Barbell Shrugged - [Carnivore-ish] A Nutrition Framework for Better Energy, Body Composition, and Health  w/ Ashleigh Vanhouten, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson #721

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

Ashleigh is an author, speaker, podcast host, health coach, and leading authority on understanding the nutrient density of animal protein: she’s the author of one of the only nose-to-tail, organ-meat centric cookbooks in existence, called It Takes Guts. Her latest cookbook, co-authored with Beth Lipton, is called Carnivore-ish. She is the co-host of the Muscle Science for Women podcast with Rachel Gregory—with more than 1.5 million downloads— where she interviews some of the leading minds in exercise and nutrition methodology and overall wellness. She’s developed a range of coaching programs and workshops aimed at improving physical strength, overall wellness, and a deeper understanding of our bodies and optimal health, including her Jacked Back pull-up program, Muscle Science for Women, and the Strength Training for Women Specialist Certification for coaches. Ashleigh holds a master’s degree in professional communications and a range of certifications including CrossFit Strongman Certification, CrossFit Olympic Lifting Certification, Primal Blueprint Coaching Certification, Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certification, and a Certification in Applied Women’s Physiology and Training. Connect with Ashleigh Vanhouten Instagram Website Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram

Shrugged Family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, Ashley Van Houten is back on the show. I know sometimes we bring our friends on to the podcast so we can just catch up with them, see what's going on with their training. Turns out our good friend, actually a good friend, Ashley Van Houten, launched a book recently and we didn't even know about it because we don't see her as much as we used to. So we brought her back on. We're talking about the book carnivorous that she already launched that you should totally go check out in all places ashleybenhouten.com gonna actually you can go on amazon carnivorous just go google it it'll show up it's the first thing it's awesome my copy is in the mail i can't believe we actually

didn't have her on to talk about the book when it launched it means we're bad friends but ashley's awesome she's been a part of shrugged for a very long time. She used to have a show that, a series that she put out. If you scroll all the way back a couple years or just Google her show, The Muscle Maven, you'll be able to listen to those episodes. A wealth of knowledge. She's an awesome coach. Highly recommend going and checking everything out that she does, checking out her cookbooks.

And it's always, it's always awesome to have her come on and catch up. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dan Gardner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive. That's over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Strugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Ashley Van Alten. Welcome back. I'm so happy to be here with you guys. Just to hang out in general. That's right.

You said Strugged Collective. I kind of forgot about that at this point. You used to have a show on our, quote unquote, on our network. Sure did. And I will maintain that some of my best interviews were actually part of that series, which I like. But I literally still get people out of the woodwork, like finding those interviews and messaging me and being like, you interviewed, you know, world's best arm wrestler. Very niche, but like growing niche, you know, industry. And they were like, that was the best interview ever.

And I'm like, damn, that was like a whole thing there for a while. Great time. It was fantastic. One of your sponsors too, the something bee company, the honey company. Yes. Yeah. That's right. They hit the jackpot over the last four years.

They're everywhere right now. Every time we go in somewhere, Ashton's like, oh yeah, beekeeper satchels. Friends, on today's show, we're going to be talking about, can't see on your podcast what's behind her, author of two books, Ashley Ben-Houten, It Takes Guts,

How to Eat All the Guts, All the Livers and Organs and Things, and a cookbook, and then Carnivorous. And I want to talk today about all the protein and all the meat because we just spent 15 minutes pre-show talking about kids shows. Yeah.

We need to go the opposite direction and talk about literally meat just to even this conversation out of this, the parents that we have become over our friendship here. Yeah. It's like if you need any evidence of the evolution that has happened since the pandemic, it's like, it could not have been a conversation than the three-year-old growing up. Meathead to parents.

Next thing you know, you're like, I haven't seen you in so long. What kid's show are you watching? Now we're meathead parents, but, you know, just more tired in general. Creaky. Yo, tell me about Carnivore. We did not have you on the show to promote your book, which is our fault.

And that's terrible friendship. But I want to hear about it. I appreciate it now. It's great to just be in front of you guys. Have you gotten the bestseller list twice? Like this show will get you all the way back to the top again? If it doesn't, you'll hear it from me. We're breathing second life into the launch of this book. Yes. Yeah, I hope so. So, yeah, I mean, I think I just kind of I was sort of steamrolling ahead from the excitement of writing that first book, which was such a cool and really interesting experience. But, you know, it was obviously very niche. Right. I wrote this book about organ meats, which which took off and did

a lot better than I expected it to. Isn't that weird? It's always that way, right? Like you get worried about niching down too much. That's why Reddit's so cool. Since it's all of the weirdest stuff that everyone actually connects with. You know that I literally like just got into Reddit like a month ago. This could be a whole other rabbit hole. Don't do it.

Listen, if you're going to waste your time on Instagram or on social media in general, I mean, waste your time there and see. Maybe you'll find something interesting. I don't know. You definitely will. But I do think you're right, though. Everyone is scared to niche down.

It's a scary thing to do for some reason. But if you go to any marketing course anywhere in the world, they tell you to niche down because that's what works. But still, there's like this psychological barrier being like, I don't know, like, if I make it too, too small, I don't want to just be organ meat person, or no one's gonna buy it because there's, there's, it's only about this one small thing. But because it's so focused, then people go, oh, that's exactly what I'm looking for. And they go buy it. 100%. And I think they're like, the reality is to if you're already a big deal, if you're already

like, super popular, super famous person, you can kind of talk about anything., if you're already a big deal, if you're already like super popular, super famous person, you can kind of talk about anything. But if you in our increasingly online low attention span, nobody cares about anything. Nobody's paying attention to anything. We're all just kind of scrolling and half awake. It's very bummer look at the world, but this is kind of how we market and how we try to get out in the world these days. You can't just be like, hey, I'm nobody from nowhere. And I want to talk to you about just being healthy. Like nobody chairs. Who am I?

It doesn't matter. Right. At least if I have some kind of unique point of view or interesting perspective or specialized, you know, experience in anything that's going to help. And it did. It really did. I found that I had a bigger potential community than I ever thought possible. You know, hunters, people who

are into sustainable eating and nose to tail and everybody that's sort of in the bucket of like eating real cool foods that isn't vegan vegetarian, like people are at least open to this stuff. So anyway, it was, it was a really positive experience. I learned a lot, but then after that, I, I thought, well, maybe let's try to do something that's going to kind of catch on to this growing trend of carnivore and like meat forward diets, which is something that I'm a proponent of and that I do personally, but without trying to be too like crazy and dogmatic about it. And this is where like we could go down a like spicy rabbit hole about, you know, just how I think folks tend to speaking about the niche thing, like you can niche down in an authentic, organic way, or you can niche down in a like, I'm going to be a crazy caricature and get attention that way. And that is sort of where the carnivore industry was going, right?

We all know the main players and the big names. When you think about carnivore, you think about meat eating, and it's all about being just maybe hyper-masculine and eating testicles and eating everything raw and all this crazy stuff that if you like it, great. But the vast majority of people are not going to connect with that and are then going to kind of dismiss the entire meat eating kind of conversation because that's what they think of. And I think that's ridiculous.

That's silly. These people are, you know, not to be taken seriously. So there is a community, as you know, of people who are just about eating healthy, nourishing foods, who are not about demonizing animal protein, who recognize the real, real value of it. And just even anecdotally, from my own personal experience as a health coach and working in this industry, how many former vegans have come to me, mostly women. I really deal mostly with women in my work who have said that

they did this because they thought it was the moral thing, the healthy thing, the appropriate thing to do. And they struggled so much with their health, with their fertility, with all of these things. And I just wanted to write a book that would go in the healthy eating section of a cook, you know, bookstore, along with all the plant plant based stuff that would show you that it's not extreme, it's not scary, it's not immoral, it's none of those things to eat a nourishing, well rounded diet and feed that to your your family. So it says carnivore ish, because I'm not kind of where I'm not strict carnivore. And also because, you know, a cookbook title saying like, just eat normal human food and don't worry about it.

It doesn't, it's not as catchy. So carnivorous it is, but all of the meals are just high protein, animal protein, well rounded. There's vegetables in there too. There's lots of fat and just sort of reteaching people that you should feel nourished by healthy. You just used that term again, the term nourish. I feel like people that are not in the fitness, health,

and nutrition industry, just the random everyday person, they think about healthy food. They think about what's nutrient-dense, not calorically dense, what has vitamins and minerals in it. They think vegetables. That's where you're supposed to get your vitamins and minerals from. When you think about meat, it has protein, sure, but they don't think about it having basically anything else other than a lot of calories, maybe saturated fat is bad for you. That's like the kind of the old school stereotype, at least. Why is meat,

and you can even go up the organ meat route here, just meat in general, how is it nourishing specifically? Well, I mean, to be fair with a lot of the mass produced sort of factory farm chicken breasts that people are eating, there really isn't a whole lot of nutrient density there necessarily compared to the way you could be eating animal products. I mean, I would still choose a chicken breast over a vegan diet any day know, you can make the case that the way the sort of like, again, factory farm mass produced stuff, the nutrient density is definitely lower, the taste is lower, all of those things. And that's why having a varied, well-rounded diet is helpful. Because if you're eating lean, you know, quote unquote, boring sort of animal protein,

and then you throw in some healthy fats, olive oil, animal protein. And then you throw in some healthy fats, some olive oil, some avocado, and then you throw in some vegetables that you tolerate well, that you can digest well. These are all going to work kind of synergistically together to help you absorb the nutrients. But the reality is that not only do a lot of plants have, you know, phytonutrients and issues like things that are inherent in the plants to make it so that you don't do well when you eat them, their defense mechanisms. Not only that, the nutrients they do have are not as bioavailable as the nutrients that you can find in animal products. And that's just if you take the emotion and the moral choice of how you want to eat away

and you look at the science, it's just a fact that animal protein is more bioavailable where it's better absorbed in our bodies. So if you eat nutrient dense, healthy animal products, you're going to be getting a lot more out of them. And every honest vegan plant-based nutritionist or coach that I've ever heard speak or spoken to has admitted that if you want to go the plant-based route, it is technically possible, but it is a lot more work. Shark Family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to RapidHealthReport.com. When you get to RapidHealthReport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in,

in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now you know that we've been working at rapid health optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. Then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your

concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my lab, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapid

health report.com. And let's get back to the show. If you want to go the plant based route, it is technically possible, but it is a lot more work. And it's a lot more supplementation. And it probably very likely still will be inferior to just eating some animal protein. So, I mean, and then of course the argument for organ meats is just that organ meats are the most nutrient dense parts of the most nutrient dense foods. So if we accept that that animal protein does have a lot of protein, all the essential amino acids that we need to literally build our bodies and function and survive. And also micronutrients, the organ meats are the most concentrated parts of all of that. So if you want to get all of your zinc and phosphorus and iron and copper and CoQ10 and

all of these things that just keep our bodies running that we don't even think about most of the time, we take it for granted that we need those things and we're getting them through our food. You get them in the highest, most bioavailable doses in organ meats. So then you can just eat a little bit of these things. You have like a little bit of chicken liver, you eat a little bit of heart, you have some tongue tacos at the restaurant, whatever. And you're getting this delicious nutrient dose and you don't really have to think about it. I remember the first time I saw tongue tacos at a Mexican restaurant, I was like, are they you're getting this delicious nutrient. And you don't really have to think about it. I remember the first time I saw tongue tacos at a Mexican restaurant, I was like,

are they serious? I was way younger back then. It was like, wait, 20-some odd years ago. I was like, they're eating tongue tacos? Are you fucking kidding me? People buy that? It's on the menu? What?

No delishness. Marketing news. Onions are the most delicious organ to eat, by the way. Just saying. Yeah. Yeah, actually saying speaking of organ meats I thought about you here a couple weeks ago I went deer hunting and we got three deer at deer camp while I was there and my eight year old skinned

three deer and then cut up the liver and the heart and so I thought about you here not too long ago but yeah to add an example to your nutrient bioavailability absorption thing, I remember someone saying a while back that if you don't want to eat red meat, you could get your iron from spinach or some other leafy green. And then I learned quickly after that, that the

bioavailability of spinach, of iron in spinach, of non-heme iron is like five percent it's like it's very very low i don't know i don't know what the actual percentage is in in red meat but uh it's much higher heme iron is is much easily much more easily absorbed compared to something like spinach which is not an argument against spinach so i eat tons of spinach spinach is great for you uh but the the nutrients coming out of meat oftentimes as you mentioned um are are much more easily bio absorbed and are more bio available than vegetables in many cases. Yeah. And I mean, that's the argument. The conversation that we're having is what the conversation that should be had, which is about nuance and about picking the stuff that is going to best nourish you as well as the stuff that you enjoy. You don't have to be against vegetables

because you like meat. Like this is the corner that we've worked ourselves into by communicating on social media that if you believe in something, you have to disbelieve everything else. If we against everything else, we all have to be on a team and i just like i hate it and it's so dumb and i'm glad that i have been able to even though i

have always kind of been a proponent of like paleo eating ancestral health real unprocessed food the way our ancestors ate like that is still kind of my jam but i i don't feel like i have to say i'm paleo or i'm carnivore or I'm animal based. I feel like you nailed it because I feel like everyone that I am friends with, which is basically people in our industry, if you were to ask them what they eat, they eat all the meat. That's it. And sometimes there's like fruit involved and sometimes there's like a salad if someone

wants to make it. But most of the time, they're taking a piece of meat and eating it. And it's a delicacy if they warm it, which that's me. That may have been the meat as much as they like it. And then they're going to make them themselves eat the vegetables along with it. Yeah, yeah, I gave up. You always just get a giant amount of meat in your body and then figure out the rest. Well, here's my question for you guys, because I don't often get to talk to folks who are in such a similar position as me, but with younger kids, you know, I, from, from a young age, I was always encouraging my son to eat a variety of things, certain animal protein. Like I had

him eating chicken liver on liver is one of his favorite foods. I, I shit, you know, I'm not even trying to be cute right now. Like he loves cod liver. He will eat spoonfuls of it. And so I'm, I feel confident that he's getting a lot of nutrient density, but as a typical toddler kid is not into vegetables at all. We try to hide some stuff and I keep trying to give it to him. Not because I think it's so important that he eats broccoli,

but that I want him to be willing to try new things, exposed to new things. That was the whole point of the first book too, was not you have to eat raw liver in a field every day to be robust. It's that you should be willing to open your mind to new things to improve your health and improve your experience of life, right? So I'm still trying to give him all of these things and try all of these things but at the end of the day i also am like oh you didn't eat broccoli i literally don't care like you're fine you know so how do you guys approach you know trying to get your kids to be willing to try new things and and have you know new food experiences, but also prioritize what's really important. Beef in a bowl.

Literally it. Like I put the beef in a bowl. I know, I'm glad. I really do appreciate you thinking that we have something figured out. But the truth is, is I could ask you the same question and we would all be unfounded again.

I think it's also just like a personality thing. We talked about all of our friends in this industry we would all be in founded again. Um, I think it's also just like a personality thing. Like we said, we talked about like all of our friends in this industry end up eating lots of meat. And then there's like a piece of fruit or some sort of vegetable that they're just like eating like a raw pepper because they feel obligated to. And most of the time we just take like a multivitamin, call it even.

Yeah. But like, uh, as, as far as like i i feel like they just eat what they're supposed to eat because they're bought they're on autopilot they're not thinking about oh i need to be getting calculated like i feel like my son weighs like 37 and a half pounds and i think he eats like 50 grams of protein a day like if i were to

calculate it i have like at least a four ounce like beef and a bowl with ketchup and just eat and then like some chicken nuggets and prosciutto like they love some like prosciutto stuff but like it literally is like they don't really my daughter is large into the things that I don't want her eating but my son like He just wants to see like a chunk of meat and then go But she way harder. It's it's it. I think they're just on autopilot. Their body just tells them what they need and Most of the time that's frustrating because we base it off of our body and not, but we're not five or two. Yeah. Yeah.

When we spoke with John Berardi, he said something interesting where he was like, kids are basically like little carb machines. Like they will seek out and destroy carbohydrates and you don't have to like convince them to eat carbs. They're going to do it no matter what. So at, at mealtime, if I remember him, I'm quoting him here, he basically just tries to get some protein and maybe vegetable in them and doesn't even try to feed them carbs at meals which is kind of what i do these days like

like dinner is just meat on a plate and then they're gonna go seek out carbs on their own and that's actually worked out pretty well yeah yeah that's that's a good point i mean i again like i think that a huge piece of like parenting struggle i I'm removing it by not caring and forcing my kid to eat vegetables and just trying to like be open and having them eat, you know, whatever they want to. But the one thing I will say is that to your point where kids are kind of carb machines because they're growing so, so rapidly and it makes sense. Even a kid like mine who I refuse to give him, you know, processed sugar for the longest time at all because I was just like, it's not even about being dogmatic. It's just like, what does a one-year-old need with a fucking cake pop?

You know what I mean? But anyway, but with that said, I mean, he's too healthy. Chronic if you're a kid, like you are getting addicted to that stuff right away. There is no doubt. We're like, what in the beautiful creation is this thing what have we done yeah but like even giving them you know lessons or or homemade paleo cookies or like stuff that's you know carby slightly sweet slightly delicious like that kid will be like a monster for it so it is still something that you kind of have to

pay attention because on one hand you don't want to make it like this scary thing that they can't have because you know how it messes people up later in life. But it's also a slippery slope where it's like, oh, he's being annoying. Let me just like give him a paleo muffin. And then like three days later, that's all he's eating because I don't want to deal with it, you know? So anyway, parenting struggles, I guess. But to your point, I wanted to say something else because I don't want to deal with it you know so anyway parenting struggles i guess but um but to your point i wanted to say something else because i i don't know i guess i'm chatting with you guys and i feel like um venting we're back in the family it's like thanksgiving already bring it in i feel like i feel like that all out get it all out if i can't use names then you can always just like

bleep it out it's not a big it's not a big deal. But you were saying a lot of, we like to eat meat and then throw fruit in there, throw a vegetable if you like it, whatever. And that seems to work for a lot of people. And I was reading, I did a big rant the other day in a newsletter because I was reading this article that was either, I don't know, it was a big, it was like a mainstream sort of online source. And it was talking about the carnivore diet. And again, it just really grinds my gears that these supposed journalists still care. They're like, oh, I'm going to write an article about the carnivore diet. What do I do? Google carnivore diet. The liver king comes up. Okay, let's just talk about him for 2,000 words. Is that a thoughtful article? If you want to talk about the liver king,

talk about the liver king. But if you want to talk about a movement of people eating a lot of protein for their health and trying to do it maybe in a healthy way, maybe there's people who are doing it in an unhealthy way, but let's have a real thoughtful conversation instead of just talking about the most ridiculous people that pop up on social media. And I also think it's unfair that, you know, another big player in this industry that people talk about a lot is Paul Saladino, right? Like him or not, or his social media stuff, whatever. The big thing they wanted to talk about with him is that he's walking back on carnivore because he now eats fruit and honey. It's like if the guy eats 90% of his calories from some animal protein and you know, eats a whatever like mango every once in a while,

I'm not really sure that's like walking back to the carnivore diet. You hear these same people talking about like these vegan proponents who literally are dying, dying from raw vegetable, you know, diets or whatever, like, and the droves of people. And I know it's not just me, because I'm just one small person in this industry. But the number of people who have come to me saying, I was vegan, I was trying to be vegan while I was pregnant. And I had all of these problems, like these real stories, right? Yeah. Instead, we're going to talk about how, you know, some guy eats honey. So that means the carnivore diet.

Yeah. Like, don't you think it's very strange, like, that you have to choose a side about any of it? Like that even saying, like, you're on the carnivore team or the vegan team. But like, just the fact that if you were to just trace back, I mean, people still probably live like this. I don't really know who they are. But if you lived in Alaska in many parts, you would just eat polar bear or something.

Northern Canadians, they're eating single-blood stuff all day. You would eat a 90% fat diet, and we can live on anything. Yeah. What, one, do you like? Two, how do you make it healthy? fat diet and we can live on anything. Yeah. What is, what, what one do you like to, how do you make it healthy? And then three,

how do you just stay away from McDonald's? Like, if we could just stay away from McDonald's, we're going to get rid of most of the problems. Um, not easy. That, that system.

Like I, yeah, there to keep up with the amount of content that you would have to put out, keep your name at the top of the Google search list for carnivore. Yeah. Write a couple articles. And the type of content you'd have to put out. That's the thing. It's the type of content.

And that's another way I can tell I'm getting old because I just, like, I wake up every day. And I wake up every day more jaded and more angry about how I'm so sure. I'm sure you've had some of these moments on your podcast where you're like talking to somebody and they say something and you're like, oh, oh, you're just like more knowledgeable than me. We had a time, Dan, John, and he was like, I think this is the fourth time I've seen keto in my career. And I was like, Dan Dan John's not lying he's just been here 40 years and I'm not as old as he has been in this game so he knows that keto comes around every 15 years or every 10 years there's a big like anti-carb kick and then it goes back to carbs are good, fats are bad. Right. The interesting thing is proteins never really bastardized in any of them. Like by writing a carnivore-ish book, you're essentially hitting all of them and saying,

you can just figure out the rest for yourself. But nobody ever comes up with a diet that's like literally no protein. We want no muscle mass. Well, vegans. Terribly. But vegans still have to, like in order to do a vegan diet properly, you still have to drink five protein shakes a day of pea protein. But this is the thing is most people aren't doing vegan diet properly.

No, they're not. And because it's such a gendered thing, like there are so many more women eating vegan, because the whole point of it is to not eat much and not be big and not gain weight and not grow, which is not something that most men are particularly into, but a lot of women are into. That's why it's kind of an uphill battle. So me and my co-author, by the way, Carnivorous, I wrote with my good friend, Bess, who is a, you know, trained chef, unlike me, and a recipe developer. And she's amazing. And she's another woman who actually, she came from like a endurance running, you know, being skinny is important kind of world. And she has since, you know, expanded her view and, you know,

eats a lot of protein and into muscle building and all this great stuff. But we are even more niche kind of group because we are like, quote unquote, I'm using air quotes here, normal women who want what normal women want to look good and be healthy and feel good and, you know, have healthy families. But to do that, we want people to eat more and we want women to eat more and eat more animal protein. And that is actually a pretty small subsection of the world right now. Like speaking to you guys, speaking to dudes generally, like I'm preaching to the choir. You're like, yeah, duh. But surprisingly, and like the female variants that I have it is surprisingly still an uphill battle to get them to eat more, to eat more

protein, to eat more calories, to feel, not even full, but feel like, again, the word nourished they're so used to just scraping by on what they're how little they're trying to eat you know? The world's heading that direction though like

the that that trend has already started it's happening like strength training is a thing for any population at this point like everyone knows muscle mass is generally a good thing you don't want to have too much of it you're not trying to be this freak show bodybuilder but you definitely don't want to be frail like you want to have you want to be able to perform and have muscle mass like a strike training is ubiquitous just across the board at this point. CrossFit made it cool for basically anyone, women, old people, et cetera. It wasn't just CrossFit, but CrossFit really pushed weightlifting into the mainstream. And so I feel like the women eating protein and not being just like stick thin, skinny fat, even if it's not every single person

fit and healthy and strong at this point like the trend is going that direction as opposed to the other way I hope so I mean I'm a little I agree with you but I'm a little bit more cautiously like pessimistic about it just because I being in this world myself I still know the pressures that women face to like, there's sort of just a new face on what women are supposed to look like. And look, I would choose strong and muscular over the alternative any day. But there is and look, I know men face these pressures to like look and be a certain way too. But there is still like, yeah, be buff. be buff but like also you better be like 125 pounds and like be strong but like if you look masculine in any way holy shit like you went too far so

there is still it there's still the potential for like you know I want to build muscle I want to be strong but there are still a lot of women surprisingly that you wouldn't expect that are in there crushing weights being strong that are still like how little can i eat and get away with it and i still need to be incredibly lean and i need to you know so it's it's still a thing it's still a thing but i agree with you i mean like you know i again i'm not that old and when i started like being a beefcake in the gym when i was 16 like there were not a lot of women and there certainly weren't women filling the squat like they are today. So I'm going to say there is significantly more and they move very well. And I've been training at a global gym for pretty regularly for like maybe a year now.

And I am always impressed with the like, call like uh upper high school to like mid late 20s female that is in there right now they crush i'm like very happy to be in the globo gym it used to be just so terrible and now i'm like very happy like people move well they lift the right amount of weight very very like few catastrophic accidents are about to happen which i feel like was normal yeah the globe which you might go to the weights area is packed with men and women and the cardio area is very sparse there's tons of treadmills and the in you know elliptical machines and stair machines and whatever over there but like there's 50 machines and there's like six people on them and the weights area is packed with men and women like that that was not the

case in the fucking 90s yeah did you get any crazy food recommendations uh post pregnancy and breastfeeding um well i i did a ton of my own research, and I decided to just empower myself to do what I felt like doing, which again, seems like a very like radical notion. And I think especially during pregnancy and postpartum, because there is so much fear about doing the wrong thing for your kid, right? Yeah, your kid. And at the end of the day, no one's going to do trials and experiments on pregnant women and breastfeeding women because it's too scary. It's like the whole, you know, there's like a subculture. They're not, they don't have a problem putting a COVID-19 shot in you though. No problem from there. That's another podcast. That's for another podcast. No problems there. Take this little bit of medicine with some DNA in it. No big deal. Maybe a kid can get some too. But God forbid you eat a runny egg yeah god forbid you go outside sorry yeah but i mean it's true you know i i knew and i knew from the research that i did and anybody who's listening who is interested in this stuff go find dr lily nichols

and her book real food for pregnancy she is really smart and very research backed and really, really reasonable. And just if you're interested in nutrition around that, go talk to her. But I basically ate everything that I always ate, including eggs and coffee and preserved meats and sushi and all of these things and liver. And again, it's just so hilarious, right? Because I post about liver and people are like, aren't you worried about vitamin A toxicity during pregnancy? And I'm like, nobody's worried about crushing pints of Ben and Jerry's while you're pregnant. But everybody's worried about me eating a little chicken liver mousse. Like I, and again- That's an intelligent question though. I wouldn't have come up with that.

Well, but it's everybody becomes a scientist when it comes to healthy food. Right. When it's unhealthy food, it's like YOLO. Do what makes you feel good. Like free free world. Everybody gets to enjoy themselves. But if I want to eat chicken liver, like, you know, anyway. But I felt really, really strongly that the food that is healthy for me is food that is

healthy for my child. And I, again, some of this is genetic, some of this is plain luck, but I ate a really high protein. I ate organ meats. I ate all the things I wanted to eat during my pregnancy. And I had no sickness. I had no morning sickness, none of those issues. And I had a healthy pregnancy and I had a big old baby who ate chicken liver, like basically out of the world. So I, you know, and of course when I was breastfeeding, the biggest thing was just eating enough, which is another thing. I have people coming to me and saying like, you know, I want to get back into it. I want to like lean out. I want to lose this baby weight.

And I do strict carnivore and can I do keto and can I do intermittent fasting while I'm breastfeeding? I'm like, guys, like, eat, right? Eat enough, please. Like, stress that you're going to feel when you are trying to restrict your calories, when you're burning so many calories and you're creating food for somebody else. Like, this is not the time, you know? Like, you see all those memes on the internet about parents where it's like, this is not our time to stay out late and party and sleep in this is our time to do you know watch blippy you know breastfeeding like this is not

the time for you to prioritize being super skinny and eating in a way that's gonna you know make the pounds drop off this is the time if you're breastfeeding to prioritize your your health getting the nutrients you need that you can provide for your kid. Just eat food, eat enough food and probably eat carbs. I ate a ton of carbs. That was the biggest difference, I think, for me being pregnant and then postpartum. And it's literally taken me years to kind of like wean myself. I'm continually doing it now. Pre-pregnancy, I was definitely like low carb, high protein, moderate fat, not no carb. I've never really been keto, but I was low carb.

And then as soon as I got pregnant, I was like, baby, just give me all the, I don't know, whatever. Yeah, load up. How long did it take for you? It's your two years postpartum, right? How long did it take before you're like I don't I never want to say like your strength from pre baby like three years ago comparing yourself is no fun but like

feeling like you were like a physically fit athlete again I don't think I feel like that now but maybe that was an identity that you never had go back to three years ago compare yourself to your old self I thought I was hot shit okay I thought I was hot shit, okay?

I thought I was athletic and awesome. I don't know, my loves. Listen, I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. But I think the reason why I may not have that identity now is has nothing to do with having a baby and everything to do with me having to figure out how to rejuggle all of the priorities.

And I am getting back into it. I have a new like fitness goal we can talk about. I will say I felt, I felt recovered a few months later. I felt I was going to the gym a few months later. I took it very, very slowly. I did rehab really,

really appropriately. I'm really proud of how I, how slowly and methodically I healed myself afterwards. And I think that is why I don't have I'm not gonna pee when I do um double unders and I still I still recovered because I did it more slowly and I wasn't pressured to like look perfect eight weeks later um I would say I felt like my normal self a year later um and then it was just sort of like, I don't have the time or frankly, the desire to be as into the gym and as fit and as athletic as I was before. But with that said,

I feel like the two year mark, I have kind of hit a different feeling now. Like I feel like I'm a little bit more out of the weeds of not just being a new mom, but also feeling like I really wanted to spend like every minute with him. And now that he's a toddler, I kind of don't. I love the guy, but I'm starting to feel like, okay, he can go to preschool for a couple hours a day. I can leave him overnight with a grandparent. I'm just starting to feel a little bit more freedom again. And with that always comes the sort of desire to like challenge myself and do some fitness stuff again. So anyway, yeah, I don't feel like I'm back to my pre-baby self,

but I feel pretty damn strong and stronger in ways obviously that I wasn't before. So, and I don't- Tell me about these new goals. I want to hear. Yeah. So this, I mean, it's not really that exciting. It's just kind of like, it is sort of the first tangible like fitness thing that I've had since, um, since having him. My birthday is in January and my husband who is more of a like runner endurance. I mean, he is a military guy. He's an infantry guy. Like he can just kind of like when the will crazy. Exactly. So he gives me all of my, my um worst ideas and we live now um on the

east coast in an area that has a lot of like beautiful like ocean side trails and no scotia that's not known for fishing fishing delicious seafood um hockey i have kids on my high school high school hockey team that play that live there yep Yep. Big time. I don't like hockey. Sorry. But I love everything else about Minnesota. Tough country. Tough country for you. I know.

And beer. I'm not a beer drinker either. That's why America accepted me because I prefer football. Anyway. So my birthday. America accepted me. And I have a passport, which doesn't. Yeah.

So my birthday is at the end of January. And I've decided I I'm doing it's a 10K, but it's a trail run like it's like a like a pretty gnarly in the middle of the woods race. And it's going to be at the end of January, which here could mean a blizzard. It could mean minus 10. It could be snow and sleet all over the rocks and like pretty, pretty intense. And I'm excited about it for a couple of reasons. One, because running has never been something that I'm particularly good at. And I really like, I think it's so important for people. You guys might disagree, but in the landscape of trying things and being sit and ceiling strong and athletic, I really think it is kind of important to sometimes have to work really hard to just feel like mediocre at something. And running has always been that for me. Like I've run a couple of marathons and that's a whole

other story. And I, I, I'm not a good runner and I'm not trying to be self-deprecating. I'm really not. Um, but if I work really hard, I can be okay okay at it and i find it really fulfilling when i train for something and do it because it isn't it didn't come to me you know like i need to go do a bunch of weighted pull-ups like i love that and that makes me feel good and i'm kind of like naturally good at it it's like cool did i learn much from that maybe not but working myself to go you're in the face we're in the face too don't worry about it you're just in that part of life um there's there's an exploration like adventure side to going a long ways you see a lot more stuff um when you're in a gym and you're doing pull-ups although it's like brand new

pr back squat you literally were standing in place and tried to move like two joints. Yeah. A basically minimum range of motion. So you could lift that much to just sit enough or get your chin high enough to say that I did something, which is awesome. Still cool. Yeah. But you're not running the grand Canyon or going and running in through some

like beautiful enchanted forest for 50 miles or whatever it is like yeah um there becomes a phase of a lot of this and one of it's it's probably why i'm like so grateful that i'm 27 years into lifting weights like i can lift weights very little now and go do things that i really like like i when was the last time you just like went and played a sport yeah oh i've been training for 27 years but the sport piece hasn't been played since uh I guess CrossFit came in and became the sport for a good decade after like you're you're told you're not allowed to play sports anymore but that's why people go and I think I mean there's a lot of people that we work with that are uh really at that like stage where it's like they they want to

go experience the adventure that can come along with fitness um and i think that that's like a it it was something that i used to maybe not like look down on but i never actually understood and now most of the things that i want to do i don't even really want to go run like a marathon because that's just like running through the roads but if i could go run and do rim to rim, that's pretty sweet. There's like tons of cool adventures. We had a client this year that went and did the race across America and they rented like two tour buses. And he rode 100 miles a day for 15, 14 straight days, something like that. And that stuff's like, when are you going to ride your bike across the country and go see all of it?

There's I feel like there's like a stage where we're like using fitness to prove our worth. And then we play sports to like show our worth. And then now there's a phase of like i i don't need to go do all those pieces but i'd still like to go experience yes um some adventures that possibly most people can't do because they haven't committed the amount of time that like we we have in this domain um welcome to the club you think about it differently now it's great and it's a self-fulfillment piece too right yeah you're not doing it to prove to anybody else like I can't keep up with

most 25 year olds anymore and that's fine I was there and I'm still pretty damn strong and fit but like I'm trying to do things for my for myself and to prove to myself that it's the the resilient part of it and to your point about being outside, it's like, we spend way too much time just doom scrolling, really, and just looking at shit that's upsetting, and being online and like dragging ourselves into like mud of fights and disagreements and people being angry at each other. And like the best way to fix any of that like existential dread that you feel in your body is to just go be outside, you know, and especially if you're doing something challenging, because when you're running up a hill, you are not thinking about the internet or the email you have to send or whatever. You are just in your body and breathing fresh air and doing as much of that as possible.

Yeah. I think about many times, like I just started training, maybe not just started, it's probably actually not even gonna work out because getting on a track, I've literally had like the cops called on me just for trying to run at a track at a middle school. It's like the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

But I wanted to run like a sub six minute mile. But then like, I also will just like go to the park and I will see like a group of minute mile but then like i also will just like go to the park and i will see like a group of uh most of the time with like one or two other people sprinkled in but it's like large groups of mexican friends playing pickup soccer and i'm like will you guys take me i want to run around and change directions and maybe run backwards a little bit or like play defense or maybe score a goal. Like, I feel like all of that stuff, like I talked to so many people where they have this whole thing built into the box. It's like, I do full body workouts, strength training three days a week, and I get 20 to 25 sets and in between you know two to zero

reps in reserve and then on mondays i do one hour of vo2 max or of uh zone two and then tuesday i do some vo2 max training and then another day zone two and i'm like hold on a second all those guys out there doing playing soccer right now are doing the same thing yeah but have way more fun than sitting on a rower for 45 minutes at a conversational pace that's not fun yeah i i do it i enjoy it like just because i like working out um but there's there's significantly more interesting and fun ways to go play um and i think that if you lift weights long enough, you will realize that lifting weights is no longer play. You're just doing the thing that is

comfortable for you and you're not really growing that much anymore. But it takes like many decades to get there. You make very good points. And I mean, at the end of the day, none of us are going to stop working out and lifting weights because we love it and it's good. But it is great too i think you know we have an opportunity having kids

we have an opportunity you don't have to have kids to do this but it is a very glaring opportunity to like re-engage and play right because that's all they want to do if you i it is my happiest thing of my life to just go out and play sports like the fact that i'm like in a cul-de-sac my kids get to go play and i get to be outside every night like um i'm like the out the outdoor dude non-stop and i just need sunshine on me badly yeah so if i could do the parenting and the play and um get sunshine. Life is good. Yeah. Doug, are you still doing Jiu-Jitsu?

As much as I can. Yeah, absolutely. Are kids doing that too? Yeah, they all do it. I typically take them on Saturday mornings, occasionally in the evenings, but really it's just once a week for them. You know, my seven-year-old plays way too many sports.

He does baseball and soccer and Jiu-Jitsu and BMX biking and used to do gymnastics. But yeah, I try not to force it on too much. I want to go to practice and their practice the same time as my practice. So because I want to go to practice and I don't want to leave them all home with my wife, I do kind of like push them to go. I want them to go. And then I also just want to go myself. It's like one of the main reasons I push them to go. But I think swing training and martial arts is just fantastic for basically anybody. also just want to go myself it's like one of the main reasons i push them to go but um i think

swing training and martial arts is just fantastic for basically anybody and i want my kids to have a lot of exposure to it but at the same time i want to be their own person and choose their own activities and not just like make them do what i want them to do um but yeah but i still do it i watched i watched jiu-jitsu videos seven days a week every single day um and i have a long list of things to practice and i try to go as much as I can but in all reality it's twice a week these days unfortunately I would go every day if I didn't have other obligations yeah

we gotta wrap though yeah where do the people find you they can find me in the woods puffing and puffing up a hill trying to prove that I still got it but but otherwise uh yeah i'm on instagram still um my handle is still the muscle maven she is greatest and uh yeah i have a podcast called muscle science for women and a program that goes along with that strength training for women

um that dives into all of the stuff that we've talked about and a lot more. And my website is just my name, ashleyvanhouten.com. And I've got all my cookbooks and everything there. But yeah, reach out to me anywhere. I'm generally a pretty nice person. I'll say hi and talk about meats with you. I would co-sign on that. Yeah. Thank you.

Appreciate that. It's not with you guys. No. Ashley, great catching up. It's been way too many years. It makes me very sad now that we're not going to strong new york here in a couple weeks uh if not for anything just to be able to see you and hang out again uh and mr kenny santucci uh be sure to say hi to him for us but

uh great seeing you you too great seeing you appreciate coming on the show my heart is happy hanging out if you a writer like you that was like four H's in a row. What's that called? Alliterate. Right? Oh, so smart. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dan Garner and Dr. Indy Galpin are doing free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive. You can access that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, see you guys next week.