What's going on is James Roberts like sceeto Savage.com and today I have special guest, dr. Ted name it on the line. I was incredibly excited to record this conversation because I feel like, you know, I have a very high fat stance on the ketogenic diet, he definitely is an advocate for high-protein. There's been so many people on the interwebs that have like
pitted us against one another. Basically, and I read his book, I've listened to his his work and I felt that there was a lot of nuance and context that really needed to be fleshed out. Doubt and unsurprisingly. I felt like there's a lot of things that we do agree upon and there are definitely some surprising things that I felt like we also did not agree on so I feel like this was a great conversation. We got to an understanding as to where we kind of recommend
things. We both have a reason for why we recommend the things that we do, I really appreciate his, you know, his effort to just showcase where he's coming from the type of people, he's really trying to Improve and make
healthy. I feel like it's got a really well formulated approach to doing just that and like with most things in life there's there's very much a sense of Bio individuality there and we kind of dive into the nuances of that and why one would need to manipulate their micronutrient and macronutrient ratios based off of where they're at in life and where they're wanting to go. So without further Ado, really, really listen tune into this conversation.
Learn something. I feel like you'll find it incredibly fascinating. I feel like you You'll definitely learn something I certainly did and I said I really appreciate dr. Chad name and for taking the time to do this because there's been a lot of controversy over the whole high protein versus high fat debate within the keto sphere. So, this was a very much needed conversation in my opinion. So like I said, sit back, relax,
learn something. Enjoy the podcast, the conversation with dr. Ted Naman. Dr. Ted naming were laughs. How are you sir? I'm doing great. How are you sir? I'm doing wonderfully. Well, so I'm really excited to
talk to you. I've heard you speak on the low-carb, Cruz. I've heard you speak at multiple different conferences and I feel like this would be coming interesting conversation, because I've been kind of pitted by the the whole keto low carb Community as the high fat guy and you are definitely the high protein guy. So, I This will kind of organically turn to a pretty interesting discussion. But before we dive into the
specifics, I love this. Just kind of get some more background on you kind of what got you in the space. What brought you into the profession that you're in? Just kind of give you some backstory. All right. Okay cool. Well I'm a family practice doctor here in Seattle. I've been out of residency for about 20 years so I just kind of down in the trenches doing primary care and I pretty much been interested in diet. It and diet and exercise, for
health, my whole career. I was raised vegetarian a Seventh-Day. Adventist vegetarian went to an Adventist vegetarian, medical school and Loma Linda, this sort of famous Blue Zone vegetarian Mecca. And, you know, started out with sort of this high-carb low-fat
vegetarian approach. And then in in my residency I was Two low carb by one of my patients who just had some really amazing transformation with weight loss and diabetes Improvement and I've been researching that ever since and just trying to learn as much as I can about metabolism and diet and exercise and exactly how everything works. You know, so I've been I've been practicing some sort of low carb diet for about 20 years now with myself.
And with my patients that is a pretty Stark contrast from the Adventists vegetarian to pretty much a low carb, high protein style of eating. Yeah, it was it was a huge, huge change. You know, for me and honestly I had a bunch of Health improvements. Personally, as a result was there any specific Health declines that you were starting to see by being vegetarian after so long. I had, you know, I had booked just the worst eggs and lat ever and that is completely On, I
haven't had it since then. So I think in terms of, in terms of health problems, eczema was definitely number one. I also had a quite a bit of almost like an OCD type anxiety thing going on as a vegetarian, which just completely melted away since then. And so, for me, it was, you know, low muscle, I was skinny fat, poor body composition. I would have hypoglycemia all the time, like I would eat my, you know, cereal and juice and, you know, all this low-fat stuff
for breakfast. And I would be just hypoglycemic three hours later and then it was. So, I would say, yeah, low muscle, skinny fat, hypoglycemia eggs, IMA this sort of OCD anxiety thing, all of, which just massively improved with really just plain old carbohydrate Striction, you know, and I mean, just eating less carbs and prioritizing protein kind of did all improved
all of that. For me, it's really interesting about the OCD because I used to suffer from just massive OCD like Howard Hughes level stuff that just debilitating me. Yeah, and I was never vegetarian, but I was following a much higher carb Approach at that point in my life. So I wonder if just simply minimizing the carbs as a whole has some kind of neurological effect on that.
I don't know. I mean, my I'm not sure if it's the carb issue or if I had some serious nutritional deficiencies, but I remember at one point as a, as a kid when I was a vegetarian, I mean I would I was literally flipping light switches on and off like 50 times or something, just insane just completely clinically OCD and at the time I didn't even know it OCD was and then all of that just went away, but Pretty, pretty glad he's gone. Did you like this is kind of off
on a tangent knows about you. So, I'm curious now Keen to find out more, but I did the same thing, and I feel like a lot of people with OCD, they do that. At least for me, it was, it was that if I didn't do that something bad would happen to my loved ones, just like this weird psychological shift. I don't know why, that's the way I am like thought of things. But did you have some kind of similar take on it yourself?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and actually, everyone with OCD is doing these behaviors in an attempt to alleviate anxiety somehow, except it doesn't work. It doesn't make, you less, ain't well, it makes you less anxious for a couple minutes and then you get even more anxious later. So it's his failed attempt to alleviate anxiety. Somehow through some behavior and it just doesn't work and it's terrible. It really is.
It's totally debilitating. Once you get that fixed, it's like you have your life back and everybody wants to have their life. So I'm glad that you no longer suffer from that. Oh, same to you. And that's that's really interesting and I feel the same way for you. So I want to kind of dive into different nutritional protocols here because first of all being talked about you know your book the PE that I've read that book, William shufelt gave me a copy and I love it.
I think there's a lot of really good material in there. I agree. With a lot of it. So if you kind of want to just give a little overview as to what your take on nutrition, is the PE diet as a whole and just kind of Flesh that out from a high level. And then I kind of want to dive into some of the nuances if you're around it then oh yeah. Sure, absolutely okay. So really, really big picture. The whole point of the book is that you're really eating to get two things.
One is nutrients, which in this case would be protein in minerals and the other is to get energy. Asian vines of cartoon fats. So if you really zoom out and look at what eating is all nutrients, like protein, and minerals come from soil plants, absorb nitrogen, and mineral form from the soil and a bunch of other minerals that you need. And then plant also take solar energy and store it chemically as the carbohydrate. I'm sorry as fat or carbohydrate high energy. Carbon Carbon and carbon
hydrogen bonds. So you're what you're eating to get is protein and minerals or energy. And in this book we kind of divide these two out, right? So the goal in the book is to hit your protein and mineral nutrient Target first, so that you don't have to eat as much energy because in this country, we've stripped energy out of food, in the form of refined, carbs, and refined fats, all
your sugar, flour and oil. And so, you're getting all of this energy that's separated from the satiety which comes from protein and minerals. So, everyone's eating this low satiety, high-energy food, like garbage and all your sugar flour
oil. And the way you fight back is by intentionally targeting protein and minerals first and foremost, and eating those and then only eating energy in the Out of energy needs sort of on the back end, it's like Target protein minerals and nutrients first and energy. Second instead of eating all this high energy, low protein processed food stuff that basically by the time you eat enough, you know, French fries to get enough protein.
To not be hungry, you have to massively, overeat carbohydrate and fat energy, all of which you're going to stores fat. Basically got you. Yeah, totally agree in the context of you like most out of the Obesity epidemic that's happening right now is a result of people just eating, you know, and there's a lot of debate as to what's causing that epidemic but it's pretty apparent that the general population is getting far too much heavily processed foods high in energy.
They don't really expend and they're probably deficient in quality protein sources. So kind of tackling this from like a PE diet standpoint in prioritizing the protein and nutrients seems like a pretty reasonable fix to that issue. Yeah. Yeah absolutely.
And then you know if you if you look at hunter-gatherers they're eating like 33 percent protein by calories and in America were eating you know maybe 12 and a half percent protein by calories and so just off the bat trying to get your protein percent up is pretty much going to be an instant win for almost everybody. Do you think like what is there as far as you know, your general clientele base? Like who are you typically working with and seeing benefit
from this? So you know my whole career I've really been focused on insulin resistance and and how it's related to all the chronic degenerative diseases in our society. Like you know, type 2 diabetes and obesity and cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's,
dementia and cancer. And if you I've been researching the fact that insulin resistance increases your risk for every single chronic degenerative disease, you could possibly name mmmmm and as a primary care doctor, The vast majority of what I'm doing is seeing patients with these. Chronic degenerative diseases. All of which seem to be Downstream of insulin resistance, which is really Just Energy. Toxicity, basically, overeating energy when you're trying to achieve nutritional satiety.
So I would say that my average patient has some sort of metabolic syndrome, you know? I mean they have increased waist circumference abdominal fat, high blood Sure. High triglycerides, low HDL, maybe pre-diabetes, like 52 percent of adult Americans. And then all these, you know, quote-unquote lifestyle, diseases, like acid reflux, and sleep apnea, and, you know, these sorts of insulin resistant, kind of problems that you're so classic.
And so that's my average. My average client is, they're trying to eat quote-unquote healthy because everything they buy is whole grain. Low-fat or heart-healthy or has you know or is fortified or something? Blah blah blah. They're not eating. They're not just eating bonbons and Oreos. You know they're trying to eat healthy but their diet is
screwing them over bad. And every year they're just gaining one or two pounds and now they're 50 pounds overweight and they have all these chronic diseases, you know. I mean I would say that's my prototypical person. Gotcha, gotcha. So, With vent as the context kind of seeing, you know, the popularity of Quito pick up and seeing probably a pretty big interest in vent over the past, you know, several years, probably coming from your
clientele base as well. Like what are some of the big, you know, loopholes or pitfalls or just frustrations you're seeing in this ketogenic movements? I mean I feel like we can both agree on the low-carb aspect being beneficial but I feel like you are I would don't put words in my mouth but I have to assume that you get frustrated seeing people just Chugging butter, if you're very much a pro high protein and very minimal excess energy type of stance on it.
Yeah, I mean okay unfortunately I do see a fair amount of kind of Quito failures, you know what I mean? I have these patients come in and they shaved their carbs all the way to zero. Like they might not even eat a salad because of the trays carbs in lettuce or a tomato or something. So they've shaved their carbs
all the way to zero. They feel like if I could just go from 10 Trace carbs in my salad, Add to five trays carbs, you know, by not eating solid, then I'm going to be even more successful and they're just starving all the time. So they're just constantly snacking on cheese and nuts, and they're eating just tons of dark chocolate and macadamia nuts. And, you know, heavy cream and their coffee.
And they're just eating basically hundreds of grams of fat every day in this attempt to get satiety. And really the big the whole secret to all this dye stuff is the amount of satiety. You get / /, non-protein energy calorie and the satiety from fat. It's well, first of all, it's not immediate, you know what I
mean? Like if you eat carbohydrates, it's hitting your bloodstream, couple minutes later and you get this big burst of satiety, actually quite a lot initially and then a few hours Hours later, you actually have - Society where your hunger and if you've never eaten at all, that's the big problem with carbs is Downstream hunger. The, the problem with that is that you could eat a whole bunch of it right away and the FED doesn't really hit your system
for a while. So there's sort of this delay gratification to the society there. And so I see people overeating spot if the proteins to low and then they basically might not I lose any weight. I've actually watched people gain weight on a strict, ketogenic diet. With, you know, tracking Ketone levels, tracking, macros eating, almost no carbs at all. I've watched people get fatter, I watch, you will give more diabetic and I just, I know that you what was that?
Last thing said, I just lost it cut out there. Oh sorry. I said that this is one of the things that I see it's just basically people over eating fat, in an attempt to get satiety and sometimes it doesn't work if the diet's not formulated right for them, I
totally agree. There are definitely some really poorly formulated ketogenic diets out there, and it's hard to see people that have a lot of weight to lose just shoveling down, you know, sticks of butter or MCT oil, or, you know, way too much heavy cream in their coffee. So I totally get the frustration there especially when people are fearful of protein from like a gluconeogenesis aspect and they shun too much protein and they're just way under consuming
then. So they're they're not really having the amino acids in the building blocks necessary to put on any lean tissue which is going to further down regulate their metabolism and kind of put them off worst in a worse position than they were when they started, right? Yeah. No, absolutely. You got it. Exactly. So with regard to satiety I kind of want to dive into that because I feel like I've done a lot of self-experimentation.
So anything that I bring to the table is going to be pretty much anecdotal and then what I've been able to see in my clients but with regard to satiety, there are several people that claim to see, you know, significantly increase satiety with a higher fat approach to Quito. So, what is your take on on that? Is that just like the exception to the rule? Or is that more common than not know? I mean, I think that it's highly Visualized.
And I think that the biggest secret is finding, what gives you, the very highest satiety for the very lowest ingestion of energy. And I have patients who I am 100% convinced that for them, that actually occurs in a very high carb diet. That's actually low in protein and fat so it's extremely I have patients who, who have more satiety eating, you know, way higher fat quantities than I eat. I have patients, who have higher satiety, eating super high-carb, low-protein diet.
And so, I fully acknowledge that there's a ton of room for individuality and I honestly believe that if we knew enough about mitochondrial haplogroups, Plug Loop groups and where your ancestry came from and how your your electron transport chain is wired. If we, if we knew more about how all this works, we could actually predict better which type of macro spread would be people the highest Authority for
the very fewest calories. And that would be the Daya Bay would be the most successful on. But unfortunately, we don't know any of that crap. So everyone has to just experiment on themselves and find out just kind of like you did. Like I did and I fully respect the fact that some people do get the highest Authority with this. You know, paleo medicine achieve grams of fat to 1 gram protein
thing. I believe people who tell me that that's their highest Authority, but I also believe people who tell me that they get to very high society per calorie from a high carb, low fat, maybe even low protein vegan diet. So I'm not going to argue with anybody success at all. All I do think that if you just looked at the population on average, if you just look across the spectrum of humans in general, you're going to get more success as the protein
percentage goes higher. And that's why I really like to focus on, you know, protein percentage because I know that's going to make everybody probably more successful and then they might have to figure out on the back end where their carbs and fats are going to lie. And in the research I've done on you and your cute, you tend to kind of gravitate towards the one-to-one personally, like having one gram of protein, per 1 gram of energy. I believe is what it?
What you recommend, right? Right as just sort of a starting point, is, sort of a maintenance, starting point on a low-carb diet. Yeah. And in the context of, you know, how much protein per individual having like a 1 gram per per pound of desired or lean tissue. I guess, is a pretty good starting. Point. That's that's that's my thought. And to be honest, part of that I chose because it's just really easy, you know, you eat a gram per pound of desired body
weight. That's pretty easy to remember and to calculate but I do think that's a reasonable starting point for most people. I'm hoping everybody's doing some sort of resistance exercise and then I do think that that's probably a good protein Target. Have you noticed? To any adverse effects to going much higher on the protein. I mean, coming from a bodybuilding background, myself, like, there's people out there that are doing, you know, three, two, one Grandmaster to each lean pound.
So, is there any downside to over consuming protein that you've been aware of? I've never seen any object of downside like, you know, an actual medical problem or a lab problem. I do not ever see any object event signs. That is bad. I I do definitely see subjectively people saying they don't feel good. Like you know, if you try to eat, you know, 600 grams of protein and say 80 percent of your calories, you're just going to feel weird. It's not going to be, it's not going to be great.
Subjectively like the way you feel and I hear people say that who are just really going north of 50 percent of calories from protein. So, but in terms of like an actual Medical problem or something that I could point to objectively. I don't really see that. No do you see I guess from the the option to Spectrum is there like a floor that you that you see, are typically recommend people not go below as far as gram per pound of lean tissue.
Yeah, there definitely is. I mean, the interesting thing about protein is that as you go to Higher and Higher and Higher protein percentages, You just get thinner and thinner and thinner. Less fat means you can do this with humans. You can do this with animals.
If you crank protein up to you know fifty percent of calories in any omnivore mammal it's just going to get it really really lean and on the flip side, if you get your protein really low, if you're down at like five percent protein, you also get really really lean but you also Very low lean mass. So this is how the potato hack works. This is how the 30 Bananas a Day.
Fruitarian approach Works your your body can tell when your protein percentage ultra-low in your diet and it just kind of gives up on eating you're like, well, okay, why bother? So people get really, really light if you're trying to just weigh the least you really want to be on an ultra low protein diet, but the problem with that is you have really low lean mass and that includes muscle and bone and the weight of all your organs, including your heart and your brain.
And I don't think that's necessarily optimal for health or strength, or, you know, looking good naked or any of these things, which are, honestly, I think, fairly important. So, so there's definitely a for that. I would tell people not to go below. I mean, you really don't, you know, the u.s. RDA for adults is, you know, somewhere around 50. Something G and of course, I would never tell anyone to go below that.
I personally think that there's no adult human who should be trying to eat less than 100 grams a day. And then the sad thing is the average American is the average American males eating 98 grams of protein a day, which I think is atrocious Lilo. Yeah, I'm not a fan of, you know, chronically eating low protein. I will say that During a contest prep.
Like, for me as an example, there is a period of time there towards the end where my protein goes very like the last three to four weeks leading up to a show where I pretty much titrate protein down like my last competition, I was down to 65 grams of protein a day, which is very very low especially for a competitive bodybuilder. However, that is in the context of, you know, just the few weeks leading up to a competition that is not optimal from a performance standpoint.
My, my take on that Is that because I'm following a ketogenic approach. My fat ratio is very high, I was in more of an anti catabolic state for that finite period of time. I would never suggest anybody be that low in total protein for months on end. Yeah, right? Yeah. No, that makes sense. That's totally understandable. What about calories in general? I feel like that is a
discussion. That's getting a lot of interest within the keto circles, but just mean, that that's the topic of discussion amongst all dining circles. I feel like in the key toes, Space people are tending to, you know, turn the other way when it comes to calories and I feel like you and I could probably agree on the fact that calories do matter and they tore a very important variable to take into
consideration. Okay. I definitely think that non-protein calories or energy calories is a huge, big deal, and absolutely, you have to pay attention to non-protein or energy calories. So I think that That completely counts, but we're calories breakdown for me is protein, so I could take anyone who's overweight and leave them in the exact same calories.
They're eating now but make that, you know, 80 90 100 percent protein and they're just going to immediately have this really dramatic body composition change with higher lean, mass, and lower fat mass in every insulin resistance parameter, you can measure is going to get better at their health is going to give nothing's going to get better on the exact same calorie. So this is why I have a problem
with Cal really. The only reason I don't like calories is because of protein, I feel like protein calories, shouldn't even count. I mean, like it shouldn't be, they should be exempt from Cal basically is what I'm saying. So, I'll, I do think calories are important, I think calories matter, but they sort of break down when you're talking about protein versus non protein energy, which Kind of, why I fractionate out those two in the book so much.
So, I kind of want to dive into a performance section here because I feel like in the context of, you know, taking on a client that is just morbidly obese. It has a lot of body fat to lose gravitating. Towards a higher protein, makes a ton of sense. Actually, I want to ask you one quick question on them. So I've noticed in the people that I've worked with if they're coming from a carb heavy. The approach to food. They, they see some initial benefit from having many of
their initial calories. Come from dietary fat because I feel like it's a smoother transition to learning how to train the body to oxidize fat as a fuel source if there's quite a bit of dietary fat coming in, but then as soon as they make that application, then I like to titrate protein up and kind of figure out what their protein threshold is so to speak.
Whereas if you just transition straight from a high carb to a very high protein minimal fat it, To be a little bit more miserable just in the experience I've had with clients. Do you think there's any, have you noticed any that yourself like transitioning people from? I carve dependent diet to more of a high protein or high fat? Like transitioning is there a benefit to, you know, titrating that fat up initially and then titrating protein up or what have you noticed there?
Yeah, I mean, I think historically I've done the same thing as have people. Eat higher thought initially when they're transitioning and And then trying to, you know, shave off some grams of fat when they're, you know, losing weight. And I think that you're probably right on there and I think a lot of low carb out of kids are recommending the same thing although I to be honest I don't know how much of that is necessary metabolically versus
just a behaviourally. People want to be able to eat more. I mean if you just write from a standard American Into protein, sparing modified fast the amount. You're eating is so tiny, by comparison that I think people would just freak out. It's also so restrictive. And so painful that it's just
mind-blowing. And so, I, I think you've gotta take baby steps and sort of progress it, like you said, okay, let's start with just eating less carbon and then we'll worry about, you know, rebalancing protein and fat, That to maximize its how you maximize fat loss. And that's probably gonna involve eating fewer fat grams. So II, totally agree with gradual progression, and and may be eating less carbs is step one and so I'm kind of doing the same thing. So I'm right, I'm right there
with you on that. Got you got you because I think, you know, in the context of someone that's trying to lose a ton of weight. You know, I feel like our recommendations are pretty pretty well aligned. I mean focusing on getting quality protein sources in And not because if you have a ton of body fat to lose a ton of adipose tissue, it doesn't really make sense to consume a
ton of dietary fat. If your body is adapted to burning your stored fat, so I feel like we can both agree there that you don't need to prioritize eating, you know, tablespoons of butter. If you have a bunch of fat to lose, I think, what, where I want to kind of take things now and get your opinion on his, from a performance standpoint, like for someone that is metabolically sound.
They have a good solid. Foundation, you know from like a caloric Baseline standpoint, they really trying to maximize performance because I feel like if you're not there and you're just needing to lose a bunch of body fat simply losing weight overall, it's going to have the, the classic 80/20, you know, analysis benefit towards your overall health.
Like it's going to improve your insulin markers, your blood glucose, I mean everything, when it comes to like performance, and you're kind of already in a good starting position, I'd like to see if you know what's your take on macronutrient ratio. Recommendations there and does that offer a Nuance that would change what those recommendations are.
Well, okay, so part of the problem for me when it comes to Fat intake is that if you really look at, like, fat that has radio labeled carbons and you and you trace this. And you look to see how long it takes for this fat to be absorbed from the, you know, aluminum small intestine and travel through the wall of the small intestine and get repackaged just cried with Mike. Bronze.
And then get dumped out in the thoracic duct and go to your liver, and then end up in your out of a sites and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's such a massive massive delay between when you eat fat and when it ends up anywhere that statistically speaking, I mean, within a PE of less than 0.05 statistically speaking, every single bit.
Bit of fat, you eat ends up being stored in your fat cells and it's after it's gotten there that it's released into your bloodstream that you're really, really burning it. You know what I mean? So pretty much all ingested. Bad becomes stored fat and then you're using it Downstream from
that. So I find that eating fat might help people With Society, in terms of just the incretins that are secreted from small intestine because you have, you no fat in there or some other Factor, but I don't know that you necessarily get an immediate performance Boost from being fat versus The Fab that's already on your body if you know I'm saying. So so I usually don't use fat as
a performance-enhancing. What kind of tool because I feel like it's it's so much Downstream TimeWise that the fat is going to be utilized. That it's not as critical as like protein and carbs that does make sense. I have a theory that the longer you are strictly adapted to burning fence. Like, for me, for instance, I've been strict keto for five or six years now, I feel like my blood, my body's ability to tap into that store fat and use.
It is much more efficient than some of the Kind of you know always in purgatory limbo. Shaded gray going back and forth from carbs, fats and proteins at that make sense. Yeah, I know, I totally. I totally believe that. Now the, the difficulty there and is that, most people aren't going to be strict Quito and definitely like that. So I mean, I don't look at it as a sacrifice.
I was it was I don't miss these carbohydrates but someone that that inherently knows they're not going to be able to stick to a very strict ketogenic, you know, high fat. Ketogenic diet, they're probably not going to really see the full benefit of being able to tap into those stored fat droplets as a fuel source basically. So in that context I can see them benefiting from a performance standpoint, you know, by using carbs. But is it possible?
And that I don't know of any research articles on this. But is it possible for someone like me that wants to stay strict? Keto? There is a inherent benefit to that and like from an energy standpoint I should be. I mean all my bases. Should be covered. Well, I think that the longer you make your body, accomplish all the things you want to accomplish in a very low carb environment without carbohydrate
availability. I think you're just going to get better and better and better as that oxidation and and it's like adapter died. Now, your body has to do everything, you're demanding of it without any carbs. And so I think you do get a huge Elation of everything. Every step involved in fat oxidation. So I totally agree with that. And I think you do get really, really efficient at utilization of fat and getting a ton of energy from fat rapidly. I don't know if I'm not sure.
And for someone as lean as yourself, you know, has tons of muscle and would probably have really good glucose disposal. I think you could probably do some sort of cyclical, keto, at this point and still be and still do just as well, I'm guessing, but I don't really know. Have you ever experimented with some sort of car Buffs? Like a lot of cyclical? Keto people, I haven't in the past. Several years.
I mean, I did when I was kind of playing around with low carbon Quito in the beginning and it originally, like I've been bodybuilding for 10 years. Now the first five years was following a traditional, you know, quote unquote, bro, diets of you know, high carbs at times, very high protein and
very minimal fat. So I played around a lot of these different manipulations then but since adopting a ketogenic lifestyle, I've noticed, so much more benefit by staying strict keto, like a lot of the knocks that people have against. Most strict Quito from a bodybuilding standpoint, such as the ability to get a pump, have vascularity lose body fats. Like I just have not suffered
from like I'm I got my Pro card. Last time I competed full following a strict ketogenic protocol with very high dietary fat, and actually very minimal protein, which was, totally counter to any of the competitors that I was up against. So I feel like what I've done and I'm continuing to do has worked really well for me, but I
feel like that's level. You know, benefit from that is only Amplified the longer you stay strict keto, so I could probably totally get away with eating carbohydrates. I never was insulin-resistant. I mean I could eat carbs and and tolerate them very well. I just prefer the benefit that I get from not eating them. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I get it.
What about? Cuz like one of the the main reasons that I've kind of gravitated towards this style of eating, especially in the context of bodybuilding natural bodybuilding is from a hormonal standpoint.
I see, you know so many of the competitors that I've competed against in the past that are following this traditional diet, a very high protein low fat, they have pretty significant hormonal down-regulation I mean, I had a natural body, but on the podcast, the other week and I mean, like he's been prepping for several weeks, there's no libido.
I mean, all testosterone is tanked and I think in the context of natural bodybuilding when calories are is low, no matter what diet you're going to do, you're going to see it down regulation there. However, I feel like following a ketogenic protocol with adequate dietary fat is probably the single best thing you can do to minimize any adverse effects in that regard. Oh, well, and that's really
interesting. And I have no experience with Any body builders who are doing a strict ketogenic approach. I have I have physique competitors who are natural, who are doing the standard approach. And I have definitely seen, you know, testosterone levels under 100 in men, as you know, in the week or two before show. I mean, it's just atrocious, it's really bad and so I don't know. I really free of knowledge as to how well your Act against that on this ketogenic approach but it sounds cool.
Yeah, I mean for me I listened to your podcast, you know, in collaboration with Williams who failed, Ted name and are not tending, but you are today, but Paul saladino, and crispo and you're talking about body butters. There's so many times I wanted to jump through the audio and put my two cents in there because it's funny because I think I see so many people you know they look at body butters to see these these magazine cover. They want to emulate that they want to get there.
You know, have six pack, etcetera, Etc. And they look at these, these bodybuilders, as the poster boy, for what health is and it's hard for me to stick this because you know, that's where I came from and that's when I was at my unhealthiest you know, that that's healthy compared to someone that's morbidly obese and 500 pounds and has all kinds
of, you know, chronic illness. But in the in the context of true Health, that is not near the the Sure that I want to paint for people and I feel like having transition to more of a ketogenic approach to bodybuilding by having adequate protein and enough dietary fat. That's really, really improved my performance more so than anything I'd ever done. And manipulated in the past, from a hormonal standpoint from a satiety standpoint and also from a reverse dieting
standpoint. Because when you're dieting down and your calories are very low, you down regulate, your metabolism is just part of And a lot of competitors. When they start adding these calories, back in and reverse dieting, especially if it's coming from high carb sources.
They almost inevitably be put on a ton of, you know, unnecessary body fat and their leptin and ghrelin hormone levels and their their sexual hormone levels are all out of whack and it just takes a long time to fully equalize that whereas with a ketogenic approached by never dipping too low from a dietary fat standpoint. The first place, I'm able to mitigate pretty much all of those adverse Effects, which is made the whole sport of bodybuilding much more
sustainable and enjoyable. Yeah. The I mean, that's all just super interesting to me because I see these people with the standard approach and, you know, maybe a month out from, from show from their show, they're ultimately a super-healthy, they have, you know, insulin levels wall on there, a 1 and C is, you know, for when I, they're just their triglycerides are 30. I mean, they're just extremely healthy but they still have to Around would be down the feeling
pretty good but man, you go, you get like, three, two, one week out, they feel like they're going to die. Their testosterone is drops out of triple digits and everyone's just like Crawling by their eyelids and some anything I think you're totally an enigma because I have, I have no clinical experience with anyone doing what you're doing, everybody, I have is doing, you know, the The peak week is, like, you know, the starting a couple days out, it's, you know,
800 grams of carbs a day. You're eating no fat at all and it's just opposite of what you're doing. So it's all really, really, really interesting to me. That's why I really want to get you down here because I feel like like I get I'm not near as active on Twitter as you are. But I see so many people, you know, pegging us up against each other and and you know saying something that I've posted Sitting there, ask you about it and vice versa.
And you know, like somebody posted about the keto brick, which I'm making you were talking shit about that and I'm like, I think the context is just off here for everybody. Let's just dive in and have a conversation because I feel like, you know, with what you and I have already said, if someone is just coming from a carb heavy diet to, you know, like eating diets having a higher dietary fat intake to make that transition smoother makes a lot of sense.
So we can both agree there and I feel like once that level of fat Meditation has occurred and people are efficient at tapping into their store, body fat titrating, that protein up and making, you know, that macronutrient a pro or t is is the way to go and I think we can both agree there.
I feel like from a performance standpoint, there's just so much little Nuance in different ways of doing things because yes, there's, there's a ton of people that are incredibly lean out there that have followed, a very high protein, low fat protocol, and they able to get very shredded, but There's not a whole lot of you know, even anecdotal evidence.
They're certainly not any research backed evidence of people that are doing kind of what I'm doing in the space with regard to getting down to, you know, three or four percent body fat while maintaining hormone levels in which my dietary fat intake is consisting of about eighty percent of my calories, which has worked really, really well for me. And it hasn't negatively impacted my ability to get down
to that low body fat. In fact, I would argue that it's enhanced my ability to do so. Yeah and I, you know, I totally believe you. I'm a member of this ketogenic bodybuilding Facebook group and I see what people are pulling off in these, you know, script ketogenic States and and I think there's just really something to it and it's all very interesting to me because I don't have a lot of clinical experience with that because because people like you are, you know, few and far
between. So I think it's really cool and I think it's Really interesting and somebody needs to be studying you at all and anyone else who's doing this approach, just to see where all the magic is happening. And I appreciate that. I really do want to make it a point to get this information out there. Because I see so many people. Like we were just saying, you know, just screw up their metabolism and their hormones. And when you screw up your metabolism, it doesn't really
fix itself overnight like that. Something that can take years to fully correct. And it's hard to see. So many people chase this Dream of looking a certain way in reaching that goal but at the expense of their health.
When there's a much healthier more sustainable, enjoyable way of going about it. So, that's kind of why I'm, you know, trying to scream from the rooftops, what I've learned over the years, but I feel like you're doing a very good job and eloquently to portraying the importance of protein and prototyping, that is a macronutrient because I do agree with you, wholeheartedly in that many people are not consuming enough protein and too many people especially in the keto
spheres Scared of protein, which is not really optimal either. Right? Right, right. Yeah. It's yeah. I just think that's not helpful. What about from like a lab? You know, blood draw standpoint. I think, is there anything that that you would recommend people look at with regard to, you know, if they're not really sure of what to do from, you know, macronutrient standpoint. Like if they're taken in a lot of dietary fat, and they've got high blood glucose and And
really high lipid scores. Like, what would you say to that person? Well, so a couple things. First of all, I love triglycerides. Like fasting triglyceride is a phenomenal marker for just being over fat, right? If you really want your fasting triglycerides to be ideally below, 100 Elite with the have to be. What was that?
Last thing said below 100. Oh Ray-Ray, you really want to be below 100 on a good fasting triglycerides, you know, 12 hours fasting, no coffee, just water, no calories, and Elite would be below 70, at least. And what triglycerides are are, is fat energy in your bloodstream. That has no place to go because your fat cells are refusing it, right? Because they don't want more of
that. Your muscles are refusing, the fat energy, or Fossils are refusing your basically over fat and triglyceride correlates really really well with insulin resistance and over fatness and visceral fat and all of this. So anyone who's got high triglycerides basically has energy toxicity where there's too much energy in their body and what you really want to do is in just less energy. That's definitely going to be carbs and probably fat butt.
And so that's someone who really wants to look at They're non-protein energy intake and try to shave that down in a sustainable way. I don't, I don't want anyone eating a zero fat diet. I also don't know that I would recommend is your absolute zero carb diet but you definitely want to get both of those down, you know what I mean? I found that if your fasting blood sugar is too high, a lot of times that means that you over Eight fat grams the day
before. So like, if you're a type 2 diabetic and you eat a bunch of cards, your blood sugar immediately goes up, you know, an hour later, your blood sugar is super high and everyone sees that on their glucometer and they get that, they understand that. But a lot of pre-diabetics are diabetics, wake up in the morning. Look at their blood sugar in there. Like wow, why is my blood sugar 150? I didn't eat any carbs yesterday. I didn't eat any carbs
overnight. I didn't You didn't cover this morning. What's going on? This is typically over ingesting fat grams the day before so if you eat a whole but you know if you drink a gallon of heavy cream today, tomorrow morning you'll wake up with the highest blood sugar you've ever seen. You know, it's just this sort of Downstream response to acutely, filling up your fat cells and the the blood sugar will go up and that's a really good thing
to be tracking. And just to sort of titrate with fat intake, you know what I mean? Do you notice any increase in blood glucose from like if fat macros or held constant? But I titrate protein up. For instance, do you notice a gradual increase in blood glucose there? Well, definitely in type 1 diabetic. So protein is going to raise glucagon. And without the concomitant insulin increase, you're definitely going to see blood sugar. Go up in anyone.
Who has any amount of insulin deficiency so that could either be a type 1 diabetic, or a burned-out type to who has less beta cell mass and they can't mount an insulin response to that. So yeah, I will definitely see blood sugar's going up. In type 1 diabetics or tape to,
with beta cell burnout. I'm still not convinced that that's necessarily a bad thing and I still want my type 1 diabetics to prioritize protein and then just ask for that with insulin, but anyone who has Is intact pancreatic function should not see their blood sugar go up at all, no matter how much protein they eat. So the main kind of red flag, you would you would say is seeing both fasting blood glucose and triglycerides above 100 simultaneously, right?
That's the worst. That's where, you know, you know, you're over fat, you know, you have no more room to store energy, you need to be on a very low energy diet, which is typically weigh less carbs and probably So less fat, although for the average American, their problem isn't isn't eating too much fat is eating too many carbohydrates? I mean, your average American males, eating 98 grams of
protein a day female. It's sixty eight grams of protein, they're both eating around 100 grams of fat and then about 300 grams of carbs. So the problem here isn't really the fat intake, you know, 100 grams of fat. That's a pretty reasonable fat intake and In my opinion, I just feel like the cards are way too high and the proteins too low.
And so what you're really trying to do is rebalance those and of course, when you increase protein you get so much the Tidy from that that is easier to eat less carbohydrates at that point. Yeah, I totally agree there. I feel like for, you know, the general population is over
consuming process carved. If they just took those calories from carbs and Initially evenly distributed in between protein and fat and then kind of checked markers along the way and were, you know, cognizant of what their society was and then they can titrate protein up or fat down as they went. The thing that would be the like a huge step in the right
direction. Yeah, I absolutely. What about the the the nutrient quality like micronutrients that kind of diving into what these macro nutrients are consisting of. You know, like do you put much emphasis on the types of protein? You're you're trying to get in Nor you pretty much just looking at it as a macronutrient standpoint.
Well, I'm really really concerned about minerals because we have a ton of studies that show that if you're low on any particular mineral, you're just going to keep eating until you get it. So I think that it makes a lot of sense to Target minerals. Luckily those track with protein in most real foods. So if you're just eating high quality protein sources, your probably going to get all the
minerals you need. But I think for that reason, I would rather see people eat nutrient-dense food instead of like just whey powder all day long, you know what I mean? Like, I think you'd be better off eating pastured eggs, and grass-fed, beef and wild caught fish, and seafood and green vegetables, and all of these protein sources, instead of, you know, you're processed, Pea protein or your hemp protein or your whey protein, which is probably not going to be as good
from a micronutrient standpoint. I don't think that anybody needs to necessarily track their micro nutrient intake because it's it tends to just follow protein and these properly raised animal foods. But I am, you know, always concerned about people getting adequate mineral intake, totally agree there, I can't take less time I hadn't. Most of my calories come from a whey Shake, but I feel like
that's a big mistake. People are making right, which is 11 definite, step in the right direction, and I feel like people are prioritized in the keto Corner boar low-carb space. I feel like they've placed a priority on nutrient dense foods the Whole Foods and that's one thing that you've always said that I agree with is trying to eat the whole animal, whether it be like the whole vegetable or the whole animal, you know, like the like seafood, getting the mussels and the clams and stuff
of that nature, right? Exactly. What about the just out of curiosity. What is your take on zero carb or like, no? Vegetation cuz carnivore is really hot right now. I'm not carnivore per say I'm carnivalesque I guess. But do you feel like there's any any deficiencies from like a mineral or micronutrient standpoint from not having that vegetation? Well, I okay I have a couple concerns there. I mean, like, I love carnivore diets for someone with some autoimmune.
Aziz. He's just trying to eliminate any potential plant talks and I think that's smart. I can get makes a lot of sense, but I think that every pure religious carnivore out there could probably throw in, they could find some sort of plant food, that would not impact them negatively. That would probably be beneficial. Like, is there any reason why
your Sean Baker's or the world? Not eat, you know, 95 percent of their calories from ribeye and then like a cucumber or, you know, something like some sort of benign low sugar fruit. There's there's basically no reason why you couldn't eat some of these Foods. They're not going to have anything toxic there. And the idea is if you broaden the foods that you're eating, you're probably going to do better from micronutrients bread. Definitely going to do better subjectively.
In terms of your diet being less restrictive. It's easier. To maintain long-term the less restrictive. Your diet is the better. Your long-term adherence is going to be for almost everyone. And so I think the game is to maybe start out with this carnivore template and then add in foods that are probably beneficial and not going to do anything bad to you. So I really I feel like carnivores a good elimination.
It but you don't really want to stay there because nobody's convincing me. That there aren't at least a few plant foods of these. People could add back in with no problems whatsoever. And you only just stand to benefit. So, that's kind of my take on the, on the Carnival thing. It's like why not figure out what you can add back in. That's almost certainly going to
be a good from. It's just a nobility point of view and a micronutrient array point of view and it's probably not going to do anything bad to you. I don't disagree with that at all. I feel like there's a lot of people that do hot have autoimmune issues, that may want to stay strict corner of will.
But there's significantly more individuals that are totally fine to eat these Foods. I'm not convinced that there's any inherent performance benefits that comes from them per se, but I feel like having just a vast array of what your options are, could probably help from a sustainability standpoint and then also just from a psychological standpoint, but I'm not necessarily convinced that that there's any like most micronutrients are in much denser Supply.
In like organ Meats, for instance, then in most vegetable sources, there is an argument against vegetables from like a, like a Fido toxin standpoint, but I'm not really sure where I sit on that either. I think, I think in the Plant World I'm mostly mentally picturing someone eating low sugar fruit and and I and I kind of think about it this way, you know, it's like humans definitely evolved from frugivores. So there's no question we've
been eating fruit since forever. And the fruit is a part of a plan that actually wants to be eaten. So it makes sense that it would be less toxic and so, So I also think that, you know, if you, if you were 100 gather, we just dump you off in the wilderness, you're basically going to kill any animal, eat the whole thing, but you're sure as hell going to eat any fruit that you happen to find.
And so does seem to be like, just from an evolutionary perspective, maybe not a crazy terrible combination. Yeah, totally agree. What do you think about vegetables from a like an absorption of nutrients in the Eats and proteins and fats standpoint, do you feel you know, having a large portion of greens for instance in tandem with your meats and fats is going to inhibit the full absorption of those nutrients? Or is it going to have any
effect effect whatsoever? Well okay to be honest, I think vegetables are kind of a joke like vegetables are a joke, all of our vegetables, we created in the last thousand years like we took this Brassica species, is why Wild mustard which just happens to be one of the few plants that humans can eat in its entirety and manage to detoxify it and then we crossbred the hell out of it. You know, if you select for the terminal buds, you get broccoli and the lateral buds, you get
brussels sprouts. And the flower budget, cauliflower and blah blah blah. We basically manufactured every vegetable in the grocery store within the past thousand years and you know, we didn't have kale in this country until 200. To go the potato for shit. Europe, 400 years ago, I mean all these vegetables are hyper-modern. We've created a mall, they're pretty much a joke.
Nobody was flying in kale from Southern California in the winter time and making a kale smoothie and there's, you know, a lot of toxins, a lot of anti-nutrients, a lot of oxalates, probably nobody needs to eat. I think they're just like this sort of filler. ER, type thing. And so, what I'm talking about plant Foods, I'm really more thinking about things like nuts and seeds and fruit nuts and seeds.
Of course, not wanting to be eaten, but fruit probably wanting to be from a plant standpoint if you know what I mean. But yeah, vegetables are kind of like, I'm just like, no, whatever on vegetables, to be honest. Yeah, I think it's a pretty good way to approach that for like people. In the experiment with and see how their body tolerates it from like an energy standpoint of digestion standpoint. Because some people, I mean, they get really bloated these
issues with them. So I mean, that case it makes sense not to really over, consume them. But if it if it doesn't have a negative impact and I don't feel like people should be scared of it saying similar to, you know, protein, like I don't feel like people should be scared of over consuming protein because overconsumption of protein, is not really easily done. Right, right? That's true. So, I don't wanna take up. Too much time here. I know you're getting busy
schedule. But what, what is one thing that you're particularly excited about just in the research or what you're doing personally? Like what are you a tamilian trying to learn as much about right now and feel could be a big moving shaking piece in the in the space. Oh well, I mean so I am really fascinated by mitochondria, to be honest. And if you look at every single every person who's pre-diabetic diabetic As diabetic parents, overweight out-of-shape, chronic disease.
The one thing they all have in common is they're worse off from a mitochondrial standpoint that, you know, mitochondria make up 30% of the weight of a normal healthy human. And all of these people who are genetically overweight or on Diabetes spectrum, they have smaller mitochondria, they have wars mitochondria they have lower mitochondrial function, they have Everything you can measure about.
Mitochondria, mitochondria size, function, contents, mitochondrial, biogenesis, the quantity of mitochondria, everything about their mitochondria is smaller and worse and the only way fat ever exits. Your body is via your mitochondria like, physically fat. Could not leave your body without it being burned into carbon dioxide and Mitochondria and then exhale and so there's a lot of chicken and egg.
In terms of do these people have broken mitochondria and then all the fat just accumulates and they can't burn it. Or did they poison their mitochondria from energy. Toxicity from overeating, you know, carbs and fats and basically then they busted their mitochondria and now they can't burn fat. Either way, I think this might occur. Chondral health is just absolutely crucial. You have to figure out some way to get more mitochondria and better mitochondria.
And it seems to be that when you demand more energy in your body, your body immediately responds with newer and better. Mitochondria any time, your energy requirement goes up and your energy. Availability goes down, you get more and better mitochondria, and you complex that. Bye. Basically exercising at a time and then eating less non-protein energy, your carbs and fats and so I'm I'm really geeked out on anything that improves mitochondrial health and anything that breaks your
mitochondria. And what we know is that metabolic oversupply basically eating too many carbs and fats together can literally break your mitochondria.
You have this mitochondrial fission where the mitochondria split up in an attempt to be less efficient and then you get all these mutant mitochondrial DNA from reactive oxygen species and you pretty much just it's this downward spiral because it's like you overrate energy and broke your mitochondria and then your might have you don't have mitochondrial function to burn fat and you just get fatter and then your mitochondria are more broken and it's just downward spiral of energy
toxicity. And you seem to be able to Reverse that by number one ingesting less energy which is carving. Fast and number two demanding, more energy expenditure, which is basically high, intensity, high power output, exercise, either resistance or cardiac. So I'm really all in on this mitochondrial thing. I'm also fascinated by the mitochondrial haplogroups and how various genetic differences in mitochondrial DNA was in.
Influenced with the humans distribution around the globe and like you know the less coupled mitochondria are at the higher and lower latitudes where you are supposed to eat more protein and fat and you have Loosely coupled mitochondria. So you're generating more heat to stay alive versus equatorial regions where people have more tightly coupled mitochondria and they literally do better on very low fat. Very high. Diets. And I think that we just don't know enough about all of this,
and we need to know more. So I'm always researching anything I can find on this topic. That's incredibly fascinating. I mean, just speaking in and Oakley again, when I do a contest prep, for instance, I'm obviously going through a period of lower caloric, ingestion, and I'm still demanding a lot from my body. And each time I cycle through, like, I'll do a contest prep every two or three years, the natural body, but it's not really healthy to do it every year.
Year. But every time I go through this cycle, I have more lean mass to start with my metabolic demands are higher and I'm able to get leaner while sustaining that same. Lean tissue are building lean tissue much more efficiently every single time I cycle through. So over the past several seasons of competing. For me it's possible in light of
what you just said that. I basically improved my mitochondrial Baseline starting point each time because I'm asking more of my body in the context of lower food, you know as I cycle through a prep and I'm basically just improving my Baseline. Each time I go through. Yeah, absolutely right. Which is a, which is awesome, which is amazing. That's the holy grail and it's interesting because I feel like many people don't, they don't
view Health through the lens. I mean, they look at that as like yo-yo dieting, which is, is not yo-yo dieting at all, but they just want to maintain or they want to be in a chronic building phase and Or a chronic cutting phase? Like, I feel like people would benefit immensely if they looked through Health with a more holistic lens of really optimizing for building and then therefore optimizing for
cutting. But having this, you know, cyclical approach to it is going to be putting yourself in a much better position. Metabolically, hormonal e, mitochondria, Lee speaking. I'm it's just much better. I think. Yeah, and I think everything we do has to be this cyclical approach. You know, it's like fasting and feeding, and we have a high-energy times in the year and low energy times a year. And I think that that's just part of what your body is expecting. Absolutely.
Well, maybe not stay. You know, stage prep that's might be a little bit more extreme. But yeah, it's I think it's definitely what your body is expecting to begin with, totally, totally well, doctor tip name and I really truly do. Appreciate Time, I've learned a ton as I expected to, and I just like, said, appreciate your stance on this. I feel like we have a lot more in common on our views, towards macronutrients and overall health, and people on the interwebs would like to give us
credit for. But again, thank you for taking the time to jump on your, where can people go to find out more about you? Okay. Yeah, well, I'm on Twitter at 10 a.m. inand. I've got a Facebook group burn fat and sugar and, of course, along with William. A shoe fell. We wrote this book called the PE diet and the best place to pick that up is at the PE diet.com? Awesome. I will certainly link out to all those and make it easy for people to find you. I have read the PE diets.
I do recommend it. It's a great read and hit you have a ton of really great illustrations, which you all made yourself, correct? Yeah, yeah. I'm like sort of a nerd that way. So I'm always making these crazy. Little Graphics will keep doing what you're doing. Cause I feel like they resonate with a lot of people very well. Well, and you're spreading the good message there. Well, awesome. Same to you. Thanks. Thank you sir. Have a good one.