Brian (0s:)
Coming up on the Get Lean, Eat Clean podcast,
Brett (4s:)
The symptoms go away when I'm as strict carnivore as possible, where I'm pretty much a purist of like red meat, salt tall eggs, like purest. And then when I, and when I get back to that, that really good baseline, I can start to incorporate other foods. But when I deviate from the plan, when I eat things out that are fried and seed oils, if I'm not sleeping enough or I'm traveling or I'm stressed out, I will start to notice some of those flares again. So I think a good little story is that the last two months, Harrison and I were doing a ton of travel. We were speaking, I was still working a corporate nine to five prior to going full-time with Meat Mafia. It was just stressed out and not sleeping enough and traveling too much.
Brett (44s:)
And I started and not eating great, and I started noticing my stomach was flaring up. So now I'm back in San Diego with an extended period of time here and have really prioritized, you know, eight hours of sleep, meditation, cooking, like a cooking, all of my meals, being very meat-based, controlling all my inputs and my stomach, you know, is starting to feel way better just from doing that.
Brian (1m 7s:)
Hello, and welcome to the Get Lean E Clean podcast. I'm Brian Grn 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 I interviewed Brett and Harry from the Meat Mafia. We discussed Brett's battle with ulcerative colitis and how we overcame this by establishing a meat-based approach along with Harry's Health Habits, which helped him lose over 20 pounds. We also chatted about the importance of eating real foods, Brett and Harry's routine for health advantages of raw dairy should you eat chicken and their one tip to get your body back to what it once was.
Brian (1m 54s:)
Really enjoyed meeting Brett and Harry Lot to learn from them, the Meat Mafia, and I think you'll really enjoy this interview. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All right, welcome to the Get Lean Ecla podcast. Excited to have Harry and Brett on from the Meat Mafia. Thanks so much for joining me,
Harry (2m 14s:)
Brian. It's a pleasure to be here.
Brian (2m 17s:)
Yeah, thanks
Brett (2m 18s:)
For, thanks for having us, Brian.
Brian (2m 20s:)
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for coming on. I was just saying it's good to put a face to the name of the Meat Mafia, and you guys are on Twitter all over social media, blogging, got your own podcast and the, it's called the Meat Mafia Podcast, right?
Brett (2m 35s:)
Yes, it is. It's called The Meat Mafia Podcast.
Brian (2m 39s:)
And would you start pretty January, 2022? I see.
Harry (2m 44s:)
Yeah, so we, we started the podcast in March.
Brian (2m 48s:)
Okay.
Harry (2m 49s:)
And in January is when we really started writing online. So we've kinda, we kind of morphed from writing and blogging about these different nutrition topics that we were really just kinda like dipping our toe in the water and then started to see a little bit of success. And both Brett and I are ex-athletes. So as soon as we saw something that we could measure, both of us and both of us kind of just started getting competitive with it and getting excited about what we were putting out there. So the writing picked up and we were like, How else can we evolve this and start to create a little bit of a brand and a voice behind the messages that we wanna put out there? And the podcast was just such a great platform for us to be able to do that. So we've done, you know, we've done 110 episodes or so recorded about 115 in the last, you know, six, seven months.
Harry (3m 38s:)
So we've, we've been hitting it hard, but it's, it's been great, great way to connect with, you know, some pretty powerful minds in this space of health and nutrition. So, you know, we got connected through Brad Kerns, so this is, we had him on a podcast early on as well. So that's, you know, great way to just connect and network with people.
Brian (3m 58s:)
Yeah. And I'm assuming you guys are both vegans?
Brett (4m 1s:)
We are. We're huge plant-based advocates.
Brian (4m 5s:)
Yeah. You, you know, I gotta get some plant-based guys on here, but eventually I will. But you guys obviously with the Meat Mafia podcast, animal-based, maybe, I know Brett, I've heard your story a little bit. Maybe explain your story and then here maybe follow up how you guys, you know, started writing about, you know, living and, and you know, and so on and so forth.
Brett (4m 24s:)
Yeah, absolutely. And, and Brian, I think, you know, it's important to, to note too, right? Like both Harry and I like a lot of what we're building out right now, it's kind of centered around like our friendship. Like we're really close personal friends first, before we even started the podcast and we have this, we discovered that we've had this mutual interest in nutrition and our food system and you know, what's really changed over the last 50 years that's led to chronic disease being so high and obesity being so high. And we're very firmly convinced that it's the food, right? It's like we don't eat food anymore. We eat food like substances that are found in the inner aisle, the grocery store. And you know, neither of us are MDs. We're not nutritionists. We don't have a, you know, degree in exercise science.
Brett (5m 5s:)
We're really just people that went on our own journey and had our own experiences with nutrition and made this shift from unhealth to health. So, you know, for me personally, my journey was really based on some autoimmune diseases that I was looking to cure, so, or more so clear up. So as Harry mentioned, we both played college baseball together and a lot of the way that I viewed nutrition was just justified on the fact that like, it's calories in, calories out. You know, I'm weight training, I'm going to practice, I'm on my feet all day so I can kind of eat whatever I want and that's just gonna be used to fuel me. So pre-workout powders, protein shakes, you know, in college I was probably drinking too much alcohol, eating too much processed food, not sleeping enough, and overly stressed out.
Brett (5m 53s:)
And in 2016, when I was going into my senior year, I was interning in New York City and I was living at home in New Jersey with my parents. So I would commute in and then commute back home. And I started noticing that that train ride in and from the city was becoming more and more uncomfortable because I was developing this urgency to go to the bathroom. I started noticing that in June, and then I started noticing blood in my stool. And I just, for whatever reason, I don't know if it was being, thinking that I was invincible or being naive or being embarrassed, I just didn't tell my parents, I didn't tell my friends, I didn't tell my family. And my stomach continued to flare up and get worse and worse. And by August of that summer, I was going to the bathroom over 20 times a day.
Brett (6m 38s:)
I lost about 30 pounds. I ended up having to get rushed to the hospital, and I got diagnosed with ulcerative of colitis, which is an incurable autoimmune disease. It's in the family of ibs, Crohn's, and it affects your large intestine, your colon, and it's all from inflammation. So you basically develop these, you know, these bloody ulcers and your, and you're told that it's an incurable disease. You have to go on drugs and medication for the rest of your life. So for me, I was put on this medication called Remicade, which was a, it's a biologic drug that gets administered through an infusion. You get it once every eight weeks, it costs me about $50,000 per infusion. So I was personally costing the medical system about $400,000 a year.
Brett (7m 21s:)
And there's somewhere between 600 to 900,000 people in the country that have colitis. So you can do the math on just how much these diseases are costing our medical system, let alone all the other autoimmune diseases that are now existent that really didn't exist a hundred years ago. So, you know, for me, I'm on these drugs and in 2018, 2019, I'm living on my own in New York for the first time, and I'm living with a bodybuilder. So he's starting to teach me about cooking my own meals. And I started noticing that I, when I was eating ground beef steak, chicken, and I was cooking, cooking in butter, olive oil ta, my stomach was feeling better.
Brett (8m 0s:)
But so I, I noticed it, but didn't think too much of it. And then I stumbled across Dr. Sean Baker's podcast on Joe Rogan in 2019, which is instrumental to so many people because for anyone that does know Dr. Baker, he's probably the most well known carnivore doctor that exists. He's an amazing guy, high level athlete, emergency surgeon. And his whole theory is that we've evolutionarily evolved to be carnivores and animal products are the most nutrient dense foods that we should be eating. And they're also the most absorbable and the most digestible. So I listened to this podcast and then I started noticing on Reddit and on Google that there were all these people that were anecdotally talking about curing their autoimmune conditions.
Brett (8m 42s:)
So people that had colitis, Crohn's, eczema, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, they're talking about eating all meat and their conditions are essentially going away. So for me, I'm thinking to myself, okay, well if I can use diet and lifestyle to correct this and get off this drug and medication, why would I not do that? So in 2019, I went carnivore, I told myself I was gonna do it for about two weeks, stayed on it for a few months, and almost instantaneously I went down to like one to two bowel movements a day. My skin cleared up, my anxiety went away. I had no, i, I was putting muscle on at the gym, like it was incredibly effortless cuz my body was just responding to all this nutrient dense food.
Brett (9m 23s:)
And over the course of about three years, I completely reversed any inflammation or micro inflammation I had. And my GI actually was comfortable getting me off of, of replicate in March of 2021. So, you know, that's a little over a year ago and like anything else, right? It's like I just started small, I, I started buying, buying grocery store quality meat and have since, you know, we, we've made a big investment to start to buy the really good quality grass fed, grass finish meat from the local farmer and have incorporated different things like some fruits, bone broth, towel, et cetera. But for me, that's really my story of like using diet and lifestyle to cure something that I thought was, was incurable.
Brett (10m 3s:)
And a lot of what we're trying to do through our podcast is to try and make these stories become, you know, more and more common as opposed to just being another patient, you know, in the medical system going through that whole care cell.
Brian (10m 15s:)
Excellent. Yeah. Well thanks for sharing that, Harry. What I know other than being friends with Brett, what, you don't have to have some amazing story, but I'm curious to know how, how you got, how you got into sort of this, this side of the nutrition world.
Harry (10m 32s:)
Yeah, mine is much less of a heroic story than Brett's, but you know, my change didn't really come out of necessity, so to speak, like Bretts, it was more so, you know, after being a college athlete and previously I, I was very much a disciplined person in the gym, but I think I'd always kind of experimented with food, but realized that I could get away with a lot more. So more how Brett described it, you know, you can, you know, have those cheap meals or whatever you wanna, however you wanna define 'em, if you're really active in the gym. And and I utilized that, you know, through my playing career there were certain stints where I really dialed in the nutrition. So like in college when I was playing baseball, I was eating a paleo diet for a while and like felt incredible, which was to, to be fair, like none of my other teammates were doing that.
Harry (11m 21s:)
So like I was ahead of the curb at that moment in time. And then, you know, fast forward a few years after my playing career and I'm, I'm working a job in finance, you know, high stress job and just not nearly as active as I used to be. And I start, you know, noticing the changes that a lot of people in their mid twenties realize, which is like, hey, me drinking, you know, beers on the weekends and ordering food to my house and snacking during the workday, this whole lifestyle is starting to catch up to me and I'm not looking and feeling the way I used to. And so, you know, when Covid hit in 2020, I had a lot of time, you know, my, my job sort of paused, like there was not a whole lot going on.
Harry (12m 7s:)
And so I just had and didn't have to commute. So I had all this time back in the bank and I really started focusing that time intentionally on getting my health back in order, which, you know, it wasn't, if you'd see me, you wouldn't be like, that guy's unhealthy. But I really dialed it in and it was through like a ketogenic animal-based diet where I really started to see these amazing effects. And I think the light bulb went off for me where I was like, this needs to be a part of how I'm living my life going forward. When I went really low carb and started feeling some of the, the effects of having a fat adapted lifestyle, not being reliant on carbohydrates for energy, like the energy swings throughout the day, not feeling those crashes after a sugary meal, like really incorporating saturated fats.
Harry (12m 54s:)
And so for me that's like, that's when the light bulb went off and I, you know, I, I pushed it even further, started experimenting with the carnivore diet and have kind of found my sweet spot since then, which is just, you know, animal based, really high quality animal meat sourcing, you know, as Brett said, sourcing from regenerative farms if we can and just, just getting the right food on the plate. So, you know, we're obviously huge proponents of, of the meat-based diet for a lot of reasons, but I think the nutrient density and saturated fat component of the animal-based diet has really worked for me in terms of just mood, energy levels, weights, stability, like performance.
Harry (13m 36s:)
It's all better because I think, you know, that that nutrient density in, in the high saturated fat.
Brian (13m 44s:)
Yeah, and like we were talking, Brad and I, Brad Kerns and I have talked about this, that a lot of times it's, it's the things that you eliminate that that really you get your biggest bang for your buck. I mean I've had so many different people and I'm sure you guys have as well like on my podcast, that, you know, might promote different ways of eating, but I think maybe the one thing that runs true with all of it is the fact that you're getting rid of these highly processed foods, these highly palpable foods, like the high fat, high carb combination and you know, like what you did Brett with getting into carnivore, you know, you could look at that as the ultimate elimination diet and especially for someone that ha is having gut issues, you know, that might be the first step to, to take
Brett (14m 29s:)
A hundred percent. And I, and I think too to everything that you're saying Brian, it's like we've kind of, it we feel like we've lost our ability to really take ownership and control or like a sense of what's going on with your stomach and your body. It's like we're just, as a society, it's like we're eating so much processed food and we just kind of accept to have chronic gut issues or IBS or feel groggy when we, we wake up and that really shouldn't be the case. That's not how we're programmed to be as human beings. So I would say with the meat mafia, Harriet, I have changed our tune a little bit where when we came out of the gates, we came out hot, like really pushing carnivore and animal based and we've changed more to the tune of you of what you just mentioned is that we're just trying to get people off of processed foods in eating real foods.
Brett (15m 13s:)
So our definition of real food is any combination of meat, fish, egg, fruit, vegetable, raw dairy, if you can tolerate it and it's about like taking sense of what really feels good with your stomach, like doing that self experimentation, keeping a food journal and, and you know, maybe you are incorporating more plant-based foods, maybe you're just eating carnivore, maybe you're eating ketogenic, you know, we really try and push like find what combination of those real foods works best for you and just run at it and don't just accept what other people are telling you and take that as face value.
Brian (15m 47s:)
Yeah, I, I, I mentioned self experimentation all the time cuz it's something that I, I do for myself because I've, I mean we've all evolved, I've evolved over the last few years. I mean I used to be, and I still do, you know, fasting and I was pretty fasting low carb for a while and then I used to have, and then recently I've had conversation with Brad who's had like Jay Feldman on his podcast and he's been a guest on mine. It hasn't come out yet, but I, I think that you, you have to sort of find where you're at, like take a baseline, maybe get some blood panels, maybe get a dxa scan, just see where you're at and then, you know, dial in the nutrition because like you said, I mean what, what one person can tolerate, someone else might not be able to.
Harry (16m 31s:)
I think another key component of all this is the idea of intuition around food where we don't, it feels like our compass around what we should be eating has been completely disrupted and now there's so many options of what can be considered food, but if you go into the grocery store, we know like most of the, the things in there aren't even really food. They're not satiating you, they're not providing you with a, a dense level of nutrition. So you're, you know, in, in an hour you're, you're still gonna be hungry. And so, you know, when it comes to actually eating the right things, it's like hey, you need to kind of experiment and build that intuition.
Harry (17m 12s:)
That's why I love fasting. I think fasting's one of those things that kind of, it's like cleaning the whiteboard and then you can start incorporating things back in. I think it's like in a similar sense, like carnivore does the same thing, you know, you eliminate all, all the processed food and then you start reintroducing things back in. You go, okay, yeah, like I can incorporate raw dairy cuz it actually does sit well with me. You can kind of isolate some of the variables.
Brian (17m 35s:)
Yeah, yeah. And as far as fasting, like yeah, my, my, I guess my viewpoint on it has changed a little bit. Like I don't think it's, it's really not a black and white thing, but I do think it's something that everyone should incorporate to some degree because it just gives you flexibility and it allows you to give you, and it also gives you like structure throughout the day. I think it, you know, like maybe have you cut your cutting off your eating window at eight o'clock or seven o'clock and most of the things that we eat after that aren't probably that nutritious anyway. So it gives you boundaries and it gives you also flexibility that if you, if you, if you do have to skip a meal, it you don't feel like you have to like, run to some fast food joint and get some junk.
Brett (18m 14s:)
Yeah. It, it almost feels like you have a superpower because you're not a slave to your hunger because number one, you're eating so much protein and you're eating so much fat that you're incredibly satiated. So like if you say you are at a workout and or something and there's nothing that's really like edible or fits your diet, it's just junk. You don't feel like you need to eat it, you can just skip a meal or go get something afterwards. And you know, people think that's crazy because like you guys were talking about before, our pallet is just so wired for that processed food that's loaded with refined grains and sugars and you're just riding that rollercoaster all day long and you feel like you're gonna die if you don't eat something within the next 10 minutes.
Brian (18m 53s:)
Yeah, no, no doubt about that. And you and you guys, how old are you guys? I'm just curious in your thirties,
Brett (18m 58s:)
28 just
Brian (19m 0s:)
Turned, you guys are young, but I was just gonna say like what you could get away in your twenties and you're still in your twenties, you can't really get away with in your thirties and you definitely can't get away with I'm 42, so, but, but I feel, I feel a lot younger than that, so,
Brett (19m 18s:)
Which is an, which is an amazing thing where you don't feel like you're like a victim because your age is getting older and I'm sure you have friends that are probably declining and you're like, well, I feel better than I've ever felt. I could probably kick my ass at 25. Like that's a, it's a cool thing.
Brian (19m 32s:)
Yeah, no, I'm, I'm so glad and, and I'm blessed that I've got into this health and wellness game because you do see it, you see people that, you know, they're, even if they're 40 years old, they look like they're 55, 60 years old. But so yeah, it is a sad thing. It is amazing what you can do. I love, I was just looking at some of your posts on Instagram about some of the Beth Best Half health hacks that are free and obviously a lot of them, sex, sun, sleep sprints, walking, stretching. Are these things that you guys try to bring into your life on a day-to-day basis?
Harry (20m 9s:)
Yeah, Definit especially the top of the list. No. Yeah, so I, you know, this I'll, I'll tie us back into my story around when I started changing some of my health habits at the beginning of Covid because, you know, gyms were shut down and I was like, I can just simplify this whole thing and focus on the fundamentals. So all I was doing was cooking my meals and then walking a bunch and then I slowly started incorporating some other things. Like I had these Olympic pull up rings, I would do use those, use a band. So I'm like very much of the school of thought of like the fundamentals win in the long run.
Harry (20m 49s:)
And so all of those things that you can do are free. And I think like meditating, journaling, walking are all just incredibly, incredibly powerful tools if you just give them time to like really be built into your daily routine. I think they help. Walking for me is me is meditation in, in some of the best form of movement. Like I think I recover better when I walk more. You, you get into a state where you're actually burning fat at a, at a pretty high rate too. You don't need to be dripping in sweat to be burning fat. So there's a lot there and, and i, I do just kind of fundamentally believe that people try to overcomplicate a lot of the fitness world when you can kind of break it down to a few simple principles if you're just disciplined around it.
Brian (21m 39s:)
Yeah, I think you named two great points there that I love to do is cook for cook. My wife and I, we cook for ourselves like all the time probably we never really like to go out to dinner, but sometimes you do whatever, it's all good. And, and then walking, like obviously you have two dogs and those two things, I, I feel like if everyone did those two habits, they'd be a lot better off.
Harry (22m 3s:)
I literally lost 20 pounds basically just doing that, focusing on those two things for like really four weeks. And I was like, by the end of that four weeks I was like, man, I've made some serious progress, now it's time to start building on this. And the next month was even better. Like I, you know, I really saw some serious results on top of that. So it's, it's, it's pretty amazing what you can do and you just try to simplify it and just be consistent with it.
Brian (22m 28s:)
Now Brett, I'm curious, you obviously you started off as carnivore and you know, you had obviously the gut issues that have, have those pretty much gone away?
Brett (22m 37s:)
Yeah, they've, they've pretty much completely gone away. And why, the reason why I say pretty much is that I, you know, I they, you're technically not cured, but I would say my, my symptoms are completely gone. But what I've noticed is the symptoms go away when I'm as strict carnivore as possible where I'm pretty much a purist of like red meat, salt tall eggs, like purest. And then when I, and when I get back to that, that really good baseline, I can start to incorporate other foods. But when I deviate from the plan, when I eat things out that are fried in seed oils, if I'm not sleeping enough or I'm traveling or I'm stressed out, I will start to notice some of those flares again.
Brett (23m 18s:)
So I think a good little story is that the last two months, Harrison and I were doing a ton of travel. We were speaking, I was still working at corporate nine to five prior to going full-time at the Meat Mafia and it was just stressed out and not sleeping enough and traveling too much. And I started in not eating great and I started noticing my stomach was flaring up. So now I'm back in San Diego with an extended period of time here and I've really prioritized, you know, eight hours of sleep, meditation, cooking, like a cooking, all of my, my meals being very meat-based, controlling all my inputs and my stomach, you know, starting to feel way better just from doing that. So I think it really just depends on your body where there's certain people where their autoimmune conditions are so chronic that they have to be that strict.
Brett (24m 0s:)
Like Michaela Peterson's a perfect example of that. If she's not beef, lamb, salt water, her arthritis goes crazy. But then there's other people that have maybe lost a hundred pounds on Carnival and they start introducing fruits and vegetables and it, their stomach does tolerate it. And I think that's the goal and that's what Harry touched on before is like, you know, if you can tolerate these things and you enjoy them and you're getting micronutrients from them, why would you not try and at least incorporate them back into your diet?
Brian (24m 27s:)
Now do you know certain things that obviously irritate your gut more than others? Like can you ta can you tolerate like fruit or is that
Brett (24m 36s:)
Yeah, I can, I can tolerate fruit, I can tolerate raw dairy. The interesting thing about raw dairy is that Harry and I were just talking about this, there were a bunch of studies from doctors in the 18 hundreds, 19 hundreds that used all raw milk dairies to cure chronic disease and ulcerative colitis and ibs, which is really interesting. But yeah, I would, I would say I can tolerate fruit, I can tolerate raw dairy. Some vegetables, yes, like dark leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables, they do not sit particularly well. You know, I love to mix in like garlic and onions and saute that stuff to make, make my, make the meat taste better.
Brett (25m 19s:)
But you know, sometimes my stomach can be a little bit iffy with that. But it, you know, really how I learned this whole process is I just kept a food journal where I would write down what time I ate, what I ate, and then how did I feel after that meal? Did I have to go to the bathroom, did my energy level feel good? And it sounds simple, but if you can do that for a month to two months, you have all this pattern recognition and you can start to realize what foods you were eating that made you feel really good. And what foods were you introducing that might have disrupted your gut or not be the best thing for you personally?
Brian (25m 51s:)
Yeah, yeah, having a food journal. I was, I'm a big fan Guess something I, I did for myself and for a lot of my clients because if you don't write stuff down, you just lose track of it. I'm not like, I, I know people don't like to track calories and I wouldn't say I'm the biggest calorie counter, but I think it's good to do for a little while just to sort of see where you're at as far as a baseline because you know, for a while I was eating one, maybe two meals a day and, and I just realized I just wasn't eating enough. And I think some people in the low carb world can fall under that because you're, you're eating such highly satiating foods and it's like, oh, I'm not hungry, I'm just not going to eat. And you know, if you're, if you're active like you guys young, working out things like that, you start to realize, well maybe I do need to start eating a little bit more.
Brian (26m 38s:)
And that, that's sort of the self experimentation that I'm doing right now is trying to consume more and takes a while to get used to it. But I don't, I'm actually not minding it right now.
Harry (26m 50s:)
It's actually a really good point in terms of the caloric deficit for, because it eventually catches up to you, especially if you're, you know, if you are eating really good high quality foods, but you're not getting enough of them. Like you will eventually start to feel the pains of that.
Brian (27m 9s:)
Yeah, and you know, I did a blood panel, thyroid was a little, little bit lacking, a little bit dehydrated, and it was tough for me to get enough protein, I'd say. I mean, I've had a lot of protein people on my podcast and you know, if I, I'm 1 75, let's just say I should be getting maybe about 150 grams of protein. Let's, I don't know if I, I really want to get that all in one meal, you know. So I'm curious, what, what are your routines now, maybe Harry, what do, what are you typically doing as far as eating and working out?
Harry (27m 44s:)
Yeah, so I'm, Brett and I are both pretty big into the endurance sports sport space and Nice, you know, I have a, a race coming up here in the next few months. So right now my, I'm trying to do a lot of my training in the mornings fat adapted, so like fasted training and kind of hold that out, hold out into on eating until like 11 o'clock. But before I train I'll, I'll usually crush like a coffee with some like MCT oil or some butter in it and get some fats in. So like that's like my form of, you know, getting some calories in but not having any sort of glucose response. And then, you know, my, I try to keep a tight eating window.
Harry (28m 28s:)
I just, I think time and, and money are the two biggest constraints for everyone when it comes to food. And I just like being productive with my time. And so in the morning I can just not even worry about food, focus on all the other stuff that I wanna do. Have like a three hour eating window where I like, I'll cook, you know, some ground beef. Usually it's like ground beef and eggs. Like I, I just keep it pretty simple and, and put in some fermented veggies, pickles, onions, sauerkraut, kimchi and just, you know, keep it, keep some variety in there. And then, yeah, for that, for the most part, like that'll be like meal number one, you know, that's usually like a pound, pound and a half of ground beef.
Harry (29m 11s:)
And then meal number two will be probably something similar, you know, might be like different style of eggs for Tata or like if I'm, if I have the right meat, do like a chuck eye or I just ordered a, a quarter cow. So I've got a freezer full of beef right now, so I'm going, going all in on a lot of just meat based meals. So I got a variety of stuff that I can pull from now, which is nice. But I mean that's usually it. And you know, I probably am, in terms of caloric, like the calories I need to get, I like, I try to just get as much fat in through like coffee. Like whenever I have a coffee I'm dumping a ton of butter in it.
Harry (29m 54s:)
So that's like a way that I try to sneak in a few extra calories throughout the day, you know, two or three times throughout the day.
Brian (29m 59s:)
Okay. Yeah. And Brett, what about you?
Brett (30m 2s:)
Yeah, I would say that my eating style is pretty similar to Harry's. I'm not training for an endurance event right now. I'm doing just more like heavy weight training and have noticed a huge, like a lot of people talk to us about, you know, they feel like they're unable to put on muscle mass or gain weight on a low carb diet. And I feel like maybe they're not eating enough because every time I've trained pretty hard with the weights at a good intensity and eat animal protein consistently, I have no issue putting on muscle and weight. Like I think I'm close to like 180 8 right now and I normally walk around or walk around at like 180 ish. So I, you know, I think it's a good testament to like, if you're eating the right way and training the right way, even if you are lower carb, you shouldn't have any issues putting, putting density on.
Brett (30m 45s:)
But for me, very similar, I, I start off in the morning I mix in a packet of element just to kind of front load electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, potassium into water and then throw some heavy cream into my coffee. I really am not a huge breakfast guy. Like there's some mornings where I, I just listened to my stomach where if I am hungry I'll throw on three or four eggs from the local farm and cook that. But most mornings I'm really not eating breakfast. And then around like 11 to 12 my stomach will start to grumble and want some food and it's any combination of ground beef, steak, chicken, thighs, those that, that's typically like the big three that I'll alternate between. Maybe I'll throw in some pickles, maybe some avocado, maybe some cheese.
Brett (31m 27s:)
And then dinner is typically like a big steak, like a pound plus of meat and I just eat that until I'm full. And I think you touched on cutting your meals a little bit earlier. That's something that I haven't done in the past that I've really been focusing on the last few weeks just to try and optimize that sleep quality. So I've been trying to cut all my meals by like seven 30 and I've been noticing a big difference in my sleep quality. And then another thing with gut health is if I'm ever having issues with my gut, I will mix in a fair amount of bone broth too. And I know that that's something Harry does as well, like three to four cups a day if I really need it. And it's just incredibly satiating. You can throw some butter in there so if you're ever really hungry and just want like a quick satiating snack, you can boil some bone marrow off, throw some butter in there and you've got, you know, it's probably like a hundred, 200 calories good fat and it's really nourishing for the gut microbiome.
Brett (32m 17s:)
But, but yeah, I would say that's, you know, typical day of meals.
Brian (32m 21s:)
Yeah, I would say like I think some people might complain and say that if, if they're eating a meat-based diet that it's can get expensive, but ground beef is a great way to go as sort of like, I don't know, you're, you can get qu like i I order from force of nature a lot of times. I don't know if you're familiar with that, that company? Yes. Regenerative farming and they got actually, I, I've been ordering their, they have, they're starting to make some stuff that you could have like, well you could have it at whenever you want, but it's like, I don't really eat sausage, but it's a, it's a venison and beef sausage, it's, I had it with eggs today. It was really, really, really good. Wow. Yeah. Have you had that, Brett, have you?
Brett (33m 1s:)
We, we have, yeah, we, we've had that and we've actually interviewed Taylor. We've had Taylor Collins on the show too, who found a force of nature. He's an amazing guy.
Brian (33m 9s:)
Yeah, I'll have to get 'em on cuz I use their products enough. Yeah,
Harry (33m 15s:)
Their whole business is amazing. Like I'm a huge, huge fan of what they're doing. It's like they're building out this regenerative supply chain and the quality of the actual meat is so good. That's like, honestly one of the companies that got Brett and I really interested in talking about the food system more is, is force in nature and white oak passers, which is another company that we've ordered from directly. There's great, great brands. So yeah, it's it's cool that you're using them.
Brian (33m 45s:)
Yeah. And and it's nice because they make those, those blends, right? Those ancestral blends with the, with the organ meets in there. Do you guys, other than maybe getting the blends and getting some, do you get organs from anywhere else?
Brett (33m 58s:)
Yeah, we, we have a farm that recently sponsored our podcast. They're called Holy Cow Beef. They're a family-owned farm out of Lubbock, Texas. The husband Weldon was a former financial advisor and they were just on the typical like standard American diet and he ended up having a stroke when he was 42 and they started digging into like the western a the western, a price rabbit hole eating more animal-based foods, cooking all their meals, changing their diet. And he ended up like reversing a ton of those symptoms and they're, he's over 60 and then Anne, his wife is 59 and they're in amazing shape and they, they take incredible good care of their animals. It's all grass fed, grass finished amazing omega six to omega-3 profile.
Brett (34m 39s:)
And the point of me saying that is that they supply, they've been supplying us with meat and their, their liver is like incredibly nutrient dense and really delicious. So for me, like I don't really mind the taste of raw liver that much. I don't, I don't cook it cuz I think it's so easy to overcook it. And that's where it gets that kind of like metallic taste that rubs people the wrong way. But I literally just cut up like an ounce of liver in the morning, I chop it into little pieces and I just throw it on a spoon and just mix it back with water. But also if anyone's squirmish, what they can do is they can just throw the whole liver into the freezer and chop off like little capsules and just pop it like a pill and you're still getting all the good quality nutrients and it's way cheaper than like a $50 bottle of liver capsules that are, they're dried and they're way less nutrient dense than the real raw form of organ meat.
Brian (35m 28s:)
Yeah, well that, that's a, that's a good tip. And it's called, is it called the company? Call it holy cow meat. Is that
Brett (35m 33s:)
Holy cow? Yes.
Brian (35m 34s:)
Yeah. Holy cow. Okay. Yeah, to check them up. Yeah. You know what the nice thing is is, Yeah, go ahead Harry. What you gonna
Harry (35m 41s:)
Say? Sorry, I was sorry to cut you off. I was just gonna add like, I I think the important part with the liver is like the quality for that really matters cuz if they are, if they do have, you know, antibiotics in their system for whatever reason, you don't wanna be eating that animal's liver cuz those things get stored in the organs before the muscle tissue and everything else. So I think it's important to, to note that.
Brian (36m 4s:)
Yeah, that's a good point. And and it's great the, there, there are a lot of these companies popping up. So like my wife and I, we always like stock the fri the freezer every, every month. Like I have not bought a, excuse me, a part of a cow like you have Harry, but, but, but there's a few local farms and, and I wanted to speak or talk a little bit more about the raw dairy cuz I'll, I've been going to a farm not every week, but there's literally a line you gotta get the, before it opens to get, get raw dairy. There's probably only like one farm, maybe a couple in Illinois that I know of that you can get, you know, raw dairy from.
Brian (36m 45s:)
Is that something you guys like try to get in your area? I don't know. Harry, where are you located?
Harry (36m 49s:)
Yeah, I'm in Austin and I'll drive, So there's one person who shows up to the, or one farm that shows up to the farmer's market that provides raw dairy called Richardson's farm. And there's another one that's about a 45 minute drive in LeRange Texas called the Jersey Barnyard that I actually usually end up driving out to them. But same thing I've showed up there, I stupidly didn't call ahead of time. Yeah. But it was like a, it was like a Tuesday and I was like, I'm just gonna go get my raw milk, get out there early. And I got out there early and they're like, like it's, it's been so dry. We, and and demand is crazy. We don't have any raw milk right now, but it's something, I mean I love it.
Harry (37m 32s:)
I think it's absolute super food. Pasteurized milk for me is just, you're missing out on all the benefits of what real milk actually is. So I think that it's a shame that some states don't really provide access to it, but it, it's, it's an amazing food. I use it as like, you know, post workout. There's not a better post workout shake than pure raw milk.
Brian (37m 60s:)
Brett, is this something that you get as well? What are you in San Diego?
Brett (38m 3s:)
I'm in, I'm in San Diego. So the interesting thing about raw milk, right, is it's, it's a, it's on a state by state basis. So there are a lot of states where you can't even get yourself raw milk if you want it. So technically California raw milk is legal, but there's basically two farms that almost have like this monopoly on the raw dairy. So one of the farms, I'm not gonna name them by name, but one of the farms, they basically, they supply every single sprouts in California. So to be able to supply every single sprouts they have to be a massive farm. And you know, what you feed the cow really matters. You want those true grass fed cows. And I've, I've read that they actually supplement like corn meal cakes and things like that.
Brett (38m 45s:)
And what I notice is when I go to visit Harry in Texas and we go out to the Barnard, my stomach digests that milk, that's all grass fed milk far better than the stuff that I can get in California. So it's like I will drink it, but I don't drink it nearly as much as if I was in Texas and had access to an actual farm because it, it really, it really does matter. But I mean even just like the experience that Harry has, it's like raw milk is one of the most pure interactions that you could possibly have because you're trusting this farmer to raise their cows the right way to raise them on grass to keep the cow clean. And they're also intentionally, like when you're at a big conventional dairy, those cows could be getting pumped five gallons of milk a day just over production and maximizing for profit or like the farm like the jersey Barnard that here he goes to, they're intentionally stopping them at like a gallon and a gallon and a half a day to ensure that the cow has the best quality life possible.
Brett (39m 40s:)
And then on top of that, it's so nutrient dense, right? It's like an amazing source of cholesterol, saturated fat, fat soluble vitamins, digestive enzymes. And a lot of that stuff really gets denatured and destroyed when you're pasteurizing your milk because you're heating it up, you know, a U s d a procedure to try and protect people from the, from the bacteria, which is like really a very outdated policy that Harry's written extensively about. But it's interesting for sure.
Brian (40m 7s:)
Yeah, don't worry Harry, the first time I went to the farm, I, they have a certain amount allotted and, and there was this long line I'm like, all right, I'll get in there. I was the, the cutoff, I was like, Oh, oh dude, that's terrible. Waited an hour and I ended up buying a few other things and left, but I learned my last But you went nice enough to spare something for you, not for a big price. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's something that's, that's sought out for I think, I think people are learning more about it, especially people who do have gut issues. Right Brett? Cuz you can tolerate it more, it can be more tolerable. Correct.
Brett (40m 46s:)
Totally a hundred percent. And there's certain people that even with the raw, they'll still struggle just drinking straight up raw milk. It's like a case by case thing, but you know, fermented forms of raw milk like keifer and yogurt and different types of dairy, like those are incredibly healing and most people should be able to tolerate those and not only tolerate it should be able to help with your gut improving the microbiome.
Brian (41m 11s:)
Yeah. And just to, to, to move topics a little bit, a question that gets asked is what about chicken? I saw a post, you guys did this post a little while back about how the, how the size of the chicken has increased by like four times it looks like from the fifties all the way till today. What do you guys have, what are your thoughts on chicken? Cuz I think back in the, now think back in the day it was like the bodybuilders, it was like chicken and rice was the diet. I think things have changed a little bit since then.
Harry (41m 43s:)
Yeah, I think chicken's an interesting one cuz it's so accessible, it's easy to, it's actually talking about this with a buddy, like the life cycle to get to breed chickens and grow them to full size is a couple of weeks for cows it's 36, 36 months. So you can just pump through chicken and and create this, this protein for people. Usually they're being fed corn and soy which shows up in their, their fat content. So it's typically a higher level of linoleic acid, which is kind of that polyunsaturated fat that's gonna create some inflammation in the system.
Harry (42m 29s:)
It's not as good as steer acid from a inflammation perspective, which is what beef is mostly, which is the fat that's in beef mostly. So I think when it comes to chicken you need to be really intentional about where you're getting it from. Yeah, unfortunately. And you know, like I love the taste of chicken when you get high quality chicken, like the skin I think is a, is actually a, a great part of the chicken to be eating but like most people aren't eating the high quality chicken they're eating like the quick chicken nuggets or like, you know, grab and go chicken on a salad in an airport, which is usually the worst quality chicken.
Harry (43m 13s:)
Most chickens are aren't raised on pasture like in forging meat like they should be. So there's a lot of different narratives around this topic that I, around poultry that I think need to be examined a little bit further. Brett, I don't know if you have any anything to add to that but
Brett (43m 31s:)
No, I think you did a great job and I think to your point it's an incredibly, it's a very nuanced topic as well because people are very opinionated on social media when it comes to this stuff. But it's funny Brian, that you mentioned the chicken breast and rice is like the body building diet cuz that's something that a lot of, like the mass monsters they're called of today's, like today's modern bodybuilders, that's a lot of what they eat. But when you look back to the golden era bodybuilders like in Schwartz and ER's age and Tom Platt's age, those guys are considered to have like the best physiques of all time and they, they basically were eating animal based diets and they were eating a ton of saturated fat and a ton of cholesterol steaks, ground beef, raw dairy, ton of eggs, egg yolks and liver, et cetera.
Brett (44m 14s:)
So I think that's just like an interesting point but to everything that Harry said, it's like we're basically eating massive baby birds where we're killing these birds way sh way shorter in their lifespan and they're also getting way fatter, which is kind of taking the nutrition and the taste and the flavor and, and as Harry mentioned, they're pretty much all eating corn and soy. But with that being said, like number one, you know, we are, both of us are trying to buy our chickens from like a local farm where we know that they're out in the yard eating a species appropriate diet that tastes really good, they're typically a little bit smaller. And I incorporate that into my diet a good amount. Like I do eat primarily red meat, but there are plenty of nights where I'll make some steak or I'll throw like a chicken thigh or two to accompany it because, you know, I enjoy the taste of chicken and it still is nutrient dense if you're getting it from the right source.
Brett (45m 4s:)
But even if you're someone that maybe doesn't have a budget to be sourcing all your stuff from the farm, if you're starting point is just, hey, I can only afford grocery store meat, whether that's chicken ground beef steak, I would still prefer you to eat the corn and soy fed chicken as opposed to the inner crop and the inner aisle of the grocery store. So it's like you can't let perfection get in the way of just starting and being really good because that's still a good starting point and you'll get healthier and source the right stuff over time.
Brian (45m 33s:)
Yeah, I think that's a great point. Sometimes it's easy to get caught up on all the nuance of all this, right? Like especially like with people ask me these questions with fasting, Oh does this break my fast or what, what should I, you know, when should I, can I have, you know, like obviously cream and coffee, that's a big one. Yes. But like I know you guys were with had, I don't know if did Dr. Benza or not Dr, but Benza keto camp guy and he, he, he always talks about like coffee and cream is, those are like fasting training wheels maybe, like things that just get you through. And so I I think that for, like you said, it's easy to get caught up in all the nuance and I think it's important to just come with a goal in mind.
Brian (46m 16s:)
Like what, what is, what is the goal of, of what you're trying to do? And like you said, if you're just starting out, you don't have to go spend, you know, these grass fed, grass finished ribeyes and spend all this money you can get ground meat, beef and, and and not break the bank and even, you know, obviously quality eggs and things like that just to get started
Harry (46m 38s:)
Behind it. It's a great point. Like everyone's at a different spot, right? Like Brett and I can sit here all day and talk about how we're like idealist and, and basically shoot for perfection with how we're dieting, but that's just totally unattainable and unrealistic for someone who's just getting started. So it's a huge, i I think it's a huge point and it's, it's part of the reason why people who are just getting started feel so much pressure is cuz you look at these people who have success when it comes to eating healthy and they're talking about like threading the needle and do like, it's like looking at an Olympic athlete's workout program and being like, yeah, I'm never gonna be able to do that. Like, it takes time to get there.
Brian (47m 21s:)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, start slow, right? Start slow with all of it. Well, any last last tips you guys guys wanna give? But usually I, I ask, and I guess I'll have you each can chime in on like what, what one tip would you give someone that's maybe looking to, I mean, get their bodies back and maybe they're in their forties, fifties, sixties and, and they've gone down sort of the wrong road of health. What, what kind of tips would you give those individuals just starting out?
Harry (47m 47s:)
Yeah, I think we hit on it, but one thing that really sticks with me is how distant we've grown from our food system and from the process of actually going, going and getting high quality ingredients. But then we touched on this, cooking your own meals. If there's one thing you can do for yourself to really start to control what, what direction your health is going in, it's go and just start making meals from scratch. So like, go learn one recipe a week that you know is gonna be really healthy and just build on that start. Like, that's, that's what worked best for me. I started like learning how to use a dutch oven to create a chuck roast and then that evolved into, you know, all these different recipes that I started making a big salad that had a bunch of beef on it.
Harry (48m 34s:)
It's like these things just compound and once you know how to do it once you'll always be able to go back to it. So I think it's just a, an element of health that's very understated. You can also, for someone who has kids, you can educate your kids on how to cook their own meals and get them involved and get them excited and just share, like, share these experiences with your family through really high quality meals. I think there's a lot of different ways to kind of prove the worth of that one core principle, but I, I really do think that it's important for people to start doing in, in really embracing.
Brian (49m 9s:)
Yeah. And Brett, what about you? What do you, what what's your one tip?
Brett (49m 13s:)
I would say that my one tip builds off of Harry's and you, you, I forget Brian, you said something earlier that reminded me of this. I would say like, let your, like give yourself the ability to actually have like the compounding interest of success from, from changing your diet and lifestyle. And what I mean by that is because of all the different inputs, all the different diets, all the different nuances, this stuff is so dogmatic, it's so easy to switch things up and get discouraged and get complacent and get off the diet where it's like, hey, maybe you tried it for four days or a week, right? That's really not enough time. Like commit to just choosing something for a month, whether it's just being no sugars, no grains, whether it's being paleo, keto carnivore.
Brett (49m 57s:)
Just commit to doing something for 30 days. Give yourself a set a set of rules and just commit to that for 30 days and see how you feel. And I would be shocked if you don't, if you don't feel immediately better. Like all the stuff that the three of us are talking about, it's very simple, right? It's cooking your own meals, it's eating real foods, it's getting daily sunlight exposure, it's walking 10,000 steps a day, it's incorporating like a 10 minute meditation. It's just doing a couple of those things and doing it over and over again and trusting the process that the fact that over time you're gonna get healthier. And like Harry, he just started off walking and then he incorporated ring dips, then he started doing, you know, more weight training, and then he signed up for an Ironman.
Brett (50m 37s:)
But the point is, it's like it was the walking that eventually led to the Ironman. He didn't just throw himself right into the deep end. So I think it's just that trust of the process of just being very consistent. Let yourself compound and realize that it's like fitness is one of the par the fairest pursuits ever, because if you commit to it, you will get healthier no matter if you're a male or a female or what your race is or your weight is like, you know, it's, it's one of the fairest pursuits. So that's what I would say is my one thing.
Brian (51m 5s:)
Well said. That was more than one thing, but it
Brett (51m 8s:)
Was like 20, it was like 20 things.
Brett (51m 10s:)
But that's, that's how it goes.
Brian (51m 12s:)
You know what though? But your, your point about like that compounding effect. I was just on an interview and they asked me my favorite book. There's a book, Slight Edge. Have you guys heard of that book?
Harry (51m 21s:)
No,
Brian (51m 21s:)
That's a good one. You guys would like it right up your Slight Edge, Jeff Olson. He just talks about that. Just putting time on your side and doing those small little things. And yeah. Brett, we could've just recorded you in that last few minutes and we we'll be done The
Brett (51m 36s:)
Whole podcast. Podcast,
Brian (51m 39s:)
Honestly, that's like, that's it right there. There's
Harry (51m 41s:)
Your clip.
Brian (51m 42s:)
Yeah. Right. And, and the, and you guys are on the Meat Mafia podcast Best place. And I know you have a newsletter and a, is it a subscription model based?
Harry (51m 52s:)
Yeah, we have a, a free sub stack that go, comes out every Friday, just usually like five topics that we write on in some, some things that are happening in the world of the Meat Mafia in terms of podcast guests that we've had on, or some appearances that we do. So, you know, just kind of keeping our audience up to date on things that are happening with us. But yeah, I think that the, our Instagram page, both of our Twitter handles are great places to find us as well. And then we have that sub stack page. So check us out if you're listening. And we, we really appreciate the support.
Brian (52m 23s:)
Awesome. Yeah, I was checking that, checking that out. You, you, it's nice. You, you can sort of go in the inside and see what's going on and then if you really like it, you can subscribe, which I like. I like that, how you guys do that.
Brett (52m 35s:)
Yeah. And, and for the, for the free subscribers, it's like we, we, our goal is, I think there's like 95 days left in the year and we have a commitment to write a new article, publish a new article every single morning for a free subscriber. So you're still getting a ton of value with the, with the free version.
Brian (52m 50s:)
Got, I wonder what the paid version gets.
Brett (52m 53s:)
Lot of good stuff. Yeah.
Brian (52m 56s:)
Well, Brett and Harry, thank you so much for coming on my first dual po actually it's my second dual podcast, so this was fun. And look forward to, I'm gonna definitely check out your sub stack and all your articles that you write and for all you guys do, thanks so much for, for coming on.
Harry (53m 12s:)
Awesome. Appreciate it Brian. Thanks
Brett (53m 15s:)
For having us.
Brian (53m 17s:)
Thanks for listening to the Get Lean E 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.
