A Healthy Discourse on Nutrition with Mark Tourcotte

Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com and today we get special guest Mark Touricoat on the line and we dive into a little bit of all things nutrition and training related. So he and I've been in contact on Instagram for years now. He follows kind of more of a cyclical ketogenic diet and he's kind of always gone back and forth with me on different philosophies and protocols toward nutrition. Always respectful, always good,

healthy discourse. We don't agree on everything, but that's why I wanted to bring him out of the conversation and podcast with him because I want that healthy discourse to be made available because I think it's where people learn. So we covered a lot all about nutrition, different dietary protocols, different philosophies, different scientific studies. We talked about training a little bit and his protocol towards that.

Third, enjoy the conversation. I've got no doubt that you will take something from it so that further delay. Sit back, relax, enjoy the podcast with Mark. And we are live, Mark, how are you, ma'am? I'm doing great, Robert, Glad to finally connect with you. Yeah, Yeah, for sure, man. We've been going back and forth on IG for probably years now at this point. And you've always got some good insightful stuff to throw it in the conversation, which I appreciate that.

I guess we've had a little bit of dialogue on, on e-mail, but most of it's been through Instagram, some kind of scrolling back through our, our direct messages here. And it's all coming to me now, man.

So you've got a ton of it. You've been in the keto low carb, you do more of a cyclical ketogenic approach, but you've been in the low carb space since before it was popular, which is I've always got respect for people that have been in the space before it was a big thing because I don't know, like I like the people that are on the cutting edge. Yeah. You know, keto, it's, it's gone through a lot of changes over the years. You know, it used to be, you know, pretty, pretty

underground. Not very cool. And then and then, you know, Atkins kind of came on the scene, kind of popularized it a little bit. And I think it's lost a lot of popularity recently. I I think, you know, it's still kind of starting to get a bad rap. There's, there's some, there's some bad studies out there right now that are, that are saying keto is, is, you know, harmful to, you know, cardiovascular disease and, and different things like that.

And, and most of those studies are, are, they're, you know, they're worthless. They're, they're just epidemiology and just observational studies. And they weren't done, they weren't done very long. There's no control group involved. So I, I don't hold a whole lot of stock in those trials. But but yeah, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of been a wave, you know, it's, it's been, it's been kind of hit or miss for, for a lot of years. I got started on keto. Gosh. Do you remember the book Body

Opus? Yeah, yeah. So that what I believe was in the mid nineties, 9596 that let's see, I graduated. So I'm 56 years old now. I graduated when I was in 86. So that would have been, you know, 10 years after I graduated. And I was, I was pretty, pretty involved with, with bodybuilding. I don't think that I started competing yet, but just was always just a huge passion for me. You know, I just, I just wanted

to get big. And then I finally decided, you know, hey, let's, let's do a, let's do a show. And, and I tried various diets and I, I just, I couldn't stick to a diet, you know, I, I just mentally, it was very hard physically it was very hard. I didn't really know a whole lot about dieting back then. I thought it was just, you know, eat less calories, train more, you know, and hopefully get

lean. But, but I, I started to kind of educate myself a little bit on dieting and started to really develop a passion for it. And I I kind of stumbled upon what you remember the magazine Muscle Media 2000. Yeah, the magazines where I, I kind of got into it, man, because this was like, see, I, I was born in 91, so I'm a little younger than you, but when I got into lifting, man, there was no Instagrams or any of that stuff back then.

So like the magazines and the old school underground books is what was that? Yeah, yeah. So Dan, so, so Bill Phillips. Yeah. So, so there was a lot of good, good stuff in Muscle Media 2000 and it was, it was pretty much an underground type of magazine and it came out like quarterly. But they had some really interesting writers. One particular man was Dan Duchesne, who I don't really know that he had any formal

schooling. I know he wasn't a PhD, nothing like that, but he just had a passion and a love for, for, you know, training in, in all things pharmaceutical and all things nutrition. And he, he wrote the book body Opus and he was kind of, he was kind of a Guinea pig, did a lot of self experimentation. I, I, I think he actually ended up passing away from, from kidney disease.

I think it was hereditary. And I, I know he was doing a lot of anabolics at the time too, but but yeah, so I kind of, I kind of stumbled upon him and really like to read his articles. And, and then I found this book, Body Opus, you know, the underground dieting book. And, and I think I had three, if I can remember correctly, it's

been so long. I believe it had three diet approaches in it and one they called the Militant Diet Handbook, which was, which was I think what the Body Opus was, which was a cyclical keto approach. It was, it was ketosis Monday through Friday. I want to say, you know, 70 to 30% ratios of, you know, fat to protein. And then it had a weekend carb structure, which was, I mean, it was stupid brutal. They had you eating carbs like every two hours, I think it was.

And it was based on a calculation according to your, you know, your lean body weight and whatnot. And so I, I started following the diet and, and I loved it. It was an amazing diet. Got super carried away on, on the carb UPS on the weekends. I remember just just, you know, waking up Monday morning after carving up for two whole days, just, I mean, just feeling horrible, just ridiculously swollen to the point where, you know, I, it was sub Q water

everywhere, everywhere. It looked horrible, felt horrible. So you did a few weekends of that just because it was fun, You know, I mean, it was great to eat carbs and, and a lot of it was, it was junk carbs. They weren't good carbs. I was eating lots of pizza and Donuts and, and, but I, I was, I would get ridiculously, you know, hydrated from it. the Super compensation effect was,

was unbelievable. And then after being on it for several weeks, you kind of learned how to kind of titrate your carbohydrates back down to a comfortable level, you know, where you weren't consuming, you know, 1500 to 1800 grams of carbohydrates over those over those two days. You know, I found somewhere in the realm of anywhere from 5 to 1000 actually felt really good. And and then it was back into ketosis, you know, shortly after.

I mean, I think your last carb meal was I believe at like 6:00 Sunday evening and then it was no more carbs until until either Saturday morning or, or Friday night. I usually start at my carb load on Friday night. But I did this for, for many, many years. Did, did. I didn't do a lot of competing, but I did, I did a fair amount of shows. I, I won some state level shows. I went national for a while and, and it worked well. I responded very well from it.

I think over the years I, I really experimented with, with the carving up aspect of it, you know, I, I was still reading a ton of, you know, information and then I, I kind of had the belief that maybe the carbs weren't as important as I thought they were. So I experimented with, with different approaches, you know, going low carb, going no carb, you know, it's just staying strict keto for a long time.

But, but I always fell back into the, into the cyclical phase because I just never, it never felt good. I felt OK, you know, mentally I felt sharp, you know, but, but physically I just, I just didn't have that same, that same pump that you would get from training, you know, a couple sets, you know, after, you know, after eating a lot of carbs and, and the pumps were just unbelievable.

Whereas if I didn't have the carbohydrates, I just felt like it, it, I just didn't have it. My strength was good. I had no complaints there. I had good strength. I, I, I look good, you know, I was, I stayed pretty lean, but I just didn't have the same, you know, feeling in the gym where you just have that muscle mind connection in that and that pump. It just didn't seem like I was able to, to maintain it. So I've always gone back to

carbohydrates. I I feel that they're, they're an essential tool, maybe not essentials, right word. They're they're, they're a tool that's there if if you choose to use it, I don't think everybody needs it. I think you can, I think you can grow without them.

I mean, you're good, you know, proof of that you, you put on a ton of size and I know you don't do any, any carbohydrates, but, but for me, it just it, it's, it's harder to, to train, you know, 110% when I don't have fully loaded glycogen in my muscles. I can train decently, but I, I, but I feel like, like it's just a little bit, not quite as intense as it would be if I had carbohydrates. I feel like I move a lot better and harder with carbohydrates.

Again, I don't, I don't necessarily think that. I mean, they're certainly not necessary, right? I mean, they're not necessary. We know that. And, and I think protein too, I think, I think, you know, figuring out the right protein amount as well plays a huge role too. Because if you're not doing carbohydrates at all, and, and you may disagree with me here, but I think then maybe you need more protein because then you do need some amount of gluconeogenesis to facilitate

more glycogen in your muscles. Otherwise you're going to be a little, a little flat a lot of the time. And I, and I'm not a big believer in, in, you know, too high protein kicking you out of ketosis. I think that's kind of a fallacy. I think that it's, it's a, it's a, a demand driven process. It's not supply driven. So if your, if your body needs more glucose, which we, you know, we make glucose all the time, right? It's going to make it

regardless. If you're taking in, you know, 300 grams of protein a day or 150 grams a day, I don't think it matters. Gluconic extensions is just going to be an inevitability of being on a ketogenic diet. But I think that if you have more protein, you can potentially put more glycogen in the muscles if you're not doing carbs. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with that. I've found that for me personally, and I've kind of seen this in clients as well

over the years. But like if, if I go extremely high with their protein, they do notice, you know, increased inflammation and there just seems to be like a, you know, a point of diminishing return with that protein. And I, I mean, I, I'm pretty aggressive with that. So I, I try to push it as far as I can, but I just noticed more inflammation. And then at some point, you know, if they're having a lot of gluconogens is taking place, it's likely having some negative impact on overall fat

metabolism. But I'm not worried about consuming protein for the risk of getting kicked out of ketosis because I'm in the surplus and I'm eating a lot of protein. My ketone numbers are always lower, but it's not like my body is not fat adapted at that point. Sure. Yeah. You know what? What do you consider a lot of protein? Like for me, a lot of protein, I'm 5, seven and a half and 190 right now.

So for me, a lot of protein, like I start to notice an adverse effect when I'm consistently consuming more than 250g. And that's, I mean, that's a pretty good hefty dose of protein for some of my stents. Yeah. And when you when you say more inflammation, how, how are you defining inflammation? Mostly just like post lifting in my joints, like I have much, much less recovery from workout to workout and I'm doing like a full body split. So I'm training everything every

single day. When I'm doing excessive protein, I'll notice like I don't recover near as well in my knees, particularly after like a leg, you know, leg movements, for instance, I can't train those as effectively the following day. Whereas if I kind of titrate that protein back down to more reasonable level, I don't seem to have any of that inflammation or pain at all. But at the same time, you know, you don't want to take it too

far. There's definitely this and you've been around long enough to see this, but in the beginning people were super fearful of protein and they they just didn't consume enough. And now the the tide has shifted the other way where people are just consuming copious amounts of protein. But I think the the sweet spot somewhere there in the middle. Yeah, I, I would, I would agree

with you. I don't think that, you know, even even if you're staying, you know, in, in full blown ketosis and you're not doing any carb OPS, I don't think that maintaining a high protein load every day is good. I, I think cycling through it, I'm a big fan of cycling. So you know, even like when, when I was training for competitions, I had, I had a formula where basically it was Monday and Tuesday were like protein sparing modified fast

days. And, and I was consuming upwards of usually A1 to 1.5g, sometimes 2G at the high point of per lean muscle mass. And, and, and basically that's it. Just just a protein sparing modified fast for two days. The couple reasons behind that, most importantly was I was just coming off a 2 day heavy carbo. So I, I wanted to, I wanted to deplete, you know, glycogen in my liver to get into ketosis faster.

But I also didn't want it, you know, I didn't want to include a lot of excess fatty acids as well because I didn't want to have a competing, you know, energy source. So my, my goal was to deplete, you know, liver glycogen as quickly as possible, keeping keeping the high, the high protein. I felt good on it for two days and then after that I, I would switch. So then I would drop my protein down to typically, you know, I would, I would take in about 40% protein and about 60% fat and

then trace carbohydrates. So whatever came in from, you know, if I was eating eggs or cheese or stuff like that, whatever trace amounts of carbs came in, I didn't even count them. So about a 7040 split. And then, you know, come Friday or come, come Saturday, you know, morning. I would then lower my fat intake considerably and then raise my, my carbohydrates to about 60% just to start carb loading. And I allowed myself to, to take in quite a bit of calories on those days.

So if I was at, you know, maybe a 10 to 15% deficit throughout the week, you know, I would, I would eat upwards of two to three times my normal caloric intake on those days, at least on day one for a couple of reasons. This is another reason I think that carbohydrates are so important. I think that, you know, they're, they're, they're great for, you know, for managing your metabolism. I think, I think, you know, it's hard to, to keep your thyroid happy without some insulin

production. Obviously we get some with protein, but, but I don't think enough to really, you know, convert a lot of inactive T4 into T3. And that's what I found was, was what happened with me is the longer I would stay, you know, in a ketogenic state, I would find my body temperature, my core temperature would actually drop about A at least a degree, if not, if not more than that.

And and that's essentially, you know, that's your thyroid T4 no longer producing active T3. So everything just kind of slows down. So I found that with that carb up on the weekends, I was really able to ramp up my metabolism again. And as soon as I started eating carbs, one of the first things I noticed was I just started, you know, sweating just profusely. I would just sweat like a mad. And I, I mean, I ate a lot of carbs. That's carbon up. Wasn't like I had like a bagel.

I mean, I was, I was pounded carbs and you know, carbs and water, you know, like it's in your muscles. My, my, my temper, body core temperature would go up and I just felt like I just wanted to just smash weights. That was the other thing carbs did for me. They I just wanted to train hard and heavy. When I would go long bouts without the carbs, my training intensity, at least for me, always just seemed to decline. I could never seem to maintain that training intensity on the

lower carbohydrates. So I think everything's a tool in your tool belt, right? I don't think I used to be very dogmatic, you know, when it came to, you know, ketogenic diets, I thought they were the be all end all of, of all diets. And, and I still think, I think, I think they're wonderful, but I think they're, I think they're a tool in the tool belt.

You know, for a long time I was in that echo chamber where I didn't want to talk to people that that had a different opinion than than what I had on ketogenic diet just because I I thought I'd figured it out. This is it. Insulin makes you fat, you know, avoid carbohydrates, eat plenty of fat, good amount of protein, you're good to go. And I think for the most part, there's, there's a lot of truth there. I just think I've learned to, my opinion on insulin has changed a lot.

You know, I, I've, I've read a lot, a lot of books on, on, you know, insulin and I was a big Gary Tobs fan for a long time. And you know, the insulin model obesity and, and, and it has, it has a lot of, there's a lot of validity there. But, but I think I, I look at insulin now as, as a dial, it's, it's never on or off. It's, it's always on. It's just how high are you turning that dial up and how long is that dial staying elevated?

I think is, is the problem with, with a lot of people and why we have so much, you know, insulin resistance. I think the fact that people just had that dial turned up all the time and it never comes down, right. I mean, insulin's supposed to do, you know, it's supposed to do what it does. It's supposed to go up with a, with a carbohydrate response and then it should come back down fairly quickly as, as should your blood sugar. I mean, all those, those are all normal responses, normal

physiologic responses. They're not, they're not necessarily bad. They're bad when they're elevated all the time. Yeah, but they're also bad when they're down all the time. There's a lot of benefits to insulin. And if you're constantly in a, in a chronically low state of insulin all the time, without the blood sugar spikes, you know, you can have adverse, you know, consequences with, like I said, thyroid, you know, cortisol production, different things like that can really

influence your health. And I so the a lot of, a lot of why I've changed my mind. I don't know if I've been real vocal on this, you know, in any of my posts. I mean, I posted about it, but but I usually don't post about it a lot, but about, you know, I'm into biking, right? So I was out at a place called Ray's. It's in Cleveland, OH. And it's, it's an indoor bike park. It's like 280,000 square feet. It's, it's enormous. And, and if you ever get into

biking, definitely go there. It's, it's incredible, especially now that you have kids. Take your kids there when they're a little older. Oh, and congratulations, you got another one on. The way. Appreciate it man. Yeah, absolutely. Kids are awesome. But when your kid, when your kids get a little older, take them there because they have something for everybody there.

It's it's just a blast. But so we planned this vacation we were going to be there for, for four days just riding at Ray's. And this was almost three years ago now. Went to raise and didn't, didn't stop at our hotel first went straight to raise. And it's my first time at raise 2, by the way. And we're there riding my, my son. He's, let's see, he's 14 now. So he was about about 1111 or 12. And we're riding for about four

hours pretty hardcore. You know, we're in full face helmets because there's, there's jumps everywhere. It's just, it's, it's a pretty dangerous place to you. But you, you kind of, you use your own skill level and you ride at your ability. We're there for four hours just just crushing it, just having a ball. And we're getting ready to leave and we load up the bikes in the truck and I wasn't feeling that great. And my wife says, do you want me to drive? I'm like no, no, no, no, I'm fine.

And so get in the car, in the truck, we start driving and I'm still in the parking lot and I, I get to the edge, you know, of the parking lot, getting ready to turn on the street and we're putting in the, the coordinates to try to find our hotel. And I said, I, I really don't feel good. And, and now, I mean, now he's feeling really bad. And I couldn't really put my finger on anything. You know, as far as you know what, it was just a general malaise. I just, I just felt horrible.

And she's like, do you want me to drive? I'm like, yeah, go ahead and drive. And so we switch. She gets in the driver's seat, I get in the passenger's seat. We just turn onto the road and I'm like, oh man, you got to call the ambulance. I had this horrific jaw pain and I was sweating profusely. And she tries getting reception on her phone and and she can't. And she pulls into AI. Think it was a QVC or something.

Not QVC, but CVC and runs in, makes a phone call, calls the ambulance and an ambulance get, gets there and they throw me in the rig. They do an EKG and, and lo and behold, I'm having an acute MI And so I'm, holy shit. So I, one of the things I've done over the years is I'm a cardiac tech. So I, I do stress testing on people. I know all about all that stuff. I've been doing that for, for many years.

It's right at my wheelhouse. So I, I kind of knew what was happening before they told me and they get they, they drive me to the Cleveland Clinic. Luckily I'm in Cleveland. So I end up in the Cleveland Clinic. I end up in the Cath lab and they, they sucked out a, a blockage, a plaque and they put a stent in and I never had any other issues. I still don't have any issues to this day. Everything's fine.

Every all my arteries are clean. I just, I just had, I had a there was a clot, unsure what caused the clot. It could have been from, from plaque most likely was although I had no indications that I would have had anything like that. The only issues that I had for many, many years was I had pretty high LDL and I was always under the belief that from all the reading that I had done, you know, I, I follow all these guys.

I follow, you know, Dave Feldman and, and all his stuff that he's doing and, and you know, Nick Norwich now and, and I've been following this for a long time. You know, there's a lot, lots of, lots of doctors that that have the same view as far as LDL not being a risk factor. But I had high LDL. I've had it ever since I've done keto. I've just always kind of thought it's not important, you know, LDL doesn't cause heart disease. How high are we? Talking. What's that?

How high are we talking? Like what was your average LDL? My my highest was LDL was 290 which which had my total cholesterol almost 400 but I would sit right around 2:50-ish most of the time. My triglycerides were always low 44 HDL was always about 52. So I wasn't quite a lean mass hyper responder for because for that criteria your, your HGLI think has to be like 80, but I was borderline lean mass hyper responder. But you know, always had real

low CXC reactive protein. You know, my, my A1C was always like 5. You know, blood, you know, fasting blood sugar was always, you know, like like 90, you know, 89. Everything was always good. I had, with the exception of of I had some blood pressure issues, but nothing crazy over the years. So and that was all that was treated with medications, but I had this lingering thing in my head about LDL. And so after having the Mii just started to kind of re evaluate

that and rethink that. And so I've kind of had a, you know, an A ha moment that, you know, maybe there is something to this. And so I've been delving into this a lot lately too. So, but that was the only I know that that's a thing that people talk about when they go on keto or carnivore, that their LDL goes up, APOB goes up and a lot of people ignore it and say it's not an issue, you know, because metabolically they're metabolically healthy.

Everything else is good. I just don't know that I agree with that anymore. That's one of the things I've, I've kind of really changed my thoughts on, you know, as of the last, you know, 2 1/2 to almost three years. What was your diet like at the time of that incident? Were you doing the strict keto then? Were you doing the cyclical approach at that time? At the time of the event, yeah, I was doing, I was doing cyclical, but it, but it wasn't with big carb UPS.

It was, you know, a, a meal or two at the most. So I would go usually a couple of weeks. I would, I, I did it on how I felt. So if I felt good, if the gym work was good, I didn't carb up. If I felt like I needed a carb up, I'd have, you know, I would eat a couple, you know, relatively small meals of carbohydrates, nothing crazy. And, and I had deviated from, you know, doing the, the, you know, the shit carbs to, to, you know, to more wholesome type of, you know, carbohydrates.

So I didn't do big carbs UPS, but but I did for many years, you know, so who knows, maybe maybe it was just from that. I, I, I don't, I guess I'll never know, right. But it just, it just makes you think it's like, is there something going on here? And so I started doing a lot of, you know, I listened to, you know, Bill Cromwell a lot, who's a, who's an expert lipidologist and Dr. Dayspring, he's like one of the leading, you know, lipidologist in the world.

And, and they're big proponents of, of lowering APLB for for various reasons. Number one in, in their opinion, expert opinion, it is causal, causal meaning that you can't have a SCVD without it. It's it's like the main

ingredient, right? I mean, without, when your LDL levels fall below 50, you know, like for instance, people that have loss of function PSPCS K9, you know, they have very, very, very low levels of LDL because they, their body does not produce the PCs canine protein that binds with the LDL receptor to pull LDLS or for for LDLS to stay in the system.

So, so they're, they're just like in this perpetual cycle of, of, you know, pulling LDL out constantly because it never stays in the, in the, in the system. You know, LDL is one of lipoproteins that that has a high resonance time. So it's in the in the body like, you know, three to five days, you know, we're at other ones are, are they're not there very long. So they have more, there's more of a chance of them doing damage

if they're there longer. So when you have loss of function PCSK 9, the LDL receptor doesn't get bound up with a protein, so it's constantly eliminating, you know, LDL. So those people virtually have no ASCBD. And conversely you get the people that have gain of function PCSK 9 and and they have a lot of ASCBD because their liver is not clearing LDL. At least that's the assumption, right?

So, so I guess, I guess, you know, it's, it's funny how you have an idea in your head, whether it be, you know, nutrition or, or, you know, lipids or whatever. And, and you then you have this epiphany later on in life. And then you have a just a completely different, you know, world view on, on what's really happening. I think, I think it's very complicated, right? I think most things are multi factorial but it just it just makes you second guess a lot of stuff.

Yeah, which is why, I mean, that's why I wanted to get you on the podcast in the 1st place because I mean, you and I have kind of gone back and forth on IG and it's always been in a respectful manner, which I appreciate because I don't ever want to be dogmatic or dealing up absolutes. And with nutrition, that's typically where things are taken. Like people have this information silo effect and they just stay in their own echo chamber. And I'm not a doctor, I am not a

lipidologist. This is not my area of expertise in that regard. I've done what I've done and I've experiment with multiple different things and I found what works well for me and I've been able to emulate that in my clients. But I don't ever want to be dogmatic in my thinking because then you just stagnate. There's no growth that takes place. Well, and that's one of the things that I've appreciated. You know, when I do, you know, I'll, I'll question some of the

things that you say. And again, I try to, I try to do it in a respectful way. I hope, I hope I'm accomplishing that. They're always just very gracious, you know, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll have your opinion. And and it's nice. It's, it's nice dialogue to have.

Whereas, you know, yeah, I, I, I said something the other day to somebody else and you know, they, they got, they got pretty uptight, their, their panties in a bunch and they threw some expletives at me saying they don't give a you know what. And they've been doing it for this long and it works on all their clients. And I don't care what you have to say. So I thought, huh, OK, well, it wasn't like I was telling you what to do. I was just giving you my opinion.

You know, I think, I think, I think opinions are important. I think science is great. I, I think, you know, there's not a lot of really good science. So it's, you got to really read through the bad science. I mean, most science is, is all observational epidemiology, you know, with some meta analysis thrown in there, but, but very few RCTs. So it's, it's, and nutrition science is one of the worst, right?

I mean, it's very hard to to really precisely determine what's going on. And I think anecdotes are great. I think they tell us a lot. But one person's anecdote is maybe completely different than someone else. So we're all homo sapiens, but I think we all respond a little differently. And I think based on, you know, how our hormones are, are working because I mean, those are the key players, right? So hormones really influence

everything. So if you're someone that that is insulin resistant, you know, you're probably not going to do well eating a high carbohydrate diet. You're just you're going to be chronically hyperinsulinemic and and these things are really going to cause a lot of issues over time. So I think it's very individualistic, you know, how people approach nutrition. And I think that that there's, you know, I just think we have

too many echo chambers now. And, and you know, and I used to be, I used to be in it, you know, So it's, it's great to find people that, that are willing to, you know, to, to be a little insecure and maybe admit that, that, you know, they don't have it all figured out. Maybe they've got it all figured out for themselves and maybe things are working great, but but to to to be willing to listen to other people that have maybe a slightly different perspective.

Yeah, and I think it's key, man. I feel like in and one of my biggest frustrations with the, you know, keto carnivore crowd is that they often times are very guilty of, you know, just digging in like a tick and just not white knuckling those echo chamber thought process. And that's that's not good for anybody. I mean, I, I'm grateful the fact for the fact that I got into this before it was popular before, you know, this is what my brand was like.

I didn't have that. And in the beginning it was, but it was just pure, it was innocent. It was just, OK, let me figure this out for myself. And I had done, you know, have you, have you read John Kiefer's books? Oh, I was a big John Kiefer fan. Yeah, I got, I have car back loading. I have carbonite solution. As a matter of fact, I was just Googling him the other day trying to figure out what the heck happened to him. He like fell off the face of the

earth. Yeah, yeah. But I, I mean, that was kind of my introduction to keto, you know, kind of by, by accident, I mean, I, I'd done the bro dieting, then flexible dieting and you know, I was doing a whole bunch of carbohydrates myself. And then I, I didn't do his carbonite solution. That's pretty similar to the body opus protocol. I had done his car back loading protocol. So every single night I was having the high glycemic index carbs, but I just felt better without him.

So I just cut them out kind of by way of defaults and was doing keto without even knowing that I was doing keto. And then I kind of finessed the macro distribution to figure out what I was performing best at. But yeah, man, I mean, I'd been playing around with carbs for the first, you know, however many years of my bodybuilding career.

So I feel like I've got enough perspective to be able to speak on how it impacted me. Whereas a lot of people, they've always only done one or the other, so they don't really have a leg to stand on when an argument comes up. Yeah, no, 100% yeah, No, I, I, I know you know, you and I have talked in the past how how you know, you've done, you've tried the carb thing and, and it just didn't seem to pan out for you. Just like staying strict keto better.

And, and, and I understand that. I just, I think that like you said, a lot of people have never tried it, you know, so they just threw whatever, you know, strange opinion they think they have. They they, they comment on it like, like they know something about it. Yeah, totally. I do think you know, like for me I put a lot of emphasis because I'm, I'm in a complete agreement with you with regards to optimizing hormone health,

metabolic rates. And I think there is a vast majority of the people in the ketogenic space that go keto or carnivore because of its satiating nature and they just chronically don't eat enough. So I'm cyclical in the sense that, you know, I have very defined periods of time where I'm at a pretty pretty significant caloric surplus followed by periods of time in a deficit for, you know, competition prep or fat loss phase.

And I think kind of undulating between those two does tremendous benefit from a hormonal and a metabolic standpoint. A lot of people aren't kind of going between those two in a very effective manner. They're either constantly in a surplus or constantly in a deficit, or they're just, they're just bringing too many variables in the equation, but they're not really fine tuning

either of them or any of them. So I think transitioning from times of the surplus 2 times at a deficit helps answer a lot of the hormonal implications and metabolic implications that come if you just, you know, hard nose one or the other. Yeah, I mean, that's a great point because you know, I used to think that that it was mostly an an insulin thing and maybe it's just a caloric thing. Maybe you just need to be high calories for a while to really reap those benefits.

Yeah, because. When I'm at the high calories, when I'm consuming, you know, 250, sometimes, I mean, I've got days where I've had 500 grams of protein in a sitting. You know, I'm getting a definite glucose response there. My insulin is being excreted. My body is functioning as it should in that regard. And then when you train to like when I wear ACGM, my blood sugar will go up to, you know, 150 or 160 in an intense training bound, you know, totally

independent of carbohydrates. So I'm getting, you know, glucose response from that as well. So my body's going through these these these processes, these physical processes. But a lot of people aren't doing that at all. They're not eating ample

calories. And if they're just chronically under consuming fuel, then yeah, they're they're going to have drastic negative implications in their thyroid health, their hormonal health, their metabolic health, like everything's going to be. I mean, that's why bodybuilders don't stay shredded year round, because it's just not healthy. Right, it, no, it's, it's 100% not healthy. And, and then your, I mean, your metabolism slows down so far, right? I mean, it's just hard to

maintain anything. I, I used to do that, I did it in a, in a keto fashion as well, you know, and I would do high periods of, of caloric intake and I was probably my heaviest if you looked at any of my, my Instagram posts when I was back when I was competing, but I used to get up to my heaviest was 293 in the offseason. How tall are you? 6 foot 511 six foot. Gotcha.

Yeah, so my heaviest was 293. Now that that was with a decent amount of carbohydrates back then I was a pretty, I was a pretty heavy carb guy in the offseason. I took, I took in a lot of carbs, but I was probably taking in 6500 calories a day on average. And then I would, I would cut down to at my, at my heaviest, I was 234. At my best, I was probably about

2:16. So I would cut down significantly, but I would and then I found that I could do this without doing heavy bouts of carbohydrates. I would still, I would have a bulking phase where I would just do a on my carb days, on the cyclical part of my carb days, I would do heavy carbohydrates and then back to keto during the week because more than two days for me on carbs. And, and I just, I just felt horrible.

My, my body just just, and I guess maybe if I took in, you know, small amounts, I'd be OK. But, but then I didn't really see the, the hormonal response that I was getting. You know, when you're really getting that whopping dose of insulin and, and when you're, when you're so low for so long, you know, the, the theory is that you can, you know, super compensate your muscles, you know, which is why many people

will carb load. I think, I don't think you do before a contest, obviously, but, but many people will because you can super compensate, you know, glycogen storage is in the muscle by depleting and then loading again. And I've always found that to be true. Yeah, for sure. I mean, people get absolutely shredded, I mean, with carbohydrates. So I've never wanted to say that, you know, because there's, there's some people in the keto, low carb carnivore space that are just like carbs, the

absolute devil. And they're going to cause a host of cancers. And it's all about insulin. And you know, the only reason anybody's fat is because they eat carbs. And I've never subscribed to that metallic. It's a very short sighted, you know, viewpoint. Yeah, I have, I've been in that camp, you know, so it's, it's not a good place to be, but I was definitely there for a while. I I was, you know, big into, you know, insulin makes you fat, period. That that's it.

And and there's, you know, obviously there's some truth to that, right? I mean, because, because without, without insulin, you know, you can't, you can't, you know, I mean, what does insulin do? You know, it, it shuts off, you know, hormone sensitive lipase, right? So, so you're no longer, you're no longer liberating fatty acids, you know, to, to then go

through lipolysis. So, so because of that insulin effect, you know, it can become very difficult to then, you know, burn fat if you're, if your insulins are, is chronically elevated. And I think this happens to a lot of people that, that have insulin resistance. I think it's a, it's a, it's a big problem with people because again, like I said earlier, insulin's a dial, right?

But if your insulin's constantly elevated with, you know, with people that have, you know, diabetes and I mean, what's what is diabetes? I mean, diabetes is, is a disease of high insulin, right? I mean, it's not high blood sugar. What defines the disease is high insulin. You become resistant in insulin and then you have to take in exogenous insulin to get the same type of storage mechanism that you would have had you had a normal functioning, you know, pancreas.

So it's a disease of high insulin. So most of these people usually have a very difficult time, you know, burning body fat. And, and conversely, what's, what's type 1 diabetic? Type 1, not diabetic, that's a disease of low insulin. It's the complete opposite. So I don't even know why these two are in the same category. They're, they're, they're complete total opposites.

So a type 1 diabetic typically will get very, very lean, eating 10,000 calories a day because he virtually has no insulin output. You know, eventually he'll, he'll get sick and die, right. But, but so, so there's definitely, you know, the insulin's definitely a huge driving factor, you know, when it comes to adding body fat or liberating body fat, you want to

be able to, to turn that dial. But I've always kind of, you know, I shouldn't say always more recently I've kind of felt like it's nice to be able to, to kind of be in that modality where you can be a good at burning glucose, you can be good at burning fatty acids, you can be good, good at burning

ketones. Not being all or you know or nothing, to me it seems like that's not a good place to be because, you know, I mean, if you were like, for instance, if you were to take a glucose tolerance test, do you, do you think you would pass it? I'd probably fail it the first time I took it, but then if I'd, you know, ate carbs, I'd

probably pass it 48 hours later. Sure, 100 percent, 100% agree with you, but but that's because your body's not primed for, for, for burning, you know, carbohydrates. But I guess that's the, the kind of, you know, that flexibility I think that I think is important to have with people, you know, being able to kind of move in and out of different energy systems. I think I think it's a great place to be for a, for a lot of people.

I think, I think evolutionarily, I think probably that's where we were, right, Depending on where we lived. Obviously, you know, I mean, if we were, if we were in, you know, in, in the Arctic somewhere, I mean, there was, you know, carbohydrates are scarce, right? So you were pretty much eating just reindeer all the time and whale. But for most people, I think, I think we're constantly moving in and out of those energy systems, which I think is, is a great place to be.

It may be the healthiest place. I don't know. I'm just kind of speculating. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I mean, I don't disagree with anything you said. I've personally, you know, I don't think like some people are worried that if you stay strict keto then you are no longer metabolic and flexible. I don't believe that.

I mean, as I, as I said, I would probably fail a or glucose tolerance test the first time, but then 48 hours later I would like to pass it. So it's not like your body forgets how to process glucose and carbohydrates as a fuel substrate. It just, it's kind of like a

reverse keto fluid. People that have never been in keto and then they, they go, they, they have a hard time upregulating those metabolic pathways to perform at a heightened state or baseline state until their body has ample time as that fuel substrate or with that fuel substrate. So like, I don't think I am less metabolically flexible in the grand scheme of things by not having introduced carbs on a more regular basis. And and as far as you know what's optimal, you know, I don't know.

But for me personally, I feel, you know, it's kind of like, do you want to be a Jack of all trades or master of none kind of philosophy? And for me, my goal is to become the best ketogenic natural bodybuilder I can. So I kind of lean into optimizing and perfecting with that given fuel substrate. But I totally agree with you and that the vast majority of the people are not striving to do that. So what works for me and was optimal for me may not be in line with their goals in any

form or fashion. Have you found that that guys that compete, you know, ketogenic like you do? Do they are they strict keto or are they cyclical or? I mean, I've worked with with all different types of clients. Most people that come to work with me, they know me as a strict keto guy. So they want to adopt that approach as well. And I mean, they get shredded man, and they're able to fill out their vascularities on points. I mean they look great on stage

as well. I mean, I think as far as the insulin goes, I think it was in John Kiefer's book, he said, you know, insulin is an extreme growth agent. It causes muscle tissue growth, fat tissue growth, cancer cell growth, like it just causes growth in general.

And there's a very possible chance that someone that consumes more carbohydrates and has higher function insulin, they're going to build more lean tissue, but also along with more fat tissue if they're eating and a caloric surplus, obviously. And for what? For me, what I've noticed is that people that go that route then have to diet more aggressively to lose that additional body fat.

So at the end of the day, when they step on stage, I don't see this market increase in, you know, net lean tissue versus that of someone who has not consumed the carb carbohydrates because they typically don't have to diet as aggressively because I don't have as much fat to lose. Like when I was doing experiments with carbs before I started doing strict keto, I was eating about 6000 calories and then I mimicked that experiments with keto at about 6000 calories

with carbs. I got to 230 lbs and had just a lot more additional body fat than I did at the same caloric intake from a ketogenic standpoint. So you know, from a bodybuilding standpoint, I wouldn't have to diet nearly as long or aggressively to cut that additional fat off, which means I'd be more prone to preserve the lean tissue that I had built.

So at the end of the day, for me as a competitor, the net effect of just staying straight keto results in better lean mass retention and less fat to lose in my competition prep cycles. As opposed to a cyclical approach or as opposed to like a carbohydrate? Carbohydrate approach that I hadn't done that experiment with a cyclical approach. Oh that. That'd be interesting to see how that went. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm all about experimentation.

Like I'm, I don't know that I would go that route now because like, for me, part of my reason for sticking with keto is, is also psychological because I know how I feel and perform and I've got more consistent mental clarity and cognition with the ketogenic approach. And I've seen a lot of people, they'll go the cyclical route and they'll start out super clean, man. Like they'll just have, you know, some Jasmine rice or maybe just a little bit of fruit.

Like they'll do, they'll do all the right things, but then they wind up going off the rails and just bingeing on a bunch of crap carbs and they have to kind of like go back and then, you know, correct course. And for me, it's like, I just don't want to fool with that. Yeah, I, I think for me and, and I used to work with people too. I used to, I used to own a gym.

I owned a gym for, for about 12 years, a powerhouse gym and I worked with a lot of a lot of clients with, with nutritional programs and we did cyclical programs. And it seems like everybody always did the same thing. And I would tell them too. I would say on your carb night, eat whatever the hell you want. I don't care what it is. Chocolate cake, Krispy Kremes, you know, chips and cheese, I

don't care. Eat whatever you want, satisfy your your cravings and then, you know, get back on track the next day. And everyone did the same thing. They would just binge the first week, the second week, sometimes the third week, usually by about the fourth week of the program, they were so sick and tired of junk food that, that they were, you know, they were just eating white rice, maybe a little bit

of fruit. You know, they, they really, they really tone down the, the, you know, the, the carb binge. They, they were no longer that prisoner that just escaped from, you know, prison and was headed to the buffet. Yeah. They, they were just, they, they, they had that, that felt good. They did it. They had to do it right. They had to do it to get it out of their system because they, they wasn't that they hated keto.

They just, they had these cravings all week long for carbohydrates and then when carb dake would, would come, you know, they're like, well, Mark said I can eat whatever the heck I want. So they would just, they would go to town. They, they still had great results. They had great results, you know, with the binge eating because it was only, you know, I told them like, look, you're going to start eating at 6:00, You know, when you get home from the gym.

Most of them were trained at about 55 o'clock. I said once, once you get home, start. A matter of fact, if you want to stop at Subway on the way home, stop at Subway. Start eating on the way home. When you get home, eat as much as you want. As soon as you put the fork down, you're done. As long as you're still eating, keep consuming. Soon as that pork goes down, you're done for the night and then you're back to, to strict keto the following morning.

No, no cheating in the, in the middle of the night, no binging, just, you know, fasting and then start your, your diet again, you know, Saturday morning and, and they had phenomenal results, but, but they all did the same thing. They all binged first. You know, you were saying they would start eating clean 1st and then binge later. All my clients would eat. I did the same thing.

I would binge first and then I would go to clean eating maybe two or three weeks later just because, you know, my gut couldn't handle all that food anymore. I just, I felt horrible. I was, you know, I was on the toilet, you know, for half the day cramping up and, and, you know, just watery as I'll get out and, and yeah, but once they figured that out once, once they got that out of their system, they were totally fine with it then then they'd still look

forward to their carb days. But it was, you know, I'm going to go have some sushi, you know, type of thing. It wasn't anything crazy. So they learned. I still, I still, there's still some clients that that I that I was working with back then. I don't do it anymore. I'm still in contact with a couple of them and they still follow the same program. They're still doing a cyclical approach and they love it. Yeah. And if they're killing it, you know, more power to them.

Like, I don't ever want to discredit some other's success. I mean, for me, I feel like a lot of people, like the food is so psych psychological, you know, like, especially in this species, like other species, that there's no question as to what they eat. They, they eat well, they're supposed to, and they eat the right amount and they're able to maintain a degree of homeostasis. Human, humans are a whole different beast. I mean, there's so much psychology, societal pressures,

all this stuff. So being able to get things out of your system is key, which is why I'm such a big advocate for having defined building phases and defined cutting phase. Because most people are just in this chronic state of, hey, I need to lose 20 lbs for XY or Z reason. But they are just constantly, you know, short circuiting their progress and never really reaching the goal because they're restricting in a way, in some form or fashion.

Then they feel this craving, they they give into it and they have this sense of guilt that's associated with that lack of willpower. And they just, the whole cycle repeats itself. So like having a defined building phase where the goal is to build muscle and embrace the fat game that comes with it, coupled with, you know, a period of defined fat loss where that is the focus, it makes those periods much more manageable and sustainable. And so few people do that, and bodybuilders do then.

But most people don't think of themselves as bodybuilders. But if people performed as bodybuilders, they would reach the goal much more effectively, much more efficiently, and then they just wouldn't have to step on stage. But they'll be able to reach that goal and actually get there. Yeah, no, I 100% agree with you. You work with mostly bodybuilders or just everyday

average joes? Both. I mean, I work with people that are on stage and people that just simply want to live a healthier life and improve their composition. So the ones that are that want to live a healthy healthier life, are they are they OK with the the bulking up phase and the cutting phase? Yeah, I mean, they like, I just have to explain it to them. Like a lot of people, like a lot of my clients are, you know, middle-aged women that are just chronically under eating.

They don't have any concept of reverse dieting. Their metabolism is totally down regulated. Their hormones are all jacked up. So be able to have a conversation with them around what a reverse diet is, what benefits come from eating at a defined surplus? Like once you break that down form their, their eyes are open and they get it, but you know, they're not really hearing that in mainstream dieting culture. Sure. Yeah. You know, a a lot of a lot of the smart guys too, you know,

like I, I follow. Like, do you know who Doctor Mike Izvortel? Is, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So he, he's, he's a big proponent of that too. You know, before you start a diet, you know, he wants you to essentially, you know, figure out what, what, what is your, what is, what are your maintenance calories now, you know, so eat for a few weeks the way you normally been eating before you even start this new program and figure out where you're at, because you need to

know where you're at, right? Totally. Because you're maybe you're chronically under eating, which means your metabolism is going to be, is going to be ridiculously low, which means you need to go on a bulking phase to, to kind of sort your hormones back out again, like you were saying. But but most people, I think when they read that, when they see that it's like, you want me to do what? No, no, no, I want to lose weight. I don't want to, I don't want to

gain weight. They they're like, yeah, I'm not doing it, you know, because they're, they're terrified of that because they want to lose weight, even though they've been in a chronic deficit for the last 10 years. It's a tough sell, man. Like when somebody comes to me, like just using a, a, you know, an example, like if I forget a, a middle-aged woman that's coming to me that's wanting to lose 2030 lbs and she's already eaten 1200 calories a day on

average. And I'm telling her, hey, look, you've got to eat at a surplus for at least six months and embrace somebody fat gain and just. Some. Weight, yeah, like it's, it's a very hard sell and nobody wants to work with me. But like, The thing is, everything that they've done up to that point hasn't worked. So just trust me and do this and I guarantee we'll get you there. Right.

Yeah, it's, it's just that that looming, you know, I got to do this for six months or whatever long before I can actually get into the program that's going to get me to lose weight and I'm going to gain maybe maybe 10 lbs. You know, that's, that's, that's hard for someone to, to digest that right? I mean, it's true, right, Because you need to fix the problem 1st.

And the problem is, you know, probably hormones because you've been chronically under eating or, or just eating such horrible food that had no, you know, nutrient density to it that that it didn't provide your body with anything that it actually needed. What what's your take on all these vegetables like? That's a big topic of discussion right now and some people in the, you know, evidence based communities are like, man, vegetables are totally fine, no

worries. Like it's all about the calories you get people in the carnivore, keto, low carb space that are like vegetables are the reason we have an obesity epidemic. You have a stance on it one way or the? Other so you know, there's, there's certainly anti nutrients in vegetables, right? You know what happens when you eat lots of foods that have anti nutrients? They chelate with, with minerals and they, they, they pull things

out of your body. You don't, you don't simulate, you know, what you're trying to consume because, because your body's not letting it because of the chelation of the minerals. So I, I, I'm kind of in the middle. I don't think vegetables are a problem. I think if you're eating vegetables, you definitely need to cook your vegetables, you know, because you know, proper cooking is going to denature a lot of these anti nutrients, you know, phytates, oxalates, all these anti nutrients that that

are in these vegetables. But and even and even if it if if you don't are unable to absorb, I think what happens usually is you're you're never able to completely eliminate, you know, a lot of these anti nutrients. I think you neutralize a lot of them by, by up to 70%, which I think is fine. I think there's ways of getting around that by, by, you know, fermenting foods and things like

that. That's, that's what most of these, you know, hunter gatherer type of societies would do when they would eat these types of foods, they would, they would ferment them and that provides a lot of benefit as well. I, I don't think, you know, you're talking about, you know, vegetables being part of the obesity epidemic. I don't think that. What's that? Vegetable oils more so than vegetables. Oh, vegetable oils, yeah, definitely vegetable. So I I have mixed takes on vegetable oils.

If if you look at if you look at all the the randomized control, not all of them a lot of them and all the mental analysis on on vegetable oils on sea oils on little lake acid they they seem to be healthy for you. OK.

So based on what we see in as far as these trials go, so I don't know exactly how to take that because you're talking about consuming something that that, you know, we never would have done, you know, when when we were primitive people, you know, we didn't have the technology to to extract, you know, heat extract these these oils from these seeds.

We didn't have, you know, hexane gas and different things that they use than bleaches and, and all kinds of stuff that they use to, to process these, these seed oils. And I think, I think the problem is that we have too much Omega 6IN our diet and not enough omega-3.

So I think it's a balance issue. I think by eating, you know, like factory farmed, you know, beef and and you know, chickens and stuff like that, you're going to get more Omega 6:00 because of how they feed these animals or they're in feed lots and they're eating lots of corn, different things like that. So they're not getting their their species specific diet like

you were talking about earlier. They're they're they're eating foods to fatten them up. So I, I think that that seed oils, I don't really know what to think of seed oils anymore. I've, I've heard so many different things. I don't particularly consume them myself. If I'm, if I'm consuming any oils like that, it's like, you know, olive oil or, or avocado oil or macadamia nut oil. Those are all, you know, those aren't heat extracted, right?

So, so I try to avoid all the heat extracted ones. But but there's, there's studies that shows that they're heart protective and, you know, because they lower LDL cholesterol, which, you know, depending on where you are in that camp. Are you, do you think that that's important? They all there's also studies that show that they oxidize much easier and they get into your cells and they stay there longer. So your cells aren't supposed to contain Omega 6 fatty acid.

They're supposed to contain saturated and monounsaturated, not Omega 6. So I think that the the jury's still kind of out on on seed oils. I don't know that they're the, you know, this demon food that people are, are making them out to be. I, I avoid them again, just, you know, saying that I do avoid them. But but I don't know. I think that any time you're going to, you know, heat up an oil, you know, you're, you're going to denature the fat.

So these, you know, a lot of these oils are, are polyunsaturated. So they have many bonds. Those bonds are are, you know, they're, they're prone to to damage and, and when you damage the fat is when you have the problem. So yeah, it's, it's, it's funny because because most of the studies actually show it being healthy. Matter of fact, I just listened to something the other day and on doctor Mike Israel was

talking about this as well. He, he said that they're 100% healthy for you and that you should include them in your diet. So it's, it's, I think it's, it's one of those things again, where we have two camps, right?

And, and you've got the pro people and then the people that are against it. And, and they're, a lot of times they talk about mechanistic studies, which I don't think is a good idea because, you know, you're, it doesn't really tell us much about what's happening when you consume the oil. It's just telling us mechanistically what could potentially happen based on, you know, different aspects of, of, of what's going on. So how, how it affects, you

know, cells. And, and so they're, they're taking everything out of context and they're saying because it does this, because we found this to happen, you know, with this particular polymorphism, therefore, if you consume this seed oil, this is going to happen to you. So it's, again, I think it's, I think it's really complicated. But if you're looking at the science, you know, the, the science says seed oils are pretty healthy unless, unless you're looking at 2 trials, which have flaws.

So there's two trials that they did. One was the Sydney Heart study and the other one was a Minnesota coronary experiment. And those two studies looked at substituting polyunsaturated fatty acids. I don't remember what kind they use. It might have been Western oil and then saturated fats. OK, so these were done, I, I believe they were done in, in institutions. So they were, they were double blinded studies. I think they were really good studies, but there, I know there were a few flaws.

I remember people talking about a few flaws that they had with these studies. I mean, all studies have flaws, right? But what they found was that the the the people that were consuming the high polyunsaturated fat diets had had much lower cholesterol levels and LDL levels than the saturated fat group. I mean saturated fats where were LDL levels. But what they found out was that the people consuming the the polyunsaturated fats had more deaths and more coronary

incidents. So, you know, it's, and those were two pretty good studies that were done. Those are the only two that I'm really aware of where, where they were double blinded studies. But again, there were some flaws with the studies. I don't remember exactly what they were, but as far as studies go, I think they were pretty good. But then you have all the other ones. Basically everything else shows the complete opposite. So I, I don't know, I think again, I think the jury's still

out on that. I think I think we need to learn more about it. I I don't think they're as bad as people say, but then again I'm not consuming them myself. Yeah, I would agree with all that. I'm I'm in the same boat. I don't consume them either. I mean, the fact that they have to deodorize them so that people find them palatable to me is like a pretty big red flag. Like if it was not deodorized, you wouldn't be able to get it past your nose to consume it. Like I don't want to make a

habit of eating rancid fats. So yeah, I don't eat them either, but yeah. And it's ranted as a start right? Because you have to heat extract it. Right. So it denatures the fat, so. And then most of it too is in a plastic bottle. So what's that doing? Yeah, and it's shelf forever. So again, I think there's the science based evidence that we have and then there's like a lot of common sense involved here too. Yeah, no for. Sure. It's like, when would we have ever consumed that amount of

seed oils in our life? Yeah, precisely. I try and gravitate to pretty common sensical approaches, like how's it made me feel? How's it made me perform? Is it something we would find in nature? Have we eaten this for the past millennia? Or is it relatively new in the advent of human dietary culture? And if it's if it's a bunch of, you know, this newfangled stuff that just is not really food in my book, then I don't want to see much benefit in consuming it.

Yeah, I, I try, I try to live my life by a couple concepts. 1 is KISS, which I'm sure you're familiar with, right? Keep it simple, stupid. And the, and the other one is a, is a term called Occam's razor. Are you familiar with that? Yep, Yep. Simplest solution is usually the right, the right answer, right. I mean, that's just, I think evolutionarily and, and just most things usually work out that way. Totally.

If you're telling me that for me to be healthy, I need to extract all this oil from these seeds through all these chemical processes and, and hexane gases and, and deodorizers and, and somehow that's healthier for me because a study shows that it is. I don't know man. Yeah, yeah. No, I totally. Or with that. I'm on the same page. Well, I know we're already an hour in. We can probably talk forever man.

But I want to get a quick take on you or from you regards to training because I'm like you said, you're 56 years old. You look phenomenal. So what's your philosophy towards training? I, I right now, I train every other day. I work out with my son. He he started working out with me during COVID. It's been. It's been by the. Way I'm super excited for my kid to want to. Yeah, so. Kudos to you there. Thank you. So my my son just turned 14 and he just bench pressed 175. Nice.

Pretty easy too. It went up. He could have got two, I'm sure. And that's freeway. That wasn't like on a machine. And he dead lifted the other day. Gosh, this was this was a couple months ago, 2250. I think it was from an Olympic bar, not from like a like a trap bar or anything like that. So he's he's a beast man. He's he, he's quite the beast. But yeah, definitely when, when your son gets gets of age, it's

a lot of fun. But yeah, so my philosophy on training, you know, I, I, I tore my, I detached my tricep tendon in 2012, I think it was, I was getting ready for a show and and I, it popped off doing dumbbell presses. Ever since then, my, my arm has never been the same. I, I've got some nerve damage. It's, it's hard for me to to go heavy free weights anymore. I still, I still do, but but everyone's in a while, not every once in a while, quite quite frequently my arm just kind of gives out.

So I guess my old philosophy was I used to like to. I was a big believer in in going heavy number one and also trying to facilitate a really good pump. So kind of similar to Hanny's philosophy. What does What does he have the FFS? What's the C7? Yeah, exactly. Very, very similar to that, you know, pick an exercise to to go super heavy on and and then just pumping as much blood in there as you can. I believe in a lot of rest. I made my best gains when I trained every other day.

I've trained every day, I've trained five days a week, I've trained six days a week and I find that if I train the other every other day, I seem to have the, the best recovery and I feel like I'm, I'm ready to, to tear it up again the next day. I split it up where I'm training 11 muscle group per week. I've kind of always done that. I, I tried doing, I tried doing 2 muscle groups a week and I just wasn't able to do it. I, I trained probably further to failure than I should.

You know, I was the guy back in the day when we were training legs where most people, most of my training partners skipped leg day. They, they just did not want to train legs because they always ended up in the bathroom puking because we, we, we destroyed legs. I mean, it was, it was brutal. So lots of back then it was lots of heavyweights repetitions anywhere from 6:00 to 12:00, usually. Occasionally we'd go high 20s if we're doing, you know, a lot of volume work.

But now I don't typically do a lot of that. My, my Rep range is anywhere between 6 and 15 on pretty much everything. I'm training in my basement. I've got a, I've got a pretty decent stuff in my basement. I kind of, I kind of hooked it all up when I, when COVID hit, I sold my gym many, many years ago. I have a lifetime membership there, but it's, it's, it's, it's in a town away. And I just, once I sold it, I didn't really want to be affiliated with it anymore.

I didn't want to be the face everybody knew. I kind of wanted the new owners just to kind of, you know, just have their own time to do their own thing. And I didn't want to be, just didn't want to be there. Just, I felt like I was in the way. So I joined Planet Fitness for a while after that, which I hated. And then COVID hit my wife's like, you know, got to cancel your membership because we all thought we were going to die, which obviously that didn't happen.

And I said, OK, that's fine. I said, but I'm gonna have to build something in the basement here, so let me buy some stuff if you're cool with that. I'll definitely train here. And she's like, yeah, get what you need, what you need. So I got a nice little set up here so I don't have. I used to do a lot of, a lot of strip sets and drop sets and, and super setting on various machines. You know, when I was at the gyms, I don't do that anymore. I, I still do a lot of drop sets.

I'm a big believer in drop sets. Usually the last set of my exercise for whatever I'm doing. If I'm doing bench press, I'll kind of pyramid my weights up and then my last set will be like a, like a, like a drop set where maybe I'm getting, you know, 6 repetitions on my first set, followed by another six after I've dropped weight, followed by another four, maybe followed by maybe another two. And then maybe do some negatives

on top of that. So I like pushing my last set of my exercise to, you know, exhaustion, you know, beyond failure really. But most of my other stuff I just take to about failure. I probably have a couple more reps in me, but I'm trying, I'm trying to go heavy, you know, the, the, the, what am I trying to say? My form's good. I'm not, I'm not throwing a lot of, you know, heavy sloppy weights around.

I'm not doing that. So once once my form starts to compromise a little bit, then I usually stop. But granted that I've got, you know, good blood in my muscles. So I try again. I try to go heavy and I try to incorporate some type of a, you know, pumping mechanism in there as well to get as much blood in there as possible. Stretch the fascia out as much as I can.

I don't do, I'd say I'd probably stay anywhere from if I'm training legs, if I'm training a large muscle group, probably anywhere from 10:00 to 16 total sets, usually three sets per exercise. And you know, 4, four to three to four exercises depending on what I'm doing.

But yeah, I, I, you know, again, I focus, focus is going heavy on, on the 1st exercise usually followed by staying heavy, but going for more of a pump and then followed by a lot of blood volume in the my last, my last movement of that particular exercise. You ever play around with like the occlusion training and whatnot to focus on the blood? Flow. You know what I never have. I've never played around with that. I've I've I've read a little bit about it.

I don't know a ton about it. I've seen it obviously but but I've never tried it. I've done it a few times. It, I mean, from a pump standpoint, it's pretty hard to to beat. I mean, you get a sick pump for sure. It feels like your arms are about to explode, but I don't. Really incorporate that much, Is that because the bloods just kind of staying there, you kind

of forcing it there? Yeah, you're basically it's, it's tourniquet's a bad example because it's not I mean a tourniquet is totally different intent. But like you're basically forcing as much blood in, but no blood, not no blood, but less blood leaving. So you've just got this engorged sensation in the actual muscular tissue. So the pump is is great.

You don't need to go as heavy. So if I'm like AI think it'd be really good from like a recovery standpoint, like if you wanted to stimulate the muscle as much as possible without having to go near as heavy on the load, you would be able to effectively do that with the BFR training. But I don't really do it on a regular basis like last time I did it was probably 3 years ago if that tells me anything. And I don't do it very often, but the times I have it's like you get a pretty sick pump.

Sure. Yeah, it was pretty popular for a while. Yeah, it was. It was. And a lot of people, they make it a staple. I just love training and I don't like having too many gadgets. I got to go in there and train relatively instinctively, so I don't do it. Typically, yeah, I love, I love your gym, by the way. Where is that? Just like in a pole barn. Or where is that? Yes, that's, that's the warehouse here where we where we do the keto brick production.

I've got my podcast studio here, my office spaces, my gym. So all of that's under one roof, which is awesome. We call it the compound. How how many square feet is your gym? The gym, I think the gym is like 30 by 100 or something like that and I need to get some more equipment for it because it's pretty open there right now. I need to, I just ordered, I'm going to order a belt squat.

I got a safety bar squat I'm going to start playing around with, but there's a couple of pieces that I want to get. What what is your? I was actually going to ask you as my next question, but like as far as your setup goes, what is your piece that you couldn't do without? Probably. So probably my rack, my power rack. I, I've got, I've got attachments on it so I can do all kinds of stuff on it.

So it's, it's like, it's like that one piece that gives me like, like I can do like 9 different exercises on it with all my attachments. So I've got like those, those leverage arms on there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't, I don't have a large space. It's in my basement and half of our basement is, is, is finished and the other half is, you know, it's laundry storage and then my gym. And so and so I needed something that was going to be, you know, space, you know, appropriate.

And I thought, well, shoot, man, that's because I was thinking about all the things I wanted, like, I gotta have this, gotta have this, gotta have this, gotta have this. I'm like, I don't have the room for it. I'd have to venture into the other area. And then I saw these leverage arms. I'm like, well, shoot man, these are awesome. I can do like there's so many exercises I can do with leverage arms. It's like ridiculous. It's like having 9 different plate load of pieces.

I'm gonna. Get that from my rack for sure. What's that? I'm gonna get some of those from my rack. I don't have those yet, but I've got the the rogue monster rack, whatever they call it. So it has arms for it. I just haven't, you know, pulled the trigger on those yet. Aim changer, man, that that's there's you can do. I mean, just use your imagination. It's it's like endless. Yeah, no. It's it's really cool. And then I can lock them up too and then use them as a dipping

bars. Have you seen have you used the what's the brand? I think it's the rogue Rhino belt squat. I have so I have AI think I might have the rhino belts, the the just the attachment, the the belt, the the the apparatus where you put the chain and the and the the belt. Yeah, so they've got, well, Rogue Rhino's got this one where it like they've got one where it, it goes into your rack, like it becomes part of your rack, but from your setup. I'm going to do the same thing

with mine. But basically you can have a pulley system up top on the inside of your rack too, where you can do like weighted dips. With that you can do everything you would. You can do so much with just the belt squad attachment set up within your rack. Yeah, weighted dips, you know, you've got full functioning cable there, so you can do all kinds of stuff. But that and those lever arms are going to be my next two pieces for sure. Yeah, you'll, you'll love the

lever arms. They're they're they're so versatile. It's unbelievable. And what I did to mine was so on my arms, my arms have, they have holes all the way on it. And I put these little eye hooks in there. And then I attach eye hooks to, to my, my, my rack. And then I have these towing straps that are probably about 3 feet long with hooks on it. So I can, I can lock it in place anywhere I want it.

So they're not, and down. So I can, I can lock them at different, different levels, whether I'm doing, you know, like incline press or decline press or flat bench press or shoulders, you know, or whatever I want. And that, that was just something that I kind of engineered on top of them. I'm like, because otherwise for a lot of stuff you need like someone to help you like pull the arms up like that. That's, that's not, I mean,

that's not going to work. You know, I'm not going to have a spotter with me every single day and they're certainly not going to want to pull my weight up every single day. So I just, I attached all these, all these eye hooks to it. And then I got these straps that hold like like 3000 lbs apiece. And I just clip it where I want it so I can clip it in various spots. Yeah, you're gonna have to send me a picture of your, of your setup, man. Like I'm a gym junkie. So like the the at home gym

setups, like I love that stuff. That's pretty much what I've got. Like I've got a warehouse space, but it's all, you know, stuff that people have in their basements as well. And I love it. Yeah, You know, I, I, I miss my, I miss my powerhouse gym. I mean, I had, I had like 10,000 square feet. I had everything, you know, that, that that place was just

that place was so awesome. I loved training there until we went, well, I used to train a lot after hours and we would just crank up the, the, the music and just, and just crush it. And then we went 24 hours. And then of course, we didn't have that luxury anymore. But but you know, you, you go from having everything because literally I had everything to now having just a few pieces that'll fit in my basement that, that you know, but they do

everything that I need. It's like I don't need any. The only thing I would like to get, because most of my leg work now is just squats. I do a lot of squatting, which is actually a good thing because before I used to do a lot of leg pressing. But I wish, I wish I had a leg press. That's the only thing that I wish I had at at this moment in time. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy one, I think.

But but yeah, right now it's just can we do it Like when we're doing legs, we do like 10 sets of 10 with a one minute interval rest. That's fun. Yeah, those those freaking short recipes like the FST seven that Rambaugh does. He, I think it's like it's, I think it's often times lighter weight at 12 reps with 32nd rest intervals. And I'm in the same boat, man. I would do that and I would be puking at the end of my squat routine. But like, you just feel so

accomplished afterwards. I I'm telling you, man, I lost so many training partners when it was like, yeah, they, they just either wouldn't show up or they just like stopped training with me. I mean, there, there's some crazy stories of some of our leg days. I mean, we used to just do some insane stuff. And I love it. I love doing that, but like, you can't do that every time because it's probably honestly not even

optimal. But psychologically, what you get from that is like, you just feel like you're a frequent animal. Well, it's funny too, because, you know, I, I, my legs were probably some of my best body parts back in the day and, and had I not trained that much, they probably would have been even better. Exactly. No, I love it, man. We got, we got a lot more in common. We, we agree with a lot more than we disagree on. So I, I'm glad we, we got this conversation booked.

We have to do another follow up one for sure. Oh definitely man, this has been a pleasure. 100% where? Where do people go to find out more about you? I know you're pretty active on Instagram. I don't. I mean, I'm, I'm on there occasionally, but yeah, Instagram. I'm at CKD for life which ironically enough is cyclical ketogenic diet for life which I thought about changing my handle. I feel like you need to have a bike handle bike related because you get more content on biking.

And cycling, you know, lately that's pretty much all I've been posting is biking stuff. That's, that's kind of, that's kind of my new found passion is biking. I, I, I love, I love training. I, I love bodybuilding. I'll, I'll never compete again. You know, I still follow it, I still love it. It's still, it's still a big part of my life. I love training and I still train like a bodybuilder and I think I still eat like a bodybuilder. But my, my passion is really is

really mountain bike. That's that's the thing. I mean, if you were asking what's my favorite thing to do, it'd be throw me on a bike, man. Take me to a bike park and I'm I'm in heaven. So you you recommended? A. Few bikes to me. I know we were DM in a while back and you were recommending a few bikes. I haven't pulled a trick on that yet either, but I'm absolutely going to get into that because I think that's something that my my kids and I can do together.

So yeah, I'm I'm going to have to pick your brain more on the bike side of things. Yeah, if, if, if you, I mean my, my whole thing, you know, being a dad is, is trying to do as much as I can with my son. I'm, I'm just, I just have one son and the more time I can spend with him, you know, the better my life is. Yeah, kids are a game changer. Enjoy every waking moment you have with them. They're just incredible. So yeah, when he started working

out with me, that was awesome. And we do a lot of biking. We're getting ready to do snowboarding. He's a big snowboarder too. So him and I do a lot of, a lot of bonding, you know, with, you know, things like that. So I, I highly encourage to you to get involved with us as much as you can. And plus you'll love biking too. But just just being able to spend that time with your son is, is, is awesome. Do you do you know the sex of your other child? No, not yet.

We'll know at the 20 week mark. So we got a few more weeks to go until we hit that. But yeah, I'm definitely curious to find that out. But yeah, biking, I mean, I'm in Northwest Arkansas, man. It's like I think there was some popular biking magazine in Northwest. Arkansas. One of the top five spots in the. Country. Oh God, yes. You you need to get out to Bentley, I think. No. Bentonville. Yeah, yeah. Bentonville's right out there in Arkansas.

That's oh man, that, that that's like, that's like heaven. That's like 20 minutes. I've never been there, but I want to go there so bad. But yes, definitely if you're, if you're out in that area, you you've got to get yourself a, a nice bike. Well, that's like I said, that's 20 minutes from man. I mean, you want to come out here, go biking up here, and then swing by and we'll get a lift in. That'd be awesome. Let's do it, man. Let's do. It for sure. That's fabulous.

Ohio, you said, right? No, no, that's that's Ohio is where I was when I had my MI. I'm in Michigan. OK, OK, OK, gotcha. Yeah. So I think Arkansas probably, what, 17 hours away from me? Yeah, probably something like that if you're in Michigan, but you gotta just make a. Trip that would. That would be fabulous though, for sure. Man. I would definitely pick up on that. Well, we got an open door for you when you're in the area, brother. I appreciate it, Robert. Mark, much obliged, man.

Keep killing it. Keep the conversation going on Instagram, Always happy to hear from you, whatever thoughts you got. I love the discourse. It's always respectful, it's always insightful. So keep doing it man, and we'll be in touch, brother. I appreciate your time, Robert. Take care man Bye bye. All right, take care, buddy. Bye.