Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Saturday School EP. 11 - What Is Protein Leveraging?

Episode Date: August 1, 2020

Gather around students, The People's Coach has some educating to do today. We asked Mark Bell, what is protein leveraging? He has been utilizing this method of dieting with huge success and claims it is the BEST nutrition ideology available to us. Big statement. Let us know if you plan on using this as well! #MBSaturdaySchool Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Support the show by visiting our sponsors! ➢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 ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢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 #Podcast #MarkBell

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mark Bell's Saturday School. This is an awesome opportunity for us, the people, to ask the people's coach any question that we may have in regards to success, fitness, motivation, etc., etc. He's been talking about protein leveraging recently, so that's what we're going to talk about in today's podcast. But Mark, if you were to start using some of these methods, what's the absolute best type of protein that one can consume? Yeah, I think, you know, first off, I want to say that nutrition is, you know, very individual. And

what I mean by that is sometimes it has to fit with some of your belief system that you previously had, and maybe some of your ethical and moral values. And so I don't want to, I am a promoter of the carnivore diet. I am a fan of eating meat and I personally don't have a moral or ethical issue with eating meat. However, as we move forward down the years and stuff like that, we could find out that factory farming is really, you know, has some really negative practices. But as you guys know, I use Piedmontese beef is the majority of the meat that I use. I'm a fan of their farming. Hopefully, I'll get an opportunity to go and check out what they have going on out there in Nebraska. But anyway, aside from that, when it comes to protein, I think it's important to try to find things that feel good to you.

So aside from the moral or ethical feelings that you may have, let's just talk purely about, you know, eating and how it can maybe benefit you. You want to go by previous history. You know, what do you think you digest well? well. Also, I wouldn't, I would try not to cast any, I wouldn't try to try to, I wouldn't try to conclude that you can't digest red meat because you've had bad experiences with McDonald's. You know, I would give that another go and I would try other types of meat because, you know, a lot of times when we eat McDonald's, we're eating a bunch of other crap with it. So I would, the quality of the meat, I think that topic alone is a large topic and it could

be questionable on how much it matters. But I will say in my own experience, it's been better for me to spend a little bit more money on meat that I view or deem as being a little bit higher quality. That's helped me with taste and that's helped me get to a good protein source that I like. So for me, my main source of protein is red meat. I know other people that tend to do a little bit better with chicken. I know some people that tend to do a little bit better with fish. As of late, there's been more information about polyunsaturated fats, PUFAs. And some people don't think that eating chicken and eating pork is all that healthy.

I don't think it's not healthy. I don't think there's enough evidence in that way to really worry about that. I still think that chicken is a lean source of protein and it's still great. However, what I would say about red meat is that it has good nutrient density to it, meaning that it has both micronutrients and macronutrients. And then also, a lot of times a steak is going to be calorically dense in comparison to a chicken breast. Now, here's where we can utilize some good strategy. a, let's just say a, let's say a chicken breast, let's just say it's three inches wide by six inches long. Can I get a, Hey now, right. And let's say we have a steak that's of equal size. They're exactly the same size. Let's just say for argument's sake, let's say they're like bigger

than your hand or something like that, you know? So just so you can kind of envision, you know, what these kind of slabs of meat look like, right? The chicken breast under normal circumstances is going to have a lot less overall calories in it. And if you're trying to live in the wild off of just chicken breast and you had no other fat sources, you weren't pouring olive oil on it or anything like that, you would have a tough time surviving off of the chicken breast as compared to the red meat because the red meat would have a little bit more fat in it and it would also have micronutrients that are important. Chicken breast also would have micronutrients, but not nearly the levels. It's my belief and from a lot of the things I've seen,

that you can pretty much live really well off of muscle meat and off of red muscle meats. And I think that Dr. Sean Baker is good proof and good evidence into this. And I think that a lot of his not just not his research but the the cast of people that have surrounded him and that have also followed suit and followed the same diet without having liver and without eating kidneys and pancreas and testicles and things like that people have still thrived and done really well. So let me move on into talking about something a little bit more simpler to grasp, something that's not even simpler necessarily, but just easier to utilize.

And that's protein leveraging. Protein leveraging is basically just being protein first. I call it meat minded. You can kind of call it whatever you want, but you want protein to be a priority, protein priority dieting. We could even call it just protein forward, protein first. Protein is the first thing that you're thinking about at all times. I learned this very early on in my lifting career. I learned this probably when I was about 13, 14 years old from my brothers and from my uncle. My uncle was big into lifting. He was big into pro wrestling, watching the old AWA professional wrestling,

watching the road warriors from back in the day and seeing how big and jacked some of these people were. And then reading about it in magazines, the first thing that always came up was these people lifted weights and they ate a lot of protein. More recently, there is more and more information all the time about the specifics of protein leveraging. And if you want to know an amazing amount of information from it, there's a guy by the name of Ted Neiman, who we've had on the podcast before. He's probably at the forefront of researching this, but I believe that protein leveraging could potentially be at the forefront of helping with obesity more so than any other singular type of nutrition ideology that we have. It's a pretty profound statement, but I'm in massive belief of this because when you

eat more protein over a period of time, you will eat less. You will drive down the overall amount of calories that you have. Now, I also want to say that having control over your diet is not everybody's problem. People overeating is not everyone's problem, but 39% of the world is overweight. And I believe, I think in America, we're at like 60% obesity rate, not just overweight. And so when you start to think about those numbers, it's like, wow. And then let's think about the most troubled of our population. Who is the most troubled of our population in terms of, I guess, setting up

their health for the rest of their life and also ending their life and setting up what the end of their life looks like? You know, we have our kids and we got our parents, right? And we have our grandparents and stuff like that. These people under normal circumstances are not getting anywhere near the amount of protein that they need. I believe Americans are somewhere in the 13% range. I could be wrong on that stat. It's been a little while, so I looked it up. But I think America is about 13% is, sorry, 13% of their diet is made up of protein and so that means that every you know the rest is is everywhere else you know to try to shift protein into like a 70 percentile range is just uh like not going to happen probably like that's that's too big of a shift but

can we increase it by 10 and lower the other ones a little bit? I believe so. I believe you can get yourself to, you know, 25%, 30% protein diet and a decent amount coming from fat and then the rest coming from carbohydrates or, you know, some combination thereof where, you know, some's coming from fat, some's coming from protein, but a real modest amount is coming from the carbohydrates. Now, I also got to say that I don't think that carbohydrates are bad. The problem usually with carbohydrates is they're usually not by themselves. And when they are by themselves, they can also be problematic because if it is by itself and you're going to eat it, a lot of times it's in the form of something sugary, such as a fruit juice

or a soda, right? Now, even a soda or a fruit juice, you're probably not going to have by itself. Now, even a soda or a fruit juice, you're probably not going to have by itself. You're going to have it with some other food. Does, let me ask you this, does the orange juice or the soda, does it really do much of anything to fill you up? You know, you're not really feeling much satisfaction from that other than the flavor. Flavor might be great, but can you replace those calories with water? Can you replace those calories with using a product like Element, which is a electrolyte that we like to use here at Super Training Gym or Keto Vitals? Or could you replace that with dropping in a little bit of lemon, you know, squeezing

a little bit of fresh lemon into some water and maybe getting a little salt in there just so you get some flavor? You know, do you have other options? you mix in even a diet coke i would be okay with or coke zero you know i know people get all out of control when it comes to you know should we be utilizing these uh uh you know fake sugars and so on and and how dangerous they are but i think utilizing them strategically here and there I don't have much of a problem with having a diet soda, you know, once a day, a couple times a week. I just, you know, somebody, if somebody has evidence otherwise on how dangerous they think that is, then you can, you can at me, bro. But I don't think that that's going to lead to much of a problem. I think the main problem in America, let's stick to America's, let's face it, because Americans, we don't care about nobody else, right? No, I'm just kidding. You know, we have our own problems here in the

United States. And a big problem is obesity. And I think that if we can start to try to rectify it here, maybe you can assist and help other countries with it as well, since I think that we're the ones that have kind of pushed this out to the rest of the world with McDonald's and all these other things. But anyway, back to this idea of protein leveraging and how you can really utilize it to your advantage. So let's just take things like one step at a time. Let's say that you have had kind of a normal standard American diet, or you've been listening to this show for a little bit, and you have even tried a little bit of bodybuilding diet here and there. You've tried a little bit of keto here and there, but you just haven't really been that consistent. Where I would start is I would go with one gram of protein per pound of body weight. Even if you're big, even if you're 350, even if you're 400 pounds,

that's where I'd like you to start. Even though you could get away with less, I would like you to start there because if you weigh 400 pounds and you have, I don't know, 250 pounds of muscle on you or 200 something pounds of muscle on you, you know, your body fat percentage, yes, it's high and yes, you are eating extra calories. However, if the extra calories are coming from protein, it's not that offensive to your body. That's in under normal circumstances, there's not a offensive to your body. Under normal circumstances, there's not a lot of situations where that's going to turn into body fat. Now, we know that if we end up with excess calories, period, that we're going to have a tough time losing weight,

and we can even gain weight regardless of the style of diet that we're on. But what I would say about this and what makes protein leveraging special is it's nearly impossible to overeat. And you can eat, you can almost eat as much protein as you want and still be relatively safe. And when I say eat as much protein as you want, I think in some cases people can go two grams. There's even some studies and some information where people are going 2.5 grams per pound of body weight.

So, you know, if you weighed 250 and you're eating 500 grams of protein, I don't know how good of an idea that is to do for the rest of your life. But to do that for three months or three weeks or, you know, half a year, I don't think it's going to make a negative dent in your health. And again, if anybody has information and they want to contend or criticize the stuff that I'm saying here, I'm very open to it because I'm not an expert in this field. I'm somebody that has just kind of poked around and played around with it for a long time. And the reason why I talk about it is because I lost 100 pounds myself. I used to weigh 330. And, you know, since that time, since the time of me weighing 330, I've pretty much consistently been under 250.

This morning I weighed 240. I did a bodybuilding show a while back on stage. I weighed 235. And like I said, right now I'm 240, so I'm bodybuilding show a while back on stage. I weighed 235. And like I said, right now I'm 240. So I'm only five pounds away from that. And I did that two years ago. So I've been able to maintain a fairly lean body. As with anybody, I wish I was leaner.

But, you know, I'm getting there. And I'm getting there by doing this protein leveraging concept and let me just kind of let me give you a good example of what a day would look like so I'm going to say aside from intermittent fasting because intermittent fasting just adds another element into the mix but I'm going to leave that out for the moment. I'm just going to give you the example of my last couple of days. So I'll just use mainly today as an example, because I didn't fast today. So this morning, I woke up, I had some water, I went to downtown Davis, and I walked and I walked for probably about three miles, about halfway through the walk. I stopped. I got a coffee. Now, I always carry around protein with me because I'm a weirdo.

But I had, you know, 60 grams of protein in my back pocket in a Ziploc bag. And I actually also had I've been playing around with some different things as of late. So I have this product called Fat Fuel and I use the fat fuel hot chocolate And I mixed it in with two scopes of the slingshot protein, and it was absolutely amazing. Mixed it into an iced coffee, and just kind of drank that on my walk. Now, grams of fat, probably 20. There was nothing else in the coffee other than that stuff. I didn't have any cream or sugar or anything like that in the coffee. And there was 60 grams of protein. So that was meal one.

Meal number two, the wifey was like, hey, I'm cooking some breakfast. You want something? I was like, sure. So about two hours later, I ended up having some eggs with some steak and some sausage and an avocado. Not sure the details on that one in terms of the amount of protein, but I'm just going to guess. And let's just say it's let's say it's another 50 say it's another 50 grams of protein.

So for the day, I'm up over 100, right? I'm about to train. It's about 12 o'clock or so. Probably my next meal probably won't be till like four because I'm not really diligent about eating every two or three hours, especially since I've committed to do an intermittent fasting. It doesn't matter if it's five hours or six hours since the last time I ate. I don't really worry about it too much. I'm not trying to like frequently feed my body. What I am trying to do is be consistent with the overall amount of food that I get in a day, A, making sure I get enough and B, making sure I'm not out of control and eating way too much.

The protein has been the single biggest driver for me to help me gain control over the diet. The second biggest thing has been intermittent fasting. I'll get to the intermittent fasting in a second. I will eat at like 4 p.m. tonight and I think we have some steaks defrosting. I will probably eat some ribeye and I'll probably get another 60 grams of protein at like four. And then probably again, around six or seven, I'll probably eat again, even even if I don't need it, I probably a lot of times, I'll end up eating one more time. Now, what I've noticed is, is because I like to eat, I like I'm, I'm basically addicted to it. Like I, I like the, the process. I like sitting down with my family, especially, and I love to eat. And so, you know, there's not going

to be, there's not going to be many days for Mark Bell where I don't eat enough food. It's difficult for me to try to keep my calories low. So that's where intermittent fasting can come into play. But let me finish off this day. So for about four o'clock, I'll probably have another steak. That's probably another 50, 60 grams of protein. I'll probably have one more meal after that. That's another 50 or 60 grams. Now we are for four meals, I believe we're up over 200 grams.

And I might end the night off with a slingshot protein mixed into some yogurt. And that'll put me 250, 300. And that's about where I'm at almost every single day. But I got to tell you that it is actually pretty damn difficult for me to do that, especially considering on a lot of other days, I'm intermittent fasting. And it makes it difficult to get that amount of food in. Something that I have noticed is a few myths that I've seen. So people that are on a keto diet, I think you're under the misconception of if I eat more fat, I'm going to get leaner. That is not true. If you eat more fat,

you'll eat more calories and you will, you could be more likely to put on more fat, even though you're not eating carbohydrates. And the reason for that is you're eating an abundance of calories. And if the abundance of calories are coming from fat, it's my, maybe this is fact, I don't know. But it's my, in my head, that that will turn into fat kind of the easiest, because it already is fat. But like I said, someone can poke holes in that one. I don't, I don't actually really know. But I've noticed even for myself on a carnivore diet that if I overeat, that it's actually a little easier for me to get fat off of that than I would think. Now, look, if I don't have any rules in my diet, it's game over. It's really easy to get fat because, you know, now you're eating things like pizza and things that are going to influence you to want to eat more.

So the one thing that you need to be a little cautious with utilizing protein leveraging is how fat the products are that you're eating. There's a lot of give and take that goes on here. So the more fat that's in something, it'll taste better. It'll be more satisfying, but it may not be all that much more satiating. And so you might find yourself eating more. Another thing that's happened to me that I noticed is if I eat too much, if I really slam food and I get myself really stuffed, that triggers a lot of errors in me. For me personally, it makes everything else just a little bit harder. If I get myself to the point where I finished my food, I feel pretty good about it. And then 10 minutes later, I'm actually recognizing now that I'm pretty full, pretty stuffed. That is right where I need to be.

now that I'm pretty full, pretty stuffed, that is right where I need to be. That's like the sweet spot for me. So you guys should pay attention to this as well. Have you noticed that if you really stuff yourself, especially with meat, how you're just looking for, hey, what's the opposite of meat? You know, now your taste buds, it's probably something that's ingrained in me. I don't know if it's everybody, but for me personally, I think it has to do with when I was a kid, hey, finish your plate, finish your plate, finish your plate. You get, you know, and now you can have dinner.

You could have a dessert. I think it has something to do a little bit with that. But I also think it has to do with in my power lifting days, it was really important for me to eat all the food. It was important for me to keep the calories high. And so it was like a challenge. Okay. You know, eat this pizza. Okay. Now you got to eat these Snickers bars, you know, now you got to eat this ice cream. And so being full, I almost have like, um, I almost have like a, um, I'll just call it PTSD, even though it's not PTSD. I almost have this, a previous recognition of, hey, this is what you used to do when you were full. Remember that? Remember how, you know, when you were full, you would eat again? Like,

that's what you should do. You should eat again. So I would caution you against that. I would pay attention to how full you are. You could try something real simple. You could put a certain amount of food on your plate and say, when that food is done, I'm actually going to use my phone to my advantage. I'm going to use Instagram to my advantage. I'm going to go and move yourself from the table, sit on the couch and look at Instagram or email people for a couple of minutes, drink some water. As that time goes by, ask yourself, am I really still that hungry? You know, do I really need more food? And the answer is usually no. Now, if you still feel like you're hungry, here's where we can again utilize some protein leveraging to our advantage. Rather than thinking about a Snickers bar, think about going to the store and getting ice cream. Let's try to think of something more positive that can still get you to your goal. Protein shake wouldn't be a bad idea because you can make them taste pretty good nowadays. Some yogurt, you know, or mixing slingshot protein with yogurt. We talk about

that quite often. Perhaps having a treat, you know, perhaps having a Quest bar or something that's a little less, not even a little less, a lot less damaging than eating a Snickers bar. You know, is there something else you could do that would be just a little bit different? We know that you can go for a 10 minute walk. We know there's other things that you can go out and do. And in addition to that, if you really are legitimately hungry, I've used this as a test to see if I'm hungry. And that's the hard boiled egg trick. I know not everybody likes hard boiled eggs, but for me, I don't really love them. But now I do because I usually put a little olive oil on them. I'll put some seasoned salt on them from Redmond Sea Salt, and I dump some of that on there, and it tastes amazing.

I usually don't even eat all the yolks. The yolks aren't bad for you. It's just that it does add extra fat to the mix, so I'll eat about half the yolks. So if I eat four eggs or six eggs, I'll eat anywhere between two to three of the yolks total. It's not adding a lot of calories into the mix. Now, I want to say that I don't count calories, but your calories still count. They still matter. The reason why people count calories and the reason why calorie counting works is because it holds you accountable. You know, what does an accountant do?

They work with numbers. What does you tracking your stuff do? It helps you work with numbers. It helps make you accountable. And you have a direct line into why you're gaining weight. You have direct information and research showing you, when you look at it that way and you say, you know, I ate 5,000 calories and wow, I'm up three pounds because I ate 5,000 calories over the last three days. You can detach your emotions from that because that is factual.

You're like, over the last three days, I ate 15,000 calories. And you might be in a state where you're sad or upset about something and you might be messing around with some emotional eating but still regardless of your quote-unquote emotional eating the 15 000 calories your your body doesn't care about that emotional state your body is going to store fat when you eat too much and it will release fat when you find that sweet spot for the right amount of energy that you need every single day. And it's going to be regardless of how you feel. So if you're able to take that 5,000, you're able to look at it and say, hmm, let's just say it's 3,000 because 5,000 is a lot of calories. So let's get down to around 3,000 calories. Can you eat a little bit

less and figure out a way to be less hungry? And the answer is yes. And you can do it very easily through protein leveraging. I'm going to finish up this conversation by talking just a little bit about intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is the other piece of the puzzle that has helped me to be able to reduce and control my calories. Just a little bit on calories, like I'm not a fan of them for multiple reasons. I don't even think the information that we have for protein is correct. And I hope within the next couple of years that we change, I hope we change the information on protein. So for now, one gram of protein equals four calories, but I think eventually that will probably only equal

one calorie, but that might throw everybody off. That might change all the apps and screw everything up forever. But protein to me is not an energy source. Your energy sources are fat and carbohydrates. Your body to survive needs dietary protein and amino acids. And your body needs fat and fatty acids. But your body does not. Your body does not require any dietary carbohydrates. Now, glucose and glucose is so critical to the body that your body will make it and it will make it out of amino acids. And some

people argue that that's not good. That could be, that could very well be true. I'm open to that dialogue. I'm also open to the fact that somebody could argue and say, hey, I don't think not eating any carbs is a great idea. I'm open to that. That's okay. However, I don't think there's scenarios in our history from an ancestral standpoint that make any sense that we would really, I don't want to speak in absolutes, but I can kind of say it this way. I don't think there's a lot of situations where we would quote unquote ever

come across eating two or 300 grams of carbohydrates out of nowhere. Because I just, we didn't have, we just didn't have the resources for it. So you, you might come across some berries and some things like that, but for you to eat that many berries, like that would be a lot. And that would probably kill your stomach. You probably just wouldn't do it. Um, and then in terms of, you know, getting a real like bolus of carbohydrates through a liquid, there is no, there is no liquid representation of anything that I can think of that would be like that, uh, in nature. I mean, there's some things that would be like that in nature. I mean, there's some things that might be like that a little bit, but like juices and things like that,

like those things are, I don't think that we have to necessarily do exactly as our ancestors have done, but I do think it's important to understand that those things aren't normal. Like your body, important to understand that those things aren't normal. Like your body, even a protein shake, you know, think about, think about, think about getting in 60 grams of protein in like 10 seconds and just think to yourself, how does that make any sense? Like under normal circumstances, I'd have to chew that up a lot. And yes, there's things like milk and there's some stuff like that, but like even milk, you're not going to like chug, chug milk. Like it's going to take you a minute to drink it, or at least it should. Otherwise you're going to be farting your face off, right? Your stomach's going to be killing you. So anyway, I think that if we look at our ancestors,

they probably sat down and ate a huge amount of meat at a given sitting. And then they probably intermittent fasted. They just didn't know it was called that, but more so than intermittent fasting, they more so intermittently ate because they weren't thinking about fasting. That's for sure. They weren't thinking about not eating. They were thinking, I need to fucking eat. That's what they were thinking about. They were intermittently eating. Now, we don't have to worry about those things anymore. We don't have to eat like that any longer. But I think what it is important to shift your mind towards and what is important to shift your mind into this gear is you could probably figure out a couple ways to eat less food. You can probably figure out a couple of ways to pull some energy from the amount of food that you eat every day. And you could probably shift

that energy into creating the body that you've always wanted, or at least heading in that direction. The biggest thing that I see, the biggest mistake I see most people making, most of the people, I should say, most of the people that are in fitness, most of the people that follow along with podcasts such as what we have, is they self-sabotage themselves at the end of the day. it'll be more difficult for you to sabotage yourself at the end of the day because you know how damn hard it is every single day just to get the right ratios and the right protein amount. You're going to say, I worked way too damn hard for this. Think about in the NFL when you hear someone ask the Patriots about, you know, they're playing the Jets.

And they're like, you guys slaughter the Jets all the time, should be an easy victory. And, you know, Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, they always downplay that and say, look, man, getting a victory is damn hard in this league. It's hard. Getting a victory in life is tough. It really is tough. And when you have to work for it, when you trained already on that day, you already got

in 100 grams of protein. You already practiced some intermittent fasting. You're like, you know what? There is no way that I'm going out like a chump on this day. I'm going to make this a 10 out of 10 day. Because at that moment, you're at like an eight and you can either go towards a six or you can go towards a 10. It's up to you on which way you want to go.

You want to go left or you want to go right? Go towards that 10. Go towards that bigger number. And when you do so consistently, you're going to start to lose weight. You're going to start to get momentum. And that's when somebody at the gym is going to go, yo, what are you doing different? You look great. And now all of a sudden, you're a resource for other people.

And you're kind of looking around like, I can't believe that this shit happened. How am I the resource? I was the fat guy. I was the person that was always out of shape. And now you're in shape. So that's protein leveraging. Again, you want to look up some deets on it. You want to get the real details.

Ted Nieman is at the forefront of really pushing that information out there. Just try your best to really up that protein amount. I would say this too, just try to, try to not have any meals. This doesn't mean any meals ever, trying to have any meals that just don't have protein in them. And if you think about snacks, what's the biggest problem with snacks? Snacks are just, they're usually not protein. Like we're not really snacking. I mean, sometimes you might have salami or pastrami or something like that, or a little bit of cheese, but those are good. I think those are good.

I think those are fair game because they got protein in them. So every time you think about eating, I want you to think about protein. And especially you get around your parents your grandparents your children really try to reinforce hey you know what let's you should have a little bit more chicken breast you should eat a little bit more they don't like chicken breast get chicken thigh got a little extra fat in it taste a million times better mix it in with some rice don't worry about don't even I wouldn't even worry about the carbs necessarily, because when you start to protein leverage, and if you intermittent fast on top of that,

you're eating your calories in such a short chunk that it just starts to become a little bit irrelevant. Now, obviously you don't want your kids and your grandparents to necessarily intermittent fast unless they knew what they were doing, unless you knew what you were doing. But when it comes to mixing in other foods, take advantage of that. Mix in other foods, mix in other ingredients so that people eat more protein. And for you yourself, you can kind of judge on whether you need that or not. I'm just going to finish before Andrew hops in here. I'm going to finish off with saying that just the other day I ate, I had some, I had some Piedmontese filet, filet mignon, freaking unbelievable, super good. I had a little bit of ribeye and I was just like, I thought it was maxed out. I thought I was full. My wife made some chicken.

A lot of times we take leftover chicken. We had that the night before, but it really wasn't that good. I think we overcooked it a little bit. It got a little dry. We chopped up the chicken. She threw some Parmesan cheese over top of it. She mixed it in with some vegetables, used a little bit of tomato sauce on top of it, threw some Parmesan cheese on that bad boy, and it was fucking awesome.

And I ate a whole bowl of it. So, boom, I got in another big chunk of protein when I thought I needed to wave the surrender flag. Yeah. You're such a fatty sometimes. It's unbelievable. I love it. Fattest guy you ever met. Yeah.

So, some follow-up questions from the uh the class here um we've had tons of experts on uh on the podcast and we i've asked this question a bunch of times but just so that way people listening right now like we've heard that it's you can have like 25 grams of protein per meal or whatever it may be is there any truth to that or have you noticed any difference of like i'm gonna have just a little bit of protein right now and then I'm going to, you know, fill it in later? Or have you just like maxed out and just got nothing but benefits? From a scientific standpoint, I believe that has been dispelled a few times. I do think there are like certain amounts that your body can kind of keep up with, you know, per like hour or whatever. But also I'd like you to think about this.

You know, all species is something that everyone should know. All species need protein, at least as far as my knowledge. It could be something weird out there that doesn't need it. And everything is in pursuit of protein all the time. Even humans, even when we're eating Cheez-Its, we're trying to get more protein, but we're just not going about it the right way. And we're never actually getting it. And these are highly palatable foods and they're overriding our ability to learn when to stop eating, but we're also not getting the protein in there. So I don't know.

I don't think that that has any merit, that 20 grams, 30 grams rule. I also think it wouldn't be a great decision to, you know, ingest, you know, a 100 gram protein shake with, you know, with your dinner unless your goal is to try to add some size and you're trying to experiment a little bit. Because I just don't think that would make a lot of sense towards you being able to assimilate all of that. But think about it in terms of like humans are humans are pretty tough and we're able to adapt to a lot of things. That's probably the reason why we're able to adapt to like eating ice cream is because if we were more fragile, we would be fucked. You know, we would be totally screwed. And so we have to be,

we have to be able to adapt to whatever food, Smokey was telling me the other day that his dog will sometime eat his other dog shit. And that's like a survival technique. And if you don't feed a dog properly, they'll also go outside and eat the grass and like barf everywhere. And it gets all weird. And you're like, why are they doing this? But they're just trying to get their calories from wherever, wherever they can. I think humans sometimes we're the same we're going to try to get the calories from wherever we can but if we go back thousands of years i mean you know like it's me and you and in sema and we're out in the wild and we killed a buffalo because we got the power project uh the power project team going out there.

We kill the buffalo. We're going to try to eat as much as that as we possibly can. You know, we're not going to be like, Hey man, you know, no more than 30 grams, you know, because, you know, the meat's going to go bad and so forth. And it just, it doesn't make any logical sense. So I would say like at a given time, I think you could probably handle 100, 200. Like your body is smart. Your body will figure it out. You know, somebody listening right now might be like, no way can you, you know, handle 200 grams at a time. But there's people that do one meal a day. And they do quite well.

I don't know what the research says. But again, I think that is kind of a myth. Yeah. Earlier you were talking about red meat just being, to shorten it up, like a superior form of protein over chicken. Bodybuilders are the most jacked dudes on the planet. They're in, I mean, we all want to be one. They mainly stick to chicken. So, like, why would they stick to chicken when red meat is superior? red meat is superior that's a great point and i'm glad you brought that up because it so a lot of times bodybuilders are using supplementation you know i'm not i'm not talking about the peds and stuff like that although that is part of bodybuilding as well but even aside from that even a natural bodybuilder a lot of times they're using supplements right they're you taking a multivitamin um they you know, various vitamins and creatine and things like that. And so

if you hit some of your needs, some of your micronutrient needs via eating different foods and via some supplementation, you're good to go. And also bodybuilders, and you bring up another great point, Andrew. Good job on you. So bodybuilders will and you bring up another great point, Andrew. That was a good job on you. So bodybuilders will also utilize vegetables to their advantage. I don't think people understand how smart bodybuilders are with their diet, you know, with their training too, shit. Man, bodybuilders are freaking smart. So bodybuilders have been utilizing protein leveraging for forever.

You know, they've been eating a lot of protein for a long time, maybe not even knowing what it does. But now we have all this research behind it. I'm not a big research person. But however, sometimes the research can kind of validate and you can kind of make you understand like, oh, that's why that technique worked. And that's why that other technique worked, even though they seem to be unrelated. But carnivore and bodybuilding diets are very similar in a lot of ways. Bodybuilders have been eating large amounts of meat for a really long time. Two or three pounds of meat a day is very, very common amongst bodybuilders. But to your point, you know, a lot of times, again, bodybuilders will utilize amino acids during a training session. training session. Chicken isn't worthless. It's just that chicken breast doesn't have the amount of vitamins, but we're not going to die if we don't have vitamins, especially here in the US, especially, look, if you get a cheat meal here and there and things like that, it's

going to change everything. There's also, I need to learn what this word is because it's a fancy word and it would really elevate my game and make me smart. But there's a term that basically says something to the effect of like, if you don't get the right amount of like vitamins, your body will shift things around and make sure that you're still good to go. So if like, if you don't get the right amount of potassium, like you're supposed to get like three grams of potassium a day. If you don't get the right amount of potassium, your body will figure out ways to not necessarily

like make potassium, but a lot of give and take between the other elements and between the other minerals. I need to look that word up and I need to get that straight. I'll look that one up and get back to you guys on that one. But the basics of it is that you don't need, you don't have a, what is it called? Recommended daily allowance. You don't really, that's fake. You don't, you don't really need to get things in every day.

It's just a recommendation because they don't want you to be malnourished. But if you get some of it in, you know, copper or zinc or some of these things, like you don't need a lot of it every single day to be a higher performer and to be in good shape. Awesome, dude. All the other questions that the class had, you answered in the whole length of this awesome podcast. So, just to compare notes to see what everyone else got, I thought it was huge that you said, find what feels good. You know, that's been huge in my life. You know, I did try like the keto, like a keto-ish diet and I just didn't feel great. I did carnivore and kind of felt almost about the same. And now when I mix higher carbs and low fat,

I feel a lot better. But the main staple has always been make sure I get protein in every meal and not just some protein, but like a lot of protein. Because once you learn, like, hey, I'm trying to make some gains, you're going to rely a lot more on that protein. I thought what you said about, you know, kind of protein leveraging and, you know, being, what did, oh, I just had it written down, meat minded, meat forward, being the best nutrition ideology. I think that's huge. I think that's going to hit people a certain way and get some reactions, but I don't really find fault in anything that you said today. So, I think that's very important. And then one of the questions I had was like, it was kind of a more broader question, but you did answer it in a certain way. It was basically just, you know, people complain about protein, like good quality meats being expensive.

Carbs are just huge abundance. So, the question was going to be something sort of like, how can we make protein as available as carbs and fat? But I think you answered it when you said you're talking about making stuff for your kids. You know, like the other day I made my daughter a, uh, the, uh, uh, it was fat free yogurt. It was a slingshot protein and that's all I had. But for hers, I added some fat free, uh, or sugar free chocolate chips and some, uh, some chocolate syrup on top.

Yeah. She thought she was having just like an absolute amazing dessert. And I looked down at it and it's, I'm like, dude, that is a protein bomb right there. Because, you know, where is she going to get like, you know, 60 grams of protein in one sitting? It's awesome. You know, which is probably too much. I'm fine with that. But, you know, like, hey, like that's how I was able to kind of trick her into enjoying

more protein and what fat free yogurt or whatever it was, is like super cheap at Costco. So like, that was how I was able to do it. And I think what you said earlier was spot on. My daughter loves to mix up some fruit. She gets some frozen fruit from the fridge, sometimes some fresh fruit, and she makes like a smoothie. And then I like, sometimes I'll make them for her. And she's like, oh, this is different. And I was like, oh, you don't like it? And she's like, no, no, no, I like it.

She's like, what else did you put in there? And I just told her, I was like, I threw in a couple scoops of protein. She's like, oh, she's like, I don't really think I taste the protein. She's like, which one is it? I said, oh, it's this collagen protein that's flavorless. And she's like, oh, she's like, it just gives it, she's like, it gives it a smoother texture. She's like, I really liked that. And so there's, you know, there's ways around it in terms of finances. That can be tricky. It's because, you know, your protein is going to cost you more, but it's also going to be of great value to you and your family for you to be healthy.

And so try to lean into that the best you can. You can get a lot of different types of meat. I mentioned like red meat quite a bit. And the prices of red meat at the moment are pretty high. But try to be economical whenever you can. Also, too, I think that a lot of people, if they think about it a little bit more, I think a lot of people know some hunters. And so if you know someone who hunts and you say, Hey man, like I'll even pay you for your meat.

If you got like, cause they're usually just going to give it to you for free, but it's, it's rare that a hunter doesn't have like a lot of extra, they're like, dude, there's no way I can eat that amount of food, you know? So I'm just gonna, I'll, uh, I'll give you some, you know, and sometimes you can find like Costco has a lot of great deals. Sometimes you can, sometimes eggs aren't too expensive. There's ways around it. It's not an easy solve because, you know, a lot of the carbohydrate type stuff is going to look super cheap and super inexpensive, but it's like, it's per like one unit versus you,

you know, getting a 12 ounce steak, uh, that could be a majority of your food for, I mean, what if you, you know, only had like one at one more steak than that? That's kind of your food for the day. One last note too, on, on carbohydrates. Um, for me personally, I've been eating a little bit of carbohydrates lately. But when I say a little bit, it's a tiny amount. You know, I had probably, I don't know, a big spoonful of potatoes last night with my steak and I threw some butter on them. But it's like, I mean, I can't even imagine that it's more than 15 or 20 grams of carbs, you know, and I'll eat some berries here and there, some blueberries and stuff like that. But what you also said about, you know, what feels best, keep in mind what feels best will probably be enough to get you in pretty good shape. But what feels best probably won't be the best thing to get you really lean.

Like if you're trying to get shredded, then you got to go haywire and you got to go into something that like you have to start to, you have to start to get into some areas that aren't that comfortable. And that's when you see bodybuilders, you know, eating tuna fish out of the can and dumping mustard on it and shit like that. That's like, there's desperate times call for some desperate measures. I used to dump a bunch of mustard on my chicken breast and stuff like that when I'd get ready for shoots and things of that nature. But aside from that, you should be able to get in really good

shape with foods that you like, with foods that you enjoy. It just might take a little sacrifice upfront with you choosing to do some intermittent fasting and you might have to choose to just, you know, start to eat a lot more protein. Last suggestion of the day here is to, if you've never tried anything like this before and you haven't eaten much protein in the past, just try an additional like meal of protein. You know, don't, don't listen to this podcast and say, shit, Mark said I got to have 300 grams because he eats 300 grams of protein a day. and say, shit, Mark said I got to have 300 grams because he eats 300 grams of protein a day. That will wreak havoc on your stomach. That will not feel good.

So take some precaution with that and enjoy the information that we shared today. Thank you guys so much for following along. Yes, thank you, everybody, for checking out Saturday School. Please hit us up on all social media platforms, at MarkBell'sPowerProject on Instagram Instagram, at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. Let's see, Facebook, I can't remember the thing, LinkedIn, YouTube, all over the place. Use the hashtag MBSaturdaySchool.

Ask us some questions. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ. If you want to get in touch with me, Mark Bale, where are you at? Don't forget to check out Certified Piedmontese. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. All links in the podcast show notes and in the YouTube and Facebook descriptions. You can use the code MarkBale and you get 25% off.

You get free shipping on any orders over 99 bucks. When we tell you guys that it's the best damn meat you can get your hands on, it's the best. I mean, it's gotten to the point where i'm i'm just like a little bitch at home it's my wife's like oh i cooked i'm like i'm like is that the piedmontese or is that something else she's like oh she's like uh she's like you won't be able to tell the difference anyway and i'm like i can tell the damn anyway i'm at mark smelly bell strength is never weakness weakness never strength thank you guys so much for following along catch y'all later bye