Barbell Shrugged - Maximizing Fat Loss Without Damaging Muscle or Metabolism w/ Dr. Bill Campbell, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Travis Mash and Dr. Andy Galpin- Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged #531

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

Save $200 on 23 Training Programs in the Barbell Shrugged Program Vault using code “vault200” at checkout.   Dr. Bill Campbell, Ph.D., FISSN, CSCS, is a Professor of Exercise Science and the Director of the Performance & Physique Enhancement Laboratory at the University of South Florida. His master’s and doctoral degrees were earned at Baylor University while serving as the Coordinator of the Exercise and Biochemical Nutrition Laboratory. He joined the faculty at USF in the Fall of 2007.   As a researcher and author, Dr. Campbell has published more than 150 scientific papers and abstracts (in academic journals) related to sports nutrition and physique enhancement. In addition, he is a paid consultant to professional sport team organizations, sport entertainment corporations, and also is a litigation consultant and expert witness related to dietary supplementation. Dr. Campbell has published three books on sports nutrition, including the NSCA's Guide to Sport and Exercise Nutrition and Sports Nutrition: Enhancing Athletic Performance.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   When calories in vs. calories out is not the rule.  Why protein is different than all other macronutrients How to maximize muscle gain and fat loss at the same time. What is a healthy body fat percentage Do females follow the same rules for fat loss and protein.   Save $200 on 23 Training Programs in the Barbell Shrugged Program Vault using code “vault200” at checkout.   Dr. Bill Campbell on Instagram   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   Dr. Andy Galpin on Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   PowerDot - Save 20% using code BBS at http://PowerDot.com/BBS    InsideTracker: insidetracker.com use code “shrugged25” to save 25%   Fittogether - Fitness ONLY Social Media App   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we are talking to Dr. Bill Campbell about how much fat you can lose, how fast you can lose it without damaging your metabolism and muscle. That's awesome because I've actually always wondered how big of a calorie deficit you can be in without just totally wrecking yourself and having to deal with a lot of issues. Before we get rolling, I want to tell you that the program Vault 23 programs is on sale right now, this week only. This is the last time you're going to hear about it on the show. We do this one time a year. It's the biggest sale of the year with $200 off.

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deal so get over to bioptimizers b-i-o-p-t-i-m-i-z-e-r-s.com forward slash shrugged use the code shrugged to save up to 40 let's get into the show friends welcome to barbell shrugged i'm andrews varter i am surrounded by my favorite people in the whole wide world but i'm still by myself in my garage. Doug Larson's in the house, Coach Travis Mash, Dr. Andy Galpin, and Dr. Bill Campbell from USF, University of South Florida. Today, we're going to be talking about fat loss and how much fat we could actually lose on your body without doing any damage. Dr. Campbell, this is awesome. I've been following it on Instagram.

I love all of the polls and QA stuff that you do on there with all the research backing it. It's an honor to have you on Barbell Shrugs. When we talk about fat loss, I have endless questions because I'm always trying to get more lean, but my problem is I eat just a little too much for all that to happen. So we need some tactical things to change my life. How much, when you guys, what are you guys looking at these days as far as bringing research to how much fat we can actually take off people in a healthy way? Yeah. So we literally just finished this week, a study that we call the rapid fat loss study and that was essentially a two-week

40 percent nearly a 40 percent an average of 37 and a half percent caloric reduction high protein resistance training and yeah that's the first of what will be several studies where the question that we have globally is how much fat can we take off of the human body in the shortest amount of time without doing damage and when i say damage in the physique world we're trying to protect metabolism and we're trying to protect muscle mass so we know that we do that with higher protein we know we do that with resistance exercise as best as possible. So now we're trying to design a few studies. The first one is done to answer that question. And you probably don't know this. I'm really not in favor of any type of rapid fat loss or crash dieting. It goes against everything that I believe an approach

should be. But again, we're doing it with the caveat aggressive but maintaining muscle maintaining metabolic rate um when you say when you say maintaining muscle mass and maintaining metabolism those those things kind of run together in a lot of ways like how how is that the same thing and how how are those things different they're they're very related at least what we've seen in our lab. When our subjects maintain their muscle mass, they also seem, they tend to maintain their metabolic rate. So that's one of the things that we've learned over time. And this is also in the obese literature as well. And I need to make that statement. My lab does not really focus on obese individuals. And while we

appreciate bodybuilders, I don't really study bodybuilders. My lab focuses on people who are fit, who want to get leaner. So it's not on either extreme. Now, the principles apply to an obese population. And essentially, if you look at what bodybuilders do, we try to say, hey, let's learn from them, but let's help people optimize their physiques within a maintainable lifestyle. So bodybuilders doniques within a maintainable lifestyle. So bodybuilders don't live a maintainable lifestyle when they get to stage. So we're just backing that up a few degrees to help people look a certain way all of the time. So that's the context for what I do.

I always need to make that point. What is that entry level to being fit but not having like an optimized lifestyle for the body type that people want is that like a 15 to 17 15 to 20 body fat range i i think well in in my in my mind and and for the subjects that we recruit it's leaner than that it's it's nearly it's it's as close to stage lean that you can get but maintain within a and a normal lifestyle so it's not quite stage lean but it's more than you know clearly not overweight and not quite to where you look like you do on stage but how lean can you get to live a life where you can still go out to eat with your family get ice cream with your kids occasionally like those kinds of things at least that's how that's what drives me in my brain i'm hearing like eight percent body fat uh is it leaner than that because i'm out

i'm not i'm not qualified all right lord if i have to give travis match we should hang up right now yeah okay i have to give numbers and a male will say 10 to 12, female 14 to 16. What are you using to measure? We use ultrasound in my lab, B-mode ultrasound. No, I'm sorry, A-mode ultrasound. So it's not the quality of ultrasound that you would use for muscle thickness or to see if your baby's a boy or girl. This one is really good for measuring body fat. And we also use skin folds as well. We don't publish the data on skin folds, but I have a lot of skin fold data because most people can use skin folds, and I like to provide people with that data.

But we publish with ultrasound. Can you tell us the big picture of some of your favorite studies or experiments that you've done, like what the groups are, a brief overview of the methods and what the results have been? Sure. Anything, anything truly unique or counterintuitive or anything like that would especially be fun to hear. Yeah. So let's, let's go back a few years when I really made the shift to, so the research I used to do was very sports nutrition focused, more performance based. And probably the last five years made the switch to just more physique enhancement. A couple of years ago, we took resistance trained females.

These were aspiring female physique athletes. Some of them had competed in bikini divisions. Some had not, but they had the intent of wanting to compete within that year. So they were all resistance trained, but not highly resistance trained. It wasn't like they were training for five, six years. Now some of them were, but the majority were within a year or two of training. They had to deadlift, I believe it was 1.25 times their body weight to get into the study. So we had some objective criteria to kind of demonstrate that they were trained. And what we did in this study, and this is published, we said, half of you, you're going

to be on a high protein diet for eight weeks. The other half, you're going to be on a low protein diet. We supervised their workouts. We gave them a workout. So every workout, every rep was supervised. And we implement like macro tracking, where we give them their calories. And we say, hey, track your protein, track your carbs, track your fat. We told them not to diet. The goal of this study, we don't want you to lose weight. We don't want you to try to gain weight. The only thing we want you to do is to manipulate your protein intake. And what we found after the eight weeks, which is probably not surprising, but this study hadn't been done before, was the group that increased their protein.

And by the way, the levels were, we said you have to eat at least 1.2 or at least 2.4 grams per kg for the high group. And then for the low group, we said, you may not eat more than 1.2. And it turned out to be 2.5 on the high end and 0.9 on the low end. And what we found after the eight week study, the high protein group, those females gained significantly more muscle mass as compared to the low protein group. And that was a between group difference. They gained about four and a half pounds. The low protein group didn't lose muscle. They actually maintained their muscle. But the interesting thing was the high protein group within their group, they actually lost a significant amount of fat within that group. It was like a percent or two of body fat, maybe like one to two pounds of fat mass.

So that was interesting because they actually increased their calories by nearly 300 during that eight-week period. So that was the first study that I'm aware of that did a protein titration study with resistance-trained females. Doesn't this fly in the face of like the calories in, calories out groups? I mean, like, I think I would love Lane Norton to be on this show right now. Yeah. And Lane and I, we agree on most things. But I'll say this. I'm aware of approximately four, and I'm trying to think, maybe five studies when people,

and I guess there's two caveats here. When resistance-trained people increase their calories and all of those calories come in the form of protein, they don't gain fat. It's, again, two key things, all protein and resistance training. I have yet to see a study where there is fat gain. So what I tell people is it's very difficult to gain fat if you're overeating on protein alone. So if you're hungry and you're resistance training, I would say, well, eat more protein. It's not conducive for fat gain. Why do you think that is, you know, like what is the mechanism that is, you know, because I'm looking at a study right now that agrees with everything i've been waiting to ask this question to somebody

you know um that could answer it so i've been waiting i thought i'd ask andy and lane but now you're on so where somebody was given they were given uh 80 extra grams of of protein per day calories they kept eating the calories they were eating, added 80 to it. And like, they actually lost body fat. And so, so then I was like, that completely flies in the face of like calories in calories out group. So why do you think that is? So, yes, my, and my response or my thought process, cause I have to grapple with this too. It doesn't make sense to me. Um, I, I think calories in calories out is the rule, but there's a protein caveat. That's how I explain it.

There's a protein caveat. Based on a few studies, and is the data that you just mentioned, is it a published study or is it? Oh, yeah, it's a published study. The effects of consuming a high-Protein Diet on Body Composition in Resistance-Trained Individuals by Jose Antonio Corey Peacock. Are you familiar with this one? Yeah, yeah, that's one of the four that I'm aware of. I'll tell you about that particular study.

That study was published before we started our study. All right. And I saw that. And, yeah, he gave, he has actually two studies where they overfed on protein. And when those studies were published, I looked at them and I'm like, boy, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know if I, and I've told Joey this, I love Joey, but he doesn't control his studies as like, there was no supervised training. They didn't keep track of cardio, aerobic exercise.

So I'm like, well, there's a lot of holes with that. But, you know, he's not unethical. He just didn't, he doesn't control his studies. So then we did, then we did my study and i didn't think anything of it and then when we when i analyze my data i'm like oh well here look at this we gave nearly 300 extra calories that supports what joey what joey found yeah and then since then again now i'm up to four maybe five studies where i've found the same thing another one was out of mike rober' lab at the University of Auburn, where they increased protein and they didn't gain fat. So you ask about a mechanism. So I don't know the mechanism. The easy mechanism, potential mechanism to point to would be an increase in

NEAT or non-exercise activity thermogenesis. So this high protein is just causing a lot more fidgeting, a lot more loss of energy through heat. That's what he said in his research. Yeah. It's very hard to measure that. And it's not like it's it's it's I still struggle because it's not like you're burning more calories than what the calories are in the protein. At least I don't imagine that to be the case. i i do have a pretty good network of physique coaches and they've told me when they've when they've loaded their clients on protein like hundreds of grams the typical response is sweating hot meat sweats yeah yeah yeah. So that would seem anecdotally to support that as a mechanism.

And again, it's the best answer that I have, but I can't, I don't say that with any evidence or scientific evidence. He said in his research that it was, you know, that protein increases satiety. What is that? How do you pronounce it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you don't want to eat bad foods. And then Dr. Gobbin, this morning driving in, uh, leads me to believe that just like, you know, maybe the body just is not, you know, designed to store,

you know, protein, even though we know it can and will, you know, if you eat too much store it as fat, but like, I'm just guessing really. Cause I'm not a doctor.

It's like you guys, but I'm, it's baffling me. I can't wait to talk to Lane about this very thing. Cause you know, his whole premise is calories in, calories out. And so this definitely, like, pokes a hole in that theory a little bit. Yeah, and this is where Lane and I disagree.

Like, I've made a comment at a conference where we were both speaking. I said, I think it's very difficult to gain fat from overfeeding on protein. And at the time time he disagreed. And I just said, well, I've got, I've now have four published studies. Like it's not just my opinion, but somebody like Lane, who's probably coached thousands of people. I, he's got real, you know, and he's a scientist himself. So I think I'm just happy to disagree with him on that and tell him he's wrong. Oh, yeah. That would be – that's who we need to get on the show. All of them.

Text him. Text him right now. I feel like even if it's not 100% accurate that it's truly calories in, calories out, like still having the mental model of calories in, calories out is close enough to get people pretty close to where they want to be i'd say in most cases especially for the average person yeah and if you look at if you look at the data in obese people or overweight and obese people when they overfeed them with higher protein they gain lean body mass they gain fat at um now again when i say lean mass, that doesn't mean all functional muscle.

That's clearly, you know, it's everything but fat. It can be organs as well. But when the protein content of the overfeeding goes up, they gain less fat. They start to gain more lean body mass. So, I just looked at a study by Bray, who's a famous obesity researcher. When they overfed subjects with like 5%, let's just say it was 1,000 calories a day, but only 5% protein. Almost all, nearly 100% of the weight gain was in the form of fat. When they increased it to 15% protein, it was something like only a half of it was fat at that point. There's a protein caveat to this overfeeding. That's cool. No question. something like only a half of it was fat at that point. There's a protein caveat to this overfeeding. That's cool.

No question. Is it just protein? I believe this was many years ago. I saw a study that showed meal frequency in an isocaloric setting. You have two groups. One group eats twice a day. The other group eats six times a day. Isocaloric diet, calories, macros are supposed to be the same in both cases, but the group that ate six times a day lost more body fat than the other group.

And then I saw another one where it's very similar. You know, there's a high carb group versus the high fat group, isocaloric diets. And I believe in that study, the lower carb, higher fat group lost more body fat, even though it's isocaloric diets. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah. So So the one thing I would always, isocaloric is good, but also it needs to be isonitrogenous to make a very good comparison. So I don't, a lot of those studies do not also control for the protein intake. So that's something that I always want to look for. Most of the data on meal frequency in humans, and I'm aware of about six studies, it's no difference. Whether

it's two versus six, 14 versus four. Now, to be fair, these are overweight, sedentary people. It's not like we have much data or any data in resistance-trained fit people. So I want to be careful that I don't extrapolate. But generally, the meal frequency does not improve. Um, there one study, one group did lose more fat. Um, but I think that was with a lower meal frequency. I'd have to check, but clearly the majority of them where they measure body composition, some of them using metabolic ward studies. So very highly controlled, uh, meal frequency really didn't matter much. Yeah, man. When you look at like, you take a high protein diet, I think, I think what really works for bodybuilders, why they do that five or six times a day is like, it's really tough to eat enough protein that we're talking about. Like if you're eating

two grams per kilogram of body weight, you know, like my Lord, like you're, you're talking, that would be like more than 50 grams per, per meal. If you only did three times a day, it'd be almost, who wants to sit there and chew on meat that long? Who's got time? And so like, would be like more than 50 grams per per meal if you only did three times a day you almost who wants to sit there and chew on meat that long who's got time and so like i'd be like by breaking it down makes it a little easier to take that much protein in i think i think a lot is coming down to this protein question it definitely is got me curious for sure. Yeah, yeah. You keep bringing up that it needs to be resistance-trained and high-protein. What happens if we overfeed on protein for somebody that is not resistance-trained? Have we looked at those at all to see if maybe a ketogenic approach,

maybe not all the way or like some sort of carnivore type thing, uh, is, is maybe an, a more beneficial way to approach fat loss in, in say general population that may not have resistance training, a resistance training background. So in general, overfeeding studies that are, that even with higher protein, there is fat gain. Now, as far as the carnivore diet, things of that nature are ketogenic. I don't – I'm not aware, and I'm not on top of that literature, so it may exist. I'm not aware of any studies. I'm just thinking of like the high meat diets that –

Yeah. One thing that I appreciate about ketogenic diets from a non-performance standpoint because i i think that's that's problematic but they do tend to help with hunger and and making people eat less naturally uh the the hard part is though a lot of people just can't follow a ketogenic diet like it's it's it's it's too restrictive for for a lot of people yeah yeah well when you when we're increasing the protein intake and and fat and carbohydrate remain the same in these studies um what happens if we if you're if you're keeping that protein intake high but is is there a more beneficial or less beneficial approach to increasing, say, carbohydrate or fat

along with that? Or how do you fluctuate those to maybe even expedite since it's kind of the goal is for you is how much fat and how fast can we lose it? Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah. I'll say what happened in our study. When we told the females, increase your protein, what we thought would happen was that they would naturally decrease their carbs and fat, but that didn't happen. They kept it the same. It actually resulted in a near 300-calorie caloric surplus. Then we found what we found, which was all muscle mass, some fat mass loss. In general, though, I think if somebody is increasing all three, they're going to gain fat. If they're increasing carbs, protein, you know, with all else being equal, whether activity levels are the same, I would anticipate fat gain and lean body mass gain as well if they're resistance training uh when if when when we're talking about

kind of resistance training what training programs are they going into because i'm wondering if if it's just for pure physique they're not super interested in the performance of increasing 10 pounds on their deadlift um does this apply to strength athletes as well in search of performance? Yeah. So in our study, we include the power lifts generally. Squats always, deadlifts always, depending on the study, if it's female, if it's more, depending on the study. We may do bench press, we may not. In that study that was interesting, there were the high versus low protein. Everybody got significantly stronger. There were no differences between the groups. So in that study, the higher protein did not translate to greater

strength increases. Now, these were not power lifters going into the study. They both probably had a lot of area for improvement. So that could be part of it. But at least in that particular study. And I think the data is relatively split. It seems like sometimes higher protein, the meta-analysis will say higher protein improves strength. But the individual studies, I think it's about 50-50. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

How long is a typical study? Because, you know, to look at hypertrophy and strength, like I feel like you need a longer study to like to really know the truth about that. Yeah, so most studies are designed, and Dr. Galpin would attest to this, it's unfortunately based around the academic semester of a university because that's what you can do. And I'll say for myself, as I'm doing these weight loss studies, I have to have, I'm very concerned about Thanksgiving, Christmas,

spring break. So I do not want to carry my diet studies over these holidays and over spring break. So my studies are always seven to 10 weeks long. Now, our rapid fat loss study was only two weeks of dieting. It was a six-week study total because that was rapid fat loss. But that's clearly enough time to start to get answers to your questions, whether it be strength, whether it be hypertrophy, whether it be performance or fat loss. It's plenty long enough to get answers. Well, I would think, like if the focus was hypertrophy you know you got seven especially if it's like

that shorter seven week you know like you need you need time for hypertrophy and then you need time for neural adaptation and it's not overnight like is someone who's coached you know 27 team usa weightlifters you know it that is a slower process. You know, it just, it takes time. And so like, you know, so like to say that it didn't get them stronger, I feel like you would need a lot longer. And then you'd have to look at, is this a brain, is it a newbie or is this an advanced person? There's a lot of, there's a lot of, a lot of variables. Yes. Very key. And I'll be the first to admit, especially when you're looking at strength, a lot of people or a lot of studies conclude no difference.

But, yeah, it was eight weeks long. What if this was a year long? What if, you know, it is a – an educated person appreciates that's a big limitation in our literature base, the exercise science literature base. My purge of these cycles is normally eight weeks. And so, like, to get any type of adaptation from an advanced athlete is, in in our literature base the exercise literature my purgatory cycle is normally eight weeks and so like to get any type of adaptation from an advanced athlete is you know it's definitely not four weeks where i'm going to get somebody who's already this one of the strongest person

in the entire world you know over four weeks i'm not going to also get them bigger you know like it takes lots of time and then you know then it takes lots of time for neural adaptations and you're trying to you're lucky to get one kilo, five kilos of improvement. So it's just, you know. But, you know, newbies, you would think that, yeah, anyone's going to get strong because it's mostly neural anyway. And so, like, yeah, there might not be any difference. Because, you know, if they're brand new and rookies, it might not matter.

But it would matter, I feel like, over time. Yes. Yep. Great point. Yeah. you also mentioned at the beginning that it wasn't just about damaging muscle damaging metabolism can you can you talk about some of the effects of having the the high protein on the metabolism i assume that that has a lot to do with kind of getting back uh kind of the recovery after the rapid fat

loss to a more sustainable body fat level? Yeah. Yeah. So generally, I look, let me just give a kind of my global philosophy of dieting. To me, dieting is, it's just a catabolic environment. Everything about a caloric deficit and dieting, it's catabolic. So if we can introduce some anabolic stimulus to the body in an otherwise catabolic environment, that's a good thing. And the two things that do that are resistance exercise and protein intake.

And it just so happens that they protect metabolism and it protects metabolic rate. If you look at, and again, this is less than, I'm relying on about six studies here. If you look at the studies that use lean people, mostly athletes, and put them on a weight loss diet, what you'll see is if they go less than 1.5 grams per kg, that's where they tend to lose muscle mass. And if the study's long enough, they lose performance benefits as well. So in my studies, it's always a minimum of about 1.8. This rapid fat loss study, it was funny. But yeah, for that study, we did a gram per pound, which is 2.2 grams per kg. And for some of our subjects, because they came into the study not eating a lot of food, nearly all of their calories was from protein. So it was a ketogenic, I mean, well, not a ketogenic diet, but a very of food, nearly all of their calories was from protein. So it was a ketogenic, I mean,

well, not a ketogenic diet, but a very low carbohydrate, very low fat, extremely high protein diet for two weeks for some of these subjects. I'm going to take a quick break to thank our friends over at Inside Tracker. The show is coming up. I'm getting my blood work taken on Friday. They're sending somebody to the house. It's going to be incredible. And we're going to read all the results from getting my blood tested as well as my DNA tested. Who knows what's going to be in there? Could be kind of cool. But today, more than ever, it's essential that we do all the right things to keep our

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If they just keep their calories super low but but their protein very high, that that's the direction? Or do they need to, since their calories are already too low, cycle back up and then work their way back down? I see a lot of people recommending that. Like, what's the consensus view from a research standpoint? Yeah, so if we're only concerned about physique, if this is an athlete, then there's problems because I want to fuel them for their training so that they can adapt to their training. But for physique athletes in general, and again, this is obviously individualized, where were they at? How did they get to where they're at now? But in general, yes, the protein is going to, it should, as they keep cutting calories, the percentage of the diet from protein should keep increasing. I don't want to cut protein.

In fact, that's usually one of my rules. Don't decrease protein when dieting. Let's start with fat, ideally, if there's a high fat intake at the beginning of a diet. And again, I'm not referring to athletes. I defer to Dr. Galpin on anything with how to deal with athletes and their diet. So I'll just stick to the physique world. But yeah, I'll cut carbs.

And if we start getting very low, in their diet. So I'll just stick to the physique world, but yeah, I'll cut, I'll cut carbs. Um, and if we start getting very low, then I'm going to start, then I start worrying or I start putting an emphasis on the timing of the carbs. So let's now fuel your workout. Let's give you carbs prior to your workout because otherwise the rest of the day, you're not going to, you know, it's, I don't, there's no, there's no benefit if we spread them out a little here and a little there because i want you to have the best workout because the workout is the stimulus for adaptation so let's fuel that workout with the small amount of carbs that we have so that would be my approach if somebody is very very low on calories and then again no that that's not that's usually not sustainable i'm dying to ask this question and it may be totally ridiculous but when ronnie coleman said that he walks around at three

percent and then stood on stage at his eighth olympia 0.33 body fat is that real i i don't believe that's real i think it's a complete lie yeah a lot of people have a lot of very very low i just have to i I had to ask. It doesn't sound real, but you would know. You would know. I think a lot of people heard that and they went, I love Ronnie, but I'm not sure about that. I'd be like, if I saw Ronnie, you're awesome, but you're lying. Just because I can count all the striations in your glutes right now, 0.33% is really small.

I want to see the fat in that big belly of his you know in that in visceral you know in the organs he's not counting that yeah yeah like in the you know in the muscle in the organs like come on no actually what what is kind of the that healthy range for people that are going to be competing in physique and still, I mean, it's a hypertrophy specific sport, but they have to be super lean. Like what is a healthy weight where you don't start to just totally wreck your hormones and your like the recovery process, turning that into like a four month long depression cycle coming out of that. Yeah. So, for females, I test quite a few females. And when I've tested the best, like IFBB pro bikini competitors, they're always under 10, usually, you know, 8, 9%. And that's at the bikini level. So, that's not even the leanest of the lean. You know, you have the physique and I guess there used to be the bodybuilding division. And I know very few of them that don't lose their menstrual cycles during that process. Now I have noticed, at least in the profession, not in the

research literature, a lot of emphasis on focusing on that. How can we maintain the menstrual cycle as this happens? And a lot of that, they're trying to keep cortisol from increasing a lot. Can you? Is there a way to keep? Yeah. How do you keep that from happening? Well, I mean, part of this is introducing some diet breaks seems to help some of these

people. And again, I'm only talking anecdotally now as I I talked to some females that are, that are through this, that have kept it. Um, but yeah, trying to monitor their cortisol levels. Um, but when you're talking, getting on stage, I, I just, I just, I try to be as honest as I can. There's nothing healthy about that. Your hormones are, uh, there's nine bodybuilding case studies that have been published and and i think about five or six of them have measured hormones they're always tanked um testosterone suppressed cortisol is elevated t3 t4 suppressed uh leptin very low so i i don't i don't like to i don't even suggest that yeah, you can do this in a healthy manner.

It's not maintainable. Why do people do that sport? That sounds terrible. I mean, that just sounds like hell to me. Yeah. And then males are typically, you know, stepping on stage, at least with my ultrasound device, what I measure. And my ultrasound, I've tested it twice on the same day as a DEXA with with other people same day act by back to back and it's it was identical to a DEXA the one time and 0.1% different than a DEXA the other so an N of two but the males are usually a little like six seven

eight percent for males on you know near stage day a day or two out of competition. Here's a question for you and for Dr. Gallup. I think a lot of people in our audience would love to know the answer to this. Let's take an athlete, a strength athlete or a football player, someone who it's important that they're strong and powerful, especially weight class sports, so weightlifting, powerlifting, wrestling, MMA, like what is the lowest someone can get without affecting their performance, without affecting their, their, their power, their velocity, all those key ingredients.

Andy, that's, that's you. The, the range is quite large. So I have some individuals who after two months of dieting plus a pretty gnarly final week of weight cut, they're still 12%. Like maybe, right? And they're really suffering at that point. And then I have some, actually the shirt for the guy I'm wearing he's probably 12 percent at his fattest and he will i mean we don't do dexes and stuff the day of the weigh-ins but he is just if you look at his physique in his pictures he's certainly comparable to anybody you'll ever see on stage

for any physique competition so he has to be in the middle single digits six percent you know something like this and he performs phenomenally even with his endurance and things like that so the range is excessively large so what i would say is it's hard to put a number rather than it is the number for the individual is what matters so track data yeah some of the people that i work with if i got them lower than 10 i feel like it would really really hurt their performance because we would have to take away their fuel so so hard and keep them on basically like what Bill was talking about earlier, the high protein, no fat, no carbohydrate diet to get them down that they would suffer. Where others, I feel like, well, no, I don't feel like, like I've done this a lot. I just take their food down 10% and all of a sudden they just start melting fat.

And you look at them, you're like, what happened? They just start melting fat and you look at them you're like what happened you just just lose and lose and lose um and all of your weigh-ins you know with your guy that's so ripped like how long is it is it a 24 hour weigh-in with mma or well theoretically 24 hours but it's almost always at least 30 because they weigh in at nine o'clock in the morning and they don't oh yeah morning so it's they always fight at four so it's yeah it's 30 to 36 sometimes almost closer to four makes it hard for my guys because you got two hours right well the wrestlers we deal with have the same thing so yeah oh yeah yeah do you do you deal with any of like the the water cuts and stuff before people people are heading on stage and and like no no i'm i'm not a physique coach I mean I've I've I've have coached

people before and and I'm very upfront I do that to to inform my research so I can learn from people but I'm I'm not I don't have clients that I'm you know working with to get them on stage and I've done it in the past but even then it's I I did not do much with water. It's just not something I have knowledge of. Yeah. Well, if we're getting people down in the 6% to 8% range, and that's when they're standing on stage, what is that rebuilding and refeed and just kind of like the reverse dieting on the way out of that and doing that in a healthy way? Yeah. So we published a study this year.

It was a K-series studies, K-series study. And I'm going to give credit to my grad student at the time, James Longstrom, who actually is a coach for Lane now. He works for Lane. He designed a study where we tracked people going into their show. So peak week of their bodybuilding show or bikini show or figure show so we had males and females we had seven different uh subjects in this case series study and then we just monitored them for the eight weeks after how quickly did they gain weight how much did their did they gain in fat what happened to their hormone levels and it was funny the original tent intent was there's this debate for in the bodybuilding world. After your show, should you increase calories quickly to gain fat more quickly so that you can restore hormones, so that you can

start training more intensely again? That's called the recovery approach or recovery diet. Then there's something called a reverse diet where you don't want to gain fat quickly. You go up very gradually, 5% a week, maybe 6% per week of increasing calories. So you're leaner longer, but you're not gaining all this fat. And what we tried to do in that study was, hey, let people self-select. But unfortunately, what the seven subjects did, even though they said they told us what they wanted to do, they didn't really follow it. So we couldn't really discuss with any sense of confidence, hey, what happens if a reverse versus recovery? But we were able to report on, well, just what happens. the the variability of weight gain was incredible one female i think it was within eight weeks it was like 24 pounds of body weight it was insane

um and i believe that was her first show some of the other people were highly experienced you could almost tell who was skilled at dieting and handling the weeks after versus who wasn't. But in all cases, or nearly all cases, leptin levels, which the lower your leptin levels are, that's associated with a lot more of a stronger hunger drive. Hormones came back within eight weeks, maybe not quite the baseline, but their physiology recovered well within eight weeks. Metabolic rate tended to increase for most of them. Leptin, T3, T4, testosterone. So that was really cool. You also mentioned a word, diet breaks and refeeds.

We published a study on that this year as well. I'd love to talk about that because it's very practical. And let me explain the philosophy with what we were looking at when we did this study. And let me also just couch it with the umbrella term for all of these strategies is nonlinear dieting. You have diet breaks, that's typically taking a complete week off from dieting. Maybe two weeks. The literature changes. And we actually, in the spring, we just finished a diet break study in females. A diet refeed is also taking a break from the diet, but it's usually not a week or two weeks. It's typically one to three days. So what we did, given that our philosophy is to help people

optimize their physiques within a maintainable lifestyle, we looked at the literature and confirmed, of course, we didn't have to look outside of our own lives, but most people eat more food on the weekends. I know I do. At least I naturally do. I mean, I eat pizza every Sunday after church. We go out to dinner with my family and usually on Saturday so I naturally eat more food when what do you know the scientific literature also suggests that so when we designed this study we we had two groups both groups dieted for seven straight weeks and these were resistance trained males and females one group we said you're going to diet for seven weeks but never take a break

you're going to decrease your calories by 25 percent every day for seven weeks, but never take a break. You're going to decrease your calories by 25% every day for seven straight weeks. The other group we said, you're also dieting for seven weeks, but you get to take a break on the weekend. So you're going to have to diet harder Monday through Friday, but on the weekends, we want you to increase your calories all in the form of carbohydrates back to maintenance levels. Yeah. So what they, yeah, yeah. They actually had the diet by 35% Monday through Friday. Then they were at 100% of their maintenance calories on the weekend. And this is another study where we supervised every workout.

So every rep, every set, they track their macros to the gram every day. And after seven weeks, we found a significant difference in their ability to maintain their dry fat-free mass. And I'll explain what that is. And the refeed group also did better within their group of maintaining their metabolic rate significantly better, whereas the group that never took the break, they lost a significant amount of their metabolic rate. It was about, they lost 80 calories. The group taking these weekend refeeds, they lost like 40 calories. Protein was high, 1.8 grams per kg kg resistance training was four days per week in my lab for that particular study so that was the first and by the way the reason that we that we reported dry fat free mass was because when they carved up on the weekends you have to

be careful because that will as you increase the glycogen, the carbohydrate stores in the muscle, that usually will draw water with it. So we didn't want to bias the outcome by saying, hey, they gained all this muscle or they didn't lose muscle when it could have been water. So we did two things. We made them wait two days to get their final testing after that last weekend. So they came in Tuesday and Wednesday, and we subtracted out all of the water from these analyses, the total body water. And again, that was the first study that's ever looked at this in resistance-trained individuals,

and that was males and females. I think it's interesting how diets and you know training strength training you know seem to be so similar like you know it's just like nothing is linear the way the body adapts you know you know whether it be you know through this dieting and losing body fat or whether it adapts to hypertrophy like it just can't go in a straight line you know it's got to adapt go a little bit backwards go tap go a little backwards yeah also similar and then let me also um briefly we didn't publish the the the diet break study but i want to talk about that for a moment and also it's important if somebody's going to take a diet break if they're going to do a refeed the reason that people do that is you have to have an appreciation for what diets do. And I always, I use the term,

the negative consequences of dieting, which we already mentioned some of them, your metabolic rate gets suppressed, you lose muscle mass, you feel more hungry, you're anabolic, you're just, even you're at the muscle level, muscle protein synthesis is decreased. Muscle protein breakdown is increased with, with dieting caloric deficits. So there's not much positive or there actually, there's nothing positive about building muscle when in a caloric deficit. So these diet breaks help in some cases, they help to prevent the negative consequences of dieting. And in the broader literature, sometimes they don't help, but they never hurt. There's not a diet break study where it hurts. And in some cases they help. So the study we just did was

resistance trained females, lean, you know, not overweight. And we gave gave them they dieted for two weeks then we gave them a week diet break then they dieted for two more weeks we gave them a second diet break and then they dieted for two more weeks so one of the concerns that a lot of people have is if i go on a diet break am i not going to just ruin all of the progress that I just did when I was dieting. And our data, and we presented this as an abstract, we didn't submit this for a journal publication yet. The answer was no. As long as they go back to maintenance calorie levels, and they don't have like a food orgy during this week where they're just eating everything in sight, they gain like a quarter of a kg. Like it's almost trivial, the amount of weight gain from taking this break.

So the reason that I like this approach for, you know, normal people, if you're going on vacation, enjoy your vacation. Don't go crazy. Or if you have a birthday party, you know, take, you can take breaks as long as they're controlled breaks and not fear that you're doing a ton of damage or limiting your progress in the big picture. Does it extend out when you're taking these diet breaks though? Kind of the timeline, the reality that the timeline is going to extend itself because you're not dieting so aggressively, and you may take a week, you may take two weeks. Does that say, take your dieting timeframe from,

say, 12 weeks to maybe we need to be at 24, 36 weeks, something like that, to have a real goal for when they can get to whatever said target is? Yes. I think you have to appreciate that it could take you longer. Now, in our study, there were no differences in fat loss or muscle loss. But ours was only six weeks, and these people weren't obese to start. So we have to consider that. But, yeah, you make a good point. You're going to have to be – it may slow you down in terms of the length of your diet

but i do have two thoughts on that one i'm always advocating for taking your time if this is your lifestyle it won't be in a hurry you're just gonna cause yourself less you're gonna you're likely going to fail later um if you crash diet. So I sell that on the front side. Now, again, if somebody's an athlete or they have a bodybuilding show or they're going to get married and they have a true deadline, yeah, then you might not be able to afford a diet break. And the other thing that I like about them is if you do take a slower approach, you're more likely to be adopting habits in your lifestyle that will become part of your lifestyle. Whereas quick, I just want to lose fat now,

you're not going to maintain that you're and again, you're going to get out of this probably worse off six months from now. Yeah, 90% of what we're talking about right now is all very quantity basis, how many calories, ratios of macronutrients, etc. You mentioned nutrient timing a little bit when we're talking about very low carbohydrates and just fueling right before your workout. But where does food quality fit into this as far as short term and long term benefits, not just for physique, but for health as well? Yeah, so I'm not a health researcher. So I cannot say that we monitored the types or quality of the foods. Now, ideally, they're getting high-quality foods.

But my research, we are only asking and analyzing the macronutrients. So whether their carbs are coming from Skittles or rice or broccoli, I could not tell you. But clearly – Skittles. Skittles are awesome. I hope so. But clearly. Skittles. Skittles are awesome. I hope so. Don't attack Skittles. A Skittle will give you the most jacked jaw ever.

You eat enough of those at once, you get a nice sore cramp in your face. I love competition. My five-year-old woke me up yesterday, woke me up from a nap to give me two Skittles. Thank you, sir. I'm going to do a podcast on Skittles tomorrow. I'll be on that one for sure. What we do know, just from recent research, again, not in resistance-trained individuals,

but the more processed the diet, it's hard to optimize your physique if a lot of your foods are coming from processed foods. Who was it? Dr. Kevin Hall published a study on, he's again a leading obesity researcher, processed foods versus unprocessed foods. And they didn't keep it isocaloric. They let them eat whatever they wanted.

But when the groups were allowed to eat processed foods they ate a lot more food it's it just does not give you the sense of satiation that nutrient will have um so i i kind of i i look at it as the the more serious you're going to get with your physique the leaner you get the more you're going to have to pay attention to that stuff. Let me ask if there were steps to take. Let's say that through people listening, they're like, I want to be healthy as a human being. I'm not trying to get lean for a show.

I want to get lean because I want to get there and stay there. I guess I'm talking about myself. I got your back. I'm here with you too. got you would one be step one increase protein and then what would be the steps would you say yeah the the first thing i would do is you have a a protein anchored diet so we're not gonna we're not gonna we're gonna set your protein and in a perfect world i would say a gram per pound or 2.2 for physique purposes. But some people can't eat that much.

So I'm like, all right, well, whatever you currently eat, let's go where you can comfortably increase where you're at. Maybe that's a little bit. Maybe that's a lot. And then from there, again, I'm a lifestyle guy. Do you prefer carbs or do you prefer more high fat food do you like to eat bacon my wife loves like birth my wife loves sweets more so her we set her protein now we have you know 60 of the remaining upper calories coming from wherever i gravitate towards

your in your case or people where do you prefer to get your food from let's fill it with those types of foods because I don't want them dieting or trying to optimize your physiques hard enough. I don't want to make it harder. Do you have a food group for monster energy drinks? That's really what he's getting at. I've been drinking – look, that is soda water. I don't think that's water at all. I don't think that's water at all.

They say it's water, but I don't trust it for one second. I like it. It gives me like a little bit of something. So just pounding water all day. So like what would you – okay, let's say that I told you I like carbs more, which is – I like bacon too, but I like carbs. So let's say I like carbs more. So like how would you split it up then with proteins, carbs?

Yeah. So I would, I would find out what your maintenance calories are. Let's say your maintenance calories are 3000 per day. So you don't, you do not gain weight or lose weight at 3000 calories. We set your protein. Let's just pretend that's a thousand calories that hypothetically. So you're going to get 1,000 calories every day from protein. That gives us two additional 1,000 calories. Right. I don't care how you fill them.

Again, you're not an athlete. You're not a bodybuilder. We're trying to optimize your physique in a way that does as little, that's as life-altering, as little life-altering as possible. Right. So you choose how you're getting those extra 2,000 calories, or if we're going to put you in a caloric deficit you know whatever it would come to um that that's how i handle the physique what i call the physique lifestyle i want to work with your preferences right sweet so like would you um i Lane, it's funny. You said Elaine said, you know, says the same thing, like fats, carbs,

it doesn't really matter, you know, um, yeah. Choose whichever one you want. So like, uh, I don't really know what I was going to say or say like, um, Oh, with finding for finding, you know, like the, the amount of calories I need to sustain my weight, you just his old metabolic rate. Is that what you do? And then look at my activity levels or how you set it. Yeah.

See, I don't like that. Um, and that's a very popular, valid way to do it. A lot of researchers do that. What I prefer, um,

is more educational. I want you to take at least two weeks and write down everything you eat. I want to make it very specific to you. Okay. So you're going to have to weigh yourself every day and we take a seven day average. So you're writing down everything you eat. I want to make it very specific to you. So you're going to have to weigh yourself every day and we take a seven day average. So you're writing down everything you eat. Then we calculate how many calories was that? Did you gain weight or lose weight? Well, most people, when we do this in my research, most people don't gain or lose weight when we do

this exercise. Now we have a large education component. All of my subjects have a personalized nutrition coach. I have a large research, volunteer research staff. So we invest a lot of effort into education so that, you know, we text them, email them, we send them videos. There's a lot of education. But I prefer to determine what your maintenance calories are based on the actual food that you eat. The way that you suggested, which a lot of people do, they will estimate their metabolic rate. And let's just say that comes out for you. Let's say it's 2000 calories. Then we'll say, okay, well, if you're sedentary, we're going to multiply that by 1.2, that gets us to 2200, or you're somewhat active, 1.4, 1.6, whatever.

The reason I don't like that is there's nothing that's relative to you. We're estimating your metabolic rate. Right. We're estimating your activity. Whereas if we can get you to write down your food for two weeks, we have a much more precise. We know. Yeah. Now, it's a lot more work.

It's a lot more precise. Now it's a lot more work. It's a lot more effort. But let me ask you with, with people, because based on what you said, like how you see three males, they all are five, seven and they all weigh, you know,

two 15. Like, you know, do they burn? Like how, what is the range of how they burn calories? Is it all the same? Is it like, like what is the range of how they burn calories? Is it all the same? Is it like – like what is the range there?

Oh, no. Their metabolic rates will vary. Now, if they're all 5'7 and they all have about the same muscle, it's probably going to be very close. Right. But the huge variable factor is what's their activity level. That's going to have a big impact on their total daily energy expenditure. Totally. Okay. level that's going to have a big impact on their total daily energy expenditure totally okay uh i actually have a question about the total daily expenditure like when i if you're a

construction worker and you're lifting things all day and you're constantly on top of a roof why are they not just told all insanely lean in a way like the most in shape looking people or is there like a level that you get to where it just doesn't matter anymore and you have to go lift weights i mean people more or less like people with like insanely high non-exercise lifestyles that are just moving all day picking things up all day, like they're working really hard, but you see them and they're still soft and they don't have, they're carrying extra body fat. You know, they're not eating 4,000 calories a day. It's just not what they do. What plays into that? Well, I'd like to hear Andy's take on this, but if they do have extra body fat,

then I'm going to assume that they are eating for – like I don't have any other – I'm going to go to calories in, calories out and say – And you ever been around people that work in jobs like that? Yeah, they eat terribly. No, I know they eat – They eat pizza every day for lunch and they're drinking 60 beer. Trust me, you're up in that world. Yeah, so did I.

If they ate like Bill made his subjects eat and they did that training, they would be very lame. Well, that's actually – I used to do construction and I would see them and I know that they didn't eat great, but I – this was when I was like very early in my training and started – was tracking my own macros and all that and running or like at construction sites. I'd be like like why isn't

everyone here just totally jacked because they're eating so terrible but it's just such bad calories very very very high very fast with fast pizza yeah oh yeah dude you go when you go to mcdonald's every day like what is it now like like a Mac, the calories now versus like 10 years ago is like through the roof, like 3,000 calories. I'm being ridiculous, but so yeah, it doesn't take long to get a surplus. I worked

at my stepdad's lumber company the last year I was in high school. Those dudes eat and drink beer every day. Beer is a big one. Beer doesn't have calories, right? I'm just kidding.

I was hoping. Sweet. Dr. Campbell, I know you got to get rolling. I really appreciate you coming on the show. Where can people learn more? If they want to get super shredded, come hang out with you. I'm only on Instagram. That's the only place that I'm socially or on social media.

My, my tech, whatever tag name, username at bill Campbell, PhD. Do you put all of those together yourself? I do. I,

yep. That's fantastic. They're great. I really appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. It's, it's fun. Dr. Andy're great. I really appreciate them. Those are cool. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. It's fun.

Dr. Andy Galpin, what are you going back to Fight Island, bud? Well, actually, I do know, but I can't say. Oh, I love it. Is it a good one? No, here's the deal. By the time we put this out nobody it'll be it'll be released so just tell us yeah is that too much money to lose and there's no way the boys try to get paid i would say a word real yeah so they don't mess around with that what does it sound like when nobody is in the stadium or nobody's in the arena

and that elbow hits that guy's cheek? Do you just go, ooh? It was incredibly loud. Yeah. The sounds the punching makes when there's nobody around, it's crazy. Even the leg kicks and stuff, you're like, oh, my God. It's different. I've been to a lot of fights and gone, you know, on the cage and stuff,

a lot of them, but it's different when nobody's there at that level. I sat in the lower bowl at UFC Raleigh, like six months ago, right before quarantine, eight months ago, something like that. And just had the cringe face every time.

Cause some guy just kept walking into a fist over and over again. His face was just mangled. And you didn't tell him, bro, you can duck. That is part. You can die. I call, called doug the next day i was like why is he doing that it's like well when you're short you got a little arm you gotta take him on the chin just to get inside i was like i'm gonna sit here and just talk on this microphone hey one thing i want to add um

to sorry my dog's barking that's what i wanted to add um no to some of bill's stuff is one thing the caveat to keep in mind most of the research in this area is revolved around trying to lose fat or at most maintain so a lot of the questions that we still don't know are the answers to are what about of trying to gain muscle or trying to go up right and so these protein questions are really interesting and when you start saying well what about i guess i'll say it this way um you know he mentioned in his one study it's they ended up having a 300 calorie surplus a 300 calorie surplus is very small relative to what many people do for when they're trying to gain weight right you'll see people double their caloric intake, right?

They'll triple them, right? They'll go dirty bulk. And it's like you added 3000 calories. Well, I can't tell you the bill's research is going to apply when you added 4,000 extra calories to your diet. Everything is totally out the window now. And so this stuff is really, really, really helpful in the area of maintenance or fat loss. But how this changes or doesn't change to the opposite of the spectrum, which is people trying to add as many calories as possible.

Andy, do you have any research on that? Because that applies more probably to me than this. Yeah. I've done plenty of this, but I've never – gaining weight, you always hear, oh, I eat all the time. My reply is like, no, you don't. i don't believe it but it's quite different so um i think maybe if uh if we can maybe get bill fired and he can start a new job where he's not full professor anymore and he has to continue to do more research we can make him do work at this end of the

spectrum too is the muscle gain stuff because yeah with all the stuff he's doing i feel aren't you doing that aren't you doing a gain a lean what are you doing well we were we were 75 of the way done until covid shut us down for a year yeah when are you going to publish your opportunity thing that you told us all about oh uh they're all up already i just didn't know some yeah they're up already what are you doing bud let's do's do the – Sorry, I've been on the front island for two weeks. Oh. Oh, excuse us. Sorry.

Sorry, buddy. When you say up, do you mean on your YouTube channel or somewhere else? So if I go in there and search hypertrophy, they'll be up there. I don't think so because they're unlisted. I'll send you the links. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I've been – I just want to watch the spiritual.

Spiritual side of hypertrophy. That was what your Instagram post said, right? You got the wrong, uh, the wrong account for that one. That's what your Instagram post said. I was waiting for you to talk about the spirit. He was joking about that. I think that was hoping not. Um, no, that is if, uh, if you guys are interested in any of the stuff that bill said he his name is on everything in this whole physique area and a lot of it is free so if you want to see these position stands on how much protein do i eat um you know vegan proteins uh you know is it

is protein getting bad for my kidneys or not like all the all these real questions um the bca stuff tribe you mentioned the video i put out but that's mostly on Bill's work. So he's all, all of these things. So if you just search Bill Campbell, you'll find a ton of papers free, uh, to read. Not all of them are, but, um, he's been doing this stuff for a long, long, long time. Yeah. One of the very few that really does true work in this area with non obese and non-clinical stuff. So a lot of that information and you didn't mention it, you guys kind of did it. But his Instagram account, all

he does is put up information on science. And you know, hey, what's which one of these questions is true or false or whatever. So it's basically like taking a class in nutrition. I love going through them and just seeing where I'm at. Hey got i got one more question before we go real quick i i saw yesterday there was a there was a guy and he's super biased he's like all about vegan diets vegan diets but he seemed to be he seemed to be like he's you know in academia but he said that he did some studies and that vegans held less fat viscerally versus like you know people who consume meat is that can be is that that's not true right i i don't know if that's true um and i i would i'm always hesitant does he sell a vegan product or he's he's so pro vegan he's definitely like you know what lame

calls zealot like he's all everything he says is is vegan you know and to be calls zealot. Like he's all, everything he says is, is vegan, you know, and to be great if he does have a product, but if you're a researcher, you know, products, even then fine. Just, I always, that's always something I look for if somebody's too tends to be now I'm very high protein. I'm, I, I base it on the literature. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll get more research. Um, but I don't have a protein product that I sell. Yeah. He was talking about diabetes, the visceral,

I mean that a vegan diet was more healthy because you held less fat viscerally. No. All right. No. As a global answer, no, absolutely. I was just scanning through.

I was trying to get the last few things on my paper I had to do. And so like I saw that and I'm like, no way. I mean, I didn't actually, just to make Bill late to wherever he had to go to. I'm still good. I'm I'm I'm at one 30. I have to be there. I knew this was coming.

So no, there's actually, I don't know, but, um, there is, I don't know if you saw or not Bill, but there are some, some groups that are looking at the protein load question and just looking at clearly at some point once you get enough total protein that the source starts to matter less okay now it's not a it's not an issue of the source doesn't matter it's it's a it's a spectrum right so if you were to take somebody and do what like joey does and put them on these just ridiculous like five times the normal protein load studies and i mean ridiculous is a compliment, right?

Well, at that point, it probably matters less if you're getting it from meat versus plant-based, right? Or even animal versus plant-based. Yeah, I would think so. So that's an interesting, yeah, like at that level, when you're like 5x the protein load, it gets there. So the question becomes, where is that line when you double the protein? So if you, instead of going from one gram per pound, you go to two grams per pound. And what about three? Where is the line? And I know several groups are actually looking at that. And what you're, I mean, I can tell you the answer right now before they even publish their papers. If you get enough total protein, the source starts to matter less. But again, that's basic logic that would suggest that,

right? Because you're going to get enough. I think the real pertinent question is how high does that number have to be? And that we don't know. But we know that clearly once you get to these, you know, in fact, if you ask Joey, he'll tell stories about having people come into the lab and trying to be like, okay, what's the most amount of protein you could finish today? And sit them in a lab and give them, you know, like money. Like, can you get down 500 grams today? Can you get down a amount of protein you could finish today and sit them in a lab and give them you know like money like can you can you get down 500 grams today can you get down a kilo of protein not a

kilo of meat can you get a kilo of protein in today and just sitting in the lab and they're just crushing protein shakes and protein shakes and stuff and seeing like putting these poor students through these studies through these things to see yeah it's like a brazilian steakhouse but they pay for it let's do this let's let's roll but you're only eating like the lean sirloin you don't get to eat like the ribeye and anyways i think those are the fun interesting questions down the line that um you'll have to bring bill back in a year or something you've got answers to. I'd be sneaking in chimichurri. Thank you. I'd have it in my bag. That was fun.

Travis Bash. Where can the people – oh, go ahead. Sorry. No, thank you guys for the invitation. Travis Bash, where can they find you? Masterly.com. Still excited about Walmart though. Right.

Let's make the world better. Doug Larson. You bet. Find me on Instagram. Doug will see Larson. I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. Barbell shrugged, barbell underscore shrugged, walmart.com. Fat loss, cardio, and strength training programs.

And make sure you go over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash shrugged. That's not right. Forward slash store where you can buy the e-books and the programs and everything else to get strong. You messed up. I can't believe – I'm struggling with the Walmart one, putting it in there right now. Go to Walmart. If you're in Palm Springs, San Diego, Vegas, and LA,

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