What's going on, ladies and gents? Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com Today I've got special guest Mark Lowbliner on the line. I've been following Mark online for who knows how long. I remember seeing his stuff several years ago when I was first getting into the bodybuilding space. So he's been around for a minute. He's got some great content. He's the owner of Tiger Fitness and we just wanted to jump on
and talk shop. We talked about ketogenic dieting, we talked about carbohydrate inclusive dieting. We talked about flexible dieting, talked about longevity and how to build the right habits and routines to set you up for success long term. We talked about it was Zimpick Wygovy, all these weight loss drugs and we just talked about life. We talked about business little bits. Great conversation.
We're definitely going to do a follow up around 234, who knows how many because it was just so much more to cover. But until we do those, enjoy this one Sit back relax drill podcast with Mark Loebliner and we are live. Mark, how are you, brother? I'm doing freaking fantastic dude. It's good to be on here. I I just, I'm so glad I got like aware of your stuff.
Like your book is insane. This is if anybody wants to know about applying keto to anything beyond just curing ailments 'cause I believe that the clinical aspect of ketogenic diets are awesome. And the problem is applying it to athletics. IF you can apply it to athletics. And I think that becomes dependent a lot on the person, their metabolism, the sport
they're doing. But you know, what I love about it is it applies the different needs of athletes than let's say to a normal sedentary individual, to which I believe the ketogenic diet is probably superior. The sedentary individual who's not burning glucose, hell, they're not burning much of anything. And it also eliminates their chances to eat a lot of really bad food that'll cause syndromex, that'll cause
inflammation. I think that it's phenomenal that we're delving into anything beyond the clinical application of keto because the more we look at keto for other things, the more it can be used towards normal clinical or lifestyle adaptations for the diet. Yeah, 100% agreement. Like I started doing keto almost a decade ago now. And what excites me about it is all the research coming out about like type 3 diabetes and it's prevention against Alzheimer's dementia, which is awesome.
But I'm an athlete that's 33 years old, so I'm not worried about Alzheimer's dementia in this chapter in my life. But if I can adopt A diet that's going to set me up for success from a longevity standpoint, and I can get leaner and perform better than I ever did with carbs, it seems like a win win to me. Yeah, I mean, I've tried keto multiple times. I I am one of those weird metabolisms. I churn through everything.
So the amount of food I have to eat on keto and keto's weird carnivore keto in that it appears I can eat an unlimited amount of calories and lose weight at an unprecedented rate. And that's something beyond the normal calories in, calories out. And the science doesn't back it up. But when we do the studies, it's normally on sedentary individuals. We don't know if they're actually adhering to the diets.
So when you do a study and you even have placebo, this that and the third, like adherence is an issue when you design these studies from personal anecdote, I can tell you that I can eat a lot more on a ketogenic diet and lose weight. And that is what's really fascinating. I would, I would guess I could probably eat 40 to 50% more on ketogenic diet with the same rate of fat loss as I would get on a standard mixed diet. Have you seen that a lot?
Yeah, like I can. I mean when I'm getting really aggressive with my caloric intake, like I bulked up to 230 lbs before I was keto with carbohydrates. So I was eating 6000 calories a day at that point, bulked up to 2:30. I just got done eating 6000 calories per months on the end with keto, and the heaviest I
could get was 200 lbs. So I do believe in the, you know, calories in calories out equation from like a mathematical standpoint, but I think once you become fully fat adapted, which does not happen overnight. And another argument against those studies is that they're all done very short term studies. But like, once you've deeply become fat adapted, your ability to metabolize your consumption is heightened and improved, so you're burning more calories than than not, all else equal.
So yes, calories still apply. Like if I eat 6000 calories, you know, I'm not as lean as I am now eating less than 6000 calories, but the metabola, the metabolic rate of that consumption is wildly different, if that makes sense. It's it's absolutely astounding. And I do believe there are some people who can really do well tapping into both fat and
glucoses energy. And one thing I'm really fascinated with are supplemental PHP because I believe that will give you some of the benefits of being in ketosis, of being on a low carbohydrate diet because you got to realize that that ketones, exogenous ketones, endogenous ketones, wherever you get them, your brain really likes ketones. If you've ever been on a ketogenic diet, it just seems like your brain is operating better. And that could be from a lot of things.
It could be from avoiding the blood sugar ups and downs before avoiding the insulin ups and downs. But if you've ever truly been in ketosis, it feels like your brain is being fueled. And I get that same thing from the BHPS, the exogenous ketones. They have the LBHPS, they have the B, the RBHP, They got these different forms of BHPS now. And my good friend, actually, he's a, he's the guy who wants a
patent on him. And I've been using a lot of BH BS. And I find that when not in ketosis, when not on a ketogenic or a lower carb diet, that it gives me a lot of the brain benefits of being in ketosis. And have you ever supplemented with BH BS? Yeah, I played around that. I mean I don't ever really introduce carbs anymore, but I played around the exogenous ketones and I'll use them to some extent.
But like the the fact that ketones, whether supplemental or endogenous can cross the blood brain barrier and fuel the brain is one of the main reasons I did because I'm in a deficit. Like I did 5 competitions last year. I got down a 3.9% body fat. Having done that in the past with carbohydrates, I felt like a zombie. Most competitors feel like zombies.
The last month and a half, two months strip, I was still functioning at a high rate with all my podcasts and business responsibilities and I never felt like I was depleted in that sense. So yeah, the cognitive benefit alone is the reason I stick with it. Yeah, I mean, that's that's a huge benefit. It's a, it's a definite huge benefit. I haven't gotten into the book. It's obviously I, this is like, I I think this is bigger than the Bible. I really do. Maybe not quite big in the
Bible, but it's pretty big. 440 pages. Yeah, it's a beast. It's a beast. So how do you now the peak of the bodybuilding competition? This is me asking you. So to peek for a bodybuilding show is one of the hardest things to do. And you know, obviously there's carb loading involved. You fat load. How do you load up for a show 'cause you look fucking great on stage, pardon my French. How do you do that? How do you do that?
I I fat and protein load. So I'll start introducing ketogenic caloric refeeds as like a trial run several weeks prior to the actual competition. And then during the week of the show, depending on how depleted I am, I may have multiple consecutive refeed days. Typically I'll have myself and my clients do a Friday refeed with a bolus of fat and protein, typically about 30% over baseline caloric intake at that point. And then I'll bump up sodium by about 15 hundred 2000 milligrams.
So that draws any of the subcutaneous fluid into the muscle tissue, make the skin appear thinner, the muscles appear fuller, bring out the vascularity. But since I'm not, you know, screwing around with carbohydrates, there's no risk of me spilling over. I never have to, you know, cut water. Like, I was literally drinking a gallon of water before stepping on stage and I felt totally hydrated.
Whereas a lot of people were cramping up and not able to even hit the poses because they were cramping so bad. Well, that's also well, it was the natural show, right? So I can't blame diuretics. Yeah, yeah, I do. Typically I've done NPC shows as well, but most of my shows are all in the natural federations. Yeah, it's for me. I carb up way lower than most. I mean, I think when I got my pro card, it was like 300 grams of carbs. I think a lot of people overdo them.
People don't understand carbohydrate. Bring water with them. So if you're, if you're not eating carbohydrate, you're you're not going to spill over. And there's got to be a clinical application. You see these heart, heart patients and they take all these diuretics, right? They take all these diuretics. Normally what a doctor's going to do is put them on a plant based diet which is going to be super high in carbohydrates, super low in protein, super low in saturated fat.
So you get this edema around their ankles. And I've seen, have you seen CT Fletcher, my business partner, he won't post it. He could poke his foot and it stays with a big fingerprint this big in his foot. But as I was doing keto about two weeks ago, I I noticed and I noted that I had 0 subcutaneous water. It begs the question. Now obviously these doctors are going off of research that they have. We don't have enough research on it. No one's done a study on this from what I can tell.
But what if the heart patients, what are the main issues and they give them they, they prescribe aldactone and they prescribe diazide or whatever the, the clinical name the the one component of diazide cause diazide has two components in it. I can't pronounce it anyway. I'm I'm partially retarded. But they give them lasix all this stuff to keep their water off. What if you took a heart patient who's on diuretics who has trouble with edema and put them on a carnivore ish or a keto
based diet? I think that would eliminate a lot of the issues they get with these medications and help them live longer without the edema. Well, I might be biased, but I would completely agree with you and a lot of from a competitive standpoint, everybody worries about glycogen if they're not eating carbohydrates. But once you become deeply adapted, your body's ability to replenish and restore muscle glycogen is on par with those of a carbohydrate dependent
counterpart. So like I don't feel just as full when I'm with ketogenic approach as when I did with with carbs, but I don't have the risk of spilling over. Like I said earlier, there's just not that variability. You're removing that noise from the equation, so it's, for me, it's a much more surefire way to know exactly what I'm going to look like on stage today and come in confidently. Well, I think that's the key to being a natural bodybuilder,
right? And I still, even though I compete in the IFBB very poorly, I'm really bad. I I never hold water and I never have those issues going in. And I think people also don't understand electrolytes and a ketogenic diet. I think that when people are getting a carb heavy diet, they're not only getting carbs, a lot of them get a lot of ultra processed foods which are filled with sodium, potassium, all these different things.
So when you're on a ketogenic diet, not only are you not carrying that water with a carbohydrate, but you also are lacking the Adenin electrolytes for ultra processed foods. So when you do that, your body's not getting the electrolytes. So people go on a ketogenic diet and just be like cool. They go from an ultra processed food to ultra high processed food diet to a whole food diet. They try to supplement by salting their meals, but that's usually not enough.
I don't think people understand the necessity it is to supplement with electrolytes when on a ketogenic diet. And that that need for electrolytes tends to increase the leaner you get. Like during my last prep cycle, I got down to again, 3.9% body fat, but towards the end there I was consuming 15,000 milligrams of sodium a day. So considerably higher than the average person from a competitive standpoint. Like a lot of people will be around that four to 6000 milligram mark.
I was, you know, significantly higher than that. But once your body, like, if you've got the right ratio of sodium to potassium to fluid coming in, your body is able to reset the equilibrium point at whatever that level is as long as the ratio is in check. So yeah, I I crank that way up, but I feel phenomenal with it. Yeah, I normally even with carb inclusion, someone who exercises a lot, trains a lot.
And while I do eat a lot of carbs in relation to protein and fat, it's probably more of a zone isocaloric diet. That's when I feel the best. And when I feel the best I'm, I'm eating butter, I'm having saturates. And I think that a lot of people try to get based in these camps, right? Like I'm this, I'm carnivore, I'm this, I'm that. But in reality, it's experimenting and figuring out what works best for you.
But I think in experimentation it's just start with ketogenesis and see what makes you feel better as you add it in. Like maybe you do good on fruits. I know a lot of carnivore guys are now considering fruits to be carnivore. I still don't understand those mental gymnastics. You can help me on that I. No, I'm I'm in agreement man like Paul Saldino I think popularized that fruit and honey with carnivore approach. Well, it's animal based. What the Hell's he talking
about? But I mean, The thing is like, if you look at fruit nowadays and rewind the clock 500 years, like fruit's not even the same thing as it was. I mean, it's all, it's all been genetically modified. Like a, a freaking banana now versus one from days gone by doesn't even look like the same fruit, you know? So I don't really buy into that argument. And it's still. It's still. Glucose. I don't either. And fructose, you know. At the end of the day, if you
break it all down, you're right. Now there is something to be said about the complete matrix of the food, right? You combine the fiber, the micronutrients, the macro nutrients. But at the end of the day, if if you're claiming you're on a carnivore diet and you're eating honey and you're eating fruit, I mean, you could call it whatever you want. And I'm going to say that's pretty healthy diet. I think.
I think we need to get back to is how do we eat more Whole Foods that aren't ultra processed and what what a ketogenic diet does, it makes it literally idiot proof. It it, it forces you to eat Whole Foods. It forces you to eat foods that aren't ultra processed. It forces you to and it's it's, it's pretty idiot proof. And also you can't snack on candy bars when you're
ketogenic. So I think that the one thing that the ketogenic carnivore, whatever you want to call them, diets too is they bring us back to eating non processed foods, which I think we need to get back to. Yeah, completely. I think most people that have a head on their shoulders would agree with that sentiment. You know, like the heavily processed foods, the high sugary foods, it's just all noise in the equation. You look at us as a society, we're obviously not getting any
healthier. So we got to kind of not do what we're doing currently, and currently we're just eating a bunch of nonsense, bunch of bullshit. And if we can return to that degree of Whole Foods, we're all going to benefit from it. Whether or not you want to fall into the ketogenic camp or the carnivore camp or a Whole Foods vegan camp. Whole Foods vegan I would still probably argue is better than processed standard American that as long as you get ample protein, you know.
What do you see as the major drawbacks to the vegan diet? I mean, if you look at micronutrient density of food, like for the same caloric low, you're going to have far more nutrients in, you know, 3 ounces of beef liver compared to whatever super food from a vegan camp you want to use.
So from a micronutrient density standpoint, like if you've only got so many calories to work with, then in my opinion, it makes the most sense to target the most nutrient dense food options you can, which is obviously going to point to, you know, fats and proteins, animal based sources.
And then if you look at us from like a biological evolutionary standpoint, you know, we didn't, we didn't evolve eating nothing but fruits and tubers and vegetation, like we were eating meat and lots of it. So just kind of returning to what our digestive system has evolved to consume over, you know, a millennia makes sense to me. I couldn't, I couldn't agree more.
And I would argue that our brains would have never fully developed if we didn't discover fire 'cause that's what allowed us to cook food, to have meat, to get that nutrient density. And that nutrient density is what allowed us to grow and to get the. My favorite argument is, well, gorillas. Well, they, they just eat plants. Yeah, but they spend 75% of their day eating, and their stomach chamber, our stomach chamber, more closely resembles a wolf versus a gorilla.
That's what's really fascinating about the vegan argument. And I understand the altruism of veganism. I understand it. I just think it's misdirected because you still have to tear up land. You still have to plant crops, implanting the crops. You're killing insects, you're killing rodents, you're killing animals. You're taking away their habitat. At the end of the day humans you need to take shit over to eat. It just is what it is and something will have to die. Yeah.
Why not just go to the source? Yeah, there's a cycle of life with everything, life and death, like something's going to die for something else to live. That's just, that's just it distilled down to its simplest form.
And like for me, you know, when you look at the digestive tract, like you mentioned, when you look at the pH of a human being's stomach, it definitely resembles that more so of a predator of a, you know, carnivorous animal of something that's eating carcasses that had that higher pH stomach, like a freaking Buzzard. You know, orangutangs, apes, they don't have, you know, a cecum. You look at ruminants, they've all got a four chamber stomach. We don't have that. We're monogastric animals.
I mean, it's like you got to just kind of distill things down to its biological essence. And when you look at, you know, the argument of the teeth, people say, look, we don't have the canines that a predator has, so we obviously shouldn't be eating like them. We don't have the canines that the predator has because we developed tools and we didn't need them. Yeah, it's evolution, yeah. So yeah, I on. The same page. I completely completely agree. Yep.
I mean, at the end of the day, man, I again, like I, I've tried all kinds of diets again, it's about figuring out I am more meat based than anything. But my body feels well on glucose and I have very good flexed energy and my body can go back and forth and switch really. And and that that took a long time like that probably took all 30 years of my training life to get that. But if you want a dummy proof diet that really can benefit anyone, yeah, you're looking at a ketogenic diet.
Now, do you eat many fruits and, I'm sorry, many vegetables, broccoli, things like that? Or are you pretty much all animal based? I'll have some on occasion, like if my wife's cooking up something for family, we have guests over. We'll have like, you know, broccoli cooked in bacon or Brussels sprouts or something like that. I'll have that. But like I probably have vegetation in my diet once every two weeks or something. I would say most of it is meat.
I'll have a keto brick a day and then the vast majority of my other calories come from eggs, pigs and animal based sources. You know, lamb, beef, Venice. And I do a lot of hunting, so I've got a freezer full of game that I've killed over the years and that fuels me quite well. Yeah, we have a cow coming. I don't hunt, dude. I'm, I'm originally from California. I might live in Tennessee now, but the only hunting I do is in Costco's freezer section.
You know, like that's about it. That's that's my I'm, I'm, I'm a city slicker, dude. I can't, I'm just, I just now if, if one of my buddies goes out and kills a deer, I'll take it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but we have a we I'm in Tennessee, man. There's cows all over the place. It's like we can get a cow. Like, yeah, the hunting thing's awesome because talk about grass fed wild food. You can't get much better than that. And it's so lean.
And it brings you like very, very close to that circle of life that we were talking about earlier. I mean like when you kill something else first hand, you see the life leave its eyes. You just respect the food all the more. Like you don't want to waste any of it. You don't. Like one of my pet peeves is throwing away food. Like I do not like throwing away food. And when I hunt that animal, I make sure every morsel gets
consumed like there's no waste. And I feel like when you have that no waste mentality, you just appreciate that much more. As we should. Yeah, as we absolutely should, man. I see this is this is the kind of stuff what's what's really crazy? I forgot the doctor's name. That doctor that Sean Baker always points out, that little vegan guy with the beard and the weird stomach. It's like McGregor, McGregor, McGregor. Yeah, that guy is so crazy and
he looks so bad. I've never listened to his content, but yeah, like I've never. I like to look at people that resemble what I would want to look and feel like. And I probably wouldn't be taking health advice for someone that doesn't look healthy personally. Meanwhile, Sean Baker's, what, 57? Is he like 59 years old now? He's getting on up there, Yeah. And he's, he's a. Beast man indoor, you know how hard indoor rowing is?
Like that's not an easy sport. You got to have cardiovascular, you got to have fast twitch, you got to have glycolytic, glycogenic and the guy is still crushing it. Like you got to respect that. You got to respect them putting their money with their mouth. I haven't seen many vegans. Remember that movie Game Changer? Did you watch that? Unfortunately, yeah. God that movie was so bad, but it made for some really good content. I got so many views on YouTube
from that one. But they had that one vegan strongman who was shitting on all the other strong men. Where has he gone? What has he done? Well, they didn't want anything of that video. And a lot of it was staged. A lot of it was using, you know, poorly designed studies, like the whole thing was propaganda. The China study is poorly designed. Yeah, a lot of. Everything the vegans have are poorly designed. You see doctors coming around now though, That's the crazy thing.
Like doctors are starting to figure it out and it's going to take time because but the kids coming out of medical school now, I think they are more in tuned with what's going on in the real world, what real nutrition is like and how everything about saturated fat and cholesterol is a big lie. Yeah, yeah, it's cholesterol. We're definitely making progress. What were you saying? So so cholesterol, man, how is your cholesterol and how do you view LDLHDL and overall cholesterol?
I have a whole list of stuff in my head for you, man. I'm I'm fascinated by what you do. Have you dove into any of Dave Feldman's work? Yeah, so he's he's on to some pretty good stuff there. They're actually making legit bonafide studies that, you know, they just recently published one study and I had him on the podcast Diamond Details, all butchered.
But basically they, they compared a cohort that was, you know, fitting his criteria of lean mass hyper responders had elevated LDLS compared to a cohort that was on a statin and reduced LDL numbers. And they were comparing, you know, CAC scores between the two. And the, the group that was in that lean mass hyper responder, elevated quarter cholesterol group didn't have any increased CAC scores. So like to me that that's pretty
indicative there. I mean, my personal cholesterol numbers, I've got slightly elevated LDL, but my HDL is also high and my trigs are like nothing. So my ratio is solid. So yeah, I mean, I test my numbers like every six months typically, and they're always in a really good range. Yeah, I, I think it's also, so I got a personal anecdote. So I have a really good doctor, but he's a doctor, right? So I came in, my HDL was right there. I'm sorry.
LDL was 130 is the high range for normal tests. I think it's 150 on some. He's like, you know what? I put every male over 40 on a statin and I'm like, you know what, OK, whatever, it's not going to hurt, right? Holy shit, that was terrible. It causes the worst myopathy you've ever, So I didn't. So I take so many health supplements because I own a supplement company.
It's what I do. I like just threw it in the mix, didn't even realize I was on it. I was literally on a self induced placebo because I take so much shit. I'm like, cool, another pill, whatever. So I'm at the time my daughter and I were training for a powerlifting meet. I was going to do a powerlifting meet with my daughter, right? And like I was killing it. So like a week it, it ended up being like a week into the statin therapy and I'm on low dose Rizuvastatin, which is the
the mild one. That's the one that causes the least effects. I forgot why there's I think it's water soluble versus fat soluble. Whatever. There was some reason and all of a sudden like my fucking back is killing me. I'm sore as shit from powerlifting. I realize I'm a bodybuilder so I'm higher volume powerlifting training. No offense, powerlifters, it's not that hard. You go in, you get a couple low Rep sets, you use some ancillaries, you leave.
I'm not doing like fucking four sets of 12, right? So I'm like, why am I in such pain? And then I looked, I'm like, what am I taking? And I'm like, oh, I'm taking, let me look it up. I looked it up and it's like 5 to 10%. I've actually read different data points that show that is vastly underestimated, like 25, thirty, 40% of people get the severe myopathy. So I'm talking to my business partner's dad at Tiger Fitness, Larry, and he's like, yeah, my
doctor put me on a statin. I couldn't walk. I'm like, I think statins are making people fatter and unhealthier because you can't fucking move. Yeah, there may be some truth to that for sure. I mean, I, I'm obviously not on statin. A lot of my family is. Don't do it. Don't do it. Yeah, like. Like I don't feel any need for the statin.
When you look at the, the if you have 0 pre-existing conditions, you haven't had a stroke, you haven't had a heart attack, and you look at the numbers as to how much the statin is supposedly going to decrease your likelihood for one of those adverse effects, it's like negligible. It's minuscule. Minuscule. See, but I understand where the doctor's coming from. Hear me out. So I'm not mad. I actually had this conversation with him. Great talk. Just AGP, just a normal guy,
right? He's not like a steroid doctor, right? Like he's a regular fucking doctor on my, on my, on my, you know, my, my, my list, right? I'm like, OK, so he's like, here's the reason I put people on it because there's an overall decrease in morbidity based on the data I've read of 30%. That's it. So if you're over for, he's like, I don't make money on it. He's like even if I did, it's like $8. It's generic. He's like, I can't prescribe enough to make money. It's not from financial.
And you could actually look up, I think it's called the Sun Act, where you could look up how much money your doctor has taken from big pharma. Everything from every lunch they've been on, every gift they've received. My guy has zero. So he's just like, look, dude, I'm I'm dealing with the general population. I just don't want people to die. Here's a way that might decrease morbidity by 30%. I'm in.
So I'm like, that makes sense. He's like, but you, you left really hard and it's good to hurt you. So don't take it. I'm like, all right, cool. So but dude, statins are harsh bro. Yeah, yeah, it's so harsh. I'm not anti Western medicine by any means. I don't want to come across the way. A lot of my family is in that sector, but there's just so much, there's so many biases with everything in life. And like they're trained to
think a certain way. They're brought through a certain curriculum in Med school. A lot of that information and, and research has been dated and is no longer applicable. And like for me, it's like, what do I do that makes me feel good? What do I do that makes me perform good? What do I do that makes me excited? And not taking a bunch of drugs, eating good quality food and lifting hard and heavy checks all those boxes. How many days a week do you
train? Usually about 5. I'll do like a cardio day so if you count that it winds up being 6, but usually five week training days. OK, so yeah, you're still in your prime, man, 30, that's a good age. Yeah, I feel very early 30s, but. I'll tell you what, man, I'm excited for what I'm looking like when I'm 78, you know, because I've been doing this for so long. So like, you look at people like Mark Sisson, he's kind of like the poster boy for looking healthy at a later age.
It's like, man, I'm going to blow Mark Sisson out of the water. No disrespect to him, but like, I'm going to, I'm going to paint a new narrative here. Dude I I turned 44 in a month I've never felt better. I think it's my best look ever and I love it because people think I'm on so much steroids. It's it's amazing. Like when I did the New York Pro dude, I had people doing videos like fucking hating me. Like he's on way more than he says he's on. I'm like guys, I'm at that time.
I'm 43 years old, I have 3 kids, I own multiple businesses. Why would I risk my health for a fucking bodybuilding show like what you're? Walking around, Wait. So my SO right now I'm back up to to 12 1/2. So that's another thing. And I don't Photoshop because my pictures will look much better if I Photoshop, right? Like, so I don't know if it's because I'm so lean year round or whatever, but 212 at 5-7 and a quarter, it's not that big.
Like these guys, Nick Walker's walking around at 3:10 at my height, shorter than me. So I'm like, no, I'm, I'm really not that big. I'm just lean. I'm conditioned. I've been training for 30 years, man. I started training at 13 years old, never missed a day. So instead of training saying, wow, you know, that guy really trained a lot of years. Like, Oh no, he's just been taking trends since he was 13 years old. And I'm I'm sure you get the
natty shit too. Yeah, it comes the territory because like people want to hate on what they don't have, you know? Like I've been competing. I've been training for I guess 15-16 years now. My first show was in 2012. I've gotten consistently better each time I've stepped on stage and I've always been natural. But like people look at someone that's jacked and they just assume they're taking stuff because they're not one to put in the work and died hard enough to reach that level of
conditioning. But like, I completed this last go round at, you know, one 53155. I'm 5 seven and a half. So like if I'm 153 and I'm on a bunch of gear that I'm doing something wrong. You're way taller than me. You got me by 1/4 inch. 1/4 inch is a lot in some places. You know, I'm saying, but I'll just wear Hocas. Those give me a good like half an inch man. There you go man. I tried those. They were like way too much cushion for myself. I dropped those out for sure.
Man I was, but I bought 5 pairs in a row. I love them. That's that's my favorite shoe because they have that wide toe box, but they still have cushioning. I do like the white toe box. I switched all my footwear to wide toe box 0 drop shoes and my feet feel way better because of it. Yeah, it's, you know what? I look at it this way like I'm,
I'm totally honest. The problem I made the the mistake I made is in when I was 27, my doctor put me on TRT and in 2013 I did when I got my Nava pro card, I did do a all out cycle like I'm on. The problem is I was honest about it and now they're like, so they're like watch, just tell us what you're doing. I'm like cool, here's what I'm doing. I'm on 150 milligrams of tests a week and two, I use of HGH five days a week prescribed by my doctor. Here's my doctor's information
in case you want to ask him. And then now people are telling me I'm lying because I told them what I'm on, because I'm on more. So I'm like, I should have just said I'm natty or I mean, you can't win. Like you're people are like, are you natural? You're like, yes, they're like, no, you're not. You're a liar. OK? And look, man, I mean, I literally took seven years off of bodybuilding to box and I couldn't lose muscle.
Like I was weight training like two or three days a week, just doing the basic compounds just to keep my strength. And I just didn't lose muscle. And I lost a little bit. But it came back really fast when I started training again for bodybuilding, like in two or three months because I didn't like, I wasn't sedentary, actually was still boxing and
moving. But the Internet is a fascinating place where even when you tell the truth and it's not the truth they want to hear, they get really fucking mad. And then they come at you and they're just so ridiculously over the top. And I'll be real, if I wasn't married, I would probably do a lot of steroids, but my wife would never let me do that. I mean, my wife would be like, what are you doing? You're just going to lose again. But you're going to take health risks.
Like, like, you're going to lose anyway. Might as well lose being health. It's tough, man. The the Internet's ruthless man. Like when we first started the business, like my wife and I are poured our heart and soul into it. Lots of sleepless nights. We'd like sell out of inventory and people would just like RIP us a new one. So we didn't know what the hell we were talking about. And the same is true with natural bodybuilding. They all say I'm on gear.
Like the internet's ruthless. But like, if you know your intentions, if you know, if you know the truth, what you do because you're you, it's like you got to just let that shit roll off your back. Otherwise you just lose too much sleep. Dude, it used to get to me so bad. I just like cry myself. I'm not going to lie. I cried because I'm like, why is everybody so bad at me? And then it's like, whatever, you know, it, it is what it is. It's the Internet.
We put ourselves out there. It's part of it, you know, and but I think we only see the negative. Like it could be 100 things of people saying thank you. But all we see is the part about like, oh, you, you kick a little dog. I'm like, I never kicked a dog. But then that kid that just, it hurts you, it hits you. And I don't think people understand because I'm not like, I can speak for you. We're not like a real celebrity like Brad Pitt or like, so we don't have what they have.
But in our micro world of our celebrity, just that little bit of negativity, it, it hurts, it sucks. It's like, why can't we all just be nice to each other? Like what? Why? Why do you have to find something negative about everything? And it's like you, you want to
make the biggest impact. And it's frustrating when you recognize that most of the engagement occurs when there is an aura of negativity around it. So it's almost like the algorithm, the the viewership, the view count is rewarding, negative over positive. And to me, it's just like, like, I don't even want to pay that price. Like I would rather not sell my soul, not do all these hate videos and just keep putting out content.
And then my loyal base of true, you know, true blue fans, like they're going to be there for me through thick and thin. And that may mean that I don't grow to the extent that I could. But like, if I don't have to sell my soul to the devil to do it, that's what I'll keep doing because then I can sleep easy at night. So are you all in on this, on what you're doing now? Do you have a another job or?
No, this, this is all it, man. So like we launched, I launched Keto Savage in 2016. I quit corporate, went to $250,000 in debt, was like depressed out of my mind. Started Keto Savage in 2016 with the content, the coaching. Then we launched Keto Brick in 2018 and we've just been growing everything organically ever since. So I haven't worked for the man, so to speak, and since 2017
probably. Yeah, that's there's there's The thing is people don't understand when you own a business, you never you never work for yourself. You're always working for your consumers. You're working to pay your taxes. Yeah, I mean you there's no freedom in owning a business. Like it is the most corporate working in the corporate world is actually, I can argue it is the most freedom you'll ever have working for yourself. It's a prison.
It literally like, yeah, you get to do your own thing, but like there's just so like, when's the last time you had a weekend off? I couldn't tell you man. Like I went down to the farm, I got a family farm. It's been in our family for like 5 generations. I went down there this past weekend to like do some hunting, do some work. And I, I didn't have Internet service down there. So I was there for 2 1/2 days, 1 1/2 days, and I was able to disconnect a little bit for that window.
But even then, like I'm checking emails, I'm making sure everything's, you know, done from a production, production standpoint, I'm making sure everything's, you know, solid. So I've never had this like clock out mentality where it's just like, I'm done with it. I can't tell you the last time. That was probably when I was with corporate. And that'll be, that'd be awesome.
Like I made, we went to, we hiked the Northeast this summer and it was like, I would get up before everybody got up, go down to the hotel lobby, catch up. And then after we get done with the day, I'd take time during the day to get some stuff done. I'd, I'd, I'd be on all my calls, 'cause we have board meetings and shit during the day. So I don't know. It's, I don't know. I like my brother did it. He, so he works.
He's, he's, he does really well. He's a senior VP digital marketing, multiple companies, but like he takes vacations. It's wild. I'm like, you mean you don't have to do anything. You have an assistant or what? That must be awesome, but I don't know, it's, there's something to be said. I mean, you're, you're obviously the message you're getting out is helping so many people fight, you know, and, and I mean, type 2 diabetes is treatable, preventable, and I can argue curable.
Of course, talk to your doctor. I'm not a doctor, but what what we do from a health and fitness standpoint, I mean, people look at it like, oh, you just want to make money. Well, yeah, we we need to keep the lights on. Like we need to sell something. But how many people do you think you've helped come off of medication?
I'm sure it's hundreds. Yeah, I mean, there's no way that I could even quantify it. Like, I mean, they may have, they may have never even purchased from me and they may just have heard something on the podcast and they're just in the background living a healthier life because of it. But I get emails every single day about how something I've said, done, or promoted has impacted their life for the
better. And I keep an e-mail folder of all those positive comments that when I get inundated with negativity, I can open one of those up. But OK, I am doing what my calling is in the world, you know? That's the best. I mean, that is, that is fantastic, man. Man, that's, that's so you've been around. You started this in 2016. What'd you do at corporate America before this? So after I graduated college, I
got hooked on with the railroad. So I was a train master for the Burlington and Santa Fe Railroad, basically managing the engineers and conductors in Spokane, WA. That's what my, my girlfriend is now my wife. And you know, I knew that I always wanted to do something entrepreneurial. I was trying to get into real estate. I was trying to, you know, drop ship and do all these things. And then I'm like, you know
what? I'm passionate about fitness, nutrition, The ketogenic diets made a positive impact in my life. I feel like I could do the same for others. I'm just going to go all in on that and make that where I create my value and that's what I've done. Man, ketogenic, you know, keto for peeking for a show is fascinating.
Yeah, that's just fascinating. Well, there's, there's so much, there's so much negativity from a, a competitive standpoint because kind of like Western medicine, like the people that compete are so steeped in nutritional dogma, you know, flexible dieting, if it fits your macros. There's just a lot of, you know, incorrect information out there.
And for me, it's like, yes, the ketogenic diet can obviously be applicable for those that need to get healthy, doesn't need to improve their diabetes, cure their diabetes, but there's not really anybody that I was aware of at the time, especially using a full performance athletics and optimizing for bodybuilding show. So it's like, if I can do that, if I can improve my relationship with food, that's where I think
a lot of people go astray. That's what appeals to a lot of people is they have these massive eating disorders. I had one and it's it's honestly more so the norm than not in the bodybuilding space. And a lot of it stems from eating heavily processed food that people feel addicted to and then have guilt around eating. Whereas like with me, I eat quality food. 365 days a year, every day, every year. And I don't have that guilt associated with it.
I know that I'm feeling my body properly and I improve my relationship with food as a result. And if I can help other competitors do that, they get their life back. Well, let's talk about flexible dieting. I will argue that it did more harm than good. Now it did teach us about calories and calories out right. Alberto Nunez, he good friend of mine, we guessed those together before, a natural legend, but he showed that you can get obscenely shredded on Pop Tarts.
That was a were you? Are you old enough to remember the Pop Tart era? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh. Jesus Christ. But the problem is it normalized fitting bullshit food into your macros. And while I will argue that calories and calories are is the most important part of dieting, there's more to it. There's hormones, there's health, there's so many things. So I would argue that flexible dieting got us to kind of look away from the whole purpose of eating and that's to sustain a
healthy lifestyle. And unfortunately, with flexible dieting, you had people literally cutting out healthy foods so they can fit in a Pop Tart or a Snickers bar at the end of the day. And I think the best way to diet is to start with a lifestyle first. Like let's make those positive changes in your food choices. Let's make those positive changes maybe going from a Snickers bar to a sweet potato, right? Let's let's make those minor changes, maybe put some.
Have you ever put peanut butter or a sweet potato? I know you're not into this, but like I'll take a sweet potato with peanut butter in it over a Snickers bar. So you do things, slight changes, more satiating, so many micronutrients. What is there 600 milligrams of potassium and a freaking sweet potato? Like it's crazy healthy, but instead we said, Oh well, you get shredded, you get shredded and you just have to control
your calories. So you have people dieting on 1000 calories because obviously you can't eat as much because it's not a satiating. They're hungry as hell, but they could dump their pop tart at the end of the day, which accounts for 80 carbohydrates. And like, it's nuts, you can get shredded on any diet. It's been proven time and time again. But like, being shredded is not
equate to being healthy. And you look, a lot of these people that used to compete that no longer do and they're still struggling with, you know, diabetes or some form of, you know, ailment or metabolic syndrome. It's like if I can bypass that by, you know, living of the morals and values that I've done throughout my competitive season and and extend that into perpetuity, it's like that just seems like a better play long term.
And if you have a long game approach to it, it's hard to justify eating a bunch of nonsense, you know? Well, we, I, I, I get that question like, how do you stay lean year round? It's like if you're eating a whole natural foods, it's really hard to get fat. It's just no one ever got fat off of chicken and broccoli. Nobody. It's just, it's, it's impossible. You can't do it.
You might not get shredded eating Whole Foods like, but if you're eating the basics, the Amish, they have the lowest obesity rate in our entire population. Why do you think that is? 'Cause they don't eat all the bullshit. They don't eat the bullshit. It's it's not rocket science, but yet, you know, And what was the old badge? Shop the perimeter at the grocery store. Yeah, what's crazy to me is that like, I was like I said, I was at my farm this past weekend.
You know, I got my family there and I love them all to death. But like, one of the guys overweight, he pulls out like a freaking massive gallon Ziploc bag full of all his pills and prescription. She's on, you know, metformin, you know, cholesterol drugs, statin, like everything. And he's like having that right after he gets done eating a whole bunch of like, apple pie or something like that.
It's like, man, you can totally bypass all this by just simply cleaning up a few things and changing your lifestyle. But people, I don't know if they just are too ignorant to connect those dots or if they're unwilling to make a change or if they're just so ingrained in their thinking or they're just simply addicted to those foods. But to me it seems like that is not a worthwhile price to pay. The dopamine reaction from eating those foods is, is quite, quite, it's quite significant.
So I mean, you look at porn, well, don't look at porn. That's the whole point. If you, if you take into account porn and anything that that is addictive, there's that dopamine response like even picking up your phone and that gives you
that little hit of dopamine. So food is definitely addictive and you know, when you and and talk about like hunting, bring it back to what you said earlier, like it's different when you go to achieve something like winning a championship, playing the whole season, just get that dope. When you get of winning the Super Bowl, that's different than just winning the lottery, right?
Like you earned it. You, you haunted that food, you got it. But dopamine is so easy to come by now between phones and porn and this and that, whereas people don't earn their dopamine. Like working out like that is something you earn. It's something you do. It's something that you, you grind to get that feeling. But when dopamine is just you,
you get addicted to that HIT. And it's so easy to grab a bag of potato chips and get that dopamine hit that you lose the whole connection to why am I eating this food? Yeah, it's for. I mean, you know, even Kita, you enjoy your food. I'm sure you enjoy steak and bacon and all that. But you're eating it and you know it's doing something good. You know it's doing something
good for you. Whereas if you're just eating a candy bar or a potato chip, you know it's not good for you, but you're getting that immediate dopamine hit of all those chemicals they produce those things with that provide that sensory feedback that provides the dopamine explosion in your body. Yeah, delayed gratification, man. It all boils down to delayed
gratification. Yeah, you can have that bag of potato chips now and feel great for the moment, but then you're going to have that guilt associated with it, and it's certainly not serving your body for any good. But it's like for me, my superpower is doing things every single day that compound over time. You know, like most bodybuilders have that ingrained in them in
some form or fashion. So like once you have that sense of delay, gratification and you play that long game, it makes it so much easier to adhere to the habits and protocols that you put into place. We like, there's 8 billion of us on this planet. We all want to have six pack abs and look good naked, yet so few of us do the habit. We don't rise to the level of our ambitions, we fall to the level of our habits and routines.
And once you live your life with that philosophy, it's easier to recognize what you should or should not do. Man, that you put that very well. Like people say they don't want ABS. Oh, that's nasty. Shut up. Yeah, shut up. You know, You know, you know what I love about Ozempic? It showed that the whole fat positivity thing was just bullshit, 'cause now that everybody can just take a pill and lose weight, it basically
stops your digestion. It's hard that this look, the the class action lawsuits and side effects from Ozempic and GLP ones. It's going to be so astronomical that you guys just, I don't think people see it coming because it causes gastroparesis. I've met three people locally now. This is just in my circle, just, you know, moms of coaches of football teams and stuff like that where they have had long term effects that are going to
plate them. They're not going to correct it for the next year or two because it's your gut where literally food gets caught in your stomach and it just kind of ferments and it just sits there because it literally slows digestion and makes you so nauseous that you can't eat.
That's how this thing works. And yet people are taking it because they can lose weight, but at the same time they're not allowed to. They're not able to eat, so they're not even enough protein, so they're losing muscle, so they look frail. They have that. That Ozempic face we just call prep face now. They got it too. It's called Ozempic face and it's just, it's fascinating that everybody's like, oh, no body
positivity. And then as soon as there's a pill that comes out, whatever happened to being proud and fat? Even Lizo is getting shredded now. Yeah, it is crazy man. And like there may be definitely use case scenario where it makes sense, but people don't understand metabolism at all. They don't recognize it. If you don't eat, yes, you will lose weight, but your metabolism will down regulate to follow suit.
And if you have, if you're taking in 500 calories a day, like a lot of these people are taking Ozempic ore, then they're not going to be able to perform. They're going to lose lean tissue so that when they do start eating again, if they ever cycle off of it, their composition is going to be far worse than when they started. And like, people need to recognize that. You know how big Ozempic is.
So I'm at a retail conference because with Ambrosia Planta, we're in, you know, Sprouts and a lot of grocery stores. So we're meeting with these big accounts, Every single one of them is looking for shit to take alongside GLP ones. That's their main hunt. They're looking for proteins. They're looking for other things, electrolytes to go alongside that. People aren't able to eat what GLP wants. It's become so big now BC rates are dropping in America. They are dropping and that's
great. And obesity is the number one comorbidity. I'm all for it. But what other issues are gonna come up? What does it do to the heart long term? What does it do to your digestive system, your small intestine, your large intestine? Your colon doesn't increase because you have food. Just sitting there doesn't increase your your predisposition for colon cancer. There's so many things that we don't know because joking was been, oh, it's been used for years in diabetics.
Yeah. At about 120th the dose for diabetics, GOP ones are this big for to for weight loss, it's this big of a dose. Yeah, it's, it's kind of like lottery, like you mentioned earlier, the people that don't have the right habits, routines in place to build and manage their money, they win the lottery within years. They're bankrupt. The people that are taking all these Olympic drugs to lose weight, you know, they can't, they don't have their the habits in place to be able to maintain
that. So like, it's going to crash and burn on them. And like people, people just got to play the long game. People got to build the habits in place that actually lead to the success, the true success, the lasting success. Dude, yes, see, that's the thing. I think if there's one thing to take home from this, this this conversation is 1 is I could talk to you for about 12 hours. I got so much, so much. I mean, first of all, you're smart, like you get it.
And but you're, you're also not crazy. Does that make sense? Like some, some, some carnivore people have taken it to the extreme. Like they're just nuts. I even Sean Baker's like, that's not me, man. Those people are crazy. And he's the one who called it. He literally named the fucking diet. He's like, these people are nuts. They're crazy. Well, they over sensationalize things for sure. Yeah, but that's how you sell books. Maybe you should over sensationalize.
You should change the name of this to do keto or you're going to die. Carps cause cancer. You know, there's other, I'll get you to my marketing people. We'll get you done, we'll get you good. But yeah, sensationalism sells, right. So it's, it's just it's profound that I think the take home from everything is protein is good, fat is good for some people, carbohydrates can be, if you're going to choose to eat carbohydrate, which by the way, you don't need, it's not
essential. There's only two essential nutrients, essential fatty acids and essential amino acids. But if you do choose to eat carbohydrate, eat it as close to its whole natural source as possible. Yep Yep. And again, I mean most people are not weight training. Like you don't need to carb up in order to do the laundry and clean the house. You know, yeah, if I didn't, if I didn't train the way I do and coach, there's no way I would be on a carb inclusive diet.
They just, unless I felt like, unless I'm like, I, I just feel like eating a cookie, you know, then I'm like, OK, I'm gonna have a cookie. But you don't need to have glucose to do everyday activities. You just don't. And I can argue you don't need it for any activity. The studies on performance and ketogenesis being subpar, yeah, I guess. I mean, there there is data on that, but there's also data that
shows the opposite. It's just a matter of what you want to cherry pick to prove your argument. Yeah, exactly. And the unfortunate thing is that most of the studies that look at performance with ketogenic diets are taking a study a population size that have been doing it for two weeks. You know like yeah, you can be producing ketones in two days, but that does not mean the metabolic pathways are in place to efficiently use those as a fuel substrate for performance.
Like look at people have been doing it for six months or better, not 2 weeks. How long would you say it takes to become fat adapted? I mean, I know it's going to be independent like some people like me who's very metabolically healthy would would probably take less time than Susie who weight trains at lifetime two days a week, right? So what would you say would be the average range of becoming
fat adapted? From a cognition standpoint, people would be able to tell the difference in two weeks for sure or or less. But from like a athletic performance standpoint with lifting metrics and endurance while training, I always encourage people to give it at
least a solid six months. Like it may be sooner than that, but you can't really look at the data 1 to one looking like a bench, bench press performance metrics with carbs versus with keto until you've been doing it for ample time for your body to build up those metabolic pathways. And again, like, think about it this way, like people who get to like £350, but they want to, my goal is to get to 200 by summer and it's January. I'm like, bro, you didn't get
that fat that quick. Like it's not going to come off that quick. And your body does adapt. And I, I, and again, there's, I said this for so many years, like there's only two essential macro nutrients, carbohydrate, that's the wild card. That's the one you don't need to survive because your body can produce energy from ketones and it can also derive from gluconeogenesis, It can derive glucose. So carbohydrate is the optional, yeah. Right.
And think about like there's. One, there's a couple ways to look at that. We're born relatively ketotic, like breast milk. Yes, there are some carbs in breast milk, but I mean it's also a very fatty profile. So like we're pretty much ketotic at birth and then shortly after birth we're inundated with like all the, the pureed fruits and nutrient void nonsense, all the formula fed nonsense. So like from a very early age we're we've become glucose dependent.
So most people spend the majority of their life in that glucose independent state. The notion that they can just switch their fuel substrate on a dime, you know, that that's not realistic. Like you have to build that up. So yeah, there's there's like our son we had like my wife was ketogenic all throughout her pregnancy, all throughout breastfeeding. He's been totally ketogenic. He's 2 1/2 years old now. He's breaking all the metrics
from a growth chart standpoint. And I mean, obviously I think he's the best world because he's my son. But like he'll, he'll be next to other people that are 2 1/2 years old and he's got more, you know, bone density. He's better built. Like he just looks healthier. You know, it's like if you feed yourself the right food, real food, from the onset, you're going to outperform those that
don't. Yeah, I can argue that's one of the reasons my kids, even though they're not ketogenic, I, I think you know, do you know I'm St. Brown, the wide receiver on the Detroit Lions. I. Don't know him personally, no. So, well, I mean know of him so his dad was a pro bodybuilder, John Brown, one of the greatest pro body. He was amazing. So he did he has a podcast. He was saying how you know, kids need more protein because they're developing, they're growing.
But if you look at what kids eat like I deal with I, I only I'm actually in 10 minutes, I got to go. I one of my kids is he tore his ACL before he came to us. So we got him coming back like 8 weeks before he should. So I'm going to his doctor's appointment. But so these kids go out and they're developing and they're growing, but their diets are absolute trash. They're getting maybe .3G of protein per pound of body weight when they should probably be closer to 222 grams per pound.
So my kids have always been at around 1.5 to 2G. Obviously don't measure their food. We're not Nazis like that. But like, you know, my kids start every day with 50 grams of protein. You know, they, they get going. And I think one thing we have is we have protein deficiency. We have too much all to process foods. And that's why our kids are the way they are. We're seeing injuries in sports that they didn't exist when we were kids.
Like I see more weird injuries. Like I know it's labrum tier tears. I've seen more of those since I started coaching than I've ever seen. I didn't even know if that existed till I was an adult. We never had those when I was a kid. Football, baseball, no one tore a labrum. I've seen like 12 of them this year.
So there's something going on where our kids are malnourished and I do think protein and lack of protein and the overuse of ultra processed foods is the reason these kids think Taco Bell is is a is a a logical food choice. Yeah, I mean like it. I don't know, man, when you, when you're a parent as you are, as I am, it's like you can't help but judge some of the stuff that you see parents feed their.
Kids, I judge everybody. Yeah, And I don't want to come across as negative, but it's like, look, that kid relies on you to feed him or her, and you're feeding them totally nutritionally to void nonsense like that is going to impact their brain development, that's going to impact their skeletal structure, like it's impacting every the testosterone. Yeah, setting the foundation for the rest of their life.
Dude, the testosterone levels of dudes in their 20s now are equal to the testosterone levels of dudes in their 70s in the 80s. Look at it that way. And I'm look, man, we can look at microplastics this that the third look at the end of the day, here's what I think. I think that kids, one is they're not active enough, and two is that their diets are full of auto process junk and they don't get enough protein, so they're naturally going to have lower testosterone levels.
Yeah. And then they end up voting Democrat. I love it, I love it. Well listen man, I know you got a doctor's appointment. As you said, we could talk for 12 hours left to do a follow up Round 2 for sure. Oh, dude, I need, I need like five of these. Man. I could talk to you all day. Let's do it, man. But what's? Fascinating. Where can people go to find out more about you? Well, tigerfitness.com is my website, so we need to talk about getting the keto brick on there.
I don't know if you do do B to B sales, but I think it would fit. So yeah, tigerfitness.com on socialmediayoutube.com/tiger Fitness and at Lowblinder TVI have two channels and then on social media it's at Mark Globe, Blinder, MARCLOBLINER and what is yours for my people. Keto Savage for me, Keto brick ketobodybuilding.com for the course I just launched. But yeah, Keto brick. Keto Savage. Keto Bodybuilding. Awesome man. Well, let's do this. I definitely we need to do a
follow up. This is fantastic. 100% man, we'll do it for sure brother all. Right brother, have a good rest of your day. See you Mark. Take care all. Right later.