Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 38 - Stan Efferding

Episode Date: April 18, 2018

Stan "The Rhino" Efferding, the strongest body builder in the world, inventor of The Kooler and founder of The "Vertical Diet". Re-Watch the Live Stream here: https://youtu.be/tN_fAR2ayEA ➢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/user-921692324 ➢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 Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

I know. You don't talk about anything cool. You don't talk about lifting anymore. Lifting's so boring. Really? Squatting 900 pounds? Yeah, it doesn't happen anymore. All right, I'm going to get the stream going. That's all people want to see. People want to see you squat 900 pounds. They want to see you talking about some stupid diet. Well, I've got to step up my game now that you've actually done your first squat I've ever seen you do.

Yeah, to depth. Yeah, that's beautiful. You gave me an internet white light. Yeah. It's waiting for those hips to give out. It's the nicest thing you ever gave to depth. Yeah, that's beautiful. You gave me an internet white light. Yeah. It's the nicest. It's for your hips to give out. It's the nicest thing you ever gave to me. Yeah, no, my hips almost did give out.

They almost exploded. So we're going to get into like the vertical diet. We're going to get into all this stuff. But I think we should take people back. Had you on the podcast a million times. We've done this before. But I think that we should kind of explain how some of this got started. And I'll kind of start and then we'll kick it over to you. This has been one of the most powerful bromances I've ever been involved in and perhaps the strongest, most powerful bromance in the history of fitness. Strictly plutonic. Mm-hmm.

And gay. Mm-hmm. But basically what happened is I saw Stan compete in Sacramento at a meet via YouTube. Love it for Stan. in Sacramento at a meet via YouTube. And, uh, I think I was like out of town or something that week or something happened where I couldn't, uh, get over that competition. Normally I would go to those competitions cause they were just down the street from where my gym was at. Um, Stan did like a 20, 50 total and he was yelling and screaming the whole time on his squats and his benches and his deadlifts.

And, uh, he was lifting some big-ass weight, and I was amazed. I was like, holy shit, who is this guy? For some reason, I thought he was German because of, like, the bald head and the goatee and then, like, the weird yells that he was doing. I thought maybe he was foreign for some reason, and he wasn't. Sort of. Maybe the Eferding or something. Eferding. Yeah, yeah, right. Sort of. Maybe the Efferding or something. Efferding.

Yeah, yeah, right. One F. Right. Yeah, I couldn't figure it out anyway. I think I might have messaged you on like YouTube, if that's even possible. You did. You sent me a dick pic.

See, there we go. I sent him a message and talked to him about Super Training Gym and he was like, I'm aware of Super Training Gym and I'd love to come check it out. And he talked about, uh, being in the San Jose area for some bodybuilding stuff. And, uh, we just started kind of chatting from there and that's, that's how things got started. And then, then what happened? That was a hell of a summer. Cause I packed my bags, you know, I was living up there and, uh,

opulence and my $2 million mansion overlooking the lake with my Rolls Royce. Been there before. The place was amazing. Yeah, I decided. Jet skis and shit like that. I said, you know, this is boring. I need to go do something to spice up my life. So I grabbed two bags and hopped on a plane and ended up in an extended stay in San Jose training with Flex.

Sounds like a typical rich guy story. Yeah, living out of bags with a little kitchenette. To follow a dream to become a pro bodybuilder. Exactly. And right after that happened, I packed my bags and I just drove up to Sac and stayed there. So I hadn't been home in like four months or five months by the time I was done training

with Flex and you. And I would get emails and pictures on my phone every weekend of my friends using my c-doos and my boat out on the lake and telling me it was broken and i needed to send it and get it fixed uh but i hadn't been home in months and it was uh i went through your closet and tried on all your clothes and stuff i was trying out your watches and stuff yeah that was a lot of fun for me i was broke at the time so i felt like i was rich it was great you know it was an awesome journey and so many things happen so fast that it's hard to even remember.

Uh, and people remind me, I'm like, Oh yeah, that's right. At that time. Yeah. So it's been exciting and it just, it just keeps going. I mean, this has been just one of the most incredible journeys, uh, watching what you've done, how the industry has expanded. All the new people with social media and an interest in the business has come to light. It's exciting. I can't even keep up with it now. It's weird because you and I were just trying to lift as much as we possibly could using any and all measures possible.

Some of those measures, not the smartest moves we've ever made. And, uh, that was the mission. That's what people were attracted to at the time. But now we've kind of shifted into talking about like 10 minute walks, the vertical diet, the Warren carbs, and you and I are kind of like leading a different charge in a different way now. Yeah. A little bit. It's a little bit of both because I I've learned so much. If I knew then what I know now, I've learned so much over this 30 plus year journey. I used to sit up at nights until they kicked me out of the science library at midnight, scrolling through microfiche just to see studies. Microfiche. Yeah, that wasn't around.

Look that up, kids. I was trying to get exposed to and learn as much as I could to optimize performance and anything and everything that I could discover, which eventually became working with great people, traveling around and training with great people. You and, of course, Flex and Eddie Cohn and a whole host of other folks. And then more recently with the Internet, seeing the amazing amount of great information that's out there from people that are just brilliant. I'm talking Mensa-level IQs that have committed their lives to this sport. And all of their research and study, in addition to their participation in the sport, makes it a lot more valid as far as I'm concerned. Because they are applying what they're learning and seeing what works and what doesn't. and seeing what works and what doesn't. So now I'm in this position where I've learned so much over the years with, you know, my own pursuits of, you know, competitive fitness, as well as trying to maintain health throughout that process with the frequent blood tests and

all those other things, to where now that I'm at 50, you know, I'm addressing problems that other people are experiencing that I did in my career, both competitively and not. People just recovering from injuries or having, you know, high blood pressure or high cholesterol or high blood sugars, et cetera. Stan has talked in the past on this podcast about being competitive a lot of times is not healthy. That's right. Yeah. Because you rant, if you want to be healthy, don't compete. And what I try to do through all of the information that I put out now is try and teach some of the lessons that I learned. And I'm not trying to overcomplicate

it. I'm trying to simplify it and focus on the things that give the greatest return. It's boring to talk about sleep, but it's such an incredibly effective tool that people are sacrificing. You can't overlook it. You can't overlook it. And matter of fact, Greg Knuckles just came out with a really good meta-analysis on sleep. He's insanely smart. Yeah. You know, I've said before, if you're getting five hours of sleep and religiously taking creatine, you're a fucking idiot.

sleep and religiously taking creatine, you're a fucking idiot. And I also believe that if you're not subscribed to Greg Knuckles' Stronger by Science site, he has a mass review that he does, him and a group of PhDs, they do these meta-analyses, they study all the research and they boil it down into a very easy to understand format and weigh in on whether or not these things are effective or not. By these things, I mean a very broad range of topics from nutrition to sleep to training, et cetera. And so not subscribing to that kind of information, there's more there than you could read in a month and that you could spend months.

And I've scrolled through two years of history on his Facebook just reading the articles he recommends. And the amount of information that you could learn from that is extraordinary. So I've tried to compile. How much does it cost? I think it's $30 a month. Well worth it. And Chris Tuffin's another example of somebody who has a membership site that has an extraordinary amount of information. And these are people who are a lot smarter than me compiling, you know, just masses of amounts of data and feeding it to you. And what's frightening is that I see the same mistakes being made now that I saw 30 years ago. The horrible training programs, the horrible diets, and they're being accepted as mainstream.

The white fish and broccoli stuff, the restriction over cardio type of thing and just wrecking people's metabolisms and destroying their health. From people that are trying to get better, like we're not talking about general pop and we're not talking about people that are just maybe not caring about their diet yet. What do you think the biggest mistake is that's being made right now kind of from what you're seeing, especially after seeing a lot of blood work and making these, you kind of mentioned, you make these small tweaks and they have a really great return. So is it the fact that a lot of people are like just in a huge caloric deficit and they're not really paying attention to, you know, maybe over time their

metabolism slows down or something like that? That's so hard because there's so many mistakes being made. And there's so many different athletes pursuing so many different goals. And these lessons are specific. So generally speaking for people who are trying to lose weight, I think over restriction and over cardio, particularly if they're trying to hold onto muscle tissue, is one of the big problems. I see diets for women that says, just fill yourself with broccoli and asparagus after you're done with your little pittance of egg whites. Right. And that's a horrific way to train somebody.

There's kind of a tug of war going on right now between over-restriction and over-eating. and overeating. People are eating too much. Generally, if they're trying to gain weight, they'll eat too much food that causes digestive distress, which I talk a lot about in my program, The Vertical Diet, trying to focus on gut health first. And they'll eat things that are loaded with anti-nutrients, things such as wheat and pasta or the vegetables, the high-gas vegetables, such as broccoli and asparagus, et cetera. And you start eating these things and they start wreaking havoc on your stomach and your digestive system. That's one side. And the other side is the over-restriction, where you end up with micronutrient deficiencies. That's your egg white, tilapia, and broccoli crowd. And those folks end up with deficiencies in micronutrients. Sodium, the big one that they tend to restrict, which wreaks havoc on the body, suppresses metabolism.

And then potassium, magnesium, zinc, calcium, all those things that they aren't getting from their foods. And they think popping a multivitamin solves that problem, and it does not. And so I try and focus on, I'm trying to balance that equation between providing a variety of foods that satisfy the micronutrient requirements and keeping them confined well enough so that people don't suffer from gut dysbiosis of any, you know, digestion problems. So kind of in short, though, if you supply the body with the nutrients that it needs, the body will be very efficient. It's amazing. the nutrients that it needs, the body will be very efficient. It's amazing. Like if you get your sleep, if you're drinking your water,

if you're taking in your salt, you're doing a lot of the things you're supposed to be doing. I know you're preaching the vertical diet, but you're getting in some variety of food. You're not just. The whole vertical diet concept is built on a foundation of highly bioavailable micronutrients, all of the vitamins and minerals that are necessary. And you can't put a three-bedroom house on a two-bedroom foundation. So if you want to build anything, you need to build it on a very solid foundation. So there is a variety of nutrients in there that give you everything from, let's just say, for instance, I put fruit in there because the fructose stimulates the liver.

If you eat too much fat and too much protein, you slow your metabolism. The liver says, well, hold up, and your thyroid starts to slow down. I've said that 70% of thyroid conversion from T4 to T3 occurs in the liver, a happy liver, a healthy liver. And so what a lot of people are doing in the industry now, and it's sad, and even in the general population, is being reactionary. They're taking something to remedy that problem. If their thyroid's suppressed, they're taking thyroid. But that doesn't solve the problem. That's being reactive, not proactive. That's sick care, not health care, right? And solving that one problem doesn't necessarily, or using medication to solve that

problem doesn't necessarily address the source of the problem. Something like an iodine deficiency. There's iodine receptors in every organ in the body. And iodine is essential for the immune system. So if you aren't getting adequate iodine to stimulate the thyroid and you're just taking thyroid medication, you haven't fixed any of those problems. You haven't improved your immune system. So I try and get on the front end with everything and give the body what it needs when it needs it to do what it does best.

I don't believe that you can trick it after the fact. It's the whole concept of throwing caffeine at a body when it's tired, which only compounds the problem, makes it worse, dehydrates you. You lose salt, you lose chloride, hydrochloric acid, sodium chloride. Now you've got less stomach acids and less acidity of that acid. So you're not digesting foods as efficiently. So all of these things, I mean, they just keep going on and on and on together. And what I tried to do with the vertical diet was provide people, uh, not be so restricted from provide people with the nutrient base that would

make their body work and perform better. We saw it with Brian Shaw's diet and he, it was a hugely popular video of him eating 10,000 calories a day. But you can see in the video how painful that was, how hard that is. And I've always said the training is not, the training is the easy part. That's the fun part. Eating is the hard part. And having to eat as much as those guys have to eat, or 250, 280, 300 plus, 400 pound guy, to support that kind of mass and that kind of, uh, uh, demand from the workouts. If you have to eat that much food, it can become exhausting. And all these videos that you see

about guys eating from Jay Cutler to Ronnie Coleman to Kai Green, it's exhausting. You look at the look on their face and they're just hunched over their food and they're force feeding. Yes. Men's are sweating. Yeah. It's dying. It's terrible. And then behind the scenes with that wreaking havoc on their gut health, they're in the bathroom all day long, every day. And Brian specifically said that that was a huge problem. He just thought it was normal. Yeah. Or that you accepted that as a part of the obligation to, you know, reach your goals to succeed at that level. And Flex told me years ago, 10 years ago, he used to, or when he was competing, sometimes he would have to eat on the toilet.

And I hate to call Brian out, but that's what, that's what the podcast is for. That's right. And you put a picture of him eating pizza on the toilet. And as it turns out behind the scenes, there has been an occasion or two when, you know, at the cost of losing weight, and you need to get calories at all costs, that that becomes necessary. Hey, what it takes to be a champion is not for everybody. That's why everyone's not cut out to be the best. Thor do and help Brian Shaw do, and we did the same thing with Larry Wills when he came out, was to eliminate the sources of, you know, digestion problems, which generally is wheat or weak products, which would be the crust in pizza, which would be bread from sandwiches, which would be pasta. All of those products tend to bloat you and have a hard time digesting them

and start using white rice as the driver of carbohydrates. And then since that much food suppresses metabolism, I had to keep the liver happy, and I did that with fructose, which in the right dose is very healthy. Matter of fact, the peer study that came out recently, it was 200,000 people, tested over a 14-year period in 200 countries. It's Dr. Youssef from... Yeah, it's really important because most dietary studies are not done on a large population of people and they're usually not done for very long. Yeah, this was an extraordinary study just finished last year. He's a cardiologist and president of the World Heart Federation and he came out and

looked at all of these different measurements. And one of them was fruit intake. And fruit intake, a lot of fruit intake. The more, the better for decreasing incidence of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. He found that it was protective of heart disease. Nutritionfacts.org is, I think, a pretty popular... Just to expand upon that a little further. So fruit has, for lack of a better term, like cofactors in it that are going to actually help you digest all the things that are in the fruit. So an orange, for example, it might have sugar in it.

People like sugar is bad. Well, it has sugar. It has fructose in it. And it also has some fiber in it. And it's going to digest a very specific way. And fructose, it seems like, for now, the more fructose that you take in, the more it helps you to digest carbohydrates. Is that right? Up to a point.

The liver can handle about 75 to 100 grams of it. But you get in excess of that, your liver loves that stuff. When you eat fructose, it just sucks it right in. And children on a daily basis eat, on average, 75 grams of just fructose a day, which is wonderful. Yeah. What you get into trouble is with the high fructose corn syrup from beverages. Right. But when you're eating fruit, or as I recommend the three ounces of orange juice three or four times a day, you're talking about maybe nine ounces of orange juice, which is probably 30 grams of 36 grams of carbs. So it's not a lot, but the way

that I break it up, just like I break up the three 10-minute walks as opposed to one 30-minute walk is significantly more effective. The way that I feed the fructose to the body throughout the day is more effective at raising body temperature, improving carbohydrate absorption, improving the health of the liver, which therefore improves thyroid function. But what we've seen is that breakfast cereals have fiber too, and they have some of the additional supposed health benefits, but they don't improve health outcomes the way that fruit does. So it seems there's, even in the absence of the fiber, it seems there's some significant benefit to just fructose itself in the right dose in terms of increasing metabolism. So that's something that people have avoided. That's something I didn't eat a lot of

when I was trying to get to 300 pounds. I didn't think it was a way to get me there, but it's something that I've feed to these big athletes because it makes their liver healthy. You ate 300 pounds? It was disgusting. That is gross. One of the huge things with that is, is now you improve your appetite. And here's guys who were having a struggling to try and get down enough calories, eating the wheat and the pasta and the pizza and the bread and all that other stuff.

Now it's easy for them to eat. They're hungry all the time and they're eating fewer calories, but still gaining muscle and losing fat. Ryan Shaw did a DEXA scan last year at the Arnold. Yeah. He did one this year. It's 14 pounds of fat lost. That's incredible.

And he'd only been on the program for maybe less than 90 days. So, you know, also too, so he lost 14 pounds of body fat. I think the important thing here is that the results of nutrition may or may not be seen in a really short period of time. A year's worth of work, losing 14 pounds of fat. Now, you were actually only working with him for like six months, so that's even more incredible. That's a really good result.

But in terms of performance, I think, my opinion is that it might take a while for you to really see a jump in performance. Like when you're talking about, let's say he goes for like a max deadlift. And there's so many other factors that go into that other than just what you ate. But technically, if he's healthier on a daily basis, he's getting better sleep. It's easier for him to absorb the nutrients that he has. It's easier for him to digest all these things over a period of time. So somebody might be like, oh, well, so Drudas Savickas, he deadlifted 1100 and he

was eating Snickers bars. It's like, well, it doesn't always work out that way. But over a period of time, we are all going to have to worry about our health at one point or another. I've often said, you know, genetics reign supreme. Beside that, calories is the driver of gaining or losing weight, calorie surplus, calorie deficit. And there's a lot of athletes who have eaten a lot of things and been successful. But remember what we just discussed. Behind the scenes, what's going on? Right.

What kind of havoc are they wreaking on their system? How hard it is to maintain that kind of calorie consumption with those kinds of calories. Right. They're exhausted. They're tired all the time. And you can imagine what that's doing to their health, particularly if you get blood tests. And we know that, that Hawthorne, Brian Shaw.

When you were lifting your big weights, you were exhausted all the time. Exhausted all the time. I mean, we had times where, where we just had to like not work out. No. You came in and you were like, I'm fucking, I don't know, I'm shot.

Too tired. Yeah. And I was doing a lot at that time to try and optimize it, but I didn't, I didn't understand some of these specific benefits. Yeah, you weren't really eating bad, but definitely a little different than what you're doing now. Yeah. And one of the things behind the scenes is when I talk about how good they feel,

when Brian Shaw came to the Arnold, his wife said he can't believe how good he feels. He feels like there's something wrong because he's not tired and he feels great. And, and I'm, you know, that's, he was waiting for something bad to happen.

He was like, something terrible is going to happen because I feel so good. I've never felt like this going into a competition before. No, it's true. And, you know, I've,

I've said before, I'm no guru. This stuff isn't rocket science. I've actually tried to simplify it. I've shied away from the opposite ends of these arguments. And I tried to make it very user-friendly for them. Brian Shaw was four-time world's strongest man before I ever met him. And Hofthor was a savage Viking long before I ever started working with him. But that was a year and a half ago that I started working with him.

And he put on 70 pounds on his deadlift in a year. It's pretty hard at his level to see that kind of progress. And he enjoys the diet. He looks and feels better. You see how lean he is. You know, he squats damn near a thousand pounds and he's got a six pack. It's ridiculous. So all the other benefits.

Now you said it can take time to get results. Here's the thing. If you're running at a deficiency, a deficiency of sleep, deficiency of sodium, deficiency of iodine deficiency, uh, everybody's probably getting enough protein and way too much at that. That's not where you need to look for progress. When you make those changes, you can, I've had people contact me and say, I've been on a diet for a week or two weeks and I've had 40 pound PRS on their lifts just because they got a little more sleep. They salted their food. They put a little bit of iodine in there. They got a little fructose in there. They're feeling incredible. And they're using protein sources. And in my case, it's red

meat, uh, that I think are better than, um, uh, chicken and fish, and fish and particularly better than fast food and all of that. So I've gotten tons and tons and tons of feedback just recently since I've actually released the vertical diet to be purchased on my website. And traditionally for years, I've used that program with my clients. And I just had so many people asking for it that I, I took the same program that I emailed to Hofthor, that I emailed to Brian Shaw, to Larry wheels, to Dan green, to you, to, you know, everybody that's, that's worked with me and more. And it's not just big weight gaining power lifter people. Uh, Stephanie Sanzo, right. Uh, Steph fit mom from Australia has been using the program. I'm using it with a lot of

IFBB pro bikini. So the diet makes your ass grow is what you're saying. That's the way it works. It's vertical and horizontal, apparently. Yeah. I took that same program, and I just put it on my website and offered it for people to purchase. And I've since come out with a version 2 that's 51 pages of information, and it covers everything that we've ever talked about with lists. Even the table showers?, even the table showers. I left the table showers out. That'll be in version three, 3.0, but I made a to-do list, checklists of every single thing that, uh, things you need to do to benefit your sleep,

such as we talked about the sleep hygiene, things you need to do to decrease your blood pressure, uh, decrease your blood sugar, increase testosterone for natural athletes. I put training programs in there, hypertrophy and strength training. I've added, there's probably a hundred reference articles and videos. So anything I talk about, I back it with science as well so that people can see how it works. Yeah, you email and text me that stuff all day long. Yeah, if you ask me a question, I'm going to send you an article. I'll give you a brief answer, but I'm going to send you what I think is one of the best articles I've seen on the topic. And in that way, I want clients and people to become more educated themselves. I want them to be able to make better decisions for themselves and have a resource.

And so I put that all out there, and the response has been extraordinary. and have a resource. And so I put that all out there and the response has been extraordinary. I've had thousands of DMs and emails and from people and everybody's complaining now that I don't put any lifting videos on my Instagram. It's just, it's testimonial after testimonial. Hey, that's what Flashback Friday is for, buddy. Well, I'm doing it every day because I get so many of them, these before and after pictures or comments. And it's not just about people that are lifting bigger weights, but it's people that are improving their body composition. It's people who had health issues.

Stan still, by the way, almost on a daily basis, sends me a 900-pound squat that he did in my gym. So. Walks right over it. Yeah. Or he'll say, hey, remember the time you benched 600? He'll be like, no, that was me. Sorry. Well, in a nutshell, that's, you know, that's how it came about. And it's really important, I think, for folks to look at the whole thing. Because like Eddie Cohn says,

if you improve everything, everything improves. And so it's just little teeny things. If you can get an extra hour of sleep, if you can eat a little bit better, if you can train a little bit smarter, if you can improve your health overall, then everything, whatever your goal is, becomes more realizable. And the neat thing about it is because it's not overly restrictive, it's sustainable. It's normal foods that you would eat. Anyhow, you're avoiding a few things. You're adding a few things. And that's the most important thing because any, this isn't something that's temporary. It's a lifestyle that makes you feel great all the time. And I've said many times, it's been almost two and a half years since I've

had a cold of any significant degree. I missed one workout in the last two and a half years because I had a little head cold and decided to stay home. And the next day I went training. And that's because I followed all of these programs, the important things about the meal planning that I've been doing. And I've traveled all over the world. I just got back from Kuwait day before yesterday. And I've been... And normally when we travel for meets and stuff, everybody gets sick. Everybody gets sick. You get in contact with different people, you get exposed to different germs and you're done. You're talking to people right up close like this and they're spilling in your face

and you're trying to be nice and their breath's really bad. I've had the same experience with kids at home. My diet as well. Yeah. And I just, I feel almost invincible. I'm waiting for a cold and I'm waiting for two and a half years and it hasn't happened. And I'm not taking a single multivitamin. I've got them. I recommend in my diet as a backup, if you want to take one, take one. Great. But I'm not taking a single multivitamin. I recommend in my diet as a backup, if you want to take one, take one. Great. But I'm not taking one. I take vitamin D3, which I don't think is a vitamin. It's a hormone. It's a sterol. It's a steroid precursor. And I take a cod liver oil because I won't eat liver. It's disgusting. But there's vitamin A and vitamin D in that

to get those benefits. And cod liver oil is not really a supplement per se. It's a food. It's oil in a capsule. But as far as most of the supplements go, even the research out of Harvard showed that multivitamin supplementation did not improve lifespan or all-cause mortality. But the Harvard research scientist that conducted the study says,

I take one just for safety's sake. So whatever that may be, but I don one just for safety's sake. Right. So whatever that may be, but I don't think that's a priority. You can't use that as an excuse for not eating spinach or not eating oranges or not eating daily carrot or not having a potato or not having chicken stock. All the things that I put into my micronutrient profile are supposed to satisfy all of those needs. And the multivitamin does not do that for you. You're not really that big on vegetables, right? I'm not huge on high-gas vegetables, broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower,

things that cause a lot of gas during digestion, methane to be released. I'm not big on those. They do bind to proteins and minerals and electrolytes. They can have some adverse effects. Having some of those may not be detrimental. No, but I choose a different source. Spinach is a great, as long as you cook it, it's easy to digest and it's loaded with vitamins. It's got like potassium and stuff like that in it.

Potassium in it, it's a great magnesium source. Spinach is a fantastic source. But you have to, A, you need to cook it because if you don't, then it's harder to digest. And B, you need a fat source with it because you need something to curry the nutrients into the body. And so I'll cook mine in beef tallow and throw in maybe a little chicken stock and some salt. And it's delicious. But I'll eat that every day is the spinach. Oranges provide an enormous amount or fruits in general, enormous amount of potassium and vitamins, vitamin C, et cetera.

And, of course, I love the fructose benefit of it. Also potato, loaded with vitamins, but I don't eat too much of it because resistant starches, although they're a good prebiotic in a reasonable dose, I say everything's dose dependent. It's in my micronutrient profile, so I don't need a massive amount of it. I don't use it to fuel calories needed for the vertical access for bigger athletes. But I include it daily. I'll eat a sweet potato, just a small one, uh, to get the benefits from that, the prebiotic benefits and the, and the vitamins. Chicken stock's amazing for gut health. It's unbelievable. Uh, I get people drinking chicken stock instead of coffee and they don't need the caffeine anymore. Their energy

levels improve, their gut improves. The, uh, a lot of people suppose that the chicken stock or the beef broth, any bone boiling, helps the gut lining, which is one cell thick and can easily be permeated. Is it the collagen? Is that part of it? That's the presumption. You're also just drinking salt, which may be beneficial. That helps. I have a problem in the morning if I drink water, my stomach tends to get irritated and the acids get all active. And, and, uh, so I just drink chicken stock in the morning, like a hot tea and it tastes delicious. Uh, and here's what I think. Now, remember the further you get down into the weeds on this, now people start disagreeing.

You watch a video of one PhD, I'll tell you this, you watch another one, another PhD, they'll tell you something just the opposite. Further, you get into the weeds, uh, and then you kind of got to go back to, I just know it works, right? It works. But in this case, it appears as though the bone broth stimulates pepsin release, which is your protein digestive enzyme. That release of pepsin causes your hydrochloric acid, your stomach acids, to in volume and for the pH to go down, which increases acidity. Think battery acid gets down to about a 3.0 pH. That environment is optimal for digesting food. When people have digestive problems, the vast majority of time, it's because they don't have adequate stomach acid or an adequate pH. You put food into enough stomach acid with an acidic enough, and it will

get very well digested, and the nutrients will get drawn out of it, and it will prevent bacteria from getting into your intestines. So that's the environment you want. Here's the problem, and I found this with many, many of my athletes. They'll end up getting gastric reflux disease, GERD, which is stomach acid into the esophagus causing pain. The problem is that isn't due to too much acid. That's due to gas that's created by not having enough acid. So your foods, your carbs in particular, aren't getting digested. Right.

So they get into the intestine, they get in and they start, gas starts. The acid belongs there, but it doesn't belong in your esophagus, right? Right. It starts pushing it up. So I've had many clients who have been on antacid medications, which I think is like The acid belongs there, but it doesn't belong in your esophagus, right? Right. It starts pushing it up. So I've had many clients who have been on antacid medications, which I think is like the number seven most prescribed medicine in the country. It's horrible how many people are taking these and popping these. Like statins and stuff.

It hurts you. When you're taking an acid, it hurts your ability to digest food. So I've had to be able to get off years of prescriptions in a week because I completely changed. I don't give them wheat anymore. I take away the gassy vegetables. I gradually titrate steak into their diet because steak, any protein for that matter, animal protein, will increase. It might be hard to digest for a little while. Well, initially, and that's why it's dose dependent. You titrate it. You start with four ounces. And then over time, I've talked before about how I was able to train, quote unquote, train my metabolism is the word I put on it.

And my body was able to better utilize more of this food over time. You know, we know this with milk in terms of the lactase enzyme. If you haven't drank milk in a while and you pound down a big 16 ounce glass. Everybody's in trouble. Yeah, you're paying for it. 16 ounce glass. Everybody's in trouble. Yeah, you're paying for it.

But if you take a four ounce glass each day, over time that enzyme increases. For those people who have an ability to digest lactose, that lactase enzyme will increase and you'll be able to handle more and more. I see it all the time, people eating things that cause these kinds of problems, high broccoli, a lot of egg whites, which have abaddon in them, which is an anti-nutrient that prevents absorption of some of the protein,

but also will create a lot of gas. If anybody's ever been backstage in a bodybuilding show, you know that people are eating a lot of broccoli and egg whites, and that's not a good thing. If your body's acting that way, there's a problem. That's not something that you want to... Yeah. I think as lifters and as people that are trying to gain muscle, we, we kind of think like, Hey, the toilet is kind of part of this equation here and having gas is, is just part of it. And it's not true. Right. It's not true at all. When you change the way you eat, all of a sudden, everything else changes. You don't have the same digestion problems. You don't have the same, you don't have to run to the bathroom as often because you're using more of that food. You're not creating the problem for

yourself. Of course, we already talked about how the 10-minute walks help with that. Yeah. Post-workout decreases gas, improves digestion. I think also something important about the switching to the bone broth from coffee is like, it's just possible we drink too much fucking coffee. That's true. And so maybe there's just a benefit to that. fucking coffee.

That's true. And so maybe there's a, just a benefit to that. I think sometimes when it comes to, uh, training, um, and you talk about like, we talk about assistance exercises. Yeah. I think they're important. I think they're extremely valuable, but their greatest importance is that they get, they keep you from killing yourself on the main lift. Yeah.

A whole nother conversation. You know, just pulling yourself away from something and pulling people away from coffee. Most of us are probably ingesting too much coffee. It's reactive. It's not proactive. You're using it to solve a problem with or to overcome exhaustion when that could be treated. So you don't have exhaustion anymore. And I posted a video recently of Dr. D. Nicolantonio, who was the author of The Salt Fix, and he's got an extraordinary book out, well, well researched and excellent read.

I got it myself. I'd recommend anybody read it. But I posted a video of him recently where he talked about how drinking coffee causes dehydration because it causes salt and chloride, sodium and chloride, to be expelled from the system. A lot of it, maybe up to a gram for four cups of coffee. So that's going to hinder performance. And so I always recommend that people come off of coffee. And then just a couple of weeks ago, you know, Pops is 87 years old and he loves to watch Dr. Oz.

And every time he watches something, he pauses it or he records it and he comes running out to tell me to come watch. And so I'll go in and watch. And this episode happened to be, um, Dr. DeNicolantonio, uh, on Dr. Oz and Dr. Oz says to him, and Dr. Oz has been a bit of a skeptic. He was a bit of a skeptic about unsaturated fats. I can remember a couple of years ago when he brought the people on that were talking about the fact that, Hey, saturated fats are actually good for you. Uh, Dr. Yusuf's peer study showed that they, they were, if anything, they were protective

saturated fats were protective. Um, so anyhow, Dr. Oz asks him, he that they were, if anything, they were protective. Saturated fats were protective. So anyhow, Dr. Oz asks him, he says, what do you say about people who take sodium? It raises their blood pressure. And when they take sodium out of their diet, it lowers their blood pressure. And he says, well, I can lower your blood pressure by dehydrating you. I just won't give you any water. So it's the same problem. And it has a lot of the same side effects. He said, what the real problem is, is that you might

be deficient in other nutrients. And in particular, with respect to blood pressure, calcium. Calcium is absorbed better when you have adequate vitamin D. And what have we talked about with vitamin D and how many people are deficient in that? So when you get adequate vitamin D and you get out adequate calcium and magnesium, as it turns out, uh, Dr. McCarran some 30 years ago, 20 years ago, uh, published articles in PubMed that showed that people with the lowest intake of sodium had the highest blood pressure and people with the highest intake had the lowest blood pressure when you controlled for calcium and magnesium intake. So it was a deficiency that was creating that situation. Dr. Youssef's study, the peer study also showed that there is a range, a safe range, what they

consider to where sodium is optimal and anything below three grams a day. There's a drastic spike in cardiovascular disease and all cause mortality. Not only that, but the quality of life for those people that are trying to take in under three grams a day, directly opposed to the World Health Organization and the American Heart Association's recommendations to get 1.5 grams a day. So the studies are showing, have shown that there's other things going on. And I don't, again, now I feel like I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be. Because somebody's like, all right, Stan, just tell me what to eat.

Right. Okay. Well, log on to stanefferting.com and download the vertical diet. Cause I'll tell you exactly what to eat. And I include the articles, all the stuff I'm talking about today, all of these articles are included. So you can make those changes and your performance just skyrockets. It's just insane what people can do in a short period of time.

You said about the sodium. It's interesting because I think we had Daniel Orego on the podcast before, who was a researcher. He works with Quest Nutrition and works with a lot of other top brands in the country. He mentioned that obesity is normally a deficiency.

Obviously, there's a surplus of calories going on. We already know that. But from a nutrient standpoint, a lot of people that are overweight, a lot of people that are heavier than they want to be, have deficiencies in their nutrients. And so it goes along with everything you're saying. Yeah. You know, having these nutrients intact is going to help you. And if you do it on a daily basis, you're going to see results really fast. I mean, just something as simple as, like I mentioned, just the three ounces of orange juice three times a day.

That's only 36 grams of carbs. I mean, that's a tiny little amount of carbs. Yeah. Drastically improves your body temperature. Well, what do we try and do when we take thyroid or clombuterol or all those other prescription, you know, what are they? Diet pills and stuff. Phentermine. We're trying to increase body temperature.

Anything thermogenic. We're trying to increase body temperature. Well, it can be done for you in the correct fashion so that you're, the problem is, is when you raise body temperature through any of those options, then your body responds. We're a homeostatic mechanism, right? And so then it's every action has an equal and opposite reaction. You put caffeine in there, you put, you know know thermodrine or whatever else in there your body

starts releasing cortisol and adrenaline and now you start having all kinds of the reactionary problems so when you do it with a little bit of fructose with food right a little bit of sodium a little bit of calcium vitamin d when you do with those things your body temperature elevates there's no there's no fight there's no fight. There's no reaction to that. It's all positive. And that's what kind of reinforces you to think that you actually need something, you know, over and over again, you, you get this pulse of, I need my pre-workout. I got to have my, I got to have my pre-work. I got to have my coffee. There's a reason you need it though. Yeah. You're tired because you're deficient in something. Remedy the deficiency,

you're not tired. And that's, what's important. And I'm not talking about pounding a ton of carbs. I know I'm big on the steak and rice deal, but I'm talking about fueling your workload and your, and your mass and your goals. Uh, and, and that can take a lot of steak and rice for people like me or those that I, uh, mentioned earlier, but in the absence of a lot of mass or what have you, then the carbs that can satisfy your daily requirements are a very small amount. It's just, like I said, from the potato or from the oranges. For a lot of people, it could just be about 50 grams or so, right?

Could be 50 grams. I like to not go under 100 just because your metabolism does tend to slow. And I think that's kind of the lowest number I like to tolerate. And we see that with, uh, with keto diets is that you have to refeed them every now and then, because you want to stoke the fire. Uh, Dave Palumbo has been doing that for a decade, uh, or decades and he has refeeds. And the purpose of the refeed is because your metabolism is slowing and you need to fire it back up. So I, I don't like to let it slow. I like to keep it kind of fired up all the time. And then you seem to be adding more muscle, less fat, body composition change. You have more energy, which is a big thing. And to be clear, some of the stuff that I've tried to do with my book, The War on Carbs,

when it comes to a ketogenic diet, I've been trying to explain this to people a million times. They keep yelling at me saying, it's not magic. It's not magic. And I don't think that it is magic. I don't think there's any, I don't think there's any really magic formula. I do think that getting the right nutrients makes a lot of sense, but I don't think there's anything that's necessarily going to be magical about any diet in particular. What I've always liked about the ketogenic diet for myself, I've had trouble with having food cravings. I've had cookies and these kinds of things around from the time I was a kid. And those are things that if they're near me, if they're around, you know,

I have children now. And, uh, you know, if, if any of these foods are around for birthdays and so on, I'm going to eat them on a ketogenic diet. When my body is switched over to, uh, being a little bit more efficient at running off of fat, I don't feel the same cravings. Therefore, a ketogenic diet ends up working well for me because it's the only diet that I can follow and be in a caloric deficit. That's right. And ultimately, the compliance is the biggest issue,

is being able to stay with it. And then in my conversations with you, I've added some stuff in. I've added in the cranberry juice. I've added in an orange here and there. I've added in a sweet potato. But you're added in an orange here and there. I've added in a sweet potato. And I think- But you're still not over 75 grams of carbs a day with all of that. Right. Yeah. People think I'm having like a buffet going on or something, but it's-

There's a few things. And with all of these diets, there's some good and bad. There's always some give and take. And there are certain populations that benefit better at certain times. And with keto diet for people who are insulin resistant and type two diabetics, it's a great way to lose a lot of weight fast and improve your insulin sensitivity. The challenge is, is when you start to introduce a high performing athlete, somebody like a strong man or a CrossFitter, et cetera, et cetera, they have a difficult time performing optimally in the absence of that glycogen. And those folks say, well, the body doesn't need sugars. It can become fat adapted. Sure. And you don't need an elevator to get to the top of the Empire State Building.

You can take the stairs, but it's not the most efficient, effective way to get there. So in certain specific circumstances with athletes, then I'll introduce more carbohydrates. But with people who have, like you mentioned, maybe an appetite problem. Yeah. I've also found that sometimes you can remedy sweet tooth with salt and they're really not chasing sugar. We're chasing salt. And that generally tends to help. Well, again, the deficiency thing, you know, you mentioned insulin resistance. A lot of times when someone becomes insulin resistant, their body will produce more insulin. And that's why you think you need pizza. That's why you think you need ice cream. That's

why you think you need these things that are coming across that you're seeing commercials for, that you're seeing other people eat. You're having these really hard cravings for it because over a period of time, due to all the sugar you've been taking in, maybe the lack of activity, you become insulin resistant. Your body is producing more insulin. And as a reaction to that, you're feeling hungry. Yeah. And I think another thing you have to recognize is that certain diets create deficiencies that you need to manage. When you go keto, you're going to lose the carbohydrates out of your muscles, the glycogen. You'll also lose with that glycogen, a lot of water and a lot of salt. So you're going to need to keep salt in your diet.

I've talked about this before when people go to clean eating and they stop eating processed foods and they stop eating fast foods, then they end up with a salt deficiency because they're not salting their boneless, skinless chicken breast and broccoli. And they need to do that. If you're going to be restrictive, you need to add in back in the minerals and electrolytes. They further compound the problem by trying to suck down a gallon or two of water a day, which at some point, I don't know where,

somebody decided to tell people that was healthy and that was the optimal thing to do. And that can dilute. It can dilute your sodium and other minerals as well. It flushes them out of the system. Being clear is not a good thing. I address this in my program, and I specifically talk about the benefits of sodium, and I also talk about water. And Dr. Sandra Godek is, I think she's a PhD that runs the Heat Institute and does thermoregulation studies. And she talks about the fact that it's not water

that necessarily hydrates you. That's not what the priority should be. It is your minerals and electrolytes. It's your sodium first and foremost. And so that's where she focuses her attention and where athletes should be focusing their attention is you sweat all that stuff out. And the reason I talk about iodine is because I think a study in Korea showed that about 2% of the general population were iodine deficient. But something like 40 plus percent of their soccer players were iodine deficient. You sweat it out. So we as athletes or high active people are sweating out iodine and not replacing it. I lost four pounds yesterday training and it's not even that hot out yet.

That's right. And I just was curious. I was like, oh, what do I weigh? I weighed myself before I worked out. Weighed myself afterwards. And it was, know, I just, just was curious. I was like, oh, what do I weigh? I weighed myself before I worked out, weighed myself afterwards. And it was the, yeah. I mean, that's a lot of weight. It is. And that's why I spend the rest of the night, you know, working on trying to pile that back on. Great coaches like George Lockhart with his guys, especially as they get closer to competition, he'll weigh them before and after training and whatever the weight deficit is, he needs to replace that. Yeah. And he, and it's three things. Usually you need some glycogen, you need some sodium and you need some water.

And so he tries to measure based on their workload, how much glycogen they need to replace what they burned, how much sodium they need to replace what they burned and different people sweat out a different amount. So he's pretty analytical about it. We in the general population, not wanting to be, you know, all again, not be in the weeds, not make this over complicated. You do want to consider that immediately post-training. And I put George Lockhart's protocol in my vertical diet program. Is this too many plugs for the vertical diet in one?

No, I think it's, I think it's too little. Standupreferencing.com, vertical diet download. So everyone on the live chat's talking about it. I put George Lockhart's protocol in there. Exactly what I've talked about it before with the fructose dextrose and a scientific article that shows where they actually measured dextrose and fructose in a two to one ratio and how it permeated the cell membrane faster and was able to store more. It's all in there, but it's extremely beneficial for to replace those things after a workout. And George's program has been awesome. If you're not training two days or if your workout is a power lifting workout, you're not sweating that much.

But for CrossFitters and for high active people, football players, et cetera, or for a big hypertrophy bodybuilding workout, it's essential. And one of the key things is you can't have proteins and fats with that drink immediately post-workout because it slows the absorption. proteins and fats with that drink immediately post-workout because it slows the absorption. Remember the American Diabetes Association doesn't even endorse the glycemic index for that reason. When you eat carbohydrates with fats and proteins, it drastically changes the absorption rate of it. So that's true with this drink too. So immediately post-workout, drink the carbohydrate, sodium water drink, and then 30 minutes or an hour later, go have your normal meal, get your protein in. We've already talked for years ad nauseum

about this anabolic window and how it's not necessary to get protein immediately following a workout. But in the case of carbohydrates, sodium, and water, it may very well be improved performance. Well, and also maybe again, maybe it's just to get those nutrients. Maybe it's not so much about the macros.

Maybe it's more about the nutrients and the carbohydrates can be a driver to help drive some of those nutrients in the right places, right? Yeah. You know, I shopped around to a bunch of different supplement companies. I was going to try and make that post-workout drink with George and we were going to roll something out. Not a big supplement guy. Never have been. I didn't take a single supplement when I got my pro card. I didn't take a single supplement when I trained with you to set my world records.

Not a big fan. I ate my food. So, you know, one thing that Dolce, Mike Dolce does from the Dolce diet is he'll grind up rice into powder using a coffee grinder and just add the fruit and the water to that and feed it to his athletes after a workout. Same thing. You can very easily digest carbohydrates. There's other people who have carbohydrate powders. They're fine, whatever. As for the salt, I've talked before about using, say, nun tablets or ThermoTabs or something like that. That's fine.

But you can also just take a half teaspoon of pink salt, put it on your tongue, wash it down with whatever carbohydrate drink you're drinking. I get asked this a lot. Is there a huge difference with the type of salt? Well, you know, I'm going to have to defer to the experts on that. And that's Dr. D. Nicolantino. And he talks, uh, D. Nicolantonio.

I've been telling people just use a variety. You can use, you know, you can use just about any salt. At a restaurant, go ahead and just use what they got. And then when you're home, if you want to buy a fancier salt, then go for it. You can. And I'll give you the long answer. And the long answer is there are a couple of salts that he recommends. Pink Himalayan salt and Redmond Real salt. That's from an old dried up ocean bed. And the reason that he likes that one

is because there's no, there isn't any contaminants in it as opposed to sea salt which may have these microplastics in it is his presumption. And other salts sometimes have like maltodextrins and weird things in them. They can. Or caking agents. Anti-caking agents and bleaching and that. I don't know how big a deal it is. I'm not trying to come out here as some being overzealous about demonizing certain things. But in terms of optimizing, one of the reasons he likes these salts is because they have additional minerals in them.

A little bit of iodine in particular, which I'm a huge fan of. But I have to say this with respect to the minerals in those salts, and we may have talked about it before. There's not a significant amount. That's not where you'd go to get them. It's like talking about grass-fed beef versus CAFO beef versus commercially grown beef, talking about the omega-3 content. There's so little in either of them that that's probably not where you'd go to get it. So in terms of salt, I don't think you're gonna get what we call an effective dose. That gets us back to pixie dusting and proprietary formulas

and supplements telling you... So to get through, to get something like your omega-3 rather than worrying about your beef being grass-fed. Maybe you just have a piece of salmon. There's other benefits to grass-fed beef, but omega-3s isn't the one that you should focus on. And with these salts, the mineral content in them is not adequate in most cases. You want to get that from the foods that I've selected in the diet. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Can people lose weight and gain strength at the same time? I mean, people are asking me that all the diet. Yeah, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. Can people lose weight and gain strength at the same time? I mean, that's, people are asking me that all the time. I have my own opinion.

What's your opinion on that? It's, it's hard. And one of the key components is, is not to dehydrate yourself, which often happens when you go on a diet and to make sure that you get adequate carbohydrates when you're dieting because you'll, your metabolism will slow as we talked about. And I'm not talking about tons and tons of white rice either. I'm just talking about, again, getting a little bit of fruit in there and you're going to have to lose the weight gradually, more than 1% a week. And you're going to start losing muscle tissue and strength. I don't like to diet competitive athletes over the last 30 days. I've said before that I'd like them 90 days out to start dieting so that when they reach

30 days, they're at the weight that they'll be cutting water from. And then I don't make any more weight loss, uh, efforts until 24 to 48 hours before weigh-ins. It's hard, but it can be done. And it also, if you prioritize the weight loss and then gain your strength back after the fact, I've seen that many times. Uh, I've had good success using the things we've talked about in the diet, the sodium, the iodine and the fructose, and losing weight slowly and switching to red meat. Usually when people diet, they go to chicken. And look, I'm not anti-chicken, but to me, it's a good, better, best scenario. And chicken doesn't have some of the vital nutrients that I think are beneficial in steak, the iron, the zinc, the B12 in particular is like the monster of B vitamins for every cell in the body,

the metabolism of every cell in the body. So there's some key components there that I think are beneficial. That's why I choose red meat over chicken. Also, I've said before that chicken and turkey, they eat almost exclusively soy for the three months they're alive. And it creates a high polyunsaturated fat content. And I'm not a fan of the polyunsaturated fats as compared to saturated fats. The PUFAs popping up again. Yeah, because when your body digests them, they put off free radicals.

They oxidize. The same as they do on the counter, exposed to light or heat or cooking. They'll do that in your body too when you break them down. There's a free radical. Same as they do on the counter, exposed to light or heat or cooking. They'll do that in your body too when you break them down. Right. There's a free radical. It becomes part of your cells for like, you know, 120 days or some shit like that. Yep. And also like, you know, I think when it comes to, you know, dropping weight and trying to get stronger, from my own experience on a ketogenic diet, when you remove carbohydrates, you are kind of in a dehydrated state in some sense.

And also, you just don't have any of that bloat to rely on at all. That bloat's great. I emphasize that. The carbohydrates and the combination of the carbs and the water and the sodium and everything, it all works together towards being able to train really hard. and everything, it all works together towards, uh, being able to, to train really hard. And so my, in my opinion, you can't really lose a significant amount of weight and gain strength. If you did it over a long period of time, as you're saying, uh, and you were to lose 10 pounds over the course of a year, then I think maybe something like that would work. Or do it in two phases.

Right. Just drop as much fat as you can, as quickly as you can. Right. While trying not to lose. Well, and that's actually, so that's actually what I've worked on is I've worked on trying to drop weight in a couple of different stages. You know, I started this journey this time around at around 300 pounds. The heaviest I was was 330. You were beautiful. I was sexy.

Such a hot guy. God bless Andy for sticking with you through that time. Can I get a hey now? She doesn't even notice. She doesn't notice one way or the other. I'll be darned. Yeah. That's amazing.

And you know, the best thing about losing weight is that every inch you lose around your waist, your dick gets an inch bigger. Right? Does it really? I don't know. I don't think she's noticed that either. Yeah. I never had a big waist, so. Wait, what?

Look at that face. Oh my God. Yeah. That's horrendous. That is a chubby, a chubby checker right there. But, you know,

in terms of, in terms of dropping weight and, and the strength gain, you know, it's going to be an, it's going to be an individual thing. And it's just a question that people just keep fucking hammering all the time.

Cause I think there's a lot of people trying to sell programs that way that you can get stronger and you can lose weight. And it's, you know, it's a balancing act. And here. Cause I think there's a lot of people trying to sell programs that way that you can get stronger and you can lose weight. And it's, it's a difficult, it's a balancing act. And here's what I think. I think that you should set your training up.

I don't think everybody should train heavy all year round. Anyhow, I've talked about Eddie Cohn training, you know, competing in powerlifting twice a year and using the off season for hypertrophy training sessions. So why don't you do your weight loss during the hypertrophy training session? Then you don't have to worry about your strength.

And then when you go back into the strength block, you can, uh, increase a lot of the stuff that you did. You didn't't have to worry about your strength. And then when you go back into the strength block, you can increase. That was a lot of the stuff that you did. You didn't even squat for months on end. I didn't. Which I think is amazing. And then you came back and every time you came back,

you came back stronger and you were like, I was like, what the fuck have you been doing? I would start a little slow. Yeah. Very quickly would be able to ramp up. Yeah, you would be doing what, leg presses and all these different movements, right? Yep.

For volume, for lots of sets and lots of reps, two a days, you can burn a lot of fat doing workouts like that. I like to increase volume rather than drastically decrease calories. I've talked about it a hundred times. And so that might be an opportunity to where strength is not an issue. It's not a concern. You're focused strictly on losing weight. You're doing these hypertrophy workouts. Plus, at the same time, you're improving your joint health. Uh, everything starts to feel

better. Your cardiovascular fitness. And then when you go back into your powerlifting prep, hopefully you don't do it by loading yourself up full of all those anti-nutrients. We talked about all the pizzas and pastas and bread and pancakes, and you, you do it focused more vertically with the white rice and steak. And yes, you do increase your calories for strength. I'm a big proponent of that. And then start lifting heavier. We talked about how Klokoff in the off season used to do a ton of cardio and his strength would dive. But then there was a carryover effect in terms of the conditioning.

So where, when he started training for the Olympics, he was able to recover faster and he could actually increase the number of workouts and the frequency. Yeah. Getting back into, you know, getting strong again. So this thing should be cycled. It should never be looked at in a two or three month phase. Your 5-3-1 program or your Westside program or your Cube program or whatever it is should never be looked at in a finite fashion for the three-month period or the 10-week period that you're doing it. Everything should be looked at over the course of at least a year and longer, possibly. And then you're able to start putting in these different blocks of

strength and hyper-difference. Any room for any sort of cheat meal or anything like that? Well, if you don't over-restrict, you don't need to refeed. Uh, I do have a reference in, but I mean, just from like a mental standpoint, somebody just wants to eat a fucking cheesecake. Sure. And I'll say this, if, if you're sleeping really well every night and you decide to on Friday night to, to go party till 4am and drink, how does that affect your training for the next 48 hours? Right. So really only three or four days a week, you're at peak performance. I think the same thing about a diet, maybe not to such an extent, but I'm cautious about if you, if, if a cheat meal means you're going to eat a ton more calories, I'm all for it. But there are certain types of calories I'd still avoid because I think they'll create gut problems that are going to set you back for more than just that one meal.

It could set you back for a day or two or longer, depending on your susceptibility to, to certain issues with digestion. What about for yourself? Do you take like a scoop of ice cream here and there? Yeah, sure. Or something? Sure. It's been a long time, to be honest with you. I don't crave those kinds of things.

But I think it was many months ago when I was trying to get those big squats that I was eating. I ate some ice cream and, you know, what have you. But I put in the diet a reference to the FODMAP, which is a low gas. So there's tons of choices for substitutions that you can use. And FODMAP is not the be all end all. There's plenty of, of people out there crying about how there's, um, you know, inadequacies in that, but in so much as that it provides you some options, then I think that that's beneficial. I'm just really cautious to stay away from certain things that I know affect me very bad, which again is.

It's hard to tell people. It's hard to tell people, yeah, go ahead and have a cheat meal. Yeah. Go ahead and eat more calories, but let's be cautious about what those are. I happen to love the foods that I eat. The Monster Mash is awesome. Yeah. When I was cooking food for Hofthor and Brian, I told you before, I was cooking them four

or five pounds of meat a day and it was like half. You cooking for both of them at the Arnold Classic, right? I had two grills going and I had, you know, eight steaks and eight burgers going at one time I was cooking or 12. I had the whole thing filled, both grills. That's kind of what George Lockhart does too. Like he'll like move in with these people and cook for them and clear out their fridge and clear out the cabinets

of all the other junk and control every single piece. And same thing when, uh, they were traveling with, uh, uh, Conor McGregor, they had to, he'd have to get to the hotel ahead of time. He was going in and asking the cooks to cook him things at like two o'clock in the morning to make sure that McGregor had what he needed when he needed it. And that's the thing. When I said, I'm not a guru, you know, I didn't do anything magical here. I just tried to make sure that they had what they need when they needed it. And I tried to make sure that it was easy on their system. It was, it was delicious as best I could. It was tasty. So that didn't become a struggle for them. That didn't become a stressor for them having to eat something and a certain amount of that, something, and not knowing when or where the next meal was

going to come from, particularly when they're traveling. So I coordinated that with, uh, you know, Hawthorne's manager, with Brian Shaw's wife, I'm giving him shopping lists and showing up there early and getting all that stuff and putting it in their room. So it was available. Those things to me are of critical importance and it doesn't take a guru to do that. It just takes somebody with attention to detail. Somebody who's disciplined and looks at those things as prioritizing those things is important.

I want to know what he's eating. Anyhow, back to the Monster Mash. So I cooked up all these steaks. These were beautiful New York steaks from Costco. I trimmed the fat off. They were delicious. And I took them all these steaks and all these burgers. And I come back and all the burgers are gone, but the steaks are still there.

And they have just fallen in love with the Monster Mash. And it's one of my favorite meals too. So what I mentioned a little earlier, we were talking and I said that kind of the evolution of this whole thing, I've decided to throw the diet on the internet so people can get it. I've also been working with a meal prep company

who's been in business for over 20 years and they serve millions of meals a year to the 48 contiguous states. And we've been working closely with them and, uh, in developing a diet for the vertical diet so that people can order meal prep. And one of the things in particular that I'll have in the offering, just to simplify it, make

it easy, but the monster mash is going to be one of the key things. And so I had to source the best tasting bison I could find because when I was out in Ohio, I bought two different types of bison. I brought 40 pounds with me and they burned through that pretty quick. And then I'm out shopping trying to find bison while I'm there. And it turns out Costco didn't carry it. And so now I'm out shopping at grocery stores looking for bison.

I cooked it, tasted it. It wasn't as good. It was gamey. It just didn't taste right. So I had to go down and get some from a butcher that was down at that marketplace by the venue there, uh, just to, you know, and it's like 12 or $13 a pound. It was ridiculous. So I found the supplier that, that of the foods that I was using went direct with them. Also with the chicken stock, I go in the grocery store and the chicken stocks are full of cornstarch, sugar, chicken flavor, uh, vegetable oils, garlic, you know,

all the things that, that irritate your stomach. And so, uh, and most of them are that way because they want it to be tasty. Right. Yeah. So, uh, Costco's Kirkland brands, chicken stock is, uh, is organic and it's boiled bones and it has, it's the least offensive of the group. It has, it's, it's actually excellent. And that's the one I drink in the morning is tea. It tastes delicious. It's, uh, but I've sourced that as well. And then when it comes to the rice, there's arsenic in rice, the Chinese rice. And so I had to use a California rice and I use

a medium grain California rice because it tends to hold moisture better. Yeah. So that when you make your monster mash and you pick it up with your fork or spoon. It's a little bit, almost like a sushi rice, almost, right? Almost a little bit.

And so it'll hold. Almost sticky, yeah. Yep. And it'll hold more of the chicken stock. And so. Other types of rice might get hard when you. They get hard and then the chicken stock runs off of them and you end up with this soup. And when you pick your food up, the chicken stock's still in the bowl.

Yeah. So I have one that I like, you know, and that's the hard thing about meal prep is that everybody's tastes are different. Right. But I've tried to find and source the best stuff, and this company has been putting them together. I think we'll release within a month or two. We've been working on this for a long time. So I'm excited about it.

And the reason I'm so excited about it, other than the fact that I'll make a lot of money, that's cool too, but is because it simplifies and provides everyone with the same things that I was able to personally do for Hofthor and Brian and the rest of these athletes. It provides a great opportunity for people that are just starting the diet that are maybe confused. And also they're just like, I just really don't want to think about it. I don't know where to start. That'd be a great place to start. And then over the course of a few weeks, if you feel like, uh, you want to save some money and make some changes and just make it yourself probably. Right. Yeah. You know, and the hard part is with meal prep is that most of them, a lot of the people out there, they're really expensive, particularly

when you add shipping. Most of these people don't have the distribution capabilities that a large company has. And you go in and order a meal and it's like $8.95 plus five bucks for shipping. And so every time you pick up a meal, it's $14. And there's no way that you can do business like that. And so with the large company, with the shipping, as you know, from shipping things over the years, that relationship with your shipper is huge in terms of, you know, costs. That's what Amazon looks like they're in trouble for right now. Yeah.

A little bit. Yeah. So. What's the Monster Mash? It's bison, rice, and stock. Rice and stock. It's simple. A little bit of Yeah. So. What's the Monster Mash? It's bison, rice, and stock. Rice and stock. It's simple. A little bit of salt in there.

We'll use pink Himalayan salt on ours. Is there any difference between like getting ground beef or eating steak or. You know, as for being cost effective, it's, I recommend it. Yeah. The bison's very expensive. It is, but it is grass fed. Right. No antibiotics. And it is a very high quality product. bison's very expensive, but it is grass-fed. No antibiotics. And it is a very high-quality product, and it's very lean, almost as lean as a chicken breast.

But it has so much more benefit in terms of nutrients. Do you have to add fat into the diet? No, because there's other things in the diet that have a decent amount of fat. And even though bison's very lean, it also does have an adequate amount. It's like 85%, 90% or something? Yeah. It has an adequate amount of fat in it. And you need fat. Fats are important. I hate when people start cutting fats. They start losing their ability to drive nutrients into the cells. But your diet in particular is not necessarily like a high-fat diet, even though there's not a lot of

carbs in there. You know, it's real sensible. I've tried to not get into any of the camps here. I've been very cautious. But for you specifically, you don't purchase like ribeyes and stuff. You get leaner cuts of steak usually. That's just a personal preference because when I get too much fat in a given meal, I tend to have a hard time digesting it. It tends to leak out of me. And I end up sharting during squats.

And so it's just a personal preference. If I eat a lot of bacon or if I eat a really high fatty steak, a real marbled steak, it doesn't sit as well in my stomach. It just doesn't seem as though I... Now I could probably throw some fiber in there. I have the daily carrot in there, the little baby carrots I eat a couple of times a day.

And that might help offset some of that problem. Baby carrots are weird. They are pretty weird. Those are like an invention. Those aren't real things. Yeah. They're strange. What's the deal with the carrot?

Well, a few things. A lot of people think it's vitamin A, but unfortunately the vitamin A in carrots is carotid and it's not easily digestible by the body. You want the retinol form that you get from animals. Sources, cod liver oil is one liver, is another. The carrot. There are some other vitamins and stuff in a carrot too, right? Yeah.

A few things about the carrot. One is, is it's for detox. And when you get an indigestible fiber in your system, when your kidneys and liver are putting out toxins, they can attach them to that fiber to as a shuttle out of the body. Otherwise, they just keep recirculating. And secondly, a carrot is also a root tuber. It's a prebiotic, which feeds bacteria in the stomach and in the intestines

so that they grow and are more effective at breaking down foods. But it's also low gas because it's a root tuber, because it's not above ground. It doesn't have as many anti-nutrients in it. So to me, it met all of those needs. I really use it as a detox and to help the stool. Yeah, I was putting that up on some of the information I was sharing with people. And people were like, what the fuck's up with the one carrot? I know.

Well, and you don't need too much. That's another thing about dose dependency. You get an adequate amount of something, and it can be good. If you get too much of it, it can be bad. You take in too many carrots. It's kind of with these bikini girl diets. Fill up on broccoli. Fill up on asparagus.

And they end up with these bloated stomachs and can't figure out why, and they think it's the meat, and it's not. It's all the vegetables. Andrew, you got some questions coming in over there, too? Yeah, what I'm quickly realizing is that the people watching, they're all becoming extremely smart. And some of these questions are really complex. But I'll go back to a simple one. Here we go. Test, stand.

All right, guys. Okay, we got plenty of questions to go back and forth. Do I get a pee break, break too or am I solo here? Yeah, you guys can tag team in and out. Yeah. I mean, not tag team each other. Sure, go ahead. No, just when it comes to the fruit juices that you recommended,

is a 100%, quote unquote, 100% juice, are they all equal? No, some of them are from concentrate and some of them have added sugars. And so I go with not from concentrate, no added sugar. And I use, for people who are trying to lose weight, I'll use oranges. And for people who are trying to gain weight, I'll use orange juice. It tends to stimulate the appetite better and they can eat more food as a result. But about the same amount in terms of fructose for each and the frequency throughout the day for each. And a pulp free on the orange juice

for gaining weight. Cool. Is there any benefit to like, say, making your own orange juice, like juicing an actual orange as opposed to just buying store-bought stuff? Sure, that's fine. You'll lose some of the fiber content if you're in the weight loss position, but if you're in the weight gain position, then you can juice your own and that would be delicious. Yeah. I think I bought one in San Francisco airport last week that was, I don't know if it was crushed in the thighs of a virgin or something, but it was like $9 for a squeezed bottle of orange juice. So I just sipped it like a fine wine. But that's a nice thing is I can buy an orange juice and it's good for, you know, three different servings for me because I dilute it with a little bit of ice water so that the acid doesn't irritate my stomach.

And if you drink it with a meal, it's going to increase iron absorption. So if that's a concern, then you want to drink it between meals. So there's some different variations to those things. We were just talking about squeezing oranges between the thighs of a virgin. Did you miss that?

Oh, yeah. No, I've done that before. Oh, good for you. There we have it, I've done that before. Oh, well. Good for you. There we have it. I was just going to ask one more thing. When it comes to like an alternative for bison, you said ground beef. What's a good lean to fat ratio that you would recommend? Like an 88-12, I think is good. Anything, you know, north of that. Also, bison or even

hamburgers not available. I get a lot of folks from the UK or Australia. Kangaroo's fine. Venison's fine. Lamb. Lamb's an excellent source. It's very popular in the UK or in Iceland for sure I'm aware of. So I'm looking for red meat because of the iron, because of the B vitamins and because of the creatine and the zinc. As far as protein goes, you can get protein from just about anything and satisfy those requirements. Macros, I don't, I don't obsess over macros and I try not to demonize too many foods. But there are certain micros that I think that, that you can get that are necessary, that will optimize performance, that red meat provides, that chicken does not.

Gotcha. Have you ever tried ground elk? No, I haven't. But I would think that venison or any red meat, it's the hemoglobin, which creates the iron and the zinc and the B vitamins. So I think any red meat will do. Just watch the fatty content. Some of the mints or the 80-20 chub that you get at the store, that can be about as fatty as a hot dog. It'd be up north of 90% in terms of total calories. Hot dogs are so good.

They measure that by weight. It's like 2% milk is 37% fat. And so you got to be cautious when you get an 80-20. It's not 20% fat. It's like 90-some percent fat in terms of calorie content. When I was filming or I was taking photos while someone else was filming in Colorado with Brian Shaw, we ended up driving like roughly 45 minutes to get a certain type of cranberry juice.

What is that all about? You know, it's because it needs to be pure cranberry juice. Most people will blend it with other juices because pure cranberry juice tastes so tart. I'm actually used to it now. I like it. I crave it. It's like a really dry, dry wine. It also has to be unsweetened.

And it can't be from concentrate. So I put, back to plugging the vertical diet, on my website, I put links to where you can purchase what's the name of the company? I found Lakewood Organic. Lakewood Organic, yeah, that's at Whole Foods, but it's also in the health food section of most grocery stores. Amazon, I think. Amazon, that's one place to order it as well. And then who's the big juice company? Oh, wow. Why am I forgetting?

They have a pure cranberry juice that I put a link to. It's probably half the price. And you can even eat cranberries. As one of my offerings for the Vertical Diet Food Prep Company, I'm putting out what I call a cornucopia, which is like a travel protein pack. And in it, I put dried cranberries. So you can get some of the iodine benefit from that along with some other dried fruit, but it's in addition to macadamia nuts, hard boiled eggs is something, eggs in particular, while I'm on the topic, since I put myself on my own topics, the yolks in eggs are extremely nutrient dense.

And even raw, right? Well, not the whites. You don't want to eat the whites raw because the avid and the anti-nutrient in them and the... But the yolks. But the yolks, yes. You can eat yolks raw and they're full of nutrients. Chromium, which helps with blood sugars. Vitamin K2, this is huge. You need to increase your vitamin D so you can increase your calcium absorption. And when you increase calcium absorption, you want to make sure that

calcium is preferentially put into the bones and used for the minerals and electrolytes to function correctly. You don't want it put into the arteries. K2 determines that. And this is one of the things about my diets. When I start doing my seminar and I ask people, where are you getting your K2 from? And they just look at me like I'm crazy. Where are you getting your vitamin A? Where are you getting your calcium and how much and what type? And they don't have answers to these questions and I don't expect them to learn. The point is, is that it's important and all of these things work together and that's why they're in the diet. So the hard boiled eggs, Costco has an organic one that tastes delicious. Most of the time when you get the pre-peeled

boiled eggs out of the pack, they taste like plastic. Costco has an awesome one. Costco does a great job with everything pretty much. So I'm including that in my cornucopia program, the diet that has the, the eggs. So the, I have all those little things that I

travel with a couple of pieces of hard cheese, maybe even a little piece of dark chocolate for magnesium, uh, maybe a little raw honey. I put all these things into a travel bag. A lot of people, they're just like, all little piece of dark chocolate for magnesium, maybe a little raw honey. I put all these things into a travel pack. A lot of people, they're just like, all they heard was dark chocolate. I know. I said a little piece, but I brought one with me. You notice when I showed up, I immediately put my monster mashes and my travel pack in

your refrigerator. I put a little ice pack in it and I travel with it or my monster mashes now. And this is huge. I want to throw this out because this is just a monster discovery for me. I used to pack my monster mashes into Tupperwares and I'd eat them later cold. They would just cool down on the plane or whatever. And I'd be eating them. And first, uh, when you start, when rice starts to get to room temperature, because of its consistency, uh, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll accumulate a lot of bacteria. So when you eat it at room temperature, you might end up with some stomach issues.

I've talked about the fact, if you put it in the fridge overnight and cool it and reheat it the next day, there's going to be the rice and potatoes get some resistant starches. So there'll be fewer calorie benefit, which is okay if you're dieting, but it's not okay if you're trying to gain weight.

So that's why I stick with fresh rice. So what I started doing recently is I got on the internet and I bought these thermos. They're 24 hour or 24 ounce wide mouth thermos that you can eat out of. Yeah. And I would take, I would make, uh, like this morning before I left the house, I made a couple really hot, fresh monster mashes, just steaming hot. I put them in there and put the lid on. And that I tested it six hours later with a temperature gauge, it was over 140 degrees. So you can start packing those to go or to us. Um, like when we do expos, I can prep them in the morning and I can have something to eat. I don't need a microwave. I don't have to eat it

cold. Everything for me is about convenience, about taste. Um, that that's how I've kind of designed the whole diet. Guys, I want to give you some insight as to who this guy really is. When, when we went to trade shows, Jesse Burdick and I would go to trade shows with him. Stan was like, hey, you guys want peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? We were like, yeah! We were so excited. You're not going to tell this story, are you? Yeah.

We start jamming down these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and we look over at Stan, and he's got steak and rice. And we're like, what the fuck? That is true. And he's like, yeah, I made those up for you guys, but I made mine. Look how red he's got like steak and rice. And I'm like, what the fuck? That is true. And he's like, yeah, I cooked, I made those up for you guys, but I made my, look how red he's getting. But I made my, but I made my own food for myself. That is so true. He's just fucking having us dig a deeper, having us dig a deeper ditch.

And you were already ahead of us at the time. I mean, it didn't matter. I do an expo and I come rolling in with this huge cooler full of food and I even, I get electricity. I pay for electricity at my booth just so I can plug

a microwave in so I can heat up a couple of monster mashes. At the last expo at the Arno, we were really busy all day long. I didn't sit down

from nine in the morning until five or so at night when the expo was done or 8.30 in the morning. And I didn't have a chance to sit and eat. So I was just eating

standing up. And as people were coming in, they're like, oh, hey man sorry, I see you're eating, but can I get a picture? And I'm like, cool, but I'm going to be eating during the picture. So they'd come stand next to me and I'd be like this. Yeah, they think it's funny. Yeah. But for me, it's just reality. I have to get my meal in and I wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity.

And so the second day, same thing. It was busy all day long. We sold out of all the coolers. We sold out 200 of Hofthor's t-shirts too. It was an awesome weekend. Awesome. Met just tons and tons of people. Many of which had great stories about their success stories with the diet. And just from watching my videos and stuff and kind of putting together what they could from the video. You need a pee break? No, I'm good.

Okay, good. I'm good. So day two, I actually sat down. I sat down on my cooler for about a minute, starting to eat my Monster Mash. And somebody came up and said, oh, hey, can I get a picture? I said, only if you sit on my lap. Dude sat on my lap and got a picture with me while I was eating my Monster Mash sitting on my lap. I wish you think I'd post that on there. I thought he was going to post that and I could post it on my page. It never happened.

So meal frequency. You know, there's these things that people attach themselves to and they get so dogmatic about it. And, uh, you know, people will learn something that they hear a blip from, uh,

uh, Lane Norton or whoever it might be. And they'll say, Hey, you know, they'll, they'll learn this from this quick clip that they, that they just took,

uh, this one chunk of, and they'll say, Oh, Lane Norton said it doesn't matter. And it's not really what he truly meant, but a lot of people will say, you know, meal frequency doesn't matter. For you, why is meal frequency important?

Well, first and foremost, I'll say that Lane Norton is an excellent resource. He's outstanding. He's awesome. And he's been saying the stuff that I have in my diet, he's been saying for years. And how much of it I stole from him, I'm not sure. All of it, I think. All of it, including when you control for calories and protein, that the carbs and fats don't matter in terms of weight loss. All of it's not optimal. Again, you can get to the top of the Empire State Building taking the stairs, but the elevator is much more efficient.

And for the body, it likes to have, it needs, it wants what it wants when it needs it. And with respect to protein in particular with intermittent fasting, there's no mechanism in the body to store protein. And so if your body needs some protein and you don't have any available amino acids circulating through the bloodstream, it's going to get it from your muscle tissue, whether it's for energy gluconeogenesis, which is not an efficient process, or whether it's for repair of blood or tissue or whatever else, organs, et cetera. So when it comes to athletes, I liked for them to get protein about every four hours throughout the day. And I include an article perfecting protein intake that I stole from Greg Knuckles site, where he posted an article about, and now I forget the scientists who actually conducted

the study and that's terrible, but an awesome article. It's in my vertical diet program. So people can click on it and read it where he talks about meal frequency and the importance of having protein. Now I heard Dr. Rhonda Patrick talk about this, who's brilliant. Yeah. And I love watching her stuff and she's way smarter than me on all this stuff. I, I try and use information from people like her and, and the rest of these, um, um, incredibly intelligent people to, to get nuggets, just to boil it down into usable things that I can apply. But she talks about intermittent fasting and she's a big fan, but she's very tiny to begin with and doesn't carry a ton of muscle mass and doesn't have to perform like as a football player or et cetera would. And so, plus it's beneficial for,

obviously for blood sugars, for type two diabetics, et cetera, to improve insulin sensitivity. So there are situations under which I think it would be very beneficial. For me, primarily dealing with people who are trying to retain muscle tissue or perform at a very high level with strength, I prefer to have them eat about every four hours. And, I mean, one of the reasons for that, too, is just getting in the right amount of food, right? So you're not packing it all in at the end of the day. You have it throughout the day. Well, you can pack the calories in a six-hour

window. There's nothing wrong with that in terms of weight loss or weight gain. But in terms of performance, in terms of optimizing muscle tissue repair and building, I think you do need the four-hour window. And this was in perfecting protein is something he talked about, getting 40 grams of protein

before bed even, because that would decrease the likelihood that, or increase the likelihood that you'd recover from whatever kind of training. How often do you eat on most days? Four or five times a day? Oh my God, I eat probably every three hours. I'm hungry all the time. That's another thing about the diet is, is you're never full, full because you don't have all that stuff bloating you all the time. Right. And you've increased your body temperature, which, which is going to make you hungrier faster. It's one of the things that, that Hofthorne and Brian liked so much about the diet is that an hour after eating,

they were hungry again. Right. They could eat more food more often and it didn't burn their body, burden their body. I like frequency over quantity. I don't like to stuff myself. I think the body becomes less efficient at, at utilizing that meal than if I do more frequency. Would you maybe have a slightly different strategy for somebody who's really

hungry and they're trying to lose weight? Yeah, I do that with high satiety foods. You put a little more potatoes in there, put a little more carrot in there. Uh, just use the kinds of foods that, that can keep them full longer. Any preference on the kind of potato, like some people are sweet potato. They're very similar in terms of their nutrient content. Yep. One's not better than whatever tastes better. One tastes better. That's my preference. I like the sweet potato. They're very similar in terms of their nutrient content. One's not better than the other. One tastes better. That's my preference. I like the sweet potato. And even in my program, I talk about the easiest way to

prepare it and make it taste good. I'll poke holes in it, wrap it with a wet paper towel, and I can put it in the microwave five minutes on each side. Why is that important? Because I travel and all I have is a fridge and a microwave in most hotels. And so that's the way. Otherwise it takes an hour. Otherwise it could take an hour and it stays moist.

If you wrap it in the wet paper towel and you've poked the holes in it already, then when you get it out and you poke a fork in, it's nice and soft and easy to eat. So these are, again, these are the kinds of little details. I like Japanese sweet potato. Those are really good. Yeah. I love them. Yeah. They're high in nutrients, but they will fill me up if I use too much of them.

And I like not to be full. And you, even though you're not trying to consume tons of fat, because I know that you like fat, but you're also not consuming too much of it because you don't want to slow the digestion down. You're still using like butter and things like that on some of your food. Yeah, and I use grass-fed butter. Just has better nutrient value. Um, Kerrygold is a brand they sell at Costco that that's great. Uh, and it's not too expensive.

Uh, so I, I do stick with that and ghee. I'll cook, um, my spinach and ghee I mentioned earlier, a little bit of, um, chicken stock, a little bit of salt and the spinach tastes amazing. It's not even spinach anymore at that point. Yeah.

It becomes, becomes something a little different. I've had the, uh, the honor of being able to like, you know, go back and forth through a ton, through text and email and just text bombing you whatever way I can. And then also we've been privileged here at Super Training, all the staff at Slingshot, I

had everybody here get their blood work done. I paid for everybody to get their blood work done. I paid for everybody to get their blood work done. And then I paid you $0, but you very nicely came in and helped everybody make sense of their blood work. I really appreciate that. Yeah, thanks. That'd probably be version 3.0. I've already put out version 2.0 and I'm updating everybody who bought the Vertical Diet 1.0. I sent them a version 2.0. I doubled the size of it. It's like 51 pages now with all these references and articles and stuff. But, uh, I talk about me a lot in there and a little bit, but I've got a small section, uh, where I start, I'm starting to develop the hormone thing. It's very difficult

to talk in general terms about that stuff because everybody's different. And, don't want to make any any prescriptions for anybody but I've included a couple of articles and some stuff but the version 3.0 which again everybody who bought 1.0 got 2.0 will get 3.0 as I continue to improve this offering they get it for free with the initial purchase so the 3.0 I'm going to include a lot more about the hormones and the importance of the, how to remedy those problems. The blood test information is in there, but I need to, on the back end, what do you do when you get your blood test back? How do you read these things?

Yeah, no, it's great information. Yeah. What is the vertical diet? Can you kind of sum it up for us what it is exactly? Well, the vertical diet focuses on getting highly bioavailable, The vertical diet focuses on getting highly bioavailable, diverse nutrients from a broad array of easily digestible foods. That's the foundation. I said you can't put a three-bedroom house on a two-bedroom foundation. So I build the foundation with all the vitamins and minerals that I think are necessary for all the actions in the body to give your body what it needs to do what it does best.

necessary, uh, for all the actions in the body to make, give your body what it needs to do what it does best. And then the vertical axis is really just growing calories, depending on that individual's demands. The bigger you are, the harder you train, the more you're going to need, uh, just macros, just carbs and protein, uh, usually carbs in particular. Uh, I don't, I don't push protein too high either. Hofthorne and, uh, um, Brian Shaw both weigh about 440 pounds. I've only got them at 360 in protein. And usually in our industry, we consider a gram a pound in the muscle industry to be kind of, which is more than adequate. The research that I've provided in the vertical diet shows that 0.6 to 0.8 grams per pound

Some people may need extra protein just to fill themselves up. That's true too. It's high satiety. And also as you get older, it's not as easy to assimilate protein. And so you do have to increase it. And I talk about how much to eat each meal in there. So I don't know, where were we headed with that? It doesn't matter.

We were talking about, well, we were just talking about what is the, uh, what is the vertical diet? Well, again, that gets us back to the steak and rice, which is where this whole thing started. When people started hearing just little tidbits of the diet, they didn't, they didn't see the foundation. All they saw was steak and rice. And so everybody's just jamming down steak and rice. And that's kind of where I started. Uh, I had more variety from the get-go, but 10 years ago when I trained with Flex, we focused on a lot of steak and rice. I've talked about that before we pushed up to 10 pounds. I'm sorry, about four pounds a day of steak, but, uh, I was sleeping nine hours a night. I was

training twice a day. I was eating at least eight times a day on that program. So I was able to assimilate all of that because I was using all those calories. So I got steak, rice, bison, spinach, oranges. Seems like cheese is okay. Why is cheese okay? Again, we talked about a calcium source being important for blood pressure. When you control for calcium, the sodium that you eat doesn't increase blood pressure nearly as significantly, depending on whether you're salt sensitive and even some salt sensitive people, when they get adequate calcium, which again can be improved by vitamin D and magnesium, then their blood pressure is fine.

I just had somebody email me today that three days ago, they had a 194 over, I think it was a hundred and something, 104 or something, 102 blood pressure. And I told them to increase calcium and magnesium. And three days later, they were 134 over 78 or something like that. Wow, that's a huge difference. Just three days later. I'm not saying that's going to work for everyone. Yeah.

But the problem with blood pressure is, and the scientists, the people that study this stuff will say that usually only about 10% of the time can you really identify the single source because it's usually a host of things. First and foremost is sleep. If you have sleep apnea, your blood pressure is going to be elevated. And then, you know, beyond that, you have to look at your exercise and nutrition and all that. So, and your body weight is another huge deal. Dropping body fat tends to cure all of these problems. Chicken stock is also part of the diet or bone broth. Yeah.

Right. Excellent for gut health. We talked about eggs, important whole eggs, not the egg whites, not a fan. We talked about getting the oranges and the potato. As far as the calcium source, cheese or yogurt or milk, if you can tolerate the lactose, I get raw milk at home. So I seem to digest it a little bit better. We get it out of Utah.

They, they have, they're allowed to sell raw milk. We do a co-op deal. Are probiotics worth anything? You know, they haven't turned out to be as promising as we had hoped. And now we're all on the prebiotic bandwagon. So, you know, for a while there it was DNA sequencing. It didn't do much for us. Right.

And then it was probiotics. And then we found out that there's maybe some benefits for some people some of the time. Any good news coming out of like the gut microbiome stuff? I know that like for a little bit everyone kind of jumped over that way and then now it seems like it's kind of in the middle. I can't even claim to be in the ballpark of understanding that stuff. We're many, many years or decades away from having any usable information. Some people are having some benefit, but it's in, you know, the problem with that kind of thing is, you know, with a lot of things that are going wrong, you know, even in terms of like injuries and stuff like that is spontaneous recovery. like injuries and stuff like that is

spontaneous recovery and that sometimes people just get better because they just got better and Whatever they were taking or doing at the time becomes the reason for it And so it's really hard to look at testimonials from individuals or a group of individuals You have to have some decent studies some, you know placebo controlled double-blind studies to be able to see If there's any real usable benefit out of it. I've just noticed that when I, probably more so than anything, is when I eliminate the things that aggravate my stomach, then I digest food better. Yeah. And so whether I'm on the chicken stock bandwagon or not, I'm eliminating wheat, spaghetti, pasta, you know, breads, vegetable oils. Rob Wolf preaches that too.

And that's kind of how he came along with the paleo solution. It was just, he just started eliminating food. So he kind of almost stopped eating just about everything. And he started reintroducing stuff back in and he was very sick too. That's important to note. Yeah. I think people are like, oh, the paleo diet, you don't need any carbs. It's like, you got to keep in mind he had an autoimmune disorder and he was very sick.

And a lot of people that contact me want to know if it's going to help with GERD or any leaky gut or any of these other digestive issues. And, you know, again, I'm not prescribing to fix these things, but I know that it worked for me. I know that certain things aggravate these problems. So I am cautious about over-restriction, like we kind of talked about earlier, things like the FODMAP diet or the GAPS diet. They're criticized because of too much restriction, in which case you might become micronutrient deficient.

So I'm trying to find a good middle ground here is what I've tried to do. You mentioned you don't think there's much going on with supplements. I haven't seen a lot. Here's the problem. You take something like arginine, you know, for vasodilation, well, salt does the same thing. You take something like creatine for intracellular water retention, salt does the same thing.

So they become less effective. And I've said this before, is that if you have a deficiency and you remedy it, you get a significant result. Well, whether you remedy that deficiency with a supplement or you remedy it with food, you're going to get the same result. And I just choose not to jump on the supplement that way. That's what Sean Baker said when he was on the podcast. Why are you asking me? He was the... Every time I answer a question, he's like, you know,

so-and-so already said that. I'm like, there you have it. Oh, I'm just saying people are agreeing. Yeah, Dr. Sean Baker. I'm agreeing with them. I didn't invent any of this stuff. I told you this is things that Flex told me 10 years ago, Lee Haney told him 20 years prior. And it goes back beyond, far beyond that. Yeah. I didn't invent any of this stuff. I'm not a guru. I'm, you know, I'm not the smartest guy on the block.

I've just tried to boil it all down into a, you know, a recognizable form. And sometimes, you know, at least in this country, when I was in Kuwait last week, you know, if you're a PhD, people will listen to you. You know, if you're a meat neck bodybuilder, probably not, but here in this country, being a meat neck bodybuilder has its advantages. People tend to listen to you. If you're the most jacked guy in the room, they'll listen to you. No matter how stupid you are, it doesn't matter. I want to do what that guy's doing, you know? So, uh guy's doing. Just to make sure with full disclosure that I've tried not to make it bro science and I certainly didn't invent any of it. It's a really, really effective

easy to follow, sustainable plan that I've been fortunate to have so many people grab hold of and also realize the same results that I did in my athletes have over the last few years. You don't really supplement with, uh, any sort of vitamins. The only, the only thing you mentioned was a vitamin D3, which you feel is a hormone, uh, and vitamin, vitamin K and all these other things you get. Yeah. I think the K you can get from the yolks is pretty good. There's a few other sources, not off the top of my head right now, but, uh, the K you can get from the yolks is pretty good. There's a few other sources, not off the top

of my head right now, but spinach has K1, which is very different. It doesn't convert to K2 very efficiently, but it has, you know, benefits of its own in terms of, I think it's coagulation, blood clotting. So I can't remember it all. Whey protein probably doesn't matter a lot.

You know, protein is protein. I just said if you get protein from chicken or you get protein from beef or you get protein from whey protein, that satisfies your macronutrient requirement. I'm focused on the micronutrient requirement. Whey protein doesn't provide me the iron or the B12 or the zinc that I need. And so, and I just as soon eat my food because I think that when you drink a whey protein, how does that affect your digestive enzymes? Does your HCL increase? Does the pH decrease? That doesn't do that. When you eat meat, it does.

And so I think you improve absorption as a result of those nutrients that are in there. We're kind of designed to do that. And I've said before in one of my rants is, you know, they're convenient and they taste good. And in so much as that's the case, and you have some extra cash, a supplement here and there. But I can't disclose the athlete, but, and many of them are this way and sponsored by supplement companies. But when I get hold of an athlete, I tell them shakes are for fakes, eat steaks. And when they do, their performance improves every single time and their gut health, because I don't know how I can't take in a whey protein. I don't even care

if it's a whey isolate. I can't take in a whey protein. I don't even care if it's a whey isolate. I can't take in a whey protein powder. It kills you. It irritates my stomach. And I guess some people somewhere along the way decided the more gas they had, the more effective it was. And I don't know when or where that happened. But, I mean, this goes back for me 30 years. Well, we know that from going to the Arnold Classic.

Oh, my God. It's horrific. And, you know, it goes back a long time for me. Decades ago, 30 years ago, I was distributing supplements and I was selling an egg white powder and the wives of the people that I was selling it to would tell me to quit selling it to them because they would clear out the house. Yeah. So, I mean, that stuff, I just, I just can't believe that if your body responds to something that way, that you would keep eating it, you know, unless it's kind of fun, you know? So, yeah, I think you just probably were thinking, oh, this is, uh, this

is what I should be doing. This is how it should be. It's convenient. It tastes good. Uh, beyond that, I take it out of diets. I take coffee out. I take protein powders out and people respond. What are some other things people should be looking out for in terms of, uh, things they should probably take out of their diet? Well, I mentioned most of the anti-nutrient things, the phytic acid and the lectins and beans, the enzyme inhibitors, oxalates, all those things kind of go into this general anti-nutrient kind of pile. I've talked about garlic being difficult to digest for a lot of people. Um, and then too much of something dose dependency, too many eggs, eggs, a high allergen,

uh, things like peanuts and too many peanuts. I'm not a big fan of peanut butter. I just don't think it's a good protein source or a good fat source. And necessarily, uh, I'd, I'd rather eat steak than, than have peanut butter. It's just so much more beneficial. I'd rather squat than like extension. I've said before, there's just a good, better, best scenario. And I'm trying to, to have people select, you know, optimally. Um, so I pull all those things out. Obviously I said vegetable oils. Um, those are the main things that I pull out of diets. You don't cook with like olive oil or anything like that. You cook with beef tallow you mentioned. Yeah. Cook with beef tallow. Uh, you know, there's some benefits to getting some omega threes in, but there's also greater benefit from reducing omega-6s, because you can't

really take in more than 2 grams of omega-3s a day, because that's dose-dependent as well. You take in too much, you start to have adverse effects as well. What's going on with your cooler? Cooler's still going well. The big thing is that the cooler's sport is finally getting ready to be manufactured. That's a half-gallon version. That's a smaller version, right? Yeah. That's a half gallon version. That's a smaller version, right? It's about half the size. It has a side handle that's rubber.

It's a beautiful looking product, but it also has a removable shaker bottle. But it's about half the size. It holds half a gallon. A little more convenient for people to carry around. So I'm excited that's coming about. We've also been developing an app that should be out shortly. We've used some very good programmers from Silicon Valley who've worked on some very big app programs.

Cool. I guess you know the Fitbit was originally created, as my understanding, in Japan by a guy who was just trying to track his own fitness. Right. And then it was Under Armour bought it for $400 million. That's a pretty good turn, right? Well, then I think Fitbit recently purchased an app that's a compliance software. It's an app that helps you stay on target.

And it's used mostly for doctors. And I don't remember the name of the app that they purchased, but Fitbit purchased this app. And so doctors could track things like high blood pressure, things like compliance for high blood sugars, etc. And it apparently is very effective. They have very good retention rates. And I've talked before about the had some artificial intelligence type of responses. So if people weren't complying, it would tell them, hey, and they could track that. I used that same information, the same programmers that worked on some of that same, those same apps to put together an artificial intelligence app for me or for my company. I'm partnered with Derek Molesworth, who's a PhD in biological sciences. And he and I have been working on this for some time now. And we have a great development group and they're putting together

an app that's mostly for compliance. So I give somebody a diet and then I give them a checklist, like I've talked about before, that every single day, this is what you need to do. The three 10 minute walks are tracked and whether or not you do them is compliant. It's almost like you're picking up some points. Yep. Every single time you eat a meal, you can just take a picture of the meal. Now your coach can see it. If you eat one of our meals, they're going to, in the future, have a barcode on them. You just barcode it.

Now I know exactly what all of the calories and macro and micronutrient compounds are. It'll also tie into their Fitbit tracker. So now I've got steps that they've walked, their blood pressure, how well they slept, all the things that you can track with a Fitbit, I can track on my app. So now I, as the administrator, as the trainer or the administrator, the admin, I can see every client's success or failure ratio, what they weigh in the morning, what they ate that day. It was everything, all the checklist. Did they get your daily carrot? Did you get your daily orange? Did you, you know, all this is on the list, the daily checklist. So this app is more of a compliance app. Yeah. You get a diet. Yeah. You get a training program, but how well you adhere to it and the immediate feedback to say,

oh, you forgot your vitamin D, uh, is all part of this artificial intelligence that it gets to learn the individual, what their needs are, and then helps them stay compliant. And that'll come out. Um, version one will come out here shortly within the month. That's awesome. Right about the same time we roll out the nutrition program, the vertical diet, uh, meal prep. Bill to reach a lot more people a lot faster. I think so. And more importantly, you, you accumulate so much great information. And so when you make a change, uh, you get to see how people respond to your program. And if we can get more compliance and we can get more success than the average diet, then I think it's a win. Awesome. Okay. Some more questions popping up over there?

Yeah. One selfishly in my head. So a lot of people that are on the vertical diet, everyone's saying that they're feeling better. they're getting leaner. Someone like me, I don't need to get leaner. Is the vertical diet good for some slim gyms like me? Yeah, that's what's excellent about it. The vertical axis can be built for calories and the kind of calories that your body can easily absorb. Obviously, Brian and Sean Hofthor, they use the vertical diet. They have a lot more calories in the vertical access. They'll have more meat and specifically more rice. What I found is, is when I control fats that are about a hundred grams or thereabouts, again, again, it depends on the size of the individual. Smaller people will be 75. I generally wouldn't go below that

because of the nutritive value of it. When I control fats at a reasonable level, now I can drive carbs. They only need an adequate amount of protein, a gram per pound. If you're growing, that's plenty. Now it's carbs. And I found that those guys are on between 800 and a thousand grams of carbs a day. And they can eat them and be hungry and digest them very efficiently and not be bloated and not have to run to the bathroom all the time because their body uses all of it. When I say carbs, I mean white rice. That's your vertical axis.

And so if somebody wants to gain weight, then get all of your, get your foundation built, get all of your micronutrients in, and then just start pounding away on the monster matches and you will absolutely gain more. And it's going to be good weight. It's going to be muscle. And when it comes to other carbohydrates that

he's mentioned, you know, something like a potato, again, going back to what you said earlier, it can be harder to eat a large amount of potatoes versus a large amount of rice. Or spaghetti or wheat or bread, those kinds of things will fill you up. So I keep those dose dependent in my foundation, just one potato and the rest I'm driving with white rice. Awesome. Someone else had asked, and you can get as in-depth as you want, but with the vertical diet and, you diet and prescribing a good amount of red meat, with the correlation with red meat and heart disease, what's your answer to that? Well, it's a myth, unfortunately, that's been pushed by people with agendas. Yeah.

And it's a myth. And I put at least 20 articles in the Vertical Diet that address that very specific thing by cardiologists and highly respected professionals in the industry. And again, we're back to the peer study. It showed that saturated fats, if anything, were protective of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. They're very essential. The bigger concern that people start to have is when the WHO classified it as possibly carcinogenic. And Dr. Rhonda Patrick talked about this, saying that when you control for factors that are known carcinogenic, such as smoking, obesity, drinking, etc., if you control for those and eliminate those from these studies, then there is no correlation between red meat and cancer. Also the WHO, I think has analyzed, I won't even put a number on it, but I'm sure it's hundreds, if not thousands of things. And I think only one didn't end up on the possibly carcinogenic. What is possibly carcinogenic? Air, possibly carcinogenic, you know, uh, work going to work, possibly carcinogenic? Air. Possibly carcinogenic. Yeah. You know, work.

Going to work. Possibly carcinogenic. And I'm not kidding. That's on the WHO's list of things that are possibly carcinogenic. So, you know, I take that with a grain of salt. Can I say that? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sea salt. Yeah. Pink Himalayan sea salt. A grain of pink Himalayan salt. There you go. Just one real quick question from Jake Dadia. He just wants to know what's your favorite cut of steak? Yeah, I love the bison, but I'm going to go right to steak. It's got to be a New York.

There you go. Yeah. Yeah, those are easy to just chop off that little side chunk of fat. Yeah, trim off that chunk of fat, put a little salt on there, and man, it's nothing like a good well-grilled New York steak. Hey, on that topic, in terms of convenience, as you've talked about my little thermos and all this other stuff, uh, the bison, when I have

a little, uh, a George Foreman grill. Those are, those are great. And it cooks it excellent. Tastes amazing. It takes three or four minutes to warm up and four minutes to cook and you've got a meal fresh every single time. And of course I have my, uh, rice cooker with a

delay timer on it right there. So, uh, I, And of course I have my, uh, rice cooker with a delay timer on it right there. So, uh, I, I get, I have my meals ready. You know, if I want to go out and do a meal prep, I'll cook eight bison burgers on the grill and I'll put them in Ziploc baggies and put them in the fridge. I talk about all this in, in my program as well. Uh, it's important to talk about because, um,

you know, people are like, I ain't doing that. It's a pain in the ass. Right. Right. And you want people to not only, not only do the diet, but you want them to be successful. The only way for them to be successful is for them to do the diet for at least a little while and get the hang of the foods that they're eating, get the hang of cooking and being in the routine and everything else. It has to be convenient and affordable and sustainable. And that's what all this does.

Going out to restaurants obviously would be considerably more expensive. And then who has time to cook six plus seven meals a day, you know, if you're doing one at a time. Going out to restaurants can be a little confusing. Yeah, it's so hard because they cook everything in canola oil. Yeah. Everything. Now I've been to eat with you before and you just tell them not to. Right. They'll sneak it in there anyhow. I'm sure they spit. And I'll know because I'll never make it out of the restaurant. I have to run in. I get them back though. I'm sure they spit. And I'll know, because I'll never make it out of the restaurant. I get them back, though. I wreck their bathroom. You served me canola oil, and so I'm out here with my

spackle gun, my feet levitating off the floor. So you've squatted over 800 pounds. I think your best squat was an 865 pound squat, correct? Yeah. Do you see how many people are doing 865 for reps these days? Oh, it's sick. Isn't that ridiculous? It's nuts.

We're, I mean, uh, what about like Ray Williams? What's going on with that guy? Screw Ray. These guys. It's embarrassing.

Um, Milanochev, Vlad recently. Yeah. Fuck them all. Just crushing that 1102 squat. I don't even talk about my lifts anymore.

Yeah, cause they're, it's embarrassing compared to what's going on today. Yeah. You've got women doing what I used to do. Yeah. Why are the girls so strong? I have no idea.

It's ridiculous. They're dead lifting 500 pounds and eating donuts. And hot at the same time. When did that happen? How are they so strong, hot, and eating donuts at the same time? What diet is that? I don't know. We got to figure out how to get involved in that.

What are you most proud of? Oh, my kids. I got to tell you, it's just amazing. I never thought I would. I was never intending to. All your kids, the two you live with and 17 you have around the country. All the others too, as expensive as they are, the damn baby mamas. No, I tell you it's, it's been amazing. And a lot of this. So much fun as they grow. Oh, it's incredible. And how they push me around and mistreat me. But you know, a lot of this, um, this whole transition into coaching in this industry and, uh, you know, having my kids

and, and also trying to coach them and teach them. I want them to, you know, lead by example and have them do a lot of the things that I do on them to eat well, I want them to exercise, I want them to, you know, do their homework. And it's just, uh, so rewarding not to be focused on myself anymore, you know, in my competition and my squat and whatever else that really doesn't matter in life and, and focusing them and other people's success, trying to provide information to athletes all over the world so that they can feel better, look better, compete better. I employ all of that with my kids. I'm just as diligent about that with them, leading by example and trying to set things up for them. So I'm excited.

Did you always want to have kids? Because you had kids much later on in life than most people. Yeah, I never did. I never thought I would. And, you know, fortunately I was able to. And, boy, I tell you what a blessing. I wish I'd done it much earlier because, see, my daughter's six now. It's kind of nice to have the majority of your career behind you, though.

I know you're venturing into a lot of other things now, but you had financial means that allowed you to be around for your children. Yeah. Well, both in terms of business, if you're an entrepreneur and competition, extremely time consuming and to be, to be excellent at those. And it can, it can be very challenging to try and, you know, and I said in my video about why I'm a hypocrite, because I didn't have all of these other responsibilities, children, a mortgage, you know, whenever a job, whenever I was competing for the last 10 years or so. And it afforded me the opportunity to pour everything into training. And now, you know, I've said, there's just no way. there's just no way. I'm a little more risk averse because I want to make sure I'm providing for my children and not leveraging, you know, doubling down on bets that might harm their

quality of life. And I'm more cautious with my health, lost some weight, obviously a significant amount of weight from when I was competing and try and eat better, exercise better, sleep better, just so that I can, you I can be healthier for them. But I have to stay just jacked enough so that for another 10 years, so my daughter's in high school, I can intimidate some of those little pricks that want to come over. How are you able to stay so jacked with traveling and family and jumping on podcasts? I got to tell you, that's one of the things. It's been so easy in my energy levels, et cetera, because of all these little things that I do. I'm so good at the logistics. I never miss a meal because I pack these, you know, I bring out my little

thermos or my little cornucopia. Are you flexible at all with anything? Like if someone wants to go eat somewhere, do you, do you put the Tupperware aside or you just whip that out of the restaurant? Yeah, no, there's just certain places I can and cannot eat. I always put on my Instagram Cheesecake Factory. And when I was in Kuwait, I ate at Cheesecake Factory of all places. And when I travel, I kind of use them as my meal prep. And I posted that I'll go there and I'll order. Yeah, there I am in Kuwait at Cheesecake Factory with Eddie Cohn. So what I'll do is I'll order a meal to eat there. And it's just a hamburger, patty, rice, pickles. And I just found out recently they also have chicken stock. Isn't that incredible? So I make my little meal right there. Uh, and sourdough bread, which I've said is fermented and has, uh, I think is the least

offensive of the breads out there. Right. Cause it's predigested. And then I'll order like two or three to go. And, uh, so I can go eat them at the hotel room later or whatever. So I always kind of got meal prep on the, on the fly if I run out of meals or stuff, but I try and pack enough. You saw me unload a bunch of frozen monster mashes. Plus I brought my thermos for the daytime trip. And, um, uh, tomorrow morning I'm headed over to FitCon in Utah and I'll have to stop and

grab a, you know, a rolling cooler at a rice maker. And then I'll, uh, or I'll just stop at Cheesecake Factory, order a bunch of meals and, uh, uh, heat them up and, and take them to the pit con with me. The thermoses that you're hauling around with you, do they need to be in any sort of cooler type thing or no? They're, they're concealing the heat. No, because it's hot and cold.

If you put something really cold in it, it'll keep it cold. If you put something really hot in it, they'll keep it hot. I make sure and cook the meal really, really hot. And I, I put like boiling water in the thermos to, to preset the temperature of it. And, uh, just for a few minutes. Right. And then I pour the boiling water out. I put my super hot meal in and put the cap on. And again, after six hours, I measured it, uh, and it was over 140 degrees. So somebody could have three of those and take them to work or, you know, if they had a day job or they were traveling, it's very convenient. And they went through security, no problem.

One lady did ask me to open it so she could see what it was. But other than that, they just swipe it. You're like, nothing exciting. They always pull it over and check it. They have to put their little bomb sniffer wiper on it and put it in their machine. But I never get through security without being pulled over. Do they ever tell you you just put too much salt on your food? Yeah.

They check it for sodium contents. Yeah. What do you think the biggest component of your success is after, you know, breaking multiple world records and powerlifting, being successful in business? What do you think is the biggest factor in your success? You know, I just think the planning, the logistics of the whole thing. I've always been, like, keep track of every single thing. I have a daily checklist. Everything, if it doesn't go on my calendar, it's not happening. If you tell me, Hey, Stan, can you do this? And you don't see me actually type it into my phone on my calendar.

Not going to happen. I'll forget in one minute that it ever happened. So I'm very diligent about every single thing I need to do. And then I've got this one touch rule where, um, my wife hates it. We're back to that again. Uh, where if I open up an email or a DM or something like that, if I'm going to open it, I'm going to solve that right there. I'm not going to let it languish and handle it later. And I just do the best I can right there on the

spot. Otherwise I'd never get through everything. And I can't answer them all. I've literally have had, uh, well over a thousand in just the last week. It causes a lot of, it can cause a lot of stress too. Like if you see something, you're like, I get it till later. I get, you know, and it, it just sits there and kind of lingers.

Yeah. I had this thing when I was working in business where employees would always come in and I called it monkeys on your back or turds in your pocket, however you want to put it. They'd want to come in and they want to unload something on you. And you as the boss with lots of employees, you could not burden all of the weight of all these little things. I would always make sure they left the office with their monkey or with their

turd. I didn't want it with me. So I would, it was like playing tennis. I always wanted the ball to be in their court. And then it wasn't up to me to, to, to take action on that. So I'll often do that here when I'm, yeah, they'll come in and ask me about something. I'll say, okay, well, if you do this, this, and this, then come back to me. Rather than, you know, okay, I'll take care of it. I rarely will say that.

I try and put the burden back on them or ask them to handle it. Yeah, that's why I hired you. Yeah, same thing with, you know, any email that I get. If it needs some follow-up, I ask it to be their burden. Even if it's a phone call, I tell them they need to call me rather than me call them. And that, that, you know, drastically increases the likelihood that call will happen, uh, because I might get busy and forget. Right. Picking my daughter up from school, I have to set a timer that goes off at three o'clock. So I'm, I don't accidentally, you know, lop over because

there's so many things I'm handling at once that I just want to make sure I'm not, uh, getting, uh, you know, under the weight of it, just kind of, uh, failing to, to respond and stick action. You just need to keep the balls rolling and keep kicking them, you know, and, uh, and that's probably one of my most effective methods. I think business wise, have you failed before? Yeah. Many times. Uh, and you learn a lot from those, you know, I've's probably one of my most effective methods, I think. Business-wise, have you failed before? Yeah, many times. And you learn a lot from those. You know, I've tried to start a number of companies that haven't turned out well. Mostly when you aren't in control of it.

You know, when somebody else is running it, it's not their money. They tend to make really poor decisions and, uh, and you end up having the burden of continuing to pay the bills. And so, yeah, that's why I've never gone into business with anybody else. I was, I'm always, you know, gun shy on that. I'm like, that's going to be frustrating for me. I can already tell it to be, you know, even if it's somebody I really get along with really well, I'm just kind of immediately thinking like, as soon as we exchange money, shit's going to get weird. Yeah, it always does. Yeah. You just, you got to make sure that everybody's kind of thinking the same and on the same path, but

more so than that, you got to make sure that you're involved in it. If somebody, uh, you know, is running it for you and they're not paying the bills, completely changes. If they don't have any skin in the game, then they're not going to. This is a exciting time for you. I mean, you've had standefforting.com for a long time. Yeah. But there's probably been a huge spike in the amount of people that have gone to it over the last couple of weeks from launching the vertical diet, right? Oh, it was crazy. Yeah.

Again, I used to just handle my clients. Yeah. And I had so many requests ever since, I think, posting that video in Iceland of my seminar. I'm really surprised you didn't just use an eggplant sticking straight up in the air for your logo. You know, one of the things that people often say, you know, is why do you give up so much information for free? And, you know, the, the thought is, is that, that people wouldn't need to, um, you know, to purchase my diet if I've given it all to them already on my rants or in my, in my videos or in these, uh, uh, podcasts, et cetera. So, but I believe just the opposite. I think if you give people a lot of information, uh, that they'll want more. Yeah.

Well, because you become a resource and a specialist to them and they, and they want to, they want to continue to learn more and they want to, they want to have something they can reference. Yeah. Well, because you become a resource and a specialist to them and they, and they want to, they want to continue to learn more and they want to, they want to have something they can reference. Yeah. And I have the time, I have taken the time. I told you I read, I'm just a voracious reader every day. I'm watching videos and reading research, et cetera. And I have the time to do that. And most people don't. Mm-hmm.

Uh, and so when I can, can spend that many hours and then kind of boil that down into something that I can give them kind of the way that, uh, Greg Knuckles, uh, does for us. Um, I, you know, I grabbed from what he's producing and what other people in the industry producing and, uh, watching videos and feedback. I'm getting experience from my clients. Even I learn a lot from them. I ask a lot of questions. When I go do a seminar, I asked the people that came and paid, uh, to be at the seminar to, to email me for the vertical diet. I give them, we have that to them as part of their attending the seminar. Uh, and so they email me, I send them the vertical diet. And then I also ask them to critique my seminar. Tell me what you learned, what was good, what was bad, what I

should change. And I get great feedback from them all the time. That's great. Yeah. And so I try and incorporate that same with the vertical diet. Uh, I reach out to people that have purchased the program and I ask them, Hey, what would you like to see included in this? Or all of the questions that I got asked over the last week, I've already tried to answer most of those and include it into the version two, which I just re-sent out. It's 51 pages of stuff along with all the articles and references. But a lot of what went into that was questions,

a lot of like the things you just asked today are things that I'll put in there and then send it out. And there'll be a version three and there'll be a version four and version five. And I'll just keep giving that information to people who are with the program. Keep learning, keep spitting out new information. Yeah.

The last time, you know, I've been getting my blood work done religiously and then spitting it over to you and you've been sharing some information. I think it was my TSH. Is that right? Yeah. Your thyroid stimulating hormones. I experienced the same thing. That's something about a lot of what I do is if I haven't personally experienced it or

didn't benefit from it, then I try not to talk about it. People ask me about, you know, smoking pot before bed. I can't help you there. CBD oil, whatever else, you know, it's not my place. So the TSH, I had the same problem. When your thyroid stimulating hormone is elevated, your pituitary releases it to tell the thyroid gland to release thyroid. And if your thyroid's not working very well, then thyroid stimulating hormone, it's kind of like yelling at a person with a hearing aid. We just keep yelling louder and louder and louder, right? But the problem is that the hearing aids turn down and you need to turn the hearing aid up. And once you do that, and in my case, it was with iodine, then the hearing aid turns up. All of a sudden the thing starts working efficiently and the TSH stops having to scream. It starts

coming down. And mine had significantly elevated as double normal, I think. And I brought it down to where it was in the bottom quarter because of just putting in iodine. And that happened over a three week period. At least I know from the blood tests that it was three weeks between the time I discovered I got the results of the high TSH, implemented the iodine and took another blood test and that the problem was remedied. And my energy also improved.

So you do realize immediate benefits from a lot of the things that are in the program that I've personally experienced. So hence the cranberry juice. Yeah. Yeah. I've been, I've been doing the,

well, I did iodine for a little bit until I got ahold of the cranberry juice. Now I'm just mainly doing the cranberry. And iodine's fine, but the cranberry juice has so many other benefits. Again, biggest return on your investment squats, better than the leg extension.

I'm trying to get as much as I can out of each of these nutrients that I'm offering. Well, there's some fructose in it as well. Absolutely. And tannins protects the urinary tract. I should say that I attached a couple of great articles for that as well. I was buying cranberry juice the other day with some like 85-year-old woman in front of me buying the exact same thing. I was like, I should get a picture of this. Well, and here's the tough thing. It doesn't prevent urinary tract inventions or infections. It can help, or I'm sorry, it doesn't cure them.

Right. It can help decrease the incidence for younger women, not older. But there are other benefits, the polyphenols, et cetera, for the system. So I just think it's a better choice. I like whole foods over supplements. Yeah. So that's why I threw that one in there. All right.

Awesome. I'm always having Stan here to fucking inform us and let us know what the hell's going on around here. Are we wrapping up? We didn't even get a chance to talk about the vertical diet, did we? Available at stanefferding.com. There you go. Vertical diet. Oh my God.

I think we forgot. We need to start over. That's why I came here. We could just do a whole 10 minute walk just saying the vertical diet, the vertical diet, the vertical diet

for 10 minutes and we'll be fine. We'll call it the BVD, the big vertical diet. This whole thing started between Stan and I from me hitting him up with an email or a message or something on YouTube.

I can't even remember exactly what it was. Um, he and I met, he came in a super training gym. We had lunch. He gave me five grand in cash. I never had anybody give me that kind of money before. So I obviously slid underneath the table and performed the job that he was looking for. He was satisfied with that work. Stan went from a 2050 total to totaling over 2,300 pounds.

And the rest is history. You know, I've, I feel honored to have him as a friend. It's been great having him around. He's somebody who's inspired me. When I met him, I was fat and fucking broke. Now I'm not. And you, you've been a huge inspiration inspired me. When I met him, I was fat and fucking broke. Now I'm not. And you've been a huge inspiration to me and a lot of the guys here at the gym. Always appreciate you.

And every time you come around, it doesn't matter if you're bigger or you're smaller. You're always strong. You're always throwing around some good weights. And so we appreciate having you around, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. Quite a journey. This is probably where you're supposed to say a couple nice things about me.

I don't have anything to say. Thanks, but you're... Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. See you guys later.