Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: [NUTRITION 101] The Exact Calories, Macros, and Micronutrients to Fuel Performance and Optimize Health w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Travis Mash and Dan Garner

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

In today’s episode of Barbell Shrugged you will learn: How to determine total calories for your goals Why maintenance calories are important for body composition and health Why calories determine the size of your body Understanding energy balance and finding your activity multiplier How to properly increase and decrease your caloric intake to reach your goals Macronutrient breakdown for aesthetics and performance goals Why macros determine body composition How to find the right amount of protein for your goals Why micronutrients are so easily overlooked and what you are missing How to get all your vitamins and minerals even if you hate vegetables To learn more, please go to https://rapidhealthoptimization.com Connect with our guests: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

Shrugged Family this week on Barbell Shrugged Physiology Friday is back. Today Dan Garner is taking a comprehensive look into how you can structure an effective nutrition protocol. As always friends make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com that's where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galpin are doing a free lab lifestyle performance analysis and you can access that free report over at RapidHealthReport.com. Friends let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Garner. Doug Larson's not hanging out today. I don't know where that guy is. Coach Travis Mast and Dan Garner today on Barbell Shrugged. We're talking about macros. Ooh, let me start at the top.

Calories, macros and micros and how you can determine the exact number you need to reach your goals. Is there any question that you get more of like, just tell me what to eat? Like, can you just give me my macros? And you probably roll your eyes when that happens because you go, why, why? Can we ask better questions? Is there like a way to have a better understanding

of how food works than just spitting body weight times one in protein and just giving broad answers that are widely accepted as right. Yeah. I mean, like to some extent we are input output machines, but we're all different machines. So the input determines the output in a lot of ways. So when we have these just broad stroke recommendations for everybody, it's the reason why these broad stroke recommendations typically get generalized results and not specialized results. But with that said, I mean, if you were to only allocate a certain amount of effort to say one thing, if you're in

some weird situation where like, okay, we can only focus on two things here, what should they be? Probably calories and macronutrients. There is an unbelievable amount of evidence behind why IIFYM, or if it fits your macros, if people aren't familiar, why that works for a lot of freaking people. Because energy balance and macronutrient distribution play an enormous role in body transformation. There's no doubt. I mean, anybody who says calories in versus calories out doesn't determine body weight either has no understanding of science or is currently trying to sell you something. It's one of those two things. They say it a lot though, man. They say it a lot.

Yeah. And it's complete and utter nonsense. And you don't even have to believe me. There's four plus decades of extremely well-controlled literature to demonstrate that energy balance is one of the few principles we actually have in nutrition. Other sciences such as chemistry and alchemy and physics, they've been around for so much longer than nutrition science. And even still, there's a very short amount of principles. Because to say that you truly know something requires a lot of evidence to say you know something. Some people are very quick to jump to assume that they truly know something. But I think of myself a little bit as a student of scientific history, just because it's been

so fascinating. And the more you look back on science, the more you realize that we're more often wrong than we are right. This is, there's so many things that in science we've been completely wrong about, and then we've needed to completely reshift the wave. And these are the most brilliant minds in the world too.

The most brilliant minds in the world used to think that the earth was flat. They used to think that it was the sun that orbited around the earth. They used to think so many things that we now know are just kind of completely silly. But these were the most brilliant people in the world at that point in time. And then now you get like a real arrogance regarding nutrition. Energy balance is one of the few things I think that we absolutely know regulates body weight. Calories in versus calories out regulate body weight. It is the big

reason why some people come to me confused because they're like, hey, Dan, I feel like I'm eating all the right things, but my body weight's not changing. What am I doing wrong? I'm like, I believe you. You probably are eating all the right things. You're just eating too much of them. Somebody can gain body fat. There's three energy states somebody can be in. A hypercaloric state where calories in are greater than calories out. There is a state of maintenance where calories in are equal to calories out. And then there is a state of hypo-chlorism where calories in are less than calories out. Those are the only three states of energy that you're going to be in. Hyperchlorism, you are going to gain weight because you're consuming more energy than you're expending.

In a state of maintenance or this is what I would use for recomposition as well for building muscle and losing fat at the same time, you would be in a state of energy in equals energy out. And then finally, for fat loss, you would be in a hypo caloric state, and you're going to lose weight because you are spending more energy than you're taking in. This is undeniable. This is something that has absolutely been demonstrated in four plus years of well-designed research, pretty much regardless of the macronutrient distribution. So that's something that's important to point out as well. If you put someone on like 2000 calories of a poor macronutrient distribution versus 2000 calories on an equal and healthy macronutrient distribution, let's say like a 33, 33, 33 with protein, carbs, fats, their body

weight is going to be quite similar. Calories regulate body weight period, but macronutrients, they're going to determine what you look like at that body weight and how you perform at that body weight. So I think kind of like as a first, just quick, because there's a lot of complicated ways you can set calories. So I'll just tell you how to set calories before moving on to macronutrients. There's a lot of complicated ways in which you can do this, but one of the easiest ways to transmit on a podcast is simply body weight.

Body weight times 15 is quite solid for maintenance. And then body weight times 16 or higher is great for hypercalorism, so putting on muscle mass, and then also body weight times 14 or lower is great for fat loss. There's a couple of recommendations though in this category. I mean, this is an enormous topic that could be discussed at length.

And I talk about this in my course for many, many hours to completely elucidate the concepts of what goes into energy in versus energy out. But I think a good rule is if you're dropping weight, you don't want to run into a state of adaptive thermogenesis where the body can actually reduce its own metabolism via certain hormonal and metabolic pathways. And the way in which to offset this is to lose only a half a percent to 1% of your body weight per week. So that should actually be the goal.

If you're in a fat loss phase, a half a percent to 1% of your total body weight lost per week should really be the goal to minimize adaptive thermogenesis and minimize any type of muscle loss that could occur in this hypochloric state as well. And then I think a good rule to have too is if you end up at a point where you're at body weight times 10 in calories and you're still not completely shredded, something's wrong. You need to go back to the drawing board. I've

had people on stage bodybuilding ripped at body weight times 10. So if you are having trouble with weight loss or fat loss and you have gotten all the way down to body weight times 10, you need a diet break to reset your metabolism and hormones, or you need to do your labs and figure out what's actually going wrong there. Right. So is that in, we talk body weight times 15. Are you talking kilograms or pounds? I'm talking pounds. Yeah.

So everything. Yeah. I'm always talking pounds. Um, in Canada, that's weird because like we learn pounds and kilos cause so much of our sit is so connected with the States, but then we're also supposed to be metric. So we're supposed to be learning kilos. So we are, we talk in both for some reason. I know. Yeah.

It blows me away being in Canada. When I'm up there, it's like half of it is like an American way of doing it. And the other half is metric. Like you drive down the road, you're going to get kilometers per hour. You go into a gym there, it's pounds. I'm like, you guys don't know if you're coming or going. Like, you know, at least in America, we're consistent with being rednecks, you know, but And absolutely nobody quantifies their height in centimeters here. We all say five, eight, five, nine, six foot. But our license plate, our license, driver's license rather is all quantified in centimeters. So it's just like, we don't know if we're coming or going, we don't know really know what we're doing yet. So just give us some

time. Also on the lighter side of this, you guys ever watched Lane Norton on, if you want to not watch TV, maybe learn a little bit, but get entertained, go to his Twitter and watch him execute folks when they say that there's no such thing as calories out, he will absolutely wreck you over coals. It's like, I will never ever go against what he says. Even if I know I'm right, this is not worth it. I won't do it. Yeah. Well, in the energy balance conversation, you're setting yourself up for failure if you say that that's one of the few things we truly know.

And that's why it's so important. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the RTA program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garner and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Arate is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan. It's not physique transformation and pre and post pictures. Arate is something completely different. Arate is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working

with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise, to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan. Arate isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing at your absolute best, physically and mentally, when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit aratelab.com. That's A-R-E-T-E lab.com.

Now, back to the show. Like kind of what I talked about previously, like if you were in some weird scenario, we could only focus on two things. Calories has got to be one of those things because it's an actual deal breaker. Like I don't care if you're on the best supplements in the world and you have all organic food. If your goal is fat loss and you're not in a state of hypocalorism, you ain't getting any results, period. You are trapped.

You will not lose weight. I don't give a shit how much you spend on your food and supplements, how often you meditate, how great your sleep is. I don't care if you are eating at maintenance, you won't lose weight, period. That's your problem. That's the first thing you need to address. And I like to do that weight loss measured on a percent of body weight,

because some people will just say, hey, lose two pounds a week. But it's like, man, like for a bikini competitor versus a heavyweight strength athlete, like two pounds is very different, because one of them is 105 pounds and the other is 305 pounds. Like this is that heavyweight weightlifter, like his

diet compared to hers, it's just a two pounds is a trip to the bathroom for him. Yeah. That's absolutely not, it's probably less than a trip to the bathroom for him to be honest. So the two pounds I just don't like because it's not relative to body weight. And when something's not relative to body weight, it doesn't really make sense to me anymore. It's like, wait, what? How can we have an absolute statement?

You cannot. It's like bikini competitors and heavyweight powerlifters. It's impossible. Yeah. Yeah. Powerlifter lose weight, just the walk in like, they could walk 100 meters and they're going to lose two pounds, you know, just sweat it out. But yeah, big, big difference.

Yeah. Just peeing out inflammation all day long. There's nothing more unhealthy. Water back up in every aspect of their body. Man. I remember being a healthy love, right? It's good stuff. Yeah.

That's good stuff. I don't know what you guys are talking about. Absolute strength is fucking fun to watch. I love it. I mean, it's fun to watch and fun to do. There's nothing healthy about that mess. Well, when I just benched for a five about a month ago at this point, I felt like crap everywhere, except while I was benching. My mobility was down. I was snoring. I'm not a snorer. I just

began to snore because I was putting on weight to move weight. But like my conditioning was down going for family walks. Like I'm, I'm, I'm mouth breathing on a family walk. Like it's amazing. But yeah, if you're going to achieve something that's actually respectable, it's a, it's tough road. And it's hard to eat that much. It's hard to put on that kind of weight. It's miserable. And after you just did a marathon, you were down to like 180, 185, something like that, and to go to 210.

That's a big 15 pounds in 13 weeks. How much have you lost so far? I'm back down right now. I'm waking up around 190. So I'm back down another 20. So that like living weight? Yeah. Like you would like to live your life at 190 pounds?

I mean, I'd probably be better around 180 ish. My genetics are small. That's a component of this too. My genetics, my dad was in the 140s until he was like 50 years old. Like we're small, small skeletons, smaller guys. And he was in his 130s when he was a younger man. So that's what I was in getting in high school. I was, I remember, I still remember I was 133. And I was like, man, I got to put some mass and strength on this. Once is it's unacceptable. So for me to go up to 210 It's just a completely different thing because your organs have to be a lot more stressed Like when you have the pancreas of a hundred and forty pound man But you're eating the carbs to sustain a 210 pound physique. Yeah, you're asking a lot of your insulin

You're asking a lot of and this is why something like metformin works so well for type two diabetics, because type two diabetics are overweight and eating way too many carbs, and they just absolutely exhaust the pancreas over time. So metformin helps increase insulin sensitivity. So what insulin they are secreting, it's actually a lot more doable and workable for the body,

but whatever your genetic prototype for organ size is, will determine the amount of stress that you're putting on your body in these pursuits of hypercalorism. So I think that's probably a good segue into gaining weight. I never even heard that statement right there, your genetic propensity for your organs. I never even considered that before. Yeah, you're creating a state that your organs were never prepared for. It goes back to evolutionary biology. I always talk about it, but like powerlifting and bodybuilding are the least efficient and least natural things possible. It's if you were, bodybuilders never existed

in say paleolithic times, because it's extremely energy efficient to walk around with that much muscle. It may, you know, and to be that strong, it's not efficient to be like all of those things go against what's actual survival. So your body and your organs and your DNA, they're actually programmed for you to be at a certain weight.

And the greater and greater disposition you are away from that programmed weight, you're asking small organs to do a large organ job. And you'll see that that plays itself out. Like just think about Thor and Eddie Hall Like Thor like the way they wore their 400 pounds Yeah, one guy is kind of designed to wear that 400 a lot better than the other guy. Yeah Yeah Exactly

Eddie Hall was not meant to be that size No, like when it went and one of the one of the movies he's to be that size. No, man. Like when it went and one of the one of the movies he's training and his wife is talking about the transformation of how unhealthy he had gotten. It was like you could tell that there was like real medical issues that were pending at any point in time the way that she described how he went from when she met him to who he is today at 400 pounds or whatever. He was a swimmer. Yeah. He was a swimmer. Yeah. He was a swimmer. That makes me laugh.

I mean, what is that muscle mass would sink down to the bottom of the pool so fast now? What is it? You can't move your arms fast enough to get that 400 pounds through the water. What is the guy that the Brian Shaw, Brian Shaw was a basketball player. Yeah.

Brian Shaw was a monster. We saw that guy at Olympia, it was terrifying how large he was. Huge. Yeah. Coach Ken tells me all about the dude, just to, you know, the stuff they do. I don't know. What do you think is the most unhealthy sport? Like it's got to be powerlifting or strong man's got to take the cake though. Like, I feel like those dudes are taking years off their life. Yeah. There's something to be said though about the extreme leanness of bodybuilding though too. And then also how we're defining unhealthy because you could say football,

like the career span and even lifespan of football players is actually pretty scary statistics to start to learn. The bodybuilding, there seems to be the high and low of weight fluctuations tends to cause a lot of problems in that sport. And obviously the drugs is a crazy one because you can't get to that. Like I wonder how naturally lean you could do. You could get without all the drugs they're on. Like, I don't think that's actually you can get shredded. Definitely get shredded. But can you get down to like three, 4% body fat where you're like, you're really like starving yourself.

Like could you look like Andreas Munzer? Those guys aren't starving themselves. That's the weird part is they're not really starving themselves, they're eating still a lot of calories, just very specifically timed and like. Ringing the water out, like that's the big one. You know, the Lasix like, you know, that's what the under the mons are died.

You just like, it's hard just like, you know, you do need some water in the system. The HGO is fairly important, but you know. Yeah. And when you lean down naturally, you kind of start dropping weight classes too, because the longer you stay in a state of hypocalorism, it's not just fat that's coming off. Your muscle mass will come off as well, especially depending on how you set up your training,

your deloads, your refeed weeks. And prep typically should be longer for a natural athlete. Like I'm talking 16, even 20 weeks out from a show, you're going to slowly burn away at the fat because anytime you do something too quick in a natural athlete, there's something I've said to my athletes a lot is if you force the body, it'll react. Sorry, if you force the body, it'll react. If you coax the body, it will respond. And that coaxing over time will what will force it to not react. So there's an analogy of a credit card I've used in the past where if I stole Anders,

if I stole your credit card, Anders, if I stole your credit card, and then once a week, I took 50 cents out of it, you'd probably never notice. You would never notice, nothing would even happen. I just take 50 cents out of your credit card once a week. But if I took your credit card and on day one, I took 500 bucks out, you would say, holy crap, I'm gonna call security and I am gonna have them shut down my credit card.

Your metabolism does the same thing. If you do a slight caloric deficit, then your metabolism's looking over here while you're dropping fat over here. So there's no alarm system like, hey, we need to offset this with some extreme adaptive thermogenesis. We need to re-regulate leptin, testosterone, estrogen. We need to down-regulate thyroid.

We need to alter receptor sensitivity. That's all what the credit card security system is for the metabolism in your physiology. So that's slow burn. Make sure that the security guards never called. But if I do a caloric deficit, boom, overnight, 500 calories or 1,000 calories, we're going to do a crash diet. It's very quick. The metabolism say, whoa, this is a state of famine based on evolutionary biology. I'm going to slow systems down because I don't know when the next meal is going to be in

so that we can maintain this current energy state for as long as possible. So natural athletes actually have to be a little bit more concerned with that because that longer prep and slower burn is important for them to maintain hormonal homeostasis but also just purely to maintain a better cosmetic look as well because they will lose less muscle tissue. But a drug-using athlete, they're able to utilize a little bit more aggressive strategies because the drugs can maintain the muscle for you. So, in a huge way, if you're on plenty of test, trend, master on, you've designed your course, you're progressively stepping up as the prep gets closer and closer and closer, it's anti-catabolic to the strongest extent.

You might even actually gain some muscle across this prep and you probably will, especially if you're not a pro. So they can just be a little bit more aggressive with it and not suffer those same consequences, but their list of consequences is elsewhere. It's not the absence of consequences, it just happens somewhere else. Yeah. I'd love to dig into the macro side of things and specifically starting with the protein. Mainly because I personally want to know what are the upper limits of protein intake

and the law of diminishing returns on this because I would love to just be a carnivore person. Like I feel like that diet aligns with my taste buds in a way that is so perfect of go warm some meat up and go eat it and make sure you take a multivitamin to get the rest of the micronutrients you need. Some greens, some greens. However, Dan Garner told me I need some carbohydrates and some fats in my life in order to perform at optimal levels. So, I'd love to know, one, the overall breakdown obviously and what goes through your mind when you're designing macro counts, but specifically

starting with the protein side of things. Is there a downside to having really high amounts of protein in your diet? Okay. I'm going to answer that question. I'm going to go back to calories for one second though so people don't get mad at me. I like to actually... So for weight gain or weight loss, let's say weight loss, stair-step your way down. So if you do body weight times 15 and your body weight stays the same after about two

weeks or so, then do body weight times 14. And then if you're achieving that half a percent to 1% body weight loss per week, stay there until you're not. And then do body weight times 13. And then once you're achieving that, stay there until you're not. And then do body weight times 13. And then once you're achieving that, stay there until you're not. And then do body weight times 12. You want to actually go through that whole progressive process. And those are your plateau busters, by the way.

And then every eight weeks, take one week of diet break back at maintenance. That'll help reset the metabolism. You can think about it like you're dieting, which means you're swimming under water hard, hard, hard. And then that one diet break that one week is like coming back up for that breath of fresh air and psychological and physical robustness that you need to get back underwater and finish the diet again.

So every week with that change. So if you lose like a pound, you know, or a half pound, you like, so you adjust if it's you every week, you met you re keep it running average. So like, I like, I honestly, I would like it away in every day. And then we'll just take the weekly average, because too many things create a fluctuation if I'm only weighing in on Sundays, electrolyrolyte status, hydration, feces, inflammation is water retentive. So, if I'm holding inflammation from training, I would be holding on to more water. Or a hormonal response from females. A hormonal response. If I have intolerances or sensitivities from food creating water retention,

my menstrual cycle, like all of this stuff takes place and can really create a high, low in weight. But don't allow it to create a high, low in your emotions because high lows are totally normal. And that's why we create averages over time. So to eliminate the noise and actually have clear cut data, I like to do the averages. And then everything I just said works in equal opposite in hypercalorism. So the goal, yeah, the goal in hypercalorism is to gain muscle, not fat. Okay. So this is what you want to do is I would say eat at body weight times 15. I'm enormous. I'm like famous for let's start eat at maintenance and then see what happens.

And then we'll adjust up and down from there because we're going to be in contact every single week. I do that every single time. I do that every time. Your life will never be worse eating on maintenance for two weeks. It's an amazing prep phase to build the habits, to feel out the new diet. There's so many positives to it that we did a whole episode actually on maintenance eating and we could do many more. Maintenance is like my home base as a coach. But if someone comes to me with muscle gain, that maintenance eating, body weight times 15 for example, see what happens for a couple of weeks.

If you're not seeing the scale move the way you want, body weight times 16. Hang out there until it starts moving. When it stops, body weight times 16. Hang out there until it starts moving. When it stops, bodyweight times 17. Hang out there. And then you just keep doing that stair climbing thing. And, and, and there's really no limit there to like, I don't like people below bodyweight times 10 for fat loss. But in terms of bulking, like I've had to put some 16 year old hockey players on like bodyweight times 20, 21, 22, just because they are walking to school and they have gym class and they work out

and then they have hockey practice and games. And it's like, and they might be involved in an afterschool recreation thing or just playing foot hockey with their friends. Like it's so much expenditure. And they're 17. And they're 17. Yeah, they've got, you know,

four digit testosterone. Going everywhere, yeah. So you they've got, you know, four digit testosterone. Everywhere. Yeah. So you just kind of sometimes you just have to find a way and that's, you know, manipulations. And this is where food type matters too. So like calories and macros, it's a great conversation, but it's not a coach. It's a calculator. And there's people who call themselves a macro coach.

And like, frankly, I think that's embarrassing. Like I could Google macros right now and then I stole your job. Hold on. What? I think that's kind of embarrassing. I know that'll rub people the wrong way, but a coach is not a calculator. It's just not how you get good results. So food selection matters at that point more than macros.

Because if it was only macros I was caring about, then that would be numbers. But there's such a thing known as the satiety index with food and how full you're going to feel after taking in certain foods. That's what I was going to ask you. Protein, for example, supposedly increases that, correct? Yes. Protein and fiber are very heavy hitters in the world of creating satiety. Same with volume as well. For example, you take 100 calories of broccoli versus 100 calories of cheese. One is like the size of your thumb. The other is a big bag. The satiety difference between those two is huge, but that's a weapon you can use because in a fat loss phase, I'm going to use the highest satiety index foods the whole time so that I am in a hypo caloric state, but

not hungry. Not starving to death. Your energy balance is different than your satiety. You can be losing weight while full. And that's a function of satiety and not current energy state. So you can use high satiety index foods while dieting to increase life quality while you're getting lean. And then for that hockey player, for example, if you're all the way up at body weight times 20, your problem is actually being way too stuffed to continue eating more and more food.

So we actually use really low satiety index foods, like white rice, extra virgin olive oil, like things that digest like water, but have a real punch when it comes to caloric intake. So that climbing up and down. That's a great idea, by the way. I don't know if you thought about that with weight gain, but like. Totally. I mean, a real easy one that a lot of people do when they're trying to build muscles, they'll eat things like tuna and chicken breasts. I'm like, dude, change that to steak and chicken thighs because you're getting the exact same amount of protein per meal, but three times as many calories.

So if you're stuffed right now, don't think that you need like a lot of people get their muscle building ideas from pre contest bodybuilding diet. This pre contest, that's chicken and tuna because of the satiety. Right. That's the, you know what, like that's actually purposeful. It's the smallest amount of calories to act as that vehicle for the meal. Whereas it's the equal and opposite for the off season. You got to get it in. Yeah. What about protein potentially increasing like, you know, the body's heat, you know, like, I know, Andy talked about that two years ago, we talked about on a show, what are your thoughts? Is that a real thing? I don't think it's proven yet. Is it? It's real.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thermic effect of food. You'll see it as TEF in the literature. So your body and TEF varies dramatically. So that's actually why I'm really glad he asked this. So protein has a TEF of about 25 to 30%. TEF means thermic effective food, which means the amount of heat and energy utilized to process that nutrient. So if you had a hundred calories of protein and it has a TEF of 30%, that means you ate 100 calories of protein, but only absorbed 70% of the calories because you burned 30% of the calories through the digestive and assimilation process. Right. So that is how protein is not only high for satiety, but you're actually utilizing a very

high percentage of energy just to break it down and process it, which burns calories all by itself. Whereas fat, that has a TEF of around 3%. So if you take in a hundred calories of fat, only three of them are going towards heat production and assimilation because it's very easy and efficient for your body to break down and uptake fats. So that's actually why I really like the example I just said regarding say steak and chicken thighs because I can get the same amount of protein. So the satiety is the same, but the thermic effect of eating in terms of adding more fat in, I'm getting way more calories with less TEF because those calories are coming from fat at a smaller percentage, which is going to put more weight on my athlete, which is the entire goal.

That's awesome. Yeah, I know. I was listening to Andy just this morning talking about, you know, the weight gain and he's like, he tries to stay with 10 to 15%, you know, extra in calories and then which is a bit I did the math is about what you're saying with 15 to 16 times your body weight. But then, you know, he talked about his main concern is protein and then he doesn't care how you balance between carbohydrates and fats so much. It's like more of what you can start to. So he's two to four grams per kilogram of body weight in the protein and then the rest divide however you want. Is it that mainly like a sport specific thing? Like if you're a strength power athlete, don't you want to be a little bit more on the carb side of things?

No, I'm a little bit more in Andy's ballpark in that scenario because when you're in a state of hypercalorism, you're fueled. There's more specificity involved when there's low fuel availability. So if I'm in a glycolytic sport like MMA where my primary fuel source is carbohydrates, then if I have low fuel availability for my diet, then I'm going to want that fuel to be sport specific to the things I'm trying to accomplish. However, if I'm in a state of hypercalorism, my glycogen is full, I've got fatty acids in the fat cells, everything's going just fine.

You've got plenty of meals on your body at that point that can go towards energy expenditure and you have more flexibility available to you in terms of distribution and ratios of carbon fat intake. With that said, it doesn't grant you the right to do things that are silly, like eat only fats or eat only carbs and go super low fat. I'm still very balanced when I do that because I do believe that they offer palatability in meals when balanced as opposed to dominance.

But I think that as well, you just get a better overall health profile when you have two things going at once rather than just getting everything from one source because you're completely missing everything that that other source has to offer you. Yeah. Let's dig into some micros.

We got like 10, 15 minutes left. How do people actually find out micronutrient levels in their life? Micronutrients. So yeah, we'll have to cover macros another time. Yeah. Mash had to run to practice. Doug had to bounce out. Oh, geez. Okay. Yeah, we'll teach them how to set their carbs, fat, and protein another time based on their specific context. In terms of micros, you can get micronutrient testing done.

SpectraCell does this micronutrient test. The NutriVal from Genova Diagnostics does micronutrient testing. There's also a lot you can pull from just a simple blood chemistry. The way you look at a main cell volume, the way you look at red blood cell distribution width, the way you look at your iron and thyroid markers. With the right eye, you can actually get a really good insight of micronutrients purely from a blood chemistry perspective. So these ways in which to test are available, and that's why we use them here at Rapid to

make sure people's micronutrients are dialed in. But that's how basically you would assess it. In terms of applying it in real life, it's a very safe strategy to have one source of vegetables and one source of fruit per thousand calories. So if you're getting one source of each per thousand, that would mean if you had 3000 calories per day, you at minimum should be having three servings of vegetables and three servings of fruit in that 3000 calorie distribution. And ideally from different sources, different colors, different sources, because each one has their own dominance in what they provide.

Like broccoli for vitamin C, spinach for vitamin K, sweet potato for vitamin A. There's so many differences. So variety of colors, one of each per thousand calories in the diet. And then making sure that that's a big part of it. Like something I've said in these podcasts in the past is calories will regulate your body weight. Macronutrients will regulate what you look like at that body weight, but micronutrients will determine how you feel at that body weight. And until you collect all three of those and put them together holistically, you're never going to be the best version of yourself. Yeah, the how, how much do we trust in multivitamins? Like the daily malty.

So it's either a lot or not so much. And this is a scenario where that old adage of you get what you pay for comes into play a lot because you can get good multivitamins that are absorbable, that are in an excellent dose, that are well formulated. And then you can also get crappy vitamins that are poorly formulated and poorly absorbed. So like, so for example, magnesium citrate is far better absorbed than magnesium oxide. So if you're looking at something that just says magnesium

and you don't know absorbability, well, you aren't what you eat. You only are what you eat and actually absorb. So, one's actually going to increase your magnesium status. Magnesium citrate is excellent for that. So, it's magnesium gluconate, bisglycinate. There's a handful that are quite solid. Magnesium oxide is terrible at increasing magnesium status and is actually a laxative. So, it can kind of work against you in a lot of cases as well. So that's an example of vitamin being poorly absorbed and us not trusting it for that reason. Yeah.

But there's also ones that are poorly formulated, like a B complex is a good example of this. If you get a B complex and just every single B vitamin is like a hundred milligrams, a hundred milligrams, a hundred milligrams, a hundred micrograms. It's like just 100, 100, 100, 100. That's not how the body operates. Yeah, I was gonna say, there's gotta be like the ratios in nature are specific to the vitamin or mineral that you are consuming. 100%. So it's such a lazy dumb formula when every it's called like B 100. And then everything in it's at 100. I'm like, oh, you guys put no thought into this. There's no biochemistry here. Yeah. So, in that scenario.

Marketing's great. B100? That makes sense to everybody. Yeah. So, people will just take it and think it's all right. But like in that scenario, even if they're absorbable B vitamins, it doesn't mean it's well formulated. It's still a stupid product. So, those things, they can be treacherous because sometimes you think you're doing something good for your health, but it could possibly be doing nothing at all. So you do get what you pay for. When it comes to specific micronutrients like that, vitamin B is like a great one, because it has so many different

variations in it or magnesium being another one where there's so many different like variations, I guess you could call it of of magnesium. Do those ratios? I guess, do they if you were to get that from a fruit and vegetable versus just taking like the bad multi and just getting it in your system. Is there a massive difference in overall health? Like where are you going to see that you're taking bad ratios of these things

and it's throwing your physiology out of whack? Yeah, so for example, vitamin C in an apple, it was something only like, I am gonna be getting the numbers wrong here, but I did a presentation on this. The reason I'm forgetting the exact numbers is because I did it in 2019 at Western University. Me and John Variety were presenting there. And it was something like, there's 10 milligrams of vitamin C in an apple, but then you could have 100 milligrams of vitamin C in an apple, but then you could have a hundred milligrams of vitamin C in a supplement

form, but then the apple still provided a larger impact from the vitamin C benefits than did the vitamin C supplement alone. And that's because nature has already answered questions that we don't know are questions yet. There are certain polyphenols and antioxidants and enzymes and things that actually are designed to work synergistically so that you co-consume them. And then that executes even just the apple itself. Like, let's just think about if you have apple juice, pure sugar, not really a good thing. If you have the apple, it's the carbs wrapped in this beautiful fiber. So that actually balances the blood sugar. That's not a mistake. Nature's figured out a lot of awesome things that every time we think we're smarter than nature, we're always reminded that

we're not. Getting your micronutrients from food sources is infinitely better than getting it from supplemental sources. For some reasons, we understand and some we still don't. Yeah, I mean, that's the interesting thing about the entire supplement. Really, the industry. I'm not much of a supplement person. I've never been a supplement person. Really, the most supplements I've ever taken is when we were going through my protocol.

But nature and humans have evolved at the same rate to co-exist together and help each other. So to think that we can just pick out specific pieces of that apple and then make it better and put it in a bottle makes no sense to me. Like I've never understood that like anytime someone's like protein powderders good and you go, well, is it better than a steak? I don't like, I don't think so. It can't be. There's no way. Yeah. I'll relieve you of that curiosity right now. It's absolutely not. It's not even close. And is it, are there mechanisms of it because of the way a an apple is digested versus a pill? Where are really like the big differences in and why nature's answer to vitamin C or whatever micronutrient it is,

is better than the pill version. I think digestion and assimilation enhancement when your body is taking in an enormous amount of micronutrients with no real transporters and delivery process, that it's going to just have a higher susceptibility to some things falling through the cracks in that scenario. But I think that would be a small part of it, because I think the body does a pretty good job at extracting nutrients when they're bioavailable. Like, for example, magnesium oxide, like that's just not going to happen. Some other things are just dumb. They're just a waste of money. But nature's vitamins and minerals are already bioavailable. You're already getting the absolute best bioavailable source, but you're also getting all of the nutrients that are synergistic with it in the exact same

vehicle that it was designed to be in the body to begin with. And like some of this stuff, it's like, it's important to kind of think about too, like think about like having vitamin D right before bed. A lot of people do this, but where would we get vitamin D in nature? Sunshine. Is it really smart to have a thousand IU, which is an absolute solar bomb of sunlight to your body right before bed. Like we actually got, we have to actually start thinking of what message are you sending your body if you're given a solar bomb to yourself immediately before you're supposed to shut it down. Like it's, that won't surprise me. Um, if that comes out to create negative effects. comes out to create negative effects. Yeah. When you are looking at individual,

is it possible if you were to only eat food to overdose on specific micronutrients? To a level that would be harmful. I know you can take so much vitamin D that it causes a lot of problems and like vitamin C can become toxic at certain levels. Would I really have to chug like four gallons of orange juice to become like sick off of vitamin C? Yeah, that's an absurd thing to think about but in nature, is it possible where you actually need to like be aware of what you're consuming? Yeah, well orange juice doesn't exist in nature. So like that that is a supplement for sugar basically In nature you can get the job done anything in excess can become toxic Fun fact Steve jobs. He had some bad relationships with food and he would actually go through periods of very, very weird dieting and he actually got vitamin A toxicity from

eating only carrots and his skin went orange from eating only carrots. So like these things are absolutely possible. You can't, anytime you have a dominance of anything, you can't expect biology to respond properly because the biology responds to consistency, not intensity. When you do these big things, biology does not like it. There's always a bell curve. Too little of something is not good. Right in the middle is a real sweet spot.

And then too much of something is not good. Right in the middle is a real sweet spot. And then too much of something is not good either. So although it's possible, it's way harder because I can have a whole bottle of vitamin A in it with a single glass of water, but I would have to eat like, who knows how many kilos of sweet potatoes and carrots in order to get that same vitamin A. Yeah. Fantastic, man. I think we need to do a full show on macros and micros. There's so much more to discuss. And even the energy balance, we just like the hormones that interact with energy balance, how the mitochondria interacts with energy balance.

There's so many cool things left to unpack. But I think an episode like this to scratch the surface is very important to give people actionable items without overloading. Absolutely. I think anytime simple directions to people to get them on the right track is a great place to start and then fill it in with all the biochemistry. Where can people find you? At Dan Gardner Nutrition on Instagram.

My courses are at coachgardner.com and you can get blood work at inside tracker.com slash Gardner. There it is. And Travis Mash had to run off to Lenore Ryan weightlifting practice. You can find him at mashleaf.com. Doug Larson at Douglas E. Larson. I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged

and make sure you get over to aretelab.com. That is the signature program inside rapid health optimization where you can go and experience all the lab lifestyle, performance, testing, analysis, and coaching to help you optimize your health and performance. And you can access all of that over at aretelab.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.