The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1176 - Dom D'Agostino & Layne Norton

00:00:01.000 Here we go.

00:00:02.000 Four, three, oh, two, one, and we're live.

00:00:09.000 Gentlemen, thanks for being here.

00:00:10.000 Appreciate it.

00:00:12.000 Let everybody know who you are.

00:00:13.000 Lane?

00:00:14.000 I'm a meathead who likes science.

00:00:17.000 Got into bodybuilding when I was young, and then did a BS in biochemistry, PhD in nutritional science.

00:00:26.000 Kept lifting, did powerlifting, won two national championships, got silver medal at Worlds, set a then-world squat record, and did also bodybuilding and won a natural pro card.

00:00:37.000 They actually have natural bodybuilding, believe it or not.

00:00:40.000 And throughout that time, just...

00:00:42.000 You know, when I first got into it, one magazine said one thing, and even in the same magazine, they have an article one month, next month it would contradict it. 0.95

00:00:50.000 So I was like, I'm just going to try and figure this shit out for myself. 0.68

00:00:53.000 Which is the place that a lot of people listening are at right now. 0.97

00:00:57.000 Yeah, and it's tough because it's kind of like, who do you trust?

00:01:00.000 Because not everybody has the time or the energy.

00:01:03.000 To go and do a degree in this stuff.

00:01:06.000 But that was me.

00:01:07.000 I kind of got down the rabbit hole of, all right, let's try and figure this nutrition stuff out.

00:01:11.000 And of course, the more I learned, the more I realized I didn't know.

00:01:14.000 But yeah, it just became a passion for me.

00:01:17.000 And to this day, I love this stuff.

00:01:20.000 This is what gets me up, gets me going.

00:01:22.000 Well, guys like you are very important.

00:01:24.000 Guys who actually train very hard and really understand the science.

00:01:29.000 Because it's usually one or the other.

00:01:30.000 Absolutely.

00:01:31.000 When I was doing it, I graduated my PhD in 2010. When we started, we actually both knew each other from the bodybuilding.com message boards.

00:01:41.000 So those were back before social media.

00:01:43.000 Trained together back in 2006 or 7?

00:01:46.000 7 at Experimental Biology.

00:01:47.000 So there's a big symposium every year for science geeks.

00:01:51.000 And we were both going to it.

00:01:53.000 And we found out about each other on the forums.

00:01:56.000 And we went and trained together.

00:01:57.000 And he's a beast.

00:01:59.000 And yeah, we really hit it off and we've been friends since then.

00:02:03.000 So for everybody who's looking for a fight, sorry, we're probably going to be pretty friendly.

00:02:08.000 Well, it's going to be a conversation.

00:02:09.000 We don't need to have a fight.

00:02:11.000 Dom, you've been on the podcast before, but for people who didn't listen to that one, please tell them who you are and what you do.

00:02:16.000 Yeah, I'm... 0.99

00:02:17.000 Keep this sucker. 0.99

00:02:18.000 Yeah, sure. 0.98

00:02:20.000 Well, getting back, I majored in nutrition actually as an undergrad, but didn't actually see a career in it that much.

00:02:26.000 So I went into neuroscience.

00:02:27.000 The net 90s was a decade of the brain.

00:02:29.000 And my formal training is in neuroscience.

00:02:33.000 And it got steered towards basically changing the neuropharmacology of the brain with nutrition.

00:02:39.000 And that's what the ketogenic diet does. 0.97

00:02:41.000 And it has...

00:02:42.000 Tremendous benefits, I think, for military personnel, which is funded by the Office of Navy Research and the Department of Defense, to develop ketogenic strategies to enhance readiness, resilience, and performance and safety in military personnel.

00:02:59.000 And why specifically does the ketogenic diet help military people?

00:03:04.000 I know there's a thing with Navy SEALs, with preventing epilepsy.

00:03:09.000 Yeah, so central nervous system oxygen toxicity, a limitation of that is, or a limitation of Navy SEAL diving is oxygen toxicity seizures.

00:03:18.000 And anti-epileptic drugs are not really a viable option because they can, they're side effects, they can decrease cognitive resilience, physical resilience.

00:03:28.000 A ketogenic strategy is something that's being studied now from a basic science mechanistic perspective to animal work to now human studies.

00:03:35.000 So it's not, you know, out in the field yet, but some guys are actually doing it.

00:03:41.000 And I study the science of that.

00:03:44.000 So for people who don't understand what we're saying, for some folks who have epilepsy, the ketogenic diet has been shown to stop seizures.

00:03:51.000 Absolutely.

00:03:51.000 Go Google the Charlie Foundation.

00:03:53.000 So that's how I actually got linked in.

00:03:55.000 And actually I met a natural drug-free bodybuilder.

00:03:58.000 His name was Mike Dancer and he had severe terminal epilepsy.

00:04:02.000 Google Mike Dancer ketogenic diet and you'll find an amazing story.

00:04:07.000 About a guy who used nutrition to manage his epilepsy when drugs failed and he used it to prep and win bodybuilding shows and compete in bodybuilding.

00:04:17.000 And the rebreathers sometimes cause seizures with some of the soldiers.

00:04:22.000 They can.

00:04:22.000 So, for example, just 50 feet of seawater using a closed circuit rebreather, like a Draeger rebreather, at 50 feet of seawater, your potential for getting oxygen toxicity seizure can occur in just 10 minutes.

00:04:35.000 So that's a little bit of time, and that's not very deep.

00:04:37.000 So there's no way to predict that, and there's no way as of now to prevent that.

00:04:42.000 So we study physiological biomarkers that could warn people of an impending seizure, and we also develop countermeasures to mitigate oxygen toxicity seizures.

00:04:52.000 I focus mostly on drugs.

00:04:54.000 I'm in a pharmacology and physiology department.

00:04:56.000 But I realized that people with epilepsy, the ketogenic diet was more effective than drugs.

00:05:01.000 So I got steered into, you know, nutrition, which was my undergrad.

00:05:05.000 And then that kicked off about 10 years ago.

00:05:08.000 And I've just been deep into probably a dozen or more different applications of nutritional ketosis.

00:05:13.000 Awesome.

00:05:14.000 And Lane, I've been paying attention to you online for a long time. 0.94

00:05:16.000 One of the things you do a great job with is just calling bullshit. 0.99

00:05:21.000 I mean, you love to call bullshit, clearly. 0.96

00:05:23.000 But whenever people are overstating claims or people get ridiculous, and I think this is one of the things that is a problem with any diet where people get really enthusiastic about it. 0.96

00:05:33.000 That becomes an ideology, whether it's the ketogenic diet or the carnivore diet or the, you know, fill in the blanks.

00:05:40.000 Vegan diet.

00:05:41.000 People decide this is the end-all, be-all. 0.99

00:05:44.000 It's gonna cure cancer, make you smarter, the dick's gonna grow a foot. 0.98

00:05:47.000 All these things are gonna happen. 0.99

00:05:49.000 And you do a great job of calling bullshit on that kind of stuff. 0.92

00:05:53.000 Yeah, I mean, I'm not anti-keto. 0.97

00:05:55.000 I'm not anti-vegan. 0.99

00:05:57.000 I'm anti-bullshit. 0.98

00:06:00.000 One of the problems we have is nutrition is replacing religion for a lot of people. 0.79

00:06:04.000 So you find something that you identify with and then people start to try to say because they identify with that movement or like for example vegans they identify with many of them protection of animals.

00:06:18.000 Not my job to judge their ethics on that sort of thing.

00:06:21.000 But then they kind of try to backtrack to find the science to support them as well.

00:06:25.000 And they pick and choose.

00:06:27.000 And this is guilty of all groups, not just vegans.

00:06:29.000 This is also a lot of ketogenic diet, zealots, carnivore diet, whatever have you.

00:06:34.000 If it has the word diet, there's zealots out there who are going after it.

00:06:38.000 And I will stick up for...

00:06:41.000 I've stuck up at a scientific conference for the ketogenic diet.

00:06:44.000 We were having a roundtable about something different.

00:06:48.000 And somebody said, well, we know that the ketogenic diet impairs exercise, performance, and endurance athletes.

00:06:52.000 And I said, I don't think that's necessarily true.

00:06:57.000 It's pretty ambiguous as to whether or not it does.

00:07:01.000 It seems to be kind of individual.

00:07:03.000 But on the whole, on the average, it doesn't seem to impair exercise performance.

00:07:06.000 So it's kind of what you like.

00:07:08.000 But when you have people who...

00:07:10.000 You know, like a Gary Taubes who says, well, calories don't matter.

00:07:14.000 It's all carbohydrates.

00:07:16.000 That sort of thing, or the carbohydrate-insulin model of obesity.

00:07:19.000 I mean, the research is you're able to do a lot of hand-waving about insulin.

00:07:24.000 And, you know, when you burn so much fat when you're on a high-fat diet, which is true, by the way, you burn a lot of fat.

00:07:30.000 But what they don't talk about is that it's overall fat balance.

00:07:35.000 How much fat you store versus how much fat you burn.

00:07:37.000 And when you're on a high-fat diet, you store a lot of fat.

00:07:40.000 You also burn a lot of fat.

00:07:42.000 The overall caloric balance is what determines whether or not you will have net storage or net deposition.

00:07:47.000 And the same thing for a high-carb diet as well.

00:07:49.000 You know, this idea that with high insulin, it just completely shuts down all fat burning everywhere.

00:07:56.000 That's just not true.

00:07:57.000 Now, if you have high carbohydrate, you will burn less fat, but you're also storing less fat as well.

00:08:02.000 And again, the net caloric balance is going to be what determines how much you store, because you don't really store carbohydrate as fat for most people.

00:08:11.000 They did a study overfeeding women, where they overfed them 50% above their caloric maintenance, and they found that of 282 grams of fat that they stored during a day in adipose, only 4 grams came from carbohydrate.

00:08:25.000 278 came from fat.

00:08:26.000 So glucose, what about fructose?

00:08:29.000 So fructose causes, we think, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

00:08:33.000 So that could be, you know, de novo lipogenesis is higher with fructose.

00:08:39.000 Think about people consuming it in liquid drinks, 100 to 200 grams a day, which is not uncommon, even for my wife, not uncommon.

00:08:46.000 So fructose does seem to have a little bit of different hepatic metabolism.

00:08:52.000 But I was actually across the hall from a professor who was doing a lot of the research on fructose and obesity and fatty liver disease.

00:09:00.000 And even he came to the conclusion that If you overfeed fructose and it creates a caloric surplus and you're overfeeding fructose, then you can have some wonky stuff start to go on.

00:09:10.000 Relative to other macros.

00:09:11.000 Try to keep this right next to your face.

00:09:14.000 Sorry.

00:09:14.000 Got it.

00:09:15.000 That's what she said.

00:09:15.000 Lane is so powerful.

00:09:17.000 I talk loud and a lot.

00:09:19.000 It's good.

00:09:20.000 So if you're doing that, If you're creating that caloric surplus, what you find is when you're in net storage, when you're driving more nutrients into adipose and sometimes liver, depending on metabolism,

00:09:36.000 but it takes a lot of fructose to do that and a caloric surplus.

00:09:41.000 You start to create a lot of wonky stuff going on.

00:09:44.000 The mitochondria starts to become dysfunctional.

00:09:47.000 And, you know, people make a big deal about, oh, well, you have...

00:09:50.000 We have claimed now that everything causes obesity and type 2 diabetes.

00:09:55.000 For first it was fats, then carbohydrates.

00:09:58.000 And there's actually professors out there who actually will claim that protein gives you diabetes.

00:10:02.000 Can I stop you for a second?

00:10:03.000 What do you mean the mitochondria becomes dysfunctional?

00:10:06.000 How does the mitochondrial...

00:10:07.000 How does that happen?

00:10:09.000 Okay, so I'm gonna state for everybody that I'm going out on a limb.

00:10:12.000 This is my opinion.

00:10:13.000 Okay.

00:10:14.000 If you look at the research on obesity and diabetes, what happens is you have everything start to elevate in the bloodstream.

00:10:24.000 So if you measure like, there was a professor who thought that branched-chain amino acids were causing obesity because they were elevated in the bloodstream during type 2 diabetes.

00:10:33.000 Well, yeah, branched amino acids are elevated.

00:10:36.000 So is fatty acids, so are triacylglycerides, so is glucose.

00:10:40.000 So is it really those things causing it or is it possible that when you are overfeeding relative to what you burn, relative to that turnover, that mitochondria start to become dysfunctional, probably a lot due to inactivity.

00:10:57.000 And the mitochondria is, as we call it, the powerhouse of the cell, as you probably learned in high school biology or whatever they taught it to you as.

00:11:06.000 That is where everything fluxes through.

00:11:08.000 So that is where you're creating ATP. That's where you're burning through lipids, carbohydrates, that sort of thing.

00:11:15.000 If that becomes dysfunctional and you're not getting enough flux, enough pull through that mitochondria, what happens is you start to back up every part of metabolism.

00:11:25.000 So all the metabolic byproducts, almost all of them, inhibit everything within the cell.

00:11:29.000 There's a metabolomic signature for that.

00:11:31.000 And an epiphenomenon, if you want to call it that, would be elevated branched-chain amino acids.

00:11:36.000 It could be a consequence of that in some people.

00:11:38.000 So these things start, these byproducts, these metabolic byproducts, because you're not fluxing enough through the cell, they start accumulating within the cell and start to inhibit the Krebs cycle, glycolysis, and so everything starts backing up to the point where you also start inhibiting the insulin receptor And now you have glucose,

00:11:56.000 fatty acids, and amino acids also backing up to the point where they start to overspill into the bloodstream.

00:12:02.000 And you see this accumulation of all of them in the bloodstream in type 2 diabetes.

00:12:10.000 I actually think that, again, me going out on a limb, that obesity doesn't cause type 2 diabetes and type 2 diabetes doesn't cause obesity, that they develop in concert from the same problem, which is overfeeding underactivity.

00:12:23.000 So a lot of it is about...

00:12:26.000 How much nutrients you're fluxing into cells versus how much energy you're creating, fluxing them through the cell and out.

00:12:32.000 So when you're overfeeding, whether it be carbohydrate, fat, you're fluxing more energy in than you can dispose of, and now you have to do something with it.

00:12:42.000 Well, when you run out of When you do that much to it and mitochondria start to become dysfunctional, you start to not have enough places to put it away and it starts spilling into the bloodstream and now you cause all kinds of problems.

00:12:56.000 So, one of the things that we really wanted to talk about here is high-carb versus low-carb, because this is just a giant point of contention today in nutrition, especially in terms of athletes with performance in mind.

00:13:09.000 It's a big factor, whether or not high-carb or low-carb is the way to go, and there's a lot of zealots on both sides, and there's a lot of bullshit, and there's a lot of online experts, and one of the great things about bringing you two guys in here is because you could really actually explain the science behind it.

00:13:26.000 You've been great, Lane, at pointing out that it's not a magic bullet.

00:13:32.000 And so many people like to sort of stress it that way.

00:13:37.000 They like to portray ketogenic diet as, this is it, this is the end-all, be-all.

00:13:41.000 I figured out what to do.

00:13:42.000 This is the way everyone should be eating.

00:13:45.000 You don't think so?

00:13:47.000 I think so.

00:14:10.000 Within one year, 70% will put it all back on.

00:14:13.000 Within two years, it's 85%.

00:14:16.000 Within three years, it's 95%.

00:14:17.000 So that means diets have a 95% failure rate.

00:14:21.000 And of those people, one-third to two-thirds will add more than they originally lost.

00:14:26.000 And this gets kind of into yo-yo dieting, and I talk about that as well.

00:14:29.000 But the real problem...

00:14:33.000 Is that people don't pick something that's sustainable for them.

00:14:38.000 If there's one bit of research out there that we have, We're good to go.

00:15:10.000 Researchers take studies that have similar parameters, and they kind of lump them together.

00:15:15.000 And they look at, okay, what's the consensus amongst these studies?

00:15:18.000 And they have advanced statistics they use to run this.

00:15:21.000 If you look at low-carb versus low-fat...

00:15:25.000 There's no difference in adherence overall on the whole.

00:15:28.000 There's no difference.

00:15:29.000 And there's no difference in weight loss.

00:15:31.000 There's no difference in blood lipids, even glycemic control.

00:15:35.000 So there was a study where they met analyses of, I think it was 23 studies over 3,000 people, where they looked at, okay, if you control calories, so calories are equated, Does low carb versus low fat make a difference on weight loss, glycemic control,

00:15:51.000 those sorts of things?

00:15:52.000 Not necessarily the ketogenic diet.

00:15:54.000 So by definition, we have an objective biomarker that defines the ketogenic diet.

00:15:58.000 It's the only diet that actually has something that you can measure in your blood to say you're on this diet.

00:16:03.000 And when your ketone levels are elevated, that confers many different benefits that I believe Can enhance adherence to the diet.

00:16:13.000 Before we get into the woods here, I want to clarify one thing.

00:16:17.000 The difference between someone being on a diet and being able to sustain it and not being able to sustain it and gaining all that weight back, isn't that a discipline issue?

00:16:26.000 Well, partly, but we kind of have to start looking at, okay, if we go in...

00:16:33.000 Let me re-circle.

00:16:36.000 We have to find what requires the least amount of discipline for somebody to stick to because discipline is, while some people have more, some people have less.

00:16:45.000 It is a finite resource.

00:16:48.000 So when do we normally find that people kind of drop off whatever they're doing?

00:16:53.000 It's when they're stressed out, work's stressing them out, they're going through a divorce, those kinds of things, right?

00:17:00.000 That's where our discipline kind of wanes because we're trying to be so disciplined for this other thing and it's draining us.

00:17:06.000 So what happens with diet is People who are busy, people who have a lot of stress in their life, that's where they really start overeating. 0.93

00:17:16.000 So we have to find something that requires – I look at it as let's find something that requires the minimal amount of discipline for a person so that when your life goes to absolute shit, you can still stick to it.

00:17:28.000 And so for some people, that is a very, very individual thing.

00:17:32.000 And they see this in the dietary studies that what works for one person to create a deficit and sustainable – Isn't the same way for another person?

00:17:41.000 And Dom even commented on this about his wife, Chilla.

00:17:44.000 She does much better on a higher ratio of carbohydrates to fat. 1.00

00:17:49.000 Yeah, I mean, early on it was obvious that she wasn't going to change her diet.

00:17:53.000 The time that we met, like 10 years ago almost, I was really getting into this and I really felt that, for me at least, but she would stop at Checkers and get a burger and a sugary drink.

00:18:05.000 And she's tremendously carb intolerant. 0.96

00:18:07.000 She was very skinny as a kid.

00:18:09.000 You mean tolerant?

00:18:12.000 She's very carbohydrate tolerant.

00:18:14.000 Did I say intolerant?

00:18:15.000 Yeah.

00:18:18.000 The diet, low-carb, I feel, and ketogenic, putting it under that umbrella, works, I think, for up to 25% to 30% of people, especially if they're carbohydrate intolerant.

00:18:33.000 And I believe that it does that by virtue of elevating ketones, shifting the neuropharmacology of the brain.

00:18:42.000 For example, it works through ghrelin.

00:18:43.000 There's new science emerging right now showing that Appetite regulation is influenced positively by nutritional ketosis in ways that we're just starting to learn now.

00:18:56.000 Well, you can certainly feel it.

00:18:57.000 It's one of the weirder things about the ketogenic diet.

00:19:00.000 When you're in that state, all of a sudden you're just not hungry.

00:19:03.000 There's not an overwhelming need for food.

00:19:06.000 Yeah, I haven't had anything to eat today.

00:19:08.000 I mean, when I was eating massive plates of pasta 25 years ago and I went to this long without food, I would start getting shaky.

00:19:17.000 I would have a hypoglycemic response.

00:19:19.000 And I'm completely resilient to that.

00:19:22.000 And that has major implications for military personnel being keto-adapted, not just for performance, preventing seizures, and I think for...

00:19:29.000 Cognitive function, too.

00:19:31.000 But it's very liberating.

00:19:34.000 So meal frequency is not an issue.

00:19:37.000 So if you're in austere environments where you have limited food availability, that becomes a major issue.

00:19:42.000 And if you're working as a scientist and you're working with animals, you're doing experiments, you don't have time to eat...

00:19:48.000 I need to maintain that cognitive function.

00:19:50.000 I need to be sharp, you know, with limited food.

00:19:53.000 So it worked very good for me throughout my professorship, you know, getting tenure and things like that, where I could just put more time and energy into my work without having to stop, prepare a meal, eat a meal, clean up.

00:20:04.000 Like, I think I wasted a lot of time doing that when I was eating five to six meals a day. 0.85

00:20:10.000 He said something that I think you've called bullshit on before. 0.96

00:20:13.000 The phrase carb intolerant. 0.97

00:20:16.000 So, yeah, so that was actually going to be one of the things that's going to say, hey, we have something we can disagree about.

00:20:21.000 Carb tolerance, carb, you would say...

00:20:24.000 Depends on how we define that.

00:20:25.000 Yes, yes.

00:20:26.000 I define it by a blood marker.

00:20:28.000 Your glucose responds to a meal.

00:20:30.000 Okay.

00:20:31.000 So, a couple of things.

00:20:32.000 I want to come right out and frame this whole discussion real quick.

00:20:36.000 So, we both agree that in terms of weight loss and body composition, that your total calorie intake per day is the most important thing.

00:20:43.000 Correct?

00:20:43.000 Correct.

00:20:44.000 Yes, and I believe the ketogenic strategy is a way to regulate that.

00:20:49.000 Right.

00:20:51.000 With carb intolerance, if you look at the benefits of like on blood glucose, blood lipids, it is almost 90 to 95% explained by weight loss.

00:21:03.000 So you can take people, put them on a high carb, very low fat diet, their blood glucose and their blood lipids will drop, even with like higher insulin levels than people who are on a low carb diet.

00:21:16.000 If they're on a calorie restricted diet.

00:21:18.000 Yes, if they're calorie restricted.

00:21:19.000 Now again, that becomes a very individual thing.

00:21:23.000 If somebody says, hey, I like a ketogenic diet because for me it helps me to create a calorie deficit.

00:21:28.000 I can stick to it.

00:21:29.000 Hey, knock yourself out.

00:21:30.000 That is no problem.

00:21:31.000 But that is not always going to work.

00:21:33.000 Some people don't feel that satiated on a ketogenic diet.

00:21:36.000 There are people who do feel hungrier on that.

00:21:39.000 So that is a very individual response.

00:21:41.000 And again, when we look at studies, We're looking at means, right?

00:21:45.000 So we're talking about averages.

00:21:47.000 And there are outliers.

00:21:48.000 Like if you look at any Gaussian distribution chart, which is kind of how populations distribute based on a certain treatment, you have about 60 to 70% that fall into the average.

00:21:58.000 Then you have another, you know, 10-20% that are kind of do a little bit better one way versus the other.

00:22:04.000 And then you have 5% on either end that are, sorry, 2.5% on either end that are outliers, right?

00:22:09.000 So just to frame this again, let's take weightlifting.

00:22:13.000 We know weightlifting makes you bigger and stronger, right?

00:22:15.000 Like that is not up for debate.

00:22:16.000 We agree on that.

00:22:18.000 There are studies that have shown that some people who are beginners where you should be gaining a lot of muscle very quickly, some people will go from the first time they walk in the gym, squat 185, 12 weeks later, they're squatting 400 pounds.

00:22:30.000 Some people don't get stronger.

00:22:32.000 There have actually been studies where over 12 weeks there's a few individuals who did not get stronger.

00:22:36.000 So those are your outliers right there.

00:22:38.000 So if we circle this back to ketogenic diet, I'm not sitting here and saying that somebody may actually physiologically do better on a ketogenic diet versus a lower fat diet.

00:22:51.000 That's a very individual response.

00:22:52.000 But when we start making recommendations for people, what we should start with is, okay, create a calorie deficit that allows you to lose some weight.

00:23:00.000 Because if we look at the studies and we look at if we equate for protein, because that's a big thing.

00:23:05.000 So if you look at some of the studies where Volek did, where he compared like your kind of food guide pyramid type diet to a ketogenic diet.

00:23:15.000 The ketogenic diets were a little bit higher protein.

00:23:17.000 That protein has a thermogenic effect and also an appetite suppression effect.

00:23:21.000 When you equate for those, and there's been 32 studies, there was a recent meta-analysis done of 32 studies that equated for calories and protein.

00:23:31.000 Absolutely no difference in fat loss when you equate for those two, calories and protein, because protein's a big one, because protein has a big benefit on thermogenesis and weight loss.

00:23:42.000 Also lean body mass retention, which is huge, because one of the reasons people regain weight is because when they lose weight, they tend to lose fat and muscle, and when they regain it, it's almost all fat in the initial phase.

00:23:53.000 That data may not have included data with the ketogenic diet.

00:23:57.000 So I know when I did the diet, I've seen a lot of blood work.

00:24:00.000 So for example, my hemoglobin H1C, triglycerides, HSCRP goes down, insulin goes down, blood pressure goes down.

00:24:08.000 And all those changes happened without my body weight changing.

00:24:14.000 So that would kind of argue against that you needed a calorie deficit.

00:24:18.000 And I've seen it many times.

00:24:20.000 But I could be eating 80% to 90% carbs and reduce my body weight and get changes in all that.

00:24:28.000 I could actually increase my carbs...

00:24:30.000 And if I create a calorie deficit, you know, my hemoglobin H1C will go down, my sugar will go down, things like that.

00:24:36.000 So that is really the – that's like – that trumps everything, that calorie deficit.

00:24:41.000 So that's an important thing.

00:24:43.000 So that's what – and that's what I think a lot of people miss, okay?

00:24:45.000 And I think that – What I'll say is – sorry.

00:24:49.000 I'm just saying – so like I think that's very powerful too that these changes that I just mentioned can occur without changing your body weight.

00:24:58.000 So they are just – you're fundamentally changing your metabolism when you do that from – and that has pretty wide-ranging implications.

00:25:07.000 So I think that what I'm going to say is that if you – if we're going to talk about people getting healthier – The first thing we need to start with is let's not lose 50% arguing about 5%, right?

00:25:19.000 So if I tell somebody, hey, find a diet you can stick to that's sustainable, and if you can lose 10% of your body weight, even for obese people, they get almost all the health benefits in the first 10%.

00:25:33.000 Now, maybe some people like you or people who respond really well to a ketogenic diet, I'm not, again, there's outliers or people on the other sides of the Gaussian curve.

00:25:42.000 If you do a little bit better on there, then great.

00:25:45.000 But if you find a ketogenic diet is completely unsustainable for you and you're not able to stick to it, but you're trying to do it because you're trying to get a little bit better blood glucose regulation, you're...

00:25:57.000 You know, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot because if you could stick to, like let's say for the individual, a higher carb diet was easier for them to stick to, they could lose weight on that.

00:26:06.000 Then that's the bulk of their health benefits they're going to get from it.

00:26:09.000 I'm having a hard time with these terms, easier, because I don't know exactly why it would be easier or wouldn't be easier.

00:26:16.000 And I always wonder, again, is this a discipline issue?

00:26:19.000 Because that's your experience.

00:26:21.000 Food preference.

00:26:22.000 It comes down to food preference, but I believe that When you follow low-carb, not even ketogenic diet, the variability of the fluctuations in your insulin and blood glucose, the postprandial dip in blood glucose that you get after you eat,

00:26:38.000 that's virtually abolished or significantly attenuated.

00:26:42.000 And then you have, you know, ketones are working through ghrelin, for example.

00:26:47.000 You could eat a normal diet and drink ketones and it's actually suppressing your appetite through ghrelin.

00:26:52.000 So we know that these changes...

00:26:55.000 Through reductions in ghrelin, you're saying?

00:26:56.000 Yeah.

00:26:56.000 Okay.

00:26:57.000 So these changes sort of are happening, but my sister, for example, followed the ketogenic diet and found it easy to follow, but she gained weight because she was eating all these fat bombs that she was making.

00:27:13.000 So she went too far.

00:27:15.000 And a lot of people don't necessarily need a nutritionist to tell them what to do, but they need like a nutritional psychotherapist or something.

00:27:22.000 You know, their relationship with food is really – and I think that's what Lane has a firm grasp on.

00:27:28.000 There's no substitute for experience.

00:27:30.000 And Lane has worked with so many different clients and knows that – You know, you could probably follow the ketogenic diet.

00:27:35.000 Your listeners are probably fans of the ketogenic diet.

00:27:37.000 I can do it.

00:27:38.000 I love fatty food, you know, high-fat food, low-carb food.

00:27:43.000 But generally speaking, it's, you know, you have to approach it from the perspective of sort of eating behavior.

00:27:49.000 And I think that's really, people want to go off the diet.

00:27:52.000 It's just a natural human trait.

00:27:53.000 Yeah, it's a weird psychological trait, right?

00:27:56.000 You just want to cheat.

00:27:57.000 You want to just stuff your face with cupcakes every now and then, and then you feel like it's too much torture to keep yourself on this narrow path of high-fat, low-carb, moderate protein.

00:28:07.000 But, you know, five years ago, ten years ago, that was the case, but now there's ketogenic brownies, there's ketogenic cookies, there's many different food companies. 0.99

00:28:16.000 It all tastes like shit. 0.99

00:28:19.000 I've tried so hard. 1.00

00:28:21.000 Go to keto. 0.99

00:28:23.000 You have a real one and a keto cookie and a fucking real cookie gets eaten every time. 0.99

00:28:29.000 Yeah, well, they are evolving. 0.99

00:28:31.000 Food technology is evolving.

00:28:33.000 I'm kidding.

00:28:34.000 No foods make some good stuff.

00:28:36.000 Go to ketonutrition.org and there's some things there that are...

00:28:39.000 I would say about 10 or 20% pass the test, meaning that they taste okay and they actually do what they say.

00:28:45.000 They actually elevate ketones or don't cause a glycemic response.

00:28:50.000 Some of those keto cookies seem like they have no foundation.

00:28:53.000 They go away as you're eating them.

00:28:57.000 It's like they dissolve. 0.98

00:28:59.000 You have a good Toll House cookie, a good real chocolate chip cookie, and you bite into that sucker. 0.99

00:29:05.000 You know it's bad for you, but god damn it feels good while it's being bad. 0.98

00:29:08.000 Did you try the Quest protein cookies? 0.98

00:29:10.000 Yes.

00:29:11.000 They're pretty good.

00:29:12.000 Some of them are pretty good. 0.99

00:29:13.000 They can't fuck with real cookies. 0.99

00:29:15.000 Well, I dip them in sour cream, right? 0.99

00:29:18.000 And then I eat them or coconut cream.

00:29:21.000 So then it becomes ketogenic.

00:29:22.000 Sour cream.

00:29:23.000 Jesus Christ, man.

00:29:25.000 Try it.

00:29:25.000 Don't knock it through.

00:29:26.000 Wow, that's a commitment to high fat.

00:29:27.000 You bring that up.

00:29:28.000 Interesting, though.

00:29:31.000 If you look at people that think they're addicted to sugar or that sugar is a lot, if you look at things like cookies and cakes, it's actually – they have more calories from fats than they do sugars.

00:29:40.000 It's – sugar and fat together is hyperpalatable, right?

00:29:44.000 So we – one of the things I was going to bring up is this idea that sugar is so inherently bad and you said the cookie.

00:29:52.000 We view that as an inherently bad thing.

00:29:55.000 But what if I told you that there were certain people, not everybody, everybody's different, but there were certain people who, if you tell them, hey, you can have that cookie every once in a while, if you track it, work it into your macronutrient intake, that that's fine, that that actually improved their adherence to diet.

00:30:09.000 Because you give them a reward?

00:30:11.000 No, not a reward system.

00:30:13.000 You're not a dog.

00:30:14.000 Don't reward yourself with food.

00:30:16.000 Because increased flexibility actually usually improves adherence.

00:30:21.000 So we see this actually with training too.

00:30:24.000 Athletes, when you do a flexible training model where they have to get in a certain amount of training but they kind of can pick and choose their self which days are hard and which days are a little bit...

00:30:32.000 They actually do better.

00:30:34.000 Diet is very similar to that.

00:30:36.000 So now you always have to sacrifice something.

00:30:40.000 In order to, if you want to lose weight, right?

00:30:42.000 So if you're doing a ketogenic diet, what you're sacrificing is saying, well, I like the spontaneous reductions in appetite, so I don't mind eating not these foods so I can get that.

00:30:52.000 If you're doing like kind of what, I don't want to say I popularized it, but myself and some other people on the message boards popularized something called flexible dieting, where you can eat essentially whatever you want as long as you hit your protein, carbohydrate, and fat targets.

00:31:06.000 Now what you're sacrificing is, okay, you're tracking every day.

00:31:09.000 Do you do that through an app?

00:31:10.000 Through what?

00:31:11.000 An app?

00:31:12.000 No, I'm old school.

00:31:13.000 I actually just do it through Excel.

00:31:16.000 My girlfriend Holly, she has an app on her phone and she has me like, if she's driving, she's like, oh, you put in what I just ate?

00:31:23.000 I'm like, babe, I don't even know.

00:31:25.000 I have no idea how to work this thing, you know?

00:31:28.000 So, because when I went to do my graduate studies, I mean, I wanted to find magic foods.

00:31:34.000 I wanted to find something that would, because how else can you make a living?

00:31:38.000 You have to set yourself apart.

00:31:39.000 I mean, if I'm over here saying, it's hard for me to sell what I do, because I'm saying, well, everything in moderation, and you've got to be diligent, and you've got to have these behaviors, and that doesn't sound sexy when there's another guy over here saying, nah, bro, it's just carbs.

00:31:53.000 I know metabolism's complicated and everything, but it's just carbs.

00:31:57.000 You know, when I started working with people, and I've worked with over 1,500 people coaching in nutrition online over the past 13 years, which actually probably taught me more than my PhD did, what I found was is that people were so different individually in terms of what made them tick,

00:32:15.000 you know?

00:32:16.000 Now I feel like I should probably go back and get some kind of...

00:32:18.000 What makes them tick?

00:32:20.000 Biologically what makes them tick or psychologically?

00:32:22.000 Both.

00:32:23.000 So I can't sit here and say by the research...

00:32:28.000 That carbohydrate versus fat makes a difference on fat loss.

00:32:31.000 But what I can tell you is that some people just seem to do better on lower carb, higher fat.

00:32:37.000 But also some people I worked with just seem to do better with higher carb, lower fat.

00:32:42.000 Now whether that's a psychological thing or a physiological thing, it's hard to tease out.

00:32:46.000 Genetically.

00:32:46.000 Exactly, too, I think.

00:32:47.000 I mean, we all have different SNPs, you know, that, you know, some people have suppressed fatty acid oxidation pathways, others are like screaming fat metabolizers, you know, or fat or sugar metabolizers.

00:32:58.000 Yeah.

00:32:59.000 You know.

00:32:59.000 So, but if you look at, like, I remember I had a conversation with the researcher, Dr. Nakamura at Illinois, who was doing some of that fructose stuff.

00:33:11.000 When I was a first-year grad student, I said, well, it's this high fructose corn syrup.

00:33:16.000 This is what's causing obesity, right?

00:33:17.000 And he's like...

00:33:19.000 Well, it's easy to overconsume.

00:33:21.000 You know, like if you take a soda and you drink it, you're not less hungry than you were.

00:33:25.000 It's not very satiating.

00:33:27.000 He said, but if you're controlling your calories, it doesn't seem to be more lipogenic than comparable carbohydrate.

00:33:33.000 And I remember thinking, well, that can't be right.

00:33:36.000 All these people say that high fructose corn syrup is like the worst thing in the world for you.

00:33:40.000 There was a few studies that really changed my opinion on sugar.

00:33:44.000 Now, the listeners are going to hear this and think that I'm advocating for sugar.

00:33:48.000 I'm not.

00:33:49.000 You're not talking about, in the context of a calorie surplus, a surplus amount of fructose, which kind of explains the state of the United States.

00:33:59.000 Partly.

00:34:00.000 So if you look at sugar intake...

00:34:03.000 So this kind of gets back to the carbohydrate insulin obesity model.

00:34:06.000 If you look at sugar intake over the last 50 years or last 100 years, it went up very steadily with obesity until around the mid-90s.

00:34:14.000 And then it took a sharp dip while obesity continued to climb.

00:34:17.000 Now, again, that's just correlation data.

00:34:20.000 But if you do look at the overall calorie intake...

00:34:23.000 Versus obesity rates, it's like an R squared of like.94, which is really, really close.

00:34:29.000 Does sugar include high fructose corn syrup?

00:34:30.000 Is that lumped into sugar?

00:34:31.000 So this was added sugars.

00:34:33.000 This was added sugars.

00:34:35.000 There was a study done by a metabolic ward study.

00:34:39.000 Can I stop you there?

00:34:40.000 Are you saying that this is added sugars, not high fructose corn syrup?

00:34:45.000 So when you talk about the graph of consumption, that sugar dropped off, but high fructose corn syrup did not?

00:34:51.000 Is that accurate?

00:34:51.000 Because that took over in many of the products.

00:34:54.000 So if there's an increase in obesity, but a decrease in sugar consumption, but you're not saying a decrease in high fructose corn syrup consumption.

00:35:02.000 So I don't know that.

00:35:03.000 I'd have to look that up.

00:35:04.000 So here's me being a scientist and saying the three magic words I don't know.

00:35:08.000 One of the last conferences I went to showed that.

00:35:11.000 Like the rise over the last 10 to 15 years, like skyrocketing with high fructose corn syrup.

00:35:16.000 And because sugar was taken out, high fructose corn syrup is subsidized by farmers, a lot cheaper.

00:35:21.000 Would you agree that it's essentially your body, the way it processes it, is essentially the same?

00:35:27.000 Sugar versus high fructose corn syrup, calorie for calorie?

00:35:29.000 Well...

00:35:30.000 So sugar, sucrose, is 50% glucose, 50% fructose.

00:35:35.000 High fructose corn syrup is 55% fructose, 45% glucose.

00:35:39.000 But if you're saying that 5% is what's creating obesity, eh.

00:35:44.000 Now, again, psychologically, some people just down sodas like it's their job.

00:35:49.000 And if you're doing that, especially as children, that's a big, big no-no.

00:35:53.000 Whether it's the Mexican kind with the cane sugar...

00:35:55.000 We have kids now with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and that did not exist.

00:36:00.000 But I would say that...

00:36:01.000 Like 20 years ago.

00:36:02.000 We've got little kids.

00:36:03.000 And you think that's from corn syrup?

00:36:04.000 I think it's due to an excess surplus calories, and those surplus calories being high fructose corn syrup.

00:36:12.000 So if you're used to eating a certain amount of calories, and back when we were actually maintaining our weight back before the 60s, we were eating about 2,200 calories a day.

00:36:20.000 That was the average.

00:36:22.000 And now it's like 2,800 is the average consumption in the United States amongst adults.

00:36:27.000 I think I eat a lot more than that.

00:36:30.000 But you train and you have a higher lean body mass.

00:36:32.000 So that's fine.

00:36:34.000 Now some people, yeah, that's a whole other rabbit hole.

00:36:38.000 If you start adding sodas in, which aren't satiating at all, they don't positively affect your hunger hormones, but you continue your same normal food intake, boom.

00:36:50.000 I mean, you can start to store, right?

00:36:52.000 But I can't tell somebody, hey, there's no way you can lose weight and drink a soda.

00:36:57.000 Because that's not true.

00:36:58.000 There was a study done by SIRWIT and they looked at high glycemic diet versus low glycemic, and I mean extreme.

00:37:08.000 One group had over 100 grams of sugar a day.

00:37:10.000 Another group had 10 grams or less per day.

00:37:14.000 Sorry, it was 11 grams or less per day.

00:37:17.000 And they looked at the differences in weight loss, blood lipids, all that kind of stuff.

00:37:22.000 Did they adjust for carbohydrates?

00:37:23.000 So the group that ate 10 grams of sugar or less a day, did they eat the same amount of total carbohydrates?

00:37:29.000 Same amount of total carbs.

00:37:30.000 Okay.

00:37:30.000 So low glycemic versus high glycemic.

00:37:32.000 Yeah.

00:37:32.000 And processed carbs can spike your glucose more than sugar.

00:37:35.000 Right.

00:37:36.000 So they did have a higher fiber intake.

00:37:38.000 But what they did find that they had higher insulin responses to the meal, the high sugar group did.

00:37:44.000 But no differences in weight loss.

00:37:46.000 So both groups lost weight.

00:37:48.000 The only real difference was the lower glycemic group had a little bit better.

00:37:54.000 Both groups improved cholesterol.

00:37:56.000 The lower glycemic group had just a little bit better improvement, probably because they were eating higher fiber, which can bind cholesterol and you excreted.

00:38:04.000 I would like to see what happened if they equated.

00:38:06.000 So again, it's creating that calorie deficit.

00:38:10.000 Both groups lost weight.

00:38:12.000 Is it more difficult to create a calorie deficit if you're eating a lot of sugar?

00:38:17.000 Yes.

00:38:18.000 Okay?

00:38:19.000 So I always tell people, your diet is like a budget if you're practicing something like flexible dieting, right?

00:38:25.000 So if I've got somebody like myself who has above average muscle mass, hopefully I can say that, and people on the internet are probably going to knock me. 1.00

00:38:32.000 Oh, you fucking dick! 1.00

00:38:33.000 Look at him, he's wearing a shirt with his name on it! 1.00

00:38:36.000 So...

00:38:38.000 Okay, I'll say it.

00:38:39.000 You have above average muscle mass.

00:38:40.000 Thank you.

00:38:41.000 You're welcome.

00:38:42.000 So, if you have above average muscle mass, you train hard.

00:38:45.000 You have a faster metabolism naturally.

00:38:48.000 I mean, I've seen people who could maintain their body weight on 6,000, 7,000 calories a day.

00:38:51.000 You have a higher metabolic rate.

00:38:53.000 You have a really big budget.

00:38:55.000 So, if you make $100 million a year, is it a big deal for you to go out and buy a $500,000 sports car if you can still pay your mortgage and pay all the other requirements that you have?

00:39:04.000 No, it's fine.

00:39:05.000 But if you make...

00:39:07.000 80 grand a year?

00:39:08.000 Should you go out and buy a $500,000 sports car?

00:39:10.000 Probably not, right?

00:39:12.000 And if you make 30, you should be on the keto diet.

00:39:16.000 Well, you'd have increased food efficiency, so...

00:39:21.000 It's the same thing.

00:39:22.000 So like people...

00:39:23.000 So Pop-Tarts somehow became the model of the flexible dieting movement because people were...

00:39:27.000 Here's why.

00:39:29.000 It's kind of like counterculture.

00:39:30.000 It's like a Pop-Tart zealots out there.

00:39:33.000 It's like...

00:39:33.000 So whenever you have...

00:39:34.000 So clean eating became a thing amongst bodybuildings.

00:39:37.000 We say you eat clean even though there's no objective...

00:39:40.000 Broccoli and chicken, baby.

00:39:40.000 There's no objective definition of that.

00:39:43.000 So people were like, oh yeah, well I'm getting shredded and I eat a Pop-Tart every day.

00:39:47.000 Right?

00:39:48.000 So...

00:39:49.000 A lot of your followers do that.

00:39:50.000 They do.

00:39:52.000 Lane kind of created that.

00:39:53.000 I don't even like Pop-Tarts, to be honest.

00:39:55.000 Did you do this?

00:39:55.000 Did you start this?

00:39:56.000 No, no, no.

00:39:57.000 It's more about… I don't know who else, you know… Hang on.

00:39:59.000 Let me put some context to this.

00:40:01.000 So it's more about people saying, hey, I can still eat these foods I enjoy and I'm still losing weight because I'm in a calorie deficit and I'm hitting my protein, carbon, fat targets.

00:40:11.000 But if you're somebody with a slow metabolism and you're not exercising very much and maybe all you're eating is 100 grams of carbs a day, should you spend 75 grams of those carbs on two Pop-Tarts?

00:40:21.000 Hell no! 0.93

00:40:22.000 That's a terrible idea because you're not going to be able to hit your other micronutrients and those sorts of things.

00:40:27.000 But if you're eating...

00:40:29.000 4,000 calories, like an Alberto Nunez friend of ours, if you're eating 4,000 calories a day and losing weight, is it a big deal if he has two Pop-Tarts?

00:40:38.000 Not really, because I actually had one competitor, again a competitor, who had such a fast metabolism that He was actually having a lot of GI dysfunction because he was eating like 700 grams of carbs and 200 grams of fat per day just to maintain his weight.

00:40:55.000 And he said, I feel bloated all the time.

00:40:58.000 And I said, well, what are you eating?

00:41:00.000 Like, what are your foods?

00:41:01.000 It was chicken, rice and broccoli.

00:41:02.000 And I said, and some peanut butter for fats.

00:41:04.000 And I'm like, well, no wonder, dude, you're having 150 grams of fiber a day. 1.00

00:41:08.000 You're literally full of shit. 1.00

00:41:09.000 Like your shit is like literally backed up to your esophagus. 1.00

00:41:12.000 Okay? 1.00

00:41:13.000 So I said, do me a favor.

00:41:15.000 Eat some pizza.

00:41:15.000 Eat some Pop-Tarts.

00:41:17.000 Eat some more calorically dense foods and see how you feel after three days.

00:41:21.000 He emailed me after three days.

00:41:22.000 He was like, man, I feel so much better.

00:41:24.000 I dropped like three pounds.

00:41:26.000 I feel amazing.

00:41:27.000 That doesn't make any sense.

00:41:28.000 Lane inspired the Pop-Tart generation.

00:41:31.000 He also inspired...

00:41:33.000 And I watched this play out online.

00:41:34.000 This makes me sound really bad.

00:41:35.000 Well, Lane...

00:41:38.000 I actually inspired a generation of drug-free bodybuilders to go and do their PhDs.

00:41:45.000 Actually, one's in my lab right now.

00:41:47.000 Andrew.

00:41:48.000 I coached him for a little while.

00:41:50.000 Yeah.

00:41:50.000 Amazing student.

00:41:51.000 And I think he learned a lot just from watching Lane.

00:41:56.000 But I think that it was amazing to see these guys eating that amount of Pop-Tarts and junk foods.

00:42:03.000 And I learned a lot from that.

00:42:04.000 But I think they could do it with better carbohydrates.

00:42:07.000 So, what works for performance, what works for bodybuilding, may not be, is probably not optimal for longevity and health.

00:42:15.000 So, that's an important point, you know.

00:42:18.000 Lane Winst.

00:42:19.000 Yeah, I... The audio listeners only.

00:42:22.000 Okay.

00:42:23.000 So, I know where he's coming from, but, you know, I'd like to hear his opinions.

00:42:28.000 Yeah, so...

00:42:30.000 Before you do that, why do you think that it would be an issue?

00:42:33.000 What would be the issue with sugar and with Pop-Tarts and junk food?

00:42:37.000 What would be the negative effects biologically?

00:42:40.000 I think the accumulation of the postprandial spikes in glucose and insulin over time, especially in the context of a calorie surplus...

00:43:00.000 I think it's even more important, almost, to actually stick with foods, carbohydrate sources that Our lower glycemic, you know, you can only tolerate so much fiber, but I think if you are running a calorie, if you are doing a ketogenic diet and you have a calorie surplus,

00:43:18.000 that could be a bad thing.

00:43:19.000 Your triglycerides will go up.

00:43:21.000 So you are putting too much fat in the system and that...

00:43:24.000 But it would go up on a higher carb diet.

00:43:26.000 It would go up on a higher carb diet, too.

00:43:29.000 So, I mean, I kind of would stay along the lines of maybe protein, but you just, you know, you titrate it in a reasonable amount.

00:43:35.000 But I just think that the negative, you know, that could come out of that is that you're, you know, I'm following a blood glucose curve, right?

00:43:46.000 An insulin curve.

00:43:47.000 And I see this very dramatically, for example, in my student, who's a type 1 diabetic, Andrew Kutnick.

00:43:52.000 And he wears a DEXCOM, a continuous blood glucose monitoring system.

00:43:57.000 And his insulin requirements dramatically dropped with low-carb, and his glucose fluctuations dramatically improved.

00:44:05.000 And that's going to pay big dividends, probably.

00:44:08.000 If you have type 1 diabetes, you know, the 10 top things on how humans die, you have a greater risk for every one of those.

00:44:17.000 You know, dramatic...

00:44:19.000 Cuts 10 years off of your life.

00:44:21.000 The tighter you can keep your glucose levels, your blood glucose and your insulin levels, that in the long run I feel is going to pay.

00:44:29.000 The science still has to show that, I think.

00:44:32.000 It's not totally clear.

00:44:34.000 But I think we can, for type 1 diabetics, which I think we can apply that data to the population, if they control their glucose levels, that pays big dividends in the long run.

00:44:46.000 Lane?

00:44:48.000 So, a couple of things.

00:44:49.000 You actually touched on a couple of the points I was going to bring up, but I want to address one thing first, which is the higher postprandial insulin and the negative effects on health.

00:44:59.000 So, if you have – they've done studies on this, on BMI versus insulin.

00:45:03.000 Now, BMI is a – we can debate about how useful of a measure it is, but in general, it reflects body fat in the average population.

00:45:09.000 Not in lifters, but in the average population.

00:45:11.000 BMI, by the way, for people who are listening, is a ratio of your height versus your weight that generally reflects obesity.

00:45:18.000 And you're obese.

00:45:19.000 I'm obese.

00:45:21.000 Lane and I are both obese.

00:45:23.000 I'm morbidly obese. 0.96

00:45:24.000 It seems so silly.

00:45:25.000 It is, but if you look at the general population who doesn't exercise, it's actually pretty darn accurate.

00:45:32.000 It gets factored into your insurance though, which is not...

00:45:35.000 Does it really do yours?

00:45:36.000 It can.

00:45:36.000 That's hilarious.

00:45:38.000 They look at you and say you're obese.

00:45:39.000 Some insurances will do like a waist chest measurement, which helps.

00:45:42.000 But anyway, so postprandial insulin, they've looked at the relationship between people who have their BMIs and postprandial insulin.

00:45:51.000 They find that people with higher BMI have higher postprandial insulin.

00:45:55.000 But the opposite relationship does not hold true.

00:45:57.000 People who have higher insulin do not necessarily have higher BMI and they've done this in meta-analysis.

00:46:03.000 So what that says is again that if you are obese, type 2 diabetic metabolic syndrome profile, that you will have elevated levels of insulin because your body is becoming insensitive to it because of all the dysfunction that we talked about.

00:46:17.000 But just because you secrete higher insulin doesn't mean that you're going to have more body fat.

00:46:22.000 And there was a study done actually by one of the proponents of the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis that looked at what's called Mendelian randomization, where basically the idea is you have different gene variants like we were talking about.

00:46:38.000 And if, for example, like they've done this with LDL cholesterol – or sorry – Yes, LDL cholesterol.

00:46:46.000 Most people believe that LDL cholesterol has some contribution towards heart disease.

00:46:50.000 I would say it's a pretty strong...

00:46:52.000 Very controversial.

00:46:55.000 Very context-dependent and individual.

00:46:58.000 When they look at these gene variants, people who have gene variants where they run lower LDL have lower rates of heart disease.

00:47:06.000 People who are higher, higher rates of heart disease.

00:47:08.000 If you look at that with insulin...

00:47:10.000 At best, insulin explains 10% of obesity.

00:47:16.000 At absolute best.

00:47:17.000 And that study actually showed a high level of bias.

00:47:20.000 It was between 1% to 10%.

00:47:23.000 So I'm not putting out the idea that maybe insulin has some effect.

00:47:28.000 You're talking about fasting insulin or postprandial insulin?

00:47:31.000 Overall.

00:47:32.000 Overall.

00:47:32.000 I'm guessing probably more so fasting.

00:47:35.000 How do they measure insulin?

00:47:37.000 I mean, we have hemoglobin H1C for like, you know.

00:47:40.000 So there was another meta-analysis where they looked at higher carb versus lower carb diets.

00:47:49.000 Equating calories, looking at HbA1c, and saw that the differences in weight loss were no different, like we've discussed, when calories are equated.

00:47:58.000 But also the differences in HbA1c reduction weren't different.

00:48:01.000 They were the same.

00:48:02.000 Now, you asked about health and, you know, consuming some of these quote-unquote bad foods, if you do it in the...

00:48:09.000 But you said in the context of a caloric surplus, right?

00:48:13.000 Which is the important thing, because they help to create a surplus.

00:48:17.000 But in a deficit, what's the downside?

00:48:19.000 Because kind of when you talk to people who are not ketogenic necessarily but proponents of quote-unquote clean eating, which again has no real objective definition, when you say, okay, well, a Pop-Tart, maybe you can lose weight on it, but it can't be good for you.

00:48:34.000 Okay, well then we have to have some objective measurement to show this by, right?

00:48:38.000 Because otherwise it's, do you believe in magic?

00:48:40.000 Okay?

00:48:41.000 So if you look at processed foods, what they have found with processed foods is that you have a lower energy expenditure from them.

00:48:48.000 Okay?

00:48:49.000 So you have a certain amount of what we call TEF, thermic effect of food.

00:48:53.000 Higher protein has a higher TEF than carbohydrate and fat.

00:48:57.000 So we know that higher protein diets actually cause more weight loss and better lean body mass retention.

00:49:01.000 Part of that is through the increased thermogenesis of the TEF, thermic effect of food.

00:49:06.000 Well, with processed foods, you have a lower TEF. But that doesn't mean you can't eat any processed foods and lose weight.

00:49:13.000 You can.

00:49:14.000 It just means you might have to eat a little bit lower calories overall.

00:49:17.000 Does that make sense?

00:49:18.000 If there was a ketogenic Pop-Tart and it was made with almond flour, we know that if we eat almonds, we're probably – or other nuts or things.

00:49:29.000 Just give me an example.

00:49:30.000 We don't – Fully digest, assimilate, and utilize those calories they pass through us.

00:49:37.000 So with a Pop-Tart, I think it's pretty high, like a salad with nuts and things like that.

00:49:43.000 It becomes significant over time.

00:49:45.000 With a Pop-Tart, basically 100% of that is going into your system, and it's causing a hormonal response.

00:49:54.000 So the food that we eat...

00:49:57.000 It's not only calories, but creates a hormonal response and also from the brain perspective can change the neuropharmacology of your brain.

00:50:06.000 I mean, that's how I got into the ketogenic diet because it fundamentally changes neurotransmitter systems and reward systems and things like that.

00:50:13.000 Right, but hormones... 1.00

00:50:15.000 People get so hung up on hormones.

00:50:17.000 And if you look at the research data, it just doesn't support it, like with insulin and whatnot.

00:50:22.000 Now, in terms of losing weight and what happens with leptin and ghrelin and all those kinds of things, that is a huge...

00:50:29.000 One of the things we talked about before the podcast started – we had about a 30-minute podcast before we actually – Yeah, we did a podcast outside.

00:50:36.000 You know, people say things like – one of the reasons people are really mistrustful of kind of the calories in, calories out model is because it is viewed as a – Two isolated variables.

00:50:49.000 Calories in and calories out are separate.

00:50:51.000 That's not true.

00:50:52.000 Calories in affects calories out.

00:50:54.000 Okay?

00:50:55.000 They're a moving target.

00:50:56.000 So people will say, well, I ate a calorie deficit and I didn't lose weight.

00:51:00.000 No, you ate in what you thought was a calorie deficit and you didn't lose weight.

00:51:04.000 But if you didn't lose weight, it was not a calorie deficit by definition.

00:51:09.000 Unless you're retaining water or something.

00:51:11.000 Yeah.

00:51:12.000 When we look at dieting, like just dieting in general, over time lowers your metabolic rate.

00:51:18.000 Right?

00:51:19.000 So if you take somebody, they actually did a rat study.

00:51:21.000 Again, rats.

00:51:22.000 But rats tend to respond pretty similarly to humans.

00:51:25.000 Would you agree with that in terms of blood glue?

00:51:27.000 I mean, you do a lot of rat studies.

00:51:28.000 I do a lot of rats and mouse studies.

00:51:30.000 Yeah, I think there's a lot of overlap there.

00:51:33.000 They're a good model.

00:51:34.000 So, again, but we have to put that out there because we don't want to oversell it.

00:51:39.000 Depends on the context of what you're studying.

00:51:41.000 Of course.

00:51:42.000 It can answer some questions, other questions it can't.

00:51:45.000 Animal studies can be helpful, but you don't want to do an insulin study in cows because cows are ruminants and they don't care about insulin.

00:51:53.000 Anyway, they took rats, they took them through two diet cycles.

00:51:56.000 Okay, so this is kind of back to the yo-yo dieting thing.

00:51:59.000 And they looked at, okay, when they took obese rats, dieted them down to a kind of normal level, then they basically gave them as much food as they wanted, let them eat back to the original obese level.

00:52:12.000 Dieted them down again to the previous level and then let them re-eat back up.

00:52:16.000 What they found was absolutely astonishing.

00:52:18.000 Their food efficiency went so far up because their metabolic rate became suppressed every time they dieted down.

00:52:24.000 Your body has this self-defense system that you activate every time you diet.

00:52:27.000 I talk about this in my Shameless Plug book.

00:52:31.000 So the first time they dieted, if that's the kind of one times rate that they lost fat at, When they let them regain it, they regained it twice as fast as they lost it.

00:52:41.000 Then the second time they tried to lose it, they lost it at half the original rate.

00:52:46.000 Then when they regained it the second time, they regained it three times as fast.

00:52:51.000 Their food efficiency went way up.

00:52:53.000 Did their ability to lose it get faster as well?

00:52:56.000 Did their ability to lose it get exponentially faster as well?

00:53:00.000 No.

00:53:01.000 It took them twice as long to lose the same amount of weight.

00:53:05.000 Sorry, I probably didn't explain it very well.

00:53:07.000 Yeah, it took them twice as long to lose the same amount of weight and they regained it in a third the time of the original.

00:53:12.000 So your body's getting accustomed to famine?

00:53:15.000 Exactly.

00:53:15.000 Because every time you diet, and we see this with yo-yo dieters who spend, how many people do you know that seem to be perpetually on a diet, but they just have that short overfeeding period in between diets.

00:53:27.000 It really does, because every time you diet, you're activating your body's self-defense system.

00:53:31.000 How many fighters do you know that every time they diet, it gets harder and harder for them to make weight?

00:53:37.000 Well, they're doing more than that.

00:53:38.000 They're cutting weight.

00:53:39.000 The cutting weight is ruthless.

00:53:41.000 They're essentially almost dying.

00:53:43.000 Right.

00:53:43.000 But part of that is they're having to crash diet super low.

00:53:47.000 So what is the signal you're telling your body?

00:53:49.000 Because you have to always think about things from an evolutionary perspective.

00:53:52.000 My PhD advisor was great about this.

00:53:54.000 He'd always ask...

00:53:55.000 His name was Dr. Don Lehman.

00:53:56.000 Brilliant guy.

00:53:57.000 And he would say, why do you think the body did this?

00:54:01.000 Well, if you think about...

00:54:03.000 What are the regulatory mechanisms on becoming fat versus becoming too thin?

00:54:08.000 So one danger is you starve to death.

00:54:11.000 The other danger is you get so fat that a predator can come get you.

00:54:14.000 Which is more dangerous in the last 20,000 years?

00:54:18.000 It's famine.

00:54:20.000 It's famine.

00:54:21.000 So your body creates much tighter self-defense system there.

00:54:25.000 So when you diet, your metabolic rate slows way down.

00:54:29.000 I mean, if you've ever, these guys who cut weight, so by the time they're ready to get a fight, for example, their metabolic rate's really slow.

00:54:37.000 Then what happens after they fight?

00:54:39.000 They eat a crap ton of food because their ghrelin is way up, leptin is way down, insulin is way down, and they regain it really fast.

00:54:49.000 I think it's safe to assume, just to interject, that if you diet for 16 weeks for a show, for example, or a contest, that what you actually educated me in like 10 years ago, and I thought there was this like post-contest rebound and in two weeks there'd be this anabolic window or whatever.

00:55:05.000 You're anabolic for fat.

00:55:06.000 It actually, if you diet hard for 16 weeks to make weight, it takes an equal amount of time to get your metabolism back up to that level again.

00:55:15.000 Maybe.

00:55:16.000 So Lane coined the term, right?

00:55:18.000 Reverse dieting.

00:55:19.000 I don't know if I coined it.

00:55:21.000 I probably didn't coin it.

00:55:22.000 We want to study this with metabolic chambers in rats and use a variety of different approaches to determine how fast it actually takes to bring your metabolism back up and if different strategies can be used to ramp up your metabolism.

00:55:35.000 Well, because when you regain it, You regain fat really quickly, but your metabolic rate is more sluggish to return.

00:55:43.000 So they actually did a study with the biggest loser participants.

00:55:46.000 And this is why I'm so big on what is sustainable.

00:55:49.000 It has to be sustainable.

00:55:51.000 They looked at...

00:55:53.000 So they lost on average like...

00:55:56.000 Quite a bit of weight.

00:55:57.000 I can't remember the exact numbers, but they lost a bunch of weight over the 30 weeks because they starve them and they exercise the crap out of them.

00:56:03.000 And they saw that their metabolic rate dropped 500 calories more than you would predict just by the amount of body fat and lean body mass they lose.

00:56:15.000 This is what's called metabolic adaptation.

00:56:17.000 When you define metabolic rate dropping, what do you mean by that?

00:56:20.000 So you have...

00:56:22.000 So we can calculate all this stuff.

00:56:24.000 So your overall total daily energy expenditure, your TDEE, is made up of your basal metabolic rate, which is what you burn, like what we're doing right now, just sitting around doing nothing.

00:56:33.000 Oxygen consumption, CO2 production.

00:56:35.000 Actually, to be...

00:56:38.000 Real.

00:56:38.000 It's just laying down, doing nothing.

00:56:39.000 So basically, the energy you burn, keeping the lights on, right?

00:56:42.000 That's one component.

00:56:43.000 It's about 50 to 60% in most people.

00:56:45.000 Then you have your NEAT, which is like this.

00:56:48.000 Like, I'm moving my hands.

00:56:50.000 I'm ambulatory movement, non-voluntary movement.

00:56:52.000 This stuff will actually go down when you diet.

00:56:55.000 Like, if you've ever been around people...

00:56:57.000 The movement will go down.

00:56:57.000 Yes.

00:56:58.000 You stop fidgeting.

00:56:58.000 Spontaneous movement goes down.

00:57:00.000 It's a huge modifier.

00:57:02.000 So, like, if you look at...

00:57:03.000 I did a DVD when I was prepping for a show back in 2010. I blink slower.

00:57:08.000 I'm not kidding you.

00:57:09.000 And I talk slower.

00:57:10.000 You were like on Valium.

00:57:13.000 It looked like you're...

00:57:15.000 Right now I'm all hyped up on...

00:57:16.000 In the life of Lane with that series. 0.99

00:57:18.000 Did you feel dumb? 0.99

00:57:19.000 Oh, absolutely. 0.99

00:57:21.000 So your body...

00:57:22.000 This is your body...

00:57:23.000 A ketogenic diet would help you.

00:57:25.000 So when you think about...

00:57:27.000 So there's NEAT, that's that.

00:57:28.000 Then your exercise activity, which is intuitive, that's how many calories you burn exercising.

00:57:32.000 And then there's what's called the thermic effect of food, which we already discussed, how much energy required to get energy out of food.

00:57:38.000 And all those add up to your total daily energy expenditure.

00:57:42.000 And we can predict, based on equations, what your metabolic rate should be.

00:57:48.000 So these people, their metabolic rate was 500 calories a day lower than it should have been just based off the weight they lost.

00:57:54.000 Because if you lose muscle and you lose fat, You have less weight to carry around, right?

00:57:59.000 So your metabolic rate goes down just from that, but it goes down way more than it should.

00:58:03.000 That is the first prong of your body's self-defense system to stop you from starving yourself is to become more efficient.

00:58:10.000 We hear the word efficiency and we think, wow, that's a good thing.

00:58:13.000 Think about if your body fat levels were a gas tank And you had a car, okay?

00:58:19.000 You would not want to be efficient, right?

00:58:21.000 You wouldn't have one of the old Suburbans that was like half a mile per gallon, right?

00:58:24.000 You don't want the Prius, because you can go way longer.

00:58:26.000 So going back to that study on rats, they became so much more efficient with their food, and this is the second prong of your body's self-defense system, is to not only slow down your metabolic rate while you're dieting, but to start activating systems that deal with re-storage once you actually start overeating again.

00:58:44.000 Have you ever done a long diet or known somebody who did it and then they start eating again?

00:58:48.000 It's like everything sticks to you.

00:58:49.000 It's like, how did I gain five pounds from one day?

00:58:53.000 And people are like, oh, it's water.

00:58:55.000 Well, water doesn't stay around for six months, so it's not water.

00:58:59.000 That is your body preparing all these systems.

00:59:02.000 So even like enzymes that deal with fat storage while you're dieting actually go up because it's preparing your body for restorage.

00:59:09.000 And then even probably the most interesting thing is...

00:59:12.000 So this all falls back on the importance of tracking macros, which is completely ignored with guys coming off of a fight or fitness competitors and things like that.

00:59:23.000 Right, you don't just want to let yourself blow up really quickly.

00:59:26.000 It's a myth that your body is set up to be anabolic or to gain muscle.

00:59:30.000 You're set up for fat.

00:59:32.000 But the point I'm trying to make is that the way most people diet, which is this kind of...

00:59:38.000 I mean, you've probably been around people who do this yo-yo stuff.

00:59:40.000 It's a lot of people.

00:59:42.000 They pick the next fad diet, whatever's popular, they do it, they lose some weight, and then they regain it.

00:59:47.000 My dad lost 30 pounds on the ketogenic diet, regained 50, right?

00:59:50.000 Now, the real problem is...

00:59:53.000 Is he track his macros?

00:59:54.000 Now he does.

00:59:55.000 And he's down 30 pounds again.

00:59:57.000 But the real problem is, we used to think adipose tissue was like a sponge, right?

01:00:04.000 So if you ate too much, you just threw more in there, right?

01:00:08.000 Soaked up extra nutrients.

01:00:09.000 And then if you started, if you were in a caloric deficit, you were losing weight, it just gave up some of its nutrients, you know, like the guy who fasted for 365 days and didn't die because he had so much fat.

01:00:22.000 We now know that body fat fits every definition in the endocrine system.

01:00:27.000 It's a tissue.

01:00:28.000 It is an actual organ because it sends out hormonal signals.

01:00:32.000 It integrates hormonal signals.

01:00:34.000 It talks to the brain, the hindbrain, the arcuate nucleus.

01:00:37.000 It is integrated in all of metabolism in a big way.

01:00:41.000 And typically, the way we gain fat or lose fat is based on the fat cell size.

01:00:46.000 So you have a set number of fat cells and they either expand or they shrink.

01:00:50.000 Pretty intuitive.

01:00:52.000 Unless now you can create more fat cells if you become so obese that you literally can't stuff any more fat in there, right?

01:01:00.000 So obese people have fat cell hyperplasia a lot of times.

01:01:05.000 What's really interesting is people at the end of a diet, when your thyroid hormone is lower, your sympathetic nervous system tone is lower, this unique hormonal milieu, if you overfeed too rapidly, there's a researcher named McLean out of Colorado that showed that you can actually increase your fat cell number if you overfeed too rapidly right after a diet.

01:01:26.000 Now this was in rats, full disclosure, but it was fascinating stuff.

01:01:31.000 So now you're increasing your bodies, but it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. 0.99

01:01:36.000 Your body's like, shit, we had this famine. 1.00

01:01:39.000 We don't want to deal with this shit again. 1.00

01:01:40.000 We want to make sure that we can store as much stuff as possible. 0.99

01:01:43.000 So we're going to create some new, this dude is rapidly overfeeding.

01:01:47.000 We're going to create some new fat cells to make sure we're not going to miss any of this energy.

01:01:50.000 We're going to capture every single bit of it.

01:01:51.000 I like what you're saying, and it makes a lot of sense.

01:01:54.000 You're talking about weight loss and weight gain, but you were specifically discussing hormonal changes in the body due to the ketogenic diet that are beneficial, and that these hormonal changes and the changes to the way that the brain functions would be a benefit of following that diet versus just working on calories.

01:02:13.000 Yeah, I mean, it's that book I gave you, The Complete Book of Ketones by Dr. Mary.

01:02:21.000 So that's...

01:02:22.000 I don't think it's actually out yet.

01:02:23.000 Contest prep.

01:02:24.000 God, I want to get jacked.

01:02:25.000 Look at that.

01:02:26.000 So ketones are...

01:02:29.000 Handsome man on there.

01:02:32.000 They are sort of, by definition, have a metabolic superiority as a fuel source.

01:02:39.000 And they readily cross the blood-brain barrier.

01:02:41.000 They can largely replace glucose as a primary energy source in your brain under periods of fasting or ketogenic diet.

01:02:48.000 So that...

01:02:50.000 That offers a lot of advantages to someone dieting because it makes you resilient.

01:02:56.000 Like the guy that fasted 382 days, his glucose was like 30 and dipped down to 20. That would be universally fatal for most people.

01:03:04.000 But his ketones were elevated, so he did not feel hunger.

01:03:07.000 So that is like the Cahill studies, George Cahill studies at Harvard Medical School, where they fasted subjects for 40 days.

01:03:15.000 They injected insulin.

01:03:18.000 What IRB did that get passed?

01:03:20.000 I remember presenting this at Lane's camp a while back.

01:03:24.000 And when I read this study, I had to call him on the phone.

01:03:28.000 He passed away in 2012, but we had a number of conversations before he passed away.

01:03:33.000 And I was amazed that he got ethics approval to do that because it's basically like killing someone, injecting 20 IUs of insulin.

01:03:40.000 But what was fascinating that they were asymptomatic for hypoglycemia at a level of hypoglycemia that's typically universally fatal.

01:03:48.000 And they were also very cognitively lucid.

01:03:52.000 And that was a dramatic demonstration at the time.

01:03:55.000 It was thought that, you know, the brain could only use glucose.

01:03:58.000 So this is a paradigm shift in the way we understand sort of fuel utilization, particularly in the brain.

01:04:05.000 So that has major...

01:04:08.000 And I can go kind of on and talking about the different applications of the ketogenic diet, which I did on the first podcast.

01:04:12.000 But from a perspective of someone dieting to lose weight, dieting as a lifestyle, doing intermittent fasting, the ketogenic diet makes intermittent fasting much easier because your brain's adapted to it.

01:04:25.000 That, for me, had tremendous...

01:04:41.000 He's a beast. 0.98

01:04:42.000 He's a beast. 0.82

01:04:50.000 The classical ketogenic diet then.

01:04:51.000 That's when I was just doing it.

01:04:54.000 Classical versus?

01:04:55.000 Like 80 to 90% fat.

01:04:57.000 Super high fat.

01:04:57.000 I was doing that for about a year.

01:04:58.000 Super high fat.

01:04:59.000 And deadlifting like three times my body weight for reps.

01:05:04.000 And it didn't hurt me.

01:05:06.000 I can't say that would be the case for everyone.

01:05:08.000 But I also titrated the calories in that I wasn't really at a calorie deficit.

01:05:12.000 I lost a little bit of weight.

01:05:14.000 So I guess by definition I was at a calorie deficit.

01:05:17.000 Yeah.

01:05:17.000 Now for people that are thinking about gains, trying to gain weight, they would think that the ketogenic diet, that 80-90% fat, would not be enough protein.

01:05:25.000 I believe that the ketogenic diet shines when you are in a calorie deficit.

01:05:31.000 My mentor for the cancer work, Tom Seyfried, had published a study showing an unrestricted ketogenic diet can actually promote cancer growth in a brain tumor model.

01:05:41.000 Unrestricted meaning too much calories?

01:05:43.000 Yeah, they were feeding mice a sugary ketogenic formula that was on the market at the time.

01:05:48.000 Well, it was a sweetened.

01:05:49.000 I'm sorry.

01:05:50.000 It was a sweetened ketogenic formula with hydrogenated fats and other things.

01:05:54.000 Yeah.

01:05:54.000 It was sweetened maybe with aspartame or something like that.

01:05:59.000 So mice tend to overeat it.

01:06:01.000 And when they overeat it, it creates a plethora of metabolic abnormalities.

01:06:06.000 Yeah.

01:06:08.000 But you also get those same abnormalities when you overeat carbs.

01:06:10.000 You do.

01:06:11.000 See, here's me being...

01:06:12.000 Just as a side note, how much does it drive you guys crazy when you hear about this fat acceptance thing or fat is healthy?

01:06:18.000 To be fat?

01:06:19.000 Yeah, there's so much of this going around today.

01:06:21.000 Do you want to hear my...

01:06:24.000 They're trying to say it's okay.

01:06:25.000 It's fine.

01:06:26.000 You're healthy.

01:06:26.000 Well, there's football players, right?

01:06:27.000 I mean, by definition, they're pretty healthy.

01:06:30.000 I mean, they lift, they train.

01:06:32.000 Metabolically, their blood work kind of looks okay.

01:06:35.000 Well, they have guts, but they're not morbidly obese.

01:06:37.000 I might surprise you with my answer.

01:06:39.000 Okay.

01:06:40.000 So we talked about this earlier.

01:06:42.000 I'll take the heat.

01:06:42.000 I'm a libertarian.

01:06:44.000 So if somebody says, I'm fat, and I'm happy, and I like my life, and I know what the risks are, then I say, knock yourself out.

01:06:53.000 I'm not me for to judge what makes somebody else happy.

01:06:55.000 But now the problem is if you complain about being fat, then you got to do something about it.

01:06:59.000 Otherwise, you're not going to have any patience for that.

01:07:01.000 And it goes back to the discipline issue.

01:07:03.000 Right.

01:07:03.000 But you can be fit, but fat.

01:07:05.000 Yes. 0.62

01:07:06.000 Because you have morbidly obese people.

01:07:08.000 Like I said, if you lose 10% of your body weight, there's overweight people who run marathons.

01:07:12.000 Oh, yeah.

01:07:13.000 You can't tell me they're not in shape.

01:07:15.000 Yeah.

01:07:16.000 Oh no, for sure.

01:07:17.000 You're just carrying extra weight.

01:07:19.000 I mean, look at Daniel Cormier.

01:07:21.000 He's not obese.

01:07:22.000 But he has some...

01:07:23.000 He's fat.

01:07:24.000 Don't come get me, Dan. 0.68

01:07:25.000 Listen, when Daniel fought Stipe Miocic, he was more than 40 pounds over his fighting weight as a light heavyweight champion.

01:07:33.000 And he was actually heavier than Stipe.

01:07:35.000 And it serves a practical function.

01:07:37.000 He's a good friend of mine.

01:07:39.000 Yeah, but performance is not the same thing as aesthetics.

01:07:43.000 Let me tell you what.

01:07:44.000 He's in tremendous shape.

01:07:45.000 When I looked like that, I looked amazing. 1.00

01:07:46.000 You felt like shit. 1.00

01:07:47.000 I felt like shit. 1.00

01:07:48.000 You were ready to pass out, right? 1.00

01:07:50.000 Literally, for me to stand up, I remember being on the couch, and there was a stupid some show on. 0.99

01:07:57.000 Get on biolane.com. 0.99

01:07:59.000 There was a stupid show on TV and the remote was like, this goes back to neat. 0.99

01:08:04.000 There was a remote over there, like five feet away. 1.00

01:08:07.000 I sat and watched the whole show because I just didn't feel like getting the fucking remote. 0.98

01:08:12.000 Isn't it ironic because you look so good. 0.99

01:08:14.000 Like when you jacked like that, you look like you just fucking run forever and break through walls. 0.96

01:08:20.000 Now, there is a threshold, like Ray Williams, who is the world's best powerlifter. 0.98

01:08:25.000 I mean, he looks obese.

01:08:27.000 Dude squats legit 1,080 pounds.

01:08:30.000 Isn't that an issue, though, with powerlifters, though?

01:08:32.000 A good percentage of them carry around a lot of body fat.

01:08:35.000 It's not as much as you would think anymore.

01:08:37.000 Like, in the super heavyweights, yes, because, for example, the IPF, which is kind of the IOC-recognized powerlifting federation that I compete in, their cutoff for super heavyweights is 265. So if you're going to be a super heavyweight, He might as well just be 350, you know?

01:08:51.000 Who's that dude, Jamie?

01:08:53.000 That's Ray.

01:08:54.000 That's Ray Ray.

01:08:54.000 Look at the bar bending.

01:08:57.000 Dude, that's... 0.98

01:08:58.000 He's a beast. 0.99

01:08:59.000 Good lord. 0.99

01:08:59.000 He's a beast. 0.99

01:09:00.000 Shout out, Ray. 0.95

01:09:00.000 The size of that gentleman. 0.95

01:09:01.000 Super nice guy.

01:09:02.000 Blaine Sumner, another one.

01:09:03.000 But, like, when I hit my squat record of 668 at 205 pounds, I mean, I was in pretty good shape for that.

01:09:10.000 But for me to get to, like, 8% body fat, no problem.

01:09:14.000 For me to get from 8%, and I'm calipering, so...

01:09:17.000 Mm-hmm. 0.99

01:09:17.000 For me to get from 8% to 3% is a fucking nightmare. 0.99

01:09:22.000 Did you really get down to 3? 0.99

01:09:24.000 On calipers.

01:09:25.000 What do you think that would be if you floated?

01:09:27.000 There are no actual accurate measures of body fat.

01:09:31.000 What?

01:09:32.000 Not really.

01:09:34.000 Relatively within themselves, they're accurate.

01:09:36.000 Because it's dependent upon hydration and a bunch of other factors?

01:09:38.000 Yes.

01:09:39.000 So people, not to make too much of a side tangent, but people look at DEXA, Dual X-ray Absorption Technology, and they say, oh, that's the gold standard.

01:09:47.000 DEXA is actually...

01:09:49.000 Really finicky.

01:09:50.000 Like, I remember dexing rats in studies.

01:09:53.000 We do it in duplicate.

01:09:54.000 So we do it twice.

01:09:56.000 And sometimes you have, like, differences just dexing the same rat twice.

01:10:00.000 It depends on the machine, your hydration status, because water, if you want to gain, you know what the best way to gain eight pounds of lean body mass within five minutes?

01:10:09.000 Go do a dexa, then drink a gallon of water, go back, do another dexa.

01:10:12.000 You'll be eight pounds lean body mass heavier.

01:10:14.000 You can impress your friends.

01:10:15.000 Because it's a two compartment model.

01:10:17.000 Get more lean body mass.

01:10:17.000 It's a two compartment model.

01:10:19.000 Same thing with calipers.

01:10:20.000 It's only measuring your amount of fat tissue.

01:10:22.000 So anything that's not fat is lean body mass.

01:10:25.000 So if you guys are using that to track progress, if anybody uses that to track progress, it's only accurate relative to the measurement.

01:10:33.000 So your calipers mean nothing for what your DEXA measurement is going to be and vice versa.

01:10:37.000 I see.

01:10:39.000 But the change, like if I'm calibrating consistently at 10% and then it drops to eight and then seven, I can be relatively confident that I'm losing body fat.

01:10:49.000 Same thing for DEXA. But you have to do it the same time of day, same hydration status, all that kind of stuff.

01:10:55.000 And I don't really use Dexa because people, in order to get it accurate, you'd have to use it like every day for it to be actual relative.

01:11:02.000 You use pictures, right?

01:11:04.000 So when he was dieting and got to a certain point, I looked at him and I was like, okay, yeah, like stop there.

01:11:10.000 But then he would go for another and get to a level where he looked very gaunt.

01:11:15.000 I mean, you looked.

01:11:16.000 But what looks good there, like seeing him in person, like I knew his personality, was changing.

01:11:22.000 I mean, it was kind of freaky, disgusting looking towards the end.

01:11:26.000 And many people who maybe follow the sport but don't compete don't really realize what the difference between 5% or 6% and 3% is.

01:11:34.000 Yeah.

01:11:34.000 So that separates the competitors from the bros online.

01:11:39.000 You're really fighting evolution at that point because your body is trying to – you're close to starvation, literally.

01:11:44.000 Your body is trying to keep you from doing that.

01:11:46.000 So like you think about food all the time.

01:11:48.000 You actually become – so a friend of mine, Chris Foss, he's a professor now.

01:11:53.000 He was doing his PhD at the same time as me.

01:11:55.000 And him, my other friend, Dr. Jeremy Lineke and Dr. Lindy Rousseau, Chris's wife – Chris was doing a contest prep and I prepped him for the show.

01:12:04.000 And it was a six-month study of...

01:12:07.000 He's a natural bodybuilder, so drug-free.

01:12:09.000 And they looked at the hormonal responses, his weight, his body fat, and even like measures of mood.

01:12:15.000 Chris is like the most...

01:12:16.000 This guy was a beast, too.

01:12:17.000 Like 260 or something?

01:12:19.000 I mean, natural drug-free bodybuilder, right?

01:12:21.000 220 in the off-season, about 190 on contest.

01:12:23.000 Yeah, he's a big guy.

01:12:25.000 But he's like a very mellow dude. 0.92

01:12:27.000 By the end, his mood measurements were measuring like that of a psychopath.

01:12:31.000 Yeah, it just changes your mood that much.

01:12:34.000 You've probably been around fighters who, like, when they get that lean, it's just like...

01:12:38.000 They can barely talk to you.

01:12:39.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:12:40.000 And think about, like, they're actually, like, trying to peak for a fight at the same time they feel the most like shit. 1.00

01:12:46.000 It's ridiculous. 0.99

01:12:46.000 They're so focused on cardio, they can't even... 0.99

01:12:48.000 I don't want to make this into a...

01:12:49.000 They're focused on just dehydration and just making that weight.

01:12:53.000 I've seen some of the protocols.

01:12:55.000 There's some good ones out there, but some of the stuff I've seen, I'm like, God, I wish I could talk to somebody in that realm because it's so much pro-science.

01:13:03.000 It's so dangerous, too, and it's really, you can only do it three or four times, and then your body starts to reject it, and these guys have to go up and wait, like you were talking about.

01:13:10.000 Will you explain to you why?

01:13:11.000 Yeah.

01:13:12.000 And guess what happens when they go up and wait sometimes?

01:13:14.000 They start crushing it.

01:13:15.000 Yeah, they do.

01:13:16.000 They do much better.

01:13:17.000 His testosterone, right, went and plummeted, but his basal requirements, his caloric requirements, was like 1,200.

01:13:25.000 The crazy thing is, so there have been some critics of my kind of view of metabolic adaptation in the body's self-defense system, full disclosure.

01:13:35.000 Some people criticize me about that.

01:13:36.000 They say, well, if you look at metabolic adaptation, it's only a 15% adaptation relative to the whole adaptation.

01:13:45.000 But if you look at Chris's numbers, I think on average that's probably right, on an average diet with an average person.

01:13:50.000 You take somebody trying to get really lean, or somebody who yo-yo diets, or somebody who crash diets, and now, again, it's proportionate.

01:13:58.000 If you challenge your body with something extreme, it's going to respond in an extreme fashion.

01:14:03.000 So every case study we have on natural bodybuilders, and there's about 10 of them now, who look at their contest preparation and coming out of it.

01:14:10.000 And I use them just because this is the realm I grew up in.

01:14:13.000 Shows that they're hypogonadal by the time that they're at stage. 0.97

01:14:17.000 Hypogonadal mean their balls are shrinking? 0.99

01:14:19.000 No, their testosterone is clinically low. 0.99

01:14:21.000 Yeah.

01:14:22.000 Naturally.

01:14:23.000 And these are guys like me, I actually run...

01:14:24.000 Very low.

01:14:25.000 I actually have a pretty naturally high testosterone level.

01:14:28.000 Every time, ever since I'm 16 years old, when I've got it tested, I've been like over 800. If I'm eating enough.

01:14:34.000 When I was at contest, I was under 300. This is part of how your body fights you.

01:14:39.000 Your body does not want you to be that lean.

01:14:41.000 But if you're...

01:14:43.000 Kind of reining this back into the discussion.

01:14:45.000 This is why I talk about why it's so important to pick something that's sustainable for you as an individual. 0.99

01:14:51.000 Because if you do this shit where you yo-yo diet or you don't come out of it appropriately, it will fuck you up. 0.99

01:14:57.000 I mean, we've all... 1.00

01:14:59.000 I think females especially, and you have a lot of track records. 1.00

01:15:03.000 I've worked with a lot of females now because, especially in physique sports, there's a lot of really bad coaching. 1.00

01:15:08.000 Starvation diets.

01:15:10.000 For women, it just messes with the reproductive cycle too, right? 1.00

01:15:12.000 Stop having periods.

01:15:16.000 Amenorrhea in of itself doesn't seem to have necessarily...

01:15:18.000 Amenorrhea?

01:15:18.000 What is that?

01:15:19.000 No menstrual cycle.

01:15:20.000 Yeah.

01:15:21.000 So, doesn't necessarily in of itself seem to be a...

01:15:25.000 Have negative health consequences in terms of longevity or disease or anything like that.

01:15:30.000 But yeah, I mean, if you can't get pregnant, I mean, that's a big deal for some women. 1.00

01:15:33.000 But what the women don't want to hear is you may have to gain some body fat to get that back. 1.00

01:15:38.000 You know, they don't want to hear that.

01:15:40.000 But this is why, like, I really start with sustainability.

01:15:44.000 And then from there, I go to, okay...

01:15:48.000 So if we've got what's sustainable for you, now can we get a little bit better?

01:15:50.000 Can we do a little bit more fiber? 1.00

01:15:52.000 I think in general, I criticize paleo diets because I think their validation for their model is absolutely fucking stupid. 1.00

01:16:01.000 What validation is that? 1.00

01:16:02.000 Oh, kind of the evolutionary validation and the fact that we didn't drink milk and we didn't eat beans and this kind of thing.

01:16:09.000 Didn't have coffee.

01:16:10.000 But the question shouldn't be what we were doing.

01:16:12.000 The question should be what makes sense and what is healthy now.

01:16:16.000 If you look at studies on dairy, almost all studies show people who take in dairy are healthier, better bone density, more lean body mass, lower body fat.

01:16:26.000 But are there a lot of people that think that dairy is bad for you?

01:16:28.000 Yeah.

01:16:29.000 Dairy causes inflammation.

01:16:30.000 Mostly vegans.

01:16:31.000 Is that really?

01:16:32.000 Some clean eaters, too, think that dairy somehow causes... 0.99

01:16:36.000 Do you think that's a myth?

01:16:38.000 Yeah.

01:16:39.000 There's protein in dairy, various proteins, alpha-lactalbumin or beta-albumin, that can basically initiate an immune response in the body.

01:16:51.000 I'm okay with dairy fat.

01:16:52.000 I can get 100 grams a day of dairy fat.

01:16:55.000 But if I drink a whey protein shake, especially at night, I wake up all congested and like I have an allergy or something.

01:17:01.000 Is that a pure whey concentrate?

01:17:04.000 Yeah, way concentrated.

01:17:06.000 Or just like, you know, yogurt or...

01:17:10.000 And I think it's a spectrum, right?

01:17:12.000 So it's not like you have it or you don't.

01:17:14.000 I think, you know, there's this spectrum and bovine protein is kind of viewed foreign to the body.

01:17:22.000 I mean, once it enters the bloodstream, it can.

01:17:25.000 It's only if it enters the bloodstream because if digestion is working properly, you're not going to get any of that in the bloodstream.

01:17:31.000 It's all going to be chewed up into monodyne tripeptides.

01:17:34.000 Some of it makes – I mean like insulin is of 50 amino acid and if you take enough insulin, like you can basically go hypoglycemic.

01:17:41.000 If you orally consume it, that's why you inject 50. I think it's 81. Yeah.

01:17:46.000 Well, it doesn't matter.

01:17:47.000 Short.

01:17:48.000 I teach on it.

01:17:49.000 Yeah, so even something that's 50 amino acids or more can get through.

01:17:55.000 So this term lactose intolerance, what do you think that is?

01:17:59.000 That's actually an enzyme.

01:18:00.000 That's actually an enzyme.

01:18:01.000 That's a sugar, yeah.

01:18:02.000 So this is an issue with people's individual dietary...

01:18:05.000 So some people have alpha-lactalbumin sensitivity where if they've got some kind of leaky gut, so normally your end junctions are tight.

01:18:17.000 So your small intestines are like fingers and they pick up nutrients.

01:18:22.000 I'm really generalizing.

01:18:23.000 The epithelial cells, the tight junction is a little anchor that holds them and that gets loose.

01:18:28.000 If something's dysfunctional with that, I think?

01:18:47.000 Going back to the paleo thing, what I was going to say is, even though I disagree with their relevance, if you told me, okay, you take their general recommendations, limit sugar, eat more whole foods, eat higher protein, I think in general that's pretty good recommendations for most people.

01:19:05.000 I just, as you said, I'm anti-bullshit, so I'm not going to let you make claims about why something works when that's not why it works, right?

01:19:13.000 So when we look at Like, the differences in diets.

01:19:17.000 Like, I think what I would say generally to people is...

01:19:20.000 Here's the great news.

01:19:22.000 As far as fat loss goes and health markers.

01:19:26.000 If you want to lose weight, if you eat...

01:19:29.000 If you control your calories, so you eat in a calorie deficit, you eat enough protein because protein helps spare lean body mass and is thermogenic, so it increases your energy output.

01:19:39.000 Um...

01:19:40.000 Then you can kind of do whatever you want with carbs and fats and whatever you prefer and you'll still lose the same amount of weight and get about all the health benefits.

01:19:48.000 But it has to be something that you can sustain because if you can't sustain it, you're going to put all that weight back on.

01:19:53.000 That's what the research data shows.

01:19:57.000 Sustaining it meaning having a balanced diet that you can stick with versus some sort of calorie deficit that's really only a temporary thing to lose weight.

01:20:05.000 Right.

01:20:06.000 So now, obviously, you can't eat in a deficit forever, right?

01:20:09.000 Because then you would starve yourself to death.

01:20:10.000 But the body corrects that.

01:20:12.000 As you drop body weight, your metabolic rate slows down.

01:20:15.000 You're not in a calorie deficit forever.

01:20:17.000 When we talk about losing weight and then maintaining it, right?

01:20:21.000 So eating in a maintenance.

01:20:23.000 So eating...

01:20:25.000 The behavior you use and the style of dieting you use, you have to continue that if you want to maintain it.

01:20:31.000 So if you like ketogenic, like you like ketogenic, you like ketogenic, and I think you're a big fan of meat.

01:20:39.000 If you can sustain that, you know, like people out there say, oh my God, people probably tell you, you're going to get cancer and you're going to do this and you're going to do that.

01:20:47.000 Most of those health benefits are just from not having excess body fat.

01:20:52.000 Excess body fat and the metabolic dysregulations of a metabolic type syndrome, that's what caused 90% of these problems.

01:21:01.000 Which is why I get crazy when people say that fat is healthy.

01:21:06.000 Well, here's the problem.

01:21:08.000 We have reactionary culture.

01:21:10.000 It depends where your set point is, too.

01:21:12.000 Right.

01:21:12.000 We have reactionary culture.

01:21:14.000 So you see this all the time.

01:21:16.000 So we had, okay, you've got to eliminate saturated fat, you've got to eliminate dietary fat, and just eat grains and limit your proteins.

01:21:25.000 And we got fatter.

01:21:26.000 And so the reaction to that was, don't eat any carbs.

01:21:29.000 Saturated fat isn't bad for you.

01:21:31.000 In fact, eat as much saturated fat as you can.

01:21:33.000 It's great.

01:21:34.000 Put butter in your coffee.

01:21:36.000 No, there's good data to show that.

01:21:39.000 The research data that I've seen, in my opinion, shows that saturated fat absolutely was demonized.

01:21:45.000 It's not as bad as we thought.

01:21:47.000 But if you eat too much of it, it's not great either.

01:21:51.000 Especially with carbohydrates.

01:21:53.000 Oh, absolutely.

01:21:54.000 Because now you're increasing your liver production of saturated fats as well.

01:21:59.000 Right.

01:21:59.000 When your body gets to a fat-burning stage and then on top of that you pile on carbohydrates, then your body wants to store those carbohydrates as well.

01:22:06.000 With a calorie surplus.

01:22:08.000 Technically, you store the fats.

01:22:11.000 You store the fats.

01:22:11.000 Yeah, because carbohydrate...

01:22:13.000 You burn the carbohydrates to store the fats.

01:22:14.000 Right.

01:22:14.000 So carbohydrate, if you say, well, why does...

01:22:17.000 If you don't store...

01:22:18.000 So I talk about this in my book because people will go too far to each direction to say, well, you said you hardly store any carbohydrate as actual fat.

01:22:27.000 Why don't we eat zero fat and mostly carbohydrate? 0.78

01:22:31.000 Well, then your body's not dumb. 1.00

01:22:35.000 You didn't get here today and get through evolution and tens of thousand years of hard living by your body being stupid. 0.99

01:22:43.000 So your body can ramp up de novo lipogenesis so that you can create fat from carbohydrate if fat gets low and carbohydrate intake gets high enough. 0.98

01:22:52.000 There was a research study or a meta-analysis done by Kevin Hall, who's an NIH researcher, And they showed that if you equate calories, you get a small extra benefit from fat restriction versus carb restriction on fat loss.

01:23:09.000 So you get about 26 grams extra fat loss per day, calories equated, protein equated, if you restrict fat versus carb.

01:23:18.000 Now, before everybody goes crazy, that's probably due to a little bit of inefficiencies in ramping up de novo lipogenesis because it takes energy to move that system.

01:23:29.000 But 26 grams of fat loss per day, to me, is not a physiological, like, I don't care about that.

01:23:34.000 That's nothing compared to, okay, if you like low carb better, don't worry about losing an extra 26 grams of fat.

01:23:41.000 If you like low carb better and you can sustain that, then do low carb.

01:23:44.000 One of the things that we seem to be getting into here is the difference between losing weight and optimal performance and then optimal performance mentally and hormonally versus optimal performance physically in terms of like athletic pursuits.

01:24:00.000 So here's something I'll...

01:24:01.000 And the type of person, whether it's, you know, you don't want to put a teenager that's, you know, playing football on a ketogenic diet necessarily.

01:24:09.000 Why would that be?

01:24:12.000 Well, maybe if they're overweight, that could be beneficial. 0.51

01:24:14.000 But I think it would decrease his performance unless he goes through the keto adaptation phase.

01:24:20.000 But there's a lot of – when you're a teenager, I would say your carbohydrate tolerance is very high.

01:24:27.000 I want to adjust this after you're done.

01:24:29.000 Mine was very high.

01:24:31.000 I could eat huge plates of pasta that I could not eat now.

01:24:33.000 I just simply couldn't.

01:24:36.000 So I think as we age, I would say our carbohydrate tolerance decreases with age because our metabolic machinery is not as hungry for glucose.

01:24:47.000 I mean, we're set up, and hormonally, our insulin sensitivity is not as high, glycolytic pathways are reduced, things like that.

01:24:53.000 That happens as a consequence of age.

01:24:55.000 So it makes sense that as we transition into age for longevity and for health span, maybe not lifespan, but health span, So carbohydrate restriction makes sense.

01:25:05.000 And even in some cases, the ketogenic diet makes sense.

01:25:09.000 But if you look at the...

01:25:10.000 Okay, so I have two pushbacks on that.

01:25:13.000 And I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you...

01:25:16.000 I kind of am.

01:25:17.000 But if you look at longevity data, the actual longevity data, people who restrict fat versus carb live longer.

01:25:23.000 Like that's what a new study that came out showed.

01:25:26.000 But again, there's a lot— I'm describing it as also a means of—because people put on weight as they age with a low carb and with a ketogenic diet.

01:25:35.000 That becomes a practical strategy to create a sustainable calorie deficit.

01:25:42.000 Right.

01:25:42.000 For losing weight, sustaining that, and also if you elevate ketones over time, a lot of the new research that's coming out over the last five years, ketones is not just a superior source of energy metabolically, but it also has epigenetic effects on the body.

01:25:57.000 It activates gene pathways that can confer resistance against oxidative stress, the longevity pathways, anti-inflammatory pathways.

01:26:05.000 But in the context of a deficit?

01:26:07.000 No, not in the context of deficit.

01:26:08.000 Really?

01:26:32.000 That's linked with many age-related chronic diseases and autoimmune pathways.

01:26:37.000 It decreases the activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome.

01:26:42.000 When you're talking about people living longer, you're talking about that epidemiology study that was like a questionnaire of people, what they ate over a long period of time.

01:26:51.000 Highly criticized study.

01:26:52.000 Absolutely.

01:26:53.000 Absolutely.

01:26:54.000 And there's a lot of co-founders, which is why I'm not a big fan of Epic.

01:26:58.000 But it's hard to say that the study shows that if you eat carbs versus fat, that you live longer.

01:27:04.000 I didn't say one was cause and effect.

01:27:06.000 Yeah, but you sort of cited it as a piece of evidence.

01:27:10.000 Because I don't cherry pick.

01:27:12.000 Because if we're going to give the argument, I want to give the whole argument.

01:27:14.000 I was playing devil's advocate.

01:27:16.000 I don't think that necessarily if you eat a low-carb diet, it's going to cause you to live a shorter life.

01:27:21.000 I don't believe that.

01:27:22.000 But I think it's important to put all the data out there because what I see a lot of is people just cherry-picking.

01:27:27.000 And I hate that.

01:27:29.000 But those studies, they become clickbait.

01:27:31.000 There's tons of co-founders.

01:27:31.000 And everybody will say, you know, eat carbs, you live longer, low-fat diets are going to kill you, and then it just gets crazier.

01:27:37.000 Here's why some of the animal work, I mean, Lane and I both did animal work, I think some of the animal work is almost more reliable because you have an inbred strain of animal and you have very tight control.

01:27:48.000 They're genetically identical.

01:27:50.000 Freely living human, you know, is doing many different things and there's genetic variability.

01:27:56.000 But with animals, it may not always be...

01:27:59.000 It's predictive.

01:28:00.000 It's informative, but not always predictive.

01:28:02.000 And I think some of the data...

01:28:04.000 I read some of the human studies and become more confused.

01:28:07.000 But going back to the animal data, I'm almost more comfortable with some of these outcomes for animal studies.

01:28:14.000 So one thing I want to bring up that I think is really important...

01:28:18.000 Is we have – I think we're all getting to this point and people out there think that there's like this perfect diet that's going to cure everything and all of our ales.

01:28:27.000 The fact – the uncomfortable truth and the fact of the matter is that if one diet is – and I don't know this specifically but my guess is if one diet is better for cancer, it might be worse for heart disease.

01:28:38.000 Or if one diet is better for insulin resistance, maybe it's worse for cancer.

01:28:42.000 One diet is better for cognitive performance, it might be worse for cognitive performance.

01:28:46.000 We don't know.

01:28:47.000 Yeah, so it's kind of where is your space at?

01:28:50.000 And this is why I go back to those big picture things of most of the health benefits just come from Having more muscle?

01:28:58.000 Lift weights. 0.99

01:28:59.000 If you're debating about diets and you're not lifting weights, you are fucking missing the point. 0.99

01:29:06.000 Sorry, I curse. 0.99

01:29:08.000 I do it on Twitter.

01:29:11.000 You've seen me.

01:29:12.000 It's very good at emphasizing your point.

01:29:16.000 I'm a fan of it.

01:29:17.000 Awesome. 0.97

01:29:18.000 Fucking awesome. 0.93

01:29:20.000 Somebody criticized me for one day. 0.98

01:29:21.000 I was like, you know what's great about my job? 0.99

01:29:23.000 I can say fuck as much as I want and nobody's going to fire me. 0.99

01:29:26.000 That is great. 0.99

01:29:29.000 But the big picture things, lift weights, create more lean body mass, be active.

01:29:35.000 That's a huge thing.

01:29:36.000 Even if you're overweight, if you're active, you're gonna live fine.

01:29:39.000 On the whole, you're gonna live longer than the person who's inactive.

01:29:43.000 And then control your weight.

01:29:44.000 So if you can get to a normal weight and maintain it, or sorry, normal body fat and maintain it, or if you're a high body fat, if you can get to a lower body fat and maintain it, That's 95% of the battle.

01:29:58.000 All this other stuff is 5% that we're worrying about, that we're going back and forth about.

01:30:03.000 And that's why I don't want to miss the context because when people like – I'll pick on him because he was who I asked for.

01:30:09.000 It was Gary Taubes.

01:30:10.000 But I'm happier we got Dom for this.

01:30:13.000 I'm going to interject.

01:30:14.000 Hang on! 0.81

01:30:15.000 Wait, wait, wait.

01:30:17.000 When people like Gary Taubes say things like carbs are causing obesity, just carbs.

01:30:24.000 You create this problem where if people don't like eating a high-fat diet or a low-carb diet and they can't sustain it, they just feel like they're a big failure and they just quit.

01:30:34.000 Because what's the point?

01:30:35.000 If carbs are causing fat and I can't stop eating carbs, what am I going to do?

01:30:39.000 I have a real hard problem with that.

01:30:41.000 Well, I know what you're saying.

01:30:42.000 Discipline.

01:30:43.000 It's important.

01:30:44.000 It just sounds like nonsense.

01:30:45.000 But I think my point is that if you give people flexibility, It usually improves adherence.

01:30:52.000 Right.

01:30:52.000 And you're talking about from the standpoint of you coaching people.

01:30:55.000 Right.

01:30:55.000 And what I would like to see is I would like to see a diet that's protein and calorie – a study, protein calorie controlled.

01:31:01.000 If anybody knows of one that has done this, let me know.

01:31:03.000 Protein and calorie controlled and then let people self-select.

01:31:07.000 Higher carb or higher fat? 0.69

01:31:09.000 What do you prefer?

01:31:10.000 Let them self-select and see how well they do.

01:31:13.000 And I bet you would see improvements in adherence in both groups.

01:31:16.000 Dom, you were gonna...

01:31:18.000 Well, I think a diet strategy that controls your appetite and does not have your appetite controlling you...

01:31:27.000 Which I think is accomplished with a ketogenic diet.

01:31:30.000 That's also, you know, one that's a well-formulated one that controls, you know, that has fiber and adequate protein, is a strategy that allows you to be far less fixated on food.

01:31:42.000 Because you're not as hungry.

01:31:44.000 And you could decrease your meal frequency.

01:31:45.000 So I know there's people out there that are probably busy people, CEOs of companies, students or whatever, that simply do not have time to prepare and eat meals when they get hungry.

01:32:00.000 So by reducing meal frequency, you can increase your productivity.

01:32:04.000 And I think you're kind of coaching your body to be a better fat burning.

01:32:09.000 I think there's...

01:32:11.000 Definitely benefits.

01:32:12.000 So when you are on a ketogenic diet, you are storing more fat, but you are burning more fat.

01:32:17.000 So think about your adipose tissue as little bags which have fat coming into them and fat leaving them.

01:32:24.000 And the fat oxidation pathways are elevated.

01:32:26.000 And when I eat a ton of fat at night before I go to bed, I am like some people carb load.

01:32:32.000 I'm like fat loading at night.

01:32:33.000 And I'm pulling off those fat stores during the day through my adiposes.

01:32:37.000 You do this purposely?

01:32:38.000 I think about it like that.

01:32:40.000 So instead of just, you know, carving up at nighttime, I would wake up hungry.

01:32:45.000 I would probably dump insulin and then wake up with a hypoglycemic cravings in the middle of the night if I did that.

01:32:50.000 Do you do time-restricted eating?

01:32:53.000 Yeah, like today.

01:32:54.000 I'm fasting and most days that I want to be as productive as possible, I will not have my first meal, which would be typically a ketogenic meal around 4 p.m.

01:33:03.000 And so what time do you eat at night?

01:33:05.000 I will start, I'll do a small meal like at work and then I'll eat my big meal at about 7 o'clock, maybe 7 o'clock and then snack throughout the night and maybe eat within, you know, I start eating at 4 p.m.

01:33:17.000 and I finish eating at about 10 p.m.

01:33:19.000 So you basically start eating at the end of your day.

01:33:21.000 Yeah.

01:33:22.000 So...

01:33:25.000 And that's very liberating for me.

01:33:27.000 And I didn't even know this was possible back 10 years ago.

01:33:31.000 I didn't know it was possible to have that amount of control over my appetite and actually feel as lucid and as energetic and be able to get with Lane and do deadlifts with him and actually maintain my performance and my strength in the gym.

01:33:46.000 I don't feel like I'm an outlier either.

01:33:48.000 I think it's possible.

01:33:49.000 So...

01:33:50.000 I think that anecdotes are good because anecdotes cause us to look at things.

01:33:55.000 But I can tell you like, so for example, I eat usually four times a day and I eat protein.

01:34:01.000 Right now I'm in a gaining phase.

01:34:04.000 So I'm trying to purposely gain weight, hopefully some lean body mass.

01:34:06.000 I'm coming back from an injury.

01:34:07.000 So trying to regain some of my lean body mass.

01:34:09.000 I'm eating about 400 to 450 grams of carbohydrate a day.

01:34:13.000 There are times when I'll go seven, eight hours, I won't eat, and I don't really get hungry.

01:34:19.000 About 16 hours?

01:34:21.000 I don't know.

01:34:24.000 I don't know, but I don't think I would.

01:34:26.000 Some nights I'll sleep, and I'll wake up, and I'll go 12, 13 hours.

01:34:30.000 I'll go in sometimes, and I don't usually get hungry.

01:34:33.000 Why do you think that is?

01:34:37.000 Well, if you look at some of the things that I'll disagree with are the idea that insulin has these big fluctuations and you become hypoglycemic and that causes overfeeding.

01:34:45.000 In some people, that's the case, but most people, if they're eating, especially with a higher protein diet, that doesn't usually happen.

01:34:54.000 I want to add that the population, most people are not bodybuilders, and the population of people that Lane mostly communicates with are on the border of being metabolically elite and also have a very high carb tolerance.

01:35:09.000 If you're a bodybuilder with a large amount of lean body mass, you are pretty much metabolically set up to have a high carb tolerance.

01:35:18.000 The general population is not like that.

01:35:20.000 So let's talk about carb tolerance because that's one thing that we'll disagree on.

01:35:24.000 I don't think that people are more or less carb tolerant.

01:35:28.000 I think that people have slower and faster metabolic rates.

01:35:32.000 So if you have a faster metabolic rate, you'll be more carb tolerant by default because you can just tolerate more calories.

01:35:37.000 I agree.

01:35:37.000 And a bodybuilder that's 220 pounds like you is going to be… If you look at somebody who's on a ketogenic diet, they're actually, by definition of carb tolerance, they're carbohydrate intolerant.

01:35:50.000 Because if you challenge them with a bolus of glucose, they can't clear it.

01:35:55.000 But that's just because of what they're adapted to, right?

01:35:59.000 But they're fat adapted, yeah. 0.76

01:36:00.000 Agreed, agreed. 0.98

01:36:01.000 So I actually, the first experimental biology we ever went to, this is why, you know, even scientists get this shit so wrong sometimes, because they get so in their echo chamber, they don't bother to look outside of it. 0.87

01:36:12.000 Going to the gym, when we first met and went, Lane stopped and had a huge meal, which to me, I was like, what are we doing? 0.84

01:36:19.000 We're going to stop and eat before we go to the gym?

01:36:21.000 I'll eat a whole pizza before I go squat.

01:36:22.000 He eats a really heavy, fatty meal on the way to the gym.

01:36:25.000 I've got to visit the bathroom about five times, but you know.

01:36:27.000 I didn't.

01:36:28.000 I forget.

01:36:28.000 I think I did eat, but it was very abnormal for me to go eat a big meal, heavy meal on the way to the gym.

01:36:34.000 Holly's like you.

01:36:34.000 She hates training fed.

01:36:36.000 She wants to be fasted.

01:36:37.000 She feels better that way.

01:36:38.000 But that's the individual differences, right?

01:36:40.000 That's the individual differences.

01:36:42.000 Part of it may be you're just adapted to that as well on what you're used to.

01:36:46.000 So maybe a psychological thing, but some people may Just do better that way.

01:36:49.000 Your blood is diverted to your digestive system and processes, and that's less blood for the muscles.

01:36:55.000 So you're expending energy to digest, break down, and assimilate food.

01:37:00.000 That theory has been pretty debunked.

01:37:03.000 Really?

01:37:03.000 Yeah.

01:37:04.000 But something happens, right?

01:37:06.000 I mean, it's just a fundamental physiological concept that you are diverting blood flow to, yeah, blood flow in particular.

01:37:14.000 The job of a scientist is to question even those theories we hold most to be true.

01:37:18.000 Neil deGrasse Tyson said that.

01:37:20.000 Yeah.

01:37:21.000 So I think a small meal actually can be beneficial.

01:37:23.000 But it's not like you're using those carbohydrates during the meal.

01:37:28.000 You're not using the protein.

01:37:29.000 Can I stop you for a second?

01:37:30.000 How has it been debunked?

01:37:32.000 That they see that performance isn't worse and that you don't – like there's no – There's not a limitation of blood flow because you've eaten something to the muscle.

01:37:44.000 There's not a limitation of blood flow to the muscle.

01:37:46.000 Okay.

01:37:48.000 But, again, some people just do better if they're faster or have small meals.

01:37:52.000 Again, it may be a psychological thing, but I like to feel like I've had a lot of food and I'm fully fueled for a long training session.

01:37:59.000 But some people don't feel that way.

01:38:00.000 But what kind of training, though?

01:38:01.000 Like if you're doing something like squats in a very controlled environment.

01:38:04.000 But if you were doing something like...

01:38:06.000 Might be different.

01:38:07.000 Yeah, if you were doing jujitsu.

01:38:08.000 But I don't know.

01:38:09.000 You would probably throw up.

01:38:10.000 Maybe.

01:38:11.000 I don't know.

01:38:11.000 I did it very briefly.

01:38:13.000 Awesome sport.

01:38:14.000 Like I did it very briefly informally.

01:38:16.000 Awesome sport.

01:38:16.000 You really can't have a big meal and then go train.

01:38:18.000 You get fucked up. 1.00

01:38:19.000 I'd probably have to run to the bathroom every few minutes. 1.00

01:38:21.000 I can't work on a grant.

01:38:23.000 I can't...

01:38:24.000 We're not supposed to talk about guns.

01:38:25.000 But if I go to the range and I'm a fasted...

01:38:28.000 You're not supposed to talk about guns?

01:38:28.000 Let's talk about guns.

01:38:29.000 We talked a lot before.

01:38:32.000 My groups are tighter.

01:38:33.000 I have better control.

01:38:36.000 If I go in in a fed state, I'm just not as focused.

01:38:39.000 My vision is not as acute right after a big meal as if I'm fasted 16 hours.

01:38:45.000 But this is the hard thing with anecdote because we can't tease out whether or not that is an actual physiological thing or whether you just feel better and you think you'll do better, so you do better.

01:39:02.000 Right.

01:39:11.000 Over half the people reported their symptoms got better and 30% actually physiologically got better because their brain was telling them get better.

01:39:20.000 Like it's pretty crazy.

01:39:23.000 So that's part of probably the best diet for you might be the diet you can stick to and just feel real positive about, right?

01:39:30.000 Because you feel like this might be some what's going on with a lot of this low carb stuff that people say they feel so fantastic because there's some sort of a placebo effect?

01:39:39.000 That's possible.

01:39:40.000 I think part of it is too.

01:39:41.000 That's why animal studies give me more confidence.

01:39:44.000 When I can look at rats or mice on a ketogenic diet and see an objective increase or decrease in a parameter, then I gain confidence.

01:39:54.000 But here's the thing.

01:39:55.000 I'm not saying that's a bad thing.

01:39:56.000 If you feel good about it, that's great.

01:39:58.000 But just don't try to get on Twitter and tell everybody, oh, you're going to gain fat and deficit because you're eating carbs. 1.00

01:40:04.000 Shut up! 1.00

01:40:05.000 If you go to a witch doctor and you really believe it might actually help you. 1.00

01:40:08.000 Yes!

01:40:09.000 One of the number one characteristics of cancer survivors is that they have a belief in God.

01:40:17.000 They believe that they're going to make it through.

01:40:20.000 Now, some people, cause or effect, some people may argue, religious people may argue, well, they believe in God and so God is helping them.

01:40:27.000 The other argument to that is they believe that they are going to make it through there and so they have a better likelihood of doing it.

01:40:35.000 So your brain is very powerful.

01:40:37.000 I know people that believe in the ketogenic diet and believe in God and I think that's a great thing.

01:40:41.000 And they fly.

01:40:42.000 They fly.

01:40:43.000 They have remarkable – I believe that – well, I'm a person of faith, but I also believe that if you have faith in the methodology too, the patients that have communicated with me that actually believe that this approach is going to work and then they reach that actual therapeutic state of ketogenic diet have results that kind of defy what you would expect scientifically.

01:41:06.000 So I believe it's working – Physiologically and also psychologically, there's immunopsychotherapy, right?

01:41:14.000 Or immunology.

01:41:15.000 So our brain can actually control many different physiological processes, including our immune system.

01:41:22.000 Yes.

01:41:24.000 That is something that's underappreciated and understudied, and that really needs to be studied.

01:41:29.000 Now, in terms of eating a large meal before training, surely your body has to use up some of the resources to digest.

01:41:36.000 You don't think that it's blood flow to the muscles.

01:41:38.000 Do you think that's been debunked?

01:41:41.000 They show that the blood flow to the muscle is not limiting if you've had a meal before you train.

01:41:47.000 Okay?

01:41:51.000 But some people don't like that.

01:41:52.000 It's a very individual thing.

01:41:54.000 It may be a psychological thing with me. 1.00

01:41:56.000 I understand that I'm an idiot like everybody else out there, right? 0.99

01:42:00.000 So I'm subject to bias and psychological influence like anybody else. 0.99

01:42:06.000 But I just use that to my advantage.

01:42:09.000 If I feel good about it, why would I not do it?

01:42:12.000 If you train in the morning, do you do that?

01:42:14.000 Like heading to the gym first thing in the morning?

01:42:16.000 Holly tries to stop me because then I usually end up going to the bathroom for like five times.

01:42:20.000 But I'll eat a little bit less in the morning if I'm going to go straight in and train.

01:42:26.000 But one of the things that...

01:42:28.000 Going back, that so many scientists miss is that context, like most people miss context, but scientists even miss context.

01:42:35.000 So the first experimental biology symposium we ever went to, there was a poster where they fed people a ketogenic diet or they fed them a high-carb diet.

01:42:46.000 And then at the end of six weeks, they challenged them with 100 grams of glucose and looked how long it took for them to clear that glucose.

01:42:54.000 The ketogenic diet people would have been worse than, like, type 2 diabetics at clearing glucose, okay?

01:43:01.000 Whereas people eating a high-carb diet cleared it just fine, right?

01:43:04.000 Now, if you just looked at these numbers as a doctor, you'd be like, oh, my God, you're a diabetic.

01:43:08.000 No, that's what they were adapted to.

01:43:10.000 And I challenged the person with the poster.

01:43:12.000 I said, and for all you ketogenic diet people who hate me on Twitter, I defend the ketogenic diet when it is time to be defended.

01:43:19.000 I said to the girl...

01:43:22.000 If you had fed a high-fat meal to these people, you would have seen the same thing in reverse.

01:43:28.000 If you would have fed a high-fat meal to people who are out of the ketogenic diet and then a high-carb diet, you would have seen really elevated triacylglycerides, LDL cholesterol, VLDL cholesterol, chylomicrons, and people who were carb-adacted because it wasn't being cleared,

01:43:44.000 because that's not what you're adapted to.

01:43:46.000 But people miss that whole context.

01:43:48.000 Lane has a good analogy in his book, that book, where if you have a military factory that's making planes and then it has to switch over to making ships, right?

01:43:58.000 So it takes a lot of time to change sort of all the processes that take place.

01:44:04.000 And the same thing is sort of happening.

01:44:07.000 I mean, you're giving your body a different fuel source.

01:44:09.000 So it has to ramp up.

01:44:18.000 Yeah, and a misunderstanding of that, or at least an ignorance, is one of the more frustrating things online when I hear, like, nonsense people, these internet Air quote experts talking about the negative aspects of the ketogenic diet that they tried it and they felt weak.

01:44:33.000 What do you mean you tried it?

01:44:34.000 You tried it for a day?

01:44:36.000 Did you try it for three days?

01:44:37.000 Did you try it for a month? 1.00

01:44:38.000 Get the fuck out of here. 1.00

01:44:39.000 Keto adaptation. 0.99

01:44:40.000 Yeah, it's so important.

01:44:41.000 When you review a study and I think you have a study in your book actually that shows in the gym you basically say the ketogenic diet can hurt your performance in the gym.

01:44:53.000 And you reference a race walking study.

01:44:55.000 Where I think they did the ketogenic diet for like three weeks or something like that.

01:45:00.000 I think we came back around and said that it's probably fine once you're adapted to it.

01:45:05.000 Once you're adapted to it.

01:45:06.000 What's the time period we're talking about?

01:45:08.000 For me, I did not feel myself after it took me about three to four months.

01:45:14.000 But then you got to realize that there's a learning curve to doing the ketogenic diet right.

01:45:18.000 So if I go back to my notes, I mean, my performance in the gym and just general well-being took about three to four months.

01:45:24.000 Do you use an app?

01:45:26.000 To chart your meals or anything?

01:45:28.000 I did MyFitnessPal and stuff, but I just know I'm a creature of habit.

01:45:33.000 So we basically just buy the same food all the time.

01:45:36.000 And I measure things on scales and stuff just as a scientist.

01:45:40.000 So I can look at some powder on a scale and do 250 milligrams plus or minus, you know, 10 milligrams.

01:45:47.000 So I've measured things out to where I can look at a plate and basically give you the macros pretty tight.

01:45:53.000 I don't know if you do that.

01:45:54.000 Have you ever done keto for long periods of time?

01:45:57.000 I've done it before, yeah.

01:45:58.000 He hasn't been keto-adapted though, I would argue.

01:46:01.000 I had ketones in my...

01:46:03.000 How long did you do it for?

01:46:06.000 About eight weeks.

01:46:07.000 So you could argue that I didn't do it long enough, but my thing is all my blood markers are healthy.

01:46:12.000 I didn't see...

01:46:13.000 So I did keto at maintenance, and I didn't see really much improvement in anything.

01:46:17.000 Everything kind of stayed the same.

01:46:18.000 You didn't feel different energy?

01:46:20.000 When was this?

01:46:21.000 What year was this?

01:46:22.000 This would have been probably...

01:46:26.000 After my bodybuilding show, but before I got back into powerlifting.

01:46:29.000 So it would have been sometime in 2012-ish.

01:46:31.000 Did you post about it and stuff?

01:46:33.000 Not really, because I didn't want to really get the wrath of anybody on me at the time.

01:46:39.000 Now I'm old and cantankerous.

01:46:41.000 I just don't care that much anymore.

01:46:43.000 But my performance didn't go down that much.

01:46:47.000 In the first few weeks, it did.

01:46:48.000 But then it was fine.

01:46:50.000 I just like the flexibility of having some carbs.

01:46:53.000 Yeah.

01:46:54.000 I liked having that flexibility because if you're going to- Lane likes popcorn.

01:46:57.000 Yes, I do.

01:46:58.000 Popcorn is great though because it actually has higher protein and higher fiber.

01:47:02.000 But if I was going to commit to it as a lifestyle, then that would be fine.

01:47:09.000 But unless you're willing to, again, if that's not something you're willing to stick to for life, You have to rethink if you want to do it or not.

01:47:17.000 But there is some benefit in going on and off ketogenic diets, correct?

01:47:22.000 So if you do a ketogenic diet and you want to stay in a state of ketosis, the days that I do intermittent fasting now, which I didn't do like five years ago, I don't necessarily do the ketogenic.

01:47:33.000 I do a higher protein, low carb, but my macros are not ketogenic.

01:47:39.000 Typically, not all the time.

01:47:41.000 Sometimes they are.

01:47:42.000 But there are different – like you could do intermittent fasting with a carb-based diet and still get ketones by the end of your fast.

01:47:50.000 You could do low-carb.

01:47:51.000 You could do ketogenic.

01:47:52.000 I actually think it's a little bit better to be metabolically flexible.

01:47:55.000 So I'll throw in – I tend to eat a lot of vegetables and then throw in some fruits too a few days a week.

01:48:02.000 Where it may kick me out of ketosis, but during the middle of the day, when I need to be at my best, I pretty much always, I'm running low to moderate ketones during the day.

01:48:11.000 And I can do that with different strategies now, you know, with my body.

01:48:15.000 How much does that kick you out of ketosis though?

01:48:16.000 At night time?

01:48:18.000 Yeah.

01:48:19.000 What are you eating specifically?

01:48:21.000 I might eat half of dark chocolate, one or two things of dark chocolate, which is maybe 15, 20 grams of carbs and maybe a half cup of blueberries and then a big salad and some vegetables, typically green vegetables.

01:48:35.000 So when you say it kicks you out of ketosis, so if you measure your blood, your ketones drop below what level?

01:48:41.000 0.5 and I typically don't even measure at night, but I wake up in the morning and I might be about 0.5 and then that goes up throughout the day.

01:48:49.000 So middle part of the day, I'm typically running one, between one to two, sometimes three millimoles.

01:48:55.000 Is there another, the urine strips are only effective in the early stages of ketosis, is that correct?

01:49:01.000 Yeah, because in the beginning, you spill out a lot of ketones in your urine, but as you increase ketone transport and utilization over time, less of them end up in your urine.

01:49:11.000 How much time is that?

01:49:13.000 Depends on the person, but after about two or three weeks, you may see less of a color change on the urine strips, even if you didn't change your diet.

01:49:21.000 Is there another effective method other than the pricking the finger?

01:49:24.000 Yeah, well, I think the blood, you know, Abbott Labs makes the Precision Extra.

01:49:31.000 There's the Keto-Mojo, which I also use, we use in the lab.

01:49:34.000 What's that?

01:49:34.000 Keto-Mojo is a blood measurement and glucose measurement device that's...

01:49:40.000 Essentially, because Abbott cornered the market, they basically allow you to check your ketones for a dollar strip instead of $3 or $4 or $5.

01:49:50.000 But it's still pricking your finger.

01:49:52.000 It's pricking your finger.

01:49:54.000 I actually use a syringe and just take a running start and jab my finger now because I got calluses like you do on your fingers.

01:50:01.000 It's annoying.

01:50:02.000 Yeah, I'm kind of used to it.

01:50:03.000 But the urine strip is actually pricking.

01:50:07.000 Pretty good relative marker.

01:50:09.000 And the Siemens Multi-Stick SG will measure ketones and then nine other things like that measure kidney function and, you know, your blood glucose and things like that.

01:50:21.000 So I recommend it's 25 cents a strip.

01:50:23.000 And then there's the breath ketonics meter.

01:50:26.000 You blow into it and it measures breath acetone.

01:50:28.000 And the level is also another breath acetone measurement system.

01:50:32.000 I was going to ask about that.

01:50:33.000 So, yeah.

01:50:34.000 And, you know...

01:50:35.000 Breath acetone highly correlates to fat oxidation.

01:50:39.000 So if your breath acetone is high, you are burning a lot of fat.

01:50:42.000 Isn't there an issue with people that are in the state of ketosis if they get pulled over for drunk driving?

01:50:48.000 A couple of lawyers contacted me.

01:50:50.000 There's some cases going on right now and they wanted me to weigh in on that.

01:50:53.000 Breathalyzers.

01:50:53.000 Yeah.

01:50:54.000 Breathalyzers because of the...

01:50:56.000 What did you say?

01:50:57.000 Acetone?

01:50:57.000 Yeah.

01:50:58.000 It uses the same technology, breath acetone.

01:51:02.000 And if you...

01:51:04.000 I know that if you drink alcohol and do a breath ketone meter, you can kind of pin it, depending on what meter you're using.

01:51:12.000 If you're using a breath, that's for a breath ketone meter.

01:51:15.000 If you have a breath alcohol measurement and you're in a state of ketosis, I have not seen that, depending on the device, that you'll have a false positive, if that's your question.

01:51:28.000 Some devices can.

01:51:29.000 It depends on the device.

01:51:31.000 So one thing I'll bring up because you said, well, you work with these kind of metabolically elite people.

01:51:37.000 So one of the problems, I say what you're doing where you kind of take yourself up to the point where you're sort of getting out of ketosis and then going back in, that's probably fine.

01:51:46.000 But most people aren't going to do it that way.

01:51:49.000 They're going to be like, oh, I had a cheesecake or, oh, I couldn't take any more and I had some pizza or whatever.

01:51:54.000 That's really bad.

01:51:56.000 So you see probably people who intermittent fast decrease that window time and overconsume on – yeah.

01:52:02.000 So that's a big problem actually.

01:52:04.000 Actually, I wanted to bring up intermittent fasting too because I think, again, like if you – So the studies on intermittent fasting show that if calories are the same, you lose the same amount of weight, same amount of fat.

01:52:17.000 Maybe you might be at risk for a little bit more lean body mass loss just because you're triggering protein synthesis less often.

01:52:24.000 But you do have a little bit lower insulin levels, it seems like.

01:52:29.000 Now, whether or not that's, again, beneficial based on the research that we talked about...

01:52:33.000 Unlikely insulin sensitivity.

01:52:35.000 Insulin sensitivity was a little bit better.

01:52:37.000 Again, so there's some techniques you can do, but people bring up things like autophagy and inflammation.

01:52:44.000 And again, I kind of get...

01:52:48.000 So if you just calorically restrict, you increase autophagy and you decrease inflammation.

01:52:54.000 Yeah, but you don't get – and autophagy is dependent upon the decrease in certain amino acids, glucose and insulin and you achieve – Those biomarker states at a more significant level doing intermittent fasting than you would.

01:53:11.000 And they are the autophagy regulators.

01:53:13.000 Can you send me the research for that?

01:53:15.000 Because I would love to see it.

01:53:16.000 Okay.

01:53:16.000 Amtor, amkinase, leucine.

01:53:19.000 So if you are eating various meals throughout the day, three times a day, like, you know, your blood leucine levels will be...

01:53:26.000 But you've always got to keep it in context of 24 hours.

01:53:29.000 So people do this with...

01:53:32.000 Yeah.

01:53:51.000 Maybe lower overall.

01:53:52.000 And if you have a fast metabolism, you're overshooting, and those calories have to go somewhere.

01:53:57.000 So the point being, over 24 hours, you don't see differences in fat loss or fat gain, intermittent fasting versus non.

01:54:04.000 I would be interested in the inflammation stuff and the autophagy stuff, because again, caloric restriction in and of itself decreases inflammation, increases autophagy.

01:54:13.000 Interestingly enough, one of the sugar studies they did with higher sugar, with still calorically restricted, they showed decreases in inflammation.

01:54:20.000 So it's inflammation is largely an issue of caloric restriction or the reduction of inflammation.

01:54:27.000 Or excess.

01:54:27.000 Do you guys think that that's what's going on with this carnivore diet?

01:54:30.000 Yeah, the people – it's hard now.

01:54:32.000 I think it's a calorie restriction effect probably.

01:54:35.000 It's hard to overeat meat.

01:54:36.000 And an elimination diet effect.

01:54:40.000 Like 200 grams of french fries.

01:54:42.000 You can get a lot of calories from that.

01:54:44.000 If I give you 200 grams of meat, even a real fatty meat, it's not nearly the same.

01:54:49.000 Like you're going to be much more satiated from the protein.

01:54:53.000 Like you can only eat so much meat, you know?

01:54:56.000 And again, like if you...

01:54:58.000 I don't want to go too far down the carnivore diet hole, but the stuff I see with people...

01:55:06.000 Yeah, do I think you can eat meat and improve your blood markers?

01:55:08.000 Absolutely.

01:55:09.000 Absolutely.

01:55:10.000 Absolutely.

01:55:10.000 Of course.

01:55:11.000 You could eat Pop-Tarts.

01:55:12.000 Yeah.

01:55:12.000 But the point is, when we get into this kind of zealot of only eat meat, you don't need vegetables.

01:55:21.000 I mean, again, it's epidemiology, but there's some really tight meta-analyses that have been done looking at colorectal cancer.

01:55:28.000 And low fiber intake.

01:55:30.000 And I would not be comfortable recommending people not eat enough vegetables and fiber.

01:55:36.000 I feel uncomfortable eating a steak or a burger without something like broccoli or salad.

01:55:43.000 I think you negate many of the potentially carcinogenic compounds that are in red meat.

01:55:49.000 And that's a whole other debate.

01:55:51.000 But I think you essentially...

01:55:52.000 Yeah, heme iron and...

01:55:54.000 Poly aromatic hydrocarbons.

01:55:56.000 Yeah, Chris Kresser actually brought that up yesterday.

01:55:58.000 We were talking about meat consumption with vegetables.

01:56:01.000 Yeah, like with cruciferous vegetables, broccolis and salads.

01:56:05.000 Like, I don't personally would not eat red meat.

01:56:07.000 So full disclosure, I mean, I was...

01:56:09.000 Because I get accused on Twitter of being a carb guy.

01:56:12.000 And I'm not.

01:56:13.000 I was – my research was funded by the Egg Board, the Beef – National Beef something or another.

01:56:21.000 Sorry, guys.

01:56:22.000 And then the National Dairy Council.

01:56:24.000 So, you know, full disclosure.

01:56:26.000 By the way, all you guys out there who – again, you're just taking my word for it.

01:56:29.000 But who think that like industry is this evil thing that comes in and controls everything.

01:56:35.000 I met one person – My entire PhD from the funding sources and I met them for literally 30 seconds.

01:56:44.000 They were at Experimental Biology and they said, hi, thank you for the grant.

01:56:49.000 Oh, great, great, great job.

01:56:50.000 Thank you.

01:56:51.000 That was it.

01:56:51.000 Now, I'm not saying that there isn't nefarious things that can happen, but like when I heard the show with Nina...

01:56:59.000 Everything was about who funded it and this and that.

01:57:02.000 But that's why they have to disclose those things on papers.

01:57:05.000 And also, this is why science is self-regulating because somebody is going to repeat your study.

01:57:10.000 And if they don't find the same thing you found...

01:57:13.000 You're going to be in trouble.

01:57:15.000 So I get criticized for conflict of interest.

01:57:17.000 I've seen it on social media and things.

01:57:19.000 So I should probably say I am not a medical doctor or even a registered dietitian.

01:57:24.000 I'm a PhD scientist.

01:57:25.000 So don't take my word as medical or nutrition advice.

01:57:29.000 We do, our research is funded not only by the Department of Defense and Office of Navy Research, but also by companies that actually develop ketone food products and also exogenous ketone supplements.

01:57:41.000 And our university owns the rights to those patents.

01:57:46.000 I don't have any products myself.

01:57:48.000 We have a company, Ketone Technologies, and Keto Nutrition is the Information website.

01:57:53.000 But at this time, we have no products.

01:57:55.000 But the university licenses our intellectual property, and products are made out of that, and I get patent royalties.

01:58:02.000 And I put the patent royalties back into our research.

01:58:05.000 So buying various exogenous ketones products that are on the market can come back and help support the science and the application.

01:58:13.000 I'm just going to vouch for him.

01:58:15.000 I tend not to state that, but I get called out for not stating that, so I think it's important.

01:58:21.000 I'm going to vouch for him because he's actually writing a chapter in my new book.

01:58:26.000 So we're going to have a chapter about the ketogenic diet.

01:58:28.000 If you're going to do it, this is how to do it right.

01:58:30.000 So the new book, Fat Loss Forever, shameless plug.

01:58:33.000 And he said, I just want all the money that I make from the book to go back into the lab.

01:58:42.000 Nice.

01:58:43.000 And Walter Longo has a similar with Prolon with his line too.

01:58:47.000 I know his profits, you know, the profits that he takes, he puts back into research.

01:58:52.000 Nobody's unbiased. 1.00

01:58:53.000 Anybody that says they're ours is full of crap. 0.99

01:58:54.000 We all have our biases. 0.99

01:58:56.000 We all have things that we think work better than others.

01:58:57.000 But I think the fundamental, if you meet a scientist, and hopefully I equip myself well in this, and I think Dom does as well, is that, one, you have an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out.

01:59:09.000 And two, you care more about getting the right answer than being right.

01:59:13.000 When I went to do my PhD, I was eating eight meals a day.

01:59:17.000 I was eating 300 grams of protein a day.

01:59:19.000 I was looking for more reasons to eat more protein and eat it more frequently.

01:59:23.000 When I left my PhD, I ate four meals a day and I ate a little bit less protein and less frequently.

01:59:31.000 And you're becoming refractory to the amino acids.

01:59:34.000 I was eating 500 grams of protein a day.

01:59:37.000 I was eating like two or three two-pound London broils and washing it down with a product metrics with HMB in it, like in between meals, like back in the mid-early 90s.

01:59:46.000 Your farts was insane.

01:59:48.000 That was the coolest thing. 0.98

01:59:49.000 I digested it well, actually.

01:59:50.000 That was the coolest thing about my research was it changed the way I ate.

01:59:53.000 I actually changed the way I ate and responded.

01:59:55.000 But that was my bias coming in.

01:59:57.000 But I looked at the research data and I'm like, either I believe this or I don't.

02:00:01.000 And if I believe this, I can't justify XYZ. Right.

02:00:05.000 Can I go back to the epidemiology studies in regards to colon and rectal cancer?

02:00:10.000 There really haven't been any studies on people that just eat meat, though, right? 0.91

02:00:14.000 You're talking about people who eat meat on a regular basis, and that usually is the standard American diet, a lot of other bullshit in there, sugar, buns.

02:00:22.000 And there's tons of co-founders. 0.99

02:00:23.000 Trans fats.

02:00:24.000 Absolutely.

02:00:25.000 Right.

02:00:26.000 I would be fascinated to see some sort of long-term study on someone who's on a very strict carnivore diet.

02:00:33.000 I'm really fascinated by this.

02:00:35.000 Because I'm seeing all these people have all these benefits, but I've got skeptical hippo face every step of the way.

02:00:40.000 I'm like, I'm not...

02:00:41.000 Now again, if it's allowing them to create a caloric restriction, and somebody says, you know what, I've tried every other diet out there, I've tried to eat high fiber, and I've tried to eat enough vegetables, but I can stick to this, and I can lose some fat, then I'm going to say,

02:00:57.000 okay, well maybe that's the best diet for you.

02:00:58.000 Well, I just know so many people that are benefiting from it.

02:01:01.000 And not just the people that have been on the podcast before.

02:01:05.000 I know a lot of other people.

02:01:06.000 And if they're followed by a doctor and collecting blood work along the way, I mean, those doctors can write case reports.

02:01:12.000 So I'd be glad to assist in a case report if people are tracking all their blood markers and doing their blood work.

02:01:18.000 Most of the people aren't, though.

02:01:20.000 That's what's going on.

02:01:21.000 Most of these knuckleheads are just eating meat and saying they feel great and there's a war on vegetables. 0.99

02:01:26.000 It's fucking very strange. 0.98

02:01:29.000 Remember that people don't discount psychology. 0.99

02:01:33.000 People are feeling very positively about it because it's the flavor of the month.

02:01:36.000 No hate towards carnivore.

02:01:39.000 I don't know who the – I think Dr. Baker is the one big guy.

02:01:44.000 But if I – Even dogs eat grass.

02:01:48.000 I mean my dogs eat around the grass to get some – Cats are obligate carnivores.

02:01:54.000 So cats, interestingly, are one thing.

02:01:56.000 There is a carb tolerance for them.

02:01:58.000 They don't tolerate them well.

02:01:59.000 They become obese.

02:02:01.000 Hashtag vegan cat.

02:02:03.000 I've seen it.

02:02:06.000 I think the thing is that I don't believe in any one diet.

02:02:12.000 I'm not trying to sell any one diet.

02:02:14.000 I would like to sell you on a ketogenic diet.

02:02:16.000 I really want to see you do it for like four or five months just to see if you're experiencing the same benefits as him.

02:02:20.000 It seems pretty obvious that you really haven't done it like whole hog.

02:02:24.000 I agree with that totally.

02:02:26.000 And I think I could probably put together a meal plan with keto cookies and things like that. 0.99

02:02:30.000 Fucking cookies. 0.99

02:02:32.000 But I like my cookies. 1.00

02:02:34.000 I did.

02:02:35.000 I did.

02:02:36.000 Hang on.

02:02:38.000 See, I did a ketogenic diet and it was fine.

02:02:41.000 I felt fine.

02:02:42.000 My performance didn't suffer that much.

02:02:44.000 What was your blood markers?

02:02:45.000 They didn't really change a whole lot.

02:02:47.000 Like I had, I think some, I would consider them insignificant changes.

02:02:51.000 I maintained.

02:02:53.000 What about your millimolars?

02:02:55.000 Did you do urine ketones or blood ketones?

02:02:58.000 Oh, I didn't look at my blood.

02:02:59.000 I didn't measure those.

02:03:00.000 So you don't even know if you were really in...

02:03:02.000 Oh, okay.

02:03:02.000 I did some urine sticks.

02:03:04.000 And what stage were you in from moderate to high in terms of ketones?

02:03:08.000 I would have been the modified ketogenic diet.

02:03:10.000 So I would have been not super, but I would have been about 0.5.

02:03:13.000 So you barely made it into ketosis.

02:03:15.000 Yeah.

02:03:16.000 I would have been above.5.

02:03:17.000 Dom, what do you think?

02:03:18.000 So he's eight weeks into it, and that's about the point I was kind of feeling crummy and stuff.

02:03:23.000 But so...

02:03:24.000 See, I actually felt...

02:03:25.000 Really about three...

02:03:25.000 Well, not crummy, but I... Cognitively, it was kicking in.

02:03:29.000 Yeah.

02:03:30.000 But I was a little bit flat in the gym.

02:03:32.000 And then I started to fill out.

02:03:34.000 And then it's a learning curve, too.

02:03:36.000 Right?

02:03:36.000 But see, my thing was...

02:03:37.000 If I can get the same benefits just by restricting my calories and keeping higher protein...

02:03:43.000 But do you get the same benefits in terms of cognitive function, in terms of science?

02:03:48.000 I would say...

02:03:50.000 I mean, we study...

02:03:51.000 You could look at PubMed, everything from polycystic ovary syndrome to acne...

02:03:56.000 Type 2 diabetes, type 1 diabetes now, that's a little bit controversial.

02:04:01.000 Genetic migraines, a whole host of neurological disorders, simply because beta-hydroxybutyrate is, I believe, there's an objective truth that it's a superior metabolic fuel.

02:04:14.000 And if you have millimolar levels in your blood, that's a significant amount of energy in your blood that your tissues can use.

02:04:21.000 How are you defining severe metabolic fuel?

02:04:22.000 What's the objective measure?

02:04:24.000 The delta G of ATP hydrolysis in the heart is enhanced.

02:04:28.000 So essentially you're making more ATP for a given amount of oxygen.

02:04:32.000 Which actually means your metabolic rate could be slower.

02:04:37.000 Maybe.

02:04:37.000 You are more metabolically efficient.

02:04:39.000 Yeah, so you're more metabolically efficient potentially, but I don't think in the context of fat loss.

02:04:45.000 But it's also enhancing insulin sensitivity and simply feeding ketones independent of carbohydrate restriction increases fat oxidation in the muscle.

02:04:54.000 This has been published.

02:04:55.000 There's been studies to look at like a ketogenic diet versus a non-ketogenic higher carb diet.

02:05:01.000 And they show that basically by going ketogenic, you reduce overall insulin area under the curve by 20%.

02:05:07.000 That was the number they got.

02:05:10.000 If I was type 1 diabetic, I would 100% do the ketogenic diet.

02:05:13.000 100%.

02:05:14.000 Absolutely.

02:05:15.000 And that's very controversial.

02:05:17.000 This is not medical advice.

02:05:19.000 This is me personally.

02:05:20.000 When I used to give talks, I would say for these things, but if you're type 1 diabetic, you want to avoid the ketogenic diet as much as possible because there's something called diabetic ketoacidosis.

02:05:32.000 But like my student, Andrew Kutnick at USF... That's if you've also got...

02:05:37.000 He has a blog on ketonutrition.org.

02:05:40.000 Go to it.

02:05:41.000 And it's a very detailed description about carbohydrate restriction and managing your blood glucose.

02:05:47.000 And it goes really into the weeds, if you want to read that.

02:05:50.000 So can I stop you there, though?

02:05:51.000 Can you elaborate on that?

02:05:53.000 So you used to say that if you were type 1 diabetic, you wouldn't...

02:05:56.000 I did, because it was very controversial territory.

02:05:59.000 Describe what diabetic ketoacidosis is.

02:06:01.000 Yeah, so if you're type 1 diabetic, you make little or no insulin at all, right?

02:06:08.000 And I guess maybe just going back to a normal person, when they fast or they do the ketogenic diet, it increases fat oxidation in the liver, and that fat oxidation actually accumulates acetyl-CoA, and that creates ketones, acetyl acetate and beta-hydroxybutyrate.

02:06:22.000 And it occurs in the context of insulin suppression.

02:06:25.000 But you still have normal insulin, but it's very low.

02:06:28.000 Right?

02:06:29.000 And then when your ketones get elevated, you spill some out in the urine, and that's how you eliminate them.

02:06:34.000 Your muscles, your brain burns them.

02:06:35.000 And if they get really high, you have a small increase in insulin release when your ketones get real high.

02:06:42.000 And that insulin ramps down fat oxidation in the liver and decreases ketone production.

02:06:48.000 And there's other things too, but I don't want to get too much into the weeds.

02:06:52.000 But a normal person is finely tuned to create, to maintain physiological ketones within a certain range with nutritional ketosis.

02:07:01.000 With diabetic type 1 diabetes, that's completely thrown out the window.

02:07:05.000 So without insulin being there, the absence of insulin essentially creates runaway ketogenesis.

02:07:12.000 And your ketones become very, very high in the context of very high glucose.

02:07:16.000 Exactly.

02:07:17.000 So you have high glucose and high ketones.

02:07:19.000 It creates a metabolic disruption.

02:07:24.000 It creates an acidotic state and electrolyte imbalances and coma and death.

02:07:29.000 Which is not going to happen in people who are healthy who are just doing a ketogenic diet.

02:07:33.000 But with type 1 diabetes, if you, for example, my student, using his example, because I think maybe he was using 20 or 30 IUs of insulin a day, right?

02:07:45.000 And then starts carbohydrate restriction and even a modified ketogenic diet and can reduce that insulin requirement.

02:07:53.000 To four, five, six IUs a day.

02:07:56.000 So literally knocking it down, you know, to 20% of what he was taking before.

02:08:01.000 So what has changed in your perception when you did not recommend it?

02:08:04.000 Well, there's a Harvard study that basically looked at a group called Type 1 Grit on Facebook.

02:08:09.000 There's a group called Type 1 Grit, and it's got thousands of people who use a low-carbohydrate approach, not necessarily a ketogenic diet approach, some are, but it's very carbohydrate-restricted in terms of Of what a doctor,

02:08:26.000 an endocrinologist, would prescribe for a type 1 diabetic.

02:08:28.000 It would almost maybe look like suicide to some people.

02:08:31.000 And low carbohydrate dramatically decreases your insulin requirements.

02:08:36.000 And if you look at your continuous blood glucose recordings over the course of a week, those numbers are much, much tighter.

02:08:43.000 And that's going to pay huge dividends in the long run when it comes to Longevity and health span and, you know, the potential for going blind or decreasing your kidney function, you know, by these huge postprandial spikes.

02:08:56.000 Essentially, if you're type 1 diet, you're always chasing your glucose with insulin injections, right?

02:09:01.000 Or an insulin pump.

02:09:02.000 If you're carbohydrate restricted, you're basically not...

02:09:06.000 It's very liberating because you're not...

02:09:08.000 Your dependence on insulin is far, far less.

02:09:11.000 You know, some...

02:09:12.000 Controversially, some people...

02:09:14.000 Have gotten completely off of insulin.

02:09:16.000 I would not recommend that, but some people are actually doing that.

02:09:20.000 Highly not recommended.

02:09:22.000 I hear this from critics of the ketogenic diet, and this is a BS criticism.

02:09:27.000 Again, here's me defending the ketogenic diet.

02:09:29.000 You'll become people who are healthy.

02:09:33.000 You have ketoacidosis.

02:09:36.000 That is not going to happen because by definition, if your ketones are high and you're relatively healthy, not type 1 diabetic, your blood glucose is low.

02:09:44.000 It's when both are elevated that it's dangerous.

02:09:47.000 And if you're a type 1 diabetic, like Andrew, who you're just using a little bit of insulin to get that baseline, to get your glucose levels down to a baseline level, and then you're using a carb-restricted diet that creates ketones while your blood glucose is at a normal basal level,

02:10:03.000 that, again, not a doctor.

02:10:06.000 Not medical advice.

02:10:08.000 That should not be dangerous, right?

02:10:10.000 Now, over the years, because he's a power lifter and he's a super big dude, he's like 250 pounds, like when he goes to the gym, he has learned that he can pulse a little bit of insulin and maybe ramp up his protein or maybe even take a little bit of carbohydrates.

02:10:23.000 But, you know, the next day, he's still doing low carb throughout the day.

02:10:26.000 But he's learned to leverage, you know, as a type 1 diabetic, you have that advantage, right?

02:10:32.000 Because you can manipulate insulin for body composition alterations and things like that.

02:10:36.000 So he has learned to adjust his protein to maximize his sort of gains and performance in the gym.

02:10:44.000 But nonetheless, he went from a strategy...

02:10:48.000 He transitioned to a strategy that would be...

02:10:53.000 Would look to be almost suicidal from the perspective of an endocrinologist doctor managing to do that level of carbohydrate restriction.

02:11:02.000 And now we actually have hard science to show that that not only can be done, That dramatically decreases the variability of your blood glucose fluctuation throughout the day from a weekly perspective and your requirements for insulin.

02:11:17.000 Whenever you could use less insulin to manage your blood glucose, that's a good thing.

02:11:21.000 It's very hard for a doctor to argue against using less insulin and keeping tighter numbers.

02:11:29.000 There's no way to argue against that.

02:11:31.000 If you can follow the diet so that this gets back to adherence again.

02:11:37.000 It's one of those things that you said, I'd like to see you try it and do it and whatnot.

02:11:42.000 And you know what?

02:11:43.000 I would probably be fine, but I enjoy having a variety of foods and I enjoy having a variety of fuels as well.

02:11:49.000 No, I'm sure you do, but I'd still like to see you try it.

02:11:53.000 Like, those two aren't mutually exclusive.

02:11:55.000 No, you're right, but I like...

02:11:57.000 I have a chapter in his book that's coming out that we worked, you know, together and just took some of the concepts that I've...

02:12:04.000 Don't you find that your preferences change as well, like in terms of your hunger pangs?

02:12:08.000 You're not.

02:12:09.000 You don't crave sugary foods, carbohydrates.

02:12:11.000 Yeah, but you do.

02:12:12.000 You like them.

02:12:13.000 Look at you.

02:12:14.000 I like them for...

02:12:15.000 Yeah, I like them.

02:12:16.000 He's getting hungry.

02:12:18.000 He's got a little...

02:12:18.000 Well, to get in the amount of...

02:12:20.000 Oh my God, give me the sugar. 1.00

02:12:21.000 Where's the pizza?

02:12:24.000 What did you have for breakfast this morning?

02:12:26.000 What did I have for breakfast this morning?

02:12:27.000 I had steak and eggs.

02:12:30.000 There you go.

02:12:32.000 And a piece of toast.

02:12:33.000 And some toast. 1.00

02:12:34.000 Oh, you son of a bitch with your bread. 1.00

02:12:36.000 Stab him in the face. 1.00

02:12:37.000 What is wrong with you? 1.00

02:12:38.000 Don't you know?

02:12:39.000 Spike my insulin.

02:12:40.000 Don't you know?

02:12:40.000 I had a big serving of nothing.

02:12:43.000 I feel lots of energy.

02:12:44.000 But again, it's individual.

02:12:47.000 And I want to point out that if somebody likes a ketogenic...

02:12:51.000 I've had people do a ketogenic diet.

02:12:53.000 I've had people get ready for shows on a ketogenic diet.

02:12:56.000 And why did you put them on a ketogenic diet?

02:12:58.000 Because that's what they liked.

02:12:59.000 They had that preference for that.

02:13:01.000 And it got to a point where for some people their calories get so low if they have slow metabolic rates that the level of fat restriction it would take them to is probably not great for hormone levels.

02:13:12.000 So I tended to pull a little bit more carb relative to fat.

02:13:16.000 And so we didn't start out targeting them as ketogenic, but by the end they were.

02:13:20.000 So you had to resort to something that actually works.

02:13:25.000 Oh, stop it.

02:13:26.000 Stop it.

02:13:28.000 Because metabolic rate declines, you get to a point, especially to get that lean.

02:13:35.000 I mean, I'm somebody who's, again, more average muscle mass and pretty fast metabolism usually.

02:13:41.000 I had to get down to under 2,000 calories a day to get ready for a show.

02:13:47.000 So for me, I had my carbohydrates for briefly under 100 grams of carbs per day in that show prep.

02:13:52.000 I don't know if you remember, but remember I was sticking your fingers and measuring your glucose in the bathroom?

02:13:57.000 I forget where, yeah. 0.87

02:13:58.000 My theory is that when you do that and you carb restrict and you calorie restrict rather and get down, once that shit's over, you just want to reward yourself as often as possible. 1.00

02:14:09.000 So when someone comes along with something like a ketogenic diet and go, no bread, no pot, fuck you. 1.00

02:14:14.000 You just don't want to do it. 1.00

02:14:17.000 But you get the same...

02:14:20.000 The adherence and the relapse is the same whether it's ketogenic or another diet.

02:14:25.000 Relapse.

02:14:26.000 Like regaining weight.

02:14:27.000 Yeah, but is it bread?

02:14:28.000 Is that your fixation?

02:14:30.000 Like pasta and bread?

02:14:32.000 There's no foods actually creates.

02:14:35.000 They've got great stuff.

02:14:37.000 Their waffles are excellent.

02:14:38.000 They have like hamburger buns now, I think.

02:14:41.000 Yeah, it's good stuff.

02:14:43.000 I've made sandwiches with their stuff.

02:14:45.000 What knocks me out more than anything of ketosis is just too much meat.

02:14:49.000 Yeah, that's the one that gets me.

02:14:55.000 Again, I kind of go back to that the data is very mixed.

02:15:04.000 Again, if we look at the overall data set, very mixed.

02:15:06.000 And all diets have terrible adherence, right?

02:15:09.000 Right.

02:15:10.000 Again, that's discipline.

02:15:11.000 Right.

02:15:12.000 Yeah, but we also...

02:15:13.000 That drives me crazy.

02:15:14.000 I don't want to talk about people who aren't disciplined.

02:15:16.000 I really have a giant hard problem with that because I know so many disciplined people and I just feel their momentum and vibration and I'm like, I just want to concentrate on what they're doing because all these people that can't do it, I feel like that's contagious.

02:15:30.000 You start thinking about people that can't adhere to diets and fall off.

02:15:33.000 I get it for you because it's something that you do professionally.

02:15:36.000 But I'm going to make a...

02:15:39.000 So for you, the ketogenic diet clicks.

02:15:41.000 Or eating more meat clicks.

02:15:44.000 That's something that you really enjoy.

02:15:46.000 You like the steak.

02:15:47.000 Dude, I love pasta.

02:15:48.000 It makes discipline easier because it regulates your appetite.

02:15:52.000 But the data doesn't support that.

02:15:53.000 I think so, too.

02:15:54.000 The data doesn't support that it makes discipline easier in terms of your adherence or in terms of your long-term adherence.

02:16:01.000 Both.

02:16:02.000 But hang on.

02:16:04.000 For some people...

02:16:06.000 For some people, this works better because they feel better.

02:16:10.000 They have better adherence. 0.57

02:16:12.000 For other people, if you say, hey, you can have a cookie, it would screw them because they would just go crazy.

02:16:20.000 But for other people, if you allow them more flexibility, their adherence improves.

02:16:24.000 What I'm saying is we need to give people all the options on the table, not demonize any one diet.

02:16:30.000 Mm-hmm.

02:16:31.000 And say, hey, maybe you try to figure out, for lack of sounding bro, what works for you and what you can sustain.

02:16:40.000 Go from there.

02:16:42.000 I'm totally in agreement.

02:16:43.000 I am as well, but you keep saying can sustain.

02:16:46.000 You definitely can sustain more than you do.

02:16:49.000 The real problem is a giant percentage of the people are weak.

02:16:53.000 Oh, I would agree with that.

02:16:54.000 It's in the 30%, 40% people just quit, give up, don't do what they're supposed to do, don't do as many reps as they're supposed to do, don't work out, take days off just because they're lazy.

02:17:04.000 And those are the people that get off the diet.

02:17:06.000 It's a discipline issue more than anything.

02:17:08.000 The market for that is really big.

02:17:10.000 So I think various foods that are emerging on the market right now, app-based systems, Virta Health actually has a great app-based system that actually coaches you through that, and I think that's very helpful.

02:17:21.000 So I think new technology is foods and we'll make it Well, increase adherence.

02:17:26.000 Also, when you have a person who knows and understands all the health benefits associated with nutritional ketosis or just low-carb, I think that can be a motivating factor to make them stick to the diet.

02:17:37.000 Yeah, but for a guy like you who's rational and disciplined, but people that are self-destructive and weak, they're going to, oh, I can't do this anymore.

02:17:44.000 I need a burger.

02:17:45.000 I need fries.

02:17:46.000 I need a shake.

02:17:47.000 That's their choice.

02:17:48.000 But then kind of, what's the point of the whole conversation then, though? 0.99

02:17:51.000 Well, the problem of their conversation is to avoid those motherfuckers because they're going to drag you down to their mediocre level. 1.00

02:17:56.000 I think you need to sympathize with them a little bit because I think the market and I think this is a fruitful area for entrepreneurs to create technologies and foods that can actually enhance adherence to eating strategies we know about. 0.98

02:18:12.000 That too.

02:18:13.000 I feel like so much of it is what you're willing to accept from yourself.

02:18:17.000 If you're willing to accept this seesaw obesity thing that so many people get on, on and off this yo-yo effect, if you're willing to accept that, that's fine.

02:18:29.000 I just feel like it's a mental state.

02:18:31.000 I really do.

02:18:32.000 Once you achieve a certain amount of success, people start sabotaging themselves.

02:18:36.000 They start dwelling on the fact that they're doing well, but how long can they sustain this? 0.99

02:18:41.000 It starts being a big fat mindfuck. 0.97

02:18:43.000 And that's when you say, like, what's sustainable? 0.98

02:18:47.000 What's sustainable?

02:18:48.000 A lot more than you're willing to do. 1.00

02:18:50.000 What's sustainable is stop being a bitch. 1.00

02:18:52.000 Don't yell at me. 1.00

02:18:52.000 Not you, the person out there that's listening to this. 1.00

02:18:54.000 I know.

02:18:55.000 But you know what I mean? 0.99

02:18:56.000 It's like, there's a thing, like, we're giving people these fucking escape clauses. 0.98

02:19:00.000 We're giving them these parachutes that they can pull. 1.00

02:19:04.000 Don't pull the parachute, motherfucker! 1.00

02:19:06.000 Just have a cheat day. 1.00

02:19:07.000 That's fine.

02:19:08.000 But don't get off your diet.

02:19:10.000 Have a cheat meal. 1.00

02:19:10.000 Eat a fucking giant sundae. 1.00

02:19:12.000 Throw some syrup on that bitch. 1.00

02:19:14.000 Get that whipped cream going. 1.00

02:19:15.000 Do it once.

02:19:16.000 But don't live your life like that.

02:19:18.000 That's nonsense.

02:19:19.000 And I think that for...

02:19:22.000 Yeah, I wouldn't disagree with anything you said.

02:19:24.000 That's what people need to hear, not this like, well, you can't sustain it, the keto diet is not sustainable.

02:19:30.000 You sustain it, I know a lot of people can sustain it.

02:19:32.000 Their confidence with their control.

02:19:33.000 If you do intermittent fasting, if you fast for three days, that will give you a lot of confidence that you have control over food.

02:19:40.000 Fasting for three days.

02:19:41.000 You can't say no diet is sustainable. 0.98

02:19:43.000 It's not sustainable over, if you look at the general population and you get a bunch of weak bitches and you get them together, how many of them are going to keep it together? 1.00

02:19:50.000 How many of them are going to run every day? 0.99

02:19:51.000 How many of them are going to work out every day?

02:19:52.000 Very, very, very few.

02:19:54.000 You're dealing with outliers in particular just by virtue of what you do.

02:19:58.000 How many people are willing to put the work in to achieve this?

02:20:02.000 Not many.

02:20:03.000 How many people are going to achieve this physique? 0.83

02:20:05.000 Very, very few, right?

02:20:07.000 Thank you.

02:20:07.000 So we're talking about outliers.

02:20:09.000 We're talking about outliers.

02:20:10.000 That's what I like.

02:20:11.000 I like outliers.

02:20:12.000 I don't like people that are like, it's too hard.

02:20:14.000 I can't hear that!

02:20:17.000 That's dangerous. 1.00

02:20:18.000 I feel like that shit is worse than carbs. 1.00

02:20:21.000 That's why we talk a lot in the book about behaviors. 1.00

02:20:23.000 Because if you change your behavior, that's what I think there's not enough research focused on.

02:20:29.000 Let's look at the people who actually achieve weight loss.

02:20:33.000 And if you look at people who achieve it and keep it off, they do it through many different methods, whether it's low carb, low fat, whatever it is.

02:20:39.000 But let's look at the behaviors that they make, and those behaviors can tell us a lot about people.

02:20:44.000 One thing we know is they weigh themselves very often, so they're accountable.

02:20:51.000 They practice some form of cognitive restraint, whether it's weighing food, recording macros, ketogenic, fat restriction, whatever it is, and also they exercise regularly.

02:21:03.000 And one, there's physiological benefits to that.

02:21:05.000 Exercise lowers the body fat set point that your body will defend.

02:21:09.000 So it actually has a physiological benefit.

02:21:11.000 But also just mentally, like you said, I mean, I never, if you took me back 30 years ago and you told me...

02:21:18.000 When I was 10 years old and you said, hey, when I was bullied and picked on and had no self-esteem, you're going to fucking squat 668 pounds one day on your back at 201 pounds and set a, it's been broken since then, but a world record. 0.88

02:21:33.000 I would have been like, there's no fucking way. 0.98

02:21:36.000 There's no way. 0.98

02:21:37.000 But when you have discipline, like you said, and that doesn't just – people say, you should have more confidence. 0.99

02:21:43.000 That's fucking horseshit advice. 0.98

02:21:45.000 Confidence is built through you set a goal and you achieve it. 1.00

02:21:48.000 You set a goal and you achieve it.

02:21:50.000 And you don't start out to say, I'm going to set a world record and that's your first goal.

02:21:54.000 I like what Will Smith said.

02:21:56.000 He said, you lay a brick as perfectly as you can lay it.

02:21:58.000 You do it again, and you do it again, and you do it again, and you talk to anybody who's successful in anything.

02:22:04.000 They didn't start out saying, I'm going to do this earth-shattering thing.

02:22:09.000 They started out and built that confidence over years and years of achieving small goals, which then led them to their big goals.

02:22:17.000 Now we're on to something.

02:22:18.000 Because I think that the mental state in which you approach anything, a workout routine, a lifestyle, the way you decide to live your life, that is critical.

02:22:25.000 And here's one of the things that people are cynical about that's probably one of the best sources of fuel is inspiration from other motivated people.

02:22:33.000 Go to David Goggins' Instagram page every day. 0.99

02:22:36.000 Watch that fucking savage. 1.00

02:22:37.000 Watch what he does. 1.00

02:22:39.000 And yeah, he's awesome.

02:22:40.000 But go to people like him.

02:22:42.000 Cameron Haynes.

02:22:43.000 Go to people like The Rock. 1.00

02:22:45.000 These fucking people just do it. 1.00

02:22:48.000 There's no escape. 1.00

02:22:49.000 I can't sustain. 1.00

02:22:51.000 I don't want to hear that shit. 1.00

02:22:53.000 That's nonsense. 1.00

02:22:54.000 And failing is good.

02:22:55.000 It's okay if you fail.

02:22:56.000 If you don't fail, you're not going to go anywhere.

02:22:58.000 You're not pushing yourself hard enough.

02:23:00.000 Well, I think when I say sustainability...

02:23:03.000 I mean if it's – because everybody has stuff that they find – again, you find a carb-restricted diet to be easier to stick to for you.

02:23:11.000 It just feels better for me.

02:23:12.000 It feels better for you.

02:23:13.000 Yeah.

02:23:13.000 And that's fine.

02:23:14.000 But if somebody is over here and says, you know what?

02:23:16.000 I'm eating a low-fat diet.

02:23:17.000 I feel great.

02:23:18.000 My blood markers are good.

02:23:19.000 I have plenty of energy.

02:23:22.000 What's wrong with that?

02:23:23.000 Nothing's wrong with that.

02:23:23.000 Exactly.

02:23:25.000 There's my libertarian.

02:23:26.000 Biodiversity unquestionably exists, right?

02:23:29.000 There's a giant difference between all of this.

02:23:31.000 Some people eat peanuts and they die, right?

02:23:33.000 Yeah.

02:23:33.000 We all know that.

02:23:34.000 The body's just very, very different.

02:23:36.000 They vary.

02:23:37.000 Exactly.

02:23:37.000 The caloric requirements, the nutritional requirements.

02:23:41.000 That's what's hard about this, right?

02:23:42.000 Is finding this one thing that is best for you.

02:23:47.000 Yes.

02:23:47.000 And objectively.

02:23:49.000 And really analyzing your actual physical performance, which very few people do.

02:23:54.000 They kind of say, well, I feel pretty good.

02:23:56.000 But by what marker?

02:23:57.000 Right?

02:23:57.000 What's your personal best?

02:23:59.000 What are you trying to accomplish?

02:24:01.000 Are you monitoring your heart rate?

02:24:02.000 Are you monitoring your work output?

02:24:04.000 What are you doing to show that this diet is optimal for you?

02:24:07.000 Yeah.

02:24:08.000 Well, and part of that is like, you know, it's hard to get – that's a lot of money that's going to be spent to get that data for an individual.

02:24:15.000 So part of it is going to have to be what do you feel good on and what do you feel like is, again, most sustainable for you because no matter what – people want a diet.

02:24:26.000 What people really want is they want – I don't want to have to track – And I don't want to sacrifice anything.

02:24:31.000 And I want to get to my goal. 0.99

02:24:32.000 Well, tough shit. 0.99

02:24:33.000 That's not going to happen. 1.00

02:24:34.000 You have to pick what you're going to sacrifice, right?

02:24:36.000 So if you say, I hate tracking calories, so I'm just not going to eat carbs because I can regulate my body weight that way. 0.99

02:24:43.000 Fuck yeah, do that. 0.98

02:24:45.000 I had a post on Twitter that was one of my most popular Twitter posts. 1.00

02:24:48.000 I said, you know, health improvements are largely driven by caloric restriction and weight loss. 0.99

02:24:54.000 But if you like vegan, if you like keto, if you like carnivore, and I just listed a bunch of different diets, and they help you create a restriction and it keeps you at a healthy weight, then fuck yeah! 0.99

02:25:09.000 Hell yeah! 0.97

02:25:09.000 If somebody says, I like eating a vegan diet... 0.97

02:25:12.000 I'm not interested in losing weight, but ketogenic intermittent fasting is very, very easy for me.

02:25:17.000 I love the food, and I feel better, and I think all my health biomarkers are improving.

02:25:22.000 You don't need any other reasoning for why you should do it.

02:25:25.000 With him, it works.

02:25:26.000 Now, can I ask you this?

02:25:27.000 When you say diets aren't sustainable, the data doesn't show that.

02:25:30.000 Were you talking about calorie-restricted diets, that overall weight loss diets?

02:25:33.000 Are you talking about dietary choices in terms of like ketogenic diet?

02:25:37.000 Excellent question.

02:25:38.000 So it's that if you lose weight, we cannot keep it off.

02:25:42.000 That is the big problem, is that most people are able to lose weight and they cannot keep it off because...

02:25:50.000 One, the self-defense system that we talked about is really...

02:25:54.000 They lose weight too quickly.

02:25:55.000 Their body gets into this state where it's always trying to regain that weight back.

02:25:59.000 Part of it, yeah.

02:26:00.000 Losing it more quickly, there's debate about this, but I would say that you have to create a more extreme deficit to do that.

02:26:09.000 And so you are activating your body's self-defense system more intensely, if I had to say it that way.

02:26:14.000 So the rebound is usually bigger as well.

02:26:18.000 So it's trying to find a way, okay, can we get this weight off and then let's really emphasize to people that the diet after the diet.

02:26:28.000 Nobody talks about this, except for us in the book.

02:26:31.000 Nobody talks about this.

02:26:34.000 My co-writer for the book, Peter Baker and I, we spent chapters talking about when you go and transition into, okay, we've lost the weight we want to lose, we're healthier.

02:26:45.000 You have to have the same amount of discipline and intensity to then maintain that loss.

02:26:51.000 Because if you let up, if you let your foot off the gas, now you don't necessarily have to be at the same caloric restriction level.

02:26:59.000 But if you just let yourself, well, I'm going to vacation.

02:27:01.000 I'm going to eat what I want.

02:27:04.000 Boom.

02:27:04.000 Gain 10 pounds.

02:27:06.000 And everybody knows people like this, who they go and they do this.

02:27:09.000 And you've just, you've literally just undid months of hard work in one week.

02:27:15.000 Would you say if you could maintain that for a set amount of time, say six months.

02:27:19.000 So I think that if someone can maintain that weight loss for six months, that's like sort of like the tipping point where they can go on.

02:27:27.000 Got my wheelhouse right here.

02:27:28.000 Go ahead.

02:27:30.000 That's a great point.

02:27:32.000 So leptin is a – I'm sure you've heard people talk about leptin.

02:27:36.000 So when you lose fat, leptin secretion goes down because fat cells secrete it.

02:27:41.000 And it's kind of like your body's thermostat and body fat.

02:27:43.000 Everybody has like a set point their body likes to be at.

02:27:45.000 So if you lose body fat, you secrete less leptin.

02:27:48.000 Hunger goes up.

02:27:49.000 Metabolic rate goes down.

02:27:50.000 And ghrelin.

02:27:51.000 Yes, and ghrelin is in opposition to leptin.

02:27:53.000 So this is your body like a thermostat.

02:27:56.000 So if you're on a thermostat, if you sit at 75, goes too low, kick the heat on, bump it back up, goes too high, kick the cooling on, go back down.

02:28:04.000 Leptin acts that way with your metabolic rate and your hunger.

02:28:08.000 When you get down to a low body fat, leptin's low.

02:28:11.000 Your body, you have a drive to regain that weight.

02:28:14.000 Your hunger's higher.

02:28:16.000 Your metabolic rate is lower.

02:28:19.000 Leptin still stays low even years after a diet in people who have kept the weight off.

02:28:27.000 So you would think there'd still be a biological drive to regain the weight.

02:28:32.000 That said, and I'm going to go out on a limb here, so any of my scientists who are listening on this, feel free to call me out on the carpet if you think I'm wrong.

02:28:41.000 But just like obese people, obese people actually have high levels of leptin.

02:28:45.000 They have high levels of leptin, but they become leptin-resistant.

02:28:49.000 Leptin insensitive.

02:28:50.000 Right.

02:28:51.000 There is evidence that if you stay at a reduced body weight for one or two years, that that can become your new set point that your body defends.

02:29:00.000 I think what can happen is even if your leptin doesn't go up...

02:29:02.000 So one or two years, not six months.

02:29:04.000 Yeah, it's a little bit longer.

02:29:05.000 It's a little bit longer.

02:29:06.000 But it's a good start.

02:29:07.000 So what is the mechanism?

02:29:07.000 What's happening over those one or two years?

02:29:09.000 Well, I think it's probably multifaceted because your body is so redundant.

02:29:13.000 Usually nothing is ever one thing, typically.

02:29:16.000 Adjusting your set point.

02:29:18.000 I think one of the things that happens is probably your body becomes more sensitive to the leptin you have because you're leaner.

02:29:23.000 Now, I want to talk about performance because this is a big thing with athletes and particularly in my field with fighters.

02:29:31.000 Many of them are reluctant to try a ketogenic diet initially because the first few weeks are pretty rough and it really inhibits training and you get that keto flu feeling and I've experienced that too.

02:29:46.000 Overall, is the ketogenic diet a good strategy for someone that's involved in some sort of a brutal athletic pursuit like football or wrestling?

02:29:59.000 It can be, absolutely.

02:30:00.000 And it will be dependent upon being keto-adapted over time and actually training in a state of ketosis so you force those adaptations over time.

02:30:10.000 We know the ketogenic diet is glycogen-sparing.

02:30:13.000 Over time, glycolytic pathways will be decreased over time.

02:30:17.000 So that may impair anaerobic power output initially.

02:30:22.000 But I think that most people, I think a good amount of people could adapt back to, especially if they're taking things like creatine monohydrate and taking various supplements that can kind of fill that gap to meet the glycolytic anaerobic energy demands.

02:30:39.000 You know Zach Bitter?

02:30:40.000 Yeah.

02:30:41.000 Yeah.

02:30:41.000 Zach Bitter, who holds the American record for the fastest 24-hour run, or the fastest 100-mile run.

02:30:49.000 He did it in 11 hours and 40 minutes.

02:30:53.000 Insane.

02:30:53.000 Yeah, he ran 100 miles.

02:30:55.000 It's fucking... 1.00

02:30:56.000 It's just nonsense. 1.00

02:30:57.000 I actually corresponded with him on Twitter one time.

02:30:59.000 Not a zealot, by the way.

02:31:01.000 Very smart guy.

02:31:02.000 No, not a zealot at all.

02:31:02.000 Very smart guy.

02:31:03.000 Jeff Volick, I think, brought him to my attention, and actually we're looking at some of the...

02:31:08.000 You know, muscle biopsies from various athletes that are doing similar things.

02:31:12.000 Yeah, he's on a ketogenic diet, essentially.

02:31:13.000 But when he does these long races, he takes in a considerable amount of glucose.

02:31:18.000 Yep.

02:31:19.000 Yeah, he uses those gels and, you know, take hundreds and hundreds.

02:31:23.000 Probably relatively sparingly compared to a person that's already, like, very carb-adapted.

02:31:28.000 So, right, so you just want to, especially a hundred mile race, you titrate in small, instead of drinking 50 or 100 grams of carbs, 20 grams of carbs every hour or two, maybe more than enough.

02:31:41.000 But say, Zach, tweet us if you need to correct us.

02:31:44.000 Yeah.

02:31:44.000 Well, Zach has a podcast that he also does with Sean Baker.

02:31:47.000 And he basically eats mostly meat.

02:31:50.000 I mean, Zach's diet consists of mostly like ribeyes.

02:31:53.000 So he's fully keto and he's using glucose.

02:31:55.000 I think glucose, and this may aggravate some of the keto people, I think glucose is one of the most powerful performance enhancing substances out there.

02:32:04.000 Really?

02:32:05.000 Glucose gel?

02:32:06.000 Especially in the context of that, where your glycogen levels are being depleted over time, and even from a training perspective.

02:32:13.000 Very small amounts of glucose are anti-catabolic, maybe argue anabolic, in the context of certain scenarios.

02:32:20.000 Floyd Mayweather drinks a Coca-Cola or a Pepsi right after he trains.

02:32:25.000 Is there any benefit to that?

02:32:26.000 Well, I mean, you're going to get glycogen replenishment.

02:32:28.000 And actually, there's research out of Lehman's lab years ago that showed that actually sucrose replenishes glycogen in muscle faster than pure glucose, which is interesting.

02:32:38.000 Probably because the fructose gets taken up by the liver, so the glucose you do eat, the liver doesn't steal any of it, and your glucose is going to muscle.

02:32:47.000 I would say ketones too.

02:32:49.000 So the science is very new, but exogenous ketones, especially in the context of aerobic performance.

02:32:56.000 Do you mean like Kegenix or like a ketone ester?

02:33:01.000 Kegenix products is great.

02:33:02.000 Ketone esters, most of the science is behind ketone esters.

02:33:06.000 But there are valid applications for the ketone salts that are emerging on the market too, like Kegenix.

02:33:12.000 I think that the science just over the last couple years has been incredible, emerging on that.

02:33:19.000 And I think it's something to watch over time.

02:33:21.000 It's a new fuel source.

02:33:22.000 It's like the fourth macronutrient, right?

02:33:24.000 We have carbs, proteins, and fats, and alcohol.

02:33:28.000 Yeah, arguably a community.

02:33:29.000 So I view ketones as they are a calorie-containing energy source.

02:33:33.000 So they are a fourth macronutrient.

02:33:35.000 Now, let me ask you this.

02:33:36.000 If you were doing nutritional consultant for, say, someone who's a UFC champion, and they said, you know, I want to get on the optimal diet for performance, you don't think that a ketogenic diet is the optimal diet for performance.

02:33:48.000 Is that safe to say?

02:33:49.000 Or you would have to experiment with them for a long period of time?

02:33:53.000 I think, one, it's going to be individual.

02:33:54.000 You certainly wouldn't do it in the midst of a camp, right?

02:33:56.000 If someone had a two-month camp.

02:33:59.000 Oh, man, that's such a nuanced question.

02:34:02.000 It's an off-season thing.

02:34:03.000 It's such a nuanced question.

02:34:04.000 But the problem is you don't necessarily get an off-season because if they call you with a fight, it's not looked nicely upon if you turn it down.

02:34:13.000 Right.

02:34:16.000 I think based on the research I've seen, I think you're hard-pressed to convince me that a ketogenic diet is worse than a non-ketogenic diet on endurance.

02:34:26.000 I think that's pretty clear and there may actually be some benefits depending on the individual.

02:34:33.000 As far as repeated sprints or things where you need that anaerobic system, I am not ready to say that a ketogenic diet is going to be as good.

02:34:42.000 I think that a non-ketogenic diet Now, this is where ketone supplements may be actually the best thing possible, because you could be using glucose, so you're getting that fuel source, and taking a ketone supplement where you're getting that fuel as well.

02:34:59.000 So not on a ketogenic diet, but taking ketone supplements.

02:35:04.000 I want to see more research.

02:35:09.000 Fats, carbohydrates, maybe amino acids, creatine.

02:35:13.000 I mean, just basically trying to leverage all the various substrates that your body can use, especially if we're talking about anaerobic power output.

02:35:25.000 You want to have a suite of different fuel sources, you know, and not rely, like the term metabolic flexibility, which is kind of used quite often.

02:35:34.000 But I think if you train and get your body fat and keto adapted, that provides benefits for recovery.

02:35:41.000 It provides benefits if you're getting, you know- Enhanced, you know, lower inflammation, lower chronic inflammation over time.

02:35:49.000 You know, chronic inflammation can contribute to insulin resistance, poor, like, neuroinflammation if you're getting concussions or even sub-concussive events over time can actually cause a lot of damage.

02:36:02.000 What is the mechanism that decreases inflammation with the ketogenic diet as opposed to a non- A number of mechanisms.

02:36:08.000 I mean, just simply lowering insulin spikes and glucose, but the NLRP3 inflammasome is something that we looked at.

02:36:17.000 There was a study where actually we used the ketone ester, and it was published in the Journal of Nature Medicine, showing that in response to LPS, which is kind of like a very powerful inflammatory stimulant, that it reduces that and suppresses inflammatory pathways for a particular pathway.

02:36:35.000 Compared to?

02:36:39.000 Compared to...

02:36:40.000 You mean...

02:36:41.000 Well, when you're studying, you're always comparing two things.

02:36:44.000 Yeah.

02:36:44.000 So what was the control group?

02:36:47.000 The control group for the inflammation?

02:36:49.000 Or it was just compared to no.

02:36:52.000 Oh, compared to nothing.

02:36:54.000 So it's just like a placebo.

02:36:55.000 Did you give a placebo?

02:36:55.000 Okay.

02:36:55.000 Yeah.

02:36:57.000 So in the context of being in a state of ketosis, it reduces...

02:37:03.000 An inflammatory pathway, think of it as a hub.

02:37:05.000 And when that's activated, you have a host of inflammatory cytokines that flow throughout your body and your brain and cause this persistent, low-grade neural inflammation and inflammation in the body that can impede recovery processes over time.

02:37:20.000 And I think that really contributes to brain health, too.

02:37:24.000 So I might be getting a little far ahead of myself because that is – it's animal work, but it's convincing animal work looking at a particular pathway that's pretty well defined.

02:37:33.000 And before you get to this, is there one – is there a variation between low-carb – Versus ketosis?

02:37:40.000 An elevation of ketone levels in your blood.

02:37:43.000 Right, but I mean in terms of, is there a benefit to the ketogenic, to being in a state of ketosis with this reduction of inflammation versus low carb?

02:37:53.000 I believe there is just by elevating the metabolite beta-hydroxybutyrate, but I do think even low carb has some anti-inflammatory effects.

02:38:04.000 But optimal would be ketosis.

02:38:07.000 Like I said, I don't think it's going to be optimal for everybody, but I know there's going to be benefits to maintaining low to moderate levels of ketones for neurological health and also for recovery and maybe performance.

02:38:22.000 Lane, you were wincing at the mention of inflammation.

02:38:26.000 More so that – so we mentioned recovery from exercise, inflammation.

02:38:30.000 And calorie deficit is a very powerful anti-inflammatory.

02:38:34.000 So, I mean, Lane addresses that.

02:38:36.000 Thank you for the context, my fellow scientist.

02:38:38.000 Non-zealot, appreciate that. 1.00

02:38:40.000 So one thing I want to – because people get – it's easy to get into black and white thinking.

02:38:44.000 We hear inflammation and we think, oh, that's bad.

02:38:47.000 That's bad.

02:38:48.000 So there's some studies that tell us quite a bit about inflammation.

02:38:51.000 Your body actually has an optimal level of inflammation.

02:38:54.000 Too little inflammation is actually bad as well.

02:38:58.000 So if you look...

02:38:59.000 Acute versus chronic.

02:39:00.000 I was talking about chronic.

02:39:00.000 Yes.

02:39:01.000 This is a thing a lot of scientists miss too is acute.

02:39:03.000 We can talk about mTOR and cancer and people acute versus chronic and how scientists even mess this stuff up.

02:39:09.000 But so if you look at studies of recovery from exercise and muscle growth, I'm focusing on this, but I'll bring it back around.

02:39:19.000 If you give ibuprofen to healthy people who have normal levels of inflammation, ibuprofen inhibits muscle growth.

02:39:28.000 If you give it to elderly people with high levels of inflammation, they grow more muscle. 0.98

02:39:35.000 So this means that the body, for recovery, has an optimal level of inflammation it likes to be in.

02:39:40.000 There is a kind of a curve here.

02:39:44.000 It's a COX-2 inhibitor and beta-hydroxybutyrate is also a COX-2 inhibitor.

02:39:47.000 Right.

02:39:48.000 And so the part of growing muscle and recovery is actually inflammation.

02:39:55.000 Macrophages and all these sorts of things are involved in that process.

02:39:58.000 Now, if it gets run away, if it's too much, It's not a good thing.

02:40:02.000 But if it's too little, it's also not a good thing.

02:40:04.000 Andy Galpin did a great job on your show of talking about recovery versus adaptation, right?

02:40:10.000 So one of the things he said, if you do ice baths, you do these sorts of things, you're in the short term allowing yourself to recover faster, but you're also limiting how much adaptation you're going to incur.

02:40:21.000 And I love that because people miss this.

02:40:24.000 They say...

02:40:25.000 If you're somebody in the off-season, if you're trying to get more lean body mass or trying to get better at something, it's probably good to let your body...

02:40:35.000 For lack of a better term, have some inflammation and not in the long term, but in response to that training session.

02:40:42.000 But then if you're in a camp, again, this is where it's context dependent.

02:40:45.000 Or like I'm a powerlifter getting ready for a meet and I'm supposed to be squatting four times a week.

02:40:50.000 I've done that before.

02:40:51.000 And I'm so sore that I can't squat my fourth session.

02:40:54.000 Then an ice bath or something.

02:40:56.000 I'm not worried about growing muscle in that time.

02:40:57.000 I'm worried about getting...

02:40:59.000 Recovered enough that I can go do my next training session because that is a lot more important for my competition coming up than having that little bit of extra muscle.

02:41:07.000 So in camp, probably a good idea.

02:41:09.000 Post-season, not a good idea.

02:41:11.000 Yeah, I mean, unless, again, it's all contextual dependent, right?

02:41:14.000 Like if you start getting so sore that you can only train like twice a week, then maybe a certain level.

02:41:20.000 But that points back to that there's an optimal range of inflammation that your body probably should be in that's optimal for health as well.

02:41:28.000 Now, I don't think like doing a ketogenic diet for somebody, it's going to take them out of that necessarily.

02:41:33.000 But I always want to give context because people hear these things and they always think it's a positive, like in terms of recovery.

02:41:39.000 Yeah.

02:41:40.000 I believe that it can enhance the adaptive process associated with recovery.

02:41:44.000 And I also believe that being in a ketogenic state will enhance your readiness, your resilience, and your recovery.

02:41:53.000 So from a military perspective, too, I believe that.

02:41:57.000 And that needs to be validated and studied, but it's something that we study.

02:42:01.000 I'm sorry to interrupt you, but when you advise this to the military, do you put them on a specific meal plan too, or do they have consultants that know how to do that?

02:42:10.000 It's more like in grants where this is being studied at a very fundamental, very controlled level from cells to animal models to human clinical trials going on and where the data is being collected now.

02:42:22.000 And some of it is taken empirically and anecdotally from the field or just from various exclusive channels, I guess I would say.

02:42:30.000 So that, I am coming at it as a bias, and I'm kind of speaking ahead of the science.

02:42:35.000 But I do think that science already exists, showing that you have a greater adaptive effect just by virtue of lowering inflammation over time in athletes.

02:42:47.000 Especially, this probably pertains more to endurance athletes.

02:42:50.000 So it really needs to be studied in MMA fighters and things like that.

02:42:55.000 So there was a recent study, and I can't remember the researcher's name.

02:42:59.000 I'll send it to you.

02:42:59.000 I had a lot of criticisms of it, but they did show that ketogenic versus non-ketogenic diet in people who were lifting weights, trying to get bigger, that there was actually slightly less muscle mass using the ketogenic diet.

02:43:13.000 Would you think that would be because of the less protein?

02:43:16.000 No, they equated protein.

02:43:17.000 I'm pretty sure.

02:43:18.000 I want to say they equated protein.

02:43:20.000 Now, I don't know for sure, so I don't want to say authoritatively, but I believe that.

02:43:25.000 But to stay in ketosis, you're going to have...

02:43:26.000 And calories.

02:43:27.000 Did they adjust for calories?

02:43:29.000 I believe they did.

02:43:30.000 So, again, I could be wrong, and so I'll go back and look, and I'll send it to you if you want it.

02:43:36.000 But it is possible, like, again, for every give-me, there's a gotcha in certain things, right?

02:43:40.000 So, like, these things that activate different pathways, well...

02:43:45.000 Part of what ketones may signal is a deficit, because usually you don't have them in a surplus, right?

02:43:50.000 So, you know, we don't know if you can, like, for example, like autophagy, right?

02:43:57.000 Like, if we're talking about performance in muscle, everybody hears autophagy, and that's a very, by the way, that's such a weird way to pronounce that, because it's auto and phagocytosis, so it shouldn't be autophagy, but anyway.

02:44:08.000 It's a very rapidly emerging science.

02:44:11.000 And Naomi Wittell wrote a book about this.

02:44:13.000 And it's just like a New York Times.

02:44:15.000 And that really covers the science.

02:44:17.000 So that's two or three years.

02:44:19.000 Yeah, lysosomal remodeling and degradation of proteins.

02:44:22.000 Very hot topic right now.

02:44:23.000 What gets me is people who are big on intermittent fasting.

02:44:27.000 They'll say, well, it increases autophagy.

02:44:29.000 But they're also saying you can grow all this muscle and it's going to be best for building muscle.

02:44:34.000 But that's not true because autophagy is part of protein degradation.

02:44:38.000 So if you're increasing that system, by definition, that's less muscle.

02:44:43.000 So there's always a give me and a gotcha.

02:44:45.000 For one benefit, there might be a drawback.

02:44:47.000 Now, depending on your individual situation, maybe it makes more sense, right?

02:44:51.000 Like having the most muscle mass possible...

02:44:54.000 Yeah.

02:45:08.000 There's never going to be one diet that just fixes all of our problems.

02:45:12.000 It depends on the individual and what they're trying to get out of it.

02:45:15.000 Just like if I went to – and again, I'm not – have much – I watched MMA for years, loved your commentary.

02:45:23.000 That's where I learned a lot of stuff about MMA. But if I went to a Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor and I said, what's the best technique?

02:45:30.000 He's going to look at me like I'm an idiot, right? 0.96

02:45:32.000 Because he's not just going to say, yeah, armbar every time. 0.99

02:45:36.000 That's the best technique for jiu-jitsu.

02:45:38.000 And that's when people say, what's the best diet?

02:45:40.000 It's the same thing, right?

02:45:41.000 It's completely contextual dependent, right?

02:45:44.000 Depends on you, and in the case of MA, depends on your opponent as well.

02:45:48.000 What your goals are, and your strategies, and your tactics.

02:45:51.000 I think what we were trying to really emphasize is that Individuality dependent, but also what I really want to emphasize today's show is calories matter.

02:45:59.000 You know, calories matter.

02:46:01.000 Even if you're eating low carb, you can't just eat as much as you want.

02:46:07.000 And low carb is a very viable option to induce and sustain a calorie deficit that can contribute to body composition.

02:46:17.000 But even like you brought up Floyd Mayweather earlier, which I thought was great because you said he drinks a Coke after training. 0.97

02:46:23.000 Well, it's hard to argue with his results, but then again, sometimes elite athletes can get away with a lot of really dumb shit because they're so genetically superior that they were going to do well no matter what. 0.98

02:46:34.000 Didn't Michael Jordan eat a Big Mac before every game? 0.99

02:46:37.000 No, not true.

02:46:38.000 Steak and baked potato.

02:46:39.000 Steak and baked potato?

02:46:41.000 Where's the Big Mac myth come from?

02:46:43.000 She was sponsored by McDonald's. 1.00

02:46:45.000 Motherfuckers. 1.00

02:46:46.000 Steak and baked potato sounds like a good meal. 1.00

02:46:48.000 My wife can eat two or three Big Macs in a sitting and wash it down with a full sugar Coke and still gain nothing. 1.00

02:46:54.000 I cringe, but some people can do that.

02:46:58.000 Some people can do that.

02:46:58.000 This is on Floyd's personal show.

02:47:00.000 But this – so it's – did he become this great because he ate this way or can he eat this way because he's this great athlete?

02:47:07.000 It's probably the latter, right?

02:47:10.000 So we wouldn't recommend like somebody – like if somebody is sitting at home and they want to become the greatest boxer ever, don't go – probably drinking Coke isn't the first step, right?

02:47:19.000 But this is what we do with nutrition because we pick out people that we follow and we go, oh, I'm just going to do that.

02:47:26.000 And it's so – It's on the sidelines of marathons.

02:47:30.000 They'll hand off Cokes to people.

02:47:32.000 Is that because Coke sponsors it or because people just want it for fuel?

02:47:36.000 People just want it for fuel.

02:47:37.000 Is it not a bad idea when you're doing something that's as grueling as a marathon?

02:47:41.000 See, I don't want to say it's a bad idea.

02:47:43.000 I'm not against it either.

02:47:45.000 If you're a carb-burner, it makes sense.

02:47:47.000 It's so dense, right?

02:47:48.000 Yeah, but you want calorie dense stuff.

02:47:50.000 Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

02:47:51.000 It wouldn't be a bad thing.

02:47:52.000 Again, context is so important because we say, well, don't ever drink a Coke.

02:47:57.000 Well, if you were starving to death, I promise you, you'd drink a Coke.

02:48:00.000 And if you need quick energy, it's probably not the worst thing that Floyd Mayweather could possibly do post-training.

02:48:07.000 Sufficient, but not optimal.

02:48:08.000 A lot of people eat those honey waffles, you know, like when they're doing hikes and stuff.

02:48:13.000 But again, at the end of the day, if his carbohydrate intake, and I don't know what it is, but if he's eating 500-600 grams of carbohydrate a day, is it really hurting him to have 40 grams of sugar from a Coke?

02:48:24.000 If he's maintaining his body weight, performing optimally?

02:48:27.000 Probably not.

02:48:28.000 Especially when you think about the kind of grueling workouts that guy puts his body through.

02:48:31.000 Maybe that's the only way he can, maybe, I don't know, again, I am theorizing, maybe that's the only way he can get enough food in.

02:48:39.000 Hmm.

02:48:40.000 Yeah.

02:49:01.000 How many times have you seen two guys in the octagon and just looked at their bodies and gone, this one guy is going to smash this other guy?

02:49:08.000 Like just in the primal part of your brain because he was built like a tank.

02:49:12.000 And then the other guy who looks like nothing just goes out and completely obliterates him.

02:49:15.000 Happens all the time.

02:49:16.000 All the time.

02:49:17.000 All the time.

02:49:18.000 Right?

02:49:18.000 So it's completely context dependent.

02:49:22.000 The biggest thing is to make sure that you don't run out of fuel during these things.

02:49:26.000 Right?

02:49:26.000 Or whatever your sport is.

02:49:30.000 I mean, again, I'm known as a carb guy, and I had this powerlifter one time telling me, he's like, don't you think you should carb load the night before powerlifting me?

02:49:37.000 And I was like, dude, you're doing nine reps.

02:49:40.000 So you get three attempts on each lift, squat, bench press, and deadlift.

02:49:44.000 You're not depleting glycogen.

02:49:45.000 You're not carb-limited.

02:49:47.000 That's what really amazed me.

02:49:49.000 You can fast for a week, which I did, and it's not a significant inhibitor of your...

02:49:59.000 Of your performance.

02:50:00.000 Where it's like running would be.

02:50:02.000 Running hills or something like that.

02:50:03.000 Or doing, you know, prolonged, you know, resistance training, two or three hours.

02:50:08.000 But even then, it's probably not optimal to go in fasted to go through a strength and athletic event.

02:50:13.000 But, you know, you have to pick the context, the individual.

02:50:18.000 And honestly, people probably aren't going to want to hear this from a scientist, but we don't know enough about this stuff yet to really say for each individual person what's best for them.

02:50:26.000 And that's why we kind of got to go by...

02:50:28.000 We know you don't have to go drinking Gatorade throughout your one-hour workouts in the gym, typically.

02:50:34.000 I'm drinking ketones, but it's not going to offer you any advantage.

02:50:40.000 And I did that for many years, actually, and I think guys still do it now.

02:50:44.000 Of course.

02:50:45.000 I mean, we see it all the time.

02:50:46.000 You've got to make your shake in the gym and drink it intra-workout.

02:50:49.000 One of the things that drove me nuts was I kind of got a little bit back and forth with Tim Noakes on Twitter.

02:50:55.000 And he kind of made it out to seem that people were dismissing some of his research because people in academia or that peer review is broken.

02:51:05.000 Tim Noakes?

02:51:06.000 Oh, sorry.

02:51:07.000 He's a big low-carb proponent.

02:51:08.000 He's a professor in South Africa, I want to say.

02:51:10.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:51:11.000 Very knowledgeable.

02:51:13.000 Opinionated, but very knowledgeable.

02:51:14.000 He said to me, he's like, well, that's because you've never challenged convention.

02:51:19.000 And Dom knows I have challenged every convention in the fitness industry that there ever was.

02:51:24.000 But it's just, you know, when people ask me...

02:51:28.000 He's vocal about it and assertive, but you're also open-minded.

02:51:31.000 Yeah, I'm very open-minded.

02:51:33.000 I just don't, like, if you can't show me...

02:51:36.000 Hard evidence, you know, like there was a great quote from Thomas Sowell that I saw the other day. 0.93

02:51:43.000 He said, you could ask these in science and go a long way in terms of sorting out bullshit. 0.76

02:51:48.000 Compared to what? 0.98

02:51:51.000 Where's your hard evidence?

02:51:53.000 You know, and what is the cost?

02:51:55.000 Right?

02:51:56.000 So it's, well, low carb is better compared to what?

02:52:01.000 And what's the cost on performance or any of these other things?

02:52:05.000 And then where's your hard evidence, right?

02:52:07.000 So this is why, like I said, science, over time, yes, you can have industry influences, you can have muddled data, and some scientists fake data.

02:52:18.000 We've both come across this, scientists who have fake data.

02:52:21.000 How frustrating is that?

02:52:22.000 Oh, it makes me so incensed.

02:52:24.000 In fact, I won't say anybody by name, but I used to be in business with somebody who I found out that I had no hard evidence, but I had a lot of circumstantial evidence that they were faking data.

02:52:37.000 Trevor Burrus This even happens in cancer research.

02:52:39.000 It's a huge problem, even in cancer research.

02:52:41.000 And I took this person out to dinner and I told them, I was like, we're done.

02:52:46.000 Like this thing we're doing is done.

02:52:48.000 And thank goodness I did because it came out later.

02:52:51.000 People started replicating, trying to replicate this data and nobody could replicate this data.

02:52:55.000 And and the still had a pretty big following even now.

02:52:59.000 But, you know, it's it's one of those things that it makes me so mad because then people get so frustrated because they feel like if they feel like scientists are just an industry's pocket, why are they going to believe anything any of us say, you know, it's so frustrating.

02:53:13.000 And that's why motivation.

02:53:15.000 Money, power, ego.

02:53:17.000 If a company is funding you for a particular supplement and you come out consistently with negative data, what's the incentive for them to keep funding you?

02:53:26.000 But if you're always showing positive results on supplement studies, Some companies will want to fund you, of course.

02:53:32.000 Of course.

02:53:33.000 But, you know, it's so dangerous.

02:53:36.000 But I also want people to keep in mind that...

02:53:38.000 It's got to be done in a very controlled, blinded fashion.

02:53:41.000 That's the only way around it.

02:53:42.000 I keep reminding people, like people who say things like, we found the cure for cancer and the government is suppressing it and all the scientists are just in the... 0.99

02:53:52.000 What you're saying is you're saying that every scientist on the planet who does cancer research is an immoral, unethical piece of shit. 0.99

02:54:00.000 That's what you're saying. 0.99

02:54:02.000 Because you're telling me they don't have friends and family who are dealing with cancer and they're suppressing this research?

02:54:08.000 Come on now.

02:54:09.000 And that's the other big – I'm a small government guy and I'm, like I said, a libertarian.

02:54:15.000 But one of the things that makes me cringe about libertarians sometimes is these big elaborate conspiracy theories that come up around science and whatnot.

02:54:22.000 Like you realize like a senator can't even text a dick pic to his side chick – Without like it winding up all over Twitter.

02:54:29.000 You think they constructed these big elaborate theories? 0.72

02:54:31.000 They can't even tie their shoes in the morning without spending $10,000, you know?

02:54:35.000 So the idea that like all this research is being suppressed by the government, I'm not saying it's never happened, but I think it's pretty darn rare.

02:54:45.000 Well, gentlemen, we just did three plus hours.

02:54:48.000 Thank you.

02:54:48.000 How crazy is that?

02:54:49.000 Really, it felt like six.

02:54:50.000 I'm just kidding.

02:54:51.000 It flew by.

02:54:52.000 It flew by.

02:54:53.000 Appreciate you giving us...

02:54:54.000 Yes, thank you very much.

02:54:56.000 Thank you.

02:54:56.000 Thanks for illuminating this stuff, which is still...

02:54:59.000 It's so complex.

02:55:00.000 It's part of the problem.

02:55:02.000 And I think we could do a hundred of these shows and we'd never cover all the topics or all the issues or all the details.

02:55:08.000 And I think it's so incredibly difficult for people to find the right diet and program that works for them.

02:55:13.000 I'd like to add one thing, that the science is rapidly emerging, and the Metabolic Health Summit, which is happening in the end of January, beginning of February, next year, 2019, will be bringing in the leading scientists that are talking about all the different topics right now,

02:55:31.000 including weight loss, and that's going to be in LA. It's actually, there's a flyer in your book there, if you look inside there, giving you a flyer.

02:55:39.000 All right.

02:55:40.000 LA January 31st to February 3rd in Long Beach.

02:55:45.000 Metabolichealthsummit.com.

02:55:47.000 It's going to be a very comprehensive group of basic scientists, clinical scientists, entrepreneurs, and people, everyday people that are just interested in this space.

02:56:00.000 Are you going to this?

02:56:00.000 And I will be at it.

02:56:01.000 I'm helping to sort of organize and promote it, but also moderating some of the things.

02:56:06.000 We're going to hit on basically every topic that was discussed in my last podcast and this podcast, The Leading Scientist.

02:56:11.000 I'm going to show up and heckle.

02:56:13.000 So we definitely want Lane there too, and I think it would be great to have a panel discussion that addresses this with a couple more experts and personalities in that.

02:56:22.000 It's amazing how much information you have to absorb. 0.89

02:56:27.000 I've done so many diet podcasts, and I'm still a moron.

02:56:31.000 Well, that's why I always say to people, It's hard because if you're not going to do a degree yourself or do research yourself, it's so hard to know. 0.77

02:56:40.000 You kind of have to pick people that you trust, right?

02:56:43.000 And it's so hard to know who to trust because there was something that Greg Knuckles, a really smart guy, said that I think kind of ties things together nicely.

02:56:51.000 He said, people are really good at knowing when somebody has more knowledge than them about a subject.

02:56:56.000 Like you talk to somebody for a little bit and you really can get an impression pretty quickly if they know more or less than you or about the same.

02:57:02.000 What they're really bad at doing is figuring out amongst two people who know more than them, who is the more knowledgeable of the two.

02:57:09.000 They are very bad at picking that out.

02:57:11.000 So you kind of got to pick people who you trust.

02:57:14.000 Now, if you're looking for people to trust, notice the three magic words that me and him both sit on here today at one point.

02:57:21.000 I don't know.

02:57:24.000 Usually, experts, they don't make broad claims.

02:57:27.000 They don't use superlatives.

02:57:29.000 They don't say things like best, worst, never, always.

02:57:33.000 They're usually putting context to everything, and they're providing you with information that helps illuminate you that everything is nuanced.

02:57:42.000 And that's why, like, I'm sure, again, I'll relate it to MMA. If you talk to anybody who's an expert in any different discipline, and you ask them a broad question, you're going to get a really broad answer.

02:57:53.000 And if you ask them a specific question, give them a lot of context, then they'll give you a specific answer.

02:57:57.000 Would you agree with that?

02:57:58.000 Yes, definitely.

02:58:00.000 If someone's really strong on one side, dig kind of deep and look for conflicts of interest, too.

02:58:06.000 So I think that's kind of an important thing.

02:58:08.000 I try to be transparent as much as possible on sort of things we're involved in.

02:58:12.000 So I think that's super important.

02:58:14.000 Yeah, and I'm not without bias, too.

02:58:16.000 I mean, I sell stuff.

02:58:16.000 I've got a book out.

02:58:18.000 I've got another book coming out.

02:58:19.000 I have a website.

02:58:21.000 Yeah, but you're not actually...

02:58:23.000 Well, you're not advocating any particular approach.

02:58:26.000 You're kind of approaching it from...

02:58:28.000 Right, what I'm selling isn't really sexy.

02:58:29.000 The complete contest prep guide.

02:58:31.000 And this is available on Amazon, all those places.

02:58:35.000 Biolane.com.

02:58:36.000 Biolane.com.

02:58:37.000 And your Twitter, Biolane.

02:58:39.000 Instagram, Biolane.

02:58:41.000 And Dom?

02:58:42.000 Yeah, ketonutrition.org.

02:58:45.000 And Ketone Technologies is our company.

02:58:48.000 It's an information website.

02:58:49.000 I don't have any products per se, at least not yet.

02:58:51.000 But I put products on there that I personally use and kind of vetted out that I think could be helpful.

02:58:57.000 And just a lot of information.

02:58:58.000 Like your prior podcast with me is on there.

02:59:00.000 Awesome.

02:59:02.000 And Tim Ferriss and Rhonda Patrick too.

02:59:04.000 So I have them right on the front page.

02:59:07.000 Your Twitter and Instagram?

02:59:10.000 Yeah, Dominic.Dagostino.kt, I think, is Instagram.

02:59:14.000 Not a huge Instagram guy, but D-A-G-O-S-T-I 2 is my Twitter handle.

02:59:23.000 And Dominic D'Agostino for Facebook, too.

02:59:25.000 So there are three things.

02:59:26.000 Thank you, gentlemen.

02:59:26.000 I think we got a lot accomplished today.

02:59:28.000 Thank you so much.

02:59:29.000 Really appreciate it.

02:59:29.000 We appreciate it.

02:59:30.000 Thanks, Joe.

The Joe Rogan Experience - September 28, 2018

Joe Rogan Experience #1176 - Dom D'Agostino & Layne Norton

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