Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com. Today I've got special guest Nick Weary on the line. He is a competitive eater and he is absolutely killing. I've never had a competitive eater athlete on the podcast. So super interesting story, super interesting sport. He was a competitive bodybuilder initially and then from that that catalyzed him into becoming a competitive eater. He's been doing that for seven plus years.
He just got none eating like the tremendous insane amount of hot dogs. He's got a blueberry eating contest coming up. He's eaten 70 plus Bratwurst, you know, multiple doughnuts, cream pie, all kinds of crazy stuff, but kind of diving into what got him into that sport, how that sport is conducted, how he trains and prepares for that. Talk a little bit about metabolism, talk a little bit about hunger and satiety signalling. Very interesting conversation, very thought provoking, very
insightful. I've got no doubt he will take something from this and the world of competitive eating. So without further delay, sit back, relax, enjoy the conversation with Nick and we're live. Nick, how are you, brother? Can't complain man, I have a pretty good day so far. Just kind of getting over Nathan's on the 4th and just ready to move on to the next contest. Love it.
I love it. Well, I have had people from all different competitive backgrounds on the podcast, Bodybuilders, endurance athletes. But you are the first competitive eater I've had on the podcast. So what is that exactly? So I travel all over the United States and the world, I guess, you know, just doing different eating contests, typically between 6:00 and 12:00 minutes occasionally like charitable components and, and things like that. And basically we'll line up food of choice.
Like for example this weekend will be blueberries in 5 LB bowls and see who can finish the most blueberries in eight minutes. For example this weekend. So I'm assuming that'll probably be somewhere between 13 to 20 lbs will be the winner this weekend. That's insane, man. So what I want to get, you know, all the nuts and bolts uncovered here because this is all new to me, but what, what compelled you to go the route of competitive in that what, what is the catalyst for that sport of
choice? Oh, that's tough. And I think everybody, we always joke around that like you don't find competitive eating, it finds you. I think it's kind of like if you're 6 foot 10, somebody's going to put you on a basketball court, you know. So for me, I was a competitive bodybuilder for about 10-11 years, you know, and, and my body weight went from starting around 162 all the way up to around 24242.
My heaviest wasn't pretty 242, but I was up there and you know, to to gain that 80 ish pounds obviously took a a good amount of food and increasing appetite and food capacity. So after I stopped bodybuilding, or at least competitively, my appetite kind of became a running joke amongst my friends and and they're like, hey, dude, what is wrong with you? And they're like, what do you mean?
You know, I didn't realize and they encouraged me to enter with a punch key eating contest, like pull a Shelly Donuts around Fat Tuesday. And I said no. And they said, but you can win money. You get free Donuts and they're raising money for a sick little girl. And I'm like, OK, I'm in, I'm in. And I went and and I won handily. And then things just kind of spiraled from there because like, I love winning. I like money and I also like free food and I love raising
money for charity. So it was, it was a nice, you know, perfect storm. No totally man. So, so you and I have the the bodybuilding background as common ground there. And as most bodybuilders would know, like when you get down in a prep and you're depleted, your body fat slow, your leptin and ground hormones are all kinds of jacked up. When you come out of that prep, you're pretty much insatiable. Like I can put down 10,000 calories on a whim, no big deal post competition.
And you're pretty much doing that outside of competitive season, which is, that's what I kind of want to figure out 'cause like when you're in a bodybuilder prep, I mean, that just kind of comes to the territory. There's, there's significantly more bodybuilders with some form of disorder eating than not. I would say would probably agree. Oh yeah, Oh yeah, 100%.
You know, especially, you know, male and female side of things, depending on coaches, cause some coaches, you know, you, I'm sure you've seen it. We've all seen it. They don't care. They're going to get you lean one way or another. And by the time you get out of that prep, a lot of people, I know it's still looked as a theory, but believe in body fat's that point theory. So you spend the majority of your adult life around a similar body fat percentage. If you're not, you know,
competitive. And once you get fairly out of that, away from that, your, your body can actually block like satiety signals, you know, particularly when you're super lean, you know, so I, I know coming out of my prep, my last show was, I want to say 2018 Garden States. And I, you would eat almost to the point of you're not even aware you're eating, you're just doing it. And all of a sudden you realize, like, oh, I just ate a 4 LB bag of bird's eye, you know, broccoli to go along with my
full pound of chicken breast. And then I ate like 2 quarts of ice cream. And you're, you're almost like come to after that. And, and that was kind of my, my realization that my appetite had become insane. My capacity had gone up. So what I did realize when I got into competitive eating, like how am I going to maintain this? I don't want to say appetite because it's not all about appetite, but the ability to eat is I stay relatively lean year
round. You know, I don't have as many fluctuations as I used to have when I was competing. I was, there was pretty, pretty high fluctuations there. I would say other people would say I'm probably around like, you know, 10%. I'd say I'm close to like 12, but they kind of it, it depends on, on the week and, and once I get closer to Nathan's, I probably get closer to single digits, you know, maybe, maybe 9-8 and a half nine.
And and as you know, if you if you're sticking in single digits, you're going to be pretty hungry most of the time. So before you started competitive eating from like a caloric standpoint, like what would be your, you know, building phase calories? How low would you take those into prep? Like what were what were some of
those numbers looking like? So when I was when I was competing, I was always way more aggressive with myself and experimental than I would be with clients when I was prepping them because it was kind of like I could, I didn't feel bad about, you know, forcing calories or depleting calories. I would do it in a much healthier manner. So I don't condone any of this behavior. Just preface, my calories would get a low, probably below 1500
by the end of a prep. And that when I say below 1500, I mean it's below 1500. I'm still doing cardio. I competed NPC, so I was including things, you know, extracurricular to, to burn extra calories, whether that be high mass caffeine, ephedra, clenbuterol, what have you never used thyroid hormone or anything like that to, to shut that down.
But you know, and then over the counter things like grains of paradise and yo him buying HCLI would I would do upwards of like 15 to 20 milligrams a day, you know, so I was, I remember being freezing cold in my basement, pouring sweat on the bike, but I'm freezing cold, you know, so it was like I probably overdid it because I would do my own prep because I'm too, I never trusted anybody to do the press. So I always did it myself.
So they probably below 1500 by the end, probably 12 to 1400, which again, if you're an adult male, you probably don't need to get to that point. But I want to be inside out at the bowl at the peak of a quilt bulk, which the 242 is kind of sloppy. I, I could walk around the two 20s relatively lean to maintain around 220, probably around 4600 calories, 4700 calories 'cause I was also pretty active and mostly from, you know, I'm not a huge fan of the term, but clean
food sources. So traditional bodyguing foods like oatmeal, rice, chicken, eggs, a lot of those things, predominantly chicken 'cause I was always cheap, trying to save money, not a lot of beef and stuff. And I was competing. And what I would do was days I would train, my carbohydrates would be upwards of 600, seven, 100 grams. And protein probably somewhere closer to like 250 to 300, depending on the day.
And then fats would be relatively trace for that amount, talking like 50 grams, right? 60 grams, which like as you know, when you're putting together that many carbohydrates and proteins, that basically means you're incorporating no fats into your diet because that's just trace fat that are adding up there. And then days I wouldn't train. So like, let's say two days a week typically and an offseason, my fats would go upwards like
100 to 120 grams. I would have no starchy carbohydrates, only from the veg that would be included, and my protein would stay consistent. But I had pretty high fluctuations. And what I found was I felt much better 'cause when I tried to just do high carbohydrates and low fats, very quickly my body turned on me. I was like, yeah, dude, we need hormonal balance. This is not OK, you know? So it was not a good idea, but
it was. I was always kind of very aggressive with my experimenting with myself, but it it, I guess I could say it paid off in the long run. Yeah. And from like a a sheer food volume standpoint, like if you're eating 6-7 hundred, 800 grams of carbohydrates, like that's a lot of food volume. Like I could put down, you know, 4555 hundred calories relatively
easily from fats and proteins. But if I'm taking in 75% of my calories coming from fats, that's not near as much actual food volume as what you're getting. Yeah, yeah, because when it because like, you know, an average breakfast when because people a lot of times I know like particularly pro bodybuilders with a lot of in the social media age, people like to buffer what they eat and say, oh, I can eat 25,000 calories.
I could. None of them do for the most part, like having eaten that many calories in one sitting. I can tell you right now, I don't believe there's an IFBD pro in the world that could eat 25,000 calories without carefully planning it out and recording it with jump cuts. You know, that's that's way too much food for most normal humans. But yeah, like the oatmeal alone, you know, if you're doing 2 cups dry, that is a boatload of oatmeal once it's cooked, or like 3 cups cooked of rice along
with eight ounces of chicken. Most people just don't have the capacity to do things like that. So what ended up usually happening is I was taking in 600 grams of carbohydrates. I typically ate 6:00-ish times a day. If you include shakes around my training, probably 350 of those would be in the peri workout window, 350 to 400. So I was pretty aggressive with that window, not because I was, I wasn't on exogenous things to kind of, you know like insulin or anything like that to drive those.
But what I would do was I just had a very high belief in the nutrient repartitioning effect around training and believed I'd be the most efficient. And then I would kind of book at the end of my day a high carbohydrate day. If I had fats that didn't need to be traced, that's when they would be in the carbohydrates would would drop just to not really because I'm like, oh, you're going to store them
because it's night time. More so just to get my pancreas and break from the beating that it's been taking all day. No totally man makes total sense. So when you when you stopped competing or after these shows and your friends were compelling you to do a, a competitive eating contest, like do you think that you were struggling with some form of disorder eating and then the competitive eating was a way to leverage that to your benefit or what was
the the psychology behind that? I think it was the, the eating becomes disordered. I think it, I don't want to say it has to, that sounds terrible. But when bodybuilding gets to an extreme and you're pushing, you know, my body weight was 33% above what it was when I graduated high school.
When you start doing those things and you're trying to do things, whether you're natural or enhanced, like let's just say super physiologically, things your body doesn't want to do, basically, I think your behaviors need to be disordered and that sounds terrible. You know, and I think a lot of competitors be like, no, they don't.
It's like, well, look at anything done at a really high level or attempted to be done at a really high level, whether that's business or athletics or what have you. Those people typically aren't socially super normal, you know, because you have to change. I think that's why sidebar, I think that's why Michael Jordan will be looked at as a, a better winner than LeBron James or maybe a better basketball player, because I don't think LeBron is a killer and a bad
human being. Or then Michael, like compared to Michael Jordan, you know, I think he's, I think he loves his kids. I think he loves his wife. I think he wants to be involved with his with his friends and his family. And I think that makes him lesser on the court, to be honest, which sounds weird and
terrible. But so for me, yeah, it was probably slightly disordered in my behaviors, whether it was just obsessing about the next meal or I was probably sleeping on average 3 1/2 to four hours a night, tops. Some garbage sleep. And some of that came with the weight and some of that came with other things. So if you're awake 20 hours and you're constantly pretty lean. And I remember coming out of a few preps and I had buddies that were like, dude, you need to put body fat on.
You need to start gaining weight. And I'm like, no, no, no, 'cause like once you, once you can grate cheese on your glutes, you don't want any fat back there. After a while, it's really hard to accept that, you know, was for me. So I think the competitive eating was mainly just, I think it was a byproduct of that. And also I'd played baseball competitively. I'd done bodybuilding a long time competitively.
It was like my first love. And now all of a sudden I was, I had a little bit of a gift at something, you know, I didn't have a great genetic predisposal for bodybuilding. I was very vascular, kind of gross looking, but I wasn't going to, I wasn't going to be winning nationals. And I was good at it and I could make money instead of spending money and I could still spend time with my kids and be dad.
And, and that was actually the biggest transition was I realized bodybuilding was taking away and I, I couldn't really do that anymore because my middle one, my now six year old was right around one. My daughter was right around 4. And I'm like, OK, I need to be around for a while. And, and this allowed me to do that. So yeah, I think, I think it's, it was a different transition, but somehow, somehow it worked. No, it's super cool man. And your wife does it with you too, right?
Yeah, she's so behind me in the dining room there are 10 giant pink belts cuz she is now after this weekend, the ten time Nathan's hot dog eating champion. So she broke her own record and aged 51 in 10 minutes. And yeah, so she's she's ranked, I believe 4th, 4th or 5th in the world. Yeah, Pretty, pretty insane. Very, very good. That's also a nice thing that we can kind of, we can do this together and you know, still be the just a very strange family. No, totally, man.
So, so when it comes to competitive eating, like I want to understand the actual nuts and bolts because like I can eat a lot of food. I think it comes to territory as a bodybuilder and I I look at why I'm hungry, what the tide is, things of that nature. But like from a competitive eating standpoint, like I'm sure there's a freaking science behind it, just like there is a bodybuilding. So like, what is the prep protocol?
What is the goal? Like when you're preparing for a a meat or a, what is it even called? The contest, I guess. Yeah, just contest. Just contest like what? What does the the prep work leading up to that consistent? I would assume that you'd want to to dip into some form of deficit, but at the same time you kind of want to condition your digestive tract to be able to withstand a bolus of food. Like how does that look like?
Yeah, so it's a, it's a tough balance, I'm not going to lie, because like obviously the day of a contest, if I'm going to eat 70 bratwursts, you're probably looking at, you know, somewhere between 10 and 14,000 calories depending on the brand.
And do you can't really, what I learned very quickly is my super high carbohydrate diet and very low fat diet wasn't going to work because I believe I can almost guarantee that my life based production was down after a lot of my bodybuilding because I would get reflux even just eating the most basic of digestible fats like avocado or peanut butters. And I had to kind of slowly almost reverse diet fats back
into my diet. And that wasn't going to work if you ate 70 drops worse and something like that. So that's part of it. And then the other part is like most days where at around 190 lbs right now, I could maintain probably at around 2800 to three, probably 3000 calories. I would maintain my weight if I wasn't going to have the insane surpluses. So most days I'd probably end up closer to 2500 with a practice every, let's say 10:00-ish days,
you know? So then I'm creating a 45145 hundred to maybe 7500 calorie deficit just via diet. And then occasionally I'll up my cardio going in or after a contest. Now obviously it's slightly leaner. I'll try to remove some of that subcutaneous layer of fat because that kind of allows my stomach to expand a little bit better and I'll feel a little bit better. And then I won't have to quote worry about the caloric surplus that I'm going to get battered
with in the contest. And the practice will pretty much be practice like you play. So in the case of Donuts, for example, we'll do five Donuts to a plate and I try to get ones that are, you know, gram for gram, similar to ones we're going to get in the contest with the plates out. I'm going to put 5060 Donuts out, set the time on the clock.
It's going to be for the contest or even maybe a little bit extra time so I can try to push through and then set up my, if it's a dunking contest, my dunking liquids. If it's not set up my drinking liquids and put some time in the clock and go, you know, it's it's and then maybe watch the footage back to see, OK, why was I slow or what went well, what was efficient? So for some people that might be swallowing larger pieces of food.
For some people that maybe you use too much fluid and you took up too much real estate in the actual bag that is your stomach. For some people, it may be you just didn't keep your hands moving. So appetite is a part of it. But The thing is, you're not going to want doughnut #60 you know, if you've already had 59. So appetite's not the biggest thing. The biggest thing I think is capacity for discomfort. I think it's huge. Ignoring flavor fatigue, I think it's enormous.
And then just who's the best prepared And, and there's, there is somewhat of a progressive overload aspect to it. So the first time I ever did brats, I think I did 43. And the next time I was in the 50s and the next time it was 70 and and that just came from overtime doing more and more contest. That bag has to extend if you if you keep pushing it, you know, to to its limits. So there there is some similar stuff to a progressive overload style training. So to be.
No, that makes total sense. So you're you're trying to operate at a relative caloric deficit with these training high days every 10 days or so to keep that kind of in your system and you're doing an actual competition how frequently? It's tough because you're like December, January, February, we might have like 3 total, you know, one a month or that once you get into April through by September we could have as many as like three or four in a month.
Usually I'd say it's close to like two a month. I I probably end up doing maybe 20 to 24 a year. Wow, that's crazy, man. And like as, as you and I both, there's not really money in bodybuilding unless you're like on the upper echelon there. Is there money like can you make a living competitive eating? Is that a thing?
You can so like my wife, for example, she's been fortunate enough where it's been her, you know, primary source, you know, if you come and she'd be able to like a living at it myself. It's a side source, you know. But with that said, I, I, I could tell you right now, I never thought I would have made the money I make off of eating food and stuff like that. And then you get some really cool stuff too.
Like I was in Thailand last year, getting paid to be in Thailand for a week or went to Milan, Italy for this or, or Toronto. And you're like, is this real life? Like, is this really, you know, happening right now? I know in bodybuilding no one's ever like, we're going to fly out to Thailand. Is it in for me? So it's I've been super fortunate to, to raise a ton of money for charity to get paid to
do this. You know, your average contest winnings, if you're the winner, usually like top six get paid, you're going to be anywhere between 2010 thousand for the winner. And then kind of it kind of halves all the way down. And then sometimes you get appearance fees or some people have sponsors. We're almost like our own, you know, NASCAR or independent contractor, so to speak. So so a lot of it's outside of
that. It's why I think why a lot of people have like their YouTube channels and what have you, because that's a different Ave. to maybe maybe competition is in your thing. Maybe you'd rather go eat a lot, but slowly so you don't have to go as fast or or whatever. So there are a few different avenues you can make money.
No, very cool, man, very cool. So it comes like the different types of foods, like independent of the actual competitions or training days in which you're eating the food that you're going to be consuming at the competition. What is your normal daily intake? Is it like like as far as types of foods goes, is it more like low carb? Is it more like a mixed diet? Like what is your? What do you gravitate too naturally? So now it's, it's much, much, much lower carbohydrates than it was.
I never really had issues. Like people always thought that the carbohydrates are super high. You're like, oh, what's your like, you know, resting blood glucose or like when you wake up and what have you. I've I've never even tested over 100, You know, which obviously it starts to get into danger zone, but you would think somebody just battering 700 grams of carbs of hydra, grams of carbs a day would have gotten up there. But I think staying lean definitely helps that staying
active. But for the most part, like my breakfast will typically be like 15 grams of veggie protein, like vegetarian from like pee and rice, 20 grams of whey isolate and two old pasteurized eggs, not mixed together obviously, but like something like that. And then usually like 3 to 4G of fish oil. So basically no carbohydrates other than a greens powder that I'll mix in the protein shakes, about negligible 3 grams of carbohydrates, something like
that in there. And then ashwagandha, rhodiola, few other supplements like that, saffron and you just try to have a pretty nutrient dense breakfast. And then throughout the day I'll typically do another way. I select shake. It'll typically have some type of nut butter. I really like sesame butter. I just love the flavor. And my I, I started getting it because they wouldn't let peanut butter in my kids daycare
because of allergies. And I'm like, so I got that they'd allow it and I'm like, wow, this is really good. This taste really good. So I started just stealing that from the kids stash with something like that, a way I slit shake and one other meal during the day will typically be like 8 to 10 ounces of chicken breast and a whole avocado. And then breakfast will typically be or excuse me, dinner will typically be maybe like a pound of grass fed beef
or bison. I really, really like when I can find it on sale like a game meets. I'm a huge fan of the leanness of that will vary. If I get a super lean cut and it was a training day or a yeah training day, I might incorporate carbohydrates there. It's a non training day. I'll typically use a fattier cut and incorporate like some spinach or something cooked into the side or just throw it in the blender and drink it and that's and then another dose of fish oil.
I like to do pretty heavy doses of Omega threes and then some more supplements on a training day. The way that's going to change is basically take the eggs out of the morning breakfast and have grits or cream or rice, maybe 30 to 50 grams intra workout carbohydrate. It's from like a carbolin or a something of that nature. Some type of easy to digest. Like I never did well with the tar go, but I was kind of set heavy with me in dextrose.
I feel it on my teeth and excuse me now and then EA as and creatine monohydrate. Then I'll do like a good amount of whatever the warm cereal is, post workout cream, rice grits pretty and then pretty much everything stays the same throughout the rest of the day. Maybe you know, the shake with peanut butter, maybe another whatever.
But so the biggest difference is basically the calories from fat will be replaced with a slightly more calories and they'll be replaced with carbohydrates on training days. So really I train probably four days a week now, like weight train. So three days a week, my carbohydrates are easily sub 100 grams by sub 60 grams most days. And then four days a week my carbohydrates are probably only about 200, which I understand that's not only to some people,
but for me, you know? And and it takes a good amount of restriction too, because bear in mind somebody can fit 20 lbs of something one time that does 200 grams of carbohydrates don't go a long way. Satiating me like I'm almost never satiated during the week. Normally until it gets closer to a training day it then it's just very very hungry all the time.
Yeah. I mean, I would imagine especially with you being as lean as you are, like you're, you're probably producing a pretty significant degree of ketones on your your off days from training when the carbs are super low. So I would imagine you're you're the body's fat metabolism is relatively on par with someone that's following a pretty well ketogenic diet. When you eat like that and then you crash 50 plus Donuts, you know like is that is that causing any massive GI distress
for you? Yeah, but I, I think I'm, I, I would like to see like a study done. I would love to go into like a, some type of university and, and kind of be a test monkey, so to speak and see like what happens with me compared to obviously you can't have a regular person eat 60 moon pies. But I would like to be able to check like, OK, when we gave a regular person this much food versus when we gave Nick this much food. How fast is like gastric emptying?
What's the hormone production? What's the enzyme production? Because I imagine I have to imagine doing this for seven years, I've formed some form of adaptation to that discomfort or even like my body is, it's not as foreign to my body to dump in, you know, 200 chicken wings or something of that nature. So there's definitely some discomfort. Some foods are worse than others.
Sweets can be pretty rough. Just your body can't produce basically enough insulin if you eat 9 1/2 lbs of fudge and or something like that, salty or savoury or fatty food, so to speak, they can be a little bit more rough just like reflux wise and what have you. And it's they're probably, they're definitely a little bit harder for your body to break
down like the meaty foods. But I think varying my diet and I take a pretty, pretty decently dosed prebiotic and probiotic supplement and enzymes around my contest and stuff. And then so I think keeping my GI track healthy and efficient is super duper important. That's, that's basically like doing oil changes in a car for, for a NASCAR driver or something like that. Do you feel like?
Like do you go train like weight train the day after a contest or like and if you do you notice like just typically pumps? Yeah, typically I will, depending on the contest, if it's a heavy meat contest, I'll typically do slightly more cardio and I'll, I'll, I'll weight train. But it's what I would refer to just pushing blood around almost like, you know, the day after a body blink show you're like you
don't want to tear something. So because typically that's still kind of sitting in my GI tract and pumps are OK. I just more so feel bloated because there's so much blood flow in my GI tract now after like Donuts, like 61 Donuts in DC and about 30 hours later, like later in the day, the next day I went and trained and I felt like I was going to burst, you know, like that was that was a pump and a half in, in my face, in my hands, you know, everything like really good
forearm pumps. So, so yeah, some days it's really, really solid. But but I've kind of just learned for me, there's always experimenting and what have you. So like this year I did some experimenting and going into a podcast, like how can I be not starving so that I can be efficient at the table? Because I still, it's crazy. What we do is you're still pushing your body to the limit for 6:00 to 12:00 minutes at a time.
And if you don't have any calories in there and you're completely faster, you have no electrolytes. Like things are not going to go well. Because I've tried, I've tried it. It's just not. So it's one of those things where, like you go to, you can feel yourself going slow and you're like, and here we go and go fast and your body's like, yeah, dude, no, I don't want to play. And so that's actually this year where I started incorporating kind of keto bricks into the mix.
And they really like kind of how things have been going. Yeah, like I said, I mean, I've talked to people from all different competitive backgrounds. I know people that use the bricks for all different competitive backgrounds, but when I, I don't even know how we got in contact, I guess to Instagram initially and you were using the bricks in preparation for these contests. And I never in a million years would have imagined that being a use case scenario. So like how, how do you do that?
Like what's? What's been the benefit there? So for me it's, it's like I want a decent amount of calories and I want my electrolytes and I also want to maintain mental focus, but basically have a virtually empty GI tract. That's my goal. And that's a really tough balance because it kind of doesn't add up. So for a long time, all that what I would do is about 24 hours out, give or take, I would drink some mag citrate, make sure everybody leaves the GI tract.
And then I would kind of live on, you know, Gatorades, coconut waters, things of that nature. And I'd absolutely love coconut water, especially like I think harmless hardest and and there's one more brand like those are insanely good. Coco Joy. That's the other one. I absolutely love it. But two things. If you drink a ton of coconut water, it leaves as fast as it goes in A&B, your blood sugar doesn't balance out great.
If you're doing it for 24 hours, you kind of get a good amount of peaks of valleys and in which case your focus is typically not as good as it should be. So I'm like, OK, how do I find that balance to where everything in my brain is firing efficiently, but I still have, I can maintain electrolyte balance and all that. And I, I think I came across them because Dominic d'agostino had posted and huge fan of DOMS.
Just as a human being, he's phenomenal and just he's insanely in hell yeah, dude's insane. Like he's the nicest guy ever, most soft spoken guy I've ever seen just go over and like a rip 675 off the ground like it's a toy and a pair of jeans and like a button down T-shirt. Yeah, yeah, you know, Oh, OK, you're you're superhuman. But he's I'm like, OK, if Dom recommends it, this is not going to be a guy who's going to just like chill Prada and whatever. It's because he truly believes in it.
So I'm like, let me give these a shot. Ordered a few, I think the first one I ordered was the steak shake one, the Mark Bell one. You know, I guess it's super interesting. I love the idea of some organ meats and stuff in there. And I got it and I'm like, OK, firstly, this tastes awesome because I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm like, is this going to taste like I'm eating, you know, like Palmer's cocoa butter like this
is really good. And I found is like, I could still, I, I still will drink maybe a, I'll take like mag citrate or magnesium glycinate. It just powdered now in a smaller, a much smaller dose. And I could do that maybe that let's say I was doing hot dogs at noon the next day, the night before, I could have maybe 20% of a brick. So get a couple 100 calories before I go to bed, wake up, still have a reasonable like bowel movement. And then I'll even melt like maybe a 10th of a brick, give or
take. Obviously I'm not measuring it out, but pretty damn close into my cough that I have in the morning and it just melts into the coffee And that flavour melted into coffee is like ridiculous. So good melts into the coffee drink that. And basically, obviously it's going to take up some form of room because that oil is going to slightly re solidify, you know, as it goes through. But almost no room in my GI
tract. And what I found is the ounce of space that maybe it takes up in my, in my intestine or my colon, the trade off to the mental focus I got the first time and not feeling like there's nothing in the tank. I felt faster, I felt more focused. And then, and again, if we listening to this, I'm not saying that there's something magic in the keto brick.
I'm saying it just fit perfectly for what I was trying to do because it it, it gave me that energy and it gave me, I still could have some like sodium, potassium, magnesium coursing through me and not feel like, OK, I woke up at 5:30 in the morning with my 2 year old. I'm dying by noon and want to rip someone's head off, but not in a positive competitive way like that. So it's just been, it's been
awesome for that. It's just that I, and I never would have expected it because obviously fats are going to process slightly slower than than carbohydrates. So the way I always thought is like how fast can they get something through my system? So it was always, you know, way isolates EA as and I still incorporate EA as basically with some electrolytes as I sip on them.
But by doing this, my insulin level staying steady just seems to put me in a much better mind state, almost even more important than ones doing physically at which obviously important mentally I feel much better and much clearer going into the contest. So you're literally having less than half a brick 24 hours prior to the contest.
And that's the use case scenario for you to kind of prime the pump, so to speak, but give you the electrolytes and just some form of easily digestible fat source that's given your brain and your body kind of like a primer for what's about to come. Yeah, I would say depending on the contest and what I'm going to do, like if it's what I would refer to as a non full capacity contest, like I know I'm not going to need all my my real
estate. I'll probably do closer to a whole brick and it's somewhere between half and a whole brick, probably where it's going to fall depending on how late in the day I'm going if we're traveling the contest itself. But just I just feel much better mentally. It, it just, it just pans out for me to be able to have that fuel that's not taking up any space. So for me, it's been absolutely phenomenal. And then it's if my 6 year old and my 6 year old is a string
being the kid eats constantly. The string being, it's also just been a great tool for him because he thinks he's basically effectively getting a chocolate bar. And I'm just giving the kids some healthy sources of fats and, you know, trace proteins and carbohydrates. And he's just psyched. So I'm like, OK, dude, perfect. You know, so he he uses it for different purposes, but but for me it's been been awesome in the prep itself. No. Very cool, man.
Very cool. Yeah, I feel like they from, from a competitive eating standpoint, I'd be curious to see the bricks be used as the item to consume. I mean, when it comes to food sources, I mean, you talk about blueberries here coming up, you talk about the hot dogs, the Bratwurst. Like what what is the, what is the, the most challenging component? Is it just like the total calories or the volume?
Like what? Cause like obviously the blueberries are gonna have significantly less calories in the Bratwurst, but quite a bit more volume. So like, how do you kind of you know what, what, what is harder? That's tough. You know, I think it depends on the person. Everyone's got different strengths and weaknesses, but I from what I've seen, there hasn't really been studies done on competitive eaters because we're kind of a pretty niche group.
But I would say there's some down regulation of receptors that sense calorie load because they're almost has to versus like mechano receptors will always fire, but we kind of you're trained to fight against that. But those receptors that sense space, they they are eventually going to go slow down, slow down, slow down.
OK, no room, you know, but the ones that sense calorie load, obviously after I've eaten 10 hot dogs and I'm 3000 calories deep, there's no reason for me to eat more, but I still got to try to pack another 40 or 50 in there. So I would say it's, it's really about space. Total space is probably the most challenging. Sometimes it's like obviously it's chicken wings or ribs. That's very much technique, figuring out how you can de meat a rib or chicken wing the fastest.
But for, for other foods like brats or fudge or, you know, poutine we're going to be doing in Toronto next month. It's really about how fast can you get the food down and how well can you tolerate it. Because like when I first started, I could probably fit about, I'd say about 8 lbs with my top capacity. Now I'd say it's close to like 18 to 20, probably top capacity depending on the density of the food. That's insane, man.
I mean, like, from a sheer calorie standpoint, it'd be crazy to see like a competition done on bricks because that's obviously not near such volume. But I mean the 1000 calories per brick. How many bricks do you think you can eat in the sitting? Oh man, they're like a little over 5 oz, probably 3 pounds, maybe something maybe like 4045 or something like that for my body to start. Filing calories in a sitting man that would be that's. True. Way too many. It'd be way too many. Yeah.
I think my body may start to fight me ahead of that when my enzyme production is like, you know, you know, when you're in a submarine, like those movies where the red lights are going off, like we, we. That probably would happen before that. It's crazy because like there's been a few people that have tried to do like bricks only for like a week or something. And I've never condoned that. Like I'm like, it's, it's in addition to a quality meat source is how I've always advocated for it.
But like, I would be curious to see you eat 45 bricks in a sitting. And I, I wouldn't recommend people do that. But I mean, I would pay to see that, you know? Oh dude, yeah, that'd be it. Would definitely be interesting. I know when I did like the 9 1/2 lbs of fudge, my body was not psyched because I also use coffee as my drinking liquid because it was bitter and I didn't want more sweet. So it kind of it helps with the
flavor fatigue. I'll use bitter stuff against sweets and I'll use sweet stuff against like salty. And basically what that ended up being was like probably half a gallon of coffee to go along with 9 1/2 lbs of fudge. You can imagine my body was a little confused on what to do next. So do you get to pick your own drink like you get to pick whatever you want? Yeah. Yeah, you can put pretty much any any beverage of choice you can use for for the contest.
And I would imagine like for me, if I'm going to get a ton of food, like when I come out of my preps, like I typically go to a Brazilian steakhouse as my celebratory meal, 'cause it's what I found after my first competition. I lost 80 lbs in 12 weeks for that show and I went to Red Lobster. This was before I was keto and I literally put on 20 lbs overnight. I just binged on everything. I didn't know what a rebound was. I was clueless.
But since then and since being keto, like I've always defaulted to going to Brazilian Steakhouse as my last show's celebratory meal. And I've had that I could eat like, I mean, I could eat like this last one. I tracked everything. I ate 8000 calories, 7700 calories after that last show and I lost weight the next day, which was trippy, you know? But like the, the types of foods make such a drastic impact on the types of flu retention you
can expect, etcetera, etcetera. But I would imagine like when I'm eating like that, I don't typically drink a lot of fluid. Like I like to just consume, you know, food. And I would imagine if you're eating, you know, 70 brats, if you're drinking a lot of fluid as well, like there's like a, a tipping point there in which you got to have enough lubrication, I'm, I'm assuming to wash everything down. But if you drink too much, like you're just defeating the
purpose. Yeah. No, man, it's it's tough man, because you want to be able to do minimum amount of fluid possible in order to to get everything down because you want to save your real estate. Gotcha. OK, that makes sense. That makes sense. Does some people like some people do this, like some competitors that you're amongst, like they purge after these massive intakes or do they keep it all down? I mean, I can't speak for other
people. I know personally, that's not my thing because I don't want to like kind of breathe that reflex, you know, over time because your body will be like, Oh, I know how to feel better and what have you. And so it's not my deal, but I, I can't speak for everybody, you know, but I know like for the most part, we, it's a job hazard. You're going to eat 15,000 calories. You got to deal with the repercussions, eating, you know, whatever, 60 Moon Pies or what
have you. Man, yeah, I would imagine, I mean, like, 'cause I used to do that when I was struggling with disorder eating in, you know, early bodybuilding days. And it's like you certainly don't want to advocate for that. You almost just got to like, let your body process it. But a lot of people too, they are under the assumption that if you eat, you know, massive bowls of food like that, your body can't possibly absorb that many calories in one acute setting.
So that's kind of how they justified. Do you have a, a stance on that? Like if you eat 15,000 calories in Moon Pies like is your body? I'm sure your pet, Yeah. No, I'm sure your pet. I mean, you're absorbing it in the sense that you're going to pass it, but I'm sure you're going to pass some of it. There's only so much you can break down at one time, I believe. Yeah, and that's wild, man. What what's been the the most challenging food that was chosen for a competition?
Like what's what's the the nightmare food for you? Spam was pretty tough. Spam out of the can was. Pretty tough, could you like was it just plain spam can after can? Oh yeah, yeah, just can after. I mean, they took it out of the can for us. It was just spam on a plate. Oh man, that's that's wild man. What's what's been the best one? Which one do you actually like? Enjoy the process of. I mean, I love chicken wings. I love ribs. They're two my favorite
contests. Patios was fun, Bratwurst and Cincinnati was a lot of fun. I mean, it's it's tough and a lot of them are fun for different reasons. You get to experience cultures, you get to meet cool people. Like it's fun. Very cool, man. And the one you get coming up is the hot dog one, right? The Nathan's hot dog. That was July 4th was Nathan's now I got blueberries July 13th, I got chicken Nuggets on the 26th and then poutine on August 9th.
Is there like how, how much lead time do they give you as far as like the food that's going to be coming? It depends like sometimes a couple months, sometimes it's like a month, sometimes we know like five months in advance. And it depends on the context, like probably when the you know when they figure out the logistics.
And this is maybe just, you know, going into the esoteric on this, but like in in the keto low carb carnivore space, like there's a lot of there's a lot of fear mongering around certain foods, which I'm not really an advocate for. I'm all for people consuming the best quarter they can. But like right now, you know, seed oils is obviously on everybody's lips. It's like the freaking next thing to the demon Satan or something, which is likely grown out of proportion to some extent.
They're probably some truth to everything, but like when you consume like a whole bunch of chicken Nuggets, like I'm assuming these are probably not quality top and high shelf chicken Nuggets. It's probably like the bottom of the barrel I'm assuming, right? Oh, it's a Wendy's contest. So as far as fast food goes, like I love Wendy's like spicy nugs, you know, they're really good. These are not going to be non spicy, but but yeah, it depends
on the contest. I do think Wendy's actually uses white meat chicken in theirs compared to some some places. So I think as far as fast food goes, we're probably on top of the top shell. But but yeah, it, it really depends. Like I said, we we do all these different contests. And I really think the biggest thing is, like you said, you don't like to demonize food is like the habit is more important than the singular source.
Yeah. You know, if, if you're drinking a bottle of canola oil every day, it's probably going to be a problem. If you cook your kids brownies once a month with canola oil or vegetable oil or something like that, it's likely not going to be an issue because a lot of times people throwing those things around were like, oh, canola oil is going to kill you. Are the same people that like smoke or maybe drink or, or they're fifteen, 2030 lbs
overweight or what have you. So like, I think ultimately it's just going to be about like total habit. No, that makes total sense man. I completely agree. Is it like a specific phenotype that describes most compositions of competitive leaders? Like most of them are not as jacked as you right? No, most of them are in probably average or slightly better than average shape. You know, there's getting into 6 to 8 used to play college basketball. There's, you know, Mickey's
super active. My wife, you know, Joey just kind of looks like a guy and is really active around the contest. Jeff Esper used to do, I think he used to do amateur strongman contest. James Webb played I believe, collegiate soccer. So there's some people, there's typically some athletes and and people who are probably slightly above average shape that do it
at a high level. They're probably not that many obese competitive leaders, I wouldn't think, because then from like a metabolic standpoint, like you're not going to really have the appetite in that acute setting, I wouldn't think. Yeah. No, no, there's, there's a couple obviously just like anything, but there's, there's definitely not too, too many. Very interesting. Well, I'm super intrigued, man. Is this stuff televised? Like what? Can I watch you slam a bunch of blueberries?
Yeah, I know there's a the television sometimes like check out majorleagueeating.com and they'll give you any updates and things like that. If you're doing live streams and what have you or people follow people follow me on on Instagram or any social media thing, just my name, Nick Weary, and I try to tell those things or if I know if one of the other competitors is live streaming it, I'll try to share the link. Very cool, man. Well, I love what you're doing.
I'm I'm super intrigued, but I think it's awesome that you come from the bodybuilding background. You've been able to lean into this competitive eating as a competitive outlet. If there's everything I can do, man, you just let me know. I'm I'm happy to keep supplying you bricks because using that in your use case scenarios is just cool in my opinion. So keep rocking it, brother. Appreciate you man. Thank you so much. You bet Nick, have a good man and best of luck.
Yeah, you too later. See you bud.