What's going on? Ladies and gents Robert Sykes? Keto Savage.com. And today I've got special guest Sylvia Von Douglas it to on the line. And she is just, I mean, she just a badass. That's a pretty much the only word that describes her. She is in Thailand. She is a Muay Thai extraordinaire. She is going for a world record and breaking. The current record of 471 recorded recorded fights, and she is doing all of this. While following a strict ketogenic diet.
She is learning from some of the greats. She is recording and documenting her journey. And she is making some serious waves in the Muay Thai space. I know nothing about more time, but I was introduced to her my chip who has been instructing us on MMA throughout the weeks here at keto brick. We all been fighting together in a good loving way but fight nonetheless, doing some MMA every single week and he was telling me about Sylvie.
So I had to get on the podcast, Diamond to her nutritional protocol dive into her fights, diving her lifestyle, and Glad I did because I learned a ton and I've got no doubt that you will as well. So that further Ado, sit back, relax. Enjoy the podcast with Sophie. And we are live Sylvia. How are you? I'm doing. All right. Thank you. Glad to have you. I'm excited to have you just to give the listener some context. I am not a Muay Thai, expert connoisseur, or any of that
stuff. One of my employees is big and Tim we time and he keeps wearing the shirt with a big picture of your face on it. And I'm one day I'm like, what?
Who is this person? You keep wearing a shirt of and Started talking to me about you and we've since pretty much started doing like a Muay Thai day, every day after work, like the whole crew gets together and we have been practicing MMA and everything, and he was talking about you, and he said that you have been doing a ketogenic diet sunlight will shoot. Let me just get on the podcast. So, that's where we are now. Well, that's a very cool Association way to get to you
like that, very much. Yeah. Yeah, it's been pretty cool. I mean, he's been doing MMA and all kinds of martial arts for four years. And when he started working for us, like we've got a gym at our warehouse facility here and half the gym is like got punching bags and kicking bags and and everything. So we're just decided to all regroup on Wednesdays and train. So I've been kind of getting into it and learning more. Ketogenic is my Realm. Muay Thai is not but you've kind
of Blended it too. I hear Yeah, I was actually looking at your podcast when you first contacted me and I was like, oh, he's got a lot of like experts. People have people actually know all of the science of how
everything works. But one of the things that I've really enjoyed about the keto genic diet is that it is such a study of one that you see the effects, you can feel the effects and it's like, okay, I can see how this is making a difference here and not there, like it's really not, it's not complicated in the sense of like, I don't know whether this is working or not. Like, you know, pretty quickly whether it's working for you or not. Yeah, totally. Totally green.
It's always exciting for me to talk to athletes that are just excelling in. Their field of that are leveraging a ketogenic bad because I don't know what it's like in Thailand. I don't know if the keto diet is
popular in Thailand at all. But in the state's it's kind of come and gone like it was super popular in 2017 and 18 and it is still now, but it's kind of it's not in its honeymoon phase anymore and you see a lot of these people ragged on athletes that do a ketogenic diet because I just assumed that you have to have carbs. So for you doing, you know Finding and You just all the intensity that comes with that from like a recovery standpoints, from, from all of
that to leveraging. That is pretty exciting. Yeah, it was my initial foray into it. Like, the reason I decided to try, it was not like a, you know, physical optimization kind of thing. It was actually because I had heard about the mental benefits of it. And as a full-time fighter, doing what I do, the mental aspect in the emotional difficulties of being a woman in a man's sport in a country. That's not mine. It's like very complicated.
So I actually got into it just for the kind of mental stability in the kind of help that it could offer there. And I was kind of willing to take a hit to my cardio or you know, whatever people talk about glycogen stores and all this stuff. And when people hear I eat, he do. That's the first question. They ask is like, don't you get tired? And no, like I I'm happy that it did not impact my ability, you know, physically to get through the grueling workouts that I do.
But I was completely willing to take a hit on that in order to get the mental benefits which which I think have really helped me a lot. I want to dive all into that. But before we pull the curtain back on the nutrition, I'd love to kind of learn about your foray into fighting in the first place. Like what led you down that life
path? But the origin story I tell is that I had moved in with, he's my husband now, but I'd moved in with my husband and he was making me watch all these like martial arts movies, and some of them were great. But he had like a whole collection and I kind of was getting burned out and I was like enough like I can't I can't
watch any more of these. He's like, okay, there's just one more you have to see because there's nothing else like it and it's this movie that I think a lot of people who are familiar with, might I know it's called own. It's got Tony job, who's kind of like? Yeah. So yeah, so I watched on Bach and my mouth just dropped open and I was like, this is so cool. And I just kind of have like a intuitive feeling towards it that I didn't have towards the other movies, which was like, I
want my body to do that. Like I want to be able to do that, but I didn't think of it as something that I wanted to fight. I actually thought of it kind of like a like an art form like ballet or something that I would just kind of get into but by pure. Fortune who I met to train me, is this man named Master K, who is now like 84 years old and training himself and occasionally students out of his basement in New Jersey as a, he just instilled in me this absolute love for my tie.
That once he got that fire, stoked. I just went crazy with it. I never intended for it to take over my life, the way that it happens, but because my husband's amazing and, you know, supports me in everything and makes things happen. We Unable to move here and make this just completely our full lives. So, were you, where were you before you move to Thailand or you in the states? Yeah. We lived in Bear Mountain in New York.
It's kind of by West Point. So I was, I went to school at Sarah Lawrence, which is kind of semi Upstate New York and then, and then moved to Bear Mountain after that. So, I'm originally from Colorado. I'm a country mouse. But yeah, when we moved here, we moved from New York and Just to give the listeners some Concepts. How old were you, when you started watching all these movies and then just Dove deep into it. The first time I hit a bag, I
was 24 years old. So when people are like, is whatever age they give me too late. I'm like, nope. I had never seen my tie at all prior to 24 years old. I watched kickboxer growing up, which they say is my tie but it's not John Claude Van Damme.
So it's like taekwondo. Yeah, this is cool because like, like Every kid at some point watches, these movies and they start, you know, hitting things, kick things and like this is what I want to do and then like life happens to him and they wind up, you know, later down the road. Wish they had done it, but they never had. I mean, I'm 30 years old now and it's like, man, I've got a kid on the way. I'd love to learn some, some, martial arts. Take some Jujitsu classes, do
some of this stuff. And then, when my kid gets old enough started, doing it with them, and I feel like if I can get them, starting at a young age, they'll be like just Unstoppable. But here I am 30 like should I do this? Should I not do this? And I think I'm going to do it. I mean doing this weekly with our employees has been super fun enjoyable. But to know that you're doing it at the level that you are having
started at 24 super impressive. I have a one of my brother's is married to a woman who teaches gymnastics and so they have two very young kids and they're getting into gymnastics at that young age. And I feel like when you do stuff with your parents, like that at a really young age and it kind of Sent to you, whether you get hardcore into it or not. It's such an important bonding experience to have like that physicality with your parents. Totally.
So when you were doing this at 24, like, did you pick it up quickly? Like, had you done a lot of, you know, physical stuff prior to that? That I mean you were in tune with your body, had a lot of mobility and were able to just run with it, or was it a pretty arduous process? It's it was a little bit of both. I've always been a very active person growing up in Colorado. We were outdoor kids.
I played soccer growing up a lot of hiking like we're we were very active but I had never done anything, even close to martial arts before. So, the movements were really
different. And I think that a lot of the like, Things things that you're taught and socialize towards growing up as a woman in America, it made kind of the more bold and some people might call violent elements of it really difficult to capture just because you actually have to stand in someone's face and it's really hard to get yourself to do that when you've been conditioned to find that very rude or uncomfortable or something like that.
So I consider myself actually a late bloomer in terms of my Progress in my time, but I don't know if other people would agree with me on that given how far the time I've been doing it, but I'm just always trying to, you know, improve in such small things that I consider it a very, very long process. What you're going for a record. If I read your Instagram by a correctly, there's a record of 471 fights and you're trying to
beat that, correct. Yeah, so the caveat of that is that the sky lend with war, has the highest number of recorded fights, which means that there is a record for every single one whether it's like in a newspaper or there's some kind of, you know, printed proof that it happened. So so he's the one that I See as having because he has this recorded record. That's the one that I want to honor and break by surpassing it a little bit. And that's not like a male versus female record or like a
certain weight class. That's just fights in general. So 471 recorded fights from any category. Is the record debate. Yeah. He's like he was a boxer western-style boxer. So it's not even within the same discipline, Tie fighters can have huge. The fights that they're not, they're not provable like there. It's just what they can remember. Their like, I have roughly 300, like, that kind of thing. So, I was going for the recorded number of bytes in length with more was a boxer and like the
20s and 30s. Got, you. Got you and you just went into the belly of the Beast by going to Thailand, and, and you're learning from, I'm just kind of quoting chip who's been told me this. If he's our employee that, that knows knows.
If you, he's like, you, you went to Thailand and Learning from all of these just masters of their other trade, their craft that are older but have all the skill set from years prior and you're learning from them firsthand in your recording, it all documented at all on like YouTube and just put that information out there, right? Yeah, so that's not like my
day-to-day. My day-to-day is training, you know, the the way that anyone does as at a gym and it's, you know, twice a day morning evening, that kind of thing, but I have this project we call it the moment. I library and preserve the Legacy. And so basically, this is trying to Archive and capture techniques from these Golden Age, Legend Fighters.
So if you can picture of someone from lunch Japan moved to America and it turns out that you could like Learn from Tyson and Frazier, and like, you know, Sugar Ray Leonard that you could just kind of like GO train with these guys. That's what it's like here. In terms of me, being able to access these Golden Age, Legends, whose their style of fighting is kind of Disappearing because my time has changed so much in the past couple of decades.
It's actually changing really fast now, so it's it's trying to preserve this Legacy of technique and knowledge. That's disappearing really. Because a lot of these guys don't even teach, I'm kind of, you know, finding someone who's a taxi driver, Samson is on and getting him to teach me and he has just such incredible technique. And so we filmed that and we do long form sessions. So instead of like, creating a highlight or kind of chopping
everything up to like isolate. This is a kick, do the kick this way. We just let it go for like an hour or an hour or more. Sometimes you actually see the kind of personalities of these men and how the technique fits into a larger vocabulary. Larry of what their style is. And so, the kind of differences in how people choose to do things, make sense within the bigger context of what their actual style is and all these people that you're learning form from. I'm assuming that they're
they're not on social media. They're not creating their own content. Like you're basically breathing life into their style. That would have been forgotten. Otherwise. Yeah, they're they're not old enough to be very good at social media. Although some of them are starting to kind of get on a
little bit more. But yeah, there are a lot of them are outside of my tie now like they kind of float around and maybe you know teach here and there or maybe make appearances at these kind of you know, annual celebrations and stuff like that. But when you when you meet these guys and you just start moving around with them, it's incredible how quickly they just slip back into.
What they feel and what they know, and they're just man there, some of them are like in their 60s and 70s, and they just moved so good still, it's really incredible to see. And you can see their faces light up, as they're kind of like coming back into contact with this thing that they, you know, devoted their entire, you know, 16 years old to 27 years
old or whatever. Like it's a long time they were doing it. Well, they're probably just like on cloud nine having you just seek Them out and be Earnest and willing to learn from. I mean, I wouldn't think that they would have that opportunity in most of their situations. Yeah. I think there's also an added element to it of me being a Westerner that it kind of has this exotic quality to it that like anant. I is interested in them and what they do and knows who they are.
It's you know, you see that with international sports stars to be on an international stage and recognized internationally. This has is kind of like bigger element to it, but I got stoked because, you know, I meet someone like someone like diesel noise who's arguably one of the greatest of all time. If not the greatest of all time. And he kind of, has had a second wind breathed into him, in terms of his Fame.
Like, I think that a lot of people in the west know who he is now, from falling, my material, but then kind of doing their own research themselves. And so, he kind of is being re celebrated in this way. That I don't think he would have had Chance for because the popularity of noise High among the younger generation in Thailand is definitely slipping. So he wouldn't be getting the kind of recognition and celebration from. I think his own culture.
Why do you think that is that? Why do you think the evolution of more time is changing so drastically in Thailand, and I'm assuming abroad. I think part of it is the internationalization of my ties. So a lot of people who watch more traditional might I have a hard time scoring it because it's scored so differently from what we understand in the west as being like a good fight, so, In the west, we really like aggression. Like we really favored
aggression. And in Thailand, there's this really beautiful Nuance. It's a buddhistic culture. And so aggression is actually not rewarded seen as being out
of control of yourself. But dominance is primary, like, dominance is really important and how you score a fight and the difference in seeing dominance versus seeing aggression, is that dominance is controlling yourself and your opponent at the same time, whereas aggression can also Often be that like, you're controlling your opponent, but you're out of control of yourself. And I think that that's kind of slipping because my tie is becoming more popular internationally there.
More Fighters coming to Thailand to fight and train here. But so they're getting a kind of audience back home watching them. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think the the popularity of muy Thai growing internationally is a good thing for its survival, but Because people are not super invested in learning, you know, how to score it or how to watch it in.
Its kind of more traditional form the promoters and the council's and things like this are going to make changes to make it more digestible for people who are maybe not as familiar with what it traditionally looks like or Discord like well, I don't know. I mean, I'm coming at this totally blind. This is not my area of expertise by any means, but in doing the MMA that we have been every
week. I've been kind of just broken up a little bit more when I, when I see content around martial arts in general, in the states in America here. It seems like everything. It's like it's almost become like a like a like there's definitely just amazing athletes and Fighters. But so much of the hype is like this. This game like politics almost like this publicity stunt so to speak and it's like that's what
the people want to see. That's what people are trying to do. You've got all these boxers that are Are you know, cross over to different divisions and is trying to build up on this hype which seems so counter to what you're describing with this like mindset in this discipline in this art form. Yeah. It's it hasn't gotten that far here. But even in the time that you know, I've watched the
development of MMA over time. It's become more and more like the WWE and not in terms of how they're fighting. But in terms of how they hype the fights and you know the parts outside of the ring or cage or whatever that Come part of a Fighter's job. I don't know. It's I guess it gets people who aren't super into the sport hyped and you just want eyes on it. But I think for die-hard fans, they don't really love that kind
of thing. Yeah, it kind of devalues what the actual essence of the sport is, I would think Mmm but I don't know. This is all just like I said, I'm new at all this, but it's been fascinating to dive into. So as far as more Tangos, you know, as it relates to other, Eating philosophies. What's the main difference in mu ties? Especially your more traditional formats like from a from a fighting stance from a technique stance, like what separates that from a lot of the other formats
out there? Um, what time is interesting in that? It is still closer to its martial art Origins as other fighting Arts that have become more kind of. Artistic or sporting? So what I mean by that is that a martial art necessarily is developed like on a Battlefield 4, you know, defense or protection or whatever the thing is. And so what Ty is known as the art of eight limbs because you use your fists, elbows, knees feet back in the day. You could use your head, which a lot way.
Still does the one tight you don't use your head for head butts and stuff anymore, but it's basically like on the battlefield if you lost an axe or whatever your weapon was, now you have your elbow or like you lost your spear. Now you have. See this kind of thing and every move was meant to end the fight. Like it's not meant to be kind of like, oh, let's do just enough. Like it was actually pretty brutal of, like, what can I do
to stop my opponent? And I think that it's kind of kept some of that original kind of aesthetic to it. Whereas, you look at martial arts, like taekwondo or mating Rowdy that because they have this really long history, as kind of racional sports. They've moved really far away from their martial art Origins for the Marshal background, which is that when it becomes a ring sport or kind of a
demonstration of sport. It takes a lot of the actual contact out of it. So compared to other martial arts, my ties considered pretty brutal, because it's still very contact driven. So, you know, like a little kid, who starts my tie and grows up in white. Hi. They're just hard kids.
They're so used to contact and like taking up space and kind of like having this dignity in what they're doing rather than necessarily just having a like I'm doing this movement in space, to get the Perfection of the, you know, flow of it that you get with like cop does or something like that in other in other martial arts. It's still very grounded in contact. Yeah, I mean, chip was showing me some videos on YouTube earlier.
Today. I've just these these people fighting in more time and I mean, half the time you don't even use like legitimate gloves run. Like you're just using like that, that roped one that you wrap around your fingers and that's pretty much it, right. That's card trick which is it's a little bit popular right now, but it it stems back to older like when white I was first becoming a sport rather than like actual battles.
So that's not the norm. I would say that's maybe like five percent rather than, you know, half the time. But yeah, it is. It is growing in popularity, to have the Rope fights. I do that actually. Really like it. Yeah, it's just, I mean, shoot your freaking tough, like people taking hits like that, you know, they're just here. Whole nother level of toughness. Right there. It's impressive.
So when you started doing this and you, you decided to go towards a ketogenic diets, what were you doing before Keitel at what was the typical days? Eating where you were you doing any particular diet or just eating whatever? No, I I mean, I just ate Thai food. Mostly like my breakfast would be a little bit more. Western like, you know, some kind of like eggs and toast type of thing, but then there's a lot of rice.
And Thailand, a lot of vegetables meat is kind of a smaller portion in anything you're doing. So it's like mainly the rice and vegetables and Curry or whatever and then you have like a little bit of meat as the you know, treat of the food or whatever. I didn't give it a lot hot. I didn't, you know, pay a lot of attention to macro-nutrients or anything like that. And I felt like I was just having a lot of like, stomach issues. Made me uncomfortable, a lot of the time.
It was really unfortunate to deal with when you're trying to like rest between training sessions in the middle of the day or you know, trying to deal with a stomach ache while you're being need in the stomach by your dream. Not like it just sucks. So prior to looking into keto I kind of I dread Michael Palin. Like I was kind of like aware of the idea of, you know, eating higher fat and lower carbs and
things like that. But I just I feel like focusing on one's diet is kind of It takes up a lot more mental energy than I feel like I'm willing to put out. I was actually vegan for 10 years from when I was like, 12 years old to 22. So I've done a lot of like, super eliminating type diets, but I think that the reason behind my going into keto has made it not as mentally taxing as previous forays into diets have been And that it feels pretty intuitive to me. And so I don't feel like I'm
thinking about it all the time. Whereas even when I wasn't on a particular diet and I was trying to, you know, just eat enough to have the calories. I need to do the kind of training I'm doing. I felt like that was just so annoying, really, to have to think about what I was going to eat for dinner. Even if it didn't matter what it was, are you eating pretty much intuitively now like you track your Macros at All just to kind of see what your Baseline is.
Are you pretty much just eating by what your body's feeling like. I'm pretty intuitive. Now, when I first started keto, I was tracking just because I needed to know what that kind of portion would look like. I think I actually now don't eat as much fat as I probably should be on. Maybe I should track my macros again or something like that, but I don't want to jump ahead. But for I think he do for about three years, but if two of those years, I actually do full day intermittent fasting.
So I actually only eat every other Day, two years and for two years. Yeah. Yeah, which I think my husband was doing this without being. He do a couple of years ago to lose weight, which is how we kind of came up with the idea and it was really hard for him because he wasn't eating hito. So fasting was actually really difficult because his body was, you know, trying to process carbs all the time, but because I started doing keto first and then I start doing the intermittent fasting.
I found it really easy like fasting for a whole day for me is really not hard at all and it doesn't hit my energy. I'm not tired on those days or Like that, I fight fasted about 60% of the time just because it depends on chance of whether I fight on a fasting day, or a, or an eating day. I don't make adjustments for that on your own, you're feeding
days. Like, are you trying to front load, the majority of your calories or back load, the majority of your calories, or do you do you structure that in a particular way? Now, I do I eat the same way. I would as if I were eating every day, I don't really have
to like make up for anything. But it's definitely much easier to just keep being key to the whole time so that there's not like a, you know, crashing when you start too fast or anything like that and in the intuitive sense, you know, there are some days when it's, you know, 7 p.m. On a fasting day and I'm like, okay, I'm ready to start eating now, but then usually I'm not hungry the next morning so I don't know it just It has taken
a lot of the, I guess. Inconvenience of eating out of my eating process, even though it sounds super inconvenient. It's actually really convenient to like, if we have to drive 12 hours up to Northern Thailand for me to fight, not having to think. What am I going to eat on these? 12 hours is actually really Pleasant. Yeah, he does interesting. I mean I've been doing for about
seven years now. And before I started keto, I mean I was I was bodybuilding, you know, before them, but I was doing kind of just traditional, you know, bro, diets, you know, If It Fits your Macros diets, lots of carbs and I don't know what it was, but like the psychological aspect was just something was off. Like, I had a bunch of binging Tendencies. I had disordered eating habits like nothing was sustainable and it was just a psychological
warfare. Time I thought about food and it just wasn't in tune with my body. And then once I went over to Quito, like I don't know what it was. I don't know if it was hormonal or what, but the relationship I had with food improved and it took the guesswork out of eating like I was just more in tune with what my body needed and then I could give it what it needed with that question. Like I just knew which is kind of a strange phenomenon when you I mean it's weird that people
would not know what to eat. But I feel like most people probably don't know what to eat because they're constantly, you know. Struggling with their weight or their health, or some form of fashion, but from a from a
psychological standpoint. I think there's just so much benefit that comes from giving your brain more quality dietary fats, and you got the circulating blood ketones, which are also used by the brain, so that probably had something to do with it, but just eliminating that guesswork and eating quality ketogenic Foods makes life much simpler.
My opinion. Yeah, I think this is actually a point that connects what you have expertise in and the and the fighting World which you are, you know, just kind of now starting to get into is that if you look at like, you know, body composition for people who do a sport that involves getting up on a stage and looking your best that has all of these elements to it. That are like, there's the loading phase and then there's the getting lean phase and the
cutting phase and dehydration. We do that in five. Because people have to make weight, you know, all these different processes. And when people are on, when they're on the end where they're trying to cut weight down to their fight, they get in this like super, everything sucks survival mode because it does suck to cut weight.
But then on the other end of that, when they finish their fight or whatever, they go into this complete, binge mode of like, let me give myself everything that I deprived myself of before and this is at a time when your body is totally in. Inflamed from your site.
Anyway, then you have all these emotional things going on because you just got out of putting your body through something pretty severe and you're going to like load it with sugar and alcohol and like all these inflammatory foods and go into this different process that then you kind of like hate
yourself and feel shitty. But you're eating all of the things that you felt like you were proud of yourself of and I see this with people who do like competition Fitness when they when they have finished their Titian and they feel good, but then they have to like go back into this other phase of their body that kind of like super spiked and low process of how you view yourself and how you kind of reward yourself. And all of these things feels incredibly unhealthy in both of
those lines of sport. Yeah. I completely agree. I mean, the the competitors in my room, you know that that follow traditional diets, and they deprive themselves. Elves. They the diet down for months. They get really lean. They look amazing on stage. And then the soon as the show's over, they binge on everything, like you're describing. I mean, I literally gained 20 pounds in 24 hours, after my first show, and it just was not healthy, was, not sustainable.
And totally screw with my head because I just felt that I had thrown away. Everything I'd worked so hard for so now like with a ketogenic approach, I stay in a much healthier, composition year-round pretty intuitively. Yeah, and then when it's time to diet, For show, it's pretty
sustainable. I mean, I'll typically do like a nomad approach as calories get lower and just simply eat one meal a day, which is unheard of In traditional bodybuilding circles, but then I'll do well like my performance doesn't seem to suffer whatsoever. My mind, stays sharp.
My, recoveries heightened my hormone stay more stable because I'm bringing in more quality dietary fats so I could definitely see how that would be a pretty similar concept and you know, in your in your world as a fighter because you don't have all these crazy. Ins and blood glucose blood insulin water retention. You're just able to stay much more even Keel throughout the entire season. Yeah. It's the they have a phrase that stay ready. So you don't have to get ready.
I feel like that that encapsulates, the way we eat and people think of a diet is going on a diet, but when you use the word and it's actual sense of like a diet is what you eat. It is your actual like, you know, vocabulary of what you eat. I think it's much healthier to just have a Distant diet rather than kind of cycling up and down all over the place about things. I think it it does a lot more to you psychologically, and emotionally than people, give it
credit for 100% agree. So you don't do any kind of car Buffs or anything like that, then. No, no, I am again. What I was saying, is that when I went into kiitos, actually, for trying to kind of like, stabilize, my emotional and mental States. I kind of had pretty good Highs, but like really low lows, and it just was getting kind of It was rough. And so I can't actually remember the movie. I think was a documentary called like the Can't remember now.
It was actually about how keto can be used for kids with like epileptic seizure. Yeah, and it wasn't about epilepsy, but it's kids with autism and kind of like difficulty regulating their moves and things like this and it's not actually a great documentary, but you could see in the examples they were showing how quickly it was working on these kids. Like it was within, you know,
like five weeks. And there were really big changes in how these kids were able to kind of be And when I when I went in it to myself thinking I was just going to try it for you know, like six weeks or something, just to see if it would have the kind of effect. I wanted. It was like we've been three days that I could feel a difference and it is one of these things. We're just being able to stabilize one part. Like if you have a table and like two of the legs are really
good. You've got a pretty A functioning table, whereas like, if they're wonky all the time. It's really hard to set anything on top of it. Without it all, going off the end just because you haven't stabilized the base of it. So I feel like for me to do has kind of like stabilized my base, and I can kind of work on other things, around that make other changes around that.
Yeah. I think that's a good analogy that I mean, I don't ever do the car Buffs either because I don't want to feel a need for it and some people do and, you know, more power to him, but I feel like once you remove that decision fatigue, in what you Eat and what you function well with it just allocate so much more time and resources to other things in your life that you can then focus on, you know, for you
the riding. And I feel like once once you have that now, then I mean, taking the guesswork out of your nutrition makes everything else so much easier and it's amazing how how big, an impact the foods. You consume can have on your mental state, your mental Readiness, your mental recovery. Do you like, what what kind of what kind of? Psychological issues where you have and with your diet prior to kid. It was just like increased anxiety or stress, or what was it? Exactly.
Yeah, it's just kind of um, I'm a very self-critical person and so I definitely have this like inner coach that's just going all the time. But when you're trying to when you're trying to improve yourself in more Thai, it's under the structure of pressure. So like you're if you're sparring with someone, you have another person who's, you know, making things difficult for you. That's their job is to make
things difficult for you. And if Stuck in a certain mental state, where you're just criticizing yourself all the time. You actually don't put it into the perspective of there are two of us in here. So my sparring partner might be making it harder for me by him doing really good things today, rather than I just suck worse than I did yesterday, kind of thing. And if you can't pull yourself out of those kinds of criticisms and feeling bad about stuff. You actually can't improve.
I say this to people who contact me about feeling really awful that they've lost their fight. Is that it sucks to lose? Like for sure. It's there are natural ways to feel bad about how you performed in training or how you performed in a fight, but it's only like it's only rough as long as you keep holding it, once you put it down, you can actually learn from it and like start progressing again, and my mental state was just not allowing me to put stuff down.
And so I was just getting more and more, and more weight, making it harder and harder for me to even process things. Should have been learning from, and I think that that when I start going keto and kind of regulating my moods a little bit more like this, I was able to have two thoughts at once.
So I was still having to, like I suck thought, but there is a secondary thought that was like, put it in the context of what's actually happening, and it allowed me to move like the water became less stagnant in that sense. If you were to take a wild guess as to what the the mechanism is there. Do you think it was like hormone-related, like in your brain or some? Type of just a regular blood sugar insulin levels. Or what would you think the actual Catalyst for that is?
I'm gonna probably guess that it has something to do. I'm gonna I think it's hormones for sure, but I don't know which ones, but in terms of like just like if you picture a three year old kid, who's just downed a bunch of like apple juice or sugar something like how cranky they get and they're just completely unreasonable. Like, you can't, you can't talk to a kid that's in that state. You don't want to like get your kid all sugared up and then try to get them to calm down.
Yeah, I think that's what was happening in my brain. I think that, I might have even like a higher sensitivity to what sugars and carbs can do for the hormones with insulin and what's going on with being able to regulate yourself. I think that a lot of people have the experience of we even have, like, slang terms for to being hangry, right? Which is when you're angry because you're hungry and you just like your mood is just bad because of that.
I don't get in a bad mood. When I'm hungry now, like at all and that must be hormonal, that must be, you know, different triggers going on in the body. So, being able to just eliminate that aspect of it, so that, when I'm in a bad mood, it's not because of some super small thing. I couldn't get over but it's actually something that I can look at it. Like okay, this is not significant. Now. I need to look at what the base reason for.
This is rather than just, you know, I didn't eat soon enough before training or something like that. Yeah, I would imagine being hungry is not conducive to becoming a better fighter and improving on a day-to-day basis. What does a typical day like going on? You're feeding days. Like what kind of food do you eat? So I trained early. So I'm at the gym at like, 7:30. So when I get home at about, I don't know, 10 is, when I would eat.
So I usually have like eggs of some kind, maybe some kind of tie ish dish ties have really good like sun-dried pork kind of stuff. And then I'll just have like a lot of greens. I really like salad. So like I usually have a big chunk of salad with whatever I'm eating. Dinner is usually like a I don't know, significant piece of meat. We get were able to get really good grass, fed beef from Australia and Thailand. Nice. It's expensive.
So, that's not like every every single time we eat, but it's worth it to get it a couple of times. And it's really filling, which is good. Yeah, just kind of like normal-ish to me. Normally stuff is what I eat. There's no like big focus on fat bombs. Like when I first started in Quito, I was trying to figure out that bombs and stuff like this, but unfortunately about eight months ago. I was diagnosed with Adina myiasis, which is a, they used
to say. It was, it was endometriosis, but now, they separate it. And it Dairy is actually really bad for it. It creates a lot of inflammation and discomfort, so, Been off of dairy for the past, like, 8 months. I think would make skeeto a little bit tricky because that's where a lot of my thoughts were coming from, but I definitely feel better without it. So, again, it's one of those things that's like, You don't really crave things that make you feel really bad when you eat
totally. So what are the main source of fats? Now because that grass-finished beef is going to be pretty lean. Are you just like put a lot of olive oil and your salads? I use a lot of olive oil and coconut oil yet. So that's, that's mainly where the fats are coming from unless it's just like the fat in, you know, bacon or meat or something like that. But even even bacon is I think 50/50 and it's protein and fat. Macadamia nuts. But you know, Kind of as a snack kind of thing. Again.
Like I said earlier. I think that my, I can probably up my fat for my benefit, but I haven't quite figured out yet how to do that without, you know, like taking a tablespoon of oil or something. I don't know what the the shipping to Thailand's like, but I'm going to send you some keto bricks. You can try those on a training day and see if it makes a difference. Oh, wow. Yeah, so that means well, thank you pretty, pretty fatty. So we'll see if that works for
them. I'll get you some don't have any Very in there. So no issues. Thank you. What about when it comes to like the mindset of someone that does, what you do, you know, stepping into a ring and happen to have the right? Just mental focus and Clarity and just Vision to perform and that lets your anxiety and stress get the best of you like, do you meditate quite a bit prior to a finite or how do you, how do you harness the mind going into this?
I don't, I don't meditate before fights as part of my like process of getting in there. But I do meditate almost every day. I use a method that's called the pasta which instead of focusing on the breath, which a lot of meditations use you focus on two objects. One is the body and the other is the mine. So as you're sitting there, for example, you just note that you call your body Roop, that group is sitting.
It's not, I'm sitting, but like Ruth is sitting, and then if there's a sound, that's the mind. The mind is hearing, that kind of thing. So way to kind of take the self out of experiences, that's been really helpful. But when you get into the ring to fight, you take your anxiety with you, I think snow there's no like I leave this all on the outside. I can totally turn myself into a pure Warrior. When I step in the ropes. It's not really in my experience. Something that works.
But when you step into that space and you're taking your fear, or your anxiety or your doubt with you, you just have to understand how to not give it significance in that space. So you're like, you Come with me, but you have to be quiet like you have to just kind of turn the volume down on that part and being able to turn the volume down is very much something that requires a lot of mental training and kind of practice outside of the Ring, to be able to do it under the
pressure in the ring. And I have a lot of fights. I've 269 fights now, and so I have a lot of experience, both good and bad success, and non success of being able to do that. But I think one of the hardest things about getting into fight is that if you don't practice and learn how to control your brain, while you're under that kind of pressure, you have too many opponents, like you're fighting yourself and your opponent which is just a
completely unfair fight. And your opponent's job is to put that doubt in you it's to make you want to quit. It's to make you think that you can't overcome whatever they're putting on you and if you get into a state where you're like, oh, yes, that's true. It's very hard to Recover from that in the space of time as a fight, a fight is only like, you know, 15 minutes long. So you have to be able to train yourself to the point of getting your brain under control
quickly. Like you feel yourself slip and you get back on the road really quickly. Otherwise, you just run out of time. And after the fight, you're like, ah should have done this. I should have done that. You have to do it within that time. Oh, yeah, I would definitely manage that. You don't ever just leave that Stress and Anxiety outside the ring. It comes with You but having done 269 fights.
Now, it was there like a point at which you had done so many that you felt enough confidence in your own ability that you were just one with the entire experience and like, you were able to perform like in a flow state, so to speak. I've definitely had Flow State. A shockingly small number of times given how many times but yeah, there's a I think for me it's hard to figure out how to access it on purpose.
Right? So like I've definitely happened into it. And then once you've Glimpse that Shore, you can try to figure out how to like swim back to it kind of thing, but I think it's a little bit difficult to do on demand. I think, a lot of it has to do with kind of not planning. So much like you, you should visualize before going into a fight, what you want to get out of it, or what you want to do, but you can't go in.
It being like, I'm going to do these five things because there's another person in the ring with you and you don't really know what they're going to do. So you're setting yourself up for failure because you don't have the flexibility of I'm going to respond to things that are happening in the ring or the kind of pressure in my opponents, putting on me, or if I put them in a difficult spot. You have to smell blood and be able to push on it.
It's kind of incredible to be a fighter who has experience being in the ring and actually facing someone and then when you step out of it and you're watching someone else and you see that they've hurt their opponent, but they can't see it because they're totally lost in their head somewhere else and so their opponents able to recover and you're like yelling at them like go after them, but they can't see it.
I think that's been really educational for me as well as being able to watch other people and see like, oh, I probably do that. I've probably missed being able to see that. I, you know, had my opponent in an uncomfortable spot. They were ready to go, but you're just so in your own head that you can't actually respond to The fight itself, you're basically trying to have like a one-way conversation of all the things that you wanted to do.
Yeah, I would definitely think that's like for me I could see myself having this like really rigid plan as to what I would want to happen, but then it just totally not at work. Yeah, so being flexible and just being willing to adapt like that I think would make all the difference in the world for sure. Yeah. Is there a lot of camaraderie amongst the the fighters like
when? Or fighting someone and regardless of who wins, who loses like is everybody pretty much friends in the day or is there all these rivalries, as well? There's not really rivalries that that I've seen. I think it's it's not a monolith for sure. I think mostly there's this attitude. That's like once the fight is over. We're friends. There's a tradition after fights, you go to your opponent's corner and their cornermen, give you water.
So like both sides do this. And it's basically, a, like, shaking of hands type of thing. After a fight. I've become friends with quite a number of my former opponents. Sometimes we fought again, after being friends, which is slightly awkward, but not the end of the world. But, I think that a lot of my ability to Have.
Relationships with, or like kind of a happy experience with my opponents, is that I speak Thai. So, you know, I can talk with them or contact them or anything like this after a fight. I think it's difficult for westerners who come to Thailand, who are here for a short time, or maybe don't speak the language or something the the point at which you could make contact with your opponent to make it friendly.
Afterwards is just kind of Lost in Translation and so it can be a little bit more of a like rivalry. Like I'm going to kick that guy's ass or, you know, whatever. The thing is that that people like to bring into their. Fight Persona, was it? It was everyone pretty receptive to you.
And you first got the Thailand or were they kind of standoffish than as you Illustrated that you were here for the Long Haul and for the right reasons and you know, invested in learning the language and really just, you know, improving your skill set. They warmed up to you her had that kind of go down. As a really friendly when I first came here, you know, everyone who's at your jam is on your side. So when you come here, and you put yourself in a gym, that's
your team. Their job is to kind of Build You Up, and improve you and stuff like that. So the point at which you would not really be accepted or something like that is is when you're put into the larger, you know, you go out of your house. That's the gym and as whether you're accepted into the larger fight Community or how your received by Promoter is whether they think you're good to work with or not. When I started learning Thai like, actually being able to understand it.
I was kind of amazed at how much shit ties talk. I couldn't I couldn't understand it before. And then once I could understand it, I was amazed by how much there is. Usually they're very, very funny. Like it's not mean, but sometimes it can be very blunt and sometimes it was about me.
Just kind of learning to take it on the chin because there are cultural differences in things that you'll say to someone's face and Thailand versus things that you would not say to someone's face in America. So that was an interesting cultural. Kalas that I had to grow up, I guess. But in general, I think that I've been very well received. I have a well-known name among promoters and people in the, in the female more Thai Community.
It's a little bit separate in Thailand the male and female fighting, but everyone's very supportive and promoters tend to really like me. They like to put me on their cards because I fight hard, which is good. So that's very, Happy for me, but it's it's this kind of. Specific in challenge to be all the things that I am.
So I'm a woman which makes things hard because you constantly have to fight to prove that your That you should be treated on par with even men who don't know what they're doing. But you just automatically are constantly put in the state of having to prove yourself, even if you've proven yourself a lot and then I'm a Westerner.
So I'm kind of on the outside of things even though I speak the language, you know, even though all of these things, I will never beat I. So that's a box that keeps me a little bit farther out. I'm not young. You know, I'm at an age when everyone would have retired already. So even though, I Myself, in terms of being able to fight still consistently, all of these
things. There's just an assumption among ties, but like, at a certain age, you just kind of shouldn't be fighting anymore, can't be fighting anymore. So there's a lot of there's a lot of ways in which I'm not accepted at the same time as being accepted and it's a little bit. It's a little bit tricky to be juggling those different balls all the time. Oh, but it makes a story so much better because you have all these, you know, cards stacked against you.
No, but you you just rise to the occasion and show them What You're Made Of and it's just it just I don't know like if I always view life as like a story book and you get it right your own chapters, and it sounds like you're riding a pretty damn cool book. That's beautiful. Thank you. I like I think it's, I got a selfish question for you here. So with me not really having a freaking clue what I'm doing, other than our weekly MMA days. What would be a good way for someone.
That's one thing to dive deeper into martial arts. Whether it be Muay Thai Jiu-Jitsu or some other, you know, philosophy. What would be a good way to kind of dive into that. Knowing what, you know, now, like is there like some sir? Fundamentals are just like a lot of people by myself included. Like I just go to quickly.
I probably should focus on fundamentals more than I do, but that's oftentimes not with the attraction is but in knowing what you do now, like if you were to do it all over again, how would you dedicate the first six months of your trade? Oh wow. I think it's a little tricky because what? I know now, I didn't know them. So if I knew then what I know now, oh, I would focus on so many things. I would have understood so many things that Master Key was teaching me that at the time.
I just, I just couldn't comprehend and then you fast forward 10 years and I'm like, oh damn, that's what master came was telling me. Like now I get it. I think I would focus a lot on just kind of getting Getting my balance down. And then any time I was learning something. I would focus more on the feeling of it rather than whether or not someone could tell me it was correct or not like It doesn't have to be hard.
It doesn't have to be fast. It doesn't have to be perfect technique, but you have to feel the difference between all of those things in order to be able to find your way back to the, you know, correct or the fast or the hard.
Like that's all feeling and I wish that I had known that much earlier as I was learning, but I actually if I were to like give you my little the Sylvie patented piece of advice, based on your PS would be Go online and watch Muay Thai or watch anime and find a cider that just Sparks you. Like when you see that fighter, you just get so excited and start actually imitating them. Like you don't actually have to do their moves. But like steal their little
mannerisms. It's so much like when you're a little kid and you like put a towel on your like I'm Batman and you start running around and being Batman. That's actually how you become an amazing fighter or Emily and my tie or whatever the thing is. It's actually imitation. It's from stealing, the kind of Charisma of someone who inspires you and then it just kind of like pulls you up the mountain. You're like, stoked to be running up the mountain instead
of like trotting. Like, did I take that step properly? It's just be Batman all the way up the mountain and it's so much fun. Well, I don't know any other Fighters. I'm just gonna start watching your videos and I'll be Sylvie. I would love to see someone imitate me. I'd like to see what people think. I am handsome. I'm not be really interesting. Notice. I have this is inspiring for sure. I have a favorite fighter Cara hot. Who, when, when he walks around.
He really Leaf is what his chest. I know him personally. So he was going to corn for me at a fight once. And he was walking in front of me and I start imitating him and, like, walking past him and he turned. And he looked at me. Buddy, what's a my husband he goes. Is that me? I mailed his invitation. I was perfect. And what is his name again? Cara, hot her hats or super one. I'll send you a link. He's unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. I'll check him out for sure.
Awesome. Well, I want to respect for your time. I know it's 9:00 or 10:00 there in Thailand right now. You got all kind of stuff to do today. I'm sure. But where can people go to find out more about you kind of dive into your world. I know my name is tricky but because I'm so prolific. It's super convenient. You can just Google silly and white I and you will find me. People find all my stuff. I have tons on YouTube. So definitely go watch my YouTube videos.
I have fights and training videos there and we also in the more tag library and preserve the Legacy that I was talking about that's made possible through Patron. So then, which I library is on patreon and even just for a dollar, you get access to that. Is incredible technique and information and documentary projects, interviewing these men from the Golden Age and stuff like that. So yeah, that's where you find me is pretty equally online. Just solely motile. Find me.
I will most definitely link out to all of those those sites and I just congratulate you for what you're doing. I mean your your breathing life into these people that have been doing this for years. That wouldn't otherwise be able to find more enjoyment in it. So that That in itself is awesome. You're doing something very cool. And the sense that you're trying to go for this record, you're doing this in Thailand.
There's just so many things in your life that are, you know, outside the norm and I appreciate anomalies like that. And the fact that you're doing it all with the ketogenic approach in a sport that most people say can't be done without carbs. I mean, I hear that all the time and body building so kind of being an anomaly in that sense as well. And just showing people rather than trying to argue with them, just showing them that it can be
done and can be superior. I mean, my hats off to you, for sure. Sure. Thank you very much. And please tell Chip. I say, thank you for wearing my shirt. He was wearing today. I swear, he wears it every single day, like, every single week, so I had to ask because I mean, that's his favorite shirt. Well, so thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you so much for taking the time. Definitely keep in touch, and if there's ever anything I can do for you in the keto space.
Just let me know. All right. Thank you. Take care.