Barbell Shrugged - Real Chalk — Plant Based Power w/ Chris Manderino — 37

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Real Chalk, a Shrug Collective production. Mike Bledsoe here. Stoked to be launching this network so that we can introduce you to amazing content providers like Ryan Fisher. We'll be posting new shows every weekday, so be on the lookout. As a thank you for listening, Thrive Market has a special offer for you. You get 60 bucks of free organic groceries, plus free shipping and a 30-day trial. Go to thrivemarket.com slash real chalk. This is how it works. Users will get $20 off their first three orders of $49 or more plus free shipping.

Starting point is 00:00:40 No code is necessary because the discount will be applied at checkout. Many of you will be going to the store this week, so just hit up Thrive Market today. Go to thrivemarket.com slash realchalk to get set up. Enjoy the show. All righty, kids, boys and girls, ladies and germs, you guys are tuned into the Ball of Shrug Collective. This is Yaya, and we're coming at you with a brand new episode of the Real Chalk Podcast. After having Kevinrence on here a few weeks ago from power crunch and making a really strong case for animal-based whey protein we figured it'd be only fair to have somebody from the other side and we found somebody right at home from crossfit chalk

Starting point is 00:01:16 the 4 p.m class is loaded with testosterone loaded dudes one of those dudes is chris mandarino ex-cultural player ex-nfl player and now the proud founder and owner of Life Fuel, one of the leaders in plant-based supplements. And we had him on just to give you guys the other side. It's always easy to just make one side sound great without listening to arguments coming from the other side of the room. I love that Mando did not try to shove broccoli down our throats literally and didn't demonize any meat-based diets or having meat in your diet at all. Even he, as the owner of this company, has meats every now and then. He just states the great effects that a plant-based diet could have. As always, guys, we're super stoked to have you here, super stoked to be on the Baba Shark Collective, trying to bring you guys the best

Starting point is 00:02:08 content possible, and all that starts with you. So hit us up on Instagram at CrossFitChalk, at Yaya's View for me, at Ryan Fish for the fish, and just let us know what you guys like, what you don't like, who you would like to have on the show, what topic you want discussed. The world is your oyster. It's your world. We're just living in it. We're doing all this stuff just for you guys and actually having a little bit of fun along the way.

Starting point is 00:02:34 So let us know. Make sure you guys are subscribed to the channel so you never miss an episode. And I'm going to stop talking. Here comes Mando. If you guys regularly listen to our show or even any other show on the Shrug Collective, there's a really good chance that you guys have heard the word mushroom being swung around. You guys probably know what we're referring to. This one is a little different.

Starting point is 00:02:58 These mushrooms you can actually drink. I'm talking about the mushrooms you guys get over at foursigmatic.com. Pretty cool company we teamed up with recently. The Barba Shrug guys actually made a trip over there and recorded some really cool episodes. So go ahead and head back on their channel to listen to those Four Sigmatic episodes. But like I said, you can drink these special mushrooms and they're nothing short of magic. You guys can get anything from mushroom coffee to matcha all the way to hot cocoa and other varieties of their drinks. This stuff truly enhances your daily routine starting from get going in the morning all the way to winding down later at night.

Starting point is 00:03:46 I've actually personally been using these from a long long long time ago even before we started the podcast and immediately got hooked especially the mushroom coffee was the one product that stood out to me and that i first started trying a long time ago i like it simply because it tastes exactly like coffee but it doesn't give you the jitters and it doesn't give you the crash at the end of the day some of this stuff will seriously get put you guys on fire like the mushroom coffee or the lion's mane that they offer while other products like the ricey that they have in a delicious hot chocolate will help you guys to finally chill the fuck out at the end of the day so go ahead and head over to foursigmatic.com slash chalk or just go to foursigmatic.com and use the code chalk. That is F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C dot C-O-M slash C-H-A-L-K.

Starting point is 00:04:35 Foursigmatic.com. Check out their products and you guys are welcome. If there's one thing in the world that you guys noted ryan and i love more than working out and podcasting then that's eating if you guys watched a vlog recently uh in our phoenix trip we literally just ate the entire trip and just bounced around from restaurant to restaurant but even with us eating so much food all day every day one of the hard parts is to get enough greens sometimes it's just not a lot of fun. The burger most of the time sounds a lot better than the salad. And especially on the road,

Starting point is 00:05:11 the stuff can get tricky. However, if you guys listen to us on a regular basis, you guys know how important it is to get not only a balanced diet, but to get those greens in your diet, stay healthy, keep the immune system going so you guys can keep crushing in and also outside of the gym. When you're on the road, especially as we travel a lot for the podcast, and I assume that most of you guys are mainly on the road as well, your best option is like a green juice from somewhere, but those are always pumped full of sugar or even worse, a ton of preservatives. And most of the time they're also super expensive. The green juice by Organifi, that's Organifi with an I, no worries. I'll spell it out later for you guys. The green juice is the exact solution

Starting point is 00:05:58 to that exact problem. And it tastes just as good, if not even better, than those sugary green drinks you guys can get at the store. Even better, they make it super convenient. Just bring along your green drink. You guys know that, one, you're going to be set for your greens. Two, you're going to get high-quality food while on the road and at home. And even better, you're also going to be saving money with the green juice powder that you guys just simply going to mix into your water or beverage of choice you guys are spending around two bucks a drink good luck finding something like that at the store you guys can now head

Starting point is 00:06:37 over to organifi shop.com use code real chalk for 20 off that's o-r-g-A-N-I-F-I shop.com. Use code REALCHOC, 20% off, and check out their green drink to finally get all those greens in your diet. All right, here we go. We're live. Back on Fish's couch. Got another guest here.

Starting point is 00:07:00 I'm Yaya. Got Fish over there. We're sitting down with Chris Mandarino, one of the 4 p.m faithfuls at crossfit chalk and also the owner of life fuel can i say it right that's right life with a y life with a y that's right because it's a acronym right yeah live your fullest every day there you go i like that i do like that i didn't even actually didn't know that yeah so you guys know a couple weeks ago we had the owner of Power Crunch make a great

Starting point is 00:07:25 argument for whey protein. Chris's company uses plant-based protein so we're going to try and get the other side on record. Let's start with a little bit just about yourself. Start wherever you want and then we'll just go from there. Yeah so I grew up here in Newport Beach. I basically was an athlete my entire life. Once I got to the high school level, really kind of focused in on football. My dad had played big-time college football at Michigan State, so I always kind of looked up to him. He was my hero and wanted to get that level.

Starting point is 00:08:02 Unfortunately, when I was coming out of Newport, I kind of played all over the field. so I played linebacker and quarterback my junior year you don't see that very often but senior year I moved from I was a good scrambling quarterback so I moved from quarterback to tailback two games into my senior season and even though I had a lot of success at both positions I was kind of labeled as a tweener coming out of high school. So like the D1 big time college football offers just weren't there. And I was faced with a tough decision on whether to walk on or go to a JC for a couple years or just go to like a lower level football school. But, you know, there's a couple offers like East Coast Ivy League type stuff. And my dream was to play at the highest level.

Starting point is 00:08:50 And what it ultimately came down to is Berkeley offered me a preferred walk-on opportunity. So I figured I'd get a great education also, pursue my dream to play football at Division I University and see what happened. So I walked on. Basically, as soon as I got to training camp, they threw me into a new position, which was fullback. I remember you telling me this story. Yeah, and it was pretty gnarly, you know, especially at Cal during that time. You had guys that went on to play 10 years or more in the league, so blocking against like Namdi Asamoah and Scott Fujita and just like, I was literally like, you know, a kid.

Starting point is 00:09:40 Especially because you were a walkout, like you've got to do the fucking grunt work. Oh, the worst. Yeah, you're just getting your ass kicked. And I remember just wanting to quit every single day. I'd be laying in the, you know, the dorm room. We did training camp in Turlock, California at the time. And was thinking about my escape plan to sneak back out. To get back to Newport.

Starting point is 00:09:59 I was like, nah, you know, like, everybody was right. This just isn't for me. You know, I don't deserve to be playing at this level. It's just like way beyond me. But, you know, just kept showing up, kept grinding. And, you know, fortunately, we had an awful season. You know, and I redshirted that year. Still got my ass kicked throughout the entire year.

Starting point is 00:10:23 But then we had a new coaching staff that had come in so it's kind of like a clean slate for everybody that was there and you know coach tadford basically said you know i don't care you know seniority or whatever like everybody's got a chance to show what they can do dude i love that yeah and so um it was very excited yeah yeah it was during spring football we had some injuries at the tailback position. So I was playing a little bit of fullback and a little bit of tailback. Got to run the rock a little bit and show what I can do athletically. And, you know, it was during that time when one of the strength and conditioning coaches at Cal had come up to me in the weight room.

Starting point is 00:10:59 He was like, hey, you know, keep doing what you're doing. You know, coaches are taking notice, but you got to put on some weight. You know, I was probably 200 pounds soaking wet at the time you know and it was just like most fullbacks at the collegiate level are 230 plus 240 you probably see them upwards of like 260 now you know and so i was challenged with that to just like live my ass off but just consume massive amounts of food and that was a constant struggle and battle for me is to not only put on weight but to maintain the weight once I put it on and you know as you guys know like when you're trying to put it on putting on weight's tough and then trying to like function with that weight too like everything changes like that first step all of a sudden feels super slow.

Starting point is 00:11:45 You're just a completely different person. And you got to 240, right? I remember you saying that. Yeah. So I ended up in college. So I gradually put on like 5 to 10 pounds every year. Going into my senior year, I actually, you know, I was like, you was like at this point started three consecutive

Starting point is 00:12:06 seasons was about to enter my fourth season as a starting fullback for Cal was in a really good place

Starting point is 00:12:12 where I wanted to be like body, physicality, all that and then broke my jaw in spring football

Starting point is 00:12:18 holy shit how did that happen? it was you know some bullshit hitting drill and just got

Starting point is 00:12:23 you know head coach had come over it was just one of those dog days of camp. He came over and got everybody all fired up and I happened to be the next one in line. The linebacker is kind of

Starting point is 00:12:36 nipping at the hills ready to take my head off. It's like a score drill. You're supposed to wait until the running back or whatever catches the ball. Then you turn up and it's just like a full-on collision you know well he didn't wait till i caught the ball i you know catch it i start to turn my head and boom like 260 pounds just like unloads straight through the bottom of my chin and uh i get up you know obviously i was like you know doing that concussion dance or whatever that you do and you get lit up and uh

Starting point is 00:13:06 the head trainer comes over to me and i've got blood like running down my my jersey or whatever he's like nando you all right i was like yeah i think so you're gonna cut it off you're like yeah yeah I can feel like a gap in between my teeth and I'm like I think I might have lost a tooth or something so they're around looking for a lost tooth in the middle of the practice field the drill's still going on and uh you know the teddy comes over to me the head coach and he's like man are you good I was like yeah I guess so let's do this he's like, Mando, are you good? I was like, yeah, I guess so. Let's do this. He's like, all right, you're up. And so I'm going to, like, strap up and, like, get him back, you know? I was, like, pissed at this point.

Starting point is 00:13:51 And luckily, the trainer, like, grabs me by the neck and he's like, Mando, we didn't find your tooth. I think you broke your jaw. I was like, what do you mean I broke my jaw? Are you still, like, talking or what? I'm talking, but I guess as i'm looking at him like every time i breathe the gap between my lower teeth is like widening and like oh my god he's like you're done so yeah i had it uh you know went out that night in san francisco because the oral

Starting point is 00:14:18 surgeon couldn't see me until like the following day and then ended up having it wired shut and it was wired shut for six weeks so then all my meals were drank through like a straw you lost weight for sure oh it was terrible yeah i'm like my uh position coach was like he was the best like he was like taking me out to like you know just bringing stuff over but they gave me like this uh recipe book and you're trying to get the calories in so literally i would like prepare a fully cooked like meal like a hamburger or whatever pasta throw it in a blender and i was just going to say that so when i was playing in college um i was a sophomore and i was living in like a house

Starting point is 00:14:58 like seven other football players and one of the guys um was playing defensive end and then somebody from oklahoma came in and they wanted him to play tackle at Oklahoma and it was the same thing with you. I forgot what it was, but it was something ridiculous. I think he gained like 40 pounds in two months or something like super outrageous, right? So this dude was already like this big ass

Starting point is 00:15:17 fucking Samoan guy. So imagine like how much food he has to eat to like gain weight. Those guys are massive. On top of like what he already weighs, right? Yeah. So I still remember this vividly. I woke up in the morning. I went downstairs. We had a big dining room table.

Starting point is 00:15:30 So he's sitting at the table. He got this huge plate in front of him. Chicken, broccoli, rice, steak, eggs, everything was on that table. And I leave and I go to class and I come back an hour and a half later and he's still sitting at the table still eating. Yeah. Like still just sh shoving the food down so I go upstairs um put all my stuff in my room come back downstairs and he's in the kitchen with the plate over the blender just like putting all his food into the blender and he's like dude I physically cannot chew anymore like I'm super

Starting point is 00:16:00 full of everything but like I can't chew like that that was the hardest part yeah yeah and like imagine like having to do that when you're trying to maintain your weight. It was just super challenging. But came through that, ended up playing out my senior season, ended up setting a school record for consecutively started games, 52 games. So it went from a walk-on to four years starting, which then allowed me to pursue my childhood dream of you know playing in the NFL and but even then so I signed a free agent contract with Bengals uh but still you know at that level you know everybody's bigger faster stronger so

Starting point is 00:16:35 you know now I'm back in the same boat like I'm too small to play fullback even at 240 pounds, like most fullbacks in the NFL were like 260 plus, you know. So for me, it was just eating was a constant battle. And it really was a chore where you're sitting down for, you're like wasting so much time and energy just trying to get enough calories in to support the training that you're doing. And to try to like incrementally move that number on the scale toward what you're supposed to be and I think one of my really frustrating things about that time is you know even though I was at this elite level of athleticism I didn't really feel healthy like you know immediately after I would consume all those calories and food like I'd have heartburn you know I didn't want to go down and

Starting point is 00:17:25 you know take a nap yeah just like you know mental clarity wasn't there and just you know felt like shit you know and you know not super positive body image because you know when you're eating that amount of calories and you're not focused on the source of that food you're putting a lot of fat on as well you know and um you know so it was actually during my time when i was done with football um i actually i had an opportunity to go play abroad in italy and i was playing both ways again so there's no way i can do that at 240 pounds like i'll be gassed within like five minutes and so i consciously started to lose a lot of that weight and when i was living in italy i started to notice like i would go out and buy um produce

Starting point is 00:18:14 or whatever and there it's like there's farmers markets everywhere like every day it's incredible yeah and so i was very fortunate and just like I could walk out two blocks from my house, I live right in the centro, and could go to like, you know, there was like a specialist for each type of food that you wanted. So if you wanted meat or whatever, there was a butcher specifically for that. If you wanted seafood, there's a right there. And like all the produce, with the produce, I noticed that if I bought it, it would perish or start to go bad within three to four days.

Starting point is 00:18:46 Which is like the natural way it should be. Yeah, here it lasts for a month. I was like, whoa, that's so crazy. Why is that? You're starting to learn now a little bit more about nutrition. Exactly. Speaking of learning, I was going to ask you this. When you were in college, how much education did you guys get on food and nutrition?

Starting point is 00:19:04 Were people helping you out? Were they writing meal plans? Zero. It's so crazy to me because now I know that's so fundamental to your performance, not only as an athlete but in the classroom just as a person. Totally. Again, when I later made this connection, life fuel, it's like food is fuel for life.

Starting point is 00:19:28 Simply put, that's all it is, right? Like our body breaks it down into macro and micronutrients to allow us to go out and thrive and be the best version of ourself that we can be. So if you look at it that way, it's like, okay, how do I put the best fuel in my body to operate at maximum capacity yeah and so it was once i had made that psychological connection that like this whole new world like opened up to me you know i remember someone said to me one time like every this is when i was younger and i i was looking up to this guy in the gym who was super jacked and i think he played arena football actually at the time that's when i used to live in hawaii and i was asking him all these questions about food and working out and

Starting point is 00:20:13 what he does and everything and he's like kid every single thing that you put in your body has to have a purpose yeah he's like next time you want to eat something that like you think is really good or whatever that's exactly what it's for it's just to be good that like you think is really good or whatever. That's exactly what it's for. It's just to be good. But like if you want muscle or you want this or you want that, there's a specific reason that every single thing goes in your body. And when you get to that point, you won't have to ask me questions anymore. Yeah. And I remember going home being like, holy shit, like I got to research this.

Starting point is 00:20:37 And I started to find out that like after you work out, you eat carbs or to recover your muscle, you need protein. And I started realizing that there was different qualities of everything and then that's like when my like geekiness of all this kind of started and i was only 18 at the time and i think where that geekiness comes from because i had the exact same effect after so i was playing college football and then got done with that and then kind of got into crossfit and then i noticed that just going harder and going faster just wasn't cutting anymore you know you had to be smarter and pacing came into play and sleeping and recovery and stretching. Because just like you, I wasn't healthy coming out of football.

Starting point is 00:21:11 My body was super beat up. I was just eating whatever someone put in front of me. There was no really thinking through the process at all. But then you figure out, oh, dude, if I just eat this instead of that, or if I just eat at this time instead of this time, all of a sudden you start to feel better. And, like, workouts get easier. And you're sleeping better, and you're more focused, and all this stuff is just coming from making these little changes.

Starting point is 00:21:33 So then you're like, huh, I wonder where I can take this if I really, like, geek out on this stuff hard. They also, they always talk about the farm boy, like, in NFL sports and whatever. They're like, oh, some farm boy from Iowa. It's like, yeah, he's been eating grass-fed bees the best quality food like yeah of anybody exactly yeah i don't know if you had any experience with that with guys you played with yeah absolutely like the dude from the midwest is just like there's so much bigger than like raw strength i was like

Starting point is 00:21:59 yeah you know it was like damn what are they feeding that kid? But he's been doing manual labor probably his whole life. He's eating as close to the source as possible. So we've always heard the saying, you are what you eat, right? Well, that needs to be taken one step further. If you are eating animal products or whatever, you are what you eat eats also and looking at the entire food chain and you know i don't want to like get in a debate of like demonizing any food right because at the end of the day we're all like our own enoblon experiment right it's all you know it's personalized uh i think too often we try to paint nutrition and diet and health for that matter with a very broad stroke.

Starting point is 00:22:49 But the future is personalized and everything's interconnected. So focusing on the source is what's ultimately going to determine, you know, the best output. Right. And so when you focus on that and like you said you eat to feel good you know and if something's not serving you if you have like you know and let's bring it back to whey protein like when i was guzzling down whey protein shakes you know you have those nasty like protein farts or bloated and gassy afterward it's not like yeah that's your body telling you something that's not like responding to you know what you're putting in right and again that's largely because whey is a byproduct of milk production and cheese production i think was it probably back in the 70s or early 80s where you

Starting point is 00:23:38 saw like the massive like bodybuilding craze and all that and it's like drinking a fucking gallon of milk a day will make you huge yeah exactly and lactose production as well exactly the lactose and like a lot of people don't realize that like why is cheese bad or why is dairy bad it's like it's not you're looking at the nutrition facts it doesn't have any sugar in it but it converts to lactose you're still gonna have some sugar effects in there and that's people they skip over that part exactly like oh just it's just added protein i'm like no no no yeah and and you know to get it to you know um product that is consumer friendly it has to go through like large-scale um synthetic production or whatever right so just that whole process like if the the goal is to get protein which is actually to get amino acids right to build and maintain lean muscle which is probably going to come back to

Starting point is 00:24:31 that in a second yeah question for you on that so you know why not go directly to the source right it's like if your dog or if you have a headache right you're not gonna like have your dog eat aspirin and then eat your dog to relieve your headache. If your child eats, maybe. Yeah. But yeah, that's another. It's cultural. It's just kind of like what's just been passed down to us from health knowledge. I think for the first time in a long time, we're actually starting to wake

Starting point is 00:25:05 up to what true health is and what is wrong with industrialized food production across the board. It's a crazy spectrum because everyone right now wants, there's a crazy surplus of people who want to be as smart as everybody in this room right now, which is three. And then there's also a massive uh influx in obesity yeah so you have like two like extremes right everyone is like wants to be super super smart and they want organic this and this and that you know they don't know what the fuck organic means but then you also have people who are more obese than ever

Starting point is 00:25:42 yeah who also need this information. And actually I worked in, so when I was done playing football, I actually was fortunate to take a job with a company called Bariatric Advantage. And that was... Is that Meditenix? So it's a market leader in the bariatric nutrition space.

Starting point is 00:25:59 So basically I would go around the country and educate patients who are preparing for radical weight loss surgery. And we were integrated into the physician's practice. So we're working with all world-class weight loss physicians. And it was during that time which I started to learn a ton about just functional nutrition. And I saw the pain points that these people would have to go through and like how messed up it is that somebody even arrives at that,

Starting point is 00:26:30 that point. Right. And it's, it's so much more complex to than what we were always told is just like work out more and eat less. Like, no, what were they doing?

Starting point is 00:26:40 Uh, is the, the patients. Yeah. What was the protocol for them to, the the protocol for them to so the protocol for them typically uh you know when somebody is suffering from morbidly obese obesity uh they're also morbidly obese what are we looking at 400 pounds uh yeah so like largely it's determined based off of bmi um and then there's uh like comorbidities so type 2 diabetes or risk for elevated risk for

Starting point is 00:27:06 cardiovascular disease diseases so there's like so they're not all massive but they're all yeah they're all yeah yeah extremely overweight um and you know they most of them have tried probably every diet under the underneath the planet and have failed right and reverted back to old behaviors but it's you know it's everything's interconnected it's, you know, it's, everything's interconnected. It's psychological, it's behavioral, it's, you know, uh, multifactorial. And so what they would typically be required to do is undergo like a two week, um, full liquid diet, uh, which the primary goal of that is to, uh, shrink the liver size because a lot of them will present to surgery with a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. And if you go in with a minimally invasive procedure, one of the biggest challenges for the surgeon

Starting point is 00:27:47 is getting the liver up out of the way so they have visibility to go in laparoscopically and do what they need to do to change the anatomy for that procedure. So if the liver is super massive, right, it makes it difficult for it to get up and out of the way. So that juice diet shrinks it down? Yeah, like significantly in a matter of two weeks.

Starting point is 00:28:06 I think it's like 30% reduction in liver size over the course of two weeks. So we're like talking macros, right? Like so the shakes that they were getting, so it's all liquid. So it's mostly just protein. Yeah, it's mostly high protein. There's some supporting carbs and fat, but it's predominantly protein. And it was a meal replacement, so it was fortified with additional vitamins and minerals. And, um, after the surgery due to the change in anatomy and change in diet and just eating less food, uh, they didn't process and absorb and

Starting point is 00:28:36 extract those same, the nutrients the same way from food, uh, had they not had the surgery, right? So they needed to have, um, higher levels of vitamin D3, B12, iron, and all those sorts of things to just make sure their baseline health was taken care of. It was during that time when we had gotten acquired by Metagenics, who's at the forefront of functional nutrition, where that's when I got to geek out like super hard, right? These guys were really, you know, at the cutting edge of, you know, bringing plant-based nutrition and plant-based medicine to the forefront. How long ago was this?

Starting point is 00:29:14 This was 2009, I believe, 2010. Okay. Because I worked for them for about four or five years and just was a sponge. I kind of just learned as much as i could and i was also going through this like personal transformation at the time when i was constantly trying to take my level of health to the next level and personally i tried every diet i remember since i met you i've i've known you to be like the guy who did this for four weeks or this for yeah and this and that yeah so i like paleo keto like we were doing keto before keto was a thing

Starting point is 00:29:45 like we had a keto program like five years ago and yes it works for for short-term weight loss but at what cost right so like what is the long-term longevity like i don't think humans are made to be guzzling like yeah coconut oils and like eating that amount of like bacon or animal fats and that's where you know a lot of these diets get kind of taken out of context it's like i think the original intention and some of the science is there to support it but then you know you have commercial incentives or whatever that take it and plus people keep like we always talk about this people take everything over the top right so fast it. So, it's going to be fast. It becomes cool. And then it's a 10-hour window.

Starting point is 00:30:26 And then it's an 8-hour window. And some dude is like, all right, well, I'm just going to give you a 30-minute window. And it's like, all right, that's not the point anymore. Yeah. Like, you guys fucked it up. Exactly. So, like, for me, so, when I was there, I saw the model for them was direct-to-practitioner, right? But that was such a small subset of, you know, the people that could benefit from this knowledge.

Starting point is 00:30:46 And I started to see an association with a lot of general population that were not optimizing their nutrient intake. And that's multifactorial again because the depreciating nutritional density of the food that we eat. An apple today is not as nutritious as an apple 50 years ago. It's probably traveled halfway around the world by the time it gets to you. It's been sprayed with everything. Yeah, exactly. So thinking about it in that context, I want to kind of hone in on that and then create something that the average know, the average consumer, the average person could

Starting point is 00:31:26 benefit from and, you know, start to, you know, bring these polarities, right, of the two opposite ends of the spectrum a little bit closer together so that people can start to make more informed and conscious decisions about what they're consuming. And for me, that starts with diet and nutrition. But I think once you start to go down that pathway and look at this as a lifestyle, you'll see that start to spill over into all these other aspects of your life.

Starting point is 00:31:57 And when you take a holistic approach to health and wellness, you're gonna see other aspects of your life improve. You're gonna be a better person to be around you're gonna want to inspire other people to like come on board and join that movement and so that's you know at the end of the day what inspires me and us to like do i think people really underestimate stress and we talked about stress with our we had another podcast recently with ceo of power crunch bar and we talked about stress with our, we had another podcast recently with CEO of Power Crunch Bar, and we talked about how, just how important stress is in general. So like if you're consuming stress, which can happen through a variety of different

Starting point is 00:32:32 red meats and eggs and stuff like that, because chicken right now is really bad for you. I'm looking at how most of those animals were treated probably, right? To get that food, right? So you're consuming that stress. At the end of the day, we're all probably, right? To get that food, right? So you're consuming that stress. At the end of the day, we're all energy, right? So you're either absorbing and consuming positive energy or negative energy. And this is something we talked about with Ronnie too. Like everything is like the energy of the food that you're putting in is automatically going to transfer into you.

Starting point is 00:32:57 And like inflammation and all that stuff is automatically transferring. And inflammation, like that's usually the catalyst of all the bad shit that happens in the body right except you can get a control and eat an anti-inflammatory diet and you know combat stress and just kind of think about all these things that are you know manifesting the negative effects of health then you're going to be in a much better position. So I have two questions here. So we have, now you're about to create live fuel after all this experience and everything. So now you have to choose what type of protein you're going to use. So a lot of the research out there is like a lot of people are using rice protein or pea protein and things like that. And then part of number two, so talk about what got you to where you chose the protein that you used for LifeFuel.

Starting point is 00:33:46 And then question two would be, does whey protein have more inflammation than what you chose? Yep. So start with the first question. So when starting LifeFuel, so it was just like a unique, and going the entrepreneurial route is never easy. I had a really good thing going with Metagenics, was managing seven states, was in a position to kind of climb up the corporate ladder. But I was a little bit complacent, and there was just something that I felt was... You're an athlete. There's no way you're going to let people tell you what to do. No, impossible.

Starting point is 00:34:21 So I had something in me that was like compelling me to do something more. I took an opportunity to join a startup, flamed out after three months and then was at that like, oh shit moment. Like, what do I do now? Do I run back and like ask for my job back and like that sort of thing? Or do I sink my teeth into like getting this venture started? And fortunately, I chose the latter. Ended up moving back to italy uh former teammate of mine had started a crossfit gym over there so i was just coaching crossfit at his gym and you know was away from all the distractions that

Starting point is 00:34:56 can come up here and was able to do a deep dive into building the business and that's at that time when i was doing super in-depth research about, okay, what is this, you know, flagship product look like? And another one of the challenges that I saw with those patients is like even myself is I was on this proactive side of health, right? Trying to put the right things in my body. But my cabinet looked like somebody that was like suffering from chronic illness right i'm taking like 15 supplements a day and just like a golf ball or you know softball size of capsules or whatever i was like this is crazy you know and just started to look at the way the supplement industry is and it's it takes a reductionist approach right i mean most companies try to sell

Starting point is 00:35:43 thousands of products you know b12 d3 k2 this that whatever and it's just like jumping on the next like hot trend so i really wanted to dive deep into the science that has been like sound for for time right and that always led back to plants and i love that approach because we've talked about that too the same thing comes with nutrition you talked about all the trends that always come up and i feel like you just kind of recycle through those trends but behind everything there's the basis that always works and there's always the og something yeah yeah yeah and so you know i knew that there would be a challenge in a debate between whey protein and plant-based protein it was something that i

Starting point is 00:36:24 personally had to debate against because it was something that i personally had to debate against because it was something that i was always like told that was the gold standard right like if you're an athlete yeah you have to have whey or animal-based protein however there are studies that have supported that as long as you're getting a diversified source of plant-based sources you're hitting all those essential amino acids, right? As long as you're all very essential. So any singular plant is, quote-unquote, non-complete, right? Whereas an animal-based source like whey, you have complete amino acids.

Starting point is 00:36:56 So what we did is we paired rice and pea protein. So now you've got all the essential amino acids. And so there's studies that have been done that show whey protein versus that combination of plant-based protein. And for like the strength benefits and muscle building benefits, it's like the same results. Yeah, I've seen some of the charts where it's pretty similar. But there's a lot of people out there that are really pissed about the essential amino acids. Yeah. Like, they're saying that a lot of the pea proteins, like, specifically, they're lacking, like, two or three of the aminos. I can't remember off the top of my head. They're lower.

Starting point is 00:37:32 So that's why if you pair with rice, so rice tends to be higher and the ones that pea are more deficient in, right? So now you have something that's more equivocal to a whey-based product. And that's what your product has? Yeah. So we use a combination of pea and rice protein to get that, you know, to parity of what you would expect and get with a whey protein product without all the nasty side effects. Yeah. And it's usually processed less from what I've read than whey protein. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:38:00 I mean, you still, even with plants, right, you still have to dive into the source right because And that's kind of what we're constantly going through as a company I think the visibility and the transparency to the consumer is super important You know we're constantly looking to you know shake things up and like making sure that Eventually we want to have that direct relationship with the farmer right and so we're super hands-on with where our stuff's coming from and trying to get it all sourced organic so that none of it's you know has the pesticides and herbicides and all the other crap so what does that look like that connection like trying to get the best farmers like how it's just it's more research it's more like and now when i do have the opportunity to travel like we spent um my girlfriend and I like a week on a biodynamic or organic farm in Costa Rica.

Starting point is 00:38:47 They've got a completely closed loop system. And so you see like the entire, so you're there at the farm. Oh yeah. Yeah. And this, these guys, these guys had to,

Starting point is 00:38:55 um, agree with a supplement company before. So the supplement company, um, was scouring the world for an organic, the most potent source of ginger. Eventually aligned with this guy who started this radical idea down in Costa Rica, this closed-loop biodynamic organic farm,

Starting point is 00:39:14 and they started doing ginger production for the supplement company. When you say closed-loop, what does that mean exactly? So closed-loop is basically renewable energy. So everything that you're doing has um is basically putting back you're not expending more resources than you need essentially all right so as far as like any energy production and like how they're um like they have dairy cows on the farm but those support the ecosystem of the entire farm right so cows are then providing fertilizer back to the plants that they're growing you know that's actually a really big deal for those of

Starting point is 00:39:51 you guys who are listening because for anybody who's farming right now like they say over 90% of the topsoil is actually like 90% of the organic topsoil that we should have in our environment is completely gone like we're working with like 10% less yeah 10% or less of like true organic legit soil right which again goes back to like the nutritional density like it's scary the pathway that we're on you know and most of the farmland now is being used for livestock and animal feed yeah you know and it's not even for human consumption it's so that the animals have enough food so that we can then go eat the animals you know and it's just crazy when you look at this from a global view um you know it's undeniable the detrimental effects that it's

Starting point is 00:40:41 having on our planet you know i think sometimes we're a little bit you know isolated here we're very fortunate to live in the place that we do but like look at places all over the world like they're running out of resources like there's places i think in south africa like they're like almost out of water you know and imagine what what type of chaos ensues when you can't have your basic human needs met so you know i think it's it's easy for us to focus in on like okay what's optimal for me individually but i think taking it to the next step and you know being conscious and consuming consciously about not just food but everything that you're doing in life uh needs to happen more we need to wake up wake up to the decisions that we're making. And when we do sit down to eat, it's a vote. You're either for or against industrialized food production. And you're

Starting point is 00:41:33 either voting in line or out of line with what your worldview is. And I think when you start to break it down to that context, you might start to think differently about what you're choosing to put in your body. Yeah. The closed loop thing is super interesting to me because I think a lot of issues that we're having with the quality of food right now is just that we have to produce so much of it so fast. If you look at how much chicken in pounds in America or the world consumes on a daily, weekly, yearly basis, you can't keep up and keep the quality up at the same time.

Starting point is 00:42:13 In our lifetime, we are set. The world population is continuing to grow on a massive scale. We'll pass over $10 billion or $12 billion. The CEO of Power Crunch told us that our resources right now

Starting point is 00:42:29 are to supply a billion people and we have eight billion. Yeah, I think if we continue on the path now, I think we'll run out of food to feed the planet

Starting point is 00:42:38 within our lifetime. So that was going to be my question. So do you think, so we asked him what the option is. Yeah. And basically we came

Starting point is 00:42:44 to a conclusion we just got to kill like six billion people and then there was a there was a way for us to do it though what was it i think he just said go back to like you know go back to like the basics like everybody has their own farm type of thing but that wouldn't even work with no but he was saying like you just basically kill each other somehow like there was like a like you're fighting for food and you just kill somebody for it. Yeah, so that's what it is. So that's what it is.

Starting point is 00:43:08 So do you think this closed loop thing could be something that would be able to support the entire world if done correctly? Yes, I think, you know, he's right to a degree. Like we have to get back to the point where we are taking control over our own food right um and yes it's it's a little bit challenging in modern lifestyles uh because it's like here like where would you put a garden right but with hydroponics and vertical farming and some of these things you can essentially create an entire farm uh in the building right So that could be a scalable option going forward. And then, you know, repurposing the arable land that we still do have and not have it dedicated

Starting point is 00:43:57 toward animal and livestock feed and going toward feeding the planet, right? Right. Or just be Elon Musk and look at a new planet just leave is that what he's doing right now is he looking for another planet well the whole like mars i know he's doing like the rockets yeah trying to get people to live up there right yeah he's probably just colonized mars i think uh send the first humans to mars within the next decade wow yeah so it's definitely an option yeah but like the amazing thing about

Starting point is 00:44:26 the planet about the human body is it has an incredible ability to heal and to course correct right so as long as we you know one wake up to what's going on and choose to take action i think you know we can get back on the path toward you know building a private future so if let's just say all the farms in the world just turn into plant-based farms instead of animal based animal-based farms would that create more products for us yeah i think well what would happen i think if we because you have to switch over to plant-based, we'd be able to feed 3.5 billion more people. Oh, wow. Something like that. I didn't check the facts on that, but I think it's like billions of people that we'd be able to feed.

Starting point is 00:45:15 Yeah, if you look at the water consumption that it takes to produce, let's say, a hamburger compared to what it takes to produce the same amount of protein by beans or lentils or whatever, it's like probably one 10th or one 20th or even more of what it would take. Right. So, you know, it's efficiency. Yeah. That's something I didn't even think about was the water in that aspect. Oh, the water consumption is huge. And then the, also like the byproducts and the waste that are coming from the animals are ruining our ground soil. They're leaking into the oceans. It's disrupting and destroying the fish production.

Starting point is 00:45:53 Well, they're already eating shitty quality of food anyway. Yeah. And then they're getting that into. Exactly. Yeah. And the same thing with like way production. Like we figured out how to create way from from animal byproducts but there's another thing that people don't know about and it's actually a big problem that um what's the big like greek

Starting point is 00:46:11 yogurt company fire um i don't know i forget anyway there's like acid whey which is like another residual production of they haven't figured out what to do with so it's just kind of being dumped into back into the the planet yeah that's how way originally started right it was like this leftover mass they didn't know what to do exactly right exactly yeah so as much as i love whey protein um and i was won over by the power punch guy this is like throwing me on the way right so i just want you to sway me more into it. Besides all of these great earth effects, some people say things like about your intestinal tract. So to have plant-based protein, a lot of those animals are consuming plants.

Starting point is 00:46:55 They don't have a small intestine and mainly a large intestine. So they have a smaller intestinal tract. Like we're made to eat meat. That's a no. Debatably, right? Yeah, debatably. You know, give me a- Yeah, debatably right so go ahead you know give me a debatably like i mean

Starting point is 00:47:06 yeah so like when you're an infant uh you know you have mother's milk or whatever but the composition of mother's milk is very very different from any animal based no argument right and if you look at animals right because at the end of the day we're an evolution of the animal species uh they're not you you know, drinking milk. From another animal. Yeah. Yeah. So why do we as humans do that, right?

Starting point is 00:47:31 And if whey is just, you know, a derivative of milk, how does it serve us, you know? And especially if there's a cleaner, more digestible source available, you know, I think it's an easy argument to make and then you throw in those other factors to it i think the writing on the wall is very clear that this is the direction that we need to go all right one of the big arguments that um kevin lawrence from power crunch was making was that they were able to hydrolyze the way in a certain way where it goes into your bloodstream a lot faster type of thing,

Starting point is 00:48:05 so it gets digested. And so if I just get done working out, I can drink the protein and it's in my bloodstream faster. Is there stuff like that to do? Yeah, you can do hydrolyzed plant protein. You can do isolated plant proteins and all that sort of thing. Again, it goes... I never see those marketed, though.

Starting point is 00:48:21 It's just plant-based protein. Yeah, but if you look at the source, you can have like an isolate, a pea protein isolate or whatever, right? Why hasn't anyone marketed that yet though? I think that would really win over a lot of the – I think a lot of people take protein. I think the vast majority of them because they're into working out. Yeah. Otherwise, you're probably just eating it and you're not really worried about taking some sort of supplement. But I think if it said hydrolyzed on the product, you might take some bodybuilder's eyes

Starting point is 00:48:48 and be like, oh, well, maybe I'll give this a go. Well, plants are already more bioavailable than an animal-based source. So your body actually has to do more work to break down an animal-based protein than it does a plant-based protein. So you're putting additional stress on your body

Starting point is 00:49:04 to break that down into something that's usable. Again, at the end of the day, you're just trying to break protein down into building blocks, amino acids that your body can use to build a muscle and do what it needs to do in the body, right? So a lot of times, you know, and this is my problem with, you know, the health industry and like commercialized goods,

Starting point is 00:49:23 like you see 40 grams of protein, 50 grams of protein, right? But how much of that is actually absorbed, digested, and utilized in the body, right? And if you don't have the right enzymes, if it's not already highly bioavailable, yes, you have to go through additional processing and synthetic ways to make that more easily digested. Plants are already easily digested, so they don't require those additional manufacturing processes that exist with whey protein. So if I'm taking whey protein or animal protein and they both have 50 grams per serving or whatever it is, I actually get more of the protein from the plant-based one. Yeah, so it goes, there's kind of the way, one of the main ways to determine, like, the

Starting point is 00:50:12 absorbability or quality of a protein that's a PD gas score, right? So protein digestible correct amino acid score, right? So whey-based protein has, like, a 1.0. Plant-based protein, like a combination of p and rice is like a 0.9 something so it's not exactly one but it's pretty damn close um and there's now more money and science and innovation going into how do we get closer to a one-to-one yeah right and it's at the end of the day it's funny right that's where a lot of the money has been is on commercializing whey protein.

Starting point is 00:50:50 It's way cheaper to make. So there's more profit for a company. But at what cost? But also, you can get into, we won't get too deep into this, but you could just do government, what would you call it? Subsidies or?

Starting point is 00:51:09 You know, when. The political agenda? Yes. There we go. So right now. If they want to get rid of whey, they'll get rid of whey. Yeah. If they want to get rid of cheese, they'll get rid of cheese.

Starting point is 00:51:18 Yeah, there's a. If they want to get rid of you, they'll get rid of you. Very true. I think the revised dietary guidelines are up for review in 2020. It's interesting. There were just some preliminary statements that had come out based off the people that have a say at the table for this type of stuff. You have the dairy farmers. You have plant-based advocates or whatever. And obviously the dairy farmers are trying to take that off the table. Like, okay, it shouldn't be addressed or focused on at all. And it sucks so bad. I hate it.

Starting point is 00:51:55 Yeah. And it's, it's BS because you need to look at the other correlating factors and kind of what, you know, the animal-based products are doing to our health, like there's just a study that came out, and we've known this for a long time, but now fortunately it's starting to be more publicized, is you are increasing your risk of cardiovascular disease by eating red meat, you know, versus eating more plants, right? right so and all the other lifestyle illnesses that we largely suffer from are rooted back to their animal-based protein their massive amounts of sugar just like industrialized processed food so when someone's eating whey now um are they creating more inflammation in their body as opposed to plants and is it

Starting point is 00:52:46 significant absolutely i mean you know if you have to like basically you're putting something your body your body's going to you know immediately set resources to break that down right and then what happens if you're over consuming, which happens often, right? 50 grams of protein shake. Yeah. Well, it's like how much protein do you really need at the end of the day? Right. Um, that what's not being absorbed and utilized is sitting in your gut, probably going rancid,

Starting point is 00:53:16 toxic or whatever. And it's leading to a catalyst of inflammation and other, a chain reaction of bad events that occur. Right. So it's a problem. Yeah. All right. Well, there's a pretty good amount of questions there. Um, let's talk about, you know, just, you know, I guess, um, your views on like what the health movie, and then also let's get into, you have another movie that you want to talk about. That's going to come out with, is it a James Cameron?

Starting point is 00:53:43 Yeah. Game changers. Game Changer, right? Okay, so let's go both of those movies. So you saw What the Health? I saw What the Health, yeah. I actually met with Kip a few times. He's very interested in what we were doing. Is that the guy who did the show? Kip Anderson, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:53:57 He's the guy going everywhere, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's, I guess, the director, producer, whatever, of What the Health. I love what he did because it was very radical. I didn't even hear about plant-based diets until that movie.

Starting point is 00:54:14 Yeah. I mean, I heard of it, but it wasn't like, dude, I'm fucking going vegan. Right. I was training a guy

Starting point is 00:54:20 who literally went vegan after he saw the movie instantly. I mean, both of us, I remember you watched the movie and you were like, whatever you fucking do, don't watch this movie.

Starting point is 00:54:26 It's going to fuck you up. Yeah, it does. I watched it and for like two weeks all I was talking about going vegan. I was like, dude, this is like insane. Yeah, I think there's like on that note, I think there's a very clear distinction that we should make. Like veganism or going vegan, you can be like a junk food vegan. Like just because you're vegan doesn't

Starting point is 00:54:45 mean you're necessarily eating healthy right and that's why i think it goes back 100 goes back to the source right there's tons of vegan products and food out there that are not necessarily good for you or good for the planet either right if they're highly industrialized and processed right so that's why our approach my approach is whole food plant-based, right? Try to eat as much stuff that's not in a package per se as possible and really focus in on the source and the quality of what you're putting in your body, right? So I think that documentary did an excellent job at like just opening people's eyes to the reality of industrialized food production, right? Plus what we were talking about with like who gives the money and who pays for all these studies. Yeah, the political agenda behind everything. Yeah, so the whole point that he was making with when you go to the cancer research or whatever

Starting point is 00:55:35 and it's all sponsored by red meat. Yeah. That was super eye-opening to me. Definitely. Yeah, and that's why with some of these these um studies that get you know largely publicized you have to do a little bit of your own research to see who is behind those study and what their motives are what their what is their political agenda right you're gonna guarantee it's already happening but you're gonna start to see more stuff coming out that's, again, quoted to be scientific, but is largely rooted

Starting point is 00:56:07 in political agendas because these companies are starting to lose market share. That's why you're seeing massive acquisitions of plant-based companies now because Kellogg's and Procter & Gamble, whoever, all these big CPG companies see the direction where the market's going. Consumers are waking up to the bad shit that we've put in our body for far too long. And if they don't find a way to acquire those companies or manufacture their own goods that align with people's new plant-based diet and lifestyle they're going to be out of business so so um this next movie let's talk about that real quick and how i know you're really excited about it you think it's going to put a giant push towards plant-based protein which is great for anyone who owns a plant-based company

Starting point is 00:57:01 let's talk about a little because i i know that I don't know about this movie very much. I know that we had talked to other people who didn't hear about the movie, but you know about it, so I think we'll give people a little... Yeah, so the name of the movie is Game Changers. It's done by James Cameron,

Starting point is 00:57:14 so Avatar, like Titanic. He's done some major films, right? And so, you know, with that celebrity, with that cachet, he's been able to pull in some big name athletes and just people in the fitness industry in general i think arnold's a part of the film

Starting point is 00:57:30 i've only seen the trader i know it's debuted at sundance but i think you know what the health was big i think this is going to be tenfold what uh what the health was especially like that yeah and especially with you know again a lot of people are you know focused on their own individual like performance longevity or whatever so i think this will start to shed the light on that and how you can be a plant-powered athlete and still get the results that you're seeking not sure if you saw it but during the the olympics there was a commercial that came out and it was um like it's almost the same format of like those got milk commercials yeah but it was all um like i won gold and without dairy and like all this stuff yeah it's really cool yeah you get a chance uh i'm sure you can youtube it or something but

Starting point is 00:58:19 yeah but this is you know my belief it's's a movement. And it's an opportunity for people to get on the right side of shaking things up and challenging the status quo and taking ownership of your health and nutrition education and making a decision that's good for you, good for our future, good for the planet. So I don't know enough about this to have my own opinion about this, but I've heard a lot of arguments kind of going back and forth that if everybody in the world switched to a vegan or vegetarian diet, that it could also be bad implications on the world.

Starting point is 00:58:58 For example, the green gas emissions it takes to make a fucking head of lettuce or it takes this much water to get this many strawberries. So that there are bad factors as well if everybody were to switch over do you think that's true um you know i think it depends on what specifically you're referring to i mean we know it takes way more uh resources to produce you know animal-based products. Yeah, and they also, the methane gases from animals actually contribute, I think the second biggest factor

Starting point is 00:59:33 to greenhouse gases, more than the entire transportation sector combined. Holy shit. That's their farts, basically. That's all it is. Exactly. Yeah, so when you're trying to make an argument you know producing more strawberries versus that yeah you know i don't think so but you know i

Starting point is 00:59:53 think it's it's uh i think it's a healthy balance i don't think that we need to demonize animal-based protein i think we do need to understand our level of consumption of animal-based products in general. If you look at human evolution, you know, going back to the Paleolithic era, you know, it's not like it was just on demand that you can get a hamburger or whatever whenever you wanted. You know, you walk down to the closest teepee and it was like, hey, give me two big bags um you know it actually required you know energy and time to go out and hunt um forage for that food right so and sometimes you ate plants yeah and you didn't eat meat majority of the time hunter and gatherer not just hunter yeah 90 of the time you probably were eating plants until you were lucky enough to, you know, get that kill or whatever and bring it back to the tribe and then you would feast, right?

Starting point is 01:00:52 And that's why I think you see the keto stuff kind of, or the intermittent fasting stuff working so well, is because we've been constantly, we've evolved to go through those periods of feast and famine. I think that's a great point. After the Walter Health movie, I was talking to a lot of people, even people who are vegan or vegetarian and one big point that all of them were making were you don't have to switch over completely. No.

Starting point is 01:01:12 You know, but because I was telling them like, I eat like four eggs every single morning. They were like, maybe don't do that. You know, maybe just eat eggs like three times a week and maybe don't have meat with every single meal. Maybe just find like a healthy balance and I think that's a great approach to it approach to it yeah that's where i personally that's you know this is not you know it's not most people don't wake up and just go like 100 all in the next day for me it was a personal journey it wasn't you know i was like okay i'm gonna be 100 plant-based cut out complete animal products all together right it's you know eliminating certain foods or changing the type of

Starting point is 01:01:45 food that you're eating see how you feel how your body responds and then slowly going more in that direction that's kind of the concept what we launched with our flagship product if you replace one meal a day with that you're already you know stepping yeah in the right direction and you might feel the difference i remember asking you, how have you been feeling? And you said, you know, I've definitely been having, this is before you even had a company. So you had no moral obligation to sell me a product. Right, yeah. Nor have you ever bought one.

Starting point is 01:02:15 You've always given me stuff. So, like, I remember you saying to me, you know, I don't have the bloat anymore. And I feel this way. Like, let's talk about some of the things that you feel switching just by switching a little bit yeah let's talk about that so on how do you feel like and you work out yeah do you really need this one are you completely switch no idea I still I don't purchase me but like in social gatherings you know the biggest challenge is kind of been you know go to my parents like every Sunday we'll have family dinner I've been trying to get

Starting point is 01:02:43 them to embrace a more plant-based diet and lifestyle, and they've been really good about it. They haven't totally forgone meat altogether. So sometimes we'll have fish, or I get them to try to purchase organic grass-fed, grass-finished beef if we are consuming red meat. But I'm trying to, again, I'm still on this journey. I'm still on this pathway to reducing my consumption personally. Gotcha.

Starting point is 01:03:06 And trying to be an influence on others just to give them the education so that they can make their own decision. But yeah, as far as some of the health benefits that I've personally felt by making the switch and gone further down this road is my sleep quality is like drastically improved. My clarity and focus like i don't think most people know what feeling good is right 100 you know it's a common question like oh how you feel i feel fine the acronym for fine is fucked up insecure neurotic and emotional so that's not it's not not a great way to live.

Starting point is 01:03:47 We have so many good analogies on this. Amanda's killing the analogy game for sure. So I want to feel great. I want to feel amazing. I want to operate at as close to 100% capacity as possible, right? And by making the switch and going down this route, again, I start to see other components of my life improve right my energy is way more consistent you know i'm not dependent on uh caffeine i can use caffeine i loved you guys the podcast on caffeine it was incredible but now you can start

Starting point is 01:04:18 to use that as you know again as an advantage right exactly it's not just something you consume every day because you have to yeah you actually get the effect from it that you exactly want from them exactly when i minimize that and i have it like even every other day i'm like on one you know it's so excited but that's so crazy that you say that because i talked to people about that all the time when i was in college i mean you know how college goes you're sleeping like three hours a night you know what i mean your Your diet sucks. I'm eating like fucking Pop-Tarts and ramen noodles and all that stuff. So it felt fine.

Starting point is 01:04:50 Yeah, you said it felt fine. Most of it. You know what I mean? And then graduated. Like I said, the whole graduation, like all that stuff kind of started switching a little bit. Got into CrossFit. Got into meditation. Got more into like geeking out about nutrition and all that stuff.

Starting point is 01:05:03 And sleeping more. Sleep has been like a huge thing for me and all of a sudden you're like holy fuck i've been in this haze for the last five years like i haven't i haven't really been awake yeah and you don't realize until you like get out of it so i think that's such a great yeah people like don't know what it actually feels like to feel good well a drug addict drug addict feels fine yeah exactly like honestly they feel fine they don't know right yeah that's the first thing until you come out on the other side it's the first thing they talk about i want to get out of rehab and stuff is like oh my god like i didn't even know like all these things and this and that and blah blah blah and i would say um yes for me it's about

Starting point is 01:05:37 efficiency you know and just having stuff that supports you know my lifestyle and being out and going to do amazing things. It was last year when you're like, hey, let's go do the Rim to Rim Grand Canyon. I was like, all right, sure, sounds great. No idea what I was getting myself into. But we did a 30-mile hike in one day. Yeah, yeah, it was incredible. I had some heat stroke, but that's fine.

Starting point is 01:06:00 There's no way, you know, I could do some of that stuff if i wasn't putting the right fuel in my body on a consistent basis you know and i think that's what it ultimately comes down to is just fueling the tank with the stuff that's going to help you optimize your life um i love using the analogy of like let's say we only get one car right you're going to drive that car for the rest of your life and say we all start out with the ferrari but if you're not getting routine oil checks and like putting the right octane and gasoline in that at the end of the day it's going to be a pinto right so you know you want that to perform as the automobile that it was designed to be for as long as possible the human body is no different you know by providing

Starting point is 01:06:46 it with the right nutrients and fuel you're going to optimize health performance and longevity maintain a high quality of life for as long as you possibly can right and that's where you know who knows what the capacity uh to that is and why wanted to build it for 500 years you know it only needs plans yeah that is great I mean they had some really good points in the What the Health

Starting point is 01:07:10 movie for sure I'm excited to see the Game Changer one yeah me too my only skepticism would be like how does someone like James Cameron

Starting point is 01:07:16 get into a movie role like this like is someone paying him on some I think he's vegan oh he is vegan yeah yeah yeah

Starting point is 01:07:23 he would have to have like his own intentions yeah and actually Leonardo DiCaprio was involved in What the Health also on some I think he's vegan oh he is vegan yeah yeah yeah he would have to have like I think uh yeah actually Leonardo DiCaprio was involved in what the health also oh wow yeah he's in the you know uh production side of it is he vegan as well yeah oh he is yeah yeah yeah so there's a lot of you know did you know that there's a lot of people out there athletes, or whatever that are plant-based or vegan that are starting to help to advocate for around the awareness. That's great. Some of the best way to do that now is through film and video production.

Starting point is 01:07:56 Yeah. We'll have a movie night when it comes out. Yeah. That's going to be good. Do we know when it's coming out? I know it debuted at Sundance. I don't know if they're doing, like, when the debut is or whatever and what their plan is for distribution,

Starting point is 01:08:11 if it's going to be, like, movie theaters or if it's going to be on Netflix or whatever. But, yeah, we should definitely do something, like an event around it. That would be super cool. So let's say, you know, someone on this show is like, holy shit, I'm going to try this plant-based thing. This is a really good point. Yeah. Kind of the way I felt when I watched What the Health.

Starting point is 01:08:29 So when someone's looking for a product, Life Fuel or Vega, which Vega, by the way, right now is the number one selling protein in the world. Power Punch guy was super pissed about it. So when someone's looking for a product, like what should they look for when they're looking for a product, what should they look for when they're looking for a product? I love hearing your side of, I went to Costa Rica to look at this crazy-ass farm and this and that, and I'm like, oh my God, I love this guy already. So I'm someone now who doesn't know anything about any brands or anything.

Starting point is 01:09:02 What am I looking for on the label? Tell me everything I need to know to buy the best plant-based protein i would say first don't start with a product so what we do at life is we try to encourage people to start with our 21 day life transformation so essentially what that is it's a blueprint of how to adapt a more plant-based diet and lifestyle and you guys give this away? Yeah. Yeah. So we sell it on our website. I've given it away to tons of people as well.

Starting point is 01:09:31 The website is? It's lifefuel.com. L-Y-F-E-F-U-E-L.com. And so, yes, there's product support with that because with our all-in-one nutritional shake, it includes all the core components that you would typically get from a whole food plant-based meal, right? So I'm looking for pea and rice protein combined. So if I'm looking at a pea protein supplement, for those of you listening right now, that's not... If it's just pea, you're going to miss some of those essential

Starting point is 01:10:00 amino acids, right? So if your goal is for muscle recovery and performance, you're going to, that's not the best option for you. So you want something that's complimentary protein source to make sure all those amino acids are covered. You can also, if you're looking at specifically for post-workout muscle recovery, you want to make sure it has, I think the rule of thumb is 3.5 grams of branched-shaped amino acids. So those are the amino acids that are associated with muscle building and repair. Above 3.5 grams of BCAAs, you're kind of, it's losing.

Starting point is 01:10:36 Just quite agree on the label. Yeah, exactly. More is not always better, right? So we sell a line of different products but they all start with plant-based protein for the most part for our powders and then we also look at other components we start with the end in mind so how does a person want to feel what is their objective and how do we reverse engineer the products to get them to that point and what natural occurring plant-based compounds and remedies exist that we can use in those products to support those goals.

Starting point is 01:11:11 Okay. So again, not just being a protein company, that's not who and what we are. We're a lifestyle company and everything that we do from a product standpoint is comprehensive. They have more than one nutritional ingredient and they're all formulated to get people to feel good and thrive. Awesome. So if you don't get all those, the plant-based company sucks. Yeah, basically. Yeah, it's like, you know, again, it's challenging, you know, in business, you know, the model is like sell more products, sell more stuff. Why not just sell better stuff that works?

Starting point is 01:11:50 Allowing the customer to take fewer things to get a better result. Because people care about money more than they care about their customer. That's a whole other issue. If you look at this as a movement and a lifestyle, the money comes, you know. For sure. You know, and again, like going back to what you had asked earlier, like I wouldn't be able to expend the amount of energy that I'm able to to pursue this entrepreneurial journey if my health and everything that we're doing at Chalk is not, you know, aligned, allowing me to hit that reset button during the day, refresh my mind, refresh my body, and then dive back in to building a business, you know? Yeah, totally.

Starting point is 01:12:29 So talking about life fuel, um, anything else you guys have coming up, like cool stuff you're working on that you might be able to tell us about? yes. So you have a turmeric thing, right? Yeah. So we launched,

Starting point is 01:12:38 we just launched our, uh, post-workout recovery shake. Uh, you know, I think it's an exciting product for me because now we finally have a solution. Is that what you brought us? Yeah, that's the samples I brought you guys.

Starting point is 01:12:48 I'm excited to try it. So that's got, again, a combination of pea and rice protein. We put some maca root in there, so that's also very good. It's supposed to be good for just that strong. Yeah, exactly. It's got a superfood berry blend, so that includes acerola, jabuticaba, a bunch of Amazonian super fruits. I don't know any one of those, but I'm just going to tell you. I can only say that because I have a Brazilian girlfriend.

Starting point is 01:13:12 It took me forever to be able to pronounce jabuticaba. It's got chlorella, which also has been shown to have some good post-workout benefits. And then other key nutrients that help replenish the minerals lost when you sweat, magnesium, and reduce muscle soreness so that you're getting back feeling amazing and you can get the most output out of the workout you do the next day. Awesome. Cool. So where can everybody find your products? So everybody can find our products directly on our website at LifeFuel.com l-y-f-e-f-u-l.com they can follow us on instagram at life fuel uh which i posted on my instagram uh you guys can

Starting point is 01:13:52 check it out behind fish and um yeah if we're out of stock for whatever reason on our website which has happened a lot fortunately but unfortunately we can also be found on amazon we just opened up arowarm markets so anybody who's local in LA or Southern California and stop over there and get it and then cool yeah hopefully more places yeah if you guys have never been to an air one if you think Whole Foods is like a healthy place which is debatable at this point in time I mean air, Air One is like the creme de la creme. It's the platinum of all the jewelry. It's the nicest place you can be.

Starting point is 01:14:29 So his product would definitely not be in there if it wasn't the absolute top-notch stuff. Anything else you got to add, Fish? Anything else you got going on? I was going to say, yeah. Well, first off, let's definitely uh, definitely just give a, you know, a little nod over to Mando over here. He really, uh, made me feel really good about his company and plant-based protein and, oh, it's so stressful.

Starting point is 01:14:56 Cause like we just saw the power crunch guy. It's a battle, right? I was like, I love him. And then I love Mando and it's like, I love like the and then I love Mando, and it's like, I love, like, the entire, like, business, you know, perspective, not the business perspective, but, like, the life perspective behind each one. I don't know that they have to be mutually exclusive. I mean, maybe, you know.

Starting point is 01:15:17 I was going to say, yeah, baby steps. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to, I'm definitely 100% going to be, um, trying pants, pants, plant-based protein. You guys know, we don't ever wear pants on the show. So, um, so yeah, I definitely want to try a little bit more of the plant-based proteins at least a few days a week to see how I feel. Um, now that he's got the post-workout, I'll give that a go. All right. So, you know, I hope you

Starting point is 01:15:52 guys really, really like that. And as far as Yaya and myself are concerned, Yaya, do you have anything going on right now you want to tell anybody about? So building my own graphic design agency. I don't know how many of you guys know that I do all the design stuff, all the going on right now you want to tell anybody about um so building my own graphic design agency i don't know how many of you guys know that i do all the design stuff all the production stuff publication everything for chalk for real chalk for ryan all this stuff's going on so i'm trying to make an actual design agency so it's going to be a little more organized and we're going to be able to output more work much faster yeah a lot of the stuff you guys see that I put on my Instagram for the stories for the podcast and everything going on, all that artwork and everything is from Yaya.

Starting point is 01:16:32 So if you guys want to find him on Instagram, it's Yaya's View. That's right. And then myself, you guys know me, owner of CrossFit Chalk, co-host of this podcast here and I make programming for people and their gyms to make them better gyms and make better athletes so if you guys ever want to follow my programming crossfitchalk.com sign up go to the online link and it's 20 a month and you can follow what we do in the gym and all the badasses that we make including chris on this show so all right guys hope you guys loved it we We will see you soon.

Starting point is 01:17:08 Alrighty kids, and that will do it. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Real Chalk Podcast. We always love having you guys here and we also love hearing from you guys. If it's just A, you guys are awesome or A, you guys suck, whatever you guys want to tell us, my Instagram is going to be at Yaya's View.

Starting point is 01:17:24 We got Fish at Ryan Fish. That is S-C-H Fish. Head over there. Go slide into our DMs. Let us know what you guys like, what you guys don't like, maybe some topics you want to hear about, some guests you would love to see on the show, or just if you want to say hi. We always love hearing from you guys. So make sure you get in there. We will be back next week with another awesome episode. Until then, guys, stay jacked.

Barbell Shrugged - Real Chalk — Plant Based Power w/ Chris Manderino — 37

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