Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto, savage.com and today I've got special guest Doug Evans on the line. Doug is a master Sprouter, so he's been sprouting his own greens for quite some time now. He went through an experiment where he ate exclusively sprouts that he had grown and I just wanted to kind of get him on the podcast and pick his brain as to what sprouts are, what the nutritional benefits of sprouts entail, how you can grow your own sprouts.
I've been getting big into the homesteading and just becoming
as self-sufficient as possible. So the fact that you can grow these and they have a much faster turn around period than traditional gardens and vegetation that you would grow was appealing to me. But yeah, I just wanted to get him on here, pick his brain about sprouts, how he incorporates them, how he recommends people in court incorporate them and just learn a little bit more from someone that's following a different diet than myself. So thoroughly enjoy the conversation.
I've got no doubt that you will take something from it if you have any interest whatsoever in sprouts. So without further delay, sit back, relax and enjoy. And we are live. Doug, how are you Sir? I am the best ever. Thank you. I love it man. I love it. Well, I'm excited to be learning from your day. You are a an aficionado when it comes to sprouting your own food, which is something I know nothing about, so I'm excited to learn from you. But before we get into that,
man, give me some back story. What got you interested in sprouting your own food to begin with? You know, I first saw sprouts 25 years ago, 30 years ago in New York City and I was at the farmer's market and there was 1 vendor who was growing sprouts and wheat grass. And out of. Everything in the market, this was the the thing that resonated with me and let me, let me up. It was almost like the vibrancy of the green was. So. Powerful that it drew me to it.
I was attracted to it. So 30 years ago I started sprouting and eating sprouts, and for these last 30 years I always thought of sprouts as a side dish or as a garnish or as this nutritionally dense vegetable. And that was just in my mindset. And then seven years ago I moved to the desert. So I live on a Hot Springs called Wonder Valley Hot Springs near Joshua Tree in Southern California. And when I moved here for the first time I was having food scarcity issues.
There were no health food stores, no restaurants, no farmers markets. Like I was in the middle of nowhere and I wanted to be here because I wanted to be in nature. But it was a stark reality that it takes weeks or months or years to grow your own food. And so I needed to eat immediately and then while staring at the universe. And we have really dark skies here. So we could see the Milky Way. We could see all the stars in the Galaxy. I was staring at the stars and I got this idea.
I was like, oh, I could grow sprouts. I could eat sprouts. And so I I received the download that night, which turned into writing the Sprout book, and the the premise fell into three parts #1 sprouts were vegetables and vegetables are food, and I never thought of sprouts as food. I always thought of them as a side dish and here I was thinking of them as food #2. Sprouts were vitamins and minerals, which I thought in small quantities they were just healthy.
I didn't realize the nutritional density of the sprouts that in 1/4 cup of garbanzo bean sprouts. At least the latest data that came was in 1/4 cup there's 9 grams of protein, so in a cup 36 grams of protein. Now the lowest research I had was 20 grams of protein in a cup of sprouted chickpeas and that was really, really powerful for me. But additionally, there are 10s of thousands of phytonutrients in the sprouts.
There's polyphenols, there are great prebiotic and there's such a variety of sprouts that you could dial in the nutrition to whatever you want to be. So if you want to be high fat, you could get high higher levels of fat, you could get higher levels of protein and if you wanted to get, you know, higher carbs ratio. So there's such a variety of sprouts that they were nutritional access and then the third. And this really.
Blew my mind was that sprouts were medicine and that there were thousands of peer reviewed published studies on the medicinal properties of sprouts, that they had anti cancer properties. They could help regulate insulin levels in diabetics. They could create heat shock proteins in the brain similar to that of going in a sauna.
And so I was very curious. I end up writing the Sprout book and because I was learning so quickly and I couldn't believe that this information was being repressed, that no one knew about it, no one was talking about it. There hadn't been any energy behind sprouts yet. There's documented history of sprouts as food that goes back 3000 years BC. Why do you think there was so much repression of it? Like what would be the the
reason for that? Well, from an economic perspective, sprouts have a very short shelf life. They require refrigerated transportation and there's not money behind it. So if we think about the food system and the pharma system, people around food systems about making money, you go into Walmart or supermarket and 90 plus percent of the food is packaged, has additives, has preservatives, has food coloring, is genetically modified as shelf stabilizers on it is pasteurized.
So you think about sprouts. They're a low margin, fresh product and they just get grossly overlooked. And there are no national sprouting companies like. You'll see a soda commercial, you'll see a water commercial, you'll see a beer commercial, you'll see a potato chip commercial and a cereal commercial. No one's advertising sprouts. Now for the the uninformed listener, can you just define what is a sprout?
I mean, I guess just the the vegetation that stems forth from a freshly germinated plant I guess is a pretty simple overview, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, sprouts, sprouts and sprouting are the process of taking a seed and it could be a nut or a seed or a legume. And when you soak it, you are triggering the germination process. And then within days the seed transforms through a metabolic transformation into a vegetable and it shoots out, shoots up a shoot and a root comes from the
bottom. And that is the sprouting process. Now when we talk about sprouts as a food source, very common in America, alfalfa sprouts are used in salads and used and on wraps and sandwiches, and mung bean sprouts are popular in Asian cuisine, in soups and in stir fries. But what I went into and what I now consume are alfalfa sprouts, radish sprouts, broccoli sprouts, lentils, sprouts of all sorts from French lentils to green lentils to red lentils to peas and green peas and yellow
peas. And if you think about, you know a lot of the protein mixes. The plant protein mixes are made using pea pro peas to make pea protein. So in my world, rather than eating a protein powder, I would rather eat the whole pea because the whole pea has this vitality to it. First of all, it's living. Secondly, it has these active enzymes 3. It has antioxidants and the green peas in particular have
chlorophyll. And so this complete food source to me is better than having an isolated protein source. So I think it it's really about the money that that's why they were repressed. And when you look at other cultures, I was just in Tokyo and believe it or not, they sell 1 billion with AB as in boy, $1 billion a year in broccoli sprouts alone. Wow. That's. Crazy. They're available in 20,000 retail stores. People are selling broccoli sprouts.
Well, I I don't need a lot of greens personally, but I I do like like it's appealing to me that you can grow them in the comfort of your own home so you can be self-sufficient in that regard. Plus, because you're growing them in such a short time frame, you know you're you're able to recoup that relatively quickly and you're not having them sprayed with, you know, Roundup and all the stuff you're typically going to have on any vegetation that you pick up at a
grocery store. So that that's appealing to me. Yeah, I mean you you mentioned Roundup. The technical chemical within Roundup is called the glyphosate, and glyphosate creates all sorts of havoc in the body from causing cancer. There's now major class action suits against, you know, the makers of Roundup and
glyphosate. And I was so concerned with the seed source and having them clear that when Mike Posner and I started the sprouting company, we committed to testing all of the seeds to make sure there was no glyphosate, no roundup on any of the seeds. Very nice. So, so all the seeds are organic, but in addition to being organic, they're tested additionally for glyphosate. They're also tested for high germination.
Rate so that. We know that when you soak them, they will sprout because if they're not sprouting, you know, you're just having a waterlogged wet seed. Not very good. So we're testing them for high
germination rate. And then the third is we're testing them for pathogens to make sure that there's no detectable source of pathogens, you know, on the seeds because if you're consuming it. But then when you grow them at home, you know, using a glass jar, you know, I use the sprouting company's jar because it's bigger and has a stainless steel filter and it has great drainage.
But I make sure that I'm properly washing my sprouting equipment with hot soapy water as to make sure that I'm starting with something sanitary. And then I'm using these fresh high quality seeds that are going through this four part testing for organic, for high germination, for glyphosate free and for the the residue. So I know that where my food is coming from, right?
So we're getting US grown seeds that we're sprouting at home And what what most people don't know and you know, you raised your hand early in this process, is it you can grow these sprouts without soil, without sunshine, without fertilizer and they grow in days. So within two days to seven days you can have an edible crop. So this means you know from a level of you know, no one really took food safe food security very seriously until COVID hit. And then people were freaking
out. They couldn't get toilet paper. They couldn't get their macaroni and cheese. They couldn't get their favorite cereals and I was not even worried about it because I had hundreds of pounds of seeds on reserve. So even if I was staying in my bunker with my water source and my seeds, I was able to live. And what I know for a fact, because I did it, was I lived very healthily and very happily on an exclusive Sprout diet. You know, for a 30 day stint. Yeah.
So I was actually just going to ask you, so you are, are you eating exclusively sprouts currently or that was just for that experiment? I'm eating right now sprouts and fruit, so I eat fresh fruit and I eat sprouts and I'll have some sea vegetables, so like nori seaweed when it's available and that's my diet. Are you out of curiosity? Are you tracking your intake? Like, do you have any idea how many calories you're consuming? How many grams of protein, fat,
carbs, etcetera. I don't track on a very frequent basis. The thing that is most important to me, the biggest factor is how do I feel? What is my energy level? But I'll tell you, and I know that you're a savage there. In 2023, I committed to making
that my most active year ever. So I was running three to five miles a day, at least three days a week, and I was averaging over 275 push ups a day, which totalled to 100,000 push ups I did in 2023. And now I'm I'm up to about 400 push ups a day and I'm doing somebody weight squats and you know maybe anywhere from 15 to 30 pull ups a day.
So I'm doing body weight exercise and if I were to look at my fat, protein, carb breakdown using a chronometer, I would probably be somewhere around 80 to 90% carbs, 5 to 10% protein, and five to 10% fat in my current state. Now when I was doing higher levels of protein, I was able to be somewhere around 30% protein by consuming the high protein sprouts. The mung bean sprouts, the pea sprouts, the the garbanzo bean sprouts, the lentil sprouts were very much higher levels of protein.
But right now what, you know, the way that this machine is presently running, it's doing much lower levels and of protein and fat and higher levels of this active vegetable part. And it's the first time I've ever been shredded. I feel, I know we're doing audio only, but I feel like taking off my shirt for you because I'm in this shredded state and I know
you want to be the leanest guy. And you know our our, our mutual friend Ben Greenfield, you know, he, as you mentioned, he tries a lot of different things, but he's eating broccoli sprouts and he's eating garbanzo bean sprouts and he's adding them to his smoothies and he's adding them, you know, to the salads
that he's eating. So what I love about sprouts is that they can fit into a high protein diet and they could fit into every other diet because you can literally dial in the specific sprouts that you're looking for based on the nutritional profile. Yeah, and I would imagine like the if you're just eating the sprouts and not the seeds that come with it, I mean your your fiber intake's gonna be higher, but like you're not consuming that many carbohydrates.
Well, I guess you know you are. That's predominantly your entire diet. But if someone's just using this as an add on to their diet, they can just have that as a as a vegetation source and they. Won't be consuming that. They're great. They're a great vegetation source. And when you sprout, for
example, you, you know lentils. When you're sprouting lentils, you're doubling the antioxidant levels and you're tripling the vitamin C and you're lowering the lectins, you're lowering the phytic acid and you're lowering the enzyme inhibitors. So you're able to get this very fine-tuned part. But I would say most of my carbs, like if we look in the ratio, comes from eating fruit. So if you're eating a lot of fruit, you're getting the high carbs.
The sprouts are very neutral, and if you're looking at the more concentrated protein ones like you know, a soy gets a very bad name. Like for some reason, you know, people like to mock soy, but the nutritional profile, you know of
a soybean is very high. I'll just open it up right now of soy soybeans and when you sprout the soybeans, but you know once one, One Cup of soybeans raw, right, it's 830 calories, 37 grams of fat, 25% saturated fat, no cholesterol, low sodium, 4G of sodium, incredible levels, three, 3422 milligrams of potassium. It has a good amount of carbs, right as 56 grams of carbs, but it has 68 grams of protein and it also has, you know, 162% of the iron, 51% RJ of calcium and
130% of magnesium. So, you know, they're really powerful, you know, when you think about that. And to me, the only soy that I will eat are soy sprouted soybeans because the sprouted soybeans, you know, are this nutritionally active body. So when you sprout them, you're shifting the the whole profile to make them more bioavailable. But it's very, very interesting to find out. Like no one would have ever believed that you could get all of this, you know, protein and even fat in a bean.
Yeah, now I know one of the knocks from, you know, against plant based nutrition from a a protein source is that a lot of the the plant sources lack a complete amino acid profile and a lot of people will make up for that by just having, you know, different variations of different plants to complete that amino acid profile. I guess you could do the same
thing with the sprouts. Yeah, I mean it's it's very interesting and I think that information is also biased because the the latest research the you know that's coming out you know from on this on the sprouts and other vegetables is that they're all vegetables have all amino acids to form complete profiles. They have them in varying levels. So it's not as divinely perfect as one would look at, you know, if you're looking at a piece of,
you know, grass fed beef. But the reality is they all have the the complete amino profile, amino acid profile. It's just a matter of getting, as you said, enough of them in variety, which is also important for the microbiome. So how much are you looking and and at microbiome as a consideration in the diet? Me personally. Yeah. Quite a bit.
I mean, I don't eat much vegetation, but I mean your body's able to create butyrate through other means besides just consuming prebiotics and probiotics. I mean like when fatty acids breakdown, you're able to get butyrate through that delivery vehicle. I mean, I consume hardly any vegetation currently. I'll go through periods where I'll have some periods where I don't have much at all. I'll kind of play around with carnivore, carnivoresque diets, but then there'll be times where
I'll have some vegetation. But honestly I just focus more so on how I feel as well. I feel like I've got a very robust digestive tract and I haven't had any issues from a GI standpoint since keeping things pretty simple with a an animal based diet. But you know, to each their own. Like, I'm I'm not knocking anybody that finds better success from a GI standpoint by including a much higher variety of vegetation. And Robert, how long have you
been doing this? About eight years now, I guess. And and how much are you in the gym now? Every day. Every day. Are you? Are you? Are you? Do you have a rest day or you're just working different parts of the body? Yeah, different parts of the body. I'll sometimes have one rest day a week, but I'm pretty active. Like I'm we've we've got some land, so if I'm not in the gym training I'm out driving fence posts or working animals or
something. So I'm active seven days a week, but I may not be in the gym, but six days of those. And are you Are you competing or what? What's your goal of your workouts? Yeah, Yeah. So I just finished the competition prep. I I competed all throughout 2023, did 5 competitions, and then now I'm in the reverse that
phase. So right now I'm basically just bringing my calories up, focusing on putting on more lean tissue, getting stronger, and building more muscles that next time I compete I'll be bigger and better than I was this last time. Wow and and when? When does competition start? So I take several years off in between competition season. I mean, it's very taxing on the body hormonally, metabolically, psychologically to go through a
prep. So I typically take a few years off in between competitive seasons so that I can put on more lean tissue, especially as a natural athlete. I mean, if you're not using performance dancing drugs and you're a mature lifter, your body doesn't put on a ton of lean tissue year after year. So I mean, it takes quite a bit of time. So I want to look markedly better every time I step on stage. So I'll typically take two 3-4 years off in between competitive cycles. Oh, how old are you now?
32. 32 Wow And are you doing this work? So the work you do, are you working on the farm or do you ever put on a a a suit and go to the office? What's your day like? Yeah, I'm a I'm in the office a lot. I wake up early, I work on the computer quite a bit. We make a meal replacement bar. I do podcasting, a lot of content creation. So yeah, I'm I'm pretty much. I have a computer more often than not, But when I'm not at a computer I'm either in the gym or on the farm. All right.
And in terms of the the the workouts, do you have a trainer or like how are you, how are you chiseling your physique, so to speak? I know I've been my own trainer for as long as I can remember. I I pretty much do all my own training, all my own nutrition. I I coach others.
I am a trainer for others. But the things that I'm doing, I'm kind of, you know, tip of the spear, figuring them out as I go, testing new things, experimenting with things, and then basing my training and nutrition off of those experimentations. So I've developed my own protocol for nutrition around competition prep, and I'm I'm teaching others how to implement it, but I'm not gaining that from anybody, specifically because I kind of designed the
protocol, so to speak. That's interesting. And what is the heart when when you're working out, what's the hardest part for you of your training protocol? Honestly, man, I just love it. Like there's not really, like a lot of people struggle with motivation in the gym, but I I just love being in the gym. I love seeing changes take place. When you're in a prep and your calories are low, it's hard to push yourself and recovery's hindered things of that nature. But it's all just part of the
process. I I I don't really have a a part that is dreadful. And there's. I mean, everything that I do, I look forward to. So when, when, when you're lifting, do you have a do you have someone there spotting you or are you pushing yourself to failure? Yeah, yeah. So I've got one of my employees comes in with me in trains in the morning, So often times work out with him and we'll spot each other when we're getting into our failure sets. But a lot of it you could do solo as well.
I do a lot of dumbbell work, so spotting is less of an issue with that. But when I'm doing heavy barbell work and I'm going to failure, I'll have my employee there. And how's your flexibility? Pretty good man, pretty good idea. One of my signature poses when I compete is the split. So pretty, pretty flexible, I feel. Wow, so you do a full split? Yep, Yep. Wow, have you seen Juju, Juju Mufu? I have not see a competitor. I don't know if he's a competitor.
He's a he's a like a a kind of a Acrobat guy but he's extremely flexible and and he got his fame. I think he went on America's Got Talent and he did a split, you know, with must have been, you know, 135 lbs or 225 lbs on a dumbbell on 2 chairs splitting. Nice. Yeah. Flexibility is important, man. A lot of bodybuilders get a bad rap because people just assume they're not flexible. And some of them aren't
flexible. But flexibility, Mobility, longevity, these are all things that I want to make sure that I'm working into my training regimen. So that's all stuff that I try to prioritize. And and you're doing, do you do any cardio, Yeah. Yeah, I'll do cardio. I don't do as much in a building phase, but I'll do cardio certainly when I'm cutting down, I'll do Stairmaster for cardio. I also do like a lot of running and hiking and backpacking, things of that nature.
I do a lot of hunting out West, so that's pretty, pretty cardio intensive as well. And and what's your height? I AM 57 and 1/2. So, so you're very, very solid and and what's your present weight like 151 Sixty? I got down to 151, was my lightest in competition. On stage I was like 155. Currently I'm about 170. Oh, OK, so in the offseason, you're bulking up? Yeah, yeah, you gotta put on, I mean, 'cause I get down to 3.9%
body fat in my my competition. So you can't really sustain that indefinitely from a hormonal or or a metabolic standpoint or health standpoint. So yeah, I'm I'm putting on more body fat now, putting on more lean tissue now and my walking around weight in the building phase is usually between 170 to 180 somewhere in that window. And what's your end goal? What's motivating you? Be the best I can be man every single day. Be the best I can be.
Get better every single day, both with the training, the nutrition and the one I'm able to put out for the public to to benefit them from. Add more value than I take you know. Yeah. And where are you physically based? I'm in Northwest Arkansas. Isn't that you where you grew up? Or how did you get to Arkansas? Yeah, pretty much. Grew up in Arkansas. I was born in Minnesota, but grew up in Arkansas. Bounced around a little bit, moved in, lived in Washington
state for a while. That's where I met my wife. Brought her back to Arkansas. And we just love it here in the Ozarks, ma'am. It's a beautiful country. That's that's really, that's really incredible. And so are are you growing? Where do you get so you're not eating a lot of vegetables. Are you open to seeing what it's like eating a lot of sprouts? Yeah, I mean I, I, I try
anything. So we have a, we've got like a little homestead operation now, so we're raising you know, sheep and we've got chickens, We're going to get some pigs and some cattle eventually, but we have a garden as well. So, but I like the idea of sprouting food because it has such a quicker, a faster turn around than you know a traditional garden. So that would make sense for sure. Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know it, it sounds like you're very disciplined. Yeah, discipline is the key
thing. And were you in the military? No, no military. I just anything that I've ever seen success with in life has come from doing hard things and being disciplined in doing those hard things. So the bodybuilding embodies that. The business and entrepreneurship embodies that. And just discipline has been a pinnacle and a pillar for every success I've seen since I started seeing any success in life. So I definitely, I'm an advocate
for discipline. Wow. And what do you you, what do you love outside of working out like that? That motivates you, you know, totally out of the the workout world. What do you enjoy? I love businessman, like business, entrepreneurship, community, building, networking, creating something with my own two hands and offering it to people and just being a part of something bigger than myself is is very motivating and I think business is a great vehicle to
accomplish that. And honestly that the homesteading that we've been doing, I really love that. Like we plugged into the homesteading community around here. We're we're talking with people about, you know, how to properly raise animals for meats, how to have chickens for farm fresh eggs, how to grow gardens. Like just becoming more self-sufficient from the ground up, I think has been really, really fulfilling as well. Wow. And you have one.
You have one boy. Yep, Yep, we got one son at the moment. We'll probably have more in the future, but just just the one right now. And how old is he? He's about to turn 2. Oh wow, he's just a little older than I've got an 18 month old daughter. Yeah, he's he's the best man. I I love him to pieces. And it's cool with him, too, because, like, we've prioritized his health and nutrition, like we were on top of my wife's nutrition before she ever even
got pregnant. All throughout her pregnancy, all the stuff that we feed him and he's just growing perfectly. Everything is developing just fine. His mental acuity is on point. Like, it's just cool to know what I know about nutrition to be able to provide that for future generations. What was your feeling on breastfeeding? I mean, that's definitely the the optimal way to go as opposed to the alternative of, you know, bottle feeding. Granted, some people can't
breastfeed. There's a lot of, you know, a lot of debate on that, but not going the formula route, if given the possibility or given the option has been key. I mean, Crystal, my wife breast fed up until just recently, so pretty much two years old and you know, he's been eating real food since day one. So his his nutrition has been on point from the very beginning. Wow, are you homeschooling or is he in play? Like, how is he developing with other kids? Yeah, we'll probably do
homeschool. I mean, he's just two now, so we haven't started that yet. But he, he's great with other kids. I mean, he's super inquisitive, very well versed and just, you know, manners and how to behave around other people. He's very observant, takes everything in, learns very quickly, picks up on words and meanings very quickly. So yeah, I'm pretty excited to start the Schooling chapter with him for sure.
Yeah, I mean, look, I think that, you know, you're watching how he's developing, you know, every day, you know, there's some other clue, some other scales. Like, I'm watching my daughter, you know, she climbed up a rock in a rock climbing wall yesterday for the first time. And, you know, she was so determined and she'd never done it before. And you know, she's using, you know, her hands in new ways and she's using her feet and she's
using her knees. And as I'm talking to her, you know, and I'm coaching her, she's listening. So there's all of this growth going on, which is exceptional, you know, to see and you know if I, if I translate that into the sprouting world, like that's what's happening. Like when you're doing the sprouts, you start off with a seed that looks like it could be a Pebble or something. And then before you know it, you know it's this green leafy vegetable that has a whole new, you know, dynamic.
And what I can tell you, you know, and you could still stay in ketosis on this like if you just did a day of, you know, you might you you you probably wouldn't be getting the, the Calor the calories you need, but you'd certainly get lean. But it would be really interesting for you to sprout, you know, and do a day of sprouted alfalfa and sprouted, you know, green peas and sprouted broccoli, broccoli sprouts and sprouted lentils, you know.
And since you're disciplined and many people aren't disciplined, you know, you could make sure you're getting, what are you eating, about 3004 thousand calories a day. Yeah, probably about 4000 calories a day on average right now, So quite a bit. Yeah, so if you could have the discipline to just eat, you'd probably have to eat about 16 cups of vegetables. So you'll probably have the most epic poop you've ever had in your life.
But you would, you could stay with low carb and keto on that formulation, but the the energy you're feeling because you are alive like you're an electric energetic body, there's no question about the electrical impulses that are flown through the body when you're consuming the sprouts. It's just a whole new level and I think would be fascinating for
you to experiment with that. And you know, we can talk offline on how to get set up, but I would say with just two or three sprouting jars and like the protein mix and some of the salad mixes, you know, you could totally keep, you know your focus you know on, on keto and on the sprouts. Yeah, I mean, I'm not opposed to incorporating that into my my dietary protocol. I probably wouldn't have that exclusively. I would probably have that in tandem with the meat that I'm eating.
Like I eat a ton of meat, but I don't think there would be any mutually exclusivity factor at play there. Like, I don't think there would be any inherent benefit for not having the meat if you had the sprouts. No I I. I wouldn't. I wouldn't discard you from having your your meat. I would just say from an experiment of just seeing how you feel like the lightness factor because you are already tuned in so you know how you feel. So you know, it would just be interesting to feel the
lightness. Like I almost feel like I'm walking around in a levitating state because I'm, I'm light, I'm five, like I'm 5 foot 10 and I'm 151 right now. And you know, last year and obviously I was the same 5 foot 10, but I was like 180. So I really kind of shredded and shedded all of the extra fat. That I've been carrying around my waist, Around my waist for, you know, 20-30 years.
I'm 57 years old. I had all this fat around my waist and my ass and you know, all that just left, you know, when I started to pay attention, you know, to getting more of the sprouts into the body and I had the energy to do the workout. And unlike you, I don't enjoy the workouts. Yeah, like I enjoy the business. You know, I enjoy spending time with my daughter. But the workout, it is total grit and discipline for me because I don't love it. You know? I do it because I have to do it.
And you know, I want, like it's important for me to be physically, mentally, spiritually in shape. So I do it for that reason, but I don't love it. Like it's much more. It's much easier to sit on my butt and be on the phone. Yeah, so right. So I gotta force myself to do it and. Do do you have any idea what your caloric intake has been like to drop that much weight? I'm just, I know you're not
tracking. Yeah, no, I think, I think, I I think I dropped my caloric intake to about 2000 calories. OK. So you went from 180 to 150 and you're still eating 2000. Did you modulate that much that that time or do you just pretty much drop straight to 2000 and just have held that consistent? Well, I increased my my workout, right? I I increased you know, to me like I I do the, I do my push ups almost like a cardio workout, but I do them till exhaustion.
So I do sets of up to 70 push ups till I can't even move, right, And then and then I'll do a 70, then a sixty, then A50, and I spread them out, and then also by increasing the cardio. But what allowed me was just I used to eat more fat, I used to eat more oils. And a lot of like the people that are doing the raw food diet, you know, they're eating a lot of a lot of oils, a lot of avocados and those things. And I just let those go, 'cause I like them too much.
So that was also, you know, the grid to say, hey, how can I do increase my sprout content? But you know, 1 cup of the garbanzo bean sprouts is 250 calories, right? So if I'm having eight cups of the sprouts, you know, I'm getting 2000 calories. Like it's that. It's that clear. But when you start to add other stuff on top of it and you're more sedentary, you know, and you're not burning it off, you know, it just turns into fat, you know, and a bad fat and slows you down.
I'd be super curious if like you could take some DEXA scans to have a proxy for what your, you know, lean tissue has done as you've gone from you know periods of higher intake to lower intake exclusively eating sprouts. Like I'd be curious to see what that's doing. I mean you're you're training your your progressive overloading, your your push ups, your your body weight squats and all that, which is great. But like if that was held relatively constant, I'd be curious to see what your lean
tissue does over time. If you're eating, you know pretty much exclusively sprouts and fruit. Yeah, yeah, look, you know my my nutritionist suggested the DEXA scan. So which one do you recommend? Do I do the full, the full set or or the light one? I would definitely do like the full body. I mean there's there's two main brands for the DEXA scans, GE and I forget the other one off the top of my head and there's going to be a little variance with it.
But generally speaking they're much more accurate than like an in body machine which is going to have a fluctuation based off of fluid retention and that would be great too. I mean you could do an in body machine that'd be more accessible to you. So you could do something like that on a somewhat regular basis. But I would definitely be curious to see what your lean tissue does over time as you have you know exclusive, you know Sprout as your as your primary intake.
Yeah, let me just find. So the IT looks like there's a company nearby body spec. Yeah, yeah. That has track muscles gain and loss. Yeah. Body specs, right? Body Yeah, body spec DEXA scans are are the one so. Yeah, jump on that. And they're, I mean they're pretty reasonably priced. You can do that you know every every three months or so would be a pretty good proxy if you got in a DEXA scan every three months and you can kind of see
what your lean tissue is doing. You know we're not getting any younger. So the more we can do to preserve that lean tissue as we age as key and I would just be curious to see if you're eating exclusively sprouts and fruit, what what that does to things over time. Yeah, I'd be very. I'd be very happy to to share that you know, and see how we can, you know, optimize, because, you know, I'm very happy to be a science project. Yeah, me too. Me too.
Well, talk to me a little bit about the, the, the whole process. Like if somebody's listening to this then OK, I want to, I want to grow some sprouts. Like, what does that look like? They buy some some Mason jars, put some water and see in there, flip them upside down like, how's that look? Yeah. So you know, it used to be pretty rogue. Like people have been sprouting in jars for hundreds of years.
And So what I did was, you know, when I was writing all the book, when I was writing the book and I was sprouting in those stages, it was very hard to get the right equipment. So, you know, I'm a very curious guy and I knew what I wanted to do. So basically I put together a few people, you know, and some designers and figured out how we could get our own, you know, product. So we formed, you know, we bought every product on the
market. We ran it through the lab and we said this is good, this isn't good. How do we take it further? And so we made, you know, a company called the Sprouting company and the product is very simple and very elegant, but it's a glass jar. It's a stainless steel filter that's used as a screen. And then with that, there's a stand and a drip tray. And the most important part is the seeds.
So, you know, we sourced alfalfa seeds, broccoli seeds, lentil seeds, peas, mong beans, and then made some blends. So there's a salad blend and there's a protein blend so that people can make it easy to have the formulations. And you so you get the seeds comes with the measuring cup.
So there's 1/4 cup. So which looks like, you know, a heaping scoop of protein powder that you add in and you take that scoop of seeds, you put it into the jar, you soak them overnight and then you rinse them, you know, with the best water you have. You know I'm using filtered water. And then you put them in the stand. And the protein sprouts you can start to eat in, you know, two to three days. The vegetable other sprouts, you can eat in three to seven days.
And you're literally getting the sprouts fresh from the, you know, from the jar. And you can have a countertop garden and growing your own crop. So right now in my setup, I've got 8 jars going, but I started with one and then I just started to build And you know, I do intermittent fasting. So I start to eat the sprouts around noon and then, you know, I close my feeding window around 6:00 PM. Well, I'm on your website now and I definitely like the look of it.
It looks super clean the the sprouting kit looks very streamlined which which I like. So if I'm if I'm wanting to consume, you know, a substantial meal from sprouts, you know, like if I want to like have a, you know, a 2 lbs of steak and then throw some sprouts in there with it. I would need to have probably a jar for each day of the week basically, and then just kind of have that rotation basically right? Yeah, I mean you could start
small and grow. So what I would suggest is you know if you got one, you know one jar will give you 6 servings, you know of sprouts to just increase your phytonutrient content. And you know, you could also do a jar a day and that would be 6, you know, 6 jars based on a six day crop. And that's the, you know where you'll get to. They don't take a lot of space in the countertop and you know, it's interesting, you know how
fast they grow. But I could tell you the they taste great, plain and unseasoned, and they make anything that you're eating more nutritious. And is there like, I know you've got an app as well, Does that app show like the nutritional breakdown of a serving of whatever variety of sprouts I was to purchase? I can double check on the nutrition there. We're right now working with the labs on getting the full profile because we were using USDA data and it wasn't as comprehensive.
And what I'm finding, and this is kind of I consider it a real miracle, is that the sprouts have a different nutrition profile every single day. So from day one to day 2 to day three, the the profiles changing. So I want to start getting a a very fine granular level of specificity around every spout on every day so I can answer that more accurately because right now I think if there's any data we have, it's just more generic.
That would be super cool. Like if I can look into an app and say, OK, I've got this strain of sprouts growing right now, this weight of this. You know, if I would probably measure it by the way I put on a food scale or something. OK, so this Oz quantity of sprouted alfalfa on this day yields this nutritional breakdown like that would be pretty pretty insightful, pretty interesting.
Yeah, I I think you'll love it. I mean, you know, it looks like you're a scientist, you know, working on your own body and the fine tuning and you know, if you want to be really lean I think and and healthy, right, because it'd be lean and not healthy. I think the sprouts will really kind of fit right into your, into your former, into your framework. Well I just love being self-sufficient man.
So the honestly, the fact that you can, you know, grow them relatively quickly with nothing more than a jar and some water, you don't even need like sunlight or anything like that. So how's that work? They work without sunlight at all. Yeah, I mean basically the miracle of sprouting is that these seeds are complete living organisms living in a dormant state and the in nature.
You know I would imagine that an animal you know would be eating a fruit or eating a pod or eating the the vegetable and then the seed would go through the digestive tract of the animal and then would be pooped out. And then you know in the in the waste would be like a compost and then from the waste and from the soil it would sprout out.
So the seed itself contains an endosperm and an embryo and this concentrated, aggregated nutritional source so that it's able to grow from zero to about seven days without the without fertilizer, without soil and other inputs beyond water, carbon and oxygen. Very cool. Out of curiosity, are you? You said you're not eating any any meat right now. Is there a particular reason for that? You just feel good without it. You know, for for me, I grew up eating meat, you know, and I I
ate a lot of meat. And you know, when I, when I, when I did my first shift into eating plants, I felt liked, you know, it almost felt like I was high. And that feeling when whenever I would introduce anything, even cooked, by the way, you know, I'm eating raw fruits and vegetables, so I'm not even eating cooked vegetables. So I'm eating this raw stuff and it makes me, you know, mental
clarity, energy, clarity. So I feel that anything, you know, cooked anything's kind of weighs me down, slows me down and you know, look, whatever research you read and I could tell you this for sure that whatever your information you are seeking, you will find 100. Percent. If you want to find the good information about vegetables, you'll find it. You want to find the good information about sprouts? You'll find it. You want to find bad information.
You'll find you know things of people say it's the worst, vegetables are the worst. They've got anti nutrition. They're trying to kill you. And you know where I panned out was I want to have a low carbon footprint and you know you're homesteading so you're, you know right there on the self-reliance. So turns out I'm in the desert. I can grow, you know, normal vegetables here. You can't, you know, you can't have cattle, can't have chickens. You know, the coyotes here,
look, you know, so frail. I just feel bad for them. I don't know if you eat coyotes. So it just didn't resonate with me, you know, anymore. Like one day, you know, I guess, you know, my mom had stomach cancer. My father had heart disease. My uncle had a heart disease and died. My aunt had Type 2 diabetes and they chopped off both of her feet. And, you know, her diet was kind of candy bread, pizza, pasta, you know, and meat. And so, you know, it's hard to
isolate. I can't point to a single thing, you know, that that looks at it. But I think from the large bodies of research that I looked at, that came to me that said, the healthiest food for my longevity would be living fruits and vegetables and sprouts. And sprouts are 20 to 100 times more nutrient dense than mature vegetables. So that really motivated me to consume more sprouts than other vegetables. Yeah, that that's an interesting
fact for sure. Like, do you getting much more concentrated nutrition from the sprouts than you would from the food once it reaches maturity, which is, which is, like I said, super interesting. Are you adding any sauces or seasonings or anything to these? Or are you just opening up the
jar and going to town? I've added a lot and when I have other people coming by, you know my staple dressing is made from tahini, you know, which is high protein and high calcium based and fermented miso and and fermented sauerkrauts. So I would use ferments along with the tahini to make a dressing, you know, with lemon as an assiduant. But basically, I like to eat the sprouts plain. Like, I took a drive yesterday from LA and I ate a pound of
sprouted green peas. You know, right out of the jar. You know, on the way home, the way other people would be eating popcorn. Yeah, I definitely think not eating the processed foods, the carb like the the junk carbs, the sugars, the popcorn, I think, I think we're in agreement that that's probably not optimal. So I'm all for swapping out popcorn for some sprouted
sprouted greens. Yeah, I think, I think it makes a lot, I think it makes a lot of sense and I think you could you could do it. I'm I'm really excited, you know, to see you, you know, experimenting with the sprouts. Yeah, no, I mean, like I said, I we we've got a garden, we'll we'll do some homesteading. I don't need a ton of vegetation, but when I do, I would. I would much rather eat something that I've grown myself and know where it's come from for sure.
And I like the idea of being able to have a quick turn around as opposed to fooling around in a garden for months on end, so that the idea of sprouting certainly appeals to me. I would definitely be putting it on the plate beside a big old juicy grass finished steak though, as opposed to in isolation only eating sprouts personally. But yeah, I'm excited to give him a shot, man.
Yeah, well, look, I think, you know, when you eat the sprouts, they're very, you know, you're going to like the freshness and you're going to like the texture. And you know, the it'll be up to you whether you want to eat more of them or less of them. So I don't tell people what to do. I encourage them to eat them. But from a profile perspective, you know if you're going to eat vegetables, you know my goal is to have the most nutritious, dense vegetables you can get. No 100% man, 100% so.
So where do people go to find out more about your company and dive into the sprouting game if they so choose? Yeah. So I'm on Instagram, you know under my name Doug Evans and the sprouting company is you know that's the the, the name of it, the sprouting company on Instagram, the website isthesproutingcompany.com and Tiktok is the sprouting company and. You know, I encourage people just, you know, be sprout, curious, and see how it feels. But this is, you know, what I
consider nature's first food. No, for sure, man makes sense. Well, I I definitely will give it a try. I I like trying anything, so I'll certainly give it a try for sure. So I'm excited to to start sprouting some greens and we'll see how it goes, man. I can't thank you enough for taking the time and enlighten me
enlightening me on the sprouts. Hey, well, look, I have a lot of respect for you and you know, I I looked at your body and I'm, I'm saying I don't want to ask him if he's a natty. So the fact that you came forth because I think the, you know, performance enhancing drugs are, you know, very dangerous and toxic. They are. They are a lot of people. I mean, I'm not one to judge, but there's a lot of people getting into the sport for the wrong reasons and not paying any mind to true health and
longevity. And if you start going down that route and abusing those drugs, it's not often times going to bode well for you. So I've always tried to figure out the best way to go about things naturally for the long haul, and I haven't felt any need to deviate from that thus far. So I have no intentions of doing so do. They test you. Do you perform in competitions with people on PEDs? Yeah, I certainly have. I try and compete predominantly
in natural federations though. So those they test every, every competitor, they polygraph every competitor and then if you win, they do a urinalysis test on you. They've got random drug tests throughout the year. So yeah, all of my federations are drug tested. Terrific. Well, I think that's good. Well, anyway, Robert, you are a savage. You're doing great stuff, and I'm so glad that you took the time to learn about sprouts this morning.
Hey, my pleasure, Doug. I really appreciate the insight. I will certainly give it a shot, see if I'm if I've got a green thumb when it comes to the sprouts, and if there's everything I do for you, man, just let me know. OK, I appreciate. I think you're going to be a Sprouting master. Well, if I have any questions, I'll certainly know who to turn to. OK my friend. Take care. Take care. Bye, bye. Yeah.