Barbell Shrugged - Protein, Fats, and Carbs: Macros 101 w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #575

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   Why macros matter What macro is most important for fat loss What is the difference between fat and carbs for energy Why is protein so important for metabolism and muscle growth How much fat do you need in your diet   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   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   U.S. Air Force. Find out if you do at airforce.com.   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

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the patented IGY Max protein. So what are you waiting for? Repair your gut health and power up your immunity today by trying Leaky Gut Guardian risk-free at leakygutguardian.com forward slash shrugged and receive 10% off any order. You have 365 days money back guarantee. That's leakygutguardian.com forward slash shrugged. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Smash in the house. Today on Barbell Shrugged, we're talking about proteins, fats, and carbs and what they do.

We know that we need them. We know amino acids come out of the protein. Monosaccharides come out of the carbohydrates and fatty acids come out of the fat. But how we get there, why our bodies actually need them. But before we do this, Coach Travis Maddox, you're hanging out in the Dominican Republic. La Republica Dominicana. If I remember from Spanish Five back in the day,

that is how you are supposed to call the Dominican Republic. What are you doing down there? It's the Senior Pan American Championships. So, Jordan Cantrell competes tomorrow. So, we're down here just hoping to win. Don't you think USA Weightlifting really messed it up by calling it Senior? It's like you

turned 18 years old. You should just be the athlete. It's the only sport that calls the regular athlete seniors. It has to be open. You know, like the Open Pan American Championships. Best of the best. Like the adult class. Like adults and then masters. seniors yes to be open just you know like the open pan-american championships yeah yeah that's like the adult class yeah like adults and then masters i just i like open let's go yeah whoever's better no matter what age you are yeah yeah you could go out there right now i bet you

could win many many weightlifting meets right now what do you think your clean and jerk is right now? Mine right now is probably the worst it's been. But I'm still, you know, I'm sure 150. You've been clean and jerk 300 pounds, right? Oh, yeah. Like I'm not dead. But I'd say 330, you know. I remember the last time I clean and jerk 300, and I was like, I think we're good.

I think we are good. I think we are good. A video popped up from 2000. Well, the last time I cleaned 300, I was talking mad shit to you mash on the internet right after we got back from a Laco. Um, and then I snatched two 32 because Hunter Elon was in the room.

Yeah. And that's an a hundred. Yeah. Two 20. Yeah. snatching 100. 220. I couldn't lose that battle. But putting it over my head is something I do not do heavy anymore. That's really, really tricky. Dude, I have to ask. Oh, with your shoulder?

Is it hard with your shoulder or what? I just don't trust it. I didn't do any of the open workouts because i just don't want to uh be doing super fast um basically like stretch reflex and bouncing off tendons is just yeah a butterfly pull-up after you've separated your shoulder sounds like not dumbest thing in the world it is like why'd you re-separate your shoulder yeah well i was doing this thing where you like swing around on the bar and hope your chin apparently gets over it yeah you just clip something i still have like the nastiest like it's gonna be there for life i can like i can

like feel my collarbone deformed inside anytime someone thinks that bones are like fixed objects that can't be, they can move. Oh, it is tissue. And let me tell you, if you fall off an eight foot cliff and land directly on your shoulder and then your elbow comes flying around, like you can see how deformed my, my elbow from hitting the ground in the follow-through is gross it is nasty deformed it has like a has like a point on it and then my shoulder is like a shark fin that just that stuff immediately deformed immediately for the rest of my life there's never coming back oh no that's my favorite i mean that's not fair but doug's video the video's great i love it oh no there's no the best part of it i'm sitting in

the damn i'm sitting in the or not the or in the er and i knew that everybody finished their first beer because all the stories start happening. Everyone's having a drink at the bar and I'm in the hospital. Everyone loosened up enough to feel good enough to start talking shit. Yeah, and that's what happened. Exactly what happened. Bros, I have a serious question. We posted a video on YouTube, Mash and I talking about uh good morning it's one of my

favorite exercises right now i just add them in all the time and dude can you tell drew to go to the beach or something chicks walking around in a bikini behind the show right now they can't distracting us yeah i can't i can't be talking about strength conditioning when your wife's in the background beach ready. I like it. Oh, man. I got to take five. So we posted a video of good mornings, which is like my all-time new favorite exercise that I've been doing for like the last six to eight months, like very, very consistently. in the video mentions dr stewart mcgill's name three times and the amount of seething anger that comes out of people's mouths when you talk about uh mcgill is so strange oh i gotta get there's like multiple comments about how all of stewart mcgill's information is so outdated. And why would anybody follow?

What is, why do people get so mad at him? Did they, did they say any specific claims were, were not correct and they have a better claim or they just generalize like, Oh, that guy's bullshit. The main claim,

hold on. There's a, there's a really good word that both of the people that were like angry sounding used. And it was like really strange to me that somebody would be so mad we were basically talking about back pain and how um once um you know if you're moving poorly it's just a matter of time before you start to, like, really have troubles and how to move properly. Here you go. If you could stop parroting Stuart McGill's unfounded, self-proclaimed, and heavily biased research, I think these videos would then be far more informative and less damaging from a kinesiophobic perspective.

Employing proficient individualized technique is important, but in most instances, blah, blah, blah. The kinesiophobic word, which I've never honestly heard before. I can put the Latin together to figure it all out. But man, anger. Like, the PTs got – I think they were more angry at us for talking about good mornings and potentially helping people with back pain by strengthening their glutes and erectors than, like, when you post a video of your kid lifting weights.

He's got some – I mean, his research is, some of it is recent as just, you know, three to four years ago. Do they want it to be, make sure it's last year? Or, like, what's recent to them? I think it's just like, I honestly, I just, I'm like, there was another one that came right at you, which was really, really awesome.

Nothing makes me happier than when what an awful video, it actually got progressively worse i'm assuming most people like had positive comments to say yeah totally you're talking about like the one or two people that for whatever reason well most people watch the video and they go oh that's great that's very informative i know how to do good mornings now and then the angry ass pts because you're teaching something about a hip hinge and you mention mcgill's name they just assume we're back while university does all the time all the time like i'm sure he gets ripped

all the time too it's so it was like a it was like a trigger button that we pressed it was like settle down say is that i have watched that guy help more people than anyone else I know, including myself. So, I mean, what do you want me to tell you? I just wanted to, like, bring it up just because I don't – when I think about back pain, I think about Aaron, and I think about McGill. And they've all – I've never watched those two've never watched like why would you argue with a guy i think these people have uh and it probably is the exact same way with like when you post kids lifting weights yeah where they have like they only believe that like and m even like mentioned this when we interviewed him last summer it's like no n always equals one and everybody should be dealt with on an individual basis because

everybody's pain and their stories and all that are similar or are individualized it should be an individual effort to fix back pain. Like just like to have the best program for strength training in the world, it should be individualized to understand and account for all of your past training, your nutrition, your lifestyle, blah, blah, blah. And then, but also realizing that he lives in a lab and does all this testing and he has to come up with generalizations that account for a majority of the reasons why people have back pain. And it was like, it just triggered,

it triggered two, two or three. Where was this? It's on our YouTube page. Um, wow. I mean, it basically is,

it literally, the name of the video is, um, how to do good mornings. Oh, I see. I see. I see. I see. how to do good mornings. Oh, I see. I see. How to do good mornings safely. I looked up the

kinesiophobia thing. It says, kinesiophobia is the most extreme form of fear of movement and is defined as an excessive irrational or debilitating fear of physical movement and activity resulting from a feeling of vulnerability to pain or injury, blah, blah pain or injury blah blah blah basically it's he's like he's like pathologizing us trying to have good technique that minimizes

the probability of injury as as like you're just super irrationally afraid of getting injured by choosing to do things as well as you can well i mean i was a professional powerlifter i don't think i had an irrational fear of doing things correctly so like you know like i was i was told i was about to reach paralysis so like and i kept lifting so i don't think i have an irrational you know fear of getting injured but like all i can say is that listening to him helped me you know in 2004 early 2004 i was told know, I was at really close risk of paralysis. Dr. McGill, you know, started reading his stuff. He started helping me. And the next thing you know, like I set two world records since the moment I was told that, you know,

by listening to him and I don't know, so like, it seems pretty rational for me to think that he's pretty good since a neurologist you know after looking at you know not only uh not only an x-ray but an mri told me confirmed that i was at risk of paralysis so i think i don't know i'm going to go with go with that guy yeah i mean you know everyone's going to have their own opinions and so you just you know you can fine you don't believe me but like when you're so mad like that you you got to say, who's the rational here. Yeah. I didn't get on your video and get all crazy. You know, I didn't, it's like, are you a wrestler? Probably.

So it's super funny. Uh, here's a good one. When you're done appealing to authority, staying closed minded because of a differing opinion, hurt your feelings, take a glance at the Lancet series on on low back pain i don't know i just i i it was the first time not the first time i feel like he's just one of those names where he is the leading authority so in order for other people to gain authority they have to say that guy's wrong or be really angry because they have to have their own methodology even though mc McGill and Aaron are, are probably the guys you want to hang out with.

It's the same dude. It's the same dude. There's two of them on there that are like, I, I had a, being friends with you, Travis, sometimes is one of the best because when somebody yells at you online and

goes, those guys are idiots. You go, are you talking about the three-time world record holder? Yeah. Are you talking about the guy that has 28 kids on the national team?

I see it. It's like Michael Carrier. There's another dude on there that got really bitter and wanted us to go check out Barbell Medicine. I was like, those guys are legit. Yeah, they're good too. I like Barbell Medicine too.

It's awesome. Bros, let's talk about protein. The most important one. Doug Larson, tell me about protein. Obviously, it's like the base for every nutrition program that we put out. Why is protein so important? That's a big question, of course. I mean, that's why I dropped it right on you.

I know. Well, we'll keep this mostly to my kind of health and performance. So, you know, kind of the standard with protein is that you want to get a gram protein per pound of body weight. You know, for strength athletes, if you're lifting weights hard and you want to have maximum recovery and build muscle mass, that's a good general number to shoot for. Generally it's a, you know, 30 ish percent of your total calories and you need that either. You have essential amino acids that you're not going to be able to get from many sources. You want to mostly get them

from complete proteins like meat. And if you don't get those essential amino acids, then your recovery is just not going to be optimal at all. Yeah. Right. When people are kind of, the majority of people looking to lose fat, why is protein the most important macro that we always focus on in order to kind of get people moving in the right direction

for losing body fat, kind of like increasing muscle at the same time. Increases satiety. Satiety? Yeah. Satiety? Satiety. That's true. If we leave you down there too long, you'll be speaking Spanish by the end of the show.

Seriously. And then it increases – you get a thermal effect as well. So there's two reasons. I think that's a very good suggestion to someone wanting to lose body fat or lose weight is just increase their protein. Basically, they'll feel more full. And so they won't be eating so much so if you tell someone to eat you know three grams of protein per i would say three kilograms i see three kilograms of protein per kilogram of body weight so three grams per kilogram of body weight that's it so i would say is if you do that you just won't want to eat the other stuff any of the thermic effect as well

those two things yeah that's like the big kicker anytime i mean i've had i want to eat the other stuff. Any of the thermic effect as well, those two things. Yeah, that's like the big kicker. Anytime – I mean I've had – I want to say it's like four people that I've helped lose over 100 pounds in the last decade, and it's always fun to watch. And the number one thing is that when – the reason they put on the 100 pounds of fat to begin with is because they're sitting there at night and they have some sort of food that they just love. For some people, it's like salty and crunchy and they

just hammer potato chips. Some people love the sweets and there's like just endless sweets in their house. And if you can get them to just say, look, you can keep eating all that stuff, like do what you want. You owe me 150 grams of protein a day. By the time they're done with that third chicken breast or like the third hamburger that they've eaten in their life, ground beef, the last thing you really want to do, your body has no interest in going and sitting down and eating all the junk food because your body just, it's got what it needs it's good to go and everything else you don't have that like triggering effect of like okay we ate but we have no nutrients okay where's where's the real food and and that's what really like

to me and especially like if i'm on some like Saturday night where I may have gotten a little elevated while watching some Netflix where you can just sit there and like have a bowl of ice cream, which leads to the next bowl of ice cream. Your body's like dying for some sort of nutrition for all the food that you ate. And when you don't get it, it goes,

Hey, we need more. Hey, we're eating all this food, but nothing good is happening. What's going on? And if you were to fill that with some sort of ground beef, some sort of protein, even if it's a protein shake, your body will recognize that it's full and does not need that.

If you look at the totality of all fat loss research, it basically boils down to eat enough protein, something close to a gram of protein per pound of body weight or at least like per pound of lean body mass. If you're 350 pounds, you don't eat 350 grams of protein. You probably, you know, your lean body mass maybe is 100 pounds less than that or whatever it is. Right. So you really only need enough protein per pound of lean body mass. But if you're relatively lean, you can just do your body weight and call it good. So if you have enough protein, then as

you eat in a caloric deficit, you're more likely to maintain the muscle mass that you currently have. Most people don't want to be just a smaller version of their fat selves. They want to look better. And looking better means the ratio of muscle to fat

is more and more optimal with more and more muscle and less and less fat. So you can actually, you know, see the form, like the bodybuilder form of your body where you can look your best. Sorry, I was going to take a different direction, but I can't remember why. I tanned just off of something. I can't remember. I think you were going to the fact that you need the protein because muscle protein synthesis to muscle protein breakdown. By taking in the excess protein, you're going to have a better chance of building protein, which is synthesis, versus breaking it down. That's the key is that ratio. As long as you bring in enough that you're over

the amount of protein that's getting broken down, then you have a better chance of either maintaining or sometimes adding. A lot of people, this is the point where I'm confused is that most people say if you're eating in a caloric deficit, that you cannot build muscle. But, you know, I have watched people lose weight multiple times. Like, I mean, example, case study, I watched Hunter, you know, drop a weight class, and I saw her muscle, you know, lean body mass go up. So I can't say, you know, saying an absolute. I wouldn't say absolute. You can't do it.

I saw it. You know, anyway, this was on you know you know pretty pretty good source um what was it the the bio whatever the thing's called you know is that in the lab that we did it so i don't know i think retested her body fat percentage yeah so well i think it's also i was gonna i was gonna cycle this back to metabolism the thing that i remember from a second ago. I was basically going to point out that the more muscle mass you have, the higher your basal metabolic rate is going to be. Your muscle is the primary place in your body that you burn calories.

And so especially as far as what you have any control over as far as your base metabolism goes, your muscle mass is the main thing that you can control to improve, increase or decrease your metabolism or and or increase or decrease the amount of calories you can eat in a day without putting on body fat. So you want to keep as much muscle mass as possible as you lose weight. And especially when your calories are extra low, protein has a has like a sparing effect where the more protein you take in, the more likely you are to maintain the muscle mass that you have as you lose body fat. And then once you actually lose your weight, then you're,

you're more likely to keep that weight off because with, with the process of losing the weight, the amount of calories that you can eat per day, didn't go down and stayed roughly the same because your muscle mass is roughly the same. A lot of people, you lose a bunch of weight and a bunch of muscle mass. Then,

you know, maybe your maintenance calories were 2 were 2500 and then now you've they you've lost weight so now your maintenance calories are like 2250 so now you can eat 250 less calories per day before you put the weight back on you go back to eating the same as you were and then all of a sudden you put the weight back on yeah that's actually like the three pieces of kind of like increasing your bmr that really important. It's the stress of training. It's the repairing part. And then the maintaining the muscle mass that you actually have. And all three of those really come back to protein and being able to build your body. Like the stress part and actually getting stronger through progressive overload and lifting rate

weights, resistance training, you need muscle. the only thing that builds muscle is going to be the protein once you break that muscle tissue down and you're telling like these old cells to get the hell out of here they're dead they don't exist anymore because the environment that you're creating is uh needs a has a requirement for strength well then it has to go rebuild the muscle, which is done through protein. And then once you have the muscle built on there, it's also more metabolically demanding. And that's not like a ton, but it's more metabolically demanding to maintain muscle mass. So you need the protein to keep the muscle, like every aspect of fat loss and having a body that looks like you lift weights comes down to ensuring that you get between 0.7 grams per pound of body weight and one gram per pound of body weight every day. It's kind of one

of the simplest tricks to just get people to focus on the amount of protein they're eating because the satiety side of it, you're not going to be just hammering food at night. And it's really challenging. If you've never been on some sort of bulk cycle where you're trying over six months to, or screw six months, how about for like a decade of your life, eating as much as you possibly can. Like it's really, really challenging for people to understand and comprehend what a pound and a half to two pounds of food looks like if you're a 200 pound male yes it's a lot it's a ton and it's not super pleasurable many times to to sit down and eat eight ounces of meat four times a day no yeah people have a lot more experience. Right now, it's like,

I could do it. I could eat four pounds of meat today, tomorrow, any day you want. I will give you four pounds. I'm good at that. I've practiced that. I've flexed that muscle enough.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if you need four pounds of meat. Don't do it. I used to. Yeah. Still not that healthy, but I did. Four pounds. Well, like three three and then whatever else was in my

peanut butter and all that you just can't eat enough try to have whey protein like i just can't that much like yeah i feel like i've told this on on and when we first owned the gym and we had zero dollars uh literally like zero dollars sleeping in like the shittiest, grossest apartment ever just plop it over on the george foreman grill close it put three slices of cheese on top of it melt it and then load the top of it with guac that was breakfast lunch and dinner every day for years wow three times three pounds of meat every single day not to mention like whatever else you're eating for dinner at night and you know and thinking about just approaching how much weight did i actually put on not that much because you're training so hard your body's constantly fighting right you guys you guys doing that crazy you know crossfit like you just need all those calories and

all that protein to survive all that training and like to not just get crushed sometimes when you're putting on weight like if you're losing weight you actually can go a little bit excessive on protein to keep all your muscle mass as you lose weight and the more protein you eat the more full you feel and it kind of just makes it easier to lose weight yeah when you're when you're gaining weight you actually don't need to bump your protein that much higher than normal if you keep the pound protein per pound of body weight then you're trying you're trying to get as many calories as you possibly can it's just so much easier to eat carbs and fats and to and to eat a lot of calories of carbs and fats compared to protein so protein you just need enough and then really as far as getting in a

caloric surplus to put on muscle mass you know eating more carbs and fats is is oftentimes much easier and also much more fun and a lot tastier for many people who aren't super thrilled to eat meat all day long. The caveat to that story is that it was also in the heyday of paleo. Oh, yes. We were like super bought into, which if you are doing that, immediately puts you in like a low-carb state of mind where you just think that broccoli and

onions and peppers are life like you just and there's no way you're getting the carbohydrates you need so we had to get the calories from somewhere which is why we ended up just eating so much meat all the time um that was when the paleo world was like hot early cross mid days, which better. You definitely need with all this stuff that you guys are going on. I mean, there's just, you know,

your body to make anything of substance has to have the protein. So, you know, you think about every little, you know, microfilament or myofilament in your body is like, you need protein where it's acting, you know,

myosin titan which is important you know for yeah like a lot of athletes you know you need that just so you can be elastic in nature so like crossfitters need that for sure so you can't make any of those without protein so yeah the other awesome thing about protein travis you mentioned it and doug you were talking about uh metabolic rate a little bit um is the thermal effect of protein and how hard it is for your body to digest protein. And you'll see a lot of times when people are in a caloric deficit and then you start like calories, like if you're in, you know, you go from like your maintenance to cut one, cut two, potentially like a cut three, and now you're down somewhere between 600 to 800 calories away from maintenance, which is just like a big number that you don't want to hang out at that long.

You'll notice many times that coaches will push the protein numbers higher because of that thermal effect and and it will like in a way because it takes so much to digest that food you get like a little bit of a boost in fat loss on top of being so low calorically but if you're if you're hanging out down there and cut three and you're 800 calories below maintenance, that's a short-lived stage of a diet. But you will notice that the protein numbers will go up many times just because you want to have everything working in your favor. And protein is really expensive to have to digest. There's definitely some benefit there.

20 to 30% of the calories that you eat in the form of protein are going to be used in the digestion of that protein. I'm a 200-pound guy, so say I eat 200 grams of protein per day, that's 800 calories. 20% of that is 160 calories. That's 160 calories that I burn just by eating the protein that I eat each day.

I wouldn't say it's a super significant number, but I wouldn't say it's insignificant either it's it is 160 calories so that's yeah that's a fact that's a plus yeah and wouldn't you say like with crossfitters like they need extra protein simply because of like especially with the long workouts when you have those like uh what's the the murph and things like that like you probably need it for it was a gluconeogenesis which is when the liver starts using you actually use this protein to uh for energy so like there is that that and it's very seldom but you guys doing like how long does murph take you guys um in the heyday oh yeah i mean yeah 40 minutes something like that

uh i'd say for crossfitters it's probably not quite as relevant like usually when you talk about gluconeogenesis you're really only talking marathon extreme endurance athletes like even beyond marathons right you know you're talking about ultra endurance you're talking about triathlons and you know run like the moab 240 and whatever it is like when you're when you're super depleted on carbohydrates but and you need some source then your body can break down some protein like a bit but even when that's happening it's still it's going to be like just a small fraction of the energy that you would have that you would be having if you were to um to just have carbohydrates available it's like it's not it's not the most efficient way. It also happens when you're actually starving.

You're shipwrecked on a desert island and you have no food available. So not having any food to eat at all, then you're definitely going to start breaking down protein and converting some portion of that into some form of glucose. There was actually a study. This is 1999, but a lot of even marathon, portion of that into some form of glucose. And there was, there was actually a study like it was a, this is a physio, 1999, this is 1999,

but like a lot of even, even marathon runners will do that, that are really, really good. Cause you see like those marathon runners trying to run that, you know, sub two hour marathons. Like they have,

if they don't, they'll hit the wall and they'll get delirious. And then, you know, they start stumbling all over themselves. It's because there's no blood, you know, know like glucose and so that's when the liver will actually create you know do the gluconeogenesis so keep the blood so because the brain needs that to think and if it doesn't then you start getting delirious and hit the wall i saw a cool video in my

physiology class is what made me bring this up and And it was a, it's not funny, but the video was meant to be funny because it was showing a bunch of marathon runners hitting the wall. And it's just like, they are delirious. They can't, you know, they can't talk.

Well, they can barely crawl across the finish line. They just like, can't move. Yeah. It looks like those, those African videos where you see like a wildebeest give birth and then like the baby wildebeest is trying to stand up and it's like on shaky legs.

I've seen marathon runners do it. They're on the ground. They try to stand up and they're just like, so wobbly. They just fall back over. Yeah. The visual that was coming into my brain. Have you ever seen the deer that have that? Like, I don't even know what the name of the disease is, but where they like literally

just become really dumb. They forget how to walk. They're slobbering out of their mouth. It's some bacteria or virus that attacks some parasite that gets in their gut and eats their brain, basically, but they can still move. Yeah, I've heard of that. This is terrible.

I wish I had the name of it. That's terrible. That's what I was envisioning when you were talking about an ultra marathon or like crawling across. That was a regular marathon just trying to go sub two hours. They're going faster than their body can. But it's an awesome transition into carbohydrates because I think that that's something that I'm really happy has transitioned, I think, in the CrossFit scene from when I was competing to where people are at now and really understanding the importance of carbohydrates, especially when it comes to high intensity efforts over short duration and understanding the fuel source that's going to be performance based in like, uh, top end strength, uh, anything really under that, like 20 minute threshold, maybe 15 minute threshold is going to be very,

um, very much fueled by carbohydrates. Um, and they're so simple and delicious to eat. Um, where, uh, how do, how do we digest these carbohydrates and, and where do they get stored? I don't know about anybody. where uh how do how do we digest these carbohydrates and and where do they get stored anybody i just get after it you too you're the one with all the degrees over there i'm trying to get it so here's what i tell my kids protein comes from animals and carbohydrates comes from plants that's not 100 true in every case but it's a good it's a pretty good generalization the carbohydrates mostly come from plants. Fruit has a slightly different type of carbohydrate than most vegetables do. Most vegetables have some form of starch or polysaccharides in them, amylose and amylopectin.

And then fruit typically has some combination of glucose and fructose together. Glucose, of course, is, you know, you hear people say blood glucose. Glucose is something that your body uses for many, many things. Fructose has calories, of course, but it's not processed the exact same way as glucose is. So, like a lot of people used to say, like, and there's some truth to this, although I don't think it's that big of a deal,'re eating fruit post-workout isn't a very good idea because fructose does not, it does not replenish glycogen directly, right? The glute four transporters that, that shuttle carbohydrates

from, you know, inside the cell, sorry, from outside the cell into, into the cell, um, don't have receptors for fructose. They can bring glucose in, but if you're eating fructose, then you have to go to your liver, glute five transporters, put it in the liver. It makes liver glycogen and then it can spit out glucose back into the bloodstream. So it can kind of get there in an indirect way. But as far as post-workout goes, most people are looking for the fastest refueling that they can possibly attain. And if you look at any studies on post

workout nutrition or peri-workout nutrition the sooner you have your your carbohydrates often with protein is even more optimal optimal the sooner you have that after your workout the better your glycogen replenishment is all right that window So the recovery window they talk about. And most of it's stored in your muscles, correct? Like you don't the whole idea of carbs making you fat. What they're really saying is carbs mixed with melted butter makes you fat because that's a cookie and it's delicious and you eat way too many of them. But carbohydrates are mainly stored in the musculature, right? The majority is glycogen, but anytime you do anything in excess, it's going to be stored as adipose tissue. Yeah, I don't think about carbohydrates or fats or proteins as being the thing that makes you fat. It really comes down in my mind to how easy it is to overeat something.

Rather than carbs are specifically bad for you, it's more so that like it's just really easy to eat a super high volume of carbs. And because it's so easy to eat a super high volume, you're going to get fat. It's like if you're drinking 64-ounce big gulps of some type of soda, you know, multiple times a day, and now all of a sudden, you know, each soda is 1,000 calories of carbohydrates, and you have four of them a day you said you had an extra on top of all your meals you had an extra 3 000 calories of pure sugar yeah oh well yeah of course you're gonna get fat like you because your muscle doesn't need any calories that day right yeah you're right popped off on

glycogen and so it all it's got to go somewhere like we're not so fortunate that we just that we just excrete it right away. You don't just poop it out without storing it first. You're going to store it as body fat, and you're going to get fat. Sure. No matter what it is, fat, whether it's carb, but yeah, you're right. It's hard to – you can eat – it's like when you're super full, but you can still get dessert.

I can still eat a bowl of ice cream. I can't eat one more bite of steak, but I can eat a bowl of ice cream. I'm the exact same way when it comes to like a plate of pasta. There's like no end. There's an end for that, but there's no end for ice cream. Ice cream's a special one. The point about carbohydrates not being like specifically bad for you, um, the rise in high fructose corn syrup has occurred over the last, you know, 50 or a hundred years.

You know, a lot of people say that high fructose corn syrup, because it's, they, they, because they, the name sounds bad, high fructose and fructose is like supposed to be the one that helps you store even supposedly more body fat than, than glucose. But they're comparing it oftentimes to regular table sugar, which is sucrose, which is 50-50 glucose and fructose. And then high fructose corn syrup is really only usually 55-45. So instead of 50-50, it's 55-45. So yeah, it's like a little bit higher in fructose.

There are different variations of high fructose corn syrup, but most of them are 55-45. So it's not necessarily that high fructose corn syrup but most of them are 55 45 so it's not necessarily that that that that high fructose corn syrup specifically is more likely to prompt body fat compared to regular sugar but with the with subsidizing corn and whatever else there there's this the volume and the price point for high fructose corn syrup is so low that that people just put it in everything so it's just it's so incredibly abundant is the problem not necessarily that that the nutrient itself is is specifically bad for you it's just everywhere yeah right i think also with people like if you're looking for simple foods when you start to get into anything processed if you look at any of the ingredients on anything that comes in a package,

you're like within three ingredients of finding some sort of corn-based product. Something that's been extracted, most commonly it's going to be some sort of high fructose corn syrup. But that's like a game that I used to play when going down the aisles. If you go into the aisles of any grocery store and pick up any package that you can basically find in an aisle that's not on the outsides, which is fruit, vegetable, meat, or some sort of milk, pretty much every single thing that you will find in the aisle within the first three ingredients is going to be a corn-based product. It's almost guaranteed. It's so abundant. It's like the single ingredient that is common amongst every food that is processed. It's easy to grow corn. Yeah.

Fatty acids. What do we need those for? They're essential. That's why they're called essential fatty acids it carbohydrates really are the only ones that our body doesn't have to have either we have to have amino acids we have to have fatty acids but we don't need carbohydrates it's kind of an interesting interesting thing yeah i mean as far as fatty acids go the only really essential fatty acids are basically fish oil epa dha like a lot of people say alpha linolenic acid

is essential also because yes it is but really they're they're getting they're wanting to get that so they can get it converted through a series of enzymatic reactions into epa and then eventually dha but the conversions are super super super low. So getting fatty acids from cold water marine life, which is where most fish oil type fatty acids are found, really is the better option. If you eat salmon all the time and sardines and whatever else, then maybe you're getting enough naturally, but chances are for most people in most situations supplementing is is the name of the game there yeah and you have to have you know the fatty acids for like big thing for guys hormones i mean testosterone i mean you can say testosterone cortisol estrogen estrogen for men

and women but mainly women but you know a little bit in men and so uh it's super important yeah yes that's especially true if you're talking about cholesterol and saturated fat as far as far as fish oil goes like the the big things with fish oil is that fish oil especially dha is a large component of your of your neural tissue which means your brain and your spinal cord and it's an essential fatty acid which means you have to get it through your diet through eating something your body can't make it naturally from other components. And so if you want to have like the most optimal cognition and you want to have your brain be as healthy as possible,

then having DHA in an abundant enough supply to give you – to maximize that effect is really important. So that's why – So what part of the brain – I that's why what part of the brain i'm curious what part of the brain does it make up i don't know if it's like a specific part of the brain like it's not like the prefrontal cortex or the amygdala or the hypothalamus or whatever whatever it is it's it's just neural tissue your whole brain is made of neural tissue right yeah dha is one of the key components to just making making neurons in general i wouldn't be able to say if it was more so like white matter, gray matter,

like that type of thing. That's what I was trying to remember, the myelin sheaths that makes it go so fast, which is the white matter. I'm pretty sure it's like – but this is definitely the part of the physiology I'm not 100% on. That's why I'm not as – I couldn't speak to all the details. Uh, there has been a decade plus since I've really dug into any of that, but, but, but

they are very important. So the, for pregnant women, as an example, almost all pregnant women have, have DHA prescribed to them as a supplement because studies show that especially in the third trimester of pregnancy and the first years of life, having DHA leads to better performance on a variety of, like, word association tasks and other academic tasks at age five. And so supplementing mothers have smarter kids when they supplement with DHA. And then likewise for studies of older individuals, as far as, delaying the onset of like dementia and Alzheimer's and just maintaining high cognitive ability into old age, people that supplement with fish oil tend to have better outcomes and they maintain their ability to think clearly for longer it's definitely the myelin sheath is like a big part of you know it's fatty acids and so it makes you know it makes um like nerve impulses faster so

it's like uh insulate you know like when you see the the electric wires and they're covered with rubber you know yeah covering so it makes that go faster in the electric wire same thing in the nerves the myelin sheaths or the white matter, it helps nerve impulses travel at a much faster rate. I think they talk about that pretty extensively in the talent code on the nutrition side of it and the myelin sheath and how that all flows together and how important getting – It is very important.

Yeah. How much fat do people need to get in their day? The way I like to think about this is if we start with protein, so your protein should be roughly a pound of protein per pound of lean body mass. So you find out how many grams of protein that is and then times it by four and that many calories should be you know roughly 30 of your diet and then from that number you can calculate you know your 30 for fats and your 40 for carbs if you like doing the 30 40 40 thing i kind of like a third a third a third 33 33 33 so if you if you calculate in my example like you know 800 grams of protein

i'm 200 pound guy so i have 200 grams of protein times four is 800 if that if you calculate in my example like you know 800 grams of protein i'm 200 pound guy so i have 200 grams of protein times four is 800 if that is a third of my diet so i'm basically i just times that by three to see how many calories i need for like my my base maintenance level which would be 2400 calories for me again if i'm trying to lose weight this this is a this is a good place to calibrate from it's not a perfect exact amazing number for you as an individual. It's a good general broad thing to tell a large group of people just to give them some place to start. You know, I would do two weeks trying to hit those numbers. And then depending on your goals, like if you're trying to gain weight and you're not gaining weight, then bump it up 10%.

If you're trying to lose weight but you're not losing weight, bump it down 10%. I think it's a good general place to start i love when talking to lane norton he'll tell you like with with the fats and carbs is like it can go either way you know you know you said 30 40 or or or 30 30 he said whatever it takes you know whichever one you can live with the the easiest he really does he said it's really doesn't matter yeah you're eating that you know caloric number you know you know that it's in a slight deficit whatever you know whichever one is easier for you some people like fat some people like more carbs i hope he's listening but uh dr michael t nelson has a a really i haven't taken the course but i know uh him and he's one of the smartest dudes on nutrition i think that's

that's out there um and he has a course on metabolic flexibility, which I think is probably a great resource for people if they are interested in understanding metabolic flexibility and kind of like digging deeper on what you just said of, it doesn't really matter what energy source you, uh, you have, your body should be able to use them both equally if your metabolism is working optimally. I like the way that you mentioned Mike T. Nelson. Ben House is close with him. And last time we were hanging out with Ben and Mike together, Ben actually did a presentation on metabolism. One of the things he said in that presentation that I thought was really interesting that I don't hear a lot of other people saying on a regular basis is in our conversation so far today we've been talking about like protein is this fixed number

and then you can kind of calculate off of that number like I just said a few minutes ago for for Ben he was basically saying that your protein's the fixed number just like we talked about gram protein per pound of body weight and then he also had a number and I don't remember exactly what it is for fats like you only need this this many fatty acids and then his his big fluctuation becomes in how many carbohydrates you eat so you kind of make sure that he has a base amount of essential fatty acids a base amount of essential amino acids and then as far as this caloric load and energy goes he just fluctuates carbohydrates up or down depending on the goals of that athlete and how they're performing yeah that was one of the most impressive talks. I had never met Ben.

And when you meet Ben, he's like, he looks like a regular dude. You would never expect him to jump up and smash a talk like that. I had no idea who he was until the day we interviewed him. And then he gave a presentation right after the interview. And I was like, oh my gosh, I just got hit in the face with three and a half hours of Dr. Ben House's brain. I had no idea who this guy was four hours ago. It's crazy. But his stuff on obesity was really cool in that talk. Just kind of like a lot of the like almost like biopsychosocial sides of obesity and why it's so hard for many people to lose weight and keep it off

and why the rebound effects happen so commonly. Homestasis makes for many people to lose weight and keep it off and why the rebound effects happen so, so commonly. Homeostasis makes it super hard to lose weight. It does. Your body wants you to stay where you are. So anything you try to alter, you know, the body fights. And it's so easy. Like Doug, you've mentioned it many times before, especially coming from like a fighting background. If you, if you need to cut 20 pounds for a fight, like once you've practiced cutting that weight, it's easier to cut that weight. If you've put on 20 pounds to gain muscle and, and, you know,

get bigger, it's easier in the future to, to be, to, to put on that 20 pounds. Your body just has the reflex built in to say, oh, it's time to grow. Let's go grow. We've done this before. We know exactly how to do it. If you've never cut and you've never lived at a lower body weight, your body has, one, no idea how to do it, but it's just so easy when you start to go into a caloric surplus again to put the

weight back on because it just, it has the pathways built. It has the muscle memory to just go get big quick, knowing exactly where we're headed if you go on off the rails for a month. Yeah. Leptin, by the way, is the hormone that's released. Like you're trying to lose weight. It's released. It makes you hungry. It's crazy. The body hates you to lose weight it's released that makes you hungry it's crazy the body hates you to lose weight yes but then we're trying to store food for the cold winter when all the animals are gone right like we're not supposed to have such cheap food as doug was talking about with high fructose corn syrup and how that's put into everything to you know keep processed foods around forever it's not supposed to be available on every street

corner and it's not supposed to cost a dollar for a big mac right it thinks you're starving it's like what happens when you're starving it's trying to like but i think that also is if you like if you are a victim to that and you are uh all you see when you drive down the road is the McDonald's, and you feel obligated to stop. Like I have a Culver's down the street from my house, and I have never seen an amount of cars stacked so far in a drive-through as I did almost every single day during quarantine. Like it was like – it was unbelievable how many people needed their ice cream i don't if you've ever seen like uh if you've ever seen a food truck that serves

only donuts it could be a freaking blizzard outside negative 4 000 degrees and people will find a way they'll be like i gotta go get that donut it's got icing and they put fruity pebbles on top of it and that shit's delicious and i will stand in that line for 30 minutes and bear the cold because i gotta get it possibly die but it's okay i will freeze to death but if i get that donut i will be good something we should probably mention about fat which i think most people know but like when you're talking about grams of fat you know whereas with carbs and proteins you know you're only it's four grand you know four calories per gram it is nine with fats yeah i think most people know that by now but well just in case someone listening yeah in the formula doug gave it's calorically speaking so

right the the carbs and the fat are going to be equal in number but if you don't look at grams you look at total calories a little bit less than half of the total grams in fat that you're going to be eating. Let's just talk about carbon chain. Is that right, Doug? What makes it nine versus like others with carbs and proteins being four and fat being nine? It's mainly a look at the carbon chain, right? It definitely has to do with the structure of the molecule it has to do with with how with how tightly the molecules can pack in with each other right and so if they can if you pack more molecules in the same space then you're gonna have more calories for the same volume right yeah because you got the what is it yeah i'm not gonna go into that's definitely not my expertise i just know that there's like there's like three you know chains and yeah as far as i'm going in all honesty if you want to get into the backbone if you want to

get into the super chemistry of it go over to galpin's five minute fizz or 55 minute fizz and he probably lays out every single molecule um how it breaks down where it's stored sure i love his stuff yeah we talked so we talked about the benefits of DHA, but EPA, the other fish oil, the other essential fatty acid, also has some really good benefits. Everyone's always talking about inflammation. Inflammation is just a part of so many conversations about health and fitness.

It's a major factor in chronic disease, injury, sickness, etc. Over-training. Over-trainingining for sure and uh so epa is one of the primary molecules that has a precursor for a bunch of anti-inflammatory compounds and so you have other types of fats that do the opposite they they are the precursor molecule to a bunch of pro-inflammatory compounds and so that's why people often recommend that you get more of like an equal ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 that one-to-one ratio seems to be like the healthiest ratio but modern society just like getting getting a lot of high fructose corn syrup is just easy and readily available and it's kind of just infused into so many processed and packaged foods and so

a lot of times you don't even know you're getting it with, with the meals that you eat out of restaurants or fast food places or whatever, whatever you buy packages at the grocery store, the, these, these bad oils, you know, a lot of people call like white sugar and white flour,

you know, the bad carbohydrates. So they, these white, the white oils, um, as far as fats go, there are the pro inflammatory fats,

the fats that you're trying to avoid. So you're trying to eat less omega six and and more uh omega-3 which is which is way easier said than done because omega-3s are hard to come by and omega-6 is just everywhere and so by by eliminating most of the processed packaged foods that you eat and just you know eating lean meats and vegetables and whatnot you kind of automatically do it um the other big one there is that a lot of times um these these uh poly sorry these polyunsaturated fats are hydrogenated into trans fats and trans fats are kind of like the worst of the worst as far as all fats go um there's been some law changes in the last couple years. I don't know

the exact rules on trans fats these days, but... I think they're pretty outlawed. Yeah, I think they're outlawed. I just wrote an article, too, on overtraining versus overreaching and talking about... You can look at the cytokine release

in your bloodstream to see the difference in overreaching versus overtraining. But inflammation is a big part of the difference. Like, overreaching is just going to cause some, like, local inflammation, which is part of the, it's how you get stronger and better. But then when it goes chronic and it's throughout the body, then you have a problem. You can have a problem. The thing about overtraining that I learned just in the last couple of weeks is that that mess can mess you up for life. Like some people can literally have, you know, lingering issues with overtraining that could last the rest of their entire life. So looking at chronic versus acute is important. I think we should take overtraining a little bit more seriously than

we have in the past. It's not funny. It's really not up for debate. I don't think, I think it's pretty, you can, I mean, they've defined it. They've defined it. Here are the past. It's not funny. It's really not up for debate, I don't think. I think it's pretty – you can – I mean, they've defined it. They've defined it. Here are the symptoms. I think it's pretty set that overtraining is a thing. How long would you consider acute turning into chronic? I think a big sign would be when mood changes first. Then when you,

your performance dips down and even after a rest, it stays down. That's two. Then it's going to be sleep. You know what the biggest sign for me was doing the CrossFit thing? Sex drive. Yeah. That's part of it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just look at your girlfriend, you go, sorry, it's going gonna be a couple weeks your boy's got regionals coming up right

that would kills you I'd be like I'm quitting regionals I know you're fucking committed to going to regionals bashing yourself in the head for two months straight. You can have sex the day of.

You're like, what? I've gone as far as in-between lists. Like, oh, we're done with squats. I need to feel like King of the Tundra. You want to get after it? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Wake up in the morning, go row for 45 minutes.

So now we know who's having all the sex. It's not the CrossFitters. It's the PowerFits. Conditioning twice in the afternoon. You boys have got your priorities mixed up. That's your thing. Go Strap a Smash. How many medals are you going to take down there in La Republica Dominicana?

Well, Jordan is looking pretty good. He could be anywhere from gold to – he's definitely looking like he's going to be in the top three. But he's got to perform, so we'll see. But definitely quite a few, it might be at least three. Something in the snatch, the clean jerk in the total. Are you more interested to go win titles today or medals or join your wife down at the pool right now?

Definitely join my wife at the pool. Give Vincent to come back to the room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where can people find you besides at the pool? Mashlead.com. Don't try to call me this week, though. Doug Larson. I'm on Instagram, Douglas C. Larson. I'm Anders Instagram, DougleseeLarson.

I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to BarbellShrugged.com forward slash Diesel Dad. We're on the Dads Getting Strong, Lean, and Athletic. And if you are in San Diego, L.A., Palm Springs, or Vegas, we are in Walmart. Go to the pharmacy. Three programs on the shelves. Fellas, nothing makes me happier every single week than getting on the freaking phone with you guys and talking about lifting weights.

Absolutely. Life is fucking awesome. I appreciate you guys. We will see you guys next week. That's a wrap. Make sure you get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash diesel dad where all the dads are getting strong, lean, and athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood, or fitness, I also want to thank our friends over at Organifi, Organifi.com, forward slash shrugged, save 20%, and LeakyGutGuardian.com, forward slash shrugged. That is where you get to save 10% using the code shrugged.

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