0 (1s): Coming up on the get lean eat clean podcast, 1 (4s): Protein has a tremendous, what do they call it? A metabolic cost where it's up to about 25% of the protein calories that you ingest are devoted to digesting and assimilating the protein you just ate. So if you have like envisioned four eggs, one of those eggs is used just to process the other three eggs. And so the argument for having a high protein or higher protein diet to promote a fat reduction is really strong and really successful because the protein foods are highly satiating, right? When you have steak and eggs and salmon, you're not wandering right around the house, looking for a snack later. 1 (46s): And so you feel comfortable, it's sustainable. And if you consume additional protein calories, they're not going to contribute to adding body fat because they're not used for that. They're used for basic metabolic function and muscle repair, protein synthesis, all this great stuff. And so that's kind of a free pass for people who have trouble adhering to whatever restrictive diet they're following. 0 (1m 12s): Hello, and welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. I'm Brian grin, and I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it once was five, 10, even 15 years ago each week. I'll give you an in-depth interview with a health expert from around the world to cut through the fluff and get you long-term sustainable results. This week bred Kearns, and I did a special dual podcast to discuss many topics surrounding optimizing health. In the modern world. We touched on the advantages and disadvantages of low carb fasting, cold thermogenesis, protein high-intensity exercise, and much, much more. I really enjoyed sitting down with Brad who hosts the bee rad podcast and has written over 20 bucks on a diet health, peak performance and ancestral living. 0 (2m 2s): Brad's a popular speaker retreat hosts. And at one point was the number three professional triathlete in the world. I really enjoyed sitting down with Brad. I hope you do too. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All right, welcome in. We're doing a dual podcast with my good friend, Brad Kearns and Brian grin with the get lean deep clean podcast and the be read podcast combined. I couldn't think of a name to combine both of them. So 1 (2m 29s): Be radically clean lane, everything else, but it is great to catch up. Cause we, we talk a lot offline and we were sorting out all the information that we're hit with constantly because we live and breathe this stuff. Unlike most people who have all kinds of other obligations in life and we're trying to make sense of it. And I think one thing that we're doing a good job with our shows is to bring that practical aspect to it, not get too sciency, right? And neither of us are standing here saying my research in my laboratory shows that this and that is a better protocol. So I think that's important because so many people, especially my friends that, you know, are not immersed in health and fitness. 1 (3m 15s): They can't be bothered with all these nuances and details and especially the controversy and the disagreement and which fasting window is better and all that stuff. I think we always have to start the conversation with that sensibility to say, Hey, have you, have you cleaned up your diet yet? Are you, are you eating clean or not? 0 (3m 33s): Yes. I think it's easy to get caught up in the nuances, especially for me and you, because we're listening to this stuff or reading about it every day for individuals who don't, I think like you said, they just want to know what to do, how it affects them and that's, that's it. So I think one thing I like about your podcast and I am a avid listener is the, how practical you, you, you know, your practical applications of what you hear from your guests and how it can work for your listeners and how you've sort of adapted through the years and added your, your 2 cents, whether that works for other people. That's great. If not, that's no big deal either, but I think that one thing that both of us both agree upon is what works for, for like having compliance. 0 (4m 18s): And long-term sustainability, I think is the most important thing because we can bring like a scientist who specializes in, you know, he's been studying protein for, I just had Dr. Don layman on, I haven't published it yet, but you know, he's been studying protein for 30 years and he has all this take about it. But, you know, I think it comes down to just really self experimentation. I just keep coming back to that. 1 (4m 41s): So you're also speaking for results with your clients and listeners and you know, community. So that self experimentation. Yeah, that, that really resonates because I think as we progress further and further with the knowledge and information, and now everything's easily accessible and we try to make these sweeping conclusions that we used to traffic in, in the old days. Cause we kind of had to, you know, you had to make a food pyramid if you're with the us government, like how do we tell people to eat? Here's what everyone should eat. Of course, that stuff is nonsense. But now when we're highly refined, we still might have this error of trying to make sweeping conclusions for everybody and witnessed the popularity of things like the ketogenic diet, intermittent, fasting, all these things that have now been second guessing recently on my show. 1 (5m 31s): And I know we're going to hit some of those talking points and get your input on that. But how can you argue with that? I mean, you're going to have the next thousand podcasts. I don't think anyone would second guess the idea that you should self experiment. 0 (5m 46s): Yeah. I think that the one thing that holds people back from and hold myself back sometimes for trying things on myself is patience. I think if we're so used to doing something like I know we talked about maybe a month back about, you know, fasting and low carb and how, you know, I've been doing that for so long. And I'm like, okay, you know what, maybe I'll, I'll try implementing some type of adding more carbs in healthy whole food carbs back into the diet and cutting back fasting a little bit. And I found myself and I, and I have done a little bit of that, but I think the one thing that holds me back from doing the self experimentation is being patient and adding in those things and seeing how, you know, the outcomes that can come from that. 1 (6m 29s): So by patient, you mean seeing the experiment out for an appropriate amount of time? Yeah. So what do you think is a good time period to bring in a new test? 0 (6m 43s): Well, I think, and you mentioned it in your last podcast, you talked about like elimination diet, the ultimate elimination diet, which would be like just full on carnivore for like 30 days. I think 30 days would be a good window of time. I don't know about you. I know you've been implementing some new, like print eating principles into your routine, and I know you're going to report back. What do you think about a month of trying something and then seeing how that affects, you know, your blood work, you know, your energy, et cetera. 1 (7m 17s): Yeah. I mean, there's good research showing that in a few weeks you can get out of pre-diabetic risk factor zone. So just modifying the diet for a brief period of time and you go in and do new blood work. And unfortunately we're used to like the annual checkup and the doctor draws blood and runs a CBC and that's it. And I've navigated in the traditional medical system here with my wife's wonderful healthcare and wonderful comprehensive coverage. But you know, you gotta fight tooth and nail just to add on like, you know, she's about to come in for a blood work. I say, add, add fasting and someone on there add vitamin D and high sensitivity C-reactive protein. And they're like, why, why does she need that? 1 (7m 57s): I'm like, because they're super important. And they're the best markers for inflammation, metabolic, health, whatever, whatever. And you're going back and forth and like, same for me. I'm like, can you add testosterone free testosterone and sex hormone binding globulin into my annual, what for, are you low testosterone? I'm like, well, I don't know. I want to test it, come on, people throw it in there. It's super important. But 0 (8m 17s): Well, this is you asking your physician to, to, to, to write up for blood work. 1 (8m 22s): Yeah. And what's so great is now we have these resources at our disposal. I just got involved with Merrick health, marital laboratories, and they have incredible concierge consulting program where they will recommend which labs to do, evaluate the results with you. And then if you need some further like medical consultation or perhaps prescription everything's encompassed here where you're, you're bypassing all the nonsense in the mainstream medical protocol, especially when your mainstream physician is looking at the normal ranges that have been established on the sorriest ass unfit sick population in the history of humanity Americans today are the fattest sickest population that's ever walked on the face of the earth with, I believe it's over two thirds now, like 67% are in the high risk metabolic category classified as overweight or obese and then half of them. 1 (9m 21s): So that's a third of all. Americans are in the obese category where their, their extra body fat is directly compromising their health immediately. So when I'm looking at the ranges, like for testosterone, for example, if I'm not in the 95 percentile, I feel like there's a problem. And I've said this on one of the shows before, when I was reporting my blood results. I'm like, you know, while I'm patting myself on the back so hard, I have to remember that when we're looking at these percentiles and I'm in the 95th percentile, I'm competing against a bunch of pathetic softies that represent average citizens. And so when you have a concierge where there's a health, sports, performance minded, individual, looking after you, they can sort out the difference between what is quote unquote normal. 1 (10m 10s): I have a great book that I resource a lot called the vitamin D solution by Dr. Michael Holick. And he's one of the world's leading experts on vitamin D health. He contends that he wants to see people up in the 60 nanogram per milliliter zone, 60, 70 numbers like that. Where if you come back with your blood tests and it says 30, you just made it into the normal range, but that could put you that's, that's very concerning for a vitamin D advocate that your vitamin D is desperately low. And most people suffer from vitamin D deficiency because we don't get enough sun exposure. And it's very difficult to get your vitamin D needs met by diet, even if you're channeling a lot of the oily cold water fish and the other that's really the only high vitamin D foods is the omega-3 fish and everything else is pales in comparison to a single sunbathing session, you know, on a warm summer day. 0 (11m 1s): Yeah. It's interesting. You bring up miracle health and I actually ordered a report and an analysis for myself and my wife last week. And this is obviously not covered under insurance. This is, you know, just over the counter, you're paying for this, but, but I'm curious. Yeah, I'll, I'll report back and let you know how that goes, but I think that's a sort of a good place to start because with all the talk about, you know, you know, what to eat when to eat or, or, you know, I don't know when to exercise so on and so forth. I think you got to just have a baseline, like, you know, you talk about, I know you talked with Jay about all these stressors and you know, is it too much, are these redundant pathways? 0 (11m 46s): Is it, you know, you're doing, you're stacking all these different things. And I would imagine that most people aren't stacking all these things in ones like maybe you and meek did it. You know, you're not there are they fast and cold exposure, warm therapy or war war, you know, sauna, fasting, maybe people are doing that. But I would say majority of the population is not, but maybe before, even that you should go get a good comprehensive blood panel taken using Merrick health. Obviously there's other companies as well, but where you can, you know, test their cortisol and fasting insulin and vitamin D and you know, so on and so forth. And, you know, you know, all your Lear lipid panel and your free T3 and free T4 and testosterone. 0 (12m 29s): And, and then like we talked about take a month and make that change that you think might be optimal for you and come back and retest and see if it's really making a difference. 1 (12m 43s): Well, you opened up some really good talking threads there, and you're speaking of Jay Feldman energy balanced podcast and his, he, he promotes this bioenergetic model of health where he wants you to be fully fueled and have the cells fully energized at all times to minimize the stress of your metabolic and overall human function. And he contends. And it's an excellent point that there's not too many people these days who are minimally stressed or insufficiently stressed, because we have this chronic type of stress that is endemic to modern life, where we're engaging with the screen too frequently. 1 (13m 25s): We're ruminating, we're suffering from depression, anxiety, things related to the, the, the pandemic and things related to just dealing with relationships, jobs, traffic, consumerism, you know, all of these kinds of things are hitting us. And then many people are in that active, highly motivated category where they're layering on other distinct stressors, like high intensity exercise, stretching the orange band with the X three bar jumping in the cold water, doing that crazy stuff. But even the basic person is under a lot of stress. And so to contemplate these other stress orders like intermittent fasting or ketogenic macronutrients, where you're cutting carbs extremely, it has to be done properly and thoughtfully. 1 (14m 14s): And I think there is a risk that we haven't acknowledged sufficiently that these, these restrictive diets can be yet another form of stress compounded onto the many other stressors in daily life. 0 (14m 30s): Yeah, no, and I, I listened to your, your interviews with him and obviously a bright guy done a ton of research. So there's a lot of validity behind it. I'm, I'm curious, you know, when it comes to these stressors, you know, I just had, and he's, you'd be a great guy to get on your podcast. Ivy Greenberg, he's a breath work coach. He worked under Wim Hoff his method for a while. He sort of has his own way of doing it. There's many ways of doing breath work. I've actually worked with him. I did a session with him last night for an hour. Yeah, we do it over zoom. I've done it for the last three weeks. And my wife and I were doing it. 0 (15m 10s): She, she couldn't do it last night. So it was just me and him. And I am telling you, this is an hour. You know, this is my 50 minutes of breath work. And most people are like, gosh, how do you do that for 50 minutes? It goes by, you don't even know you're pretty much almost falling asleep. And you want to just talk about a transformation in that 50 minutes of just almost euphoric, but also feeling like, okay, like you can, I can fall asleep in the, in the, in the, you know, in the snap of a finger. And so I guess where I'm going to, this is I'm, I, I like these stressors and ABI. And I talked about in the podcast because I think I like them for, for most people, obviously, like you said, if you're, if, if, if you, what if daily overstressed lifestyle that you have and you feel like you don't want to stack, that's fine. 0 (16m 1s): But like for someone who has their, you know, their stuff in order, and they're doing breath work and doing other things to counteract, maybe fasting or cold therapy, I think as long as you can find a balance, I think, I think they can be beneficial. And, and, and when you do cold therapy, let's just use that as example, going to the cold for, I know you do a bread, you learn how to utilize your breath. You learn how to deal with those moments where maybe you're not comfortable. And I think that resiliency can be, can be applied to when you're driving in the car and someone cuts you off, and now you have to focus on your breath and, and it, it gets you out of that fight or flight mode that normally you would be under if you didn't do those, those things that, that prepared you for it. 1 (16m 49s): Yeah. I think what we're looking at today is too much of the chronic stressors and then a gross insufficiency in the appropriately brief fight or flight stressors that make us more strong, resilient, focused, energized, and so forth. And so liver king, the, the Instagram sensation. Now my buddy Brian Johnson that I worked together with at ancestral supplements, he makes a huge point of saying modern humans have gone soft. We're lazy. We're, we're in temperature controlled environments all the time. And so we got to reawaken our ancestral spirit and do these crazy workouts and jump in the cold water and, and so on and so forth, get away from EMS and all the chronic stressors. 1 (17m 34s): And that's a really important point to distinguish between where are you overstressed in, in the chronic categories, and then where have you gone soft and where can you kind of reawaken some of that fighting spirit and cold exposure is the best example because I'll go in lake Tahoe or in my chest freezer in Sacramento for the chest freezers, you know, one to three minutes lake Tahoe in the winters, one to two minutes, probably when it's at its lowest 42 degree Fahrenheit. My chest freezer is 38 degrees Fahrenheit, but it's way more difficult to go cold immersion into a big body of water where the water is moving, or you're moving through the water than it is to sit in a confined space where you immediately start warming up the water in the middle interesting side note. 0 (18m 18s): You're saying it's more difficult in the, just going in a freezer than going like, 1 (18m 22s): Yeah, no, no, no. It's more difficult going in the lake. Like, I, I, I have sat in the chest freezer for six minutes to set a record at 38 degrees. Not that I'm recommending that. And I don't do that myself. I do much less, but you know, I'm trying to push my outer limits and explore the practice of cold thermogenesis and report back for everybody. And so that's my longest in there. And interestingly in 42 degree in lake Tahoe in one to two minutes, I'm experiencing the time to get out, right? My brain says, okay, man, you're getting cold. Get the heck outta here. And the difference is that that moving water is much colder than when you sit and basically form a film around your body of warmth because you're emanating 98.6 degree body heat into the water. 1 (19m 10s): And so as Dr. Huberman recommends to, when you're sitting in a confined space, like a tub, you want to constantly move your limbs and Bob around the whole time. And it's much colder that way. And you get a much more, you know, authentic experience. So you're, so, you know, we used to do, 0 (19m 28s): I would think you can, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I would think you'd be, it'd be easier in a lake only because you're like, aren't you like sort of swimming and treading water and moving as opposed to just sitting in a, you know, cause I have a cold plunge in my house and it, you know, you're just sitting there not creating any movement or body heat from that. So 1 (19m 47s): Yeah, go, go to lake Michigan, man, try it out and compare times. But it's really interesting. The, the effect of warming the water around you is profound when the, when the space is confined. And so as soon as you do so much as like wiggle your legs around, you immediately get a sensation that it's much colder and less comfortable. So if you're in a small space, move around frequently and then, you know, imagine like being in a, a rushing river where the current is coming down and snow melt and it's in the forties, that would be the most, you know, the most severe because the water is hitting you aggressively. And so all told all this, this whole practice of cold exposure, you want the stressor to be appropriately brief. 1 (20m 32s): So it doesn't wear you down and contribute to your hectic stressful day. And that's the part where we're, you know, generally deficient in now when it comes to fasting or keto or these wonderful restrictive diets that have delivered so many results to so many people, I'm rethinking a lot of the, a lot of the, the, the boiler plate talk. One thing that comes to mind is that the success of these diets could be largely driven by what you eliminate rather than the magic of cutting your carbs to 50 grams a day, or the magic of not eating until 12 noon or eating in a compressed time window, Dr. 1 (21m 16s): Peter Attia, who does not make proclamations without a lot of science and a lot of thought he's, he reveals that the benefits of time-restricted feeding for fat reduction are entirely due to a consequence caloric restriction, rather than any magic of tightening up your eating window and the work of Dr. Panda where this time restricted feeding became popular. He found that rats in the laboratory did better metabolically. They lost more weight when they were limiting their feeding times versus rats that were allowed to eat all day long, even though they had the same calories. And so that's everyone, he extrapolated that to saying, Hey, if you can tighten up your eating window, you're gonna lose weight. 1 (21m 59s): And it's just simply not playing out with humans. And so it's not to discount the benefits and the power of, for example, establishing rules and guidelines, like a time restricted eating window, or, you know, cutting your carbs to go keto. But these are just, I guess you could call them gimmicks. If you want to be impolite, they're just mechanisms to achieve a result. That's better than this unfettered access to indulgent foods that we experience in modern life. But if that's the only reason or the main reason that they're working, then it's like, wait a second. You know, how can I look at this picture a little differently? You know, get, put the magic wand away and say, what is, you know, what is the optimal strategy here to have the most energy be the most active maintain muscle mass throughout life? 1 (22m 48s): And yes, I want to drop some excess body fat and then we're sort of looking down different pathways and different possibilities. 0 (22m 56s): Yeah. And I think it goes back to, like I said before, maybe tracking, cause I started doing this. I never really like tracked my macros counting calories per se. But perhaps if you haven't, it's time to do that, just to see where you're at, because I, one thing I noticed in bread, I don't know about you, but are you tracking your protein intake? Are you see, you know, are you seeing, you know, your macro count and, and, and cause I know you've made some adjustments over the last month or so, and cause I think, you know, you can talk, we can talk to we're blue in the face about all this stuff. Like for me, I've probably been low carb for so long. I don't even think about it. 0 (23m 37s): And, but I don't think, you know, where, you know, you don't know anything until you're actually tracking what you're doing. 1 (23m 45s): Well, I'll answer the question. And I'll also say that the mere act of tracking all of a sudden puts you into from, from the average category to bad-ass because just by bringing more awareness into your dietary habits or, you know, we tell athletes, exercisers, keep a fitness log and write down what you do. And so all of a sudden you're more aligned with a structured, measured approach quantifiable. And so you're, you're doing yourself a huge benefit just by getting out a piece of paper and writing down what you eat for a week and reflecting on it or, you know, seeking the advice of an expert or what have you. I've done so much tracking with mark Sisson for our books over the years that I'm like, I'm over it. 1 (24m 26s): I don't do a lot of tracking. I don't do any anymore. I have a general notion, but we've done so many macro nutrient reports and charts in the books. It's like at a certain point, you want to graduate and just enjoy your life and try to optimize. But I will say, you know, my experiments three months into it, we'll talk about it shortly. But Ryan Baxter, who's a primal health coach on the east coast. He engineer by trade. He is very, very methodically, tracked his caloric intake on spreadsheet for a number of years. And he performed an experiment over a year ago. Now he has a year of data where his experiment was to consume an additional 600 calories per day from his previous records going back years. 1 (25m 13s): And so he wanted to see what would happen when you get fat. Of course he's going to get fat, right? That's what all the science says, you're eating 600 more calories a day and doing similar workout regimen and trying to keep the variables tight. Right? So a year later he weighed the same, same body composition. So we wonder what's going on there. And what's going on. There is he was, and these are a hundred percent 99% nutritious calories, right? So if you go and consume an extra Slurpee every day for a month, you're going to get fat. And we'll talk about the difference between processed foods and nutritious foods. So he's having 600 additional calories, nutritious calories every day, weighing the same a year later, what happened over that year? 1 (25m 54s): Guess what? He was more active. He got better performance, faster recovery turned up, these other very important dials like reproductive libido, right? Immune function probably didn't get sick or, you know, have some of those fallouts that extreme exercisers can experience when they're not eating enough. And so that's a really wonderful experiment to, to reference because it was so tight and iron clad. And so you gotta wonder, wow. I mean, yeah, that's mind blowing really. 0 (26m 27s): That's interesting. And I'm sure he's not the only person that this has happened to obviously, but I think it goes back to like, you know, you, you back in the day track and now you don't want to, but I think for the average individual, I think it'd be good to go onto there's so many apps, right? My fitness pal or chronometer, and just at least if anything, track for a couple of weeks and see, you know, cause it can be an eyeopening experience. I will say for me, who, who, you know, for a while and for, I don't know, probably the last few years it's been two meals, but I noticed that I was just probably under eating a bit and not getting enough protein. Even though I added an animal meats where I wasn't eating animal meats for a while there, I was like a pescatarian. 0 (27m 12s): This was like three years ago, two, three years ago. But anyways, you know, I'm 170 pounds. So let's say I aim for 150 to 170 pounds, 70 grams of protein. I was probably, gosh, I can look at it now. Like even, you know, I was probably averaging a hundred grams a day, You know, I could be, I could be like a Ryan Baxter, I bet. And probably hike up my calorie count by 600 for her year. And probably my weight would stay the same. And you know, maybe I would have better markers, but again, I won't know until I'm actually next week. So maybe we can do a rebroadcast down or a new broadcast down the line and see where I'm at after my blood work, you know, six months later let's say, but I'm going to get blood work done. 0 (28m 4s): And I, and I got it actually through, had ordered it through miracle health. Cause I, I, I, I heard about them through a salad Dino so 1 (28m 13s): Well interesting there protein has a tremendous, what do they call it? A metabolic cost where it's up to about 25% of the protein calories that you ingest are devoted to digesting and assimilating the protein you just ate. So if you have like envisioned four eggs, one of those eggs is used just to process the other three eggs. And so the argument for having a high protein or higher protein diet to promote fat reduction is really strong and really successful because the protein foods are highly satiating, right? When you have steak and eggs and salmon, you're not wandering right around the house looking for a snack later. 1 (28m 58s): And so you feel comfortable, it's sustainable. And if you consume additional protein calories, they're not going to contribute to adding body fat because they're not used for that. They're used for basic metabolic function and muscle repair, protein synthesis, all this great stuff. And so that's kind of a free pass for people who have trouble adhering to whatever restrictive diet they're following as you hit that protein hard. Now, so many people have backed off from the early commentary that be careful of eating too much protein. It will stress your livers and kidney, and it will be converted into sugar via gluconeogenesis. And we even read some of those wrote some of that stuff in books from years past. 1 (29m 41s): And now that whole story has been refuted where gluconeogenesis is a, a demand driven process. That means it's only going to happen if you desperately need glucose. Gluconeogenesis is the conversion of amino acids, either lean muscle mass or ingested protein into glucose for energy needs. So when you're starving, when you're doing keto, you're going to kickstart this mechanism. But people were afraid that if they had too many steaks, it would be converted into sugar and then stored as fat. And that's just not how not how the body works. So that's kind of, if you're starting and envisioning an optimal diet, it always starts with protein. That's the survival food, right? 1 (30m 23s): Rob Wolf's epic quote, one of the favorites one-liners I've ever heard on hundreds of podcasts episodes. He says, if you want to live longer, lift more weights and eat more protein. And there's a lot behind that, but it's basically talking about maintaining that functional lean muscle mass throughout life as the number one key to longevity. 0 (30m 44s): Well, the question is, can you get enough protein in two meals? 1 (30m 47s): Yeah. I hear people talking about that a lot. And I also hear people talking about how you can only process 30 grams at a time or something like that. And I'm not sure what to think of that, but it is a good question to say, how do I get, especially someone who's active like you and is looking for that one gram per pound. That's a simple takeaway for, for all listeners that a lot of experts are pointing out now is, and that's much higher than you've heard of the U S RDA or these, these recommendations that you can find online. Like if you type in something into Google, like protein needs. So those protein requirements, daily requirements are first survival, so they don't die. 1 (31m 29s): So you don't lose your hair and waste away. That's a whole lot different than what's optimal. And the experts like Dr. Paul Saladino carnivore leader, and many others are saying, you know, go for a gram per pound. It's a gram per pound of your ideal body weight. It's not gram per pound of lean mass or 0.7 gram per pound of lean mass was what the Quito boiler plate has been for a long time. Because again, keto, people were worried that too much protein would kick you out of ketosis. And so all this stuff is kind of old news. I would say it's flawed and dated in many ways. And if you can make sure that you maximize protein, that's when you're going to be functioning at your best and avoiding some of these weird symptoms like cold hands and feet, or, you know, difficulty recovering from workouts. 1 (32m 20s): Chris Kresser talks a lot about when you're protein deficient, guess what's going to happen. Hey, you're going to feel like shit and B, you're going to have intense cravings for high protein foods. Cause that's just how the body works. Females report those weird cravings happening during pregnancy. And it's not, you really have to mess yourself up to get into a prolonged protein deficiency. But again, in your case like, Hey, Brian feels fine. He does his awesome workout. So we can see him on Instagram. He looks like a fit guy, but what's optimal could be bumping up from whatever you were getting 100 to one 20 up to one 70 or even more. 0 (32m 58s): Yeah, I think for me, if I, if in order to get, let's just say 170 grams, I would need to do that through product through three meals, which I've experimented a little bit with there. I haven't probably done it long enough to, you know, definitely it helps. I, I had a conversation with Robert Sykes a few times, 1 (33m 18s): Quito expert has been maintaining high, high, muscular physique for a long time. 0 (33m 25s): The Quito natural bodybuilder, you know, and he's got a company, Quito bricks, and he's like, well, he's like, if you need to up your calories and protein and fat and you know, he's like try the keto bricks. And I I've, I've had the keto bricks on and off for years and I ordered more and it is, that is an easy, easy way of getting it. And if, if you know, so I've been experimenting with that a little bit, cause that's a thousand grams. That's a thousand grams of protein. I'm excuse me, a thousand calories. And I think there's about 33 grams of protein per brick. So that's an option. But one of the th one of the takeaways I took from interviewing the protein expert, Don layman was he's like, protein's important. 0 (34m 8s): But what, what also is really important is the amino acids and Lucy, and he talked about leucine three grams per meal was one of the notes I got from that. And certain, you know, obviously fish meat, eggs way has a high amount of leucine. I'm sure you're maybe familiar with that because you have a protein whey protein coming out. 1 (34m 32s): Yeah. Th the whey protein supplement is a great way to ensure that you're getting your protein needs met every day. Do you need to take a supplement? Of course not. And whole foods are always going to outrank. You know, even my precious Oregon supplements, they're easy, they're convenient. I take them every day and it helps fill in the gaps when I'm not slaving over the stove, cooking up heart, kidney and liver every single day, which I probably should be. And I'm trying to up my liver game in terms of, I put the chunks of frozen liver into that protein smoothie. So it's kind of a, it's a high protein, high, fat, high carbohydrate smoothie that gives me everything I need. And I'm now doing it first thing in the morning. 1 (35m 12s): But before we, before we move on to that, there's another point about these tools, these restrictive diets and the benefits you get. I said that largely from what you eliminate. And I think the main thing that we need to get away from, by any means necessary is the, the process food. 0 (35m 33s): Oh, okay. 1 (35m 35s): And that is the key. Before we start talking about anything else about how many meals a day we're choosing or what our macros are or what, what, what's the next diet that we're going to pursue. If there's, if there's any strategy that'll help you stay away from the refined industrial seed oils and the refined carbohydrates. That's the, that's the gateway to dreaming of better health and better body composition. And if that's not happening and you're doing a half-ass job, then we might as well not talk about anything else. 0 (36m 10s): I agree. I agree. Although you'll have some people who are all about calories say, well, as long as you just restrict calories, a certain amount than you'll be better off, no matter where the meals are coming from. 1 (36m 27s): I know that Twinkie diet guy have you heard of that? Some, some scientists decided to test this theory. And so he calculated, you know, how many calories he burns every day and then went on this Twinkie diet and lost 20 pounds in short order because he only ate whatever a thousand calories of Twinkies. And it was burning 2000 a day or whatever. And we also know from television shows like the biggest loser that all these different strategies will be effective, but then we are very likely to experience a rebound effect. And one of the rebound effects of starvation diets or nutrient deficient diets is these intense cravings. And that lasts for weeks, months, or years. 1 (37m 8s): And the data on the biggest loser participants virtually every one of them, six years later, still revealed signs of metabolic damage from the ordeal that they went through that only lasted six weeks or whatever. They were torched for six years because they were trained so hard and struggled and suffered so much in restricted calories. And they became eating machines afterward. And almost all of them gained all that weight back. And we're talking about a lot of weight with the participants on that show. So that's a pretty tragic consequence of doing it the wrong way. 0 (37m 43s): Yeah. I mean, you have these two camps, you have the car and we don't have to get into all this. And I want to hear about your new routine, but you have the carbon sullen argument, you know, these high-glycemic high sugar foods or vers that are causing you to get fat versus the, almost like this energy balance of calories in calories out. And I think they'll always be going against each other. There's a lot of smart people on both sides of it. Yeah. And that's why I think it comes down to knowing your baseline, what you've been doing, what your markers are, how's your sleep and, and things like that. And optimizing your, your life and your routines around getting optimal sleep and controlling stress. 0 (38m 25s): And, you know, if you like to eat high carb, even if you know, that's fine. And if it works for you and you feel energy, and if it's, if, and you feel like you have, you know, good, you know, good testosterone and things like that, libido, then go for it. But if you've been doing low carb for a while, and I think, I think, I don't know, what's your opinion. I mean, you went from low carb, w w into now you're having a fruit, you know, extravaganza in the morning where you're eating. I don't know how much, how, what would you say? How many, how much food are you having in the morning morning? 1 (38m 57s): Well, let's go back to the historical, you know, the transition into ancestral eating in 2008 when I started working on the primal blueprint with Marxists. And so prior to that, I was eating kind of a very healthy quote, unquote, healthy grain-based diet, where I was emphasizing the best cereals, you know, not the sugar pops and the, the, the, the, the, the pink and yellow stuff, but, you know, granolas and natural products and whole wheat bread and the best of whatever, but it was a lot of carbohydrate intake and quite different than going primal and ditching all grains and processed sugars. So that's low carb because we're comparing it to the disastrously high consumption of processed carbohydrates in the standard Western diet. 1 (39m 46s): So whenever we use those terms, I think it's, it's good to like couch it now that I probably still eat a sufficient amount of carbs all the way through. I did that very brief, extreme keto experiment, because we were writing and researching the first book, the keto reset diet. And luckily we talked about a 21 day keto reset in the book rather than pitch Quito as this lifelong strategy to just ditch all carbs for the rest of your life and feel better. But that part, I think gets problematic if you're healthy, active, athletic, energetic. And so we know that the best benefits come from restrictive diets with people who have metabolic dysfunction, metabolic damage, and they are desperately needing a solution and a resource to become more metabolically flexible. 1 (40m 35s): But if you're already showing signs of health and vitality, then a big question comes is, do you need to, I mean, you, you're going to have to convince me now why you're only eating two meals a day, even though I co-authored the book two meals a day, you can see it in the background on the video here, but maybe in your particular personal case, that's how we started the show with that experimentation. Maybe you would try two meals and perish the thought some snacks, or a giant protein smoothie in the morning, like I'm eating, and I will talk about my food experiment, but I just want to get your thoughts on that. And if, if things are swimming around where you're reflecting more about why do you need fasting periods if you're slamming that orange band? 0 (41m 23s): Yeah, well, I mean, I, like, I obviously got into fasting because I had a client who was, who was looking for solutions. She was pre-diabetic. And so it had me go down that rabbit hole of fasting. So I've been doing fasting on and off for, I don't know, seven years now give or take, but it's a good question. If you're metabolically healthy, you're, you're putting up a decent amount of weight in the weight room, and maybe you're doing kickboxing and, and some sprints and things like that. Can you overdo it, you know, with restricting, you know, and not eating? I think you can, like, for me, like you mentioned, and when I started tracking, I realized that probably am not consuming enough. 0 (42m 10s): What is the ideal calorie intake for myself? I really don't even know what that is. I know there's people who like to say that all it should be this amount or this amount, but everyone, you know, everyone's a little bit different, right? Like it was a 2,500 calories is a 3000 again, I think it comes down to measuring for a couple of weeks, at least on an app, or even on a piece of paper, just writing it out and just seeing where you're at with as far as calories protein. And I never used to be like this, but I do think it's good to do at least for like two weeks, right? It's not that fun tracking this stuff, but it can be an eyeopening experience. And I think it was a little bit for me. And after talking with you, I am trying to maybe have my times of feasting increase my window a little bit more, which could be two and a half to three meals now. 0 (43m 2s): And we'll see how I feel on that. I've, you know, I opened up my window today at 10:00 AM. Normally I didn't open up my window until 2:00 PM. And so opened up my window earlier, and then I'm working out a couple of hours later and then adding in maybe a meal meal and a half after that, and I've been tracking it pretty diligently. I needed to get a little bit better with that, but at least having an idea of how much protein I'm taking in. And I'll be curious to see, I mean, I have to take the blood work just to see now that I have to do that. I think a lot of times it's just a feel, right. You sort of know, I'm curious to see how you're feeling with your, you know, you know, fruit, fruit extravaganza that you're having, but I am trying to consume a little bit more fruit and seeing it and hitting up those carbs a little bit more to see how it affects my workouts, my daily energy, and, you know, yeah. 0 (43m 56s): So 1 (43m 57s): Yeah, you mentioned that term redundant pathways in passing a while back. And I heard that term from Dr. Casey means of levels health, highly respected physician, and she's, she's doing the continuous glucose monitor operation there, but the, the term means that you can get similar health benefits or fitness benefits or whatever from doing different things. And so fasting and intense exercise are working on redundant pathways to give you these amazing cellular and health boosting benefits. There's Brian showing his continuous glucose monitors actually scanning doing his thing, scanning the beeper. 1 (44m 41s): Yeah. So when you fast, some of the health benefits come because you're starving yourselves of energy, thereby prompting these wonderful processes like autophagy, that's the natural internal cellular detoxification process that occurs when the cells need to work more efficiently because they're not getting fueled constantly mitochondrial biogenesis as the making of new or improved mitochondria to process energy more efficiently. So these processes are prompted when you challenge the cells by starving them from a non-stop drip, Ivy of glucose and whatever. When you do a sprint workout, or you do a challenging X three bar workout, where you're working variable resistance to total muscular failure in a short time, the same thing is happening. 1 (45m 27s): Autophagy, mitochondrial, biogenesis, enhance fat metabolism, enhanced immune function, all these great things. And so Mike Mutzel had a video recently, he's the host of high intensity health, very respected sort of a journalist interviewer researcher and athlete himself. And one of his videos is like why I stopped fasting and what I'm doing instead, I think is the rough title. But he made one Quip where he said, look, you can fast for 24 hours and get all this cellular renewal benefits, or you can slam it in the gym for an hour. Which one do you want to do? Work hard for 24, or just go bust out a workout and be in that same, you know, a positive adaptive state afterwards. 1 (46m 11s): So that's an interesting point. And that brings up the what's. Why I asked you the question of, if you are indeed starving your sales of energy on a regular basis and draining those glycogen tanks on a regular basis to become insulin sensitive. You're, you're working, working those same pathways fasting. Now, now we've gotta raise our hands. Are you slamming in the gym like Brian, pulling those straps, or have you been missing some of your workouts and not moving enough throughout the day, then fasting keto, carb restriction, time-restricted feeding all these things are going to be important tools to get the job done. Our mutual friend, Melanie Avalon, Melanie Avalon, biohacking podcasts. 1 (46m 53s): She admittedly is not a huge fitness freak. She does the muscle stimulation. It's a very expensive, it's called M sculpt. Yeah. M sculp, where they put electrodes on your body. And it's like doing a thousand bicep curls while you just sit there and let the machine do the work. Very interesting hacking for sure. But she's on one meal a day and loves it and feels great and all that's wonderful, but she's also not draining her glycogen tanks from extreme 6:00 AM, spin class. And so that is her redundant pathway is to wait until evening to eat her first bite of food. And that's fine. And Dr. 1 (47m 32s): Saldino makes the important point when we're talking about plant hormesis. In other words, getting these antioxidant benefits from consuming the kale smoothie or the salad or the vegetables, the same exact thing happens when you jump in the cold tub, you get an anti-inflammatory, you get an antioxidant boost, you get all these redundant pathways happening. And Paul's argument is there's no side effects to jumping in the cold tub and getting out where there's a ton of potential adverse side effects from consuming plant toxins. 0 (48m 4s): I'll tell you the interesting thing I've noticed, but this continuous glucose monitor on me and I, I, I probably don't, I don't think you need to have it on for more than like a month. I mean, well, let's just say this, the sensors last two weeks, but you only really need it. I think you do a two weeks to a month of data gathering, at least for me, because I eat about the same things. But now that I'm implementing a little bit more, I'm curious, cause I do have a fairly, I don't know, I have a fairly high fasting blood glucose. You would think for someone, and this could be going back to maybe, you know, maybe too much fasting, you know, you know, 1 (48m 39s): Explain that why that would come out high if you're fasting and exercising and 0 (48m 44s): All that great Genesis, right? 1 (48m 47s): Yeah. I mean, you're gonna, you're gonna make whatever glucose you need and amazingly miraculously, so the optimal amount of glucose in the bloodstream is five grams, total glucose. So at all times your liver is working hard to make sure your glucose is balanced. If it goes out of balance, you're diabetic, you're going to collapse on the ground and go into a hypoglycemic coma or whatever, you know? So we're very, very sensitive and we need this optimal glucose balance. I think we have seven liters of fluid. And so in that giant pool of blood in, through circling through the body, there's only five grams of glucose. And so if you're full on hardcore keto, Robert Sykes, whatever it, hasn't had a car hub in years and working out hard. 1 (49m 32s): Yeah. You're going to be making your own glucose elegantly to put it right there in that, you know, that, that tight zone that represents good health, hopefully it's between 80 and one 20 or whatever people are saying is okay. 0 (49m 46s): And that's about where mine is. So I guess I'm not like that concerned with it, but it's interesting when I do the cold plunge, what it does to my blood glucose. Have you noticed that, have you done that? No. Yeah. So yesterday I went in there for just a couple minutes at six 30, my blood glucose went from 1 0 3 to 1 73 1 (50m 10s): In, in the while you're in the tub. You spiked. Yeah. 0 (50m 15s): Now could this be a mismeasurement? Maybe? I don't know. I mean, it is a stressful event obviously, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm somewhat, you know, I've done it. I do it not every day. I maybe do it every few days or every other day. Anyways, I just find that interesting. And it goes right back to know, 1 (50m 34s): So classic fight or flight response, just like getting in the starting blocks for the a hundred meters. All those people are probably spike and glucose up to one 70 for a minute or two or three or whatever. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. 0 (50m 49s): So yeah, it goes to your point a little bit that your body doesn't know whether it's getting in the cold plunger or you're getting into an argument or you're, you know, you got cut off your blood glucose is probably going to spike from those incidences. And if it's happening chronically, that's an issue like for me, I'm not worried about it cause I know what I did and I went right back to normal. 1 (51m 11s): Right. And that's the goal after eating as well or with the technology that neutral stance and levels health is putting out the two main providers of continuous glucose monitor for home use. They want to see a nice, healthy average, right? They want to see a tight variability. So it's going to spike after meal desirably. So we want that insulin to come into the bloodstream too and help you perform and recover and all that. But then we want to see it drop back down within two hours and then we want to see an overall favorable standard deviation. That's right. Why it's right there on the app face, where they want to see overall, are you doing a good job controlling your blood glucose over the course of the day? 0 (51m 54s): And I'm curious with your experimentation with adding in your carbs fruit, how is that affecting you? How does, 1 (52m 3s): Okay. Yeah. So finally, we're going to, we're going to talk about my another major transition and another challenge to being open-minded kind of rethinking and being flexible with potentially developing, fixed and rigid beliefs and all that great stuff. And so the most recent one was getting acquainted with this guy, Jay Feldman energy balanced podcast, and then subsequently realizing that a lot of people are kind of talking in the same realm where we're being mindful of stacking stressors inappropriately and rethinking the need to fast or restrict carbohydrates if we're active and athletic and energetic. 1 (52m 44s): So he makes a really great compelling case on the energy balance podcast about this idea that you want to perhaps fuel yourself optimally at all times, and minimize the stress coming from your, your nutrition and instead, you know, be fully equipped to perform and recover and live and thrive because you are eating in an optimal manner for what he'll call energy balance or bioenergetic function. And so I said, you know what? This makes a lot of sense. He was on Ben Greenfield show and Ben hit him hard with interrogation. 1 (53m 25s): And he passed with flying colors along with his sidekick, Mike fav, who appears on a lot of the shows and they referenced science constantly. And so I'd say it's probably a controversial, a lot of things he might say on there are controversial or counter to the foundational principles of ancestral health and how wonderful fasting is and how keto has all these amazing benefits, but you can reconcile everything. It's not this either. Or, and for me it was like, yeah, making sure that I'm optimally fueled and making sure that all these dials are turned up to maximum because I want to lead a long, healthy, active, energetic life and, and prioritizing the development and maintenance of lean muscle mass throughout life. 1 (54m 9s): As the number one factor to age gracefully, Layne Norton, the bodybuilder guy who is famous for saying, saying a crazy stuff that people object to or pay attention to. He says, look, if you're walking around packing a lot of muscle and you're lean, you are automatically demonstrating that you are metabolically fit and protective of the typical disease risk factors. Where if you see somebody our age walking around with a spare tire, you're like, dude, you can take a look at that spare tire. That's going to determine your destiny fighting that spare tire battle because obviously the spare tire represents metabolic dysfunction. 1 (54m 49s): The accumulation of visceral fat around the abdomen suggests an inflammatory state. And you're at you're securing these inflammatory cytokine chemicals into the bloodstream, messing up your metabolism, messing up, particularly your sex hormone function. And so you're going to have a slippery accelerated slope downhill if you have a spare tire. But if you're walking around jacked that person, unless they're extreme over-training and messing up their heart, like a lot of triathletes and an endurance ultra endurance people, that person has got like a flying color free pass. And so I'm not saying you have to get, you know, the six pack and be busting through your tight shirt and turning heads, but just keeping that functional muscle mass rather than declining into sarcopenia, which is extremely common. 1 (55m 37s): I shouldn't even say common. It's just the baseline for aging. Modern citizens is sarcopenia. That's the age related loss of muscle mass. So we become more stooped over a little softer, our legs get skinnier and they start walking around on pigs when you're out on the golf course in the summertime, looking at the, the seniors teeing off and everyone's lost their muscle mass over time. And that corresponds with adverse metabolic health and poor organ function because the organ function is tied in directly to the health of your muscle mass. Right? If you're, if you're working your biceps work in your legs, that means that your heart, your lungs, your liver, everything's working to support whatever you're doing on the exercise realm. 0 (56m 25s): You never, you never got into a 1 (56m 28s): Yeah. So there I've just paused to be polite to the, 0 (56m 32s): But no, while you're w this is a dual host, you know, we're both hosting, I mean, make a lot of great points and like you mentioned your priority, right? So I think it depends on the goal of the individual, right? You're pro you're prioritizing maintaining or muscle mass as you age and having just running optimally. And you you've, you know, after your interviews with Jay and things like that, you decided to add in, and I'm assuming now you're having pretty much three meals a day. You're are you having your big shake? And then you're having, 1 (57m 9s): Yeah. So, you know, prioritizing the maintenance of lean muscle mass and my, my argument there and lane Norton's Quip, this is, this should be everyone's goal, because if you don't do that, you're going to land in the stat. The number one risk factor for, for death and decline in Americans over age 65 is falling and the related consequences 0 (57m 35s): Falling, falling, 1 (57m 37s): You break your hip, you're hospitalized, you get pneumonia, you die. You never come back to your you're thriving and falling. Of course, lack of balance, lack of muscle mass, all that. So we should all have this compelling goal to, to remain physically fit throughout life. And so you might encapsulate this theory into this, eat more, move, more diet or 0 (58m 2s): Lifestyle you'll come out with a book. 1 (58m 3s): Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty clever because how are we going to, how are we going to get more active? How are we going to get more fit? How are we going to do these workouts that we, we dream of, but maybe they're too hard right now, or whatever, you know, how are you going to get better? You're going to need to nourish yourself and have the energy to go in there and perform and recover. And so if I just turn my attention to that for a moment, when I decided to do with this experiment, it was like, Hey, instead of, you know, my typical pattern would be to wake up. I work out in the morning, maybe a pretty intense workout, or maybe just my 40 minute morning routine, but I'm active as soon as I get up. And then I would kind of drift through the morning, typically and around midday, I would start and have this lavish meal and then have another great dinner. 1 (58m 50s): And I eat a lot of dark chocolate. So I'd probably nibble on that in the morning hours, but I wouldn't, you know, go out of my way to prepare a bunch of food. And I felt fine. I'm alert, I'm energetic, I'm focused. But as Jay makes the important point there, when you feel alert, energized, focused, and not hungry from not eating, this is due to turning on the stress mechanisms that are allowing you to feel that way without energy. So you are kicking into gear, a stress hormones, such as cortisol, adrenaline, and glucagon, and they are liberating fuel from storage. So you're burning your body fat. You might be making ketones if you're doing this to the extreme devotion and everything feels great, but we must not forget that these are stress mechanisms in the body. 1 (59m 35s): Just like the stress mechanisms that you call upon to get through the challenging workout. So by, by Jay's argument, if I instead wake up and fuel myself with a huge bowl of fresh fruit and a giant protein smoothie, that has a lot of calories in there when I'm listing the ingredients and I'm putting in a wonderful way, protein creatine, probably a couple dozen Oregon pills, several chunks of frozen, raw liver and big loads of frozen, frozen assorted fruit. So again, high carb, high protein and nutritious fat in there as well. So I have a lot of calories in the morning. I, I, I would probably say that probably adding up to a thousand calories or something that's significant. 1 (1h 0m 18s): And I've been on that experiment for three months now and counting, and then eating regularly the other times. So I'll probably have a significant lunch most every day, the significant dinner, and then going out of my way in the evenings, making a concerted effort to get up and consume more calories when otherwise I would probably be watching my, you know, watching my behavior 0 (1h 0m 43s): Because you're talking about after dinner. 1 (1h 0m 45s): Yeah. Yeah. So bowls of fruit, more dark chocolate, more liberal enjoyment of the popcorn that I talk about a lot on my podcast, which I referenced as my weakness. That's not one of the nutritious foods, but once in a while, or maybe more than once in a while that comes into the mix. But mainly the focus is on nutritious carbohydrates, such as fresh fruit, the most easy to digest and the most nutrient dense foods. And so that is a radical departure from kind of the boiler plate that we've been talking about, where vegetables and, you know, things like nuts and seeds and all these things are fresh and recommended, but they also land in that category of potentially objectionable due to their due to their natural plant toxin levels. 0 (1h 1m 31s): So you've been doing this for three months, 1 (1h 1m 33s): Three months weigh the same, same body weight, same body composition. I'm still vain. As they say, excuse me, I can still see my veins or both, whatever. 0 (1h 1m 43s): You're not vain. You're not there. 1 (1h 1m 45s): And am I reporting any magical, amazing peak performance breakthroughs? No, I'm very careful not to, you know, to, to, to, to blather on, on a, on a public recording here, but I feel like I'm on the right path. And it's also interesting to note for any naysayers that I weigh the same, despite challenging every single morning, rather than skimping and taking a square of dark chocolate instead. 0 (1h 2m 14s): So you've probably in over the three months, increased your calories by over a thousand. 1 (1h 2m 21s): You know, I'd probably say it's more like Ryan Baxter's experiment where it turns out to be 600 additional calories a day. I would, I would be comfortable with a number like that. 0 (1h 2m 31s): And your carb count has gone up quite a bit. 1 (1h 2m 34s): Yeah, for sure. 0 (1h 2m 35s): And if you're having fruit, you're having that fruit smoothie in the morning and then you're having fruit after dinner. 1 (1h 2m 40s): Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, salad, Dino's big fan of raw honey. And so I will go and hammer some raw honey, if I feel like it and more sweet potatoes, more just, yeah, more, more devotion to a broad based nutrient dense diet is still, I'd call it animal based with extensive carbohydrates and possibly earning those carbs as liver king likes to say. And I kind of liked that concept where if you're sitting and working long hours at your desk, and you're saying, oh, Brad Kern says eat a bunch of fruit in the morning and at night. And I haven't done shit all day. And I haven't even, you know, so much as hustled up a staircase instead of walk slowly, this is not what we're talking about here. 1 (1h 3m 21s): So I think the, the energy optimization experiment goes hand in hand with being as active as possible or as active as you desire. I I'm correcting myself. Cause Melanie corrected me when I said, you know, you want to be as active as possible. Right? And she's like, well, you know, I have my desired level of activity. I don't wish to live my life being a fitness freak or someone who's, you know, obsessed with. They have to burn this many calories every day. So I get that. I totally respect that. I love being active. You know, I don't mind taking my dog for a walk as many times a day is she'll hang with me. And of course I need to get my workouts in and I love to take my breaks and I love my morning routine, et cetera. 0 (1h 4m 3s): Have you felt diff, like you said, you don't, you're reporting back nothing crazy. You say you weigh about the same. I don't know if you did any body composition things a before and after so far. It's, I mean, it's been three months, which, you know, that's a decent amount of time, but like I 1 (1h 4m 18s): To get fat, right. 0 (1h 4m 19s): What's that 1 (1h 4m 20s): Enough time to get fat for sure. 0 (1h 4m 23s): Maybe what's 1 (1h 4m 24s): His 0 (1h 4m 24s): Name. I don't think you're ever going to get fat. I can tell you that. I mean, 1 (1h 4m 27s): Drew Manning fit to fat fit, but he was going to take six months and try to gain 60 pounds for his experiment is very well chronicled experiment. If you haven't heard of that, I had a show with him. You can look him up. It took him like a month. It took him like 63 days, he got fat so fast. It blew his mind. 0 (1h 4m 45s): He also ate, you know, standard American diet refined, you know, he's not eating whole foods like you were. So, yeah. So, but did you, what about like energy? What about like energy and like, cause like, you know, you're so used to in the mornings, not having much, maybe having a little chocolate and moving on with your day, was there a shift, did you find that having that, that big shake in the morning, a little bit of an adjustment and how you felt energy-wise 1 (1h 5m 14s): No, I felt, I felt great while doing it immediately. And I also felt in pretty good before the experiment began and I was sucking on dark chocolate in the morning hours. And I think the, the, the insight here is that your body will do a pretty good job if you're a healthy specimen in regulating energy mood appetite, whether you eat or not, that shows that you have metabolic flexibility. But my thinking here is that I want to direct all of my stress hormones and all of my stress tolerance to my workout, performance and recovery, not to mention my stressful life where ups lost our shipment again. 1 (1h 5m 58s): And I'm screaming at the person because they lost also my claim for my shipment. You know what I mean? Like we have enough stress that we have to deal with every day. And mine particularly relates to, you know, still being athletic at age 57, which I also count as a huge stress factor. If I'm looking at a scoreboard, I should probably write 57 on the top. And then on number two, I should write likes to high jump and sprint like a, like a high school idiot while being 57. And then number three is whatever it is like, you know, if you're, if you're on a ketogenic diet and you're a girl and you do CrossFit, we're going to have a sit-down conversation. Like, okay, listen, sweetie, you're already lean. 1 (1h 6m 40s): You're metabolically healthy. You're slamming yourself in the gym. Maybe you're going to that workout too many times per week. And you're counting your macros and limiting your carbs. I'm counting a lot of stress factors on one hand and I don't see a lot of appropriate replenishment refueling. And so that was, that was my thinking was here's this old athlete trying to be good. And I'm going to, I'm going to start hitting the fruit and the protein smoothie. And I think what I've made, I conclude to be a lifelong shift in that direction. Because again, like you said, I'm eating healthy, nutritious foods. It's, I'm not going to get fat. Dr. Robert Lustig, one of the greatest researchers and anti sugar crusaders on the planet, mega bestselling author, his most recent book metabolically. 1 (1h 7m 25s): I interviewed him and he said, look, you're not going to get fat. You're not going to get a metabolic disease. If you eat exclusively wholesome natural foods, it's impossible. The brain will not let you, the appetite centers, the CCK and your stomach, the, and everything is going to be optimized. The leptin signaling. If you get rid of processed foods, you can't get fat. Now that's a pretty mind blowing and strong assertion. And I was like, are you sure, dude, Mark Bell disagreed with me on the power project podcast. He goes, are you kidding? I can eat enough steak and eggs to get fat in no time. So I guess outside of the extreme examples, the point is well-taken that, of course, after you eat a certain amount of fruit, like I can eat a pineapple Brian, but I can't eat two pineapples in the morning. 1 (1h 8m 10s): Right. My stomach is already, you know, it's blowing up with water and fiber and processing, you know, so it's a wonderful strategy to emphasize those natural, nutritious, easy to digest foods, gain that satiety feel great all day long and not have to traffic and potentially stressful activities. 0 (1h 8m 30s): Yeah, no, I mean, I think for someone like yourself and even for myself, this is, this is like a, a nice, maybe balanced or self experimentation to check out and see how, how you feel and how it works. And for you, obviously for three months going through it it's work, it's it, you know, you're feeling great. And I think what, what what's most important is, you know, long-term sustainability and compliance on whatever you're doing and for someone else. And maybe majority of the people, I don't know, not necessarily even listening to this podcast, cause I'm sure a lot of the people listen to this podcast have a lot of things in line, but people who don't have those things in line, and they're not that active. And you know, they'd been eating, you know, a lot of processed foods then maybe they should, maybe they have to find one of these dials, whether it's fasting or, or something else to sort of dial into before they go this route. 0 (1h 9m 21s): You know what I'm saying? Before they go. 1 (1h 9m 23s): Yeah. And I think about that all the time. Cause we're trying to crack this code. You know, if we, if we could crack the code on how do you lose excess body fat, we'd have a lot of nickels for every nickel that we received from cracking the code. Jay has an interesting kind of a counter point to that. That even if you want to lose excess body fat, you are obligated to nourish yourself appropriately with all the macros so that your cellular energy production is optimal. And thereby you can get the energy that you need to get active enough to burn excess body fat and change the hormonal and the genetic signaling. 1 (1h 10m 3s): And I think w w we can step aside, we, we have to step aside from science for a moment because I've been an athlete for a long time as have you. And I will tell you to quote, mark Sisson, quote, nothing cuts you up like sprinting and quote. And I believe that there are things that transcend the th the, the laboratory analysis, where if you can turn in some brief explosive activities, you are going to send profound messages. Genetic switches are going to turn on and hormones are going to flow that will prompt you to reduce excess body fat. So whatever you can do to get out there and do the eight minute workout on the Carroll bike that I love to do that involves some all out sprints or do my sprint workouts and things that I, the progressions that I put on, on YouTube, if you can get out there and be that kind of athletic type person, again, at all fitness levels, you, you can sprint on a bike if you're not competent yet to sprint on the ground and then work your way up to sprinting upstairs, or, you know, low impact, medium impact. 1 (1h 11m 3s): But if you can do that, you're going to send the right signals to your body to drop excess body fat outside of, I don't care what anyone tells me or any scientists saying that there's limits and there's constraints it's going to happen for you. We always joke, you know, have you ever seen a fat sprinter? And the answer is no at any level, even like even, you know, high school, college, elite international, I saw the sprinters run the world championships. They're, they're universally extreme, you know, fit physical specimens because they work their body that hard. And so if you can get to that point and how do you get to that point, Hey, maybe it's just eating as many nutritious foods as you can. 1 (1h 11m 45s): Dr. Tommy wood has told me this for several years and I'm appreciating it more and more and more. He said, you know what? I tell my healthy athletic clients, I say, eat as much nutritious food as you possibly can, until you gain a pound of fat and then dial it back a little bit. And that's when you discovered your optimal. And so I get, stick that to you right now. If you're only eating two meals a day and your protein was a little bit under what if you went to the extreme and went overboard on everything and went for four meals a day or whatever, and maybe you're doing some extra workouts or who knows what's going to happen, or maybe your body's just adjusting and compensating. And some dials are turning a little bit more up than they already are. That's what I'm looking for is going from level seven to level nine. 1 (1h 12m 29s): And I don't even know if I'm at level seven. I might be at level five. I don't know. 0 (1h 12m 34s): Yeah, well, maybe I'll do this cause I've just been dabbling a little bit in it. And you know, maybe I'll do a DEXA scan. I have blood work next week, you know, so I'll see my body fat percentage and things like that. I haven't done it in probably six months or so maybe a little bit. I did it like four months ago and blood work start tracking consumption. And, you know, maybe do like a three month experiment of consuming. I'll tell you one thing. I will have to force myself. You know what I'm saying? Cause like, even like my wife, I tried to force her to eat a little bit more and it feels like she's under consuming. But I think when you get used to that, I'm sure there's a lot of people that are listening that have been doing low carb and, and ma and you know, having these high satiating meals, you're just not hungry, you know, and you almost have to force yourself. 0 (1h 13m 26s): Like I have to like force myself to eat that keto brick and or that fruit. Yeah. 1 (1h 13m 32s): That's interesting. I wonder what you think about that because one thing that I've experienced from this experiment is that now I get hungry, 0 (1h 13m 41s): Craving 1 (1h 13m 41s): It. I get hungry and I can't last. And a couple of days went by in recent, recent weeks where I didn't really get much to eat until 2:00 PM because we were traveling we're on the road, we're driving to Oregon. And boy, I was cocking out like, Hey, you better pull over. I need some food me and more, this is, you know, I'm feeling goofy. And that never happened in the previous decade because I was so fat adapted and so alert and energized and Quito. And of course I'm making ketones. That must be what's happening and that's all fine and dandy. But again, when you call upon the stress response to keep your energy mood appetite, stable, I'm strongly of the opinion that it's possible to overdo it. 1 (1h 14m 25s): Here's another amazing one-liner that really resonated with me that Jay Feldman said about people pushing back and saying, you know, the reason I'm low carb is because I'm pretty sensitive. And when I have a meal that's high in carbohydrates, I crash and burn right away. I feel bad. And he said, there's four possible reasons. One of them, which the one that slapped me in the face was this is unmasking your reliance upon stress hormones. Oh shit. That's definitely I can bring late. And so you're going, going, you feel fine. You're working hard. Maybe it's a stressful work day where you're really cranking and your brain is going. 1 (1h 15m 7s): And then you break in and have a sweet potato, and then you can't get rallying after lunch. And if that's unmasking my reliance upon stress hormones, and guess what I want to rewind the clock a little bit. And I want to make sure that I have enough fruit in the morning and protein smoothie and get fully nourished so that I don't have to drain my gas tank and then crash and burn. And I think we can definitely relate to that when we're doing indulgent foods like, oh, you've had a busy, stressful day. You're finally relaxing on the couch. You grab the Ben and Jerry's, you hit that pretty hard. You're halfway or two thirds of the way done. And then you crash and burn after consuming that that's, you know, from the process food, but it's also maybe just, you know, the bottoming out of running on fumes the whole day. 0 (1h 15m 53s): Yeah, no, I mean, it's it, these are all interesting levers. I would say that you can sort of play on and I think, you know what you're doing and what, maybe I'll give a try for a few months and see where it lands me and I'm not totally opposed to it. And I think also too, and I'm, you know, I'm curious if maybe you'll just mess around, you know, you've been doing it for three months. Do you ever say to yourself, God, you know, maybe I'll just take a day off and just fast. 1 (1h 16m 20s): Well, that's funny cause I do without prompting, like I'm talking about on the road trip. And so I am reflecting like, am I now more fragile? And because I'm feeling goofy at 2:00 PM where before I didn't care and it's possibly, it's possibly a good sign that I'm turning on. My hunger, hunger signals to that extent, even though many people would say, no, that's a bad sign. That's showing you're, you're losing your metabolic flexibility or what have you. But I think if you can turn those signals up again, because I'm in the 57 year old age group, and I'm trying for peak athletic performance, I want to turn everything up and keep those dials up for as long as possible so that I can live a long, healthy, active, energetic life. 1 (1h 17m 9s): In contrast. Let me think of my father who made it to 97. He had a wonderful run through life. Anyone can celebrate living that long in exceptional health for almost the entire time, but in his final days when he was slowing down and sleeping, instead of walking around, he wasn't very hungry. Everything was turned down and people can last like that for a long time. So maybe the last year of his life, we had to force him to eat and make five different meals and see which one he would go for. But that represents kind of a slowing of metabolic function, which is associated with disease and decline. Of course. So if I have an appetite like a horse and it's getting bigger, now I'm going to put a thumbs up there and I'm going to reference first. 1 (1h 17m 52s): I talk about my dad. Now I'll talk about my son who literally eat or works out all day long. He wakes up, he eats the drinks. The giant smoothie goes and eats a giant breakfast, does a workout, a little workout of something eats, again, goes to the gym in the afternoon, get some takeout comes home, the takeout's finished. And then he makes a meal. I mean, it's unbelievable. And guess what? He doesn't have diabetes. He's put on 35 pounds of muscle since high school in four years Natty style. Okay. Like for the real deal, he just loaded his body up with muscle due to his extreme workout regimen and massive dietary habits. 1 (1h 18m 33s): And he's a good eater. He's a culinary interest. And so he eats good food and it's an eyeopening thing to see. Cause it's like, do you do anything but eat? He just eats all day long. And the, the, the takeaway is it's, it's working for him. And of course he's in that age group in that phase of life where he might not be able to sustain that the rest of his life. But if we can take, you know, honor a bit of that example and then compare and contrast with someone in their final days who isn't hungry and is picking at and biting at the food. I don't want to be that guy until my numbers up. And so if fasting in the morning while trying to exercise and recover from that sprint workout is pushing me in the wrong direction rather than the direction of my son. 1 (1h 19m 18s): Who's put on his 35 pounds of muscle in four years. I'm going to want to be the muscle man. 0 (1h 19m 24s): Yeah. Lots of great points. I think, I think there's this concept of like over dieting. I think I talked about it with Robert Sykes where you're actually, you know, over-consuming go through periods of time where you're over consuming and then periods of time where maybe 1 (1h 19m 40s): Yeah. You're talking about reverse dieting. 0 (1h 19m 43s): Oh yeah. Yeah. 1 (1h 19m 44s): That's really interesting. Mike mussel has a whole video. I was watching some of that. I think he was talking to Robert dykes maybe, but the, the Telus the goal there of doing that, 0 (1h 19m 55s): I think the goal of, of, and I'm not like no expert in this because I've actually never done it on myself, but is, is, is almost like what you're doing, where you're, you're, you're giving these signals to your body that there's abundancy and there's enough and your body will sort of turn up all the levers and be, and not go into like this, you know, flight or flight or there's these stress responses like you talked about. So I think it's maybe the same idea that you're talking about is this reverse dieting. But I think going through periods of that, and then maybe going through periods of, of, you know, like for example, what you're doing, like three months of what you're doing and then maybe taking a day or two and just saying, Hey, you know what, because I know looking at ancestrally, like I know like J w H and I've seen articles on it where he talks about, well, yeah, we can look at our ancestors and say data, this data that, that, that doesn't always mean that we should be doing it. 0 (1h 20m 55s): And I do 1 (1h 20m 57s): Excellent point. Yeah. 0 (1h 20m 58s): You know, the whole fast thing is beneficial because it's sort of our evolutionary history and, you know, but if you look at like, let's just say, I know this like the Hadza, right. And I, and there's, you know, like I know Saladino and a few others have gone and visited them and, and the question was proposed, well, what, what's their day like? And I think a big part of their day is being outside, being in nature, having community, not having a lot of stressors, but also too, they go periods and, and all these, all of them have like, you know, whatever, seven or eight, 9% body fat and look great. 0 (1h 21m 38s): You know, they, I think they don't have these outside stressors and they don't worry about that first meal. They almost they're roaming and they're going, and, and they have these hunting times and these times where they just lay low and these days where they are, there's over abundance of foods when they have where they, where they, the, they have, they, you know, they hunt down a, a wild animal and that lasts them for maybe a day or two, but then they go a little bit without it. So, you know, again, we can talk till we're blue in the face. I think that, I think it just depends on what the history of that individual has done in the past, what their goals are and, and trying to balance, you know, times of overabundance. 0 (1h 22m 20s): But there may be times of, you know, where you sort of give it a break. 1 (1h 22m 24s): Well, that's, that's great. And that's a really important reflection is how deeply do we want to link ourselves to the ancestral example? And you pointed out some ways that we can honor them and other ways where we can go, you know what, those dudes are struggling right now, the hots are getting encroached by society. And now they're relegated to hunting baboons instead of big, giant wonderful beasts that are running the planes cause they've been restricted. And so they're not thriving in a manner that the winner of last weekend CrossFit games is thriving. And in fact, Tommy wood cites research saying that today's elite level athlete like a CrossFit games person or an iron man person, or the track athletes that I saw competing in the world championships. 1 (1h 23m 13s): They perform six times as much physical energy expenditure than the busiest hunter gatherer that has ever lived. And so even the roughest times of the old days where these guys were dealing with harsh winters and having to go build shelters or continue to hunt and track the animal, even when they were struggling, no comparison to Matthew Frazier's YouTube workout, where he's throwing around weight and then putting it down and running a six minute mile with a 15 pound weight vest and coming back and throwing around more weight. So how, you know, how do we want to optimize modern life, but going beyond what's possible and explore what is optimal. 1 (1h 23m 54s): Maybe that's a nice closing to the show. It's like, what's not, what's not, you know, let's not settle for what's possible for a human let's let's pursue what's optimal. 0 (1h 24m 4s): Yeah. I think that that's a good way. I mean, we could talk for another two hours. I would just say that, I think for anybody listening that I, it's good to start to know where you're at and where you want to go, you know, and, you know, we can look at all different examples of what works for one person. There was a fruitarian I'd remember listened to, you know, how all he does is eat fruit and there's other people who do it the other way. And all they do is eat meat and they're thriving. So I guess I think it's important to just know where you're at and that could be blood work. That could be a DEXA that, that could be tracking your macros for a couple of weeks. And, and then seeing where you want to go. And I think with that being said, I think it's important to find a coach and find someone that'll help guide you on, on your journey of health, because it's your journey. 0 (1h 24m 46s): It's no one else's so, 1 (1h 24m 48s): Oh, I love it, man. Another, another memorable quote for Brian's 0 (1h 24m 52s): Instagram, but then on the board. 1 (1h 24m 54s): Yeah. So you can connect with me listeners@bradkearns.com listened to the <inaudible> podcast. And Brian, tell us where we can link up with you 0 (1h 25m 4s): Get lean E clean Brian green.com. Yeah. I got a book coming out in September, so I'm excited about that, so, 1 (1h 25m 11s): Oh, okay. Well, we'll get, we'll reconnect. We'll check how your experiment went and learn all about your book. Thanks everybody for listening. What a show. 0 (1h 25m 19s): Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it, Brett. Thanks for listening to the get lean eat clean podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine. And I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member. That's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again, and have a great day.
