Retro Bodybuilding with Craig Toni

Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com. Today I've got special guest Craig Tony on the line. He shot me an e-mail a few months back and he had a really cool, really cool back story talking about his experience bodybuilding back in the 80s and 90s. He was very transparent and open with his use of steroids During a few of those years we talked about that. We talked about some of the health implications that

resulted from that. We talked about his transformation to a ketogenic, now carnivore state as a result of high blood pressure, having his appendix rupture and just kind of what he's learned over the years from a competitive standpoint, from a strength and conditioning standpoint, from nutrition standpoint. So covered quite a lot of different topics. I thoroughly enjoyed the

conversation. I've got no doubt that you will take something from it. So that for the delay, sit back, relax and do the podcast with Craig and we are live. Craig, how are you brother? Good doing well, Robert. Thanks for having me. Hey man, I'm excited to be chatting with you. Just to give the listeners some context, you sent me an e-mail.

Shoot, I don't even know. A couple months back now I guess probably and you were talking about your your back story with bodybuilding, powerlifting, weight training, you know some some health concerns. You had transition to keto now carnivore, and it was like a super in depth e-mail. It's like shoot man, I need to be just talking about all this on a podcast. So here we are today to talk

about it on a podcast. Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm really honored to be on your podcast because of all the different podcasts. Your podcast incorporates the weight training and especially with your bodybuilding.

You know, just just really important stuff to people who like lifting weights and I don't think that that information actually gets out there so much to our community cause so much of the community is really doing this for health related purposes or they had a history of health, you know, health issues throughout their life. But, you know, so this resonated with me and before I even start, I just want to give your, your

props and your respect for. I have a lot of respect for you, for what you've done in this community. Because when I started in 2017, when I went keto and it was for health reasons, you're you were in this community already as young as you are. You're like a old timer in the community and you were, your stuff resonated with me, even your weight training, because you were old school.

You know, a lot of the people who are weight training now, you know, utilizing all these different new funky principles. And I hate to say it, but, you know, it comes down to getting in the gym, getting consistent and doing basic movements. And I've been doing this for 41 years in the gym. So I do know, and I did it competitive competitively as well. And so when I watch you do this stuff, it's like, man, it just reinforces what I had been doing

and what we figure out. Those of us who did that, who have been doing it this long have figured out and watching you doing it, seeing a different generation introducing and just kind of in a quiet way how you do it is just amazing. And then your story, you know, I I I know your story too and things you overcame with with your story for health reasons and trying to compete in bodybuilding, doing all this and staying steroid free and competing at a high level.

I I give you the utmost respect on that and so I'm I'm honored to be on this and tell my story so. Hey man, Well, I truly, truly do appreciate all the kind words. It's like I've I've been bodybuilding now, you know, for a pretty good while, I guess 151617 years, I'm not sure, but I've been keto now for more than half of that. And it's it's weird because there's a definite demographic

of bodybuilders. There's like a separate demographic of natural bodybuilders and there's like another demographic for all those that are interested in, you know, ketogenic, low carb, carnivore fasting, biohacking. But it's like there's so much overlap, so why don't we just bridge that gap, you know? Yeah I know I and you you seem to be one of the. I don't know, I I haven't seen any you know Doctor Baker shows his weightlifting that he does

and things like that. But what you do with the macros and talking about it and being in in a ketogenic state, which I think is extremely a different concept than most carnivores are doing. And I've noticed that most people who are carnivore tend to all of a sudden they get

carnivore. And if they were never lifters before or were old time lifters, they all of a sudden start thinking that they need to put carbs back in their diet and they start doing these, you know, carb loads and you know the different techniques for bringing carbs in around the

workout and everything else. And I'm like and then a lot of them also started doing TRT and it's like you have stayed true to that and I have been experimenting myself and it's like, Dang, you can do this without doing any of that stuff. And I think yours was the first person I ever heard, and this is before I watched that Nick, I think his name is Norwitz, talk about glycogen stores. And you were one of the first ones when I heard you on a podcast with somebody else or a

doctor was on your podcast. And you said, I don't believe that that's true, that you can't restore your glycogen and you're not a doctor. But it's like you've been training and you're able to go hour workouts, hour and a half workouts. Your glycogen stores have to be getting refueled. And so you know it's just now they're figuring it out that you know you can't have somebody on keto for four weeks and think that they're going to have an effective workout doing an hour or two hour workout.

So it's going to have to take. I think Nick said that the average time period of their people that they tested were twenty months on on a ketogenic type of diet. So yeah, you're kind of like a, you know, one of the people that you're the head of the spear regards to weight training.

I appreciate that man. It's it's interesting because like I don't have you know obviously any medical training or background but I think I've taken a very boots on the ground you know approach and I just, I mean I love training, I love pushing the envelope and I've done the whole carbohydrate based protocol and as I know you have as well and we'll dive into

that. But it's like, you know, I I don't need to have a scientific study, you know, give me a bullet to the list as to why I can or can't perform at a high level in the complete absence of carbohydrates. I've tested it with, I've tested it without. I know how my body feels. I know what my recovery and performance is like. And I don't need a scientific study to show me what I already know. And it's like, what else do you need?

You know, like just focus on that and if the performance speaks for itself, then let that be the reality. Yeah. And and staying on that topic, that's that's kind of been my approach. It's like I don't want to hear the the epidemiology reports and and the the studies and all that. And you know, people like Lenny Norton and all those folks who are just, you know, they just regurgitate all that stuff.

That means nothing to me. It means nothing to me about a rat study listening to somebody tell their story and then I get something out of it that means something to me. I mean that's you know, n = 1. I don't know. They, they team seem to downplay it. You know, I've had so many people say that, you know my effects are placebo and it's like you you're insane.

But anyways, you know, hearing that kind of stuff and even you know the level of followers that you have compared to the level of followers that steroid guys have you're you're not even close. And it's and it's to me it's it's a little frustrating because they're getting the followers because, you know, they're just massively just, you know, enhanced. And people actually think that

they can get that way. And so when the guys who are enhanced don't say that they're on steroids and they're giving out advice on nutrition and other things to do. I think it's like it's it's kind of, it's it's frustrating for me to watch, 'cause I'm like, those guys should be listening to you to see how you can do it naturally and you know, how big you can get naturally. I mean, my son, he's a carnivore

and he's a shoot. If you look at him, you'd think he's on the juice and he's 28 years old. So he he knows how he can get you competing, getting a pro card, everything else. I mean, you're shredded 3% body fat in my last show. I mean, you know, naturally, it's it's that kind of information that means way more. I mean, I have total respect for the Mark Bells and the guys who come right out and say, hey dude, you know, I like my TRT. This is what I do and I have total respect for them.

I I don't have a bad word to say. I did that. I know what the feeling of being massive and and the feeling of, you know, just the feeling going in the weight room of, you know, pushing around some massive weights is, you know, it's, you know, it's a lot of people want that and I totally understand it. Not only that, I understand the 60 year olds, the 40 year olds and 50 year olds who start TRT because they're trying to feel better, but nobody's talking about what the problems may be.

And you know, I I have, I have some friends who do the TRT. And even if you listen to like, what's his name, Derek from Workplace, More Dates talk about the TRT. It's the first thing they talk about doing is putting them on a blood pressure medication. What does that tell you?

You know what I mean? So if you're 40 or 50 years old, you really think you need to be taking something that you should be getting put on blood pressure medication at that age, you know, and and I've talked, I've talked to friends about it and I can look at the pictures and I can look at their food and tell that they're on TRT when they're 50 or 60. And so when they talk to me and go, hey, what are you doing? And then I tell them and I go, you know, what are you doing?

And, you know, I say, yeah, I know you're on TRT or whatever. And then I'd be like, so how's your blood pressure? Are you on blood pressure meds? And they're like, yeah, that's kind of why I'm talking to you. And I'm like, you know, so nobody wants to talk about the ugly part of it. They see the pictures and it all looks good. But behind the scenes, what's going on to the body? You can't, you can't alter one thing. It's like putting a three, you know, a 350 engine in a Pinto.

You alter that power without burning out your transmission, without burning out your tires, without burning out something, you know, in that car. And the same thing with the body. When you supplement it, that supplement's going to do something somewhere else and you're going to have to accommodate it or you know, reap the unbent, you know the benefits or detriments. Yeah, an. Alteration so.

I totally agree man. And I feel like, you know, I don't know that much about these different, you know, compounds performance enhancing drugs because I mean honestly I have not really looked into it at depth because I I don't use them. If I was using them, I would like a deep dive study on it all. But since I don't even entertain that idea, I haven't really done that. I'll bring people on the podcast

that are experts in that field. I'll pick their brain and at the end of the day it's like you know, to each their own. Like I don't have you know any judgement one or the other as long as they're honest and transparent about it. Like I think that is key for sure. But as far as me personally, I want to see what I can achieve naturally. But honestly like all of that external inputs and variables just seems like an easy way to cloud the equation and just add too many variables to the mix.

Like, I don't want to have to try and keep track of all that stuff, you know? It just seems overwhelming. Yeah. And it it was for me when I when I was down that rabbit hole and you know back when when I was doing that, well, I'll go ahead and just go ahead and say what where what I was doing. Yeah, give me some back story. I So anyways, my name's Greg Tony and I'm 61 years old and I started competitive bodybuilding in the 80s.

I actually went into a show at 18 years old when I was natural. I had been lifting for a couple of years. I lifted weights for a a little bit in high school, but not a lot. But once I graduated from high school, I wanted something to take the place in my sports that I was doing. And so the weightlifting, I just liked it and then got the magazines and was totally hooked on oh wow, you know, I'd like to get jacked. You know, I was always, I was always always had a muscular

build. I wasn't one of those little buff guys, but I was always 'cause I'm Six 2 and so I was always more lean. I never had very low body fat. I was always ripped. I remember, you know, they would call me Little Hulk in high school, not because of my mass, but just that the muscles just just were were out there because I I'd be pretty ripped. So lifting weights, my big thing was I I wanted to, I had to gain some mass, you know, I had to get big. And so at 18 I had entered a

show. I can't remember looking back, all I remember I didn't place at all and I just remembered those guys were really big and I was like Dang. And so talking to some of the competitors even at 19, a lot of those guys were doing steroids and which is? Crazy at that young of an age. I mean, they've got so much natural occurring testosterone. Like to to supplement that young of an age just blows my mind. Yeah, it it is. And so, you know, I wasn't thinking about steroids at that

point at all. I just decided basically like you just said, hey, I'm young enough. The stuff I was reading, even even back then, you know, none of the people ever recommend, first of all, they never talked about steroids. Even Arnold and all of those guys didn't really talk about it. They kind of had the illusion that most people had the illusion that they weren't taking anything. And so there wasn't much in the literature.

Although when the topic would come up, people were like, you know, you shouldn't take this under, you know, 21 years old or whatever your body's forming. And and now what I know about any of that stuff, people are taking it under 26, they shouldn't be taking it because your brain and everything else is still forming all the way up until that age. So whatever. I mean, I don't think anybody

needs it at all. If somebody's trying to be, you know, Mr. Olympia, obviously there's no way around it. But anyway, so I started to work out more. I I went to, started going to gyms, I went to in our area. I was in Connecticut. I lived there most of my life when I was growing up. And there was a place, we were in a Podunk, we were in a little Podunk town called Woodstock, CT and there was no gym that was any kind of gym.

So I would go to Southbridge, MA. We were on the border and they had a little hole in the wall gym and there were some big guys in there pushing some weight around. I was like, ah, this is pretty cool. So I got addicted to that at that time. Then I took a bartending at like 18 or 19 years old. Before that I was working for my dad's business, which was a concrete business, but I didn't want part of that business anymore. It was hellish work and so and so I decided to go into the

bartending. So I would go to Hartford, CT and that was a pretty big boxing town, boxing community. I know a lot of bars outside of Hartford in Manchester and West Hartford, and that's where bodybuilding was actually pretty big. And so I joined a gym and what the hell it was called, I can't remember the name of it. When it comes to me, I'll, I'll say what it Gibson's Gym. And that was just an old school gym with all old equipment, but it was brand new but all basic equipment.

And there were some Olympic lifters in there. I I'll never forget this guy. He was like, man, he had to be about £300, not fat either, just about 6-4. And I remember him doing front squats with, you know, five plates, 44495, right. And I was like, holy crap, you know, that's a lot of weight. And there was some people pushing around a lot of weight. And I'm like, I want to do this.

And so I worked out there, was getting pretty big, getting pretty strong and decided to, I was going to compete in a show. People were talking, saying, hey, you should try and get into a show, but there's no way you can do it without getting on the juice and this and that. And it was like, so at 21 years old, I remember it was a 21 years old, I went to a place and it was all back then. It wasn't, you know, out front.

It wasn't, you know, getting that pharmacy prescription, although it was not considered a felony drug, It was like getting a prescription of Tylenol with codeine. So it wasn't. It was that when you want to say an infraction, it was never on the books as being a felony. But it was illegal to sell it, obviously, but taking it or having it was not an issue. Not a super issue anyways. But anyway, yeah, I'm not gonna try and minimize it. It was illegal, but it was considered a misdemeanor

infraction on the law books. So anyway, so I had met with the guy who basically was doing all the cycles for people in that area and he owned a gym in West Hartford, CT And so we would, most of the people would go there and talk to that guy and he would, you know, set them up on cycles. And then plus he was a big name among some big names. I mean actually I ended up at one point, Mike Quinn, I don't

know if you know that name. He just recently died but he was he was in the Olympia a few times and he was big time bodybuilder in the North Northeast area. And he would go in and he would talk to that owner of that gym a lot and he was getting ready for show and he needed a training partner And that owner said, hey, I know a guy who pushes around the weight that you push around. He said go see that Craig, Tony guy, he's at Gibson's gym.

You can train there with him and they called Gibson up and you know Gibson's gym up and talked to the owner said yeah absolutely Mike, Clint, come in here. Oh that's great. He'll bring more people in. And so I would I trained with that guy for a week and he he was extremely strong. But yeah, so we had good workouts or whatever. But so I started at 21 and I entered was what I was getting ready for was a show called the Big East and it was a regional show and it was a qualifier for

a national level shows. So I was, I never knew much about diet. I just didn't eat junk food and

now we stayed ripped. And so I didn't really know how to get super ripped like you obviously know how to do for the shows you compete in. There's a difference between, you know, carrying around 6 to 8% body fat and going down to the levels that you have to go to for a show, which is, you know, 4 or 5%. And so I could always walk around with like between 6 and 8% with just, you know, not just not eating junk and especially when I was taking the steroids.

If anybody knows anything about steroids, you know, they're they're a, they allow your food to get turned into muscle, so you become insulin sensitive. That's one good thing. One thing about steroids. And ITRT is they allow you to have insulin sensitivity. And so by doing that it just makes everything come in. And if you notice with a lot of bodybuilders, there's a few, there's a few that watch their diet real well and then there are a few that don't.

And when I equate the difference in those being as kind of like Larry Wheels and and I I respect him too for his honesty and stuff. He's crazy though, but I respect him for his honesty. But if you listen to him, he says he can't eat a lot. So he'll eat calorie not dense, but calorie high foods in order to get the calories in to build that muscle. And I was like him, I had, I never had it. Steroids gave me a bad appetite. I didn't have an appetite and so I had to force feed myself.

And so you'll get people like that. Although I didn't do what Larry Wheels didn't eat junk, a lot of them will go to the chip witches or ice creams or something. That just has a ton of calories. I know Sam Sulak was doing that as well. And it it gets you to the whatever 10,000 calories a day that you need to get to, to maintain that muscle or to get that muscle bulk that you want. But you can imagine when you're doing that, how damaging that is

to your body. You know, so outwardly you look good, but inwardly you're, you know, you're not getting the nutrients that your body needs and you're not getting that nutrient density. So, but there are two types. There are the types that are able to somehow their appetite doesn't get suppressed at all and they're able to eat a lot of calories. There's a blessing and curse to that is the blessing is that you're eating good food. The curse is that you can still get fat.

And so they have to diet. When it comes down to shows, I didn't really do much dieting because I didn't know how to and I was ripped and so I just ate less. Food is all I did to diet. So I entered that show. There were some people who had been around for a while and that was a person, person that they were pushing. I can't remember his last. His last name was Prince. They were pushing for the AAU America. And so he ended up winning the show.

I think I got either 4th. I think I got 4th, but I qualified for a regional show by placing 4th And so after that point I was going to college at 1819 in the Bronx, NY and at Maritime College and then AT20I transferred to University of Connecticut and that's when I was spending a lot of time at Gibson's gym. And so between the ages of 21 and 23, I was doing cycles and competing.

I would go, but I was pretty. I was pretty by the book, by, you know, 12 weeks on, 8 weeks off, 12 weeks on, 12 weeks off. So you were cycling off. A lot of people never even cycle off these days. Right. Yeah. And you know, I didn't know that at the time until I was working out with a guy. I was at A at a gym. And so anyways, I moved to California when I was 22 years old. I was with a girl at the time. She was going to go to UC Davis.

She's like, hey, would you come to California with me and kind of keep an eye on me and move out there with me? I was like, cool. Yeah, I'll go out there. I wanted to do bodybuilding. I was into that. I was going to the University of Connecticut. Didn't know what I wanted to major in, though. So I was like, if I pick up school again, I'll go out and do it in California, get residency and go to SAC State or somewhere, you know, in California.

And I did end up doing it. I went back to school and got my business degree while I was working at the prisons. But anyway, so I come out here and I'm like, OK, I want to be poor bodybuilder, go work out at Gold. So I'm like this is the Mecca, you know and come out here to California and I'm doing the cycles and like you said, I'm thinking that people are on and off cycles. And I remember a friend of mine, he, I was like, so you off a cycle now And he's like, yeah, yeah, I'm off a cycle.

And I don't know, we were in a bathroom, whatever. And his gym bag was soap. And I'm going, you know, you've got testosterone, Simponi in in there and you got, you know, this and that in there. I says you're freaking lying, you know, And he's like, oh, and he got into blush And he goes, well, I'm not taking as much as when I'm on my side. So. So being off a cycle was actually being in a reduced level.

So it's like people nowadays who always talk about, oh, I'm on TRT, you're taking steroids, all right. Because the level of steroids that you're taking for TRT doses and steroid doses, it's a Gray area. And everybody, it's great now because wow, I can say I'm on TRT, you know, and it's just like, just say you're on steroids, all right, Nobody's going to going to judge you. You're getting it legally, probably through a prescription anyway, so who cares? That is definitely the case,

man. Like TRT has become so socially acceptable and there's been a lot of studies that show, you know, like there's certainly benefits to it have taken at the right dosages and it's kind of like all kinds of, you know, anti aging benefits, you know, bone health.

I mean there's there's lots of perks to it, but it's it's kind of scary that it's become so socially acceptable because people are just, you know, flying by to see their pants and taking it, not cycling off of it, taking super physiological doses of it. I mean, it's kind of the Wild West in a lot of regards. Yeah, it really is. And I just kind of look at it like any kind of pharmaceutical.

There are those studies, but I wonder what the follow up studies are regarding 'cause I think a lot of the people, you know, they just say I got low testosterone, they go in, they they take the TRT and they will, you know, they try and bring their levels between whatever, 300 and 1200. And most of the doctors try and keep it into a range. But like I said, even the ones that are doing that, most of those guys I know are taking blood pressure meds as well.

So there's although they're getting enhancements and they're probably getting bone density and everything else, it's really like, dude, why don't you try a low carb diet and see if your testosterone can boost, see if your, you know, your bone levels? Because I I guarantee they're just insulin resistant at that point. I mean, I'm not a doctor. I mean, in my opinion is that most people just get to be insulin resistant at, you know, in their latter years, 40 years old.

And it it happens mostly to those of us who are athletes because we spent so many years carb loading. I mean, it's just the way it is. If you're athletic, you're going to be pushing your body super hard. And that pushing, although it's a good push and it's a good stress, it's still a stress on the body. And you are more likely to be later on in life having problems because that stress will affect your CNS, you know, central nervous system and all kinds of issues on your body.

So you have to, you know, look at the fact, am I insulin resistant? Is that what's causing the weight gain? Is that what? OK why don't you try addressing that naturally, see what happens? You know, go on a low carb diet, go on a keto carnivore type of diet and see if that happens before. But it's it's a lot easier and it's a lot more fun to take the TRT and and you know it, it

makes you stronger. I'm not going to say it doesn't, and I'm also not going to say that those guys don't work hard, 'cause I work my ass off when I was taking my steroids to get the size I did. But it was easier to overtrain without having the detriments of overtraining. So doing what you're doing, you have to be very careful as a natural guy because your levels of everything in your body revolve around what your, you know, what your inflammation is

like. And when you're on steroids, you don't have to play that game as much you can. You can really push it, you can do those super long workouts, you can really push the points. The only problem is, is then you get things like what Larry Wheels and people like even me experience later on, later on in life is you start getting tendon tears, you start getting muscle tears. And is that attributed to the steroids?

I don't know. I mean, you know, there's a good case to say that, yeah, because you're able to put, you're able to push your body a little bit more than then you could. If you were natural, then is that going to cause because your tendons aren't going to get any necessarily, I don't think get much stronger. You kind of have this tendon strength that you'll always have.

So you know, a lot of guys, you see them with PEC tears, they see them with the bicep tears, you see them with these, you know, like I had quad ruptures and stuff like that. But yeah, it's, you know, there's a there's a price to pay for the supplements. I think that, you know, the good Lord gave us a body and gave us food to eat. And if we if we do it correctly and we get nutrient density that

we can kind of maximize. And you're a good example of what you're able to do with proper nutrient diet and proper hormones. Because I I throw that in there because I think people doing carnivore are not eating enough fat a lot of times, especially if they're lifting and that's where they end up going to the carbs is because they're not getting that fat for energy and not getting that fat for hormone

production. And they're depleting it really quickly, thinking that the higher protein is going to fix that. And I don't believe my personal opinion and my experiments on myself that doesn't. It doesn't work that way, necessarily so. Yeah, no 100% agreement. I feel like, you know, Carnivore in my mind is just a subset of keto.

But when you take Carnivore from a high protein standpoint to the extreme, and it's kind of like the pendulum has kind of swung that direction lately, it seems, it feels, it seems as though people have become fearful of too much fat and they're just, you know, protein's been given a Halo, which I mean protein's obviously a very important macronutrient.

But like, there is a point of diminishing returns where if you're consuming so much protein relative to fat and you're doing low carb carnivore and you're not consuming carbohydrates, then, you know, protein is not a great substrate for injury. So people's performance is going to hinder and they're not going to have the, the hormonal baseline that they need. I mean, and when you diet down like my, I've been super open

about my, my hormone levels. And like as a natural when you're really lean, you know, your hormone tanks regardless of the diet you're on. So, like, my total testosterone was in the freaking, you know, toilet at the end of my prep. But since my prep, it's literally doubled every single time I've gotten blood work in the reverse diet. So I mean, it will become, it will bounce back to natural levels, but you got to do it the right way.

And when Speaking of food, like when people are on gear and you can speak to this, but when you're on gear, you're able to get away with a lot more in the kitchen. You don't have to be as concise with the macro nutrients. If you're taking like Trinblown, you can, you know, lean down much more quickly without losing muscle tissue, nearly as likely as you would if you were natural.

And then when you reverse diet and you can be much more aggressive with that, have that rebound muscle gaining potential, and then diet for another show much more soon after your prior show. And you can't really get away with that if you're natural. No.

Yeah. And and that's The thing is when and that's that's exactly what I'm saying and and one of the things that I, I respect about you too with you've seen Keto from 2017. Anyways, from when I started it, from that point in time to now, it kind of has gone out of favor and kind of carnivore has taken over and I've watched you maintain ketogenic state you yet you put your, you know, you put your ketone levels in, you put your blood sugar levels in.

And that's for me, it's really cool because it gives me a reference point to look at. And the same thing with your, with your testosterone of a few things there that you just said with your testosterone tanking, which it obviously does when you're when you're dieting and to where you're libido. And that shows you kind of the effect that yes, you're not going to, you're still not going to shut off your testosterone, even if your levels, I don't know if you ever tested them.

But even if your levels were considered below the 300 mark, you know, what's the fear? Is the fear that it's going to shut down completely. I don't. I don't think. I don't. I don't even think. Well. And I did the steroids for about 2 1/2, almost three years. My levels were bad when I didn't get them tested, but I could feel when I went back in the gym because I'm, I'm the kind of person that will go do things cold Turkey.

And so I'll go back to that. I'm kind of bouncing around, but going back to the the thing you were saying about the, you know, about the the diet. But yeah, you can, you have a lot more wiggle room in what you can eat. And so you're able to, you're able to eat more crazy foods. Like I said, they looking for calories, especially when they're bulking, but when they are dieting they do.

And that was the thing I did notice was a lot of there were two different strategies that people would use. They'd either do a carb loading before the shows or they depleted themselves about a week before the show and then like that day before they would carb load. And you know, I would watch people do it and it was like amazing that the vascularity and the water just gets sucked right into the muscle The day before the show. I'm like, this guy looks like crap and then boom, just in a

day they look different. Some people that didn't work well for them and they would do sodium loading instead where they would sodium deplete and then sodium load. And that was another technique that the people were doing.

And now thinking about what I do know about carbs and the body and sodium, it's like I think if people were pretty much on a lower carb diet that the low carb or low carb depletion didn't work for them because the reason carb loading works is you're tricking your body for that basically five day period. If you miss that peak, obviously you flatten right out because your body's doing it saying OK, it's a biological computer and it's figuring out, OK, how do I fix this?

You know, that's a shock to my body. That's why you're getting that look. That look is not necessarily a healthy look. It's just what your body's doing to react to the fact that you carb depleted for all this time. Now you just put all those carbs back in and now it's trying to figure out how to find equilibrium. And so same thing with the sodium. It's a trickery.

That's why that window is so important for people that if they miss it by a day, you know, it throws you completely off and your skin gets all messed up and your your vascularity goes away, your muscles get flat. So yeah, for me, I just didn't do any of that. I just stayed, like I said,

between 6 and 8% body fat. I don't know what it was on the night of the show in California, but so basically I trained at a gym called the Body and Power in Carmichael, CA, which is outside of Sacramento, and at that time that was the gym in the Sacramento area. There was a guy by the name of Bill Canberra who who owned the gym, was super nice to me. Definitely a big gear guy, definitely. He'd been in some shows Massive guy. If you look at his pictures, just just size wise massive

about 5-8. I want to say maybe 5-9 I don't know. But he competed in some shows. He I can't remember how what level he got to. I don't know if he got to the you know the Mr. America stuff but he did the Sacramento, did some regional shows and he looked really he looked great. If he had ever had an issue it was dieting down. He liked his size. He he was big tricep, big back guy. Anyways, his gym, really great gym for me.

He was super kind to me and so I represented his gym going into the California State Championships and my qualifier was my regional show and in in New England. And so when I went in that show, you talk about politics, That was the year 1986. It was the year Troy Zukalato won the show. If anybody knows that name at all, it's them talking about old times, but Flex Magazine and Iron. I don't know what the two were.

Flex was one of the big ones. Muscle and Fitness was big, but for hardcore it was a Flex magazine. Anyways, if you looked in those magazines, you would see pictures of people in some of those magazines that didn't have names under them, but they would take a picture of some muscular guy in the gym. All of those guys were guys that were being promoted by Joe Weider. So there were people that all of a sudden I saw him all on stage, you know, in the California, I'm like, holy crap, I didn't

realize how big a show that was. And it was a basically a qualifier for the Mr. America. And usually the person who won the cow was favored to win the Mr. America contest. And I think that's what had happened with Zuccovato that year. And he looked good. And, you know, I'm not taking anything away from him at all.

He looked good and I didn't you know I didn't get down to the whatever 3 or 4% body fat but like I like I wrote to you I said that my claim to fame was I was mentioned in I believe it was Flex magazine to be they go the the size of these people ranged from the heaviest the biggest at six foot two 248 lbs. Craig. Tony. That's it. That's that's my moment. There's there's my 15 minutes of fame and that was it.

I didn't place, I didn't make the night show and you know, but I knew in my head, I mean you know I was I towered over these guys and you know how it is when a tall person is holding that much muscle, you can't not see it. You know what I mean? But you know, it's but if you get somebody, I don't care what height or weight, if that's super shredded, you know, they're obviously going to be better conditioned and deserve to win the show.

But it it, you know, you see like you see Lou Ferrigno to me, his physique was always impressive to me and that's kind of what, you know, he was like 6-5. And that was kind of the physique that I look to. And I knew at that height that probably my career in bodybuilding, you know, was not going to be something substantial. And I also got a chin check that day because I talked to a guy who I hadn't seen in six weeks and six weeks before he looked like crap.

And the day of the show I knew recognized him and I go, Dang, how, how did you get like this? And he says, come on Greg, he goes, it's a chemical warfare, you got to know. And so I talked to Bill Canberra, who just recently died. Actually, Bill Canberra had prostate cancer and bone cancer and died. But he told me he goes, yeah, he said that you got to understand the diuretics and all of that stuff. And I was like, you know what? I'm done with this.

And that same year they also made it a felony drug, even to possess steroids. And so when I was thinking about a late year and, you know, a career in law enforcement and even at that gym, there were a lot of cops, they were on the juice. They all stopped taking it and you could see a bunch of people shrink. It was it was pretty interesting. But my my personal history and story as far as strength goes, is my strength, really. At first it declined and so I'd

say about a six month period. But I always loved the gym. So for somebody like you, you can understand this. I love the gym. I don't need to train in front of people. I could do heavyweight and my gym is in my house now. I can do heavyweight without a crowd watching. I don't care. It's yeah, I do it for me. I love pushing weight and so that's what also made it hard with bodybuilding. I was not one of these guys who wanted to do a lot of reps on

stuff. I was a guy who wanted to see how heavy he could squat, how much you know. And so during that time period I, you know, when I was on the juice, I had a 495 bench. I don't know why I didn't put the 2 1/2's on there. I should have put it so I could say I had 500, but I had I had the five plate bench. I had a 785 squat and I those were my big lifts. I never deadlifted because I always had lower back issues so

I didn't mess with it too much. But surprisingly off of steroids my strength got up to but you have to understand my weight. I I carried around a lot of weight. So off of steroids, after 20-3 years old at 24 through 40 years old, I was weighing between 260 and I got up to 309 when I competed in the police Olympics at 40 years old. So there's no doubt that the body weight helps your strength. It also helped it. It totally also helped cushion

my joints. So surprisingly, my weakest as far as strength goes is was always my bench because of my long arms. And surprisingly, I decided to do a bench press contest in the police Olympics. I had 40 years old in the Masters and I was 275 at the time. But the 275 weight class was pretty competitive. And so I knew that I could get my bench up higher if I just ate like a pig and gained weight. And I got up to that 309 and I ended up benching 451 natural

creatine. That's it. And I benched 451 with no bench shirt. And that's with a pause. So it was two O 5 kilograms, I believe. And yeah, I was happy. I was proud of that because there were guys on steroids in the police Olympics too. I mean, don't don't think that there aren't cops using weren't cops when it was illegal, still using steroids. And some of them were getting TRT prescriptions as well back then.

But yeah, and then and as well, my squat was I didn't go super heavy in terms of one Rep Max, but I would do sets of A1 plate, two plates, three plates, 4 plates, all with 10 reps, 5 plates for 10 reps, and six plates for 8 to 10 reps And that's actually how I blew out my quads. I had a dual quadricep rupture. When I lost my balance on the way down, I was in a full spot position. Both quadriceps blew out. But.

Yeah, man. And who knows how much of that was because of #1, some of the steroid, you know how the detriment to the steroids. And and I was doing carbs at the time and I'm sure that my insulin, I was having insulin resistance. So who knows if I was getting the nutrients that I needed to be getting to do that heavy kind of weight training that I was doing so?

When you were natural and you were in that police Olympics and you were pushing the calories high to get up to that higher weight class to to move more weight, Did you notice that even naturally, just simply by consuming a ton of food and and pushing that higher body weight that you just had more joint pain and inflammation kind of by default? Surprisingly so. My bench would.

I would go in the gym in in my home I had a gym and I would go up to about four O 5. That's what I would normally only go up to, and that would be a one Rep, one Rep maximum natural. But when I went up to three O 9, my joint pain actually kind of went away. And my yeah, and I I felt like I had this cushioning of fat in my body that was allowing me to do that much more weight and I got super strong pretty quickly. I mean my my bench now, mind you. I also eliminated a bunch of

exercises. I had a friend who was a power lifter. He told me, OK, you're overtraining shoulders, you're overtraining, you're doing bodybuilding movements like a power lifter. He goes, the the two don't go together. He goes, you got to cut out all of these things. You got to be lazy when you're doing bench press contest. So, you know, just do three days a week, blah blah blah. And you know my reps were down and I was repping four O 5 easily with, you know, whereas before it wasn't.

So between the cutting out exercises and that extra body weight. But I'll tell you what. I was breathing heavy. I couldn't bend over to tie my shoes. It was difficult wiping my butt in the bathroom like, and I was only 309. I go, I don't know how people can pee like 400 lbs. And so immediately immediately after that I, you know, I I lost

the weight. I've never had a problem, you know, dropping weight, but still I stayed between, like I said, I stayed between 260 and and two 75280 and throughout my career as a parole agent too, which, you know, it helped me in the field with some, with some of the guys I had to deal with. Yeah, I bet you see a lot of these old school bodybuilders, like they, since they're taking gear so aggressively in their competitive years, when they get off it, they have to.

I mean, they can't ever really get off it. Like they're always having to take, you know, somewhat of a dose. They can just simply maintain normal testosterone function at that point because their bodies just totally shut down natural production. But you see them downsize considerably, like they don't even look like bodybuilders half the time. You know though, Robert, I wonder if that's true.

I I wonder if you, if you worked with somebody who said I want to be natural, that if I even take TRT, it's going to have an effect. Like for me, you know, I've had people actually say and I and I'm not saying this to boost my ego, but, you know, in in a picture of me at 61 ago, oh, what's your TRT dose? And I'm like, I'm not taking TRT And then some say I'm lying. And it's that's like the

ultimate compliment. And I'm like, well, in my case, TRT would kill me. So, you know, so I'll talk about the health thing real quickly too. I know we've been going for a while. But whatever you want to do actually, how do you want me to go from here? I'll I'll talk about we're. Just we're just having a conversation. Open dialogue, man. So yeah, just lean into it. So anyway, so yeah, to go to that point is why there's no way that I'd be taking any kind of testosterone is because.

So at in at 52, it's throughout my whole life. My first migraine ever started, started in my life at I was about 19 years old. And I Remember, Remember when it happened and I was like damn, what is this, you know, it's felt like a sinus infection that but that it was blurring my vision, it was causing head pain. Your smells were intensified just every it was, it was horrible. And I started getting them more often from 19/20/21 in my 20s, they started getting worse.

In my 30s, they were getting worse. And what I was finding to be the only thing that helped with them at all because I had to go to a job every day, was to take like those Excedrin migraine medications. Basically, you know, they're basically an aspirin of some sort with caffeine in it, and those would tend to take the edge off. But I was experiencing one of those migraines probably two to three times a week in my 20s, and the same thing in my 30s and in my 40s.

They started intensifying to where I was almost getting them daily. Yeah, actually in my 40s I was getting them daily and I was taking basically Excedrin migraines every day, three to six. At one point I would take them every time I got the migraine. So if I took one, took three in the morning, and then the migraine came back, I would take another three, another three, and then I was like, OK, I'm going to be killing my stomach lining if I keep doing this. So I just limited it to three a

day, which is still bad. And I think this contributed to why my appendix ruptured when I was 52 years old. And so at 52, I was just getting ready to retire. And so I had a month to go and I got massive pain in my gut and I'm getting these migraines now. Mind you, my diet is broccoli, cheese and chicken, I mean, but not cheese, broccoli, rice and chicken for the most part. I never was a dessert guy. I never was a, you know, a cake guy or whatever.

Did I have one or, you know, a slice on occasion or, you know, once or twice a month? Once a month or twice a year? Yeah, I'll have a dessert or have stuff like that. But I really stuck to that type of diet. Vegetables, fruit, eggs, tuna. I was big on tuna. People at work knew I used to take cans of tuna and eat the tuna and eat the eggs and and then I would, But I was eating a lot of vegetables and I was eating a lot of fruit. Had my bananas, all of that stuff.

Total carb diet, carb load, creatine, and whatever carb drinks that they had out there before before workout. Anyways, at 52, I'm a month to retirement and I get this massive pain in my gut. I'm like, oh shoot, but it gets so bad that I'm literally sleeping at the side of the bed, kneeling down like I do. Actually, when I have migraines I sleep that way. I would sleep on my knees in a praying position and I'm like this and and my wife was about a

week before retirement. So I I'm like this for like 2 1/2 weeks, 2 weeks and yeah and I'm thinking Dang this whatever it is. And I thought it was just Constipation because I'd get on my bike inside my recumbent bike pedal and I'd go to the bathroom had bowel movement. I go, OK, I feel a little bit better, you know. And so I thought it was just really bad Constipation. And so finally breakdown go to the doctor.

I didn't want to call in sick. And the reason I waited so long was I didn't want to call in sick. I had turned in my timesheet. We turn them in a month early. When you retire and you burn all your sick time, you burn all of whatever get cashed out. So I didn't want to seem like I was screwing over my employer by calling in sick when I don't have any time on the books to do it, you know. And so I was just trying to be the quote dedicated employee and and somewhat stubborn at the same time.

So I'm not going to put it on being a nice guy, but I just didn't want to be appear in that light, you know, for for whatever reason. And so I went to the doctor and my white blood cell count was out of control. And he said you need to go to emergency room, go to emergency room. They didn't even see it on the first pass, I think on the X-rays and they didn't know what it was. And I'm riding in pain at that

point. And then finally they come back and go, oh, you got to go to surgery right, right now. And so I go into surgery, come out of it and the team on duty was an oncology team, so they were the cancer guys. But the lead doctor surgeon had said he's been doing these appendix surgeries for appendix ruptures for over 30 years. He said it was one of the worst he saw and he goes, you're lucky to be alive. They had to clean all of my

organs by hand with antibiotics. So they were in there fiddling around, he said. They also look for cancer because they're like, what's what causing this? And they almost had to take out part of my intestines. But fortunately we're able to save it. And so, yeah, I was basically scrubbed down with antibiotics internally and was on antibiotics for a week, you know, through IV and in the hospital.

And I noticed during that time period, of course I'm getting migraines during the whole time, but because of the morphine and stuff they put me on, it was kind of keeping it down. But when I got out of the hospital, I noticed that my blood pressure started rising. And so before long, my blood pressure was like really bad. I never had blood pressure issues. And it was like 180 over. You know, I'd go to the doctor, it was 180 / 90.

And I was going to the neurologist trying to have them work on my migraines and figure something out. And they put me on Botox and they put me on nerve blocks, they put me on Topamax and all the other protocols. They had nothing work for that stuff. It was ridiculous. And my blood pressure keeps going up. I'm like, oh shit, so I so I'm like, that's when it got to the point where I was having the migraines so bad. My blood pressure was so bad.

I literally was on the side edge of my bed one night where my migraine was super bad. And so I'm having to sleep kneeling down and I'm praying to God, you know what? Either Take Me Out, you know, I was never suicidal, you know, I would never take my life. But I was like either give me that big widow maker with this blood pressure or, you know, help me find a solution, please, you know, please, God. And it was like, because I couldn't live like that.

I between I was wondering whether the migraines were going to kill me or the OR the blood pressure. I knew the migraines wouldn't kill me, but I knew that that blood pressure would. And I'm sure the migraines weren't helping the blood pressure. And so, believe it or not, the next day I found Angela Stanton online when I looked up electrolytes and migraines, and she was the one who started the whole thing with her Facebook page and she was helping people cure migraines using a ketogenic

diet. And then when when I had joined and was talking with her, she told me, hey, you may want to try Carnivore, because she's found Doctor Baker. And she said, you know, you work out and Carnivore approach seems to work well too. So yeah, that's where my journey started. And it didn't. But it didn't solve and it didn't solve my blood pressure issues. My migraines started slowly going away. I wasn't one of these three months. You did this and boom,

everything was healed. It took about a year where I was down to like a migraine. A month. And then when I went carnivore, it really improved. When I started overeating, surprisingly that got rid of my migraines. Because I remember Doctor Baker saying, hey, if you're not getting cured on stuff, you know what, eat more meat. And I thought, you know what? Let me eat more. So I was consuming like 4000 to 5000 calories and you know of carnivore diet and it my

migraines went away. So I was like hey this is cool. But then after a few years of that my my blood pressure still was not getting fixed. And Long story short, the way I fixed that was surprisingly, I ended up having to. I did a bunch of electrolyte experiments on myself. So I just isolated the variables and thought, you know what, just eat meat and water, isolate the variables. At the time, I was taking like 400 milligrams of magnesium.

I was taking sodium all the time because that was part of the protocol for both just going to keto and carnivore and for the migraines and that the Facebook page. So I was taking probably about 5 to 10,000 milligrams of sodium a day. So I decided, OK, I'm just going to isolate each each of those things and so I just would salt my food and then I had tried potassium and brought my potassium levels up to up to 10,000 in a month's period of time. That didn't do anything for my

blood pressure. I tried to do the same with magnesium, only lasted 2 weeks because I was crabbing my brains out. So at about 1500 milligrams I was, I was like it was non-stop. I was like I go, I can't do this anymore. And so I didn't get to the sodium, but I had consulted with a card, a cardiologist, who was Keto guy. So I paid big money, you know, saved up some money, paid big money to go to this cardiologist. And I'm like, what do you think's the problem? Gave him access to all my

medical stuff. And mind you, I got an enlarged heart. I'm on a beta blocker. That's the only medication I'm at on at the time. They put me on, They tried to put me on a diuretic and that didn't do anything. And so you know, our enlarged heart and some aorta, probably some damage in there, but not enough to where they were going to do any surgery.

And so when he looks at my stuff, just to remind you, this is a carnivore keto guy and he advertises that he says well, and I told them that this way of eating got rid of my migraines. He told me that I recommend that you increase your carbohydrates to 75 grams. And because of your cholesterol level being the way it is that you take, you know, the the carbohydrates will help fix that. But I put you on a statin and an additional blood pressure

medication. And so I looked at him and I said when I wrote to you, I told you I care about quality of life, not quantity of life, that I'll take no migraines a day for five years even if I die of a heart attack over migraines for the next 20 years. You know not. I'm not doing it. And even with that, he still made that recommendation. I was kind of like, dude, you you don't. You're not buying what you're selling. You're selling.

Why couldn't you have given me some approach that was ketogenic, knowing that, yes, it may be riskier, but you already said you want quality over quantity. Here's my, you know, approach to that. No, he just his default was automatically, oh God, this guy's going to have a heart attack. What do I do with a normal person? I I'll put him on a statin, put him on, you know, the typical playbook that you would do with a conventional Dr. And I was really disappointed. So I get to.

And now I'm at the level. And I was also disappointed because the guy didn't know that potassium had a lot of, I mean that meat had a lot of potassium because I had to tell him that. And then he kind of wrote me back and said, Oh yeah, I stand corrected. Meat does have a lot of potassium because I had asked him a simple question.

I said, does can external electrolytes, let's say you have kidney damage from my high blood pressure in all these years, eight years of it. Can electrolytes externally have a harder time being processed by the kidneys than electrolytes that come from the food? And he goes, I don't know, he goes, I don't think so. And every doctor I asked that question, they didn't know the answer to that. And so my experiment was, you know, what with sodium, Let me I'm just salting my food right now.

Let me do the experiments. With this, I went up to 10,000 milligrams of sodium again, and I almost had AI had 200 / 100 blood pressure for a week straight. So I go, OK, I'm not doing that experiment anymore because I'm going to blow a gasket. And so I completely got rid of the sodium. I go, what do I do at this point? I'm I'm only salting my food. It's not, it's not much. So I got completely rid of the sodium and within three days my sodium and my blood pressure

went down to normal. Three days after eight years. And So what would my opinion be is that my kidneys obviously were damaged, and those small tiny arteries and capillaries in there probably just could not process any external electrolytes. And so my diet obviously now contains no electrolytes other than what's in the food. And so I don't use any sodium, I don't use any magnesium, I don't use any supplements at all, and I'm just eating pretty much meat and water and keep ketogenic macros.

So I do that. And I've had to experiment with that because my overeating of the protein caused my blood sugar to start getting out of control to where it was. My fasting would be anywhere between 100 and like 1/22 and my levels would stay there during the day.

So I was getting this sort of insulin resistance from too much protein and my experiments with lowering the fat down below like 68% the 1:00 to 1:00 where I was going at 64 to 68% fat and that's you know as you well know that's lower than one to one and so that ended up kind of damaging.

So now I've gone back to a whole different level and doing a little bit more research and following, you know, Jeff Vollick and Steven Finney's recommendations with maintaining, trying to stay in ketosis by having .6g of protein per lean pound of weight. You know, that would give me, you know, you know, the amounts of protein. For my weight, I'm 225 now, my lean body mass, I kind of figured to be about 180 and that would put me at a Max of 180

grams of protein. And so right now I'm I'm doing about 130 grams. Keep my fat at, you know, 80%, eighty, 1% in order to drive that to blood sugar down and get those ketones up. So have you noticed a pretty big difference in swabbing at those micros? Like if your blood sugar levels dropped on average. Yeah, not immediately, 'cause you know it. It would. It also proved to me is at first I started continuing to eat like 4000 calories.

And so I was taking in like 400 grams of fat and thought, OK, I'll really drive that down and I'll do, I'll go extreme, 'cause I don't do anything normal to my detriment. But but it helps, like with, you know, clients and stuff that I work with too, 'cause I can say, well, I did this and don't do it, but I was taking 100 grams of protein. I I worked it out to my lowest level of protein would be like 108g and I went down 100 grams of protein and 400 grams of fat.

My blood sugar was still around 122. Now I'm like, why is that? And there's two possible things and you may may go ahead and chime in. One is that it can take calories, whether they're fat or protein, And if it's if you're in an excess, it can still turn it into It can turn it into blood sugar for energy, especially if you're in excess. And I noticed it wasn't until I brought my calories down to whatever my caloric intake should be based upon, You know, a reference range.

You know when you do a calorie, when you, you know, figure out one of those calorie meters that you get on the Internet and plug your numbers in. My caloric needs would be between 2800 and 3200 calories. So anything after that is obviously excessive calories because you know it's not not for what I'm putting out there right now and not what I'm doing

working out workout wise either. So some of that obviously the protein wasn't necessarily driving it, but the calories in general might have been driving it. So I reduced those calories to, you know to around 3500 and by and the fat was about 85% and still I was still getting readings kind of all over the place. But also my digestion, I was still getting diarrhea quite

often. So with the digestion being off, my experiment was kind of off because the digestion itself could be causing my blood sugar, you know, to be volatile as well. So what is my opinion? What do I think right now that my digestion is kind of more normalized? I'm getting more solid, you know, bowel movements. And so I'm like, I I'm at like 130 grams of protein and about 260 grams of fat, which puts me

around 3000 calories. And I'm noticing, OK, I'm getting a fasting blood sugar of 95 in the morning. So it is driving it down. It's just a slow price. It's not, as you know, it's not a fast process. It's not as fast a process as when you go from carbs to keto. And my personal belief on that is that because when you cut out the carbs and you go to keto, your body is not really efficient at but like you said, proteins, you know that's gluconeogenesis, it's not efficient process and so it's

looking for energy somewhere. So it automatically goes to that fat for energy much quicker than if I became acclimated to using protein as energy. How hard is it for my body which is going, you know what, I'd rather have the blood sugar. I'd rather have that than the ketones for energy. And I know how to do it now pretty efficiently, using gluconeogenesis. Whenever he starts working out, whenever he brings that protein. And I'll just take it, turn it

the blood sugar. And I utilize it at that point. And I do notice because I do take measurements before my workout and after my workout, and I can see when it's using blood sugar as opposed to using ketones, and it's pretty interesting to watch. So but yeah, it's much harder, it's much harder to regulate it once your body is starting to use that, you know the protein as as a blood sugar and using that to fuel especially your workouts.

And so it's it's a lot harder for people to work out somebody, you and me, you in particular now too would have a really hard time if you got into that realm because you almost have to be sedentary for you to to make that switch happen a lot faster. But because you're working out, you're also taxing the system to where it needs the energy. And so it's going to go for the

quickest form it can. And if that biological memory is going after that protein, you really have to drive that protein level down so that it stops doing that. So yeah, it's a it's a tricky cut, you know, it's a tricky situation to have. Yeah. And there's, I mean, there's there's been times where I've really pushed my protein up. There's times where I've pushed my protein down quite a bit. And I find like pros and cons to each, all within the context of being indefatted at the state.

And like, right now that I'm in the building phase, like my protein is pretty high. Like I'm consistently over 250 grams a day, but my fat is also like 300 and 5400 grams of fat a day. So relative to protein, from a total macronutrient standpoint, it's still the obvious majority there. But yeah, I think there's definitely a point of diminishing returns when your fat levels are too low and your protein is too high, especially in the context of a pretty aggressive surplus.

I mean, like it's just really going to hinder one's ability to optimize for fat metabolism and it's just the way it's going to work. And and I've been following your stuff too and that still puts you I didn't think I don't think I calculated that still puts you around 75% fat which which keeps you in a pretty good level of maintaining ketosis. And you're obviously as you're reading show you're your blood sugar is pretty consistent and your and your ketone levels are

still there. So I, I, you know it's just I didn't take mine all during that time period. I started to go to really high protein. And so when I finally did I had noticed the reason I did do that or change or figure that out is because all of a sudden I was getting tired like I was when I was on carbs like hypoglycemic and I'm like that's weird. I just had a meal and everything. Why am I getting this fatigue? And I took my levels and my blood sugar was high and my it

was high. And then it was when I was taking them later, it was going down lower and there was just so much whatever, you know, there was just so much variability. And then I noticed that my, I had no ketone levels. It was like either low or no, you know, no level, whatever that shows in there. I think it was low. Yeah, I wasn't gaining any ketone, ketone level. And so I started to take it more throughout the day.

And then I developed a, you know, a routine where I would take it fasting and then I would take it before my first meal and then I would take it three hours after. Because you know that three to four hours it takes to digest your food, see what the levels were. Then again after, before, and after my next meal. I'm eating three meals a day, and then again before and after

my dinner. And so I was noticing the switches in it. And then I would also take it before and after a workout to see what was happening. So I was, I've been doing the last six months, a lot of experiments with that. And actually I helped the client figure hers out really fast because she had that where she was basically not sleeping and she was getting tired and taking a nap during the day. But she was super easy. She had been carnivore for like 5 or six years.

So I just told her I gave, hey, you willing to poke your finger a bunch of times And she was a two meal a day person. She was like, Yep, I want to do whatever it takes. I go, OK, this is what we're going to do. And we did that. She sure enough, I have the data in front of me. I'm looking at it. I'm like, oh wow, yeah, your protein levels are way too high. And let's go by Voelex numbers, your highest amount of protein. She was like 100 lbs lean and so I was like, you shouldn't be

eating more than 100 grams. We'll try not eating more than 100 grams of protein and bring your bring your fat levels up to between 79 and 81%. Dude, after two weeks of that week 3, she's not tired, she's sleeping and her ketone levels and her GKI were perfect levels. So she really, I adjusted well because she didn't have the diarrhea. I had diarrhea throughout and she didn't get the diarrhea from

going up higher in the fat. And she was like, man, I didn't realize I was that far out of whack. And I was like, it was such an easy fix when you have the data, otherwise it's, you know, as you know, coaching or whatever, it can be a stab in the dark. I mean, you don't know people are doing at home and especially if they don't take their numbers, you can't get to read it and say, Nah, I don't think you're doing that. You know the numbers aren't showing that you're doing that. You know so.

Yeah, I'm all about the data. Like, I feel like there's there's definitely a benefit to being able to eat intuitively and not obsess and fixate over it. But if there's like a specific problem you're trying to solve and you're doing yourself a massive disservice, but not just controlling the variables that you can and and capturing that data and then kind of tweaking one thing at a time, like to not do that would just be like a total shot in the dark.

And I I'm all about being efficient with things and being, you know, playing darts in the dark is not efficient at all. Yeah, 100% hundred. I'm agree with you. As some people say it's obsessive. And I I said opposite. I said when I got away from it. I think it's something that, yes, intuitive eating is what you want to gravitate to. My son does it really, really well, but he's also 28 years old.

You yourself, also young, you can't afford a little discrepancy one way or another and it's probably not going to affect you. If you've been damaged metabolically, you can't afford that. You know you just can't. When you go off into a little bit of a ditch detriment in one area, nutritionally it can. It can throw off your sleep or whatever. I mean, somebody at 28 years old has a lot more metabolic flexibility and that's a great term everybody uses.

But they do. They have more metabolic flexibility and so my son can stay between, he can do a higher protein and stay between 68 and 72% fat without measuring, you know. But he still even even he measures his food. And I'll tell you another props for you is he uses your keto bricks quite a bit. My wife does as well. I I like them when I was doing Keto before, but now I just, you know, do all meat, organ meat

and fat. But total props to that product because yeah, he, he played professional independent League Baseball for Dang since he was 22. He's 2028 now. He just stopped at six years and his that brick was a big part of him on road trips or you know, when there were only restaurants around that he couldn't eat the food and he was just boom, he was packing those. He was packing the bricks. Yeah, no, it works, right.

And especially the one you worked with with Mark Bell who is in West Sacramento, which is right on the corner from me. So that's like 45 minutes. But my wife would go and get his products over there. But she ordered that through you the, the, the that brownie batter bricks and they just are delighted with that. Just wanted to tell you that's that's been a great product and and and for people who do this stuff, keto or not keto, it's, you know it's a good pretty good

food to eat and give you a meal. It's a meal, so yeah. Yeah, I mean I'm all for you know, streamlined things making it simple like I I tell people first and foremost always prioritize, you know, wholesome single ingredient, nutrient dense animal based foods. But there's definitely times where you don't have those available. So you might as well have a a good salt option to replace it with and you're not going to find that in the fast food

chain. So having a brick, having some good, you know, cured meats or something like that to to, you know, bridge that gap. I mean, I eat 1:00 every single day, but I've also got a pretty high caloric threshold too. So I'm eating shoot man right now. Like 4 thousand 5500 calories a day, somewhere in that ballpark. I'm just trying to push that envelope and put as much lean size on as I can because, you know, I don't have the height gene that you do. I've got.

I've got to build up my frame to put that weight on. No. And the amount of time you were in a deficit, I mean your body's got to be screaming for a nutrients right now. So I mean, yeah, that's a long time. You did the shows how many you did, being natural, but that's a testament. What you're doing is not just, you know, I mean, it's obviously a testament to your own, your own personality, but it's also a testament to what keto can do. Yeah.

Totally ketogenic and and I hate, I hate when people tell me, Oh yeah I'm doing keto. And to them, it's a food. And I'm like, keto is it's a, it's a it's a state, it's not a food. And you've stuck with that. And that's what I really like, 'cause like Thomas De Lauer, I listened to him on a podcast where he was talking to, oh, if it was Mark Bell or somebody else, but he had Dom Dagnostino on there as well. Yeah, it. Was a good podcast. Listen to that one.

Too. Yeah, and but he was like he shield away from the whole keto thing because there were so many people in the community that were producing all these keto foods that were horrible and they were saying keto and then they couldn't answer the simple question, well, how come that doesn't work with me and everything else? I'm thinking you can't dismiss a whole a thing that is really

useful. Why not educate people on ketogenic not being a food but a state, you know that you get in and that ketogenic state is what helps neurological issues and cancer and all of these things that it does. But there's a carnivore approach to that as well and that's what I'm doing. It's, you know, getting your macros and getting your just by eating meat and fat to that, you know, 75 to 80% range or in some cases 3 to 1 fat to protein and you're just eating animal based foods.

And that's kind of what the PKD diet for you know that Sophia, Clemens and the Hungry Institute do regarding healing people. They're doing a carnivore diet in the ketogenic state using organ beats. I mean it's the state of keto that is what is important in everything, including the

bodybuilding. And I think that's the area that you stuck with and been kind of like, no, I'm not going to let them scare me off by all these people coming around saying keto doesn't work, I tried keto doesn't work. It's you've kind of taken the approach of you're either going to try and listen to me or you're going to ignore what I have to say and I'm not going to argue with you. And it's it's, it's really a good approach. I'm more argumentative. You're more, you know what?

They're they're going to come to me because they're going to finally realize that whatever they're doing is not working. And then they're going to finally ask me instead of telling me. And honestly, I I give you a props for doing that. That's that's a really good mindset to have. Especially man, I feel like in bodybuilding, like because I did the whole traditional bodybuilding diets and I did all kinds of different diets. I was always high carb, high protein, low fat.

And I mean, I've done them all. And it's like there's so much benefit from a fat adapted state when you're competing, when you're trying to, you know, keep your hormones stable, keep your metabolism up regulated, keep your caloric threshold higher, have energy to train and perform while in a caloric deficit. So I feel like there's so much benefit to be had, you know, competing especially as a natural in a ketogenic state and that has not really seen the light of day yet in most

bodybuilding circles. Like they're aware of the term keto, but to them keto is just simply low carb. It doesn't really. I didn't really go much beyond that. And I feel like I'm trying to bridge that gap because I think there's there's so much like bodybuilding in its purest form can be an incredibly healthy sport, but they take it to a very unhealthy place and most competitors are plagued with disordered eating.

I don't really like the whole flexible dieting approach because it just kind of, you know, emphasizes that you can get lean while eating junk food in a lot of ways. And I don't think that's a good message. But I think a few people, if people just simply ate real quality foods, high fats and proteins and, you know, performed at a high level, like, who can argue that?

Well, and and the other point, and that's a good point, but the other point too as well is not not only do they not understand and they, you know, they look it as low carb, but they're afraid

of that transition. Because you and I both know if they've been doing this a long time with carbs that almost the longer you've been doing it and the more intensive you've been doing bodybuilding or weightlifting that that maybe one month transition could really turn into six months to a year before you start seeing the strength gains and everything else. And nobody wants to do that, you know? Totally.

It's not. They're impatient and the longer they continue see him from my son it was easy because he started with me when I was started doing all this stuff that so he was 2122, just like you.

You started pretty early, but you get a guy who's been doing a carb diet, you know, he's 30 years old and then you tell him, yeah, just take a year off from your bodybuilding just so that you can get into a a real ketogenic state where your glycogen stores are acting just like carbohydrates would, except now with a fat induced diet, they don't want to do that.

You know what I mean? It scares them because that that strength weakening, that they're natural testosterone going down, all of that stuff is like, Oh my God, and the muscles, they're just, you know, people don't have the intestinal fortitude to push that out. And so it's takes a special person to go that route. But I agree with you 100% that that's the future. A bodybuilding. It's as far as natural bodybuilding goes that's.

And you know what? I I would, I would like to say too I'd be curious to follow somebody who does that diet while doing steroids. So, you know, wonder if it would it would be a healthier approach than the approach that they're taking right now. You know what I mean, 100. Percent and like the people. I mean like bodybuilding, like people are going to pay to see the freaks.

I mean like the the Mr. Olympia competition is the Arnold classic, like that's where all the the eyes are at because they want to see the £300 shredded guys that obviously aren't achieving that naturally. But I feel like, you know if they went the right of doing it from a fat based diet, they could mitigate a lot of the risk they're experiencing.

And you know the the reason that there's not getting much limelight, keto's not getting much limelight within the bodybuilding space is because none of these elite level, you know, juiced up pros are doing it. But there's no reason they couldn't do it. They just haven't gone that route because it's so far from

their norm. But I don't see any reason why they would not benefit from it. And you'd have to wonder if that, you know, high fat diet while you're on the juice is is helping to feed those hormones to the point where if you got off the juice that they're able to kick in because they, you know, because they have that stimulus already. I mean, there's so much experimentation that people could do in that realm that you know.

Now a lot of them are, you know they're doing the Super physiological external doses of insulin to grow as well. Yeah. So that would not be that would be kind of kind of productive there. But there's there's lots of different ways of skinny cat they wouldn't need to that they they could use other anabolic agents besides insulin. That that came in after my time. What? That was just coming in when I was going out. What was popular though was the

the thyroid. People were using thyroid, which was really dangerous 'cause I knew two guys. We used to call them the Anadrol brothers. They were doing so much thyroid, I guess that finally when they came off they had to continue thyroid for the rest of their life 'cause their thyroid was completely demolished. So yeah, that that ruined a lot of things.

But I remember the drugs I remember back then were Winstrol, Winstrol V equipoise, which is a horse, testosterone, testosterone, cyponates, testosterone and anthate, the Winstrol, they were water based drugs. So people took them basically when they were cutting up for a show. Anavar was another drug that actually powerlifters used because it didn't increase your weight, but it increased your strength substantially.

Obviously Diana Ball was big, they had an injectable Diana Ball. They had a thing called parabolin which I think is the grandfather to the trend balloon and those were the cycles that I remember and and that I had done, but not all at the same time. So it will be, you know, you did like a testosterone base and then an oral based drug and then you did something else, another cycle. You were trying to confuse the the thing but it was you know, it was bro science back then.

There were no doctors dealing with it at all. And frankly, like my friend Bill Canberra, who was that bodybuilder I told you about, he would get calls from doctors who were testifying in court where they were asking him how do these things function so that they could testify on the stand so they didn't even know. So they were talking to bodybuilders to find out, hey, how does this, you know, what

kind of reaction? Oh, bodybuilders are definitely the on the cutting edge of a lot of human experimentation. I mean a lot of lot of the stuff that's you know out in the public eye now from like a medical standpoint was born in the gym without a doubt you know. So I I think being on the cutting edges is exciting for sure. But it's also you know like you're you're experimenting and often times it can can go astray and have some very negative consequences.

But yeah, I think, you know, bodybuilders as a whole being extremists in nature. Like you can learn a lot about what causes what to happen physiologically when it comes to the different inputs. So it's it's super interesting stuff. I'm hopeful that I can do the same thing on the other end of the spectrum from a natural ketogenic standpoint and that becomes more paramount as as time goes on. But time will tell, man.

Yeah. And I'm trying to do it as an older guy so that people can see, OK, can you do this at 60 years old? Can you do this in your 50s? You know, and can you make the changes? Because I'm finally at a point because I actually had to reduce my workout significantly because part of my healing was to to reduce the inflammation in my CNS.

And I would notice that if I did a heavyweight training session the next day I would get I get pain coming up my, you know, my SCAP right up into my neck which would turn into a headache. And so I had to slowly reduce to just band workouts only three

times a week. And then finally, I'm now at a point where my blood pressure was fixed and my CNS stuff is pretty much fixed and I'm able to do half hour heavy workouts every other day and doing split body parts and now starting to make gains that are pretty significant. And so I'm like OK, what's a year going to be like with this where I can document it, you know, on Instagram or YouTube and kind of show people that hey, you can do this and no, I'm

not taking TRT because I can't. It will kill me. So I mean, you know, it's, you know, you can do this, people can do this into their 80s, nineties, until the day they die, you know? Totally agree, man. I'm all about playing the long game. I think it's awesome that you're documenting the journey, showing people what's possible, and you look freaking great, man. I mean, you look incredible, so keep doing what you're doing because it's obviously working for you.

I appreciate and I appreciate the compliment. Thanks a lot. My pleasure, Craig. Well, I will definitely make it down to California. I've got family down there. I need to go hang out and train with Mark at some point as well. And if he's 45 minutes from you, man, we'll just have to get a lift in together as well. Yeah, absolutely. I have AI actually have a home gym in my house but if you went down to his place I'd I always wanted to see his. His.

I know he moved from the warehouse in West SAC to I think Dixon, CA. I don't know if he moved all the weights or not but yeah I built a 400. I just 400 square feet in my gym but I have you know all commercial equipment in there so it's been great. But yeah, if you come out to California, definitely hook up. I'd I'd love to you know meet you and talk with you 100%. Great conversation. We will definitely make that happen for sure. Until then though, Craig, where?

Where do people go to find out more about you? Yeah so I'm on I'm on a platform that's called the BNC community and that's I think it's BNC community.com is the platform. But I also I also host mental health and mental health and addiction on Rivero's site which is carnivore dot diet. And so I have an one hour session or half hour session that I do twice a week on there. But my Instagram pages at low carb bully, LOWCARBBULLY SO2BS and that's on Instagram and I do

coaching on there. There's a link if people want to go get get a coach or look at me at all, but that's pretty much it. I should do most more posting on Instagram. Not so good about it, Not a very good, not a very good marketer. But I appreciate you asking me about this stuff here so. No, for sure, man. I'll definitely link out, make it easier for people to find. You really appreciate the conversation, man, Appreciate the transparency. And there's everything I do for

you, man. You just let me know. I'm. I'm excited to keep the conversation going and get that lift in with you. Oh, absolutely. I appreciate. I appreciate it. Yeah, I'll, I'll definitely keep in touch and I'll be posting and hopefully and I follow you all the time on yours. So please keep posting I I learn a lot from your stuff and thank you for having me on the podcast so. Hey, my pleasure, Craig. Until next time, brother. You take care, man. All right. Talk to you later.