Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 622 - Can You Perform At A High-Level On Keto/Low Carb? - Response to Joe Rogan

Episode Date: November 11, 2021

We react to Joe Rogan saying Mark Bell is not 100% keto which lead to a conversation about low carb diets not being necessary for everyone, but high carb diets maybe aren't as critical for athletes as... we all once thought. Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: Visit https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢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 $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb 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 ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Dude, I was making so much noise this morning, I don't know what's wrong with me, I was like hacking up a lung. Yeah. I don't know, it was like an allergy thing or whatever, but I had like a sneezing fit and I kept trying to clear my throat and it just wasn't going so good. I don't know what the hell was going on. Shoot. Did you get any element this morning?
Starting point is 00:00:16 I have not had any elements. Me neither, actually. That's what's going on. No, actually, me neither. You know, the funny thing is like, when I go through my day, if I haven't had electrolytes in the morning and I do feel like a little bit of fatigue by the middle of my day, I'm like, oh, I can usually be like I didn't have element. So I'm probably not as hydrated right now. Probably a little bit low on sodium, magnesium, potassium. You can feel the difference.
Starting point is 00:00:41 You don't look low on anything, bro. I do look like you're doing good. Look like you're doing. Thank you. Do I't look low on anything, bro. I do. You look like you're doing good. You look like you're doing alright. Thank you. Do I still look high? Right? Still look high. That Kratom being back is amazing. You know what is a big issue is
Starting point is 00:00:56 this time of year when it gets cooler outside, you just think, I don't need to drink anything. I don't need any liquids. That's true. And I got to tell you, it's been more often than not that I cramp up more when it starts to get colder out than I do in the summer. In the summer, it's like you're so thirsty all the time. You're like, man, my body temperature, I feel hot. And you want to drink quite a bit.
Starting point is 00:01:18 And so it's kind of hard to stay on top of it in the wintertime. But luckily, we got Element. You throw that shit in your coffee, you're good to go. in the wintertime. But luckily we got element. You throw that shit in your coffee, you're good to go. And the cool thing too,
Starting point is 00:01:27 what I've found is like, as I've started supplementing electrolytes too, especially at the beginning of this year, I drink less overall water. Cause I used to drink a lot of water, pounding water. Cause I'm like, I'm thirsty.
Starting point is 00:01:37 I'm thirsty. I wasn't necessarily just thirsty. I was literally electrolyte deficient. We need to have that salt guy on here. I keep forgetting about him, but I got a guy, a salt guy. Nice. i have a foot guy too that we can get to the bottom of some of these uh these things that we need to just like know more about but there's a lot of information about it's not so much about just the water intake it's also about uh getting in the right amount of electrolytes and um who was it? Floyd Mayweather.
Starting point is 00:02:07 Floyd Mayweather actually said in an interview one time, he's like, a lot of these guys are out there drinking water all the time. He's like, water dehydrates you. And people are like, no, what is he talking about? That's the dumbest thing he ever said. And he's like, no, when you drink too much water, it'll start to dilute your electrolytes, and you can end up with cramping. And he's 100% correct.
Starting point is 00:02:23 Yeah, and he's only considered the best come on it's like just ridiculous how good yeah not even close uh so uh yeah you guys really got to get hydrated correctly head over to drink lmnt.com slash power project do what we do get a value bundle so you're going to get four boxes four different flavors whatever you want or you can even get the same flavor if you want and you. And you're only going to pay for three of those boxes. No code needed. Just hit the link down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. And again, that's at drinklmnt.com slash powerproject.
Starting point is 00:02:56 Awesome, man. I'm excited to play this clip from Rogan. It was really cool to hear Rob Kearney and Joe Rogan talk about me and my bro on the show. And I just thought it was interesting how much attention Joe Rogan's paying to both of our Instagrams, where he knew some facts and he kind of had a rebuttal to something that Rob Kearney said. So let's play the clip. Let's check it out nothing to do with diet nothing
Starting point is 00:03:28 to do with anything no that's what's crazy they say that and I don't know if this is accurate but they say that ketogenic diets are very good for preventing cancer because there's something about cancer needing glucose to grow whereas ketones the cancer doesn't grow on ketones, but your body can function better. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense.
Starting point is 00:03:51 You know, like you think fat grows with glucose, so why wouldn't something else that's a little bit more anabolic? Yeah. So it makes sense physiologically. Yeah. I like carbs. Well, I could imagine. Yeah. When you do that kind of work.
Starting point is 00:04:04 I mean, is there anybody that tries to follow a keto diet that does power lifting or strongman type stuff like you? I mean, you have like Mark and Chris Bell. They do like the carnivore stuff. Yeah, but they take carbs. I see those guys. They're always eating apples and shit. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:18 Chris eats a lot of fruit. Yeah. You know? But they're just doing it for aesthetics. They just look good. They lift weights. And you're involved in serious competition with other gorillas that are trying to pick up super heavy shit. Yeah, I would imagine carbs are almost necessary.
Starting point is 00:04:36 Yeah. I mean, they're a staple in every meal. What is your standard diet, like a standard plate for you? What do you eat? Typically, anywhere between one to two cups of rice, depending on the time of day and where my training is at. Eight to 10 ounces of meat and then some veggies. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:53 Robert Ober said that he's basically rice and meat. Yeah. That's the primary. Is that most strong, man? It's the easiest way to get the calories and the nutrients in, right? I think we're good right there, yeah. Awesome, man. A lot of great things there.
Starting point is 00:05:09 First of all, huge shout out to World's Strongest Gay, Rob Kearney. Thanks for hitting me and my brother up. Thank you so much for giving us that mention, giving us some props. And then Rogan, you know, it sounded like there's some like a little disdain in his voice when he said that and he's like those guys are eating apples and shit like as if we're like you know we're fake right i'm just kidding anyway but i confess to all the carbs you've been eating i know i know so many carbs damn it i know he blew the top off everything now i just now that i'm out of the closet i gotta just be eating pizza all the time, I guess, right?
Starting point is 00:05:54 I just thought it was really cool that Rogan's paying that much attention to where he has seen my brother and I shift with our nutrition. We talk about it a lot in the show, and we're big believers that your nutrition should shift around a bit. It could be relatively the same, or you could go back to similar principles all the time. But why not enjoy some different diets here and there when you have different goals? I want to clear up something, though, too, is that I did not use a ketogenic diet to – or even like a low-carb diet to get as strong as possible when I was powerlifting. I think that's kind of a misconception. I think that people think that I did that. If I did put that forward at any time, then maybe I misrepresented myself at some point. I did write a book called The War on Carbs. But The War on Carbs was after I was done lifting the big boy weights in the super heavyweight class, and it was when I
Starting point is 00:06:44 wanted to come back down and weight. And I did so with a ketogenic diet. But people might not realize is that I did use a ketogenic diet while still being dead center in the middle of my strongest times and in the middle of my powerlifting career where I squad to 1080, benched 854, deadlifted 766. But I wasn't leveraging the ketogenic diet in training to get that strong. I used it strategically as a reset here and there. I used it after competitions to lose weight and to feel good. And being that big is just unhealthy. So a lot of times I was like, let me,
Starting point is 00:07:32 you know, it's great that I was able to achieve these one rep maxes on the platform, but now I'm very like unfit and I'm very fat. So let me see if I can fitness myself a little bit. And so I would walk and sled drag and do a GPP type of work, do a little bit of cardio type stuff. And I would go on a ketogenic diet. And nearly every single time I'd lose anywhere between 10 pounds all the way up to about 30 pounds. I would really try to dump water weight. I would try to get rid of excess body weight just to be healthier, just to feel better. You know, one thing that I, um, I think is interesting is that, you know, I think Rogan and Rob during that episode, they mentioned how there's no one really, there's no one at those levels or in those sports that are doing a ketogenic diet. Right. And you know, let's kind of, let's broaden it a little bit. Cause I think when also when people think about keto, there's
Starting point is 00:08:24 also low carb, right? Because if you're eating some carbohydrates, but you do enough expenditure, you can still actually be in ketosis. So let's kind of broaden that. Athletes not being able to compete or do work at a high level with low carbs. it's like a, like a mind virus thing that goes around, especially within fitness where that's a commonly held belief, not just by athletes, but also by researchers with what they've seen in terms of the research and
Starting point is 00:08:54 athletes being able to perform. Um, and that belief kind of just widespread, even though we've seen a lot of people, us ourselves, like pretty low carb performing at a pretty high level in what we do um we we see it but even like i believed that there was a point where i was eating a lot of carbohydrates and i was like i need this and there's no way i can't
Starting point is 00:09:16 i could do this without the amount of carbohydrates i'm eating which is like 300 400 500 grams a day right like andrew we were just on a walk and you said something that was super interesting about your buddy with the protein. Oh yeah. Can I want you to mention that real quick? Cause that falls in line with what we're talking about. Absolutely. Um, I just helping somebody out and you know, he had heard something somewhere sometime
Starting point is 00:09:38 in the past and for whatever reason, this is the one thing that stuck. But somebody told him somewhere down the road that if you have too much protein and you don't exercise, that protein just turns into fat. And because he heard this, he was a little weary of having a protein shake. Or like me saying, no, go ahead and load up a little bit extra on the protein just so that way you get full and you don't have to worry about too much. And his first thought was i thought if you have too much protein then it just turns into fat and so it was just like wow that's interesting that he had this thought and i'm just was thinking like how many other people think that but go ahead yeah no no exactly and the reason i
Starting point is 00:10:20 wanted you to mention that is because that that belief was kind of falling into your friend's bias because your friend didn't want to really do healthier things. Like, you know, he still drinks his beer, et cetera, which is probably worse than eating more protein. But that belief about protein, now he doesn't have to take that action. For me at the time when I was eating a lot of carbohydrates and I was performing pretty well, I was also eating a lot of foods that weren't the healthiest, but I could fit them in because I enjoyed these foods. So that fell into my already, I had a bias because I like these foods. I don't want to get rid of them. I need these carbs to perform. All these other athletes eat a lot of carbs to perform. So there's no way that I could perform being low carb or keto, which after I started
Starting point is 00:10:59 doing those things and I performed even better, it's not the truth. It's really hard to determine what really helps with performance. It's so hard to tell sometimes. Rob Kearney looks a lot better nowadays than he did when we interviewed him at the Arnold maybe about two years ago. He's still competing at a high level. He's still competing in World's Strongest Man. He just did the Rogue Invitational. I think he did pretty well. He's not a huge guy in comparison to how – he's a huge guy, sorry.
Starting point is 00:11:32 He's not a huge guy in comparison to how big some of these monsters are that do World's Strongest Man. But he's still able to perform really well. He actually for a while was in line with trying to break one of the records in log press. So he's a very strong athlete. But I would imagine right now that he probably changed his diet when he's talking about eating steak and rice and meat and rice and things like that. At least it didn't appear when we saw him last time, it didn't appear that he was on maybe that regimented of a diet. So it'd't appear that he was on maybe that regimented of a diet.
Starting point is 00:12:06 So it'd be interesting to have him on the show again and have him talk about what's the difference, like if he did clean his diet up, because I got to personally admit, and this is just my own evidence of what I've done, I didn't notice a benefit from trying to eat super clean while doing powerlifting. So the way that I ate when I was powerlifting, yes, I ate meat and rice and stuff like that. But I also would eat McDonald's. I would also eat pizza. It wasn't a horrible diet. Like if most people kind of saw what I would eat, they would just kind of be like, holy shit, there's kind of a lot of food.
Starting point is 00:12:46 And I would eat like bagels and I would eat hot dogs and I'd eat like certain things. Those calories. Yeah, where there's a lot of calories. Ice cream, maybe three, four times a week. I might even have like, because I might be a little bit more regimented with the meat and rice type thing, maybe on the weekend I would just say, hey, just do kind of whatever. I might have burrito and things like that. And so it's a really interesting thing because you hear of so many people talking about inflammation
Starting point is 00:13:15 and all these different things. That was never really my experience. But I also would admit maybe I didn't clean up my diet enough for a long enough period of time to really see what optimal really was I just thought and maybe it was a virus mind that I was having where I thought I found what was best for me and I was going to like kind of put that forward and kind of ride that out and maybe I did want to have that as an excuse a little bit too. You know, Stan was coming around at the time and he was talking about his nutrition and he was talking about the vertical diet, which is basically meat and rice.
Starting point is 00:13:56 But I didn't maybe do it for long enough to have it give me exponential benefit over just kind of eating crappy food. Absolutely. And like, that's the same thing for like for me currently, you know what I mean? Number one, I want to mention guys that if you switch to any different diet, there's going to be a period of time where you need to give yourself the time to adapt to the new type of way your body is going to be working off the food you're eating. Because if initially you're an individual that was working off of high carbohydrates and maybe
Starting point is 00:14:29 you're doing a lot of CrossFit or a lot of cardio based workouts, and you're working with a lot of high carbohydrate, your body knows how to use glycogen, mainly glycogen, even though you might be having some fat. But now if you're going to a place where you're intaking a lot of fat and much less carbohydrates, your body has to now get used to using that fat as one of its big fuel sources. So it takes a while, but when you get used to it, then it doesn't really feel that bad. But what I was going to say was I did notice a big difference in terms of not necessarily my output as far as performance, but more so my ability to have a better body composition. So I got leaner over time in a much easier way. Right. Um, and I was still
Starting point is 00:15:14 able to keep my performance very, very high. Now there are some times where like, if I have a competition that I'm going to do at jujitsu, right? The night before I'm going to have a good amount of fat and a decent amount of carbohydrates to get me fueled up for the next day. But before I compete, I'm not going to have a high carbohydrate meal. You know what I mean? I'm going to probably keep the meal pretty minimal and have it be fats, maybe some protein, maybe a tiny bit like some, some electrolytes, maybe a tiny bit of carbohydrates, but it's not going to be like the way I used to compete before these things where I'd have a breakfast that had a good amount of carbs, et cetera, because I know that I don't work as well when I have that in my system. But that's the difference now.
Starting point is 00:15:54 I'm able to maintain a leader physique while putting out good output. And your physique got leader too, and you're able to maintain that with the new diet that you're on. The other thing too that I'm failing to point out is like when I was that big and eating that often and eating that amount of carbohydrates, first of all, my carbohydrates still weren't crazy because I just have never been that crazy into eating tons and tons of carbs, even though there was some junk food in there here and there.
Starting point is 00:16:24 I was just more lethargic. I was just more tired. I didn't have as much energy. I would hit my workouts up and I would usually kind of like need a pre-workout to like kick start me to do my stuff. And at that time, I didn't really have any of the shit going on that I have going on now. I mean, I had my wife, I had my kids, but I didn't really have much in terms of like a formal job. I didn't have a lot of responsibility.
Starting point is 00:16:50 I guess I'll just say that. My main focus was just to figure out how to lift more weight. But even with that, I was still, even though I wasn't doing a ton, I was still pretty fatigued. And the biggest difference between me now and then, yes, I did lose a lot of weight, but I also shed off a ton of fatigue all the way to the point where it's extremely rare. I don't even really get tired. I mean, it sounds weird, but it's – and I don't sleep well. Like I've told you guys a million times, like I sleep somewhere between five and six hours you know most you just wake up right i wake up and i feel fucking awesome every single day i don't have any i don't have any noticeable signs that i would like to continue to work on trying to improve my sleep but um with the way my diet is i and i've heard cory gregory
Starting point is 00:17:42 talk about this before where his diet and training everything feels good to the point where I think he only sleeps for like four or five hours. So in terms of it improving my strength on the platform or whatever, I don't really know because I didn't really eat that way. But if I lost significant amounts of weight during that time I was powerlifting because of the diet or because of the nutrition I was utilizing, I would have lost strength. I would have had to make a decision to go down to perhaps a different weight class. I could have also recalibrated and ate more food, but I don't think there's really any good reason if you're bodybuilding, powerlifting, or whatever it is you're doing, I don't think there's any reason to go like zero carb. I don't think there's a lot of great reasons to, unless specifically you're trying to like cut weight.
Starting point is 00:18:32 So I used it for cutting weight. As I mentioned earlier, I used it as like a reset. I don't think there's any reason to get dogmatic and say, hey, boom, carnivore diet. Like this is going to be the way and I'm going to be a world champion in bodybuilding. You could do that, but I would just say in most cases, it just seems like you're just making something a little harder than it needs to be. Is there a certain level when an athlete achieves where this low-carb-ness goes out of the window? an athlete achieves where this low carb-ness goes out of the window. Um, I asked that because what I usually see in the comments, anytime we have a video about keeping carbs down, whatever it may be, it's always, well, Jay Cutler, it worked for him. It worked really well. So I'm going to just do
Starting point is 00:19:17 what that guy did because it seemed to work out really well for him. And I mean, we'll, we'll ignore that there's one Jay Cutler in this world, but yeah. Does that make sense where it's like, once you reach a certain level, you know, fasting goes out of the window. Uh, and I guess I'm just focusing more on bodybuilding. Fasting goes out of the window. Low carb goes out of the window because we need, like you said, and seem like we need these, this this glycogen because I'm going to hit a heavy workout and I need to pack on the calories, et cetera, et cetera. I think in most cases when we're talking about people
Starting point is 00:19:53 that are already starting out heavy is they don't need nearly as much food as they have kind of trained their body and mind to believe. That doesn't mean we just like all of a sudden go and just rob yourself of 1,000 calories a day. That is not going to work out the way that you would like it to. It's going to be too difficult to maintain for any period of time. You would be kind of surprised and shocked at like what your body could run on once you start getting into fasting and once you start to reduce your carbohydrates. Now, that doesn't mean we don't have any nutrition going on.
Starting point is 00:20:32 But if you get in one gram of protein per pound of body weight, you get in about half of that amount for fat. Now your carbohydrates don't really matter as much. You can use those as leverage to do certain intense exercises. But you got to keep in mind someone like Jay Cutler, the output that Jay Cutler has is just was astronomical, you know, and the pace. The pace that he would work out at and the amount of overall work. pace the pace that he would work out at and the amount of overall work i mean just to like i know he would do squat i know he would do leg extensions every single time he worked out of this is for leg day and i know he would squat every time he worked out so he would always start every workout with leg extensions he'd pre-fatigue pre-exhaust then he was going into squats and this wasn't like
Starting point is 00:21:22 this wasn't like oh he's just going to handle 225 and do some pause squats or something, handling five plates. He would do leg presses, he would do lunges, and I'm not even aware of some of the other stuff that he does, that he would do in a given training session. But there's like four or five exercises where he's going, I mean, watch the videos of the guy training. I don't really think, I mean, there's very few people in the world that train at that level like that with that intensity. So Jay may have kind of stumbled upon something that worked great for him. And you hear the rumors of the thousand carbs a day. I mean, who knows how long was he doing that for years on end
Starting point is 00:22:05 or was this like a period of time? There's a lot of things to consider, but also just consider the fact that his output is absolutely monstrous and then also consider the amount of muscle mass. That guy's body is chewing up calories all day long because he probably has, uh, you know, 280 or 270 pounds,
Starting point is 00:22:29 like lean tissue going all at one time. Yeah. Yeah. So Christ fucking jacked. And also, I mean, okay. So Jay, two things.
Starting point is 00:22:39 It's interesting. Cause I, you know, Rob was mentioning how like bodybuilders, they're not necessarily the performance athletes. They do get on stage. But when you look at this training, this is strength and it's hard fucking training. So maybe when they're getting into contest shape, their training volume goes down.
Starting point is 00:22:58 They get a bit weaker. That's when they're not eating as many carbs. But when they're training and they're putting on muscle, they eat a lot of carbohydrates, right? But the second thing also is isn't there something that like at the NPC level, IFBB pro level, don't they take things that allow them to shuttle carbohydrates just burn through it, right? Well, they'll take insulin. Insulin, right? So we can't use Jay Cutler necessarily because like, are you out here using? Because some people do mention that.
Starting point is 00:23:29 I know some people mention that, right? But are you out here taking insulin? Right? Maybe. Some people, yeah. But most people aren't. And I do find it interesting that people will point to maybe just it's because it's popularity. But like there's very little people arguing for the other side, like someone like Robert Sykes.
Starting point is 00:23:51 You know, it's like I'm going to go zero carb, you know, abusing it the other way. You know, they're like, I'm going to go all carb and eat a thousand grams just like Jay Cutler. And then there's nobody saying like I'm going to go zero carb because it's working out for Robert Sykes very well. And Robert Sykes looks amazing. He looks incredible. Our, you know, Cole Robinson, who we've had on the show before, who yells and screams a lot about fasting and intermittent fasting and just basically how people eat way too much, which I actually agree with the message in a lot of ways. I do think that people eat way too much. actually agree with the message in a lot of ways. I do think that people eat way too much.
Starting point is 00:24:29 And it's something just to be like mindful of at some point, if you are overweight, you're going to have to figure out a way to eat less, which is a pain in the ass. But what he, what he'll say oftentimes is, what he'll say oftentimes is, you know, if you're getting, if you're getting in the amount of protein that you need and you utilize some intermittent fasting, you don't need nearly the amount of fuel that you thought you did. However, it will always be of benefit to you to add in something within a few hours of training. So if you – I know like we love fasting. But it can be a little bit more beneficial to you to eat something either the night before. I'm talking about before as in like it could be hours before. It could be the night before.
Starting point is 00:25:12 You're going to increase your performance a little bit by doing that. You're also, if you are going into workouts just, I guess, like fully nourished, you're going into your workouts fully nourished, you're going to recover from your workouts even better. Not only will the workout be better, you'll be able to lift better, you'll be able to perform better. You might be able to work out a little bit longer. You'll actually recover from these workouts a little bit better too.
Starting point is 00:25:37 So those of you that get obsessed with any one of these dogmatic things that you can get obsessed with, even if these dogmatic things that you can get obsessed with, even if it's somebody that is way into fasting, if you have a small meal, you eat like an apple or a banana and you have a protein shake at two, three hours before a training session, it's going to benefit you a lot more than just going into a lot of these workouts cold. Does it mean that you can't get used to fasting? Does it mean that you can't have great results fasting? Does it mean that you will never prefer to work out fast?
Starting point is 00:26:14 It doesn't mean any of those things. It just means that if you have a little extra boost and you have the nutrients, you have access to the nutrients that you need during your training session, you will feel better and perform better. I'll say this too, you know, kind of what Mark was mentioning there as if you're an athlete, it's very hard with something's working for you at that moment in time and you're making progress and you're doing okay. There's very little reason maybe to try to pick up something else like, oh,
Starting point is 00:26:44 maybe going low carb, maybe trying some fasting. If everything's just like going great in your head, you're like, why? Why should I try this? And the thing that I would suggest sometimes is like, if you're not getting ready for a competition and maybe you're far away outside of doing another competition, it might be a good idea to try some new things because potentially these things could take you to a different level. And this is something to think about. Yeah, something's working for you, but what if something could work better? And if it does, cool. But if you do it and then it doesn't work, you have more reinforcement for what you're currently doing because I gave this thing an honest shot for a good while, for a few months.
Starting point is 00:27:29 It wasn't working well for me. I didn't see any benefit over time, so I stopped. Or you could be on the side of like, I tried this for a few months. I made a few changes. And a little bit of fasting here and there or maybe lowering my carbs just a little bit, maybe using mainly whole foods, et cetera. Maybe that helped my appetite more. I'm able to control my appetite more.
Starting point is 00:27:49 And that's been helping with that. Maybe it's just a little change, but it could either help you have a small increment or it could be a pretty big positive change. So it's, it's, it's a good idea to give yourself some time to try some stuff. I like that. You said a mind viruses earlier too. I think I got that you said mind viruses earlier too. I think I got that from Gad Saad.
Starting point is 00:28:07 Oh. Yeah. What's that book? I only went through half of it. He's been on Rogan a bunch. He's been on Rogan a bunch. But I got that phrase. It was Gad Saad who talked about it because there's a whole thing about it. But yeah, it is a mind virus because you hear a lot of people that are coaches, a lot of people that are athletes.
Starting point is 00:28:24 There's this thing and and my coaches even when i was younger soccer coaches etc you gotta have some pasta or some carbs before you before you train carbs before you train it becomes something that's like it's this is just what you do if you're an athlete yeah and what they thought wasn't coming from like a place of like being 100 incorrect they the we know that you burn glucose when you exercise yeah when you're in motion and so therefore you would think oh well let me just load up on a bunch of this stuff um but your body can adapt your body can adopt uh new things and you can take your time with it and you can you can learn how to utilize these other types of diets to your advantage.
Starting point is 00:29:06 Just kind of in finishing this up and wrapping it up, keep in mind, you know, we know that you're going to try to come at us with like this guy does this this way and he's amazing and this guy does. We know all that. And we are aware, you know, that there's like Dominic D'Agostino who fasted for 10 days and then deadlifted 600 pounds for 10 reps. Yeah. Like there's a lot of cool stuff out there. But would Dominic D'Agostino be able to lift 615 pounds for 11 reps if he had a couple of meals in him? Like probably would be a little easier, right? Like just, I don't know, might be easier, right?
Starting point is 00:29:44 So there's many different diets and many different ways of doing things. But I think that people tend to get really stuck on like, there's just this one way of doing things or this guy does this, this way. And so now I'm going to, now I'm going to, you know, follow exactly what they're doing. But in terms of keto, I don't think there's a lot of reasons to do a ketogenic diet unless you really want to and unless it's going to be something that assists you in getting towards your goal. For me, some of my goal in the past has been figuring out ways to manage my calories. That's what it did for me. It helped me to manage my calories. Intermittent fasting helps me manage my calories. Now, is it helping in every other aspect of my life?
Starting point is 00:30:34 Not all the time. It doesn't have a plus for every single thing. So if you're fasting or if you're eating low carb because you're trying to lose body fat, but it's not playing into you being able to have the best workouts possible, that's only at the moment. It's only momentarily and you can get yourself back into maybe eating some carbs when you feel like you're in the shape that you want to be in. And again, that's where element actually helps a lot. Like if you're a low carb athlete you notice yeah the electrolyte difference like you
Starting point is 00:31:06 know people people always wonder oh how do you perform etc electrolytes make a big difference i'm not cramping up it's like it makes a very big difference so again i know we mentioned at the beginning of the episode but we ain't playing when we're talking about electrolytes and also quality of meat from montee i got someiedmontese waiting for me at home. They got those ribeye caps. Breaking a meal. Dude, they come out so good. Dude, the kebabs.
Starting point is 00:31:33 Oh, yeah. The kebabs. Those are legit, right? Yeah. You said they're made of like what? I think it's made out of like filet and ribeye. And I need to have them actually tell me. I forget what they said.
Starting point is 00:31:46 But whatever the case is, it's super tender, right? It's super fucking tender. And guys, we're not playing around when we talk about Piedmontese. The cool thing about them is that they have a lot of different cuts of steak, which is great. But they have steaks like the flat iron that are low-fat, super high-protein. I think it has like six grams of fat for 80. No, it's like 46 or something like that 46 grams of protein yeah and and i'm like four grams of fat yeah but then also the uh the center cut ribeye which you hear ribeye you're just like if you're on a low fat diet or
Starting point is 00:32:18 you're on a traditional high carb bodybuilding diet it's like oh steak i remember that stuff back before i started lifting it's like dude no this stuff so this center cut ribeye has i'm gonna hopefully i don't mess this up it's like 60 grams of protein and only like five or six grams of fat for the whole thing yeah that's my favorite cut right now that stuff's so good they call it the nebraska cut ribeye that one's so good but they also have cuts that are you know if you're not someone who's low fat, you don't have to be. They have a lot of high fat cuts too. So you have all the options
Starting point is 00:32:49 with some amazing steak. Yeah, this is the traditional ribeye. Really good. Tell them how they can get hooked up. I can. Yeah, it's over at Piedmontese.com and we're not just going to tell you how amazing it is. We're going to help you save 25% off. Again, that's at Piedmontese.com P-I-E-D-L-O-N-T-E-S-E.com.
Starting point is 00:33:08 At checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your entire order. And if your order is $150 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Again, links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Whapam. Want to take us on out of here? Sure thing. You got it? Yeah. Thank to take us on out of here? Sure thing. You got it? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:26 Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Let us know what you guys thought down in the comments below. And if you're on iTunes, go ahead and just leave us a review. It's been a while since we've been asking for it, but when we do, you guys really show up, so we sincerely appreciate that. And also, please follow the podcast at MarkBell'sPowerProject on Instagram,
Starting point is 00:33:44 at MBPowerProject on instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter my instagram and twitter is at i am andrew z and on tiktok at the andrew z and sema what's up and sema in yang on instagram and youtube and sema yin yang on tiktok and twitter and for all y'all on youtube you guys have been showing up hard on the comments we appreciate you for the algorithm leave a comment let us know what you think about what we talked about today give us your input on dieting. Mark? I'm at Mark Smelly Bell.
Starting point is 00:34:07 Strength is never weak. This week is never strength. Catch you guys later.

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