice, but then you don't want to take it. So like, just do what I'm telling you to do for a couple of weeks. Like just eat some more protein, just eat some meat. And then if you hate it and you don't like it, go on your way. I'm not here to judge you.

But like, you gotta be willing to try something different. You can't just keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result, right? And people are surprisingly, surprisingly hesitant to try new things because I think that they're like almost more comfortable with like the devil they know than like the potential of something different

that could work for them. You know, it's, it takes a lot of unlearning. It's very frustrating, but you know, it's worth it. How much protein do you think people need?

I mean, talk to Gabrielle about that. She's the, she's the, she's the pro there, but I mean, she asked, who's your favorite doctor?

I mean, she's my doctor. So obviously she's my favorite. Although I have to say, I was going to say at the beginning of this call as a potential icebreaker, since we've actually never met in person, I was listening to your interview with Dr. Will Cole. And at the beginning, you guys were talking about how many holes the human person has. I really wanted to know if you guys ever figured that out, because I do know the answer for women. I don't think it was ever like clarified at the end i will say beyond a shadow of a doubt that uh we know nothing

about women on this show that's for sure or anything about any holes either yeah okay great well i'll tell you again i'm not a doctor gabrielle can confirm this for you too but women do have an extra hole we have one more really yes yeah I never knew yeah the vagina and the pee hole are two very different things but to be fair a lot of women don't even know that wait a lot of women

for a second I was tripping on something but but also I wonder you know what are we considering a hole you know I mean like you know we have we need a definition of like the word holes. Because humans could potentially not have any holes. Maybe men are only thinking of holes in terms of like, could you put something in it? In which case. We definitely are.

Then, well, then listen, both genders probably have less holes than you think but if we're just talking about holes that exist in the human body that things can come out of yeah you have an extra one yeah i'll just finish by saying everything can be done with force you know at some point listen i brought this on myself i started it i started it so you know but now we know each other better we kind of look at anything as a whole i guess we're okay so this is the thing i feel like we're in a very good place now because i can ask a certain question that someone needed me to ask um and i was like okay I can phrase this in a certain way. Spit it out, buddy.

All right. I can't wait. Again, you have a lot of women who have messaged you about certain specific things that we wouldn't think about. And this is something that I would have never thought about. But from the women that you've spoken to and the antidotes that you have, someone asked me, switching to this diet because i didn't realize that when women eat a lot of different things vaginal smell is different

like it changes when they eat certain foods and they were wondering when switching to a diet like this what would that do like there was a real concern here and like i'm curious have you do you know about women who talk to you about this story anything like information about it because yeah i didn't realize again i mean listen i'm not a doctor but there's a lot of quack doctors who will tell you some crazy stuff too so i guess you got to take it all with a grain of salt um from my understanding andience it is a it is very untrue that the type of food you eat flavors how you taste now if you have a very unhealthy diet and guys will probably notice this too like you're gonna stink you're gonna sweat differently if you're eating garbage if you're drinking all the time if you have a shitty lifestyle so if you're somebody who is living a

very unhealthy lifestyle, probably a lot of processed food, maybe even like, I don't know, a ton of like garlic or something like that, it's going to affect how you generally smell. But eating a vegetarian diet high in pineapple does not make you taste like pineapple. You taste like a human woman regardless. So it's, I believe, I believe I can say with, with, you know, fair certainty that it is complete BS that like, oh, if I eat a bunch of meat, I'm going to taste grosser or meatier. I don't know. Versus if I just eat like salads and whatever, I'm going to taste like a salad. It's that's not, if you're healthy and you take care of yourself and you hydrate and you sweat regularly and you work out, you're going to be fine. I think hydration is a big part of it. And I think, you know, a lot of people aren't drinking enough water and things like that. And

then I do know like a keto diet can affect your breath sometimes when you get into ketosis. And then sometimes fasting, it just feels like you feel like you're a fire breathing dragon all day and you're just like lighting people's faces on fire with your breath. So there are certain things that I guess can impact certain, you know, certain smells and stuff that come from us. But I think there may be more extreme situations like being in ketosis is kind of a, you have to really push yourself to even get to ketosis. Most people aren't even doing that. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, again, like kind of going back to this, I'm not really like a proponent of like the carnivore diet per se. I eat a lot of meat and

probably predominantly meat, but I would never tell somebody that they only can eat meat. And if you like put spices on it or eat it with a salad, you're an idiot. Like I, I eat everything. I'm an omnivore. I believe that it's very important that we should be for our health and especially for athletes and people who are looking to build muscle and be stronger, looking to build muscle and be stronger, especially women to eat more protein. But, you know, people like kind of look at the carnivore diet, and they think it's this like extreme kind of crazy thing. I'm like, most people don't need to do that. And also, if you do a carnivore diet, you don't need to be only steaks and ground beef, like people talk about how incredibly restrictive it is. And I'm like, keto diets,

a strict keto diet is very restrictive. A vegan diet is incredibly restrictive. They're all restrictive. It's just this one seems more extreme again, because it's new. And because we've been told that eating animals is bad for you. But you know, when I do my kind of carnivore resets every now and then, like, if I go on vacation, and I went off the rails, and I just kind of want to like, reset my satiety signals, or kind of just sort of bring it back down to baseline, I'll eat maybe straight carnivore for three or five days. And I'm eating seafood and shellfish and poultry and beef and game and organ meats. And I'm making them in all different ways. And I'm eating dairy because I can eat dairy. Some people can't.

But if you can, great. There's so much you can do. Like people just, again, everyone wants to make things like black or white. They want to be like, okay, I need to eat carnivore. And so now I can only eat beef for the rest of my life. And that's going to suck. Or, you know, factory farming meat is bad. So I guess eating meat is bad. Like that is such an illogical conclusion, right? When we've been eating meat for the, for millenniaogical conclusion, right? When we've been eating meat for the, for millennia, since human beings have existed, we've been thriving on meat, but because our current system is shitty, that means that eating meat across the board is bad. I mean, that's, it just doesn't make any sense. There are so many other options. Um, and especially

when you consider that the modern kind of mass produced vegan options are in no way better for the planet or for your health or for animals even so um yeah it's just there's always more nuance and context that people don't want to spend time on but it's important that they do yeah what go ahead oh i'm sorry uh what are some of like the first benefits that a person can experience um i ask this because there's a lot of like 14-day detox programs that promise X, Y, and Z. But if somebody's eating kind of like a whatever diet, standard American diet, and they start incorporating some of these organ meats, what are some of the first things that they might start realizing like, oh, like this actually feels

better or, you know, my hair looks better or, you know, like what are the first initial things that like they can actually point to and be like, oh, this is actually working? Yeah, that one's kind of tough because I think it does depend on the individual and maybe what they were struggling with to begin with and what their diet was like to begin with. But I would say for a lot of people who are maybe low protein or who are maybe just eating a little bit of kind of very conventionally raised kind of not suboptimal protein. So like chicken breasts from the grocery store only in like broccoli or

something. And then they start incorporating some things like liver and even like bone marrow heart and things like that. even like bone marrow, heart and things like that, you're going to probably pretty quickly notice improved energy overall, just generally feeling better. Because again, your body is like filling up on all of these things that so like micronutrient deficiencies, right, that so many of us have even healthy people have our bodies like we function, despite having all of these nutrient deficiencies and then one day maybe we feel like shit or our skin breaks out or our

digestion stops or our energy stops and we're like well what did this where did this come from and it's like because you've been b12 and vitamin d deficient for a year and your body finally just can't handle it anymore. You know, and so literally these foods are like daily edible, full spectrum supplements that are going to be more, you know, absorbed and better used than a supplement. That's just going to bring all of these little, so it's little things, right? It's like I suddenly actually just have energy. I don't need coffee at three in the afternoon to survive. I just feel good. Like my joints hurt less, like things like that. You're just going to notice that you feel better because you are literally giving your body at a cellular level what it needs. And then there's other kinds of specific things that can be

addressed to through different, literally different choices of organ meats. But I think it's really, it comes down to that micronutrient thing that we are not paying attention to on a daily basis that makes a huge difference. So on kind of on that note, I wanted to know, because there are all these micronutrient deficiencies and like even Mark has mentioned in the past, like a lot of people, the reason why they eat so much is they're trying to get so many nutrients from all this nutrient deficient food. So maybe could you talk to us about not just the the the massive amount of nutrients in these foods, but also the bioavailability aspect aspect? Because people are like, oh, yeah, I can just eat all these other plants, et cetera, and get the same things. But they don't necessarily realize you're not necessarily getting all the same things, even though they're in those plants. Yeah, it's such a good point. And,

you know, it's, it goes back to this concept of like cravings that so many, and I mean, maybe men feel this too, but like this guilt around cravings, right. Where it's like, I have no willpower. And like, if you put some chips in front of me, I'm just gonna eat the entire bag and I can't stop it. And it's like, because you are truly not fueling your body and your body is doing everything it can, it just keeps eating until it gets what it needs. And so that's why you're never going to be satisfied by low calorie, low fat, you know, pre-portioned hundred calorie snack, whatever, because you will, you could eat 4,000 calories of that in a day and you're still not getting the nutrition. So if we looked at it

less, like how many calories, which is what we're also obsessed with. And we look at it like at the macro and micronutrient level. There's so much math and science that can be done there where you can eat less, even if you need to and be getting more nutrients if you're focused on nutrient density. So yeah, I mean, there's tons of, you can find all these like infographics online where it's like broccoli or I don't know, spinach has the same amount of iron as a steak. And it's like, if you eat 40 cups of it or something, it doesn't make sense. It's so stupid. Why do people not read and understand these things?

Like people just, I guess, because you can just create anything that's going to double down on what you sort of already believe. Listen, if somebody came out tomorrow and told me that broccoli was pound for pound more healthy and bioavailable than liver, I'd be a little sad, but I'd probably eat more broccoli because I'm willing to change my mind and my beliefs and understandings as we get new information. And I just would hope that other people would kind of be more open to that too. But yeah, listen, even vegan and vegetarian advocates, some of whom I know and get along with. I totally have a vegetarian friend or two. Most of them who are intelligent and actually trying to help people will tell you that it is a lot more work to get the micronutrients that you require from a strict vegan diet. They will tell you, you will need to supplement. Um, you'll need to do a lot of alchemy of like beans and legumes and stuff, right. To get the things that you need.

Um, and then they'll even say like, you know, if someone, if a vegan woman becomes pregnant, like they'll advise you to eat meat, like, come on, what is that telling you? If you suddenly need to start eating animal products to support a life that you're growing, but you aren't supporting your own life that you're growing and living with every day. Like, it just seems so crazy. Right. It just seems so like crazy and out of whack for me. So again, there are absolutely micronutrients and all kinds of benefits you can get from

fruits and vegetables that are also like textural benefits, pleasure benefits. You can get vitamins and minerals from fruits and vegetables. It's great, but they shouldn't be your first stop as far as nutrition. They should be a part of a varied diet that is focused on protein, animal protein first. I think one of the big advantages of, you know, eating, eating meat is the fact that it has protein. And we're talking about these nutrients. We're talking about, you talked about protein being the most important macronutrient. And it's my understanding that there's a lot of studies, a lot of evidence pointing to that

all living things are in search of protein. And when they don't get proper amounts of protein, you're pretty much just hungry all the time. Pretty much just want to eat all the time. They, there's some people that say this is might be what might explain why your dog goes outside and eats grass because the dog's not getting the nutrients that it needs from whatever food you gave it. And, and some dogs are just going to chew on anything, you know, that's just, so it's hard, hard to really, uh, to really truly know. But I think one thing that makes vegetables really valuable is that vegetables, they don't have a caloric load to them. They don't cost you a lot in terms of your overall calories for the day. Whereas like a ribeye or something like that is going to be more

calorically dense. So I always think that vegetables, while they can be great and they can be part of a, they should be part of a healthy diet because they do have fiber in them. They can help take up some space. But I always think the most important thing about them is the simple fact that they're not more meat, you know, because then you might get yourself into a position. I think whether we're talking about keto or talking about a carnivore diet or we're even talking about your cookbook and making things delicious, we could still end up in the same situation as people that are on the standard American diet. We could still end up in a situation where we're over consuming food. Like we eat in a very gluttonous way. And that is the toughest thing because somebody that's 330 pounds, as soon as they try to lose some weight, they're now

trying to eat like they're 300 pounds. Then they're trying to eat like they're 270 pounds before they're 270 pounds, you know? So they got to keep kind of ramping that down over a period of time. And it just gets to be really hard. It's like, hey, if you want to weigh, you want to go from 330 to 180, you'll have to eventually start to eat like 180 pound person. That's why this whole process is going to take a really long time. But if we do fill up with protein and we fill up with vegetables, obviously we need some fat thrown into the mix as well. And, you know, maybe a small amount of carbohydrates might be helpful as well. Then it would be a lot easier for somebody to get to that body weight that we're talking about. For yourself, it sounds like you eat like a wide array of foods. Are there any foods that are in

your diet now, or when you're communicating with somebody about trying some of the things that you recommend, how do you kind of walk them through the process of like, we don't have to cut out a lot of stuff that you really love. Like those things can still be part of your diet. They're going to be, you know, less a part of your diet now because we need to make better choices more often. But when you have a playbook that's wide open, you don't really need to do a lot of tricks. You don't need to do a lot of cheats because you have fruit, you have dairy, you have meat, you have vegetables, you got access to a lot of things, maybe even certain potatoes or rice, or I don't know, you know, where you fall in with some of

that. But why don't you kind of explain to us, you know, where you you fall in with some of that, but why don't you kind of explain to us where you do fall in with some of these things when you are trying to recommend a nutrition plan for somebody? Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, I basically fall into the category of, again, whether people like the term or not, this concept of like paleo, whole foods, ancestral, just in that it's mostly unprocessed food, meat, vegetables, fruit, nuts, whatever. But I also am somebody who can eat everything. Like I don't have any, to my knowledge, I don't have any like sensitivities or issues. Like I can eat gluten, I can eat rice, I can eat dairy, I can eat all of these things. I love sugar. So I do eat all of those things. But I just try to balance it based on what my goals

are. If my goals are to look a certain way, to perform a certain way, to feel a certain way, I'm going to be constantly making tweaks. And it's always going to err on the side of high protein, real food, and then the rest of it kind of gets filled in. And that is kind of the approach that I have for most like potential clients or people that I'm talking to about health. And again, it's why I'll probably never be rich and famous, because it's not a sexy approach. It's not saying you're the five things you can eat, pay me $400 and see you later and hope for the best. It takes a lot more work, it takes a lot more individual experimentation and time. But I will tell people for the most part that like you start with this basis of like whole foods. And like, like you said, focusing on what you're going to

add in rather than what you're going to take out, because there's a psychology component to this too. Someone comes to you because they're struggling and they have food issues, which most people do. And you immediately say you can't eat that or that or that or that, you know, people are going to be sort of miserable and freaked out and overwhelmed already. So for somebody like, for example, that I'm working with right now, a woman who does not have a whole lot of nutrition understanding or background and is definitely one of those like, I eat, you know, diet, low fat snacks all day. And then I binge on the weekend because I've like never eaten anything that's nourishing me. And so instead of telling her like, stop eating out, stop eating this garbage. I'm like, eat some protein with every breakfast and tell me how you feel. Here's

some protein sources. And here's generally how much maybe you could start trying to eat and make a note of how it makes you feel. Do you feel really full? Is your digestion weird or not? Is your energy better? Play with these things. And you add it in progressively. And so I'm not changing someone's complete diet zero to 100 today. Because again, that's just it's not sustainable. It's overwhelming. It's too much to take in. You change little things progressively a step at a time. And you start by adding in what's going to make the biggest impact. And then also with the knowledge that when people are eating nutrient dense foods that are finally giving their body what it requires, those binging, craving kind of tendencies

do go down. And I'm'm not gonna say that you're gonna eat healthy and suddenly become one of those people who thinks that like a carrot tastes sweet or like fruit is a dessert like i still don't know you know what i mean like i will always i will always have a sweet tooth i will always enjoy french fries and cake and chocolate or whatever but i don't have that kind of necessarily like uncontrollable unpleasant like i need to eat these other things because i i'm being satisfied first and so that's why i often tell a lot of these women who can also be triggered by being told don't eat anything you like and you have to be restricted now forever and you can only eat these healthy things i'm like eat, eat the healthy thing first. And then if you still want to eat the cake,

eat the cake. Like you might find that you eat less cake and you might find that you actually don't need it an hour later, but if you eat it fine, but at least you nourished yourself first and we'll deal with the mechanics of calories in and calories out and body composition later, but just like create a healthy body first and then we can work on the details you know what's up pat project fam this episode is brought to you by element electrolytes speaking of element electrolytes i actually wanted to ask you and seema you being all jacked and tan and all strong and pretty uh do you take your Element Electrolytes pre or post workout? I actually take it pre, during, and post.

Sometimes I'll do more than one pack. So if I finish the pack of Element that I had during my workout or my jujitsu session, I'll pop out another one, sometimes post. And that hydration really helps my recovery. Because sometimes after you get done with a really hard workout, when you are sweating a you feel sore you feel kind of tired and you feel drained there is absolutely no problem with taking more than one pack of element yeah i'm really interested in trying it like uh intro workout right i've always i've always been one of those guys that's like oh you gotta have your your pre-workout and then your post-workout in the middle it's like usually water or something

right but now with element electrolytes from what rob wolf told us about how it like maintains strength and all this other just amazing benefits i'm just i'm really stoked about it and uh if you guys want to be like us we actually like getting the value bundle because you essentially get a box for free but if you're not ready to fully commit element is still offering you guys a free element recharge pack so that's an eight sample pack. All you have to do is cover the shipping. Um, you can do so by heading over to drink LMNT.com slash power project. Again, it's absolutely free. You just have to cover shipping. Make sure you guys go there and check it out right now. Being somebody that has competed, I think you've gotten on stage before,

correct? And, uh, you know, being somebody that has competed, um, how is that diet, you know, being somebody that has competed, how is that diet, you know, for bodybuilding type stuff? How is that different than, you know, what you do now? And what's what was the level of like hunger and dedication that you had to have versus where you're at now? feelings about bodybuilding competitions than a lot of people do. And I've done an entire podcast for my own show about it because I just think it's a really interesting topic that can, again, be sort of like villainized. Like you can follow actively competing bodybuilders and they're like amazing and they're your heroes and they're talking about how dedicated they are. And then you talk to people who no longer compete because it was really bad, a bad experience for them or affected them in a negative way. And it's like, bodybuilding is dysfunctional and terrible. And anyone who does it as a psycho and it's awful. And, you know, and as with everything, there's, there's more nuance to it than that. It's certainly the sport can attract people with dysfunctional attitudes

towards their bodies and towards eating because it essentially gives you an excuse to say, I'm going to eat like crazy and be way too lean all the time. And you can't tell me anything because it's my sport. So that's fair. But it also can be an experiment in learning about yourself and how your body works. And it can be fun and it can be kind of cool to see yourself in a different way. Like I've always kind of been fit. I've never really been overweight, but I certainly never had a visible six pack before I did a bodybuilding competition. That was really cool. Um, but I will say that I got into it a little later in life as in like late twenties, instead of a lot of people and women are like

doing a bikini competition at 18 before you know their bodies are even really sorted out yet and before they they are certainly sorted out how they feel about themselves I was kind of at a point where I I truly really wasn't doing it to prove anything to anybody because I just I was like I'm already cute I I'm not doing this for attention. I don't care. Like I'm just doing it for fun and like to see what would happen. Um, and so I really approached it in probably a much more, um, it was still extreme, like to, to anyone on the outside, any kind of bodybuilding prep is going to be extreme, but I, I really took the time to like, seek out a coach that I believe I our values aligned. And I liked the way that she operated and the way that she looked.

And I did it in as gradual a way as possible. And I did a lot of work on the other end to kind of come out of it as gradually and healthily as possible. And there were certainly times where I was like, I can't believe I'm still doing this. And this is nuts. And I want to eat a cookie. And I was hungry and I was tired. But I really made sure that I put my health first. I knew that bodybuilding wasn't something that was sustainable and that the leanness that I was at when I competed wasn't really that healthy. But I was doing it with sort of some calculated risks in mind and knowing that I wasn't going to try to stay that way. I wasn't going to take anything or do anything

that was going to potentially impact my long-term health or reproductive health. I was like, I'm just going to do this as an experiment, see if I can actually follow strict rules for a few months, see what my body looks like, take some pictures, have fun. Um, and so I, I really had a positive experience. I mean, there's still some crazy shit about the bodybuilding industry and I have some funny stories as I'm sure everyone does. Um, and you know, I kind of did it for a while. And then when I got to the point where like, I'd have to really change my life if I wanted to continue, I stopped cause I was just like, I kind of feel like I've learned what I could learn from it. But I learned a lot. I learned a lot about my body. I

learned a lot about my mind and my willpower and attitude when I want to stick to a goal. And I had a lot of fun. And I had six pack was really cool. And yeah, I feel good about it. I mean, and you know, my diet too was like, it was pretty typical bodybuilder, but it was also like with a bit of a paleo lean, like I was eating oatmeal and rice and stuff like that. But I was also eating like chicken thighs and sweet potatoes. And I was trying to eat whole foods wherever I could. But yeah, it was pretty typical. Are you leaner now because of it? You think like, did you maintain at least some of that? Do you feel like that's an interesting question? Actually, I think mostly it's just

that over, you know, 15 years of lifting weights, I feel like my body has changed so that even, this is another thing I love to hammer home to women, especially is that building muscle is so important because even when you go through your cycles of more or less body fat, you're going to look better when you've got the muscle underneath it. That's what people don't get. That's where that whole skinny fat thing comes from because people focus so much on the fat loss and they're not focused on building this healthy muscular structure, which is what makes you look good when you're lean. And so people put all this effort into not eating and doing like cardio all day long. And then they're a size four or two.

And they're like, oh, I still don't like the way I look because you didn't eat the protein, build the muscle first. So I don't know if I'm like naturally leaner, maybe usually, but I think I just look better because I have more muscle because I spent a really long time building it. So, you know, no matter how I'm, how fluffy I am, I think I look better. And I think it's like one of the big aspects is like, okay, you will look better, but you also won't feel and like feel fragile because I know a lot of women who like they they stay away from lifting in certain ways or lifting in general and something like you know if they they trip a little bit and coming off the ground it's like oh my shoulder's cracked a little bit and all this

like it's because you're so fragile like you're scared of lifting and you're fragile yeah you gotta eat more nutrients you gotta eat less like you, gummy bears for carbs. And like, I don't know what I don't even know what people who don't eat protein eat. I don't even know. But like, whatever's a big thing with even just the way that people eat. You know, we're, I guess like the four of us that are on the show right now, we're kind of trained, you know, to eat a certain way. So even if we were to sit down at a restaurant and to just enjoy whatever foods we wanted, it would be pretty unlikely that we would get a hamburger and fries. Like, first of all, we, it'd be pretty rare that we'd just order that out of nowhere. It would be accounted for, or we would think about it the next day. Hey, I'm going to fast a little bit longer tomorrow. Or, uh, you know, maybe I got a hard training session later on. So it's already kind of like you're computing for it.

You're, you're acknowledging what you're about to eat. But what I see from like my own children and just from a lot of other people just observing how people eat the first thing they go towards is the french fries and so so this is this is what happens to people this is why they don't eat the protein is because they will literally eat the eat the carbs first and it's just the it's simply the order if the order could change then the percentage of protein can change. I think the average American only eats like 12% in protein. If we could change that to 20, like that, you know, that stat alone could be the very stat that changes the impact of, you know, diabetes, pre-diabetes. 88 million people in the United States are pre-diabetic. I mean, that's a lot of fucking people.

And if we just could change the order in which they would eat, I think we would see some huge changes because they don't have room for the protein anymore. It's kind of hard to eat that burger. Or if you ordered a steak and you ate the French fries and mashed potatoes first, getting through that steak is really tough. But you want it to be the other way around. You want to get through the steak first and go, God damn, these mashed potatoes first, getting through that steak is really tough. But you want it to be the other way around. You want to get through the steak first and go, God damn, these mashed potatoes are good, but I don't have any more room for them.

That's the way you want it to be. Maybe we need to start putting French fries on the dessert menu or something. Or just make them out of meat. What do I got to think of everything around here? There may or may not be a meat-based fry like thing in my cookbook so i'll just say right away this this again goes back to a little bit of you know i'm somebody who's i'm trying to write this book and again when i speak to and i'm not just speaking to women directly but you know being a woman and seeing the frustrations that that we to face, I do kind of speak like I'm speaking to everybody, but like, hey, women, like, especially listen up.

You know, I think that there is a little bit of understanding and empathy and meeting people where they are, that has to happen. And compassion and knowing that like, this is a very difficult environment that we're living in, where there's hyper palatable garbage food all the time and it will always be there. But then at another point, we have to take personal responsibility and recognize that it is hard and do it anyway. Because like you just said, it doesn't matter how healthy you are and how well versed in nutrition and how used to this stuff you are. When you get a steak and fries, everybody wants to eat the fries. Everybody does. But we have to make the decision to eat the things that are healthy first. And I'm not saying that it's easy and I'm not saying that it's going to come naturally and perfectly in a day. But these are the things we have to arm ourselves with.

We have to, I don't know, visualize it, practice it, journal about it, like listen to more podcast, like do whatever it is you have to do to get there in your head, because it's never going to get easier. We're never going to be in an environment where it's all healthy and we never are tempted. That's not the world that we live in. So rather than trying to kind of pretend that that's the world that we're living in, or just complain that it's not, let's focus on what we can control, you know, you can keep hyper palatable carb junk sources out of your house, you can pick, I don't know, restaurants that might have better options for you. You can, like you said, sort of hedge where like, you have a day where you kind of go off the rails. And so the next day, not as punishment, not because you're weak-willed and a terrible person, but because you're paying attention to your energy intake,

you eat less carbs the next day. We're moving some of this emotion and stuff out of it too. Like a really good book that I recommend to a lot of people. I don't know if you guys have read it. I think I have it here. It's called The Hungry Brain. Have you guys read this? No. His name is Stephan Guyenet. And I had him on my podcast years ago. But the book is really cool, because it talks about from a physiological and like a brain perspective, why we are wired to overeat hyper palatable food, why we love sugar, all of these things that we kind of already know, right. But the way that he explains it, it like it shows you that when we get mad at ourselves or beat ourselves up

for eating too many cookies, because they were in front of us, we're essentially getting mad at like our brains for working properly. It's nuts, like, stop feeling guilty, stop feeling bad. And like you're weak. Every single person does this every single person has a weakness, eats too much junk food sometimes wants to eat it, you know, we're all in the same place. So instead of, yeah, wasting your energy, feeling bad or feeling guilty or beating yourself up over it, which never helps, that doesn't help you get fitter. Instead, use that knowledge and say, okay, this is how my brain works. This is how I can override it. This is how I can work maybe around it, because it's not really serving me anymore because i don't live in the woods where there's no chips and cookies you know

so like just looking at it from like a more science physiologic pragmatic approach instead of just i ate too many cookies so i'm an asshole and i'm doomed to be this way for the rest of my life. It just, it doesn't help anybody. Right. So Mike drop. Yeah. There's something I really want to ask you, by the way, and I'm about to ask you, you're not aware though, but we took some shirts and they just hit, they just landed. We took some before the podcast. Yeah. We, podcast yeah we we we should have sent you some i'm sitting here all sober thanks guys no no like it's it's fuck so that's why when you were speaking you saw this shit going on because like they have just landed now ashley um what i really

want to know we're so responsible good luck i luck. I can't wait to hear what this question is going to be. No, that I really excited to get to know. What's the meaning of life? Please explain it to me. Hey, we never did get an answer on how much protein. Oh, we didn't? How much protein do you suggest? Oh, yeah.

We started talking about holes and then things just went south, so to speak. I did kind of deflect, didn't I? Yeah, with the holes thing. Yeah. So, I mean, again, I would probably just sort of echo, I believe what Gabrielle and what many other people say, which is like, generally, like really easy rule of thumb is kind of like one gram per pound of body weight. I would usually also say like lean body mass. So like, especially for women who are generally trying to lose fat, and say you 165 pounds and you kind of want to weigh 135, like maybe 130, 135 grams of protein a day is like a good starting point. And then you, you can adjust. Like if you're lifting a ton of heavy weight and you're, you're training really hard and you're actively trying to put on a bunch of muscle, like maybe you up that a little bit, and then you're going to play with your other macros as a result. Um, and maybe if you are super, super overweight. And so you do kind of have to really be paying more attention to overall

caloric intake. Maybe you go a little lower, so maybe you're, you know, 115 grams per 110, whatever. Um, but I generally think like that one gram per pound um is a great starting point and then you can play with it from there and i also really like to tell people to kind of try to keep that of course i just said you can tweak it but try to keep that number like the steadfast number and play with the other two macros around it so if you're somebody who's trying to go lower carb for whatever reason if you're somebody who just doesn't tolerate fat very well, so you're going to do more carbs, or maybe you're doing a lot of high intensity exercise, and so more carbs is going to be better for you, whatever. You play with those two things, but like the protein is kind of the building block, and then you sort of play with the other ones after that. Okay.

Yeah. You all right over there? No, I'm fine. I'm fine. I couldn't stop. I'll send also i got it i got it wait isn't it super early in the morning where you guys are yeah okay all right go ahead no i just well when they hit you guys i noticed that there's a squirrel in the background blowing uh bubble gum it looks like you're kidding i just i couldn't stop okay it's a rabbit oh yeah it's a bunny rabbit yeah it's more bubble gum i like that get your get your fantastical animals right over my bad by the way your decor is amazing i have to say the color palette and everything it's it's very nice it's inspiring listen i gotta balance out some feminine

all i do is like lift weights and get mad at people. So I got to like, I got to, I got to have like a feminine. People really wonder, how the hell do I find that? I go to Safeway. I don't know. I don't see liver anywhere. I don't see heart anywhere. I don't see pancreas. So how do you go about, first off, finding organs? Or if somebody's in their neighborhood or whatever, where should they go and try and find it? And then what should they be looking for as far as price? I mean, I've never personally been able to find brain.

I haven't looked for it, but I feel like it'd probably be something difficult to find and it's in your cookbook. So how do people go about doing that? I love it. You're like, I've never seen it, but I've also never looked. Okay. But thank you for the very practical question, despite the fact that you may or may not be tripping balls right now. It is a very practical question. It's a good question. So there's a couple of things. Some organ meats are actually easier to find. It's just that truly we are not looking for them.

So we don't see them. So for example, things like chicken liver, which is what I suggest a lot of people start with because it's such a mild tasting, easy to cook, just easy, like starter, um, cut chicken liver. You can almost find anywhere. Like if you go to almost any grocery store in the chicken section, you're going to find chicken liver, chicken hearts, chicken gizzards. Usually you'll find them. Um, many places like you're going to slightly kind of higher, like, I don't know, whole foods kind of places you can get beef liver. Usually. Um, I don't know, Whole Foods kind of places, you can get beef liver usually. I would also recommend for most people, if any of you have any convenient access to an actual butcher shop, they're going to have better options. So they'll usually have heart, tongue, liver,

things like that. Farmers markets, if you're lucky enough to have one of those nearby, and they have some like actual farmers coming in and selling their meat, even if they don't bring these items because they aren't frequently asked for. If you go and, you know, make friends and talk to them and ask them about their products and say, hey, look, I'm looking into try more liver and heart and tongue, probably they'd be happy to bring some for you because who knows where that's going otherwise. So that's an option. And then I would also say, check out your local ethnic markets. So Middle Eastern markets, Asian markets, African markets, grocery stores, right?

That cater to these cultures. Like I go, when I can't find my lamb tongue, I go to the Middle Eastern grocery. And when I can't find tripe, I go to the Asian market and they usually have them there. So try that. That's a pretty good starting point. And then, of course, you've also got, since we're in pandemic world where people don't

like to leave their house, there are some online sources that you can get good quality organs as well. Like U.S. Wellness Meats is one that i um use frequently and i believe they ship all over yeah and they have uh that bronchwager stuff is really good liver works so good yeah the bronchwager has like heart and liver right it has a bunch of stuff in there it's kind of a mix like a pate or something like that right yeah it's really really good very good starting point too because it's delicious you like it's like mixed with like cream and butter and stuff. I mean, what's not to like there?

But yeah, you can get almost anything through U.S. Wellness Meats because I used them a bit when I was working on the book. And like anything from spleen to kidney to you name it, you can usually get it online. And they are cheaper. Like I can't necessarily speak to across the board. Some organ meats, interestingly enough will be kind of expensive because they're either rare or they're like the rare organ that like kind of actually has like some sort of a cache.

Like you think about like sweet breads, right? Like you go to like a fancy French restaurant, you can usually find like sweet breads or like foie gras. And so those are more expensive. Sweetbreads is thymus and pancreas. It doesn't really matter. It's just like another little part in the body, but they're actually very, sweetbreads are very delicate and creamy. They don't have a strong taste. And so they're often like in French restaurants, they're often um like deep fried and so they'll be sort of like crunchy and then it's like sort of like just usually tastes really good yeah they're so good but like those might be a little more

expensive because there's this like concept that they're fancy which again goes back to this arbitrariness of like what is okay to eat on an animal and what isn't. It's so silly. Like this is like the height of sophistication to eat a thymus gland, but I'm over here eating tongue and I'm a savage, right? It's like, it's all the same part of the animal, guys. So yeah, but like things like tongue is another good example that I like to use because it's delicious. Like that one's a harder barrier to entry to prepare because it straight up looks like a tongue. And it's, you know, it can be kind of like gross for some people, but it's, it is one of the most delicious cuts of meat.

And if you love like a fatty brisket, you like that kind of like rich, you know, really juicy, fatty meat. There's nothing better. And you can get like a two pound like beef or buffalo tongue for like 15 bucks and you can get like a buffalo heart that's like five pounds of meat for like 18 20 bucks like it's really good and they're good quality like you know i'm sourcing locally and stuff um so usually like pound for pound you're you're saving money usually when you're eating organ meats brain looks disgusting for sure like it just looks that that's a, that's a kind of a hurdle to get past. Right.

Brain is another one that actually it's so funny. Uh, that was one of the times when I was doing the prep for myself, but like I had a moment where I bought this brain and I was like, what am I doing with my life? I'm holding a brain in my hands. Like in the time that I bought blood too, we talked with the blood pudding. Like I literally had to go to this butcher and these guys got used to me after a while. But at first they were like, who is this chick? And I was like, Hey, can I get some blood? And they're like, uh, I mean, I guess, but like, we don't, we don't sell

like blood by the ounce. Cause no one ever asks for it. So I had to buy like, I don't know, it was like two liters of like frozen blood and I'm walking home with it and I'm like, okay, this is who I am now. I've committed. But brain, I will say, because it looks so much like the thing that we're used to, right? Like we're used to seeing a steak and we only think of it as food instead of like a piece of an animal, whereas you see a brain and you're like that straight up looks like a brain so that one was like that was kind of tough for me like i i did it i had no problem but i was still like whoa this is pretty intense looks like an alien or something it is so mild and delicious like some of the scariest food is usually like the most innocuous when you actually eat it. Like kidney just looks like

liver, looks like meat, looks like whatever. And that's got a strong flavor. Like that takes some getting used to brain looks scary, but it's actually, it's delicious. It's very similar to sweet breads. Like you poach it and then you can kind of bread it or deep fry it or fry it in a pan really quick. And it's just mild and delicious. What's something that, what's something that didn't work where you tried it and you're like, just not going to really mess with that ever again. What's the grossest thing, I guess. I mean, for me personally, I think it's different for everybody. Um, for me, I just, I really don't enjoy kidney. I find it very strong tasting. Um, now I know people who hate liver that quite enjoy kidney. So again,

I think it goes back to like individual tastes and maybe what you ate growing up or whatever, but I find it has a very, very strong flavor that I'm not super into. And I do, I do remember some like bloopers where it was very hard to take pictures for this book. You guys have a copy, right? I feel like I sent you absolutely yeah okay good um the the photos were a little tough because you know again there's a reason why all these like health books that are like plant-based it's like these beautiful colorful salads and i'm like taking pictures of meat it's like it's brown and red it's like kind of tough and so i was making like chopped liver and i was making like fried gizzards or something. And these are delicious.

Like they're so good. And they just look like dog food. Like, I'm like, I don't know how to make this pretty. Like, do I throw some like flowers in this picture? Like, I don't know what to do. And so we had to like play around with a couple of different applications because I'm like, there's no way I can put this in the book.

Like it looks, it looks really bad. So it took a little bit of work with that. But again, this is like, this is my hope. Like if you go into Barnes and Noble right now and you go to the healthy eating cookbook section, whatever, and of course it is mostly marketed towards women because we're who are buying the cookbooks. And every single book has a picture

of like a skinny skinny beautiful woman and or a salad on the cover and it's all plant-based vegan vegetables eat more plants and be healthy my book is tucked over there in like the specialty items section or whatever for weirdos like you know and it's like my, this food is the most nutrient dense food on the planet, but it doesn't take pictures well. And we're not used to it. And it's not all cute and pretty like a salad. So it's not, it should absolutely be in the section of health food and it's not. And that's what I want to try to change. I want more people to acknowledge the reality of

what nutrient density is vegetables and salads are great but like this belongs here too this shouldn't be like tucked in a corner for like the extreme weirdos that's my that's my rant america's so funny because like i remember like yeah it wasn't even years ago like my mom still does this but as a kid like my mom my aunts would find a place where they could get like a goat butchered and they'd come home with like, like just all those parts. And it'd be put in a freezer. Like we'd pull out a goat head and put it in a pot and make some soup. Like that's the shit that I grew up on. But it's like, it's just so funny how people kind of think that oh that's that's so

weird it's like this shit is good you know it's good i have a goat i have a goat neck recipe in the book that you might like i need yeah it's uh i'll send you one i'll send you one it's delicious and a lot of these two like going back to inspiration i had a meal it was like a slow roasted goat neck over rice um at this restaurant in new york and it was like a slow roasted goat neck over rice, um, at this restaurant in New York. And it was like one of these memories that I have, like I've eaten a billion delicious meals and that's one that like sticks in my head because it was different and it was delicious. And it was just like, so fun to eat. And I was like, okay, I want to try to make this myself. And I pulled it off. So it's like, you can do it. Um, but yeah, goat, goat's delicious.

If someone were to go to, what would you say would be the top three kind of organ meats to try as far as first off, ease of cooking and then nutrient like nutrient pow, right? Top three that you think someone should go get their hands on. Well, I'd say for nutrient density, bang for your buck, liver across the board. And I would say, i would say i would say start with chicken liver unless you're somebody who's like very against eating poultry for whatever reason i know some people are um but it is the smaller the animal the milder tasting the food's gonna be so like if you're going from like i only eat chicken breast to like here's a buffalo

kidney like it's not gonna be a good transition like you need to work your way up to it because bigger animals taste stronger and especially if you're somebody who has eaten conventionally raised meat your whole life and this is not a judgment because i did it too like if you only eat chicken breast and like ground beef from like the lowest rung grocery store like you don't even really know what these meats are supposed to taste like like they taste different when it's well raised and you know organic grass fed whatever um so start small start with chicken um chicken liver and then i mean even like lamb is a really good option because lamb is also a very i think it's one of the most delicious animals but like their um liver and heart kind of tastes of lamb. So like it's very good.

So liver first, I'd say put it into a make a pate. You know, I've got some recipes in the book, but something where you're mixing it with spices and cream and butter that makes it delicious. You can also chop it up with your ground beef and make your burgers and your meatballs. Like I have no problem with people hiding it. That's how you have to do it to get it in. And it works your way up to trying other things. Just yeah, like four to one ratio, like just put a couple ounces of liver, you know, ground liver in your ground beef, make whatever you're going to make anyway.

It's a really good starting point. The next one I would say is heart because it's an an organ but it's also a muscle meat so if you're used to eating muscle meat which most of us are it has a texture that's more familiar it's like beefy and you know it has maybe a stronger taste than some other muscle meat but it tastes like muscle meat it doesn't have that texture issue that people are going to run into and you can do chicken hearts too super easy but like beef heart delicious there's so many And you can do chicken hearts too. Super easy, but like beef heart, delicious. There's so many ways you can make it. It's so versatile. You can barbecue it, you can chop it up, you can roast it, anything you want to do with that. So I would say those

are kind of like the two main ones. And then as far as like pure deliciousness, I still say tongue. I know it's a tougher one. Like I can send you guys some, some prep pictures that will haunt your dreams forever. Oh, please, please. I will. Cause they're great. Once you get over it, you get over it, right? It's like, you know, some people can't, some people can't look at chicken breast or chicken thighs on the bone because it's so scary. You get over it. You, you know, you prep your food and it's food. Um, so once you kind of get over it, like the first couple of times that was super grossed out. But I also recommend for people that if you are open to trying organ meats, but you're a little intimidated and you're a little

bit freaked out, do it like have a professional do it first. You can go to a restaurant and try chicken liver or try tongue tacos or try whatever that, you know, these things exist. You can try, try it's pho, like at a, you know, Korean restaurant or somewhere like you can, you know, try them professionally made first that you can see that they are delicious, that it's not scary, that it's possible to enjoy these things before you dive into it yourself. Like, like I said before, with kind of anything with nutrition, you don't have to dive into it zero to a hundred, like have someone else do the work for you first. And then if you like it, then maybe you try and do it for yourself.

So it seems like, you know, from eating muscle that we can gain muscle, we were eating protein, right? Uh, what does it do when you eat like pancreas, when we eat liver, when we eat heart, uh, do you think like when you eat brain, does it, uh, enrich your own brain or when you eat pancreas, does it somehow, or the same thing with liver and those kinds of things? What have you seen from that? I would say kind of indirectly, like again, not a doctor. Um, but I, there is a lot of ancient wisdom about like eat this to improve this on your body kind of thing. Might help with some sort of nourishment.

Yeah. And if you look at the breakdown of like nutrients in certain parts, there kind of is something there to suggest that. So if you look at brain, for example, it's really high in omega-3 fatty acids, which is something that your brain needs to function properly. It's very, it's high in cholesterol, which is your brain is made of cholesterol. And we can, you know, we don't need to go down the rabbit hole of like cholesterol, not actually being as evil as everyone wants to believe it is. So like, there is kind of something to be said for like, like supports like a little bit. But I would generally just say that while certain parts have higher amounts of certain things, so like heart, for example, is really high in CoQ10, which is like a powerful antioxidant. That's great. And like gizzards are really high in like selenium, which is another

antioxidant and really high actually ounce for ounce in protein surprisingly so it's like a really good kind of protein source um i don't know if we need to go so far into like oh you know i have stomach issues so i'm gonna eat stomach or whatever i think it's more just again we want to support our body by eating the most whole nutrient-dense foods we can And all of these organs generally tend to be higher in all of the good stuff that we get from meat, we get more of them from organs. So because again, muscle meat is great. It's healthy. It's full of micronutrients. It's full of protein. It's full of amino acids. That's great. There's just more of it in more concentrated doses in the organs. And that's why hunters and animals out in the wild before we had the internet

to tell us what was right and wrong, people just hunted an animal and they went straight for the liver and the heart. They didn't have to be told. No one had to say like, hey, that's, you know, inhumane and bad and humans don't do that. Or we weren't, you know, being told that you should eat the grass instead. You just hunted and you that you should eat the grass instead you just hunted and you ate what was the most beneficial because you just knew it um so that's that's where i think people should start is just start with just a little bit of some organs just try it hide it eat it feel better and it's all gonna kind of steamroll from there i don't use this word often because i don't like it much but like we are very just like privileged in america to like look at these foods and be like oh well that's nasty

i'd rather eat vegetables and like like it's just it's it's just a really weird privileged way it's very very strange because then it's like uh well let me go down the aisle of chips and get some doritos that doesn't make any sense but they do taste delicious and they do have us hooked and it's a ends up being kind of an addiction that's why at first when people told me that i was a gross weirdo i kind of like liked it and thought it was funny and kind of laughed along and stuff and And now I'm like, dude, like you don't even know what you're, you don't know what normal food is. Like if you can go to McDonald's and not bat an eyelash, but you think I'm a fucking weirdo, like, I don't know what to tell you. Like I'm over here living a pretty healthy lifestyle. I feel

really good. And I'm eating what human beings have always eaten. Maybe, I don't know, read a book or like go somewhere and see that this is actually quite normal it's just in our very weird bubble modern north american culture that this is weird that's the only place where can people get your book it takes guts where can they get it i love that title yeah title thank you that's what i had before i had anything else when i I literally, this was like a twinkle in my eye. I was like, maybe I should write a book only about organ meats and like 10 people will buy it, but they'll be super pumped about it. We need to point out that you're also,

you're even before that though, you've been a writer for quite some time, right? And an editor and stuff like that, right? Yeah. Yep. So, I mean, that's kind of where my actual expertise is. My background is kind of in marketing, communications and journalism. And I just love to write and talk as I'm sure you guys can tell by now. I like to talk and I just like to share. I like to learn and I like to share what I'm learning with other people. And so podcasts and writing and stuff has always been a good platform for that. But I, and you know, it's funny because I never thought about writing my own book because I'm like, I'm not a doctor. I don't have any of these like post-nominal things. I'm not like, who am I? You know?

But I think that maybe if we did kind of put way more, way more on people's passion and interest and drive and hours they put in to dedicate themselves to learning something instead of just blindly believing somebody because they say they're a doctor on the internet, we might be a little better off. I don't know. That's just one woman's opinion. But you know, so anyway, so when I thought about the book, and I was like, I'll just self publish this weird book about organ meats, and no one will read it. And I don't care because it's cool. And I was thinking, okay, I can't write something about like awful good because that's been overdone. Everyone uses the term awful. And then I just

thought like, this makes sense. Like it does take guts. It takes guts literally to make these things. And it takes a little bit of guts to try something different, to invest in your health when other people are telling you it's weird and gross and it's worth it and it's good to have guts. And so that's kind of what I thought about. I think I was just so passionate about it that the publisher was like, all right, this chick seems really into this. Maybe there's an audience for it somewhere. And here we are. It's been doing okay. So where can people find out more about you and where can they get your book? Yes. So you can buy the book anywhere. So, um, online or in stores, Barnes and Noble, if you're in Canada, you can go to chapters, Amazon, anywhere you want. And, uh, I have a

website. It's just my name, Ashley Van Houten.com. Um, you can find me also on Instagram. That's the place that I'm kind of the most active and And my name there is The Muscle Maven. And I also will just kind of offer this too, that I have like a little, like an ebook, like a little like recipe PDF that has like a couple recipes for people who, again, are kind of on the fence. Maybe they've listened to this whole thing and they're like, all right, I'll give this a shot, but I don't know. And so I'd be happy to kind of send that out.

So if people want to reach out to me and say, Hey, I'm interested, I'd like to learn a little bit more. I can send you that. And, uh, you can try out some recipes before you buy it. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. Yeah. It's been awesome. I'm so pumped that I had an opportunity to do this. I do kind of, I'm kind of mad about the mushrooms thing. I wish that I was sort of in on it, but maybe next time, maybe next time when I'm in person, have a party. Yeah. Where are you at?

I'm in Canada right now. Like I, I normally, I have dual citizenship, so I'm always back and forth, but with, you know, everything that's going on,

we're a lot stricter up here and the restrictions they're putting on people trying to travel. Like I have a passport. I could, I could come, but it's like a nightmare trying to get back in. They're making you like stay in hotels and pay all this money. And it's just,

it's craziness. So I've been kind of laying low up North for a while. Yeah. When that ends, you got to come down and show us what's up. Show us how to cook. Yeah. Oh yeah,

for sure. Yeah. That'd be really cool. Thanks for your time today. Appreciate it. Thank you guys. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Yo, damn, that was some good stuff. I love that double entendre it. Thank you. Yo. Damn. That was some good stuff. I love that double entendre on that book title. Yeah. Like the, Ooh, like when she said that,

I was like, Ooh, that's sick. Yeah. And, uh, like we said earlier, you need,

made more women kind of talking about this stuff. So it's great that she had the guts to make the book in the first place. Mm. Mm. God, this is a good one. I'm about to blast this out to so many people and like I'm impatient. So I'm going to live like I'm going to go to Barnes and Nobles.

I'm going to grab that book immediately because I'm just really curious about all those recipes. Yeah. I'll link it in the podcast show notes and YouTube description and all that. So if people want to hop on that book, but yeah, I'm going to dive into it because I know it's here somewhere at the gym. I'll go find it.

There's a, you know, people have experienced probably liver and some of these other things, maybe more so than they might think through having like, just if you go to a restaurant, a lot of times they'll have like a cheese board, a charcuterie board, right? There's that word again. A lot of times those things will have it'll have like something you know on it where you're like i don't know what that is but i keep you know dipping my crackers in it it usually has like liver in it or duck fat you know it's some sort of it's some sort of mixture of meats and fats and a bunch of stuff that actually tastes really good it just sounds

gross and you just think it's gross because you're not used to it yeah like i didn't know what what tripe really was tripe is so cool but yes i mean we we eat that in manila all the time you know like it's it's a weird texture i don't it's not my like favorite thing to eat but i grew up you know it's yeah it's in manila it's pretty popular right dude lengua tacos all day those are really good i don't know if you've ever been to Garibaldi's in Hardin. But my favorite thing to get there is, like, it's not on the menu, but I'll mix the meats. It's a tongue-in-cheek burrito. That's what it's like.

Nice. It's like a beza y lengua burrito. That's what I always get. And it tastes so good because the cheek is super fatty and the tongue is nice and, ooh, it's. Garibaldi, like the artist? Oh, like, yeah, like the artist oh like yeah like the artist but it's like a place it's not his it's not his it's not his but a tongue-in-cheek burrito if you guys go to mexican restaurant try and get your hands on that but like um tripe like i grew

up my mom made tripe so much but i would call it towel like i'd like okay because like she'd always cut it up in squares and for some reason to me as a kid it just looked looked like towels. So I'm like, let me get more of that towel. Yeah. You know? Yeah, definitely. I don't know. It looks weird. It's funny how, I guess, again, we can grow up on stuff like this.

It's perfectly normal. But it can just look so just weird to Americans. We're American too, but yeah. Yeah, liver and kidneys and all that stuff. It looks like it belongs inside the body, you know, and to stay there all the time, you know? But for some reason, when we think of, like, muscle, I guess we're not, we're not really, I guess you don't really think that much unless you're someone that, you know, really dives into it quite a bit. You don't even really

think about where the meat really comes from. It's like origin and like where it's you know where is this piece of steak where is it cut from on you know from a cow or whatever yeah and we don't there's a lot of people that do know that information but there's i would say the majority just don't know yeah don't have any understanding of it and maybe if we knew more of that maybe it would seem less gross because you're like, well, this muscle meat is actually right next to the heart or this muscle meat is right next to

where the kidney is or the liver. And you'd be like, okay, well, maybe it's not as gross to eat liver as I thought, you know, but they do have definitely a different flavor and you need to get used to it over a period of time. Yeah, if it wasn't for Piedmontese,

like I wouldn't know where certain parts of the meat comes from. When they were here, they were kind of breaking it down, and they're like, oh, well, that's why the flat iron's so tender, it's because it's next to this and that. And I'm like, oh, fuck. I don't know, I just think the steak comes from a cow. I don't know why you guys have funny names for it, but it turns out it's because it really freaking matters

where it does come from the animal animal yesterday morning before the cast i uh i usually like cut up the bevette like you you have but i was like in a rush so i just put the whole bevette in an air fryer nice and i cooked it for a little bit longer since it's pretty thick like 25 minutes that shit was so good it was it was like it was just it's just nice thick slab of meat and it was amazing yeah dude that's been one of my favorites yeah yeah i'm so stoked so i got a uh so our air fryer like it finally like we've had it for a really long time so it pooted on you finally yeah i mean i could kind of like a like the old nintendo like i can kind of make it work but it's like like i don't want to rely on this piece of shit.

Got to elbow it and shit. Yeah. Yeah. So I ordered a Ninja Foodi Grill XL because it has the most like surface area. True Mr. Franchise. A little bit like the thing we have here. Yeah. Except this one is like you can open up the top.

Ah, nice. And then like pull stuff in and out of it. But yeah, my first thought was like, how many Bob vets can I cook at once? And it's like, well, this one's probably going to allow me to do like three. Like it's,

it's yeah. If, if that steak wasn't so gigantic, you know, we obviously cook more, but I've also been having a lot of fun, but really enjoying the, uh,

the dynasty cut ribeye. Oh, dude. Yeah. Those are fucking good three point set like you know if you look at the label it's like two and a half servings and i don't know it comes out to 3.75 grams of fat for that whole steak but it's so so many so much protein it it's ridiculous. Like for, I don't know, whenever the hell I decided to go on like a serious cut, like I'm just going to eat that because it's, it doesn't make any sense. It's so good. Their meat is so good, Peeves. Their meat is so good.

Those mushrooms hit all of us, I think at the same time, right? I believe so. Because I tried to hide because I started, like i i just seen one of you guys like smile just very just very briefly and i'm like oh fuck here we go and then i looked up and i see that stupid rabbit i was like god damn it yeah that rabbit was talking to you rabbit was like fucking motherfucker you're like what you got beef with me i'm like has that thing been there this whole time bubble gum rabbit man yeah when it seemed to step away from the mic i was like oh shit like he's

he's in it now too you know i felt it a little earlier than that because i i know a little bit of what to expect from it so i i i saw the screen kind of you know moving around a little bit of what to expect from it. So I saw the screen kind of, you know, moving around a little bit. And I was like, okay, it's coming. And then about another 10 minutes went by. But it took like 40 minutes to hit. So like on the shot clock. I mean, it's still hitting, but it took 40 minutes. It was like an hour and 10 when like we all kind of like acknowledged it.

Yeah. So, but before that, yeah, the, like the lights were flickering for me, like a little bit like in and out for me i actually started looking real 3d like i was looking at the screen and i was just like looking at her move and i was like she was just looking real she was after that she was just like out of the screen a little bit i was just like damn like that's awesome yeah when you need to like ground yourself you need to be like okay like the desk is here okay good like i'm just gonna that's when you make it worse though i know it does it makes it way worse it always goes back to uh to friday

when craig is just like do i still look high it's like yeah dude you look worse yeah and yo my like my like i think i didn't really notice it i that point. I still look high. That's great. Yeah. But my eyes started to water immensely. That's why I was just like, wait, I don't want to look like I'm fucking crying. So I backed away. My eyes just started watering. This is good stuff.

Yeah. This is good stuff. This was great. Not to be buried by the amazing information that we received, too. But yeah, this was fun. Oh, yeah. Take us on out of here, Andrew. I will. Thank you But yeah, this was fun. Oh yeah. Take us out of here, Andrew.

I will. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Sincerely appreciate it. Uh, if you guys dig what we were talking about today, or if you had a laugh with us, uh, please hit the like button.

And if you want to, you know, hang out and subscribe, that'd be really cool too. Uh, please make sure you're following the podcast at Mark Biles power project on Instagram at MB power project on Twitter, on twitter my instagram twitter and clubhouse is at i am andrew z and sema where are you at thanks daddy if you guys like the shroom cast let us know

i'm at and sema yin yang on instagram youtube all we do from now on and sema yin yang on twitter mark the good news is that nobody's listening. God damn it. Remember, if you're listening to Mark Bell's Power Project, then that means you have no life. And if you're not listening to it, it also means you have no life. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength.

Catch you guys later. We made it! Yeah!