Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 24 - Shawn Baker
Episode Date: March 26, 2018Mark Bell's Power Project live with Carnivore expert Dr. Shawn Baker. Shawn is an orthopedic surgeon, weight lifting world record holder, and the biggest meathead we've had on the show. Mainly because... he eats 4-6lbs of red meat per day. Recorded live on 3/13/18. Watch Live Stream: https://youtu.be/9Z3hQcz7tw8 ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Temperature like you like it first, and then you just sear it, and you don't have to worry about how done it is, because you know how done it's going to be.
No, it was perfect.
Rib-eyes are great.
You cook them just right, and you can eat the whole thing sometimes when you get it perfect.
If you don't get it perfect, then you've got a couple of hunky parts that are kind of weird to eat.
If you eat it perfect, you can just eat the bone, too.
No, I'm kidding.
I don't do that.
Why not?
I'm working. I'm building up. Why not? I'm working.
I'm building up.
There's a lot of people who do this stuff with raw meat.
You know that?
Are you hearing my point?
Yeah, no, I know.
Yeah, there's, I was actually listening to a podcast and the guy, you know, talked about
how he went from being a vegetarian to being full on vegan to, and this happens a lot,
going the complete opposite direction and only eating
meat and then going all the way into only eating things raw.
What's the basis behind raw?
Yeah.
There's people that think it's more nutritious.
Oh, because you're like cooking away some of the vitamins or something?
I don't know that there's any concrete evidence that shows that.
There's people that do it and they swear, but I'm not really interested in that right now.
I don't want to, I mean, it's too good cooked.
I mean, so the evidence we've been cooking goes back at least a half million years.
And some people argue back to one and a half million years.
So somewhere in that timeframe, we learned how to cook.
We don't know exactly when we controlled fire, but it's been at least a half million years.
So people have been cooking for a long time.
Seems a long ass time ago.
Well, you know, if you think about, you know,
you and I's lifetime, you know, 70, 80 years is nothing
when you look at the frame of half a million years
or a million years.
And so there's a lot of stuff that's going on.
What's going on with this diet?
We got to get to the bottom of this
because let's just start out with the most obvious thing
that people get the most pissed about right away.
And I made a comment on your live feed yesterday. It seems to be women in general are kind of up in arms as soon as, and it's every
guy mentions it to his girlfriend or to his wife, they'll go home and say, Hey man, I want to try
this diet. This Dr. Baker's doing this carnivore diet. Mark and Chris Bell are jumping on board
doing a carnivore diet. And you know, the first question out of the woman's mouth is like, well, what about vegetables?
And then, uh, you know, the women, for some reason, they seem to be very attached to these
vegetables. And, uh, a lot of the stuff that I'm hearing from you is maybe vegetables aren't
nearly as good as we thought. Yeah. I mean, there's a, you know, there's a, there's sort of a, uh, sort of
reverence for vegetables that goes back a few, maybe, maybe, maybe a hundred, no more than about
a hundred years. You know, if you look back, uh, historically in a lot of places, you know,
vegetables just weren't even available for most people, you know, most societies. In fact,
if you go back a few hundred years, if you were a member of a wealthy family and you had a dinner
party and you serve vegetables, it was also considered an insult to people yes seriously what the f is this yeah they're like what do you serve
me a radish for i want a piece of steak but yeah no but it goes back but then we had this sort of uh
sort of kind of change in our thought process and then we started looking at some epidemiology
looked at the people and we just started looking at epidemiology and the problem with epidemiology
you know you study these these big populations and there's so many variables that
go into that so the people that uh are told you know eat your fruits and vegetables because they're
good for you well those are those are the good listeners those are the good those are the straight
a students who do everything right right and then the meatheads are the d students that are back
there you know sticking their fingers in the electric sockets and all the stupid stuff that
we do right right but so the the straight-A students, they go to the doctor, they wear their seatbelt, they don't smoke,
they don't drink, they don't drink caffeine, they exercise regularly, and lo and behold,
they have a better health outcome, which is really all it is. And so we've got this epidemiologist
that says, eat your fruits and vegetables, don't eat a lot of saturated fat, and you're going to
be healthy. And that's what epidemiology shows you. But what it doesn't show you is all those other things that are making an impact.
You know, if we look at longevity, the biggest predictor for longevity is socioeconomic status.
I don't care what you eat.
If you're living on the slums of Sudan, you're going to live longer if you live in Switzerland.
I mean, it just doesn't matter what your diet is.
And so diet has such a little impact on it.
That's actually really interesting.
I have not really heard that before because the question that pops up all the time now is, so a keto diet is like one thing that could, for some people, they start immediately thinking about their wallet.
You know, they start thinking about their wallet when they think about a keto diet.
They're thinking, man, I'm going to really spend a lot of money. Well, now when we start talking about a carnivorous diet, a diet where you're predominantly eating mostly steak, I guess you can have some hamburger and other forms of red meat and stuff like that, too.
But then people start to really think about spending a lot of money. One thing that's lost in all this is that if you're utilizing any of this stuff as a means to a diet, I will assure you that you are going to eventually, probably, if the goal is to lose weight, you will eventually start eating less.
And I would bet in most cases, you'll probably be spending less money because you're not buying cereal.
You're not buying milk.
I mean, a lot of these things are expensive.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of people, you know, because I, you know, I didn't,
it's not like I started out
doing a carnivorous diet
and never tried anything else.
And so I went through this all.
You didn't come out of the womb
eating red meat right away.
No,
but I mean,
you know,
people ask me how long
I've been a carnivore.
I said,
well,
basically since I was born,
but I started eating that way
when I was 50.
But,
you know,
a lot of people,
you know,
they get hung up on this
whole food,
stuff like that.
And what happens?
You buy all these organic fruits and vegetables and and where do half of them end up?
In the trash can.
You waste all that money, lots of supplementation is required to make your diet complete.
So we have all this extra expense that's kind of taken out of the way when you're just eating what I consider really nutritious food.
But I mean, the other thing about the fruits and vegetable comment I just want to say is, you know, the actual evidence that's out there discussing why fruits and vegetables are good for us, you know, they have a lot of isolated compounds.
So they'll take a plant compound, you know, sulforaphane is one that gets a lot of headlines because it's in broccoli.
And they'll say that if we give sulforaphane to these cells, it inhibits cancer growth.
So it's like, well, that's cool.
You know, but, you know, what if I give gasoline to these cells? Does that inhibit cancer growth cancer growth so it's like well that's cool you know but you know what if i give gasoline to these cells does that inhibit cancer growth too well yeah that's true
too but we don't think gasoline's gasoline's good for you because you don't eat it but
most of those studies are done that way so they don't look at the whole effect on the entire body
and they don't actually consider what else is in the plant because there's things like oxalates and
uh phytates and salicylates and you know tannins and polyphenols and some of the things are good
some are good some are bad we don't know the whole detail of that but there's only been a few studies
where they've actually taken human beings and they've given them more fruits and vegetables and
in compared to people that didn't get more fruits and vegetables and the results for that for those
studies are very very mixed there's several that were, that the outcomes were negative. Like the, the markers of inflammation got worse. Uh, there are, there are studies that show, um, that some people got a
little better, but the surprising thing with that was that fruit tended to be more helpful than
vegetables, uh, in those types of studies. And there's very few studies. So the evidence that
people say fruits and vegetables are based on is really kind of, really kind of limited.
Well, a lot of the stuff you're saying, it makes a lot of sense.
We hear that fructose is bad, right?
And that's, that'd be like an isolated incident of, yeah, when you take in a lot of high fructose
corn syrup, well then maybe fructose is bad.
If your child is consuming a hundred grams of high fructose corn syrup a day and they're
not moving at all, then yeah, it probably is bad.
But what about, you know, for the guy that exercises that has an apple or an orange after he works out?
I mean, it's probably not, probably not as detrimental.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a, there's a, there's a dose response and there's a, there's a physical
capacity to handle that stuff.
And, you know, big guy with a big bunch of muscle has more capacity to dispose of that that
stuff and so you know from an evolutionary standpoint you know fruit is what plants want
us to eat they don't really like us eating their their leaves and their stems and that's why that's
why vegetables taste bitter because it's like kind of warning signs like hey man don't eat me
it's that's your defense mechanism and you know you and i cannot go outside and munch on the tree
leaves because we'll get really sick because they're real bitter. And that's how, like I said.
That would be kind of weird.
Yeah, well, I mean, we could try it.
We could do an experiment where we have maybe some vegan guys come here and we'll just eat tree leaves and see how we do versus eating meat.
But no, I mean, it's the, you know, the plants, you know, they kind of want us to eat their fruit because it helps us disperse some of their seeds.
And that's why it's sweet, and that's why we have a receptor for sweetness
because we know sweet's not going to typically kill us.
The problem today is we've bred all that fruit into these sugar bombs.
You know, these giant strawberries are the size of apples now,
and they've got probably 80% more sugar than they used to.
And so in days gone by, you know, let's say we go back, you know,
a couple thousand years, 10,000 years.
Yeah, even the oranges are enormous.
Yeah, we just bred them to be really sugary.
And so we've kind of overdosed, we're kind of overdosing on that fructose rather than getting it in a smaller amounts that we might have had, you know, thousands of years ago.
So it's a kind of a, it's kind of a difference in the food.
I think women are kind of pigeonholed into eating salad just because women are trying to be skinnier and just the way society has kind of stuck them into that.
Yeah, we talked about that.
Yeah, I think women particularly, at least in Western society, the female ideal for many people is a way thin model type.
Yeah, size two.
Yeah, where they're just not eating enough. They're undernourished in a lot of cases.
And so, you know, as you and I will both agree,
muscle is healthy.
You need nutrition to get healthy.
And so, some of these women are told,
you know, you got to eat a salad.
And oh, by the way, put the dressing on the side.
And if you're going to have any meat,
make it a little skinny piece of chicken breast.
And that's a woman's typical diet.
And then what they happen is, you know,
through peer pressure from other women, they kind kind of they want to emulate these people so they so then they
pretend i think they pretend they really like that stuff and i think that the thing about women women
are also capable of faking orgasms so they can fake it now they can fake it wait wait what i'm
told never experienced that but i'm told that You know, another point of interest that I think will interest our audience in those fruit and vegetable studies is that one study that I saw on a fruit and vegetable diet, a high, high fruit and vegetable diet, one of the responses they had was the largest bowel movement of any study they've ever done before in history.
I was like,
Oh my God,
that all happened with these people.
So how do we,
how do we get ourselves to shit if we're just eating meat all the time?
Yeah.
So,
I mean,
you know,
you,
well,
you look at any other animal,
it's a carnivorous animal.
They go to the bathroom too.
I mean,
they take a shit,
you know,
just like any other animal,
you know?
And so they have different stomachs than us or not really,
not so much.
You know,
they both,
they have a monogastric stomach.
You know, they have one chambered stomach,
whereas a lot of plant eating animals,
herbivores have multi-ruman stomachs,
like a cow or a sheep or one of those animals.
And so our system is set up to where, you know,
the humans are really, really, really effective
at digesting meat.
You know, we have this really long, small intestine.
So when you look at patients that have had their colon removed, because humans are one of the
few animals that can live without a colon because we don't really need it to live.
And that's the thing. What happens in our colon when we're on a plant-based diet,
the colon ferments fiber to give us a little bit of fat. That's what happens. So even these guys
are eating a lot of plants. They're really on a high fat diet, just like a chimpanzee or a gorilla
or a cow, because they convert all that fiber to fat. But humans can live without our
colon. And so when you study those people and you give them meat and you see what comes out of their
small intestine through what's called an ileostomy pouch, you see that just a little bit of liquid
comes out. So all that meat is well-absorbed. When's the last time you looked down in the
toilet and saw a chunk of steak floating around in the toilet? It just doesn't happen, you know.
Yeah.
Which you'll see.
I'd call you if I did.
Well, you should.
I'd be like, what the fuck happened to me?
Yeah, but I mean.
I'd send you a picture for sure.
I'd say, what's happening to me?
It's kind of interesting how many people are infatuated with my bowel habits.
I'm almost tempted on Instagram.
I am tempted one day, you know.
I don't know.
I'll probably lose a lot of followers if I do that.
But I mean, it's the biggest thing. Your IG could be steak and poop. Yeah,
that's right. Just consistently back and forth. Why do some people, uh, struggle with going to
the bathroom and they switch over to the diet? Yeah. So again, like I said, you don't make much
waste. And so what happens is instead of having this big fiber filled colon, you lose that. And
so what happens is you're only making a tiny amount of waste. And so it may take you several days, even a week or more to start, even have enough material to get
rid of. And then after you do it for a while, you know, you find you kind of get more regular,
you know, particularly as your appetite picks up. And so, because what's in poop, you know,
normally is a bunch of bacteria. So you're still pooping out the bacteria, you know, a little bit
of the food residue and then mostly fiber. But if you take out the fiber, you lose that.
So what happens is instead of these big giant bowl filling poops, you know, you get these
little-
Those are so satisfying once in a while.
Well, you know, maybe if you like getting stretched out that way, but you have these
small little snaky things that come out and, you know, it's just a little small bit of
poop and you're fine, but it's regular.
Right. It's, you know, there's a lot of evidence to show that actually that's probably more beneficial than these big giant ones.
Because there's been some studies looking at people that have diverticulosis, which is when the colon has little balloons that pop out of it and those things get infected called diverticulitis.
And there's been some studies looking at people that were on high fiber diets and they were more prone to get that.
Whereas they're on a low fiber diet, they didn't have that issue.
So some of the benefits of like fruits and vegetables, some of the benefits of say like
fiber, let's just say fiber, for example.
And my understanding is that fiber can rid your body.
It can help eliminate maybe some toxins from your body.
But maybe part of what you're saying and part of being on this carnivorous diet is that maybe you're healthier and maybe you just don't need that.
Yeah, I mean, the benefits of fiber are really context dependent.
You know, there's a lot of people promoting that because there's a lot of people that like to sell you fiber, you know, like a cereal manufacturer.
You know, believe it or not, they actually put sawdust in our food.
They actually take sawdust.
They call it cellulose
and they take actual sawdust
and mix it in some of these processed foods,
but because it's real cheap
and they can make a lot of money on that.
But fiber,
the benefits of,
you look it up,
it's crazy.
The benefits of fiber are basically,
sawdust is good.
Yeah,
it's good sawdust.
You know,
it's,
but you make it chew,
maybe we go chew on it.
In addition to the leaves,
we can chew on the tree bark too and see how that goes.
But fiber is context dependent.
And so if you eat a high fiber diet and a high sugar diet, the fiber may help a little bit with that.
You know, some of the thoughts are that it can help decrease your glucose spike.
So if you're not taking in a bunch of sugar, you know, is it really a benefit?
Right.
The other thought is it can help lower cholesterol.
I think there's a lot of evidence now that shows it may be lowering cholesterol
is not always the best thing to do. I think there's a lot of people,
myself included, that are seeing that, you know, the reasons for things like cardiovascular disease
is not solely based on cholesterol, but cholesterol in context of things like inflammation,
based on cholesterol, but cholesterol in context of things like inflammation, things like insulin sensitivity. And so those things drive cardiovascular disease. And kind of, those are the bus drivers.
Cholesterol is just a passenger in that situation. And so we're seeing that, you know, as we learn
more about it, it's not so simple. So lowering our cholesterol in a lot of cases, you know,
it's shown that if you have a low cholesterol, you're not likely to live as long. You're more
likely to get cancer. You're more likely to get cancer.
You're more likely to get dementia.
And so those things just may be, you know, because our brain, our brain uses 25% of the cholesterol in our body.
So if you're lowering your cholesterol with drugs or with diet, you know, maybe you're taking some of that out of your brain.
And then there's some studies out there that potentially support that.
So that's kind of interesting.
Maybe some people that are not on a carnivore diet, maybe people that are eating in a different way, do you think there's some value to a fiber supplement?
Like maybe it's helping, you know, rid them of some, you know, crap that maybe they shouldn't be eating in the first place?
Yeah, I mean, I think in the context, if you're eating a junk food diet, fiber is better than drinking Cokes and eating potato chips.
I think there's a benefit there.
And I think it may, like I said, mitigate or lower that glucose spike.
But I think a lot of people find that if they go too high on a fiber, it really affects their digestive system really poorly.
If you eat a bunch of fiber supplements, a really, really high fiber diet, many people complain of bloating, gas, you know, pain, you know, things like that.
And so that's, I think there's a small amount that may be beneficial in the context of a otherwise not so good diet.
Somebody comes to you and they say, look, man, I, I, I'm sick.
You know, I, I don't, I don't feel good on a daily basis.
My energy sucks.
I want to lose 50 pounds.
Do you just take them and turn them inside out and say, hey, man, you got to go all meat all the time?
Or what do you do?
No, I mean, I think there's a strategy.
I mean, you know, there's a lot of ways you can approach that.
I mean, there's lots of, you can calorie restrict.
You know, the problem with calorie restriction, and I'm sure you've noted the cut weight, it's not very sustainable.
It's hard to do long term.
You just eat less and less all the time.
And you're just hungry all the time, and it's not a fun place to be. So, but you can do that. You
can play with different, you can eliminate different foods at a time, you know, and that,
that can be a long process. You know, what you can do is you can certainly go, uh, you know,
just eliminate down to basic, you know, all meat. And, uh, you know, like Rob Wolf and I talked
about this the other day and he said, I know we called it a safe space, you know, like Rob Wolf and I talked about this the other day. I know, we've done that before, yeah. We call it a safe space, you know, just because everybody's kind of safe there.
And then you can kind of see how you do.
Most people will lose weight.
You know, we find that you probably notice that too.
The meat in particular is pretty satiating, the combination of protein and fat.
And so your appetite kind of naturally regulates itself to where you're just maybe not eating as much.
And to hold weight on you, you've got to actually consciously, physically, voluntarily eat more than you maybe may feel
like eating. So a lot of people just lose that weight that way. And then what they can do is say,
if they want to go that route, they can say, all right, I did 30 days, 60 days. I feel better. I
got some health issues that went away. I lost some weight. Now let me see, can I handle whatever?
Can I handle blueberries now? Can see can i handle whatever can i handle
blueberries now can i handle oranges whatever they want to put in you know because there's
different people have different tolerances i think we all have the capacity to digest and tolerate
meat very well with a very rare exception there's some weird genetic abnormalities where very few
people can't do it but 99.99 of people on earth can probably do this and then the rest of it is
but 99.99% of people on earth can probably do this.
And then the rest of it is, you know, probably there's some genetic or ancestral variation on what you can handle.
You know, where did my ancestors grow up in a place
where we were introduced to dairy early on?
So can I handle dairy?
Northern Europeans, like when I got back, when I was in Iceland,
have you met Iceland before, Mark?
I have not, no.
A lot of strong people there, as you probably know.
But they're used to dairy because they, and they handle it better, as opposed to somebody from Africa or Asia where they didn't introduce dairies early in their culture.
I think last time you were here, you were just like on your way there or something like that.
Yeah, right, right, right.
Yeah, so it was a good trip.
Good place.
Good people.
It's kind of funny.
In Iceland now, Iceland only has about 350,000 people, right?
And as you know, they've had two World's Strongest Man Champions.
They've had eight titles.
They had, you know,
they had Sig Morrison and...
Now they got Thor, right?
Well, did he?
Well, he hasn't won
World's Strongest Man.
Oh, yeah, right.
He won the Arnold.
You can't put Brian out.
Yeah, that's right.
Don't tell Brian.
But I mean, yeah,
but I mean,
so these people are,
these massive big people
in CrossFit.
There've been a lot of CrossFit champions.
Right.
But the other thing about Iceland, and they've been a meat-heavy, dairy-heavy society for ages, right?
They haven't had access to fruits and vegetables very much because it just doesn't grow there.
I think Benedict Magnusson's from there too.
Benedict's got the world record in the deadlift, right?
Yeah.
He's talking about being on a carnivore diet too, by the way.
I don't know.
Wow.
I don't know if Thor is, you know, sneaking a little more meat in there.
I know.
I know that he,
I know that Hap Thor's
been eating a lot more steak.
Yeah, so we gotta get Brian,
we gotta get Brian more,
even more steak.
Yeah, Brian's crushing
a lot of steak
because he does a lot of,
they both do a lot
of stand efforting stuff,
which is basically
a version of what you're doing
just with this,
adding some rice and potatoes.
Yeah, that makes sense.
But the other thing
about Iceland,
which I think is really neat
because not only the fact that you've got these tremendous athletes for the size of the country, but they live as some of the longest people on Earth, too.
And they've got more guys living over 100 years than almost anywhere else on the planet per capita.
Wow.
And they're on an animal-based diet for the most part.
I didn't realize that.
I mean, this is just like as backwards
as you can get it's as different um as you can get in terms of a diet like people are always
talking about uh yogurt and uh and i think i think most of us are kind of over the hump in terms of
uh recognizing that grains can give us some problems but what about like probiotics and
some of these other things we've been sold on for so long that are healthy for us i mean mean, there's a lot of marketing and a lot of money being made in the supplement industry.
And I've been doing this for a long time.
You've seen all the supplements that have come out in the bodybuilding stuff for years.
And you just keep getting recycled over and over again.
And you're like, that shit didn't work.
I remember when chromium pecanolate was this big thing.
I don't know if you remember that.
You buy that stuff and you try this stuff and it's like, did it actually work or not?
Or did I just get taken?
You never know because you don't really notice a bigger, you know, I would say things like creatine.
When creatine came out, I think there was a little bit of an effect.
People could actually see that.
But where is creatine found?
In meat.
Found in meat.
Most of the ones that really have worked, you know, the ones that you can buy as supplements are mostly in meat with the exception of maybe caffeine.
So it's kind of interesting, but, but, uh, you know, these, uh, you know, there's a lot
of caffeine fed cows.
You just nailed something right there.
There you go.
Caffeine meat.
Maybe it's a, maybe.
What's the deal with a grass fed?
Uh, so grass fed, you know, I think, uh, is that a thing?
Is that important?
Sure.
I mean, so grass fed.
So let's just talk about how cattle are raised.
Cause I think, you know, there's an environmental issue that people want to talk about i think it's
important um grass-fed cattle i think cattle in general from an ethical and environmental
standpoint have it much better than chickens and pigs and i think that's pretty clear and i think
we have to work to do in all areas but a a grass fed animal, like all cattle, whether they're grass finished or grain finished, spend about 80% of their life on grass.
So even, you know, they spend the first, most of their life in pasture, no matter how they're finished.
And then the ones that are finished on grass will, you know, they'll continue to eat grass, but it depends on where they live.
If they live in the winter areas where it's snowy, they got to go inside and eat something else.
So they're not always on grass.
So even if it says grass finished, maybe they didn't get all grass.
The grain fed animals are brought in for a few months and they're fed,
you know, a combination.
They're still fed grass, some different forage material.
And then they slowly add in a little bit of grain to size them up.
But the difference, you know, there are minor nutritional differences,
but the differences are so small that it probably doesn't make much a
difference for human health.
Right now,
from an environmental standpoint,
some people argue that the grains that are going to feed the cattle are
causing a net environmental negative.
And there's some truth to that.
You know,
how big of an effect it is.
It's kind of overblown by the people that make the,
the propaganda documentary films.
And when you talk to actual cattle ranchers and people that do that,
they can tell you that it's not as big of an effect
as it seemed to be.
Now, can we do better?
Should we do better?
Particularly if people decide that,
hey, meat is an essential part of the diet,
then I think we can,
and we have the technology to do it.
But it's just a matter of having the willpower.
Because right now,
there's kind of like this big political swing where it's going one way to plant-based.
And we've got all these people behind this movement.
And what we're seeing is a lot of people are really, some people are doing okay in it.
But there's a lot of people where their health really deteriorates.
There was an interesting documentary that came out a couple of days ago where a guy went on a vegan diet for 28 days.
And he measured, he got some measurements done.
In 28 days, he lost two kilos
of lean muscle mass and 3% of his bone mass. That's, that's usually takes a decade to happen.
And he did that in a short period of time. He did that. So, I mean, we, we have to,
we have to find a balance. You know, it's not that I'm saying everybody needs to go on a
meat only diet because clearly not everyone does, but for the people that, um, need to do that or
want to do that for either health reasons or even
athletic reasons i think you know that should be an option for him and i think the neat thing is
what i'm seeing every day is people getting rid of you know like i know your cousin yeah steven
yeah he's doing your yeah when were you here last was in january middle of january yeah yeah and
he's lost i mean she don't even know he's he was like i think he's out about 40 pounds since
january middle of january yeah it's insane yeah but i mean it's you know even know. He was like- I think he's had about 40 pounds since January,
middle of January.
Yeah, that's insane.
Yeah, but I mean, it's the things like people
seeing rheumatoid arthritis going away,
ankylosing spondylitis.
These are diseases that just don't go away on their own.
I mean, and the treatment form are high-dose corticosteroids,
which have all kinds of side effects,
or these really expensive immunosuppressive
and immunomodulating drugs,
which really have a lot of bad side effects.
And so to see people basically getting rid of those diseases, to me, is fascinating.
And I think it's something that we need to continue to look at.
It seems to me like most people can benefit from even just trying this, even just trying to eliminate some of the other foods that they, that they're eating. I remember Rob Wolf years ago, uh, talking about trying to eliminate some
of your foods and trying to bring, um, you know, trying, trying to figure out what foods are
causing you problems. And I thought, man, what a, like, what a shitty thing, like that sucks to
have to do that. But some people are kind of painted in a corner where they need to, but
from what I've seen, uh, all the different results that people are getting that are popping up on your page and
the different people that are tagging me and stuff, it just seems like it makes sense for everybody
to at least, you don't want to force anything on anybody, but I think that almost anybody can
benefit from this. Well, I mean, it's, you know, like I said, we have, you know, we just got to
walk outside and see how many people are sick in this country. And it's, it's, you know, like I said, we have, you know, we just got to walk outside and see how many people are sick in this country.
And it's a shame because, you know, the U.S., you know, we'll just talk to the U.S. audience, but the U.S. has so much wealth and we have so much technology that we should not be a sick nation.
We should be a nation of people that are tan and jacked.
That's right.
I mean, we really should.
We really have that capacity.
And the problem with that is no one knows the answer to that.
And so we keep pouring money in the wrong end.
We keep developing procedures to treat diseases after they've already occurred.
And it's,
this is a solution could be,
and I think it is very,
very simple for a lot of people.
And so,
you know,
if this is something that,
you know,
and the nice thing about being on this is there,
you know,
with social media.
And when I talked to you about this last time,
there's,
you have such a big, powerful reach now that this is going to get to, you know, with social media, and I talked to you about this last time, you have such a big, powerful reach now that this is going to get to, you know, maybe it'll be all the meatheads that listen to you.
Yeah.
Because you mostly have a lot of guys, but you're going to get the meathead's mom that's going to hear this stuff.
Right.
Or the meathead's sister.
That's what's happening with the 10-minute walks and stuff.
Right, absolutely.
They're grabbing a hold of a family member and they're going on these 10-minute walks.
Yeah, I mean, it can make a difference.
And, you know, it doesn't take the Harvard scientists to move the needle on health.
It can take the guy who busts his ass in the gym.
And, you know, because like where the rubber meets the road is where it counts.
And, you know, you can sit back in your research chamber, but what's happening in real life is what really, in my view, counts.
And like I said, what I like to see about athletes is because they're pushing the envelope.
A lot of the athletes are at the extremes,
and that kind of teaches you about physiology.
And you see where, okay, what really happens
when humans really do something extreme,
like eating all meat?
What happens?
The last time this was formally tested was 1928.
They did a study in Bellevue Hospital in New York,
and these two guys, Vilmer Stefansson, and I can't remember Anderson's first name, but they came back from the polar exploration.
So they lived with the Inuit for nine or 10 years.
They only ate meat.
No one believed them.
They said, you're going to die.
You're going to get sick.
You're going to get scurvy.
So I said, okay, we'll do it.
So they locked themselves in a hospital for a year, only ate meat and they were totally fine.
That was 1928 and the last time anybody's checked this, which is kind of interesting.
So now we're doing it 90 years later
and we're seeing that people are,
you know, not only not getting sick,
but they're getting really healthy.
What you got, Andrew?
You got something over there, buddy?
Yeah, I got people asking about bone broth.
Mark's been-
Boner broth.
Yeah, Mark's been downing
quite a bit of boner broth lately.
Is that something that you partake in?
I'm just, cause I'm lazy, you lazy, and I don't. I mean,
I used to make it a little bit. I'd cook a chicken in a pot and use that and make my own bone broth,
but that's fine. There's no wrong bone broth. It's high in electrolytes. It's high in collagen.
If we look at steak, because I eat a lot of steak, steak is about 3%. Well, muscle is about 3%
collagen by weight. So if you eat a lot of steak, you're going to get plenty of collagen. And then
I'd throw salt on my steak. So a lot of people that like a warm drink,
that's a, that's a good option for them. Cause a lot of people are, you know, they're so used to
drinking flavored coffees and, you know, like sodas and artificial sweetened flavors. And I,
you know, I look at, I'm like, you know, cause people say, well, this is a sort of, it's kind
of a monotonous diet, and it is.
I drink water.
I drink what every other animal on the planet drinks, and I just consider myself a dumb animal.
You know, I think some people want to pretend they're not, but all animals just drink water.
They don't drink coffee.
They don't drink, you know, stevia-flavored water or anything like that, and it works fine. But the other thing is, if we look back into human existence, we didn't have menus 20,000 years ago.
You weren't going to go get the chef's tasting menu 20,000 years.
You're going to get a big hunk of meat, maybe a couple of berries or a nut or two if you could gather them.
But I mean, the menu was probably the same damn thing day in and day out.
And people were happy.
I mean, I'm sure they were.
I mean, if I look at my dogs, you know, my dog, do you have a dog or anything like that?
I do not. You should get a dogs, you know, my dog, do you have a dog or anything like that? I do not.
You should get a dog, man.
They're good animals.
Anyway, but they're, you know what, you know why,
you know why dogs are man's best friend?
Because they, we have the most resemblance to any
animal, the digestive tract is a dog.
Ours are very similar because we were, we co-evolved
because those animals, the wolves helped us hunt
and we domesticated them into, you know, dogs
eventually and they eat the same diet as we do.
My dogs, I give them a hunk of meat in the morning mostly some hamburger in the
morning and hamburger in the afternoon and they're happy every time they don't ask for the menu they
don't ask for different flavors it's like and they're drooling it's like you know i don't know
when you start have you noticed when you start cooking a steak now you start to drool yeah it's
embarrassing you start yeah it is you start to like you get this we call it the cephalic phase
of digestion your brain focuses on and you start digesting because
you're secreting saliva so you can secrete that salivary lipase because there's lipase in your
saliva as well as amylase and as that happens then you start digesting in your head and then
you're ready then you're ready to eat so it's kind of neat but yeah i just uh yeah i think
but bone broth is fine you know some of some of these other things, you know, are, are, you know, people talk about, ask me about protein powder and I'm like,
well, you know, you can do it. It's, it's, it's, you probably don't need to do it. You know,
like I said, you know, unless you have a hard time getting steak made, cause there's plenty,
there's plenty of protein and it's in a very nice bioavailable form as it comes to me. And it comes
with fat too, which is kind of how we're designed. So for me, I, I eat twice a day, um, on most days, every once in a while, maybe three times.
And so I'll add a little protein here and there.
I add like a, you know, I'll have, uh, you know, some protein before I go to bed or something
like that.
And sometimes I add some protein to, uh, the bone broth.
Sometimes I'll add an egg to the bone broth.
Um, just some little things like that, just because my appetite is okay,
but it's not, I, you know, four pounds of meat every day. I don't think I'm chucking that much
down. Um, on some days I probably am in that range, but I'd say like on average, I'm probably
more like between two and three. And, uh, while I, it is my goal to continue to lose some weight,
continue to get leaner. I don't want to just like wither away and lose weight, you know, super fast.
And also, you know, people kind of forget in the absence of food, we're also losing electrolytes, you know, when you fast and do some of these things.
So I'm trying to keep that balance.
I've had issues in the past with cramping up and stuff like that.
So I'm trying to learn as I go along.
I'm trying to learn how my body feels and how my body reacts.
The bone broth for me, it's been great because it, I like the flavor of it.
Well, you get to make a funny face when you press the button.
That's right.
Having that, having that drink, you know, having something hot like that, almost like
a soup or something like that. It makes you feel more full than you really are, if that makes any sense.
Where do you get your bone broth?
I just get, it's just a particular company that I pick up at the store.
It's Epic.
It's like, it has a cow on it and it's a jalapeno something flavor.
So it's got a little bit of ingredients in it, but I like the flavor of that one.
So I use that a lot, but I've used different ones too.
Yeah, I think that you highlight a good point.
I mean, like I said, you have to figure out what really works for you.
And the nice thing is when you only have a very few variables.
You pull out a lot of stuff.
It's pretty easy to figure out what's working and what's not.
You know, when you're eating 155 different types of food, it becomes
difficult to figure out, to isolate which one's hard. So if it's meat plus bone broth, I'm doing
great. Yeah. Hey man, that's fine. I'll tell people this too. You know, if you, if you are
to try something like this and you, let's just say you go three days, you go three days. And
the only thing that you eat is some eggs, some bacon and
predominantly steak, and maybe some bone broth on that third or fourth day. If you have a hard
workout and you go home and you eat something like an orange, you will feel like you died and
went to heaven. It'll be like the most tasteful thing you've ever had in your life because
you know, a lot of that has been suppressed for a while, but I think that people need to,
they need to work on getting themselves to that point because we're so desensitized to taste.
Years ago, I started to embark, you know, more on just being healthier. This is a long time ago.
This is before I even got into power lifter mode, but, you know, I was eating things like
spinach and almonds and things like that. And I just, I stopped seasoning them. I stopped putting stuff on them. I started buying
raw almonds. I started getting just regular spinach, not putting a bunch of crap on it.
And you can actually taste the nutty flavor of it. Same thing with a steak,
even, you know, it's a better with salt on it. You can eat more of it when it has salt on it, but
just the flavor of some steak, you put a little bit of like butter on it or something and it tastes fucking awesome. As opposed to going to
a barbecue, you know, where they put all kinds of junk on it. You get used to those flavors. We get
used to the flavor of Doritos. We get used to the flavor of all this stuff. And then when you have
something natural and you have something that's supposed to be good for you, you're like, oh,
that tastes like crap. It's like, no, it doesn't taste like crap. That's the way it's supposed to taste.
It's the way things are supposed to taste in general.
They're not supposed to have 75 different flavors going on at one time.
Yeah.
I mean, there's, you know, the food companies understand this.
They have, you know, a guy named, I can't remember what Moskowitz's first name was, but he developed
something called a bliss point, you know, back in the early 80s or 70s, I think.
And he calculated exactly how much sugar
and exactly how much would be the most palatable.
And so they have these formulas to decide
what is the most flavorful to humans,
what is the most addictive.
And so they load that stuff in there.
And so now your taste buds are desensitized.
And so now for me, I mean,
even drinking water tastes a little bit sweet to me.
And so I just, you know, you lose that ability
to sort of discriminate these fine
different flavors because you're just i mean you're just hit with a mac truck where the flavor
all the time all day long and people tend to be so used to that that they can't you know it takes a
while but once you do it once you give it a few weeks or a few months where you're not eating all
that stuff now all of a sudden you can actually taste the flavor of food and you're right meat
i mean you'll you'll notice a different cut to steak tastes a little different and you can you people can tell you
know how the cow is raised and what part of the country is right you you become almost like a wine
connoisseur yeah you can just really taste a little subtle variations of flavor and it's very pleasing
i think we have yeah we went to eat the other day and uh andrew he's been doing some of this diet
he was like this meat's about to go bad. He didn't eat it.
You know, you can just, you can, as gross as that is, but you can, you can taste that.
You now have taste buds for that.
Yeah, it was such a bummer.
I'm so excited to eat.
I'm so hungry.
But that was actually another question we had come in.
Are there any better cuts than the other as far as steak?
Like anything more nutritious than the other?
I think from a nutrition standpoint, just the primal cuts,
so just the name cuts, you know, from a taste standpoint,
I would argue there's some better cuts.
I mean, you know, I think Mark will agree,
things like ribeye steaks and T-bones are at the top of the taste spectrum.
And one of the reasons that is, why does that taste so good?
Why do the fattier cuts of meat taste so good?
And I think there's, again, some evolutionary perspective we put on this. And so if we go back several hundred
thousand years and we look at some of our forebearers, you know, either Homo erectus,
which we didn't directly descend from, but we probably interbred with to make whoever,
however the Homo sapiens came out with. And then early Homo sapiens, they preferentially went
after these really big fatty animals and particularly things like mammoth
and elephant and some of the other megafauna that exist and those were these big fatty animals even
today's modern hunter-gatherers which don't necessarily represent the the people from you
know 20,000 years ago because because the climate has changed the the animal selection has changed
now they're kind of they're at the bottom of they're kind of fighting for the scraps now they're
trying to catch the antelope which are are much skinnier, not as much fat.
But humans initially evolved on really big, fatty hunks of meat, probably coming from things like elephant and mammoth.
And that's why when we get these really fatty steaks, it's so just, you know, deep down, primally pleasing to us.
Yeah.
And then there's a couple of people asking, or they're just talking about like how expensive steaks can be, but you and I were just talking earlier about how actually like
affordable it can be to eat just like straight hamburger patties at Wendy's. Cause I know you
like to go nuts over there. 12 patties at a time. Well, I mean, it can, you know, it depends on what
country you're in. Obviously in the U S you can get some pretty good deals and meet some central
Europe. They've got really good prices. I mean, like Poland is like ridiculously Romania,
but different countries have different policies on, on that. And so the price is very, but in the
U S uh, I'll often use, you know, uh, a website called my grocery deals.com. I just go in there,
you type in your zip code, type in steak, and I'll tell you where the best price is.
I just buy in volume. I'll buy, I'll go to the, I'll call the butcher and say, Hey man,
I need 50 pounds of your ribeye at five bucks a pound.
I'll load up on that stuff.
And then I'm eating for the next couple of weeks on, you know,
five bucks a pound for steak, which is really, I mean,
that's really affordable.
You know, even if you compare it to, you can get a,
you can get a 16 ounce steak for five bucks.
That's less than a cup of coffee in a lot of places.
And that's real nutrition there.
Well, I think people are just, so they might look at the cost of a big steak that they
bought and it might be, you know, 30 bucks or something like that.
And they're thinking, oh my God, if I'm going to eat that twice a day, that's going to be
really expensive.
But you don't have to eat the best steaks that there are.
You can have hamburger meat and there's, there's some other options, but you don't have to eat the best steaks that there are. You can have hamburger meat, and there's some other options.
But you can also have some eggs here and there.
Like eggs are not typically that expensive.
Some bacon.
Bone broth can be really expensive, but you can also make your own.
I mean, you can be resourceful.
What about, you know, other types of meat?
Lamb, what about some other things like that?
I think what most people will find if they do this long term, you know, I think anyone's fine to start with.
I think we call ruminant animals, you know, red meat animals, grazing animals like cows and sheep tend to have the most nutrition, in my experience.
And most people will find, I don't know what your taste is, but that's your taste preference, you know.
Yeah.
Like if you, now I'll tell you, if you eat a lot of chicken now versus steak, you'll be like, and the chicken's kind of like,
you know, some people call it like a meat salad. You know, it's like a salad now. Chicken's kind
of like salad, but the real meat is, is, is that, but I think lamb is, is very, very nutritious.
Again, back in Iceland, they had a lot of lamb. It was really good. Uh, but things like, you know,
lamb, goat, uh, elk, uh, game meat. I know Joe Rogan likes they had a lot of lamb. It was really good. But things like, you know, lamb, goat, elk, game meat.
I know Joe Rogan likes to do a lot of the game meat.
Those things can be very nutritious too.
The only negative for some of the game meat is it can be a little lean.
So you might have to beat up the fat content a little bit by cooking.
And I prefer people cook in animal fats.
So either butter, ghee, or use tallow or lard like they used to do 100 years ago.
Like when we, before we-
Yeah, some of these companies now they sell like goose fat.
Right, right.
And all these different things.
Those things are very flavorful because the flavor is better.
And, you know, I think the health benefits are better as well.
Is there anything you miss food-wise?
Yeah.
I mean, I would, you know, if I were to come off the diet, it wouldn't be to eat broccoli.
I mean, there's no way.
I mean, I'd eat frigging dessert.
I mean, that's what I would do because I had a real sweet tooth.
Now, because I-
That's important to point out.
You were a heavier guy, right?
You did Highland Games
and you were 300 or so.
Yeah, about 295, 280.
Yeah, which isn't that heavy
for your height.
Yeah, but I mean, well,
I mean, in your world,
I mean, in normal people's world,
300 pounds, six, five
is a big guy.
But, you know,
in the Highland Games,
it's like an average-sized dude, right?
I mean, you're a small guy
for some of those guys,
you know, in the strongman stuff. But, yeah, so, I mean, I was eating, you know, in the Highland games, it's like an average size dude. Right. I mean, you're a small guy for some of those guys, you know, in the strongman stuff, but yeah. So,
I mean, I was eating, you know, 8,000 calories a day, you know, eating dessert, you know, but I need a lot of regular healthy food too. But I mean, I miss that stuff. I mean, from a, you know,
if I were going to eat something, like if I were going to cheat tomorrow, I would go eat a piece
of cheesecake or something like that. I wouldn't, I wouldn't cheat to have a, an apple or a broccoli.
Are you enticed by that at all?
Not much.
Like when you see ice cream?
The only time I even remotely think about that is if I haven't eaten in a long time, like if I haven't eaten soon enough.
And your eyeball.
Yeah, well, generally, if I can get nutrition and steak, then I don't even think about this because I have my kids, and sometimes I'll make my kids stuff like that.
Not that often, but I'll cook it for them, and I won't have any of it.
I'm just like, here you go, kids.
But yeah, I'm not really, this is the one unique thing about this diet.
And I don't know if you've experienced it, but a lot of people that comment on this as they say their cravings for that stuff really diminish.
I believe that.
It becomes a, because you're so well, you're so well nourished from getting this constant infusion of nourishing steak or red meat that those cravings really tend to go away.
And you don't have these mental battles.
A lot of people just find that like, I could take it or leave it.
You think about it, there's a little psychological stuff still going on.
But the physiologic, I got to have it cravings.
Like before when you're a carb eater and you're really hungry, it doesn't matter what's in front of you.
It's a bunch of junk, a cookie. You'll eat it just because I'm so hungry. Now you're a carb eater and you're really hungry, it doesn't matter what's in front of you. It's a bunch of junk, a cookie.
You'll eat it just because I'm so hungry.
Now you're never hungry that much.
And so you have that willpower.
You have that, you know, all you got to do is have a little bit of mental willpower because the physical stuff is gone.
Right.
The cravings are gone in most cases.
Yeah.
No, I think it helps a lot.
I think it helps build willpower.
It helps build better habits.
You know, and it takes a long time. It takes a lot. I think it helps build willpower. It helps build better habits. It takes a long time. It takes a while. I tell
people all the time, you're one meal away from being off your diet, one meal away from being back on.
One thing that's important with your philosophy
with meat heals, as in it heals your body, it helps your body.
It helps cure you of, it's helped cure a lot of people of
disease. It's helped you lose weight. it's helped cure a lot of people of disease. Uh, it's helped you lose
weight. It's helped you with performance in the gym. You mentioned performance in the bedroom.
Can I get a, Hey now? Um, and we seen you last time you were here, you, you, you know,
you worked out like a maniac. Um, and it's, it's really, it is healing a lot of people.
And what I think, what I think people need to just comprehend here is that
the reason why you chose this style of diet is because you recognized that the more meat that
you eat, almost the better, I guess, within reason. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, I didn't
come to this from a very sick standpoint. When I read about this, most of the people that did this
were really, truly sick
people that had all kinds of medical issues and they did it out of desperation. And I did it,
just after doing my own research saying, I think this might help me athletic because I'm very
competitive. Like you, you're very competitive. You always want to do better. And I just said,
I'm going to try it for a little while. And then I noted my performance got better. And no,
it was just kind of like, and it continues to do even, even 15 months into this, I'm still
getting stronger. So getting faster, you know, I still had a few minor health, like joint things, you know, as you get old, the nice thing about being old and beat up is, you know, things that completely went away. And so I was like, well, this is, there's something here.
And so as I continue to do this, I noticed better recovery, you know, just better strength went up, which I think is pretty remarkable.
Particularly if you've been training for 35, 40 years at a hard level, your strength just doesn't automatically go up.
It's hard to do.
You know, it's hard to put on a couple pounds of muscle when you've been doing it for 20 some years.
And so I noticed those things starting to happen. happen so i thought this is unique from an athletic standpoint
that's what's kind of keeping me in the game some of what you're saying with uh you know eating
eating large amounts of meat um has been a little bit similar to what bodybuilders will say so a
bodybuilder will say um yes you can have a bar and yes, you can have a protein bar here and there.
But it really doesn't make any sense because it's taking up space, taking up valuable real estate in the grand scheme of things.
What we're trying to do is we're trying to have our body be in an anabolic state as, you know, quote unquote anabolic state as much as possible.
And we're trying to flood the body with as much nutrients, as much food as we can. And if you're taking up space by eating a protein bar, having a protein shake, you're
giving up some valuable space to some real food that could really probably make a bigger
difference, such as in a bodybuilder's case, you know, lower fat, high protein and carbohydrates
and things of that nature.
And in your case, it's just, it's just a little bit different because of the macronutrient
that you chose.
Yeah, I think there's,
you know, obviously
you got to do what works.
You know, there's a lot
of bodybuilders that have proven
they can get huge
eating a mixed diet,
you know, doing the right
chemistry stuff.
And so there's no doubt
that stuff works.
The question is,
you know, can you do it another way?
Is one way potentially
more healthy than the other?
And I don't know,
there's some thought.
I just saw a nice lecture from a guy named Ben Bickman,
who's a PhD out of Utah somewhere,
talking about the relationship between insulin and glucagon.
And when we go on a low carbohydrate diets,
protein, you know, you're kind of in a relatively even situation
where anabolism and catabolism are kind of,
you know, you're a little bit anabolic,
but you're not as, you're not very, you know, you're a little bit anabolic, but you're not as, you're
not very, uh, uh, you know, and very little catabolic. So you kind of anabolism kind of,
kind of dominates there and protein, uh, can have a little bit of impact on that, but not much.
But when you're on a high carb diet, you know, you can, you can swing things where your insulin
is really overpowering. And that's where sometimes you can get that effect where you're building
muscle, but at the same time, too much insulin can lead to problems. And so the question is,
do you do it slow? And say, I think it's probably a, you know, if I were to say,
how's the quickest way I can get as much muscle on as possible, I'd say add more carbs in.
But if I said, how do I want to do it in a way where maybe my joints aren't flaring up and maybe
my recovery is better, maybe my performance ultimately is better um you
know it might make more sense to do it this sort of way and i think that's yeah i think we're seeing
that people are doing that yeah we got another question uh cpd just hit us up on the youtube
live chat uh he wants to know if there's any pros or cons to drinking milk uh oh yeah so i think um
you know i think it depends on your one your tolerance you know
if you're lactose intolerant to me drinking milk yeah i mean if you're lactose intolerant
to some problems tell you that much right now the pros may be that there's more sugar and
carbohydrate in there if you're if you're trying to you know hit carbohydrates the cons are the
same thing you know if you have too much lactose you know you're going to have issues with with
carbohydrates some people some people will find dairy products in general to be inflammatory, me particularly.
If I do that, I notice that I don't sleep as well.
I get congested.
So there's some people where it's a negative.
I think it's kind of a case-by-case basis.
This is just in general.
Now, if you're saying, I want to strictly be on a carnivorous diet, I would say you
probably don't drink milk.
If you're going to have a little bit of dairy, do a little bit of hard cheese, do a little bit of cream, you know, maybe stick it in your coffee or something like that.
But guzzling, you know, the Go-Mad, you know, I used to do the Go-Mad.
You remember the Go-Mad stuff?
Yeah.
Yeah, 20-20 rep squats and Go-Mad, you know.
And so, you know, you do that stuff.
And, you know, you get big, but you get a little fat, too.
There's an interesting, there's a tribe in Africa.
They're not the Maasai, but they're one that's similar.
baby to get a little fat too there's an interesting there's a tribe in africa they're not the messiah but they're one that's similar and they have a a contest every year where the person all they do
is drink milk all day long and they drink as much milk as possible get bloated bloated and huge and
fat but that's considered a sign of you know that's something they prize yeah so the guy that
gets the biggest fattest guy from drinking all the milk and gets the women or whatever i pride
myself on that for years.
Yeah. But I have to, I have to see, I saw something in your picture. You're, you're definitely getting the, getting the stouts on. But yeah, I guess, you know, again, just a short, short answer to that question is potentially, you know, many people will say it's kind of contentious to drink whole, whole milk, raw milk or low fat skim milk, you know, and it's, it's, it's kind of a goes back and forth, you know, it's, I don't think it's, I don't think it was, I don't think
it was an easy answer on that question, quite honestly. You know, I think it, it, it does boil
down to, you know, the answer everybody hates is like, find what works for you, you know, because
if you can digest milk, okay, then you're, you're probably okay. I mean, if you, if you feel okay,
but I think it's important that people do take out some of these things from their diet
to see if they feel better.
When it comes to milk, there's been a lot of great athletes over the years that have
gotten really big and strong using meat, potatoes, milk.
Bill Kazmaier comes to mind.
There's a lot of these people.
But when you listen to some of the stuff from Stan Efferding
And when he's talking about like the vertical diet
Or some of these bodybuilders
I think they have great concepts
They're talking about trying to digest stuff
In a timely manner
So that you can get more nutrients in
And so for some of you guys
That want to get bigger and stronger
The real trick is going to be
To be able to turn that food over So you can have enough calories each day To be the size trick is going to be to be able to turn that food over so you can
have enough calories each day to be the size that you want to be and be the strength that
you want to be.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, again, it's, you know, the simplest thing in the conscience of a carnivorous diet
is do it without it for a month and then add it back in and see how you do.
Because again, if your only metric is how big and how strong can I be, that's different
than if your metric is how big and how strong can I be without I be, that's different than if your metric is how big and how strong can I be
without my,
my back hurting,
my knees hurting or my skin flaring up.
And so there's,
or my digestive being crappy.
And so there's different ways to do that,
you know,
and some people,
like I said,
young guys,
19,
20 years old,
you're bulletproof.
You can do about any diet.
You know,
there's,
there's professional athletes on the McDonald's diet.
They're kicking ass.
Oh yeah.
Genetics.
Yeah.
So I mean,
you know,
but when you,
when you start to, to look at career longevity,
do you want to be in the game for five years or 20 years?
And so it may make a difference in that outcome.
And so, like I said, I'm saying this from a guy in his 50s
and Mark's in his 40s now.
You kind of get through that.
People are watching this like these guys are fucking old as shit.
They shut it off a long time ago.
I'll hide my walker behind the stage here.
But yeah, I mean, it's something to think about.
And I will tell you that I'm seeing, man, a lot of pretty high level athletes are starting to do this now.
And they're getting pretty good results.
So it's still kind of the wild, wild west as far as nutrition is concerned.
But there's a kid in Canada.
He's a 165-pound powerlifter,
a Canadian CPF national record holder.
I think I might have seen him on Instagram.
And he's like blowing up his numbers right now.
I think he might have been tagging the carnivore diet.
Yeah, he is, he is.
But he's putting up some pretty impressive-
He deadlifted like close to 700 pounds.
I think he's going to hit about 700.
I know he's pulled like 585 for six reps,
for six sets with no belt. You know, he's sumo, so you got to- Oh, he's just- You got to create about 700. I know he just pulled like 585 for six reps for six sets with no belt.
You know, he's sumo, so you got to.
Oh, he's sumo.
You got to.
Come on now.
You ever deadlift sumo?
No.
I mean, I've done what I suck at.
I mean, look at me.
I would not be very well.
I don't think I'm built for sumo.
Maybe you have more thought on that.
Yeah, it depends on how you move.
I mean, I've done it, just been training, screwing up, but I never tried to do it real heavy. But you have a really strong deadlift. I did, yeah. I mean, I think I'm't know. Yeah, it depends on how you move. I mean, I've done it, just been trying, screwing up, but I never tried to do it real heavy.
But you have a really strong deadlift.
I did, yeah.
I mean, I think I'm still okay.
You're too old now?
What happened?
Well, maybe we'll see.
No, I had a, you know, my best was 770.
You need to mix in some vegetables or something.
Yeah, vegetables, it got me there.
Yeah, no, I did that in 2000 when I was 33, and I'm 51 now.
But I still maintain, I was over 700 up until I turned 43, was the last time I tried to pull 700.
How much did you say you did?
772.
Man, that's huge.
That's good, Ted.
I did that in, it was kind of funny, I did that in a little organization, because you know how powerlifting has all these organizations.
Yeah.
So I used to lift in USAPL, and I lifted in NASA.
I don't know if they're still around.
Yeah, I think so, yeah.
But I did that, I remember I did that.
Some sort of, they're trying to send rockets in outer space or something.
Well, yeah.
Anyway, but they had this meet where it was like a lot of people in one platform.
So it took all damn day.
So I remember I was squatting at like 9 a.m.
And I was pulling at like 11 o'clock at night.
And I mean, I pulled 772 and I was tired.
And then I had 783 and I had it just above my knees.
I couldn't lock that damn thing out. Then I went into- The one that got away. Yeah, so I And then I had 783 and I had it just above my knees. I couldn't lock that.
So then I went into the one that got away.
Yeah.
So I should have had a 783,
but then I had to go to my surgical residency.
Then I started working 140 hours a week and I was like,
crap,
you can't,
you can't train anymore.
So your actual doctor,
I thought,
I thought the doctor thing was just like,
you're the meat doctor.
A little of both.
Yeah,
no,
I did.
I did an orthopedic surgery residency training
or they trained did that and did war trauma and uh spent about two decades i got something like
right here and then over here and then on this side can you just you know hit you in the head
with a snake yeah give me some vodka and uh let's do some surgery here how long did you do that for
uh about 20 years yeah oh my god yeah so um yeah I'll probably get back to doing that part-time, I think, once I get through this nutritional stuff.
And is it right you got kind of booted out for wanting to recommend?
Yeah, when I-
Now, this has happened to somebody more recently, too, I saw.
Yeah, there's a couple of doctors this has happened to.
There's a guy in Australia that was told he's not allowed to give nutritional advice to his patients because it was low carb advice.
And they told him it goes against the dietary guidelines.
And so we don't want you to.
So why does, so, so how does that work?
Is it cause they'll say like board certified, is that how it works?
And is there a board of people that kind of vote you out or something?
No, it was a hospital, it was directly with hospital.
So, I mean, I got board certified when I,
when I passed my exams and met with a board certified.
And then basically I started to change the way I practiced. Cause I was,
I was initially the normal guy where I was just doing a lot of surgery.
I was in lots and lots of surgery, you know,
taking care of lots of patients, making them a hospital, a lot of money,
hospital likes that they like making their money.
And then I started to sort of, sort of talk about, well, let's start treating some stuff with
diet.
And so I asked the hospital, hey, man, I want to one day a week where I just talk to patients
about diet.
No, no, no, we don't want you to do that.
Then I talked to the people that were on the employee wellness program.
I said, can I be part of the employee wellness program?
And they kind of blew me off.
And then I asked about being on the non-operative bariatric surgery department because they
bought a surgeon to cut people open and take their stomachs out. and blew me off. And then I asked about being on the non-operative bariatric surgery department because they had,
they bought a surgeon
to cut people open
and take their stomachs out.
And I said,
I want to,
I want to give advice
on how to lose weight without it.
And they kept blowing me off
and that stuff.
And so I started just
on my own
and started pressing the diet,
pressing the diet,
talking people away
from surgery.
And so hospital
kind of went after me with that.
And so it was a long,
about a two year legal battle.
Cost me a lot of money.
Right.
And then,
and then eventually, you know, I lost it because they just, they about a two year legal battle. Cost me a lot of money. Right. And then, and then eventually,
you know,
I lost it because they just,
they just outspent me basically
because they had so much more money,
you know.
And then I went to the state
and the state said,
you know,
we've got this complaint.
Do you want to contest it?
It's going to take you a year
and a bunch of money.
I said,
I'm not going to waste
any more money on that.
Right.
They said,
we'll just,
we'll let you recertify another way.
So that's what I'm doing now.
But from like a mental perspective, I mean, that sounds like it would have been a real kick in the dick.
That was like losing a kid. I mean, cause you spend, you know, I spent, you know,
decades training.
Well, and you're also helping people.
No, helping people too. But I mean, it was, it was one of those things where
I spent most of my life training to do this stuff. And then they're saying, well,
we're going to take it away from you. And, uh, yeah, it was, it was tough. I mean, I was pretty depressed. I mean, I was depressed about it for
a good year and then pissed about it. And I had these fantasies about caveman days where you just,
but you can't do that stuff now. So, so now my, the revenge will be, I'm still helping people.
Uh, hopefully I'll get back in that game. But if, if, even if I can't, um, my goal is going to be
help as many people any way i can through hopefully better
nutrition training yeah all the lifestyle stuff that we we in western medicine don't focus on
we don't have the capacity or the systems not set up for you know we're set up for disease
management not really disease prevention where we really need to put our effort in and that's
what's going to change the course of this country, because right now we're heading in a pretty bad direction.
That's why I'll put a plug in for that.
We're on carbs is one tool in the way we're going to hopefully take back our vitality, because we've lost it.
I know Trump wants to make America great again, but you're not going to make America great again if everybody's sick and disabled.
Hey, you know what? His son is squatting, benching, and deadlifting.
Oh, yeah? Which one? We're getting somewhere. I think it's Donald Jr., right?
Oh, okay. Yeah, he's squatting, benching, deadlifting. I think
he was squatting around 315 or something like that. He's moving around some weight.
He said he's got some crappy knees or something like that, and so
he hit us up for some strong sleeves and stuff like that.
Really? Cool. That's awesome.
Tell him to get on a steak diet.
Tell him to get his dad on a steak diet.
That would be cool.
Yeah, I tried.
It didn't go very far.
You know, here's an interesting thing.
So the president of Mongolia is a guy who's just jacked.
I don't know if you know who he is.
But he's a guy that probably is on a steak diet.
But he's pretty solid there.
Oh, is that him there deadlifting?
Yeah, that's him right there.
That's not bad.
Oh, Donald Trump Jr.
He looks like he's kind of a young guy.
Three blues and maybe a 25.
It looks like 365 maybe or something, something like that.
Yeah, he's a little rounded, but that's not bad.
Giving it all he's got.
He's doing it.
And he's, I like he's doing a conventional.
Yeah.
Who knows?
Three tips to.
If we say bad stuff about him, who what'll happen does he say three tips to
better deadlift by by uh i'll find it but i'm not sure you gotta have him on the podcast he'll
teach you how to do it isn't that isn't that funny i mean there's got to be some sort of security
breach of the president's son even just having a youtube channel i would imagine like any of it
right it's just is that is that recent i don't know i don't know um so like you know when
you were going through that that time period were you still you know where you were um uh dismissed
from your your job you know it sucks because you spent 20 years you know honing the skill
you have this great skill now you can't use it um were you still training at the time still
lifting at the time?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I kept training.
I mean, I've been a meathead since I've been 10 years old.
I mean, that's never going to stop.
You know, you identify what you do is one thing, but who you are is something else.
And I've always been, you know, basically a meathead at heart.
How did you get started?
You know, I just, you know, I remember I watched, this is, you know, Bruce Jenner, who's now
Caitlyn Jenner.
I was inspired by him in the Olympics in like 76, I think it was 76 when he did the Olympics, when he won the decathlon.
I think everybody was inspired by him.
And so I thought as a kid, I made my own.
People that grew up in that time frame.
That's what I did.
I'm going to do that same workout today.
Oh, that's when you used to work out.
Oh no, this is a couple weeks ago.
No, that's two days ago.
Oh, okay.
That's just four or five.
But I did that and I-
Smokey, we got to work on this guy's technique.
Look at this guy.
Yeah, I know.
I'm terrible.
A strong hand.
We got huge hands.
He's a huge guy.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm a proponent of the hook grip for that.
I think it's a more efficient way to pull.
So you started at a young age?
Yeah.
So I started about 10 organizing the neighborhood Olympics.
And then I just started like an exercise.
Then I was a cross country runner.
Wow.
I mean, I was like 140 pounds,
a 6'1", skinny guy.
Then I got into lifting about 13, 14 years of age,
you know, muscle and fitness and all that.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, all the body, Lee Haney and all those guys.
And I remember all the old bodybuilders
tried to do that stuff.
I'm not a bodybuilder.
I'm tall, skinny guy.
I'm never going to be a bodybuilder,
but did that stuff.
And then I got into playing sports, got into rugby. I played at a highbuilder. I'm never, I'm tall, tall skinny. I'm never going to be a bodybuilder, but did that stuff. And then I got into, uh, uh, playing sports, got into rugby. I played at high
level rugby, went to New Zealand. I went back into powerlifting. You know, I think I pulled
seven. I was 26. The first time I pulled 700 and then I maintained a 700 pound deadlift for
until I was about 43. So I did that for all those years. I'd never, was never a great
bench or a squatter. I think I was like a 650 squatter
or 400 pound bencher
but that was
single ply stuff
back in the day
and then I switched over
to throwing
the Highland Games
because I know
you have Matt out here
all the time
so I did that
for about five years.
Yeah, Matt and Andy Vincent.
Yeah, Matt.
Andy's a big boy too.
Andy's huge.
Yeah, so I ran
with those guys.
I was in the old guy class
but I won the old guy
world championship in that and then I switched over won the old guy world championship in that.
The old guy world championships.
That sounds so good.
Well, it's Masters.
That sounds great.
It's honest, you know.
But I mean, it's still cool.
The old guy world championships.
You win like this big-ass cane.
Well, yeah.
Like, I won this year.
I'll be back.
It's like being the tallest midget or something like that.
You know, it's kind of like, you know, whatever.
The old guy world championships.
That's great. Well, some people call it Masters. I'm kind of like, you know, whatever. The old guy world championships. That's great.
Well, some people call him Max.
I'm going to get you a shirt that says that.
Old guy world champion.
Champion old guy.
I'm not that old yet, but I'm, you know.
And then I took him to send our rowing stuff.
And so now it's been for the last three years.
Now you're really fishing for records.
Well, yeah.
But I mean, it's like I broke a world record on that.
I broke that world record about 19 times on the Concept2.
You knocked my brother off the damn road last time.
Yeah, he fell off.
I was trying to teach him how to pull.
Oh, now you're saying he fell off.
I think you knocked him off.
I gave him a little push.
Yeah, you gave him a little push.
He needs that.
Yeah, but I think, like I was saying, I'm probably going to do some training to get my deadlift back up,
see if I can't pull 700 again, which would be, I think that would be a testament to the meat diet as a strength training thing.
Right.
Yeah, so we'll see.
Are you abstaining from eating foods to maybe in some effort, like, prove people wrong,
or does this just feel right to you, period?
You know, I think the latter more than the former.
You know, I do feel good.
I mean, I have no, my only goal is to be as healthy, strong, fast, as competitive
as possible. If I thought eating, eating, uh, kale would make me a better deadlifter and a
stronger athlete. I would definitely do that. I just don't think it does. And I know that,
well, you know, but anyway, kale is kind of gross anyway, but I can't believe people actually
thought we would want to eat that stuff. Has anybody ever actually tasted it? You know,
you know, you know, back in the old days,
you would have had a guy,
the guy,
probably the guy
who pissed everybody off.
He's like the plant taster.
You're like,
you're in there,
you got grok.
You say,
hey dude,
go eat that berry,
see if it kills you or not.
That's probably the guy
that no one liked.
But I don't know
which guy decided
kale tasted good.
We should all eat it
as humans.
Hey,
you come across
something that doesn't
smell good
and you come across
something that doesn't
taste good. What do you left to do guys? Yeah, it's crazy. Hey, you come across something that doesn't smell good, and you come across something that doesn't taste good.
What do you have to do, guys?
Yeah, it's got to be healthy for us.
That's why I tell you, eat your vegetables.
They're good for you.
Why do they taste so bad?
That's because they're good for you.
That's why they taste so bad.
You know, it's kind of that's.
Everything's got to be the hard way.
Well, I think that is maybe the view, you know, sometimes is that, you know, in life, a lot of times, you know, taking the hard road, taking the longer path, you know, sometimes is what you think is right.
And so I think, you know, maybe when it comes to vegetables, we just think, yeah, it's supposed to take forever to chew this shit up and it's supposed to be kind of gross.
You know, it's kind of interesting, you know, if you look at just on chewing chimpanzees in the wild, they spend of their waking hours, they spend 60% of their day chewing.
I mean, their day is spent chewing 60% of their waking.
Can you imagine if humans spent 60% of their day chewing?
Sometimes I feel that way when I'm following your diet.
You eat these giant pieces of rhubarb.
You have to work on your efficiency, but no.
Yeah, you're fast.
I went to use the restroom and you scarfed down like four pieces of meat when you were at my house.
That's right. I had three pounds of steak. Yeah, you did. You like four pieces of meat when you're at my house. That's right.
I had three pounds of steak.
Yeah, you did.
You like inhaled it through your nose.
I don't mess around.
But I mean, you know, you can like chimpanzees are at 60% of their day.
Humans or early humans were considered at 4% of the chew.
They could tell that from jaw structure.
So what were early humans chewing on?
They weren't chewing on a lot of plant material.
They were chewing on something they could eat and swallow.
Smokey spends 80% of his day with his mouth open.
80%.
80%.
Got a question?
Yeah.
Justified Journey, again, on the YouTube live chat.
He's wondering if you're concerned at all with hormones and stuff that are being pumped
into cows.
Yeah.
So all...
How do you think we got so jacked over here?
Yeah.
One more hormone.
No.
Always cheating. No. Always cheating.
No, there is a little misconception about that because, yes, some hormones are implanted in cows.
You know, typically it's testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, and there's something called xeranol and one other, I'm blanking on the name right now.
Tren.
No, it's not Tren, but it's-
Damn it, it should be. But anyway, what happens is when we look at a normal cow, a normal cow produces testosterone, estrogen, progesterone to a certain level.
It's in like nanogram quantities, and that's what shows it from the meat, even if it's not been implanted.
So when you implant those animals, the hormone concentrations go up just slightly more.
So you're still just getting a few nanograms, whether you eat an animal that's been implanted or not.
just getting a few nanograms, whether you eat an animal that's been implanted or not.
Now, if you're really worried about this stuff, then don't drink any dairy or milk because dairy or milk has even more hormones than even an implanted cow. Don't eat eggs because eggs have
them in there. Don't eat organ meats because organ meats concentrate those things. So if you're
really worried about hormones, you should not be eating all those things. But it's such a small
amount. And then if we want to consider phytoestrogens, which some people think have an estrogenizing effect, there's lots of
foods. Bread has them in it. You know, obviously all the soybean oil that we have. Soybean oil is
the most, is the most, is the number one oil that Americans consume these days. You know,
our soybean oil consumption, vegetable oil consumption is about 8% of the U.S. caloric
intake right now. It used to be zero.
And that's what some people think is one of these drivers of metabolic disease and obesity and whatever else you want to attribute to that.
And so we've had a tremendous increase in vegetable oils.
We didn't know.
Vegetable oils did not exist before about 1910 when they invented Crisco.
When they invented Crisco, it was cottonseed oil.
And, you know, I think it was cottonseed oil.
But that's when vegetable oils came into the human diet.
And we've been going downhill since then.
So there's a lot of people that think vegetable oils in particular are particularly bad.
What do you think the main driver of obesity is?
I've heard some people, they try to blame it on like the government.
I've heard some people try to blame it on like the food pyramid. But when I look around and I see people that are obese, especially when I'm at like the airport or something like that, I don't see people really eating off the food pyramids.
You know, I think it's, you know, I will tell you what it's not.
It's not meat.
It's clearly not meat because everybody's on an all meat diet.
It's getting lean, you know, which is I think so you can eliminate that.
But I think there's a combination of things.
Certainly some people will attribute there's more calories.
There's probably a lot of underlying hormonal problems that people are developing, underlying inflammation, which kind of drives some of that stuff.
And I think it is the food in general.
I think the food is the biggest driver of that because it's like people want to blame it on chairs.
We were sitting down.
Well, we invented chairs about 3,000 years ago.
So it's not like we invented sitting.
So people have been sitting around for a long period of time.
I don't think it's so much the activity.
I think those things contribute.
But I think the biggest driver is humans are eating the wrong diet in general.
We've been eating the wrong diet as humans for about 10,000 years.
And it's only getting worse, you know, as we introduce, you know, the 31 flavors and the, you know, the 25 flavors of potato chips with all the artificial chemicals.
Keep talking, keep talking.
I mean, you know, there's nice to try, you know, if you want to try the Butterfinger flavored,
you know, potato chip, I don't know if they have that now, but they might,
they might do a new invention.
We need to patent that.
We need to patent that.
But I mean, you see how this stuff goes.
Now they're making fake flavors of fake flavors.
You know, it's like, you know, a fake product that has some, it's like pop tart flavored drinks.
Yeah.
It's like, what the hell is that?
Well, and it's amazing because even just that first, the first time you hear it, it sounds exciting to you.
And you're like, wait, what am I getting excited about?
Butterfinger's not even a real thing.
It's a fake Butterfinger flavored popcorn.
You're like, oh, that sounds so good. And then
you're like, oh wait, that's not even like, that's a fake thing of another fake thing
piled onto another fake thing. We'll see if we get to the third level.
Fake news. Justin Savage wants to know just basically like what would be the first three
meals that someone would have trying to convert over to a carnivore diet?
I think, you know, there's a couple of ways you can do it. If you want to go hardcore and a lot
of people recommend this because the transition is quicker, you know, because you get through
those carb cravings. And so, you know, but I tell people, you know, when I tell people to do this,
I tell them to don't worry about calculating stuff right now. Don't worry about, you know,
how many macros you're eating. Just enjoy the food, get the most flavorful thing you know,
you're going to like, whether it's a ribeye steak, maybe it's a hamburger with bacon and eggs with it,
and just maybe put some spices in there, a little bit of cheese, whatever it takes to get you to
sort of buy into the flavor. And then run that for a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two.
And then what you can do is start playing with stuff and you'll find that your appetite naturally
will gravitate you one way or the other. For me, it's, I like steak every meal. If I could eat ribeyes every meal for the
rest of my life, I'd probably be just as happy as if I couldn't. So I think it's, you know,
you have to sort of, you know, because most people are coming from this background of variety,
variety, variety, got to have variety, even though humans have never had variety until the last few
decades or even a hundred years. So you have to really find whatever you really love, steak, shrimp, make it surf and turf,
steak and lobster.
If you can afford it.
If not, it's a bacon cheeseburger without the bun.
Whatever you can do to make it really palate to palate, you know, appetizing to you and
do that as long as it takes to get past.
Because if you see it as a chore, oh, I got to eat, you know, dried ground beef again.
You know, it's going to be hard to stick to that stuff.
Particularly if you got all these other things in your house tempting you.
But if you find it, I'm going to make a delicious, because I look forward to every meal.
I mean, I'm like, I'm going to eat a ribeye.
Like this morning I was at the Black Bear.
So I had tri-tip and ribeye.
Black Bear Diner.
That was good because Chris showed me that place.
It's so good, yeah.
So I had a little bit of eggs and I had what I had ribeye. Black bear diner. That was good because Chris showed me that place. It's so good, yeah. So I had a little bit of eggs
and I had,
when I had ribeye.
I'll give you guys this tip too
is if you're hungry,
then you're going to crave it more.
So if you're,
you know,
utilizing some intermittent fasting,
I think can be,
can be,
can help a lot
on this particular diet.
Another couple small tips.
When you cook, if you cook ground beef, uh, cook it as a hamburger and save it as a hamburger. If you want to mash it up
and whatever, uh, configuration you want later on, it it'll taste better that way. Uh, if you
have it in the fridge as, uh, just ground beef, just all smashed up, up. It'll be like hard and it'll be weird
and the fat will be weird on it
and it won't be very appetizing.
The other thing that I've done,
and when we had keto gains on the podcast,
he lost nearly 300 pounds.
300 pounds.
He did?
Yeah.
Oh my God, he must be huge.
He was big.
Yeah, he was a big, big boy.
He lost nearly-
He's only like a buck 50 now, right?
I don't know what he weighs now.
Maybe 165.
Tyler Cartwright, I think he probably weighs, oh no, he's probably still about 200 pounds
or so.
Is it Luis Villasenor or is that-
Oh, he's, yeah, no, he's-
Because he's a KetoGames guy.
They're, I think they run it together maybe.
Oh, okay, the other guy.
I was like, is he KetoGames?
Yeah, Tyler Cartwright was like five something.
Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
He was big.
But anyway, yeah, he lost about 300 pounds.
And when he lost all that weight, I asked him on the show, I was like, how long did that take you?
And he said, 10 years.
I went from 330 to the, you know, I'm going down to 230 pounds.
And somebody asked me recently how long it took.
And it's taken several years because that was at my heaviest point.
taken several years because that was at my heaviest point. My point is, is what the good doctor just told you right here was that he said, Hey, you know, try it for a month. You know, I
think that we're so quick to give up on stuff. We try something for two or three days and you're
like, Oh my God, I went to the gym. I went to deadlift and I nearly blacked out. Well, yeah,
you nearly blacked out. You you've been eating like shit for a long time. This is a huge rude awakening to you. You just implemented no carbs and intermittent fasting all in one shot. And now you're not eating. And now you're trying to do a 500 pound deadlift. Of course, you feel like crap. You're going to have to give this some time and you shouldn't be trying to implement that many things at once.
to implement that many things at once.
Take it one day at a time.
If you're somebody that is on a high carbohydrate diet,
maybe your diet is just really, really shitty.
Maybe your diet on a scale of one to 10 is a one or two or three.
If that's the case, try to make it a seven,
try to make it an eight,
try to just have a day where you don't eat carbs
and then try to string together a couple days
where you don't eat carbs.
Try to get rid of, if you have a lot of soda, if you have a lot of stuff like that in your diet,
try getting rid of some of those things. Um, some things that I've done, uh, at night,
cause that's usually where my cravings come from. And I think most people have that too.
Um, protein shakes have helped, uh, even though they're not really truly part of
a carnivore diet. I also kind of consider some of these things as a little bit of cheats.
I know it's like being like super strict, but it's not really the reason why you do a ketogenic diet.
It's not the reason why you do a paleo diet.
You don't do a paleo diet to eat a paleo donut.
You do a paleo diet to eat paleolithic, you know, so.
But having like an omelet or something at night,
it was something that helped me quite a bit. Uh, you know, just cooking up, uh, some eggs,
bacon, cheese, and not caring about how many eggs you make, not caring about how much butter you
throw on it, not caring about how much cheese you use, all these things, just trying to load up
and really having something savory, uh, at night. Cause that's where a lot of people's cravings come from.
Yeah.
I think,
I think again,
particularly during the transition phase,
the biggest difficulty people have is,
you know,
getting passes because a lot of people come from a ketogenic background or
another background where they're counting stuff is getting that out of your
mind for a while and just eating to satisfaction.
And I tell people eat like it's your job in the beginning,
because that's, what's going to get you through. You know, every time you even think about craving
some mouth, shove a piece of bacon in your mouth, shove a steak in your mouth, have stuff on hand
so that if you have those cravings, you can just, you can satiate that with a nice piece of steak
or something like that, or hamburger, whatever, hamburger patty. And then you're going to get
through that stuff. But, you know, you should, you know, at the beginning, you shouldn't worry
about, you know, how much am I going to restrict? Because what you're trying to get through that stuff. But, you know, you should, you know, at the beginning, you shouldn't worry about, you know, how much am I going to restrict?
Because what you're trying to do, again, I tend to tell people this is about nourishment.
It's not about any particular weight loss or body composition goal.
It's the first thing is about because most people out there are undernourished, whether they're too thin or obese, they're undernourished.
Obesity is a problem with malnourishment.
It's not necessarily that they haven't had enough calories, but they haven't had enough true nutrition.
And so a lot of people have to, they've dug themselves a deep hole.
And a lot of times it takes a lot of nutrition to restore that.
You know, if you look at people.
I've never heard anybody say it quite that way, but that actually makes a lot of sense. And a lot of these people that are having a huge surplus of calories every day and not expending that energy at all are deficient in vitamin D and calcium and A and B and C, right?
Right.
So what they're doing is, you know, their body is asking them for something and they're not giving it to them.
They're giving them calories and a little bit of sugar, a little, you know, a little bit of wheat and stuff like that's low and low in nutrition. And so
what happens is you're constantly hungry and you're constantly just retrying to feed the
beast because you keep asking for that. So when you start giving yourself-
Your brain is telling you Doritos and your body's saying something different.
Your body is saying, I need magnesium or I need protein. And you're saying here,
here's carbohydrate. And so what happens is you fill up on calories, you get obese, but you never get nourished.
And so that's why we see people that are even obese that have frail bones.
I mean, you can live operating on these people.
You know, you cut through all these layers of fat, you get down to the bone, and the bone is like you can stick your finger right through their bone because it's so weak.
And that's what's happening.
These people are losing all this nutrition from their body.
And as they get older, they start to auto-cannibalize themselves.
And that's why their brains will shrink.
Their kidneys will shrink.
Their liver will shrink.
Their skin will shrink.
Their muscles will shrink because there's no nourishment.
And so what happens is we see people that do a diet that's animal protein heavy, and they hang on to the muscle.
They hang on to their bone density.
They're just more functional people.
Didn't you say we used to be more dense?
We used to be-
Yeah, interestingly, you know.
Like tolerance.
Yeah.
If you look at the, the, the fossil records from agriculture, which started 10, 12,000 years ago in the, in the fossils from maybe 20, 30,000 years ago, humans 20,000 years ago were about six inches taller.
Our bones were much denser.
Our muscle attachments were much bigger and our brains
were about 200 CCs bigger. So we were smarter, bigger, stronger, and faster. And we, and since
we adopted agri-fault culture, we've become weaker. And so we, we might've had a bunch of
Brian Shaw's walking around the earth, you know, uh, eating mammoths, you know,
I mean, that could have been more. Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah. Uh, uncle Duderino,
It could have been more of a war, yeah.
No, exactly.
Yeah.
Uncle Duderino, that's the most unique name so far.
Would you recommend this diet for somebody who just had gastric sleeve surgery?
Yeah, so I'm aware of a number of patients that have had either gastric sleeves or other types of gastric bypasses that have done this. You know, the problem with a gastric sleeve diet is your capacity to eat a big meal is diminished.
And so the people that have successfully done this, and there are a lot of them that have done that in that situation,
they tend to eat smaller portions. If you probably go back to your diet that the gastric bypass
doctor recommended you to do prior to surgery to shrink your liver, he puts you on a high protein,
low fat or high protein diet. And most likely that's what they usually do for gastric bypass,
a low carb, high protein diet, which is kind of what this is. It's not super high protein diet, most likely that's what they usually do for gastric bypass, a low carb, high protein diet, which is kind of what this is. You know, it's not super high protein, but there's
plenty of protein in the diet. And so, um, you ha you can do that, but you just have to probably
get by with more frequent, smaller feeds just because your, your stomach capacity is now shrunk.
So there are a lot of people that are doing this. If you go to world carnivore tribe on Facebook,
you can talk to people directly that have had that experience and they can tell you how they manage that.
It's really become a tribe.
It is.
We've got, you know, we just started and we've got six some thousand people in a month or two.
And so we're getting about a hundred people every day signing up.
That's awesome.
It's pretty cool.
You know, my son, the other day he went to the dentist, you know, and I, it got me thinking, I was like, yeah, you know, you go to the dentist from the time you're a kid,
you go to the dentist, you know, like twice a year.
That's just what you do. Right. And I asked him, I was like, Hey,
I was like, when, when have you gone to the just like regular doctor,
you know? And I knew the answer obviously, but he's like, never really.
I was like, why, why is that?
He's like, I don't know. And we, you know, he and I, it's kind of funny cause he's 14,
but we get in like these debates and, uh, he, he's political and stuff. And so I was like,
well, maybe, you know, maybe it's, uh, in our best interest to keep people sick and to have
them play this guessing game and have them not understand what's going on with their body and
have them, uh, get addicted to some of these shitty foods and this and that.
Normally, he always plays the other side.
Normally, he'll come, especially when it comes to like health, like he's, you know, he wants to be the opposite of dad all the time.
It's just kind of funny.
But in this case, he was like, he's like, maybe she's like, maybe you're right.
I can't think of another reason.
He's like, why do you go to the dentist twice a year but you don't see a regular doctor?
The only time you see a regular doctor is when you are sick.
I mean, it's not just to sort of cast any conspiracies here because most physicians are hardworking, caring people.
They really want to do the best they can.
The system is kind of not set up that well to prevent people from getting sick.
It's good for taking care of sick people. And the healthcare system requires sick people to stay afloat. You know, we have to
have so many people running through the operating room, we're throwing through the cath lab to, to,
to, to turn on the light switches. And so if there's not sick people there, the hospitals
will close. And that's, that's a sad reality of the thing. Um, you know, it's, there are people
that make profit on that. Undoubtedly, you know, there's, there are people that make profit on that. Undoubtedly,
you know, there's, there's, there's drug companies that, you know, if no one's sick,
no one's going to buy their drugs, obviously. And there are food manufacturer companies that
probably, uh, you know, they're not blameless in this as well. I mean, they make the food that
make people sick. And so there's some profit motive there. I don't know if it's, it's just
business. I mean, if you're in a business and you don't really care, if you're only, if your only concern is
how much money can I make, you know, I'll give you, you know, we're going to make Purina human
chow. You know, that's what we're going to, you know, that's where we're going to. And we don't
care as long as it just, just imagine though, if you, you know, if you went to the doctor
from the time you're a kid and you just went every, at least every year, at least once a year,
and you went when you're 10, you went when you're 11,
they're checking your body weight.
They're kind of seeing a normal trend of your body weight going, going up.
Well, when you're 12 and you go in and you gained, you know,
maybe double the amount of weight that you should have gained what they
typically see, then they might say, Hey, well, what's going on?
Maybe they find out that your parents got divorced.
So they find out that something happened or you got hurt playing a
sport. You no longer play the sport anymore. And then somebody at that point can at least,
you know, give some education either to the parent or to the kid or however it would work.
But you think that you would be able to prevent a lot of what we're seeing right now, because the
only way to really truly get this stuff
reversed is to have it not ever happen in the first place.
Yeah. The best health insurance is not getting sick. I mean, that's, that's just the bottom
line, but I mean, you know, like I said, I know Chris Kresser, I don't know if you're
Chris Kresser, but he's talked about, he has a book on his, I haven't read his book, but
we share a similar philosophy.
I don't read books either.
We should have.
I just read them.
Yeah. I mean, I like to look at it. They got pictures, you know, I i like i like the picture on your book there so i'll look at your pictures shirtless sweaty pictures
but a man holding a gun with donuts there you go but you know if you look at you know what we
should be doing what we do i mean we train these armies of people to be radiology techs and lab
techs and you know nursing assistants designed to take care of sick people we should put the
same amount of effort and we could have an army of prevention specialists you know, nursing assistants designed to take care of sick people. We should put the same amount of effort and we could have an army of
prevention specialists, you know,
people that are trained to go into people's homes and show them how to eat
correctly, maybe show them how to deadlift, you know, whatever, you know,
you can make whatever exercise you want.
I can picture you with your kit and you have like a big thing of steak.
You're like, quick, get this guy some meat.
You can get a steak and a kettlebell for a, for a, for a, you know,
a house call. But I mean, I think that's,
that is something that we could do if we wanted to put them, put the emphasis there. And that's
how we would probably, you know, turn the country around is from a health standpoint. But again,
the will has to be there. Uh, you know, a lot of people don't want that, you know, you go and they
just want, just give me the pill, give me the shot. And that sort of mentality is still out
there too. So it's's it's an uphill battle
i think it's a battle worth fighting and i think again i'll point to the point that social media is
reaching more people than you know a lot of these big institutions are and so we've got yeah that
was something you mentioned to me after i thought was you know kind of was kind of eye-opening to
me you're like oh man you know you're you're reaching a lot more people than uh that person
that's got the research paper on it or whatever,
either the person at Stanford who's studying it or whatever.
And I just never even, I never really looked at things that way.
Think about it, even as a career surgeon, you know, 20 years of operating, I only impacted X amount of people.
You get on social media and you've got, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of followers.
You can reach those people in a day what would take me
10 years to do and so with that amount of power if you're getting the right information and you're
seeing it already you're seeing the fruits of the just a little bit of effort that people are coming
back and saying wait a minute my life has changed i'm healthier and most of those people once they
discover the war on carbs and they experience it it's pretty rare for them to go back most people
once they learn you know or what carnivore diet they learn, okay, this is how I'm healthy. They know how to do it. And they
really go back to the really crappy stuff. Some people do, but most people have to come to one
of these trade shows with us. One of these days, like LA fit expo or something like that. You'd
have a lot of people coming up to you telling you how much, how much you've helped improve their
lives. I mean, I get it pretty powerful. I mean, I it on social media. You know, you get the messages all the time,
which kind of gets, you know,
you got a person that handles your social media.
I don't.
So, you know, try to answer as many questions as you can
or do videos to try to answer a common question.
But I do that and it's very rewarding.
That's what keeps me wanting to do this
is just, you know, the stories I'm getting.
And that's what I'm trying to, again,
this is the one thing that people kind of dismiss this stuff.
They say, well, it's just an anecdote.
Well, I will tell you, stories are extremely, extremely powerful, you know, because people can relate to that.
It's not some research paper that nobody bothers to read anyway.
Or some guy in a white coat telling you, this is what you got to do because of this study, which you don't understand really well.
But when you hear somebody that you can relate to, somebody in the exact same situation as you, and they lost weight, they got rid of their arthritis,
their gout went away, their diabetes went away,
they're like, I'm going to try that.
And that's what's happening.
That's why stories are so powerful.
That's why I'm trying to meetheals.com,
bringing all these stories together.
And the more we do that,
the more people are going to be affected.
When it comes to like Highland Games or strength athletes,
you know, Matt Vincent used to be about 300 pounds.
You yourself used to be 300 pounds in competitive days.
I was fat as fuck in my competitive days, just being as big as I possibly could to handle
the most amount of weight.
And we all recognize that you can, uh, that there are athletes that can be smaller and,
and they can lift more weight.
There are athletes that can get there through different means and it can create leverage,
uh, simply just by just being big and by being jacked. Somebody like Stan the Rhino
Efferding, you know, who's competed at 275 pounds, probably had like 22 inch arms. So he was able to
make up a lot of ground just by having large muscles, which gave him a lot of the support
that he needed. But he certainly didn't do any of that.
He didn't break any of those world records on a, on a low carb or no carb diet.
Do you think that you would have been able to perform at the level you're able to perform at when you were a Highland games athlete doing the current diet that you're on?
You know, I, I would only have to speculate.
I think, you know, based on what I'm seeing in the gym right now,
I'm pretty close,
you know?
So I think I would probably be,
you know,
right around,
cause I did that,
you know,
my last year Highland games,
I was pretty,
I was pretty lean.
I dropped down from two 80 to two 30.
I was throwing pretty close to the same distances.
And so,
you know,
again,
there's,
you know,
there is something to do with,
you know,
strongman being big as you can possibly be and stuff like that.
And certainly powerlifting, if you're going to be six, five and you're going to squat.
I guess the real question is, is there a reason to, you know, so like, uh, you know, what,
what would the, what would the reason for it being like, uh, if, if I can bench press
400 pounds and I, and I'm on a diet, a mixed diet of some meat and some carbohydrates and
I'm, and I'm not unhealthy, is there any reason for me to change over to a diet like this
or should I just keep going on the path that's already working?
Well, I think it's individual.
I mean, I think you can try it and see how it does
because a lot of people are noticing recovery and strength
going up pretty significantly on this stuff.
Now, again, if you're healthy, and again, you have to figure out
how do I know if I'm healthy or not.
Young guys, it's hard to tell because they don't really have much going on.
They've got this physiologic reserve.
And so they may not need to.
You know, there's people out here that are testing if they're younger and we're going to see.
And I don't know the answer yet.
No, I don't know.
It may take a few years to find that stuff out.
But, you know, certainly, like I said, if you think about is there a reason for it, maybe career longevity.
You know, if you want to be a flash in the pan, compete for a year or two, do whatever, you know, max out your total and then walk away.
Right, right.
That's fine.
But I mean, if you say, I want to, this is something I enjoy.
I might want to do it for 10, 20, 30 years or whatever, any kind of sport, then there may be some advantage to that.
Right.
And it makes sense to me, like even when I was competing, even when I was at my heaviest, I did always try to have, I did always try to carry the most amount of muscle that I could. I also tried to,
after most competitions, there was a point where I got kind of too addicted to some of the yummy
foods I was eating to where it was too hard. But I tried to, after every competition I ever did,
I tried to lose about 20 pounds just in recognition of, hey, like, you know, it's not that healthy to do this.
Uh, and then also, you know, when your health is compromised, your strength will be compromised.
Now, a lot of people had tons of questions about the blood work and they wanted to know
people kept asking me about my blood work.
People kept asking you about your blood work.
What were some of the things that you saw with, uh, with your blood work?
Yeah.
So I, in fact, if you want a comprehensive listen with, I just did a podcast with Rob
Wolf, came out today, in fact, so that's up there.
But I mean, for me, you know, so some of the things that people talk about, about meat,
you know, they say it's highly inflammatory.
So when I got my inflammatory markers, my C-reactive protein, they were close to zero,
bottomed out.
So I didn't have any inflammation.
The other thing people saw was that it can cause kidney damage.
Well, I looked at my kidney.
My renal numbers were all normal.
No problems with my kidneys.
The other thing people say is it's damaging to your liver.
Well, my liver enzymes were all normal.
What about your cholesterol?
Yeah, so my cholesterol.
So my cholesterol was, my total cholesterol was kind of just barely mildly elevated in one second.
I did it.
I repeated it a couple times.
One, it was completely normal.
My total cholesterol was 190. And then one cholesterol, one, it was 204.
So it's kind of at the top end of normal. My LDL was a little high. It was around 140. Some people say 130. Some people like it below 100. But those things are things that don't really associate well
with disease. Some other markers like HDL and triglyceride ratio was very good. My HDL was-
Triglycerides are a little bit more of a marker of heart disease, perhaps.
Yeah, and insulin resistance.
So my triglyceride was really low.
It was like 50s.
My HDL was in the 40s, and that's kind of low on the low side, but it's still considered normal.
But my HDL had always been really, really low, like in the 20s and 30s.
And so it actually went up.
So those things improved.
So my overall cholesterol package looks better.
And so it actually went up.
So those things improve.
So my overall cholesterol package looks better.
And I got some advanced studies and we looked at some other things like particle size.
And we know that the big particles, if your low density lipoproteins are big and fluffy,
they tend to be less prone to causing cardiovascular disease.
And that's how mine were.
They were big and fluffy.
There's something called lipoprotein A, which is another independent marker.
It's a great word, fluffy. I just realized it. That's an awesome word. You want to describe your girlfriend or yourself.
I got a little fluffy.
Maybe your cat or something like that. But yeah, my lipoprotein A was bottomed out next to nothing.
And so that was, I thought, some interesting stuff. You know, the rest of my calcium, all my
markers of electrolytes were all normal.
And some of the interesting things I saw was my testosterone was actually pretty low,
which is some people are freaking out about. And it's one of the things I've seen on this.
You have been looking a little girly, Doc.
I am. I know. I'll see how I do in the gym today. But some people will say,
you know, that meat and cholesterol will raise your testosterone. I think that does occur. And
I've seen a lot of people's labs that have shown me this, and their testosterone will go up to 300 points,
which is pretty cool.
I think chronically what happens,
and we see that with our insulin receptor,
with the thyroid receptor,
with some of the other receptors,
and even the androgen receptor,
is you get more sensitive to the hormones.
So your body has to produce less
to get the same effect
because despite Mark calling me girly,
I'm still a pretty strong guy for a 50-year-old.
And everything works from a male perspective very well, in fact.
But so my testosterone is adequate for what I need it to be.
It's sufficient.
And like I said, I don't need to crank out more testosterone or more thyroid or more insulin if my sensitivity is really high.
So that's something that people have to get their heads wrapped around because you've got to understand the physiology.
Yeah.
I talked to Dr. Finney a while back.
He was kind of telling me the same thing.
He's like, you know, people may notice that their thyroid levels may decrease, but your body will look around and say, hey, you know, you've been doing a good job losing weight.
We don't need to produce as much.
And not that thyroid only helps you lose weight.
It helps you with a lot of other things.
But because you don't need it as much, the body's pretty smart, pretty intelligent and says, Hey, we don't need to produce a ton of
that. Yeah. The nice thing about that is it's, it's kind of, I'm a pretty extreme example.
Cause as a 50 year old guy, most people can't do what I do strength wise, conditioning wise.
And so for me to have low testosterone and still be able to do that shows you that the physiology
is more complex and nuanced than we think it is. It's not just, what is your testosterone level? And if it's not here, you're going to shrivel up and die
because that's not what's happening with me. So I think it's an interesting discussion.
The other thing that I thought was really interesting is I am extremely, extremely
insulin sensitive, right? So my insulin sensitivity was extremely high based on everything we
calculate because my fasting insulin is really, really low's ways you calculate there's something called a homa ir score and there's another
there's a couple other ones out there there's three or four that you do and all of them show
me to be extremely insulin sensitive but despite that my fasting blood glucose is actually fairly
high and i think what's happening there some of that's really interesting we're seeing well we're
seeing other athletes i've seen this with other athletes is what happens is your your body will make the glucose you need and
because i'm asking a lot i'm doing all this highly glycolytic work and carrying on carrying quite a
bit of muscle mass that my glucose is being shunted in a blood it's it's it's you know
it's what i require and so the interesting thing to further ferret this out would be to maybe
look at where it's being deposited because my my thought here is that it's maintaining enough in the glucose, in the blood, so that when I call on it
to exercise, and we see that with athletes. Sometimes when athletes, even when they think
about exercising, their blood glucose will go up. Athletes, when they wake up in the morning,
their blood glucose go up. So just because I'm pushing so hard in the gym, my blood glucose has
to be what the demands are asking of it. And so the other thing is because I'm fat adapted from not eating carbohydrates, I'm probably getting the best of both worlds.
And this may be one of the reasons why I can do these highly glycolytic things and break world records on the rowing machines, which traditionally I consider glycolytic sports, despite the fact that I'm taking basically no carbohydrates.
So I think it's very different to what diabetic pathophysiology is.
Because you go to a regular doctor and he sees a fasting blood glucose over a hundred,
they're going to say, well, maybe you're pre-diabetic. But if you look at the insulin
and you see why you're really, really insulin sensitive, then you have to, again, it's nuanced
physiology and you have to understand the physiology. And many people don't. And that's
an interesting thing. So this should bring up some interesting discussion in the world of
people that do this stuff.
And blood work also, too, is just a snapshot, right?
Like I got three different blood results there from spanning how long?
Almost a year or something like that or eight months or so.
And, you know, it's weird because my first test was pretty bad.
My second one was pretty good once I started going keto and once I started dropping quite a bit of weight.
And then the third one, some of the markers of inflammation and stuff were a little higher.
But there are some things that happened along the way with that last testing.
I did tear a bicep.
I did tear a calf muscle.
And I also worked out really hard before I got that blood work done.
So it could be part of the reason why some of the C-reactive protein is higher.
Yeah, I mean, your labs are very similar to mine.
In a lot of ways, you're extremely insulin sensitive.
Your fasting insulin glucose is 85.
I think your insulin was around 2.
So extremely insulin sensitive.
What does that mean? The glucose is 85. I think your insulin was around two. So extremely insulin sensitive. So those are all-
What does that mean?
So it just means that your body,
when we talk about diabetes,
we talk about insulin resistance.
So what happens is your body's ability
to interact with insulin is compromised.
So your body has to put up more and more
and more and more and more insulin.
And so that has a negative effect
on the body long-term.
And so what happens is initially
when diabetes occurs,
your insulin levels go up, up, up, up, up
to keep the blood glucose levels low.
And then eventually it can't keep up anymore.
And your pancreas is running so hot
to produce all this insulin
that eventually it kind of burns out.
And then the glucose starts to rise over a period of time.
So you're very insulin sensitive.
So that means you're at very low risk for diabetes,
which is good,
which also means you're at very low risk for heart disease.
So those things are very good. You know, your C-reactive protein was up for the
same reasons you talked about. You know, you can change your C-reactive. It's considered an acute
phase reactant. So very acute things can change it dramatically. Getting an illness, having an
injury, a hard training session can bump that. So again, even your cholesterol numbers can change
dramatically over a period of just a few days.
There's an interesting guy named Dave Feldman who showed that he can change his cholesterol numbers 100 points in a week, which is just amazing.
I mean, that changes everything.
You know, the rest of your labs, you know, are all pretty unremarkable, quite honestly.
I mean, you think, you know, I know that Stan looked at these, Stan Efterding looked at these, and he commented on your thyroid a little bit. And I think the main thing with that, yeah, your insulin was flagged as low, which is a good thing.
Mine was 2.6 and yours is 2.5.
So you beat me on insulin, which is a good job.
But he commented on your iodine being a little low.
And I think one of those things is that there's another thing, as we know, what Steve Finney said.
You probably use less thyroid hormone. You need less thyroid hormone, so you don't need quite as much iodine.
So that's why that's occurring.
Well, all these numbers are all of what we know is so skewed because a lot of times it's
tested in people that are unhealthy.
When it comes to even supplementation, some may say like, oh, you need, you know, tons
of vitamin C or tons of like, you know, there was a big craze about vitamin D. Everybody got all fired up and excited about vitamin D. And then just like with anything else, it's like, oh, pump the brakes. We don't really know. We're not really sure. Gut microbi think, you know, what, what are some things that we can agree on that, that we can eat?
That's where things start to get a little confusing sometimes because one
person will say, this is healthy.
Another person will say it's not healthy.
And then a lot of people just put their arms up and they're like, I'm out.
Yeah. The problem is, you know,
we get all this sort of little snippets of data. You know,
we learn a little bit about vitamin D and all of a sudden everybody's got to
be supplementing vitamin D, their gills.
And then we find out what I didn't really work with the shit. So, you know,
so we get all these things where we do it and now it's a microbiome and next year it's going to be
something different. So we have all these little bits of information and people go crazy and they
make these big proclamations and supplements are developed and people take this stuff and it
doesn't really make much difference. And so what I think we can agree on, you know, again, these
lab tests, many of the reference values were determined on, you know, again, these lab tests, many of the reference values were determined on,
you know, unhealthy populations eating a bunch of carbohydrate, arguably, you know, we don't know
low carb populations are completely different metabolism, probably have different requirements,
uh, you know, and different lab values. So we have to evolve to understand that. But,
you know, the thing is that I forget.
What are some of the things we should be looking out for?
You know, like when you're doing a carnivorous diet or if somebody's trying a low-carb diet, like, you know, what's something that we do need to pay attention to?
Is there a supplement that we may need?
Is there something that we should be really watching?
I think some people will find, you know, particularly electrolytes may be helpful because some people, their electrolytes will shift quite a bit.
We see that on any kind of low carb diet.
I'll just warn everybody right now.
If you're doing a keto diet and been doing it for a while, you really do need to pay attention to what he just said.
You need to pay attention to your electrolytes.
But if you're going to eat carbohydrates, if for some reason you're coming off the rails and you're going to eat carbohydrates,
then you really have to pay attention because the cramps that you can get from that can be fucking vicious because the carbohydrates are going
to take in, they're going to require some water as well.
And it can kind of further in some weird way, dehydrate your body.
I don't know if I'm saying all this correct, but all I know is you can get some really
crazy cramps that way.
So be on the lookout.
I've been trying to figure out why I'm cramping up so bad.
It's because I had, I had a, I had a big bucket of fries the other day.
Yeah, I'm dying over here.
Vegetable oil.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, anytime you're playing with your electrolytes shifting,
either going low carb or reintroducing carbs,
there's going to be swings in fluids and electrolytes.
And so that may result in cramping.
It may result in digestive type changes.
There's a whole bunch of things in electrolytes.
You know,
cardiac function a little bit.
Some people have palpitations.
So there's a lot of things,
you know,
brain function,
all those things depend upon electrolytes
and so those things can happen.
You know,
some people will argue
that vitamin D
may be beneficial to people
that live in colder areas
where they don't get much sunlight.
I think that's controversial.
I think there's some people
out there that say
that that may or may not be necessary. Your body's going to adapt to whatever
it's thrown at it. Well, the bottom line is, and this is a bottom line, can you look at any of
these numbers and you look at a lab sheet, but what you really have to do is look at the person.
And I think that's the biggest message I want to get out here. If you're leaner, if you're stronger,
if you're getting stronger, if your, you know, your pecker works, if, you know, if your, you know, if your joints stop hurting, if your digestion is great, your skin is getting better, your mood is getting better, your labs have such a small change on that.
Because even if we look at associational studies, we know the people that are leaner, that have small waist-to-height ratios, are going to have less chance to get cancer, less chance to get diabetes and heart disease.
So all these markers, they're not controversial at all.
People know if you've got a big beer belly, you're at risk for dementia,
you're at risk for cardiovascular disease, you're at risk for—
Your dick might not work as well.
Exactly.
I mean, that goes up to cardiovascular status.
So all those things are not controversial.
What is controversial is how we interpret these
lab values and in what context we interpret them in. So a lot of people get hung up and they say,
I got to see what's going on under the hood by looking at my lab values. Well, I'm telling you
that your lab values are really sometimes difficult to interpret for a lot of people.
And there's a lot of-
You learned much from yours, did you?
Was there anything that surprised you?
Not really. I mean, I understood why that happened.
I mean, I was kind of thought, you know, because most, I was a little bit interested to see that my testosterone was low, but it didn't bother me because I went on a show, a podcast.
It's kind of a weird thing with testosterone because you think, you know, a guy with like a deep voice or big muscles or a beard or whatever, like you kind of associate these things and none of that necessarily means anything.
Well, I mean, testosterone has a, you need testosterone for that.
The question is how much and how sensitive are you to it?
And what's your blood going to show at that moment?
It's going to show you how much testosterone is in your blood at that moment.
But the more important aspect is what is receptor hormone reaction,
you know, interaction.
And if that's happening sufficiently,
then you may have big muscles and strong in a deep place,
despite having, you know, not a super high level of testosterone. in a deep place, uh, despite having,
you know, not a super high level of testosterone.
So it's kind of, uh, uh, you know, it's not.
Your muscles receptors have, uh, combined with a periwinkle.
Is that what happened?
Now, you know, one thing that's, uh, that's also lost in a lot of this, when we talk about
nutrition is people want to look at, you know, right away, they want to throw their arms up and say you need to get blood work need to get
blood work uh well no one ever gets blood work done under normal circumstances like just regular
people they never get it done who roll through in and out burger all day long but one thing that's
uh no offense andrew sorry none taken um one thing that's lost in all this, and I think I've gotten lost in this myself before, when you're trying to be healthier.
And in a lot of cases, when we're trying to lose weight, sometimes we get too into losing weight and we end up hurting our performance when it comes to training.
And I think that training is still a very big part of the picture.
comes to training. And I think that training is still a very big part of the picture. And if you can't perform in a gym and if your performance in your training sessions is suffering, then all of
your, all of the things that you're going for are going to suffer somewhat. Yeah. I mean, the point
about, you know, being obsessed with body composition, because there's a point, you know,
you can talk to any competitive body, but when they get down to competition, body weight, you
know, body fat, they don't feel very good. It's not a healthy place to be.
You know, walking around at 4% or 5% body fat for any length of time, you know, is going to suck.
I mean, you just can't maintain it.
So if you're at a healthy body weight, and we can argue based on the sport, you know, say we're 10%, 12% for most guys, 8%, 9%, 10%, 12%.
Yeah.
Most guys can sustain that, and that's a pretty healthy position to be in.
Yeah. Most guys can sustain that. And that's a pretty healthy position to be in. But people that start to really try to, you know, if for a contest, great. If that's your sport, that's great. But don't pretend that's where you got to be all the time to be healthy. Most people have done this more than once. We'll know that, you know, it's just pretty, you know, pretty self-evident. But yeah, I mean, it's, you know, how do I determine if I'm healthy? How do I determine how long I'm going to live?
You don't know.
I mean, I could walk out tomorrow and get hit by a bus.
The vegans would blame it on meat, of course.
But, you know, you don't really know.
It's that ribeye I told you.
Yeah, the ribeye made you dizzy and you fell in front of the bus is what happened.
But, you know, the best thing you can do, in my view, is get as healthy as you think you can be.
Get as strong, as lean lean within a reasonable amount. Fix your joint pain, fix your skin, fix your digestion, fix your mental health,
because mental health is a huge part of this equation for diet. Diet plays a huge role in
mental health. And if all those things are as good as they can be, just maintain that as long
as possible. Do what you're doing to maintain that. Make changes as you need to adjust to those
things. And not only are you going to likely live longer, but you're going to enjoy life a lot more.
And I think that's the important message.
Guys, we captured Sean lifting here last time at Super Training.
We're going to capture more of that today.
He lifts in a very explosive manner.
Damn, put those guns away.
He lifts in a very explosive manner.
And last time he was here, he mentioned something to me
that I thought was pretty cool.
You felt that speed is important.
It's important for people to do explosive movements.
You mentioned even just sprinting
and you felt that that's important.
Why do you feel it's important?
Well, I hate keeping using animal analogy,
but I think they make sense to people in a very simple way.
You know, if we look at an animal in a wild, the animals in the wild that are going to get picked off and killed are the slow, weaker animals that can't move.
So I think as human beings, you know, we went through this jogging craze in the 1960s, 70s.
Everybody was, you know, they were skinny, fat people jogging, right?
They were slow joggers. So now- Come on, guys. Let's stop jogging craze in the 1960s, 70s, everybody was, you know, they were skinny, fat people jogging, right? They were slow joggers. So now- Come on guys, let's stop jogging around.
Well, for the last, you know, 10, 20 years, we've started to appreciate, you know, strength training,
right? So people are getting stronger, they're getting to gym, you know, the old grandmas are in there doing some deadlifts finally, which is great. But I think ultimately you also have to
put that strength into a functional thing that you can do.
And so I call this the a hundred meter test, you know, and I like this analogy because I think as
a male, you know, I'd say, let's just arbitrarily say, if you can't run a hundred meters in 15
seconds, right, then the lion's going to eat you. He's going to eat the guy that, you know,
if you run it in 15 seconds, the guy that runs it in 16 seconds.
We're not doing that test today, are we?
Well, we don't do that today.
Okay, good.
I got to stretch out.
You got a banged up calf.
But honestly, what keeps you, what keeps your capacity to do that?
One is, you know, if you're overweight, you're going to have a hard time running 100 meters in 15 seconds.
I use that number just arbitrarily, but the world record for 100 meters for 85-year-old man is 15 seconds.
So I'm like, you know,
if I can't beat an 85 year old man, maybe I deserve to get eaten by the lion. But again,
this is analogy for just health in general. Um, but so, you know, if you're overweight,
you're not gonna be able to do it. So what's going to fix you being overweight diet for sure.
You know, training will impact, but diet definitely, if your joints are sore and achy
and you can't do anything, you can't train because of that. What's going to impact that
in many cases, diet.
So I think diet impacts joint health as well.
And then it goes, then it goes into strength.
You know, the world, the world's best sprinters are strong son of a bitches.
Very strong.
They're very strong guys.
So you have to have enough strength to propel your body down the track at a certain speed.
And the final thing is training explosively because you gotta, you know, you gotta be
able to put that into motion.
And so it's also just fun.
What is it? I mean, racing against sprints,
as long as you'll pull hamstring or something like that. Yeah.
As you get older, if you haven't done it a long time, uh, I would suggest,
you know, for some people that are just starting out,
maybe try a machine first try to do a sprint on a bike or something like that.
You can do it on that, that synergy bike. Yeah.
But you're not likely to get hurt on that.
I think those are excellent tools to move.
You could perhaps, uh, run hills because you're going to move slower.
And so therefore, it's probably a little less impact.
You can push a sled or push a truck or something like that.
And you try to sprint into that, you're going to move a lot slower, so less likely to get hurt.
Yeah, I mean, there's lots of ways.
We can talk about ways to incorporate that stuff.
But I think that's a very vital component of just, you know, not necessarily goals for sports performance,
but just for general health.
And I think there's a lot of applications of sports, you know,
you know, like Matt Vincent's having a bit of a background in throwing,
you learn to appreciate how to move and accelerate things.
And I think that carries over to health.
And it's something that.
That's something that you do as well.
You throw too, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I don't, I'm not throwing now actively, but I did.
But you take like med balls and throw them in.
Yeah, I love throwing those things.
I mean, medicine balls.
Swinging kettlebells. My goal on a medicine ball is to break the damn thing. Right. take like med balls and throw them in. Yeah, I love throwing those things. I mean, medicine balls. Swinging kettlebells.
My goal on a medicine ball is to break the damn thing.
Right.
That's what I think they're for.
You're trying to throw it as high as you can or trying to slam as hard as you can or both.
As high as you possibly can.
It's not a, I don't use them as conditioning tools because there's, you know, that bike's
a better conditioning tool.
You sit there and throw med balls until you get tired.
It's not very much, you're kind of wasting your time.
Use a med ball like you hate it.
Right.
Like you want to break the damn thing.
And you just do a couple reps,
and that's how I incorporate that stuff into my training.
But that's a good way to do the upper body explosive.
You can jump.
You can do jumps for your lower body.
You can do different types of plyometric stuff,
box jumps and depth jumps and different sprints
and change of direction stuff.
And if you're not as comfortable with some of those things,
you can try some boxing
because you can get your upper body.
You start learning.
It's going to take a little while to learn how to throw some punches.
But move your hands around a little bit.
Throw some lefts and some rights and do that for 30 seconds and tell me how your wind is at that point.
Yeah, I boxed in college for a little bit.
It's a little more fun.
I mean, it can bother your joints and stuff too.
But I think just about anybody can do it.
Yeah, get a heavy bag, you know, that's fun. Yeah. That's, that's, you know,
that's another component to training. And I think,
I think we'll see an evolution towards that. I think, you know, even, uh,
a little bit with the CrossFit influencers doing a lot with the Olympic
lifting, cause it's kind of explosive.
The problem with Olympic lifting is it's not that they're bad lifts,
but they're very technical and, you know, you know,
it takes you a long time to learn that skill and you're not, you know, it takes you a long time to learn that skill.
And you're not, you know, it takes you a long time to really get the benefit out of that.
And then there's a higher potential for injury, you know, kind of catching a snatch or clean and jerk over, you know,
racking and clean and jerks for some people beats them up.
So that's why I like these medicine ball things or, you know, high pulls and stuff like that,
just because I can get most of what I want to get out of this exercise with minimal risk for injury. And the skill levels, throwing a medicine ball as high as you can from the ground is not a skillful activity.
There's things you can do to make it better, but it doesn't take a great deal of, you know, just.
Again, it's fun.
Yeah, it's fun.
Get a training partner with you.
Have a contest.
Yeah, and try it out.
And it'll be frustrating.
You'll be like, oh, I can't because it's not just strength.
There's other elements
that are involved there.
You have to learn how to transfer that strength.
You'll be pissed.
You'll be like,
why is this guy kicking my ass on this?
Sometimes people are going to catch you
on some of these different movements.
Yeah, sure.
Absolutely.
Like I said,
that's one of the things
I've come to appreciate with throwers
because when I started to learn how to shot,
but I was like,
well, you just take this big stone and you push it, right?
There is so much technical skill that goes into that.
Oh, and a shot put?
It's amazing.
It's crazy.
It's insane.
It was awesome having you on the show today.
Where can people find you?
What do you got going on?
You can find me on Instagram, Sean, S-H-A-W-N, Baker, B-A-K-E-R, 1967.
I see lots of meat on there.
Lots of meat, lots of pictures.
I kind of poke fun at vegans a little bit.
Some people get mad at me for that.
You know what I love?
I love the images, like the memes that your fans are making.
Yeah, it's almost like what Rogan's guys are doing, but they're horrible.
I mean, they're horrible Photoshop.
Oh, it's great.
It's great.
But the worse they are, the better.
So I put a few of those out there.
I got a bunch in the holding tank.
And then Twitter, SbakerMD.
Yeah, look at that.
This one's my favorite one right here.
I like the ACDC one somebody did because I liked ACDC.
But I asked this girl I met with yesterday.
She goes, who's ACDC?
I'm like, are you kidding?
Oh, no.
Isn't that sad?
People younger than us don't even know who ACDC is.
Give us a little rundown on some of the weight loss stories that you've heard.
How much weight have people been kind of dropping
through some of this?
The biggest guy I've seen
lost 220 pounds.
Wow.
That's the biggest drop
that I've gotten.
Through doing the carnivore diet.
Yeah,
I've seen people lose
about 130,
40 pounds
in about six months.
This gal's lost
about 30 pounds
in 60 days.
Have you had anybody,
you know,
say,
hey man,
I,
you know,
ended up in the hospital
because I ate too much meat
or anything weird,
anything crazy happened?
Not,
no,
not that I can remember. Not that I've seen. Anybody get a piece of weird, anything crazy happened? No, not that I can remember.
Anybody get a piece of steak lodged in there?
No, not, but I almost, we almost had our first death when I was in Iceland.
This guy, Ivor Alstreder brought me to Iceland.
We were out eating steak in a restaurant and he was talking and he swallowed a big piece of steak and he started choking, literally choking, like real choking.
And I had to get up and just whack the hell out of him in his back because I couldn't, I couldn't do a Heimlich.
I just whacked, I reached over and whacked him in the back but i said you saved a piece of meat i
hope he got it yeah i think he re-ate it okay good so it was regurgitated a little pre-chew
so who's that who's a movie star that does that there's some women that do that uh yeah i think
yeah yeah yeah you're right you're right like somebody crazy like angelina jolie or somebody
like that was chewing it up for the kids so the kids didn't have to chew it. Oh, my God. That was funny.
Yeah, but that's it.
Meatheals.com.
Go check out some stories on there because there's some really inspiring stories of people doing this.
You might have my cousin on there, right?
He's got to write up some stuff for you.
Yeah, Steve said he's got to get down.
I think he's about five pounds away because I think he'll have dropped 50 pounds.
Wow.
And that's since mid-January.
So we're only, what, early March now, right? You know, and people that are listening to the show, my cousin is just such a typical story of somebody that he played football in high school, always loved sports.
He loves his kids.
He's a really, really good father.
He's there for them all the time.
He plays sports with them.
He's their coach.
I mean, he's.
His daughter's like a beast football player.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I see her like knock some guy in his ass.
Oh my God. Yeah. It's been really, really fun watching her kick the crap out of people. And
his son plays lacrosse and sports are a big part of our family just in general. And my cousin just
kind of lost, he lost track of a lot of that. He was somebody that was, you know, putting in a lot of work hours for his family.
He was trying to make money for his family and trying to keep everybody safe, keep everybody secure, keep everybody happy.
And he just lost sight of himself.
He wasn't paying attention to himself.
And he had problems with his food.
He had problems with his sleep.
You know, this and that.
And ended up on a lot of medications.
Ended up very, very overweight. And he came out here to sleep. He had, you know, this and that and ended up on a lot of medications, ended up very,
very overweight. And he came out here to California about a year or two ago and I got him on a diet.
He lost some weight. Then he kind of regained it because he got, he, he fell, you know, he fell
off a little bit, came back out. Dr. Baker was here last time he visited and they had breakfast
together and he was bought in. He was like, I'm going to, you know, I need to make a change. I
need to do it. And sure enough, here he is now, you know, almost 50 pounds later, just a few
months removed. And there's no magic going on. My cousin doesn't use steroids. He's not on
thyroid medication. There's nothing like that going on. He literally doesn't use steroids. He's not on thyroid medication. There's nothing,
uh, nothing like that going on. He, he literally just has eaten meat. Uh, he found kind of his own
way of doing it. Sometimes, uh, he'll do, uh, he goes to like the local deli and gets a roast beef
here and there and does that. Um, you know, whatever way you got to get it done, figure out,
figure out a way to get it done. But the bottom line is that when you lose weight, in most cases, you're going to be healthier.
And that's what we're seeing a lot
from this carnivore diet.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think, and again, among the other health benefits,
but it's been really cool,
because he texts me every once in a while,
like, hey, doc, I lost.
And his dietician's freaking out
because he doesn't understand it
because it doesn't compute with her formula.
Wait a minute, you're eating meat and losing weight.
You're supposed to get sick and fat,
and that's not happening.
Liver enzymes are coming down and all these neat things that I'm seeing all the time with
other people.
He's been unhealthy for a long time.
So this is really remarkable to see such a huge change.
I'm really, I'm really happy for him.
It's really cool.
Yeah.
I think Chris, your brother's doing it too.
And he's, he's doing good too.
He's gotten leaner.
I see he's putting up his guns every once in a while.
Yeah.
So that's neat too.
I know he had a lot of issues with arthritis.
Hopefully that's helping him out too. Anyone who's listening to
this podcast, I urge you just to just try it. Try it for, just try it for three days. Try to eat
just red meat for three days. Give it a shot. You'll be, you'll be totally and completely shocked.
I guarantee if you're somebody that's already lifting and you're somebody that's,
that's into training, you will notice that you will get leaner just in those three days. Really hard to
do. I've actually only done it one day where that's all I ate was meat. I didn't have any
eggs or bacon or anything else. But if you could do it for three days, I guarantee you're going to
notice a big difference. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Thank
you guys for tuning into the live feed. We're going to do
all these from now on as
live as we can make them. Catch you guys
later. All right. Nice.
Thank you so much. Hey man, that was fun.
That was great.