Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #55 Chris Bell

Episode Date: October 15, 2018

Chris Bell is an is an American director, producer and writer, known for his documentaries Bigger, Stronger, Faster (2008), Trophy Kids (2013), Prescription Thugs (2015) and most recent A Leap of faith (2018). In this episode Chris stops by to talk with Kyle about his new documentary A Leaf of Faith, his career with the WWE, and working with his brother Mark Bell on their upcoming new movie The War on Carbs. Their movie takes a deep dive in the science behind the ketogenic diet as well as the carnivore diet. Check out Cris Bell's new movie A Leaf Of Faith | https://bit.ly/2QNsuM5 Chris bell on: Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/bigstrongfast/?hl=en Twitter | https://bit.ly/2IXAAPT Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk Get 10% off at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/podcast/ Connect with Onnit on: Twitter | https://twitter.com/Onnit       Instagram | https://bit.ly/2NUE7DW Subscribe to Human Optimization Hour  Itunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY   Notes Yoga toes | https://bit.ly/2EgaloX Hoka shoes | https://bit.ly/2pT8rjT Stan Efferding vertical diet | https://bit.ly/2A77oDa The Magic Pill | https://bit.ly/2NBadzD Mammoth Keto Ice Cream | http://mammothcreameries.com/ Natural Organix Kratom |https://naturalorganix.com/

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as Bigger, Stronger, Faster. One of my absolute favorite movies that really takes a deep dive into steroids and baseball and pro wrestling and movies and film with Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger and just what it meant to grow up in the 80s, you know, just an amazing documentary. That's what put Chris Bell on the map. He followed that up with Prescription Thugs and Trophy Kids. And most recently, which just came out on Netflix, A Leaf of Faith. Chris is also working on a new movie with his brother, Mark Bell, who we've had on the podcast called The War on Carbs. And it takes a deep dive into the science behind the ketogenic diet, as well as the carnivore diet and others. We dive into all these things.

I mean, I pretty much just go through his cinematography. Is that what you call that? You know, like the IMDB list and timeline of what got him into film and how he put together each one of these movies. And it's a fascinating deep dive through all this stuff because he's tackled so many large issues like what's happening with the prescription pain pill epidemic. What are the ways we can get rid of addiction and find peace? How can we find some life worth living where we're not hooked and a slave to medicine and uh really you know just blew blew me away chris bell was a phenomenal guest i know you guys are going to dig this one check it out roland brother that was a good warm-up that was a great warm-up we

should have been recording for the last hour and a half yeah i was just warming up man lots of good stuff we got you in town uh i first became a fan of yours from bigger stronger faster oh thanks yeah and just absolutely blown away i became a fan of yours watching you punch people in the face and getting punched in the face too i'm sure just as many a little bit we won't we don't have to talk about that yeah hey when i was a power lifter i won every meet let's just say that that's good because it's not on tape so nobody can see it yeah there's nothing to go back to I always lift they don't have them all on fight pass yeah every painful memory yeah um yeah and then I mean you first let's just start

with what and I'm sure you've answered this before on different podcasts people know who you are so I'm I'm sure people tuning into this, they're going to be like, oh, why did he ask this question? Why did he ask that question if you've already answered it before? But I do like getting a little background. What got you into film and documentaries in general? It's interesting. We grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York. We were from upstate New York.

And every month, once a month, my dad would bring us to watch professional wrestling at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center. And it was the WWF at the time, and it was Vince McMahon's show. And back in the day, if you saw when the Hulkster was big in the 80s, they used to shoot all the wrestling at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center in Poughkeepsie. And we would go every month, and they would tape four shows there. And that sort of gave me this, I don't know, this gateway or this vision into something much bigger. Like I knew there's something bigger out there. And like these giants come to our town like once a month and we get to see them and like, hey, maybe one day, maybe we could do something like that. And my brother wanted to be a wrestler. And I was always the biggest fan of my older brother, Mad Dog. So him wanting to be a wrestler and looking at entertainment as maybe a career.

My parents never, they were nerds. So they never really thought that way. But I think this idea of wrestling, professional wrestling, gave us this idea to think and to dream big and to dream larger than life. And we were looking up to these guys like Andre the giant, who was obviously larger than life. And, uh,

I think that that was the catalyst because, uh, eventually I ended up going to work for Vince McMahon and I worked, uh, for WWE only for like about a year. No shit. Only about eight months, actually back in 2004,

I was a writer there for a little while. And when I went in for the interview, I had to do an interview with, uh, Stephanie McMahon with Vince little while. And when I went in for the interview, I had to do an interview with Stephanie McMahon, with Vince's daughter. And she said, well, why do you think you'd be good for this? And I just said, you guys taught me how to tell stories. I went to film school because of wrestling. Because I learned from Vince how to tell stories, how to make a crowd react, how to, like they say in Gladiator, win the crowd. And know? And we always kind of knew that through wrestling. Like wrestling was a story. You get in the ring and you tell a story. So I think that was really the basis of why I got into movies. And we just

liked movies as kids and we worshiped Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hulk Hogan and Sylvester Stallone. And we wanted to be like them. And I was kind of fat and not in the best shape and didn't see myself necessarily in front of the camera, so maybe I could be behind the camera. Yeah. I mean, I was kind of hiding because I didn't know how to not be fat. Well, fuck, man. I mean, every one of your films has been great.

Some of them are hard to watch. I was just telling you that Trophy Kids was like a heartbreaker for my wife and I. We have a little boy, and you see these fucking dads just drilling their kids on running the perfect out pattern or the perfect, you know, you cut right here at the five-yard line. You know, he's screaming in their face. Just take any fun you could possibly have out of being a kid and out of playing sports. What the parents are doing, so Trophy Kids is a movie I did with Peter Berg. And the reason that I made that was my friend was a basketball coach at the time, my best friend, and he was kind of getting abused.

And so one day I just took the camera over to his practice and I was watching all this insane stuff going on. And he was actually on the phone with one of the moms and he's like, let me just put it on speakerphone. Let me show you how crazy this is. And I was recording it. And his mom's like, well, hell, what are we going to do? I mean, I got to fatten him up for next year. I mean, he's got to put on, I got to put like 10 to 15 pounds on him. And the mother's just talking about this kid, like it's a cattle or something, you know, like it's some sort of farm animal.

I got to put some weight on them. I got to fatten them up. Like she's fattening them up for the slaughter or something. She's trying to get her kid bigger to play basketball at a better school. And then I saw all these kids that were jockeying for position, especially in Los Angeles. They're jockeying for like what school they were going to play for. And where I grew up in upstate New York, you lived in Poughkeepsie. You went to the high school in Poughkeepsie. That was it. And like out here in LA, they would go, uh, modern day, all these other programs, all these programs that are built up for years with, you know, almost like professional teams of coaches behind them. And the, the, um, barrier

to entry has gotten a lot greater. Uh, it's hard if your kid just started, or if you just moved into that, you know, that city or whatever, it's hard to get your kid into the programs, you know, it's hard to, so kid into the programs. It's hard to... So it's like really these parents are... I think they think it's a race to the top, but what it really is a race to the bottom because what ends up happening is the parents that have all this money and are spent like... So I'll give you a good example. Redondo Union High School in Los Angeles, they spent $90 million, $90 million on their sports complex. They redid the football

field, basketball courts. What? That's like Arizona State. Yeah, they spent $90 million. And this is all paid for by the taxpayers of the state of California, of Redondo Beach. And they put it in, it's all for athletics for this one school. And so the school was pretty shitty in basketball when we showed them in trophy kids. They were like, you know, mediocre, right? So what they do is the parents band together in trophy kids and they get the coach fired. The coach had been there for 15 years. He developed some really good kids out of that program. Like when I say good kids, I don't mean good basketball players,

I mean good people. And so he developed good people, but the parents, that wasn't good enough for them. They needed to win. And because certain kids weren't getting playing time or whatever, they forced that coach out. And what they did was they hired a coach from Loyola, which was a black school, basically, you know?

And they hired this coach and he comes in and he brings some of his kids with him. Well, he brings in these three black kids that are from the inner city, right? So that right away, it causes racial problems. It causes like tension. And then guess who plays in the $90 million facility? All the kids that aren't from the town

that raised the money, that paid for it, the coach isn't from there, the parent, you know? So it just caused this big debacle. It's like, do you really, do you want to win that bad so that your kids don't even get a chance to play and get on the court? You know, it was like that, is that what you're trying to do? And so it's, that's why I say it's a race to the bottom because these parents in the affluent school were trying to, you know, force the coach out so that their kids could play. They bring in a better coach and the coach brings in better players. And that's the bottom line. The reality of it all is like, there's always going to be somebody better than your kid. So you should just love your kid and

let them do the best of their ability. Let them do what they can do to the best of their ability. And just realize that they're probably not going to be a professional athlete. And if your kid grows up to be a professional athlete, just consider yourself one of the luckiest people in the world. That's all. I think that's the way you got to look at it. Yeah. And there's something to be gained from, I mean, I think when you watch Trophy Kids,

and I encourage everybody to, it is hard to stomach. It's hard to watch. I think there's probably a bigger issue today with participation awards and we're not going to keep score. And you don't learn from competition, right? But if you look at that, like take, for example, when I was a senior at ASU and we were just talking about Coach House, who was my strength coach at ASU. He's the strength coach for the Panthers now. I sat the bench my junior and senior year at Arizona State. And I had been an all-star all the way up until then.

And it fucking killed me. But there was so many beautiful lessons in there. It was humbling. I got to figure out really what it meant to be a role player, like how to make sure my teammates were getting a real look in practice but not hurting anybody. And a number of ways that I could contribute to the team without actually getting in the game more than a couple of plays a game.

And that was fuel for me to continue athletics, you know, in fighting, like big fuel for me. So, but like, those are the things like, like that, that can be drive for somebody that can be a spark for somebody like, like maybe you want that chip to be on their shoulder. Maybe that's a good thing long term, right? Look at all the people that are great in football nowadays. I mean, look at Tom Brady.

Look at the things that he's overcome. And just look at the things that anybody that's good in sports has overcome to get there. They're usually not the person that was out in front. You know, the kid that was out in front, he's smoking pot somewhere. You know what I mean? Like, that's what happens. It's like, I know in my high school, all the kids that were, they're really good athletes in high school. It's like, they don't have the drive. And I think the drive is what really in the end makes the athlete, not necessarily like you can have all the

components in the world physically. Uh, but if you're not willing to put them together and utilize them, then nothing's going to ever happen. You know? Yeah. So let's, let's, uh, let's keep going through the, the, the filmography here. You get to, um, which one was first prescription thugs was after, uh, we did bigger, stronger, faster, faster, first. Yeah. That was the first thing. Then we did trophy kids.

Okay. Then, um, then prescription thugs. And then I did prescription thugs while I was making trophy kids. Um, actually right after Bigger, Stronger, Faster, I had a double hip replacement surgery. I had genetic arthritis. I've had it ever since I was young. As far back as I remember, when I played football in high school, I couldn't run with the team. Like I've never run a lap. In high school?

Like I've never run a lap in my life. I can't run a mile. I can't run at all. Like if you were going to run me over in the street you're probably gonna run me over like if i have to run like i i run all fucked up like i can't i can't run good it's like something i got now that i'm actually in kind of shape i want to start trying to figure out how to run but ever since i was a kid it was always broken like i can run like i can sprint but i can only run like 20 yards and then it's like things start going all over the place. I don't know what's

wrong with me from that point of view, but I've always needed my hips replaced ever since I was really young. You know, I just got it done at 35 years old. And, um, you know, along with that came a lot of prescription drugs and a lot of pain. And that's what brought me into making prescription thugs was I was, uh, addicted to prescription drugs for like six years. Damn. Painkillers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had a lot of friends in college, lost a couple to opiates, but then, you know, just started with Vicodin and Percocet. Then you go to Oxycontin, then you're getting 80 meg or 160 meg Oxycontin from somebody that's terminally ill. There's like a ladder. And it starts out with Norco, Vicodin.

Actually, it even started for me lower down the list with some of the lesser opiates, the tramadols, and Darvacet was one of them. And I remember when I was filming Bigger, Stronger, Faster at this anti-aging convention. And I remember I had taken like two Darviss sets and then I had taken like four. I'm like, man, my feet, like my legs are killing me. And it was before I had my hip surgery and my hips were killing and my feet were killing. Let me take two more of them. I was up to like six Darviss set and Darviss sets are like kind of weak, but all of a sudden I felt great. I'm like, oh my God, I feel great. And I started interviewing everybody. And I started asking all these different questions of people. I'm like, oh my God, I feel great. And I started interviewing everybody and I started asking all these different questions of people. I'm like, that was awesome. And right then was

when the addiction began. I didn't know it, but it was before. You hit the euphoric threshold. Yeah. I hit that button and I still remember hitting that button for the very first time. I remember how it felt and I remember I was working and I was working in what I love to do, making movies. And I was asking people questions and guess what? I was a lot better at it when I was high, but I didn't know I was high. So I didn't know what was going on. So you just, you get into that as a cycle and then you're like, oh, well, every time I interview somebody now I need pills, you know? And that's kind of what you make these associations. Every time I go to the gym, I need pills. Every time I go here, I need pills and you just need pills, pills, pills. And then next thing you know, you're just dumping them down your throat like crazy.

And then the doctor cuts you off and then you're buying them on the street and then you're buying them on Craigslist. And that's what I was doing. You know, it's got to be out of hand really fast. Yeah. And then, um, you know, I should say this cause a lot of people, um, don't have things like this that can, that, that help them. And unfortunately mine happened to be two suicides, like back to back. So I had a neighbor that lived right across the street from me. And I came home one day and found out that he blew his brains out because he couldn't get more Xanax that he was addicted to. And he blew his brains out. Well, then I was like, man, that's made me really think about my own addiction and my problem.

What if I can't get Vicodin? Like, am I going to blow my brains out? Well, I don't have a gun, so I'm not worried about that. But I was always trying to think, what's going to happen to me? Well, maybe I'll take too many and I'll die or something, right? So then I was worried about it because I had a friend that killed himself. And then two weeks later, the guy that I was getting my drugs from, he killed himself.

And that's where I was getting my drugs from. So then I knew I had to quit. I was just like, there's no, and we had already lost my older brother, Mad Dog, you know? And I was just like, man, like when Mad Dog died and he died in sober living and mainly because of drugs and alcohol. And when he died, I just said, I'll never go out like that. Like, that's not a way to go out, like in a sober living home.

And, you know, just he was lonely and sad and depressed when he died and just thought that was so sad. And I was like, I'll never do that. And then there I was doing the same exact thing, going down the same exact road that my brother was going down. And I think so many people go down that road, but they're left alone and they're left by themselves and they're left stranded. And that's why like on Instagram, I don't know if you saw me out there when before we're in here, but for about an hour, I just was answering questions. All those questions I answer on Instagram, I probably answered over a hundred today already from the plane ride. Um, and then, and then here, and they're all about addiction and they're all about, Hey man, I'm on opioids. I can't get off. My mom's on opioids. My friend is on benzodiazepines by,

you know, and it's just all these things. And I'm going like, well, it's like $60,000 or, you know, the rehab that I went to $60,000 a month. I went to passages at Malibu. I went to cliffside Malibu. Oh fuck. And, and, and luckily I got lucky. I didn't pay for it. So what happened with me was just like the most unique way. I always say like, I lead the most ridiculous and blessed life in the world. So because I make films, I was making a film about prescription drug abuse, and I relapsed on prescription drugs. And one of the guys I happened to had interviewed six months previous was the owner of Cliffside Malibu. And when he found out that I was in trouble, he's like, look, I know you're trying to do something good. Just get over here. And I'm like,

but I swear I'm going to still finish the movie. He's like, I don't give a fuck about your movie. Get over here and get better. So I went over there and I got better. And as soon as I got better, I said, Richard, I really want to finish this movie. I owe it to the world to finish this movie. And he's like, then go finish your movie. And he let me leave rehab every day. So I would go to rehab. So the first 30 days I was there, I was there full time. And then the second 60 days I was there, I got to work on my movie for half the day. And half the day I was in rehab. I mean, like you don't really normally get to do that. But the guy from Cliffside Malibu, Richard Tate, who was the guy that stepped in and

helped save my life, he knew what I was trying to do. He knew that the mission was bigger. And he said, you're going to get this done and you're going to stay sober and you're going to help a lot of people. And I just thought like, okay, well, that's what I have to do then. And so for me, it's not a question. It's just what I do every day is like, just try to always help people, whether it's with their diet, whether it's with something I can help them with addiction, whether it's

their training or anything. I've just always been taught to give of yourself and it'll always come back to you. And so far it always has. Yeah. Fuck yeah. It's worked out. That's kind of that. Aubrey talks about. And so far it always has. Yeah. Fuck yeah. Aubrey talks about that, the law of reciprocity. If you're always aiming to give 51% and receive 49, then there's always this ebb and flow of what you give out to the world is slightly higher than what you're receiving, but you're always receiving because you're giving out so much.

Look at it. A lot of people ask us too. Like, you guys are stupid. Like, you know, when we were younger, you know, in our 20s, Mark was trying to be a pro wrestler and we met John Cena and we brought John Cena in and we were the ones that were like, hey, you have to do this for a living.

You'll be great. You'll be a great wrestler. And everybody always says, what do you get out of that? What did he give you? And I'm like, he didn't give me anything. But when our brother passed away, he was the one that paid for the funeral. He was the one that came through when our family was in need. He was the one, you know, so like things do come

back to you. And it's not, not always like what you get right now. It's like, don't worry about what you get. Worry about what you did for that person. Worry about how that makes you feel. Like when, when we got John into wrestling, how good does it feel to get one of your best friends into the grand grandest stage of all for wrestling like that was become one of the legends of the sport became one of the best one of the best ever and i'm sure you got those stories with fighters and different things that you've gotten started because we all we all do that it's that's what we do you know yeah yeah fuck yeah that's a good feeling for sure i didn't realize that you guys got seen into wrestling. That's so rad.

I would say, wouldn't say we got him in. We just led him in the right direction. Yeah. He was working at Gold's Gym, and this is something- He was bodybuilding beforehand, right? Yeah, well, he was trying to bodybuild, and he wasn't really particularly successful at it. He was doing okay, but when these guys are 260 pounds on muscle and

you know, you're, you're up against a completely different, you know, animal. And so he was doing okay with bodybuilding, but when he went into wrestling, it was just immediate. He just knew it. Like, I mean, he got in the ring and he bounced off the ropes twice. And I'm sure you've seen this with MMA where like some dude just gets in and like wrecks somebody. And you're like, how? Like, holy shit, you know? And John was kind of like that with wrestling, even though it's so-called fake.

He just ran the ropes a couple of times. It just looked natural. And he was kind of a bodybuilder. And like, well, bodybuilders usually don't run good. And then he took a couple of bumps. Yeah, he's an athlete. Yeah, he's a great athlete. And you could see that from day one.

He had athleticism and he had, the main thing with wrestling is you can talk. And we always knew that from day one. He had athleticism, and he had the main thing with wrestling is you can talk. And we always knew that he could talk. Yeah, that's by far the biggest. My buddy, Daniel Pewter. I know Daniel, yeah. He got on the- Tough Enough.

Tough Enough. Yeah, he got the Million Dollar Tough Enough and won that, but didn't have the gift of gab. He's a much better speaker now. He's doing a lot for- He does a lot of anti-bullying stuff, right? A lot of different stuff for kids, yeah. After school programs, things like that. So he's a much better speaker now he's doing a lot for uh he does a lot of anti-bullying stuff a lot of different stuff for kids yeah after school programs things like that so he's he's doing well but he definitely didn't have the gift of gab and that's interesting like if he if he had had it back then he might have uh he might have stuck around there a little bit could have been yeah could have been now still wrestling till his day yeah for sure and and wwe too like once they

lose the flavor for you you're gone too we've seen that a lot with with wrestling it's like you know one time somebody said this to me I always remember Andrew Bernarski who played Latimer in the program said this to me because he was trying to be a wrestler once and Latimer was there he's uh ripping the chicks starting defense place at the table right you were leading me on remember I said I lead a weird blessed crazy life i used to go to wrestling um in anaheim with andrew bernarski who played latimer in the program and he'd wear his latimer jersey from the movie this is like this is like 10 years post program and i you know i went to usc and when i was at usc i was friends with all the football players and we must have saw the

program while i was in school like 10 times in a row we would go like every night when I was at USC, I was friends with all the football players. And we must have saw the program while I was in school like 10 times in a row. We would go like every night when it was out in the movie theater. It was playing at like a little local university theater. And we'd just go to watch the program, watch Latimer. And then I became friends with him. And it was the first experience I ever had with weed. Was driving around LA with Latimer in my car smoking weed like crazy. And he would just abuse

the shit out of me. He'd like, oh, he's borrowed 20 bucks. Like, you know what I mean? Like you meet these people. It's like the first celebrity I ever met. First of all, the first celebrity I ever met was the Barbarian Brothers. The second was, uh, Andrew Bernarski. And then we used to show up at these wrestling matches at like Anaheim, you know, Staples Center or whatever. And, uh, we'd pull up, he'd go, just pull up to the back. Pull up to the back. I go, okay. And this guy is 6'5", 280 pounds.

He's a big dude, you know? So we pull up to the back. He goes, wrestler's entrance. And they're like, oh, sir, right there. And we'd drive right down the ramp and we'd park and we'd get out. We'd be backstage. I'm like, how did you get us backstage? You know, he's like, ah, I just said wrestler's entrance.

And like, because he was in the movies, he didn't give a shit. And he'd go back and he'd just start talking to the wrestlers. And they just thought he was supposed to be there. Yeah, that's sick. That's sort of how I got my way into the backstage at WWE. And that's how I ended up getting a job, actually, eventually, which is just really weird. It's just meeting people through going backstage all the time,

meeting Shane McMahon and those people as well. So yeah, I definitely have this crazy. What did you do when you were at WWE did you do I was a writer oh you wrote like like storylines for the wrestlers yeah I was a writer for for a little while and um it was a it was a weird job you know and uh what was cool about it was uh the very first day on the job you know I say in bigger stronger faster right off the bat that Hulk Hogan was my hero growing up. And I get in the limo and the Hulkster's in the limo. I'm like, oh, shit, the Hulkster's in the limo. Next guy in the limo is Mean Gene.

I'm like, I'm in the limo with Hulkster and Mean Gene. And then Vince pops in the limo. I'm like, holy shit, Vince is in the limo. I can't wait to call my friends back home and tell them, you guys aren't going to believe this, but I'm in the a limo with the Hulkster and blah, blah, blah. You know, there was no social media back then. It was like, there's no way to share that experience. No camera phone. No, nothing. There was nothing. I didn't have a flip phone then. There was nothing. I don't even think I had a cell phone then to tell you the truth. And so, um, I get in the car and, you know, I'm excited cause we're in the back of this limo with, you and Vince and Mean Gene. And Mean Gene offers me a

beer. He's like, here. And I just took it. And I'm just sitting there with it. And then Hulk Hogan grabs a beer. He pops it open. Mean Gene grabs a beer. He pops it open. And Vince doesn't grab one. I'm like, oh, Vince isn't going to drink. I'm not going to open this. I'm working. I'm thinking I'm supposed to be working. Vince is like hulk hogan gives you a beer and you're not gonna drink it and i'm like uh you're not drinking he's like i don't drink i'm like okay and he's the boss i'm like oh shit this is vince he's actually in good shape and like he probably doesn't drink and hulk's just having a beer and mean jeans having a beer so i crack it open i start drinking it and they're all staring at me i'm like what do they stand like i put it down and they're all staring at me. And I'm like, what are they staring at? Like I put it down and they're all staring.

And Vince is like, are you serious? Kind of thing. Like, you know, you're going to drink on the job first day on the fucking job and you're going to drink, you know, and they were ribbing me, but that's what I learned that that's what they do when you're on the road. And, you know, it's like, they fuck with you. And, uh, and so, yeah, that they got all got a really good laugh out of it. I was scared shitless for, you know, for a little while, but, and so, yeah, that they got all got a really good laugh out of it. I was scared

shitless for, you know, for a little while, but, you know, working there was, um, it was difficult. It was a, it was a crazy high stress, uh, environment. So, uh, which was really weird cause I didn't, I didn't think it needed to be, but anytime you're dealing with like live television, it's always going to be hectic. And that's what I would say it was. It wasn't a hard job. It was a very hectic job. There's always madness going on, and you had to put out a lot of fire. So it was interesting.

Yeah, and you got different pro wrestlers jockeying for a push. Like, man, you're going to tank my fucking career. I can't lose again. You know what's hard is all the divas. Oh, I bet. The divas would come slide up to you and be like, oh, hey. So they would really be extra flirty with the writers because they wanted to get in the scripts. Get some new angles.

Yeah, but I mean, it's crazy how crazy it was. They're like, oh, hey, I wanted to talk to you about my character. And it's like, yeah, sure you do. So that was awesome. So you had, I mean mean at what point did you get turned on the kratom because you get clean you finish the film with prescription thugs and then obviously i mean we have it right here for yeah for the people watching on youtube a leaf of faith on dvd it's on netflix as well as the rest yeah sure i should explain kratom a little

bit so kratom is a plant from southeast as Asia that a lot of people use instead of opioids. So they'll use that instead of the Vicodins, the Percocets, the Oxycontins, things like that. But people also just use it to feel good. It's something that just makes you feel better. Like coffee, you know, have a good cup of coffee. Like, ah, I feel really good. You know, it's like coffee on steroids or something, I guess,

is what I would say. It's like coffee and then a little bit extra, kind of that little mental kick that makes you feel good or puts a smile on your face. And I got familiar with Kratom when I was doing prescription thugs, because when I was making prescription thugs, people were telling me, you heard about this Kratom stuff? You can use it to get off of opioids. And so I'm like, bullshit. Let me, you know, when I was, when I was trying to get off of opioids, I mean, it was brutal. I ended up in the emergency room twice. I was on Suboxone for over a year. You're only supposed to be on it for like two weeks. And the doctor had me on it for over, you know, over two years. And when I tried to get off of it, I just would have these really crazy withdrawals. So if there was something that could get rid of that withdrawal that drove me to go to

the emergency room, I wanted to know about it. And so I went to this smoke shop and I bought some Kratom and I took 10. I'm like, okay, it was a package of 10. So I took five. I didn't feel anything. I took five more. I didn't feel anything. And I'm like, well, I'm not high.

And I'm like, I guess it doesn't work. That's just, that's what I thought. And this is while I was doing prescription thugs. So like flash, flash forward a couple of years and somebody brought it up to me again. I said, Hey, have you ever tried, you know, Kratom? And at this point I had already, I had just been on Joe Rogan actually. It was on Joe Rogan's podcast. And I was telling everybody like, Hey, I was on Rogan's podcast. And I was telling everybody like, hey, I was on Rogan's podcast and I was talking about using Advil and Tylenol in combination and how that actually, there's a study out and actually Dr. Drew told me about this. There was this giant study that they did about pain medication. And they found that Advil and Tylenol in combination was actually preferred to opioids for pain relief.

It actually works better for most patients for pain. And so I was going around telling everybody that. And at the time, I didn't know that Advil kills 16,000 people a year. So I'm telling everybody, just take the Advil. It's better for you. Take the Advil and Tylenol, right? And so they're both deadly. Opioids are killing people because of respiratory depression.

Advil is killing people because it's knocking out their kidneys. And Tylenol is killing people because it's knocking out their liver. So there's three different situations. Each drug has a deadly repercussion. And I'm thinking like, well, there's got to be something else. And then so when somebody brought Kratom up again, I was thinking like, well, is Kratom liver toxic? No. Is it kidney toxic? No. Does it cause respiratory depression? No. Does it work? 90 pills a day. His name in WWE was Luther Raines. And WCW, he was Horseshoe. And Luther Raines was like, hey, bro, you ever tried Kratom? And I'm like, no. But you have those friends that have done so many drugs that if they tell you to do something, you know what I mean? Like, never try this. And you're like, no, I'm good. You know, like, but then you have those friends who are like, well, I'm kind of curious because this guy doesn't think anything works. Horseshoe doesn't think anything works. I mean, he's anti everything unless, you know, unless it was cocaine or whatever, you know, he, he always says he has this famous quote. He says, there's mountains in Peru missing from my cocaine habit. That's the kind of guy we're dealing with. And so he's been sober though for years. He had a massive stroke and he was sober and this Kratom stuff was really helping him. He had a stroke so bad that they basically, he went to Arizona state as well, actually. look they told the doctor the doctor told um his friends get his mother here tonight he's not going to make it through the night so his mother flew in from

like you know detroit or whatever and she got there and you know he made it and he actually made it he's he's still around today still alive and kicking and he and he uh this kratom was really helping him to see how it helped him, not only helped him get through the pain and everything that he was going, because this was quite a while after the stroke, but he still had residual pain from the stroke. But just to see his cognition increase and see him be more normal, because he would talk really slow and drawn out. And then on Kratom, he just talks normal. So I'm like, holy I'm like, holy shit, man. Like this actually could have some implications. There might be something, you know, to this. So, um, one day I was working with my brother, Mark, and I was at his gym and we were filming all day and I was just exhausted.

Everything ate. I was just that dull, achy pain that won't go away. And, um, you know, we just need to like slip into the hot tub for a little while and just get rid of it. And that's what I was thinking of doing. But I was like, man, let me try this Kratom that they've been talking about. So my buddy had given me some. And I tried it that day. And I just remember 45 minutes later, all the pain being gone. And I remember jumping up and down to see if I can get my legs to hurt. They just hurt.

They were just in pain. Like I know I was laying down for a while, but I mean, they were just in pain 45 minutes ago. I'm trying to like smash on my legs a little bit. I'm like, there's no pain here. Like this is crazy. And so I'm like, go outside. I walk around a little. I'm like, you know, so I called horseshoe. I'm like, dude, you have to come over. We need to talk about this Kratom ship because I have no idea what you, you know, what you guys gave me. And so Horseshoe, he came over and he was with my friend Kelly and Kelly actually owns Urbanized Organics, which is a Kratom company. And I was dumbfounded by it. And basically just, it took me about three months to get like fully acquainted with it. But after three months,

I said, we have to make a documentary about this. The world needs to know about this plant. This is something that everybody needs to know about because so many people are in pain and so many people are hurting and there's nothing that we can do to help them except for say, hey, take an Advil and we know that that kills a lot of people. Now that we have something that's natural

and it's been shown to be pretty safe, all I'm really pushing for, the main thing I'm pushing for beyond people taking Kratom is to keep it legal so we can research it. Yeah, I think that's a big one. But also, it wouldn't surprise me if there was neuroprotective qualities to it. That's something, it just popped into my head as you were talking about horseshoes stroke and how he had slowed down. And then on Kratom, he did speak at a normal pace again. There's a lot of research into THC helping with cognitive function and helping heal the brain by clearing out amyloid plaque.

A lot of the things about THC that they're finding out are actually like opposite of what they thought. Yeah, completely. I remember I was just watching this report. I'm getting into CBD a lot lately into really researching that. What I'm seeing is a really clear path for myself. I was just talking to you about it. I said, I want to write a book about it. I think pain is destroying our country. I think when people are in pain, they can't function optimally. And that's what we talk about is optimizing human performance. And how do you optimize human performance? You got to take people out of pain first. That's got to be your

first thing that you do. And so I have all these like techniques and things that I've tried, like CBD oil, like mariva curcumin, like all these things that will lower inflammation and kill pain and Kratom fits, you know, really nicely into that. And I just, for me, can see myself carving a path of just like helping people get through pain with natural methods, not by, you know, we, I smashed the shit out of myself trying to get out of pain, you know, and I just, I ended up a wreck, you know, and now through all the steps that I'm taking to feel better, I just feel immensely better than I did a couple of years ago.

Yeah. Yeah. Kratom's cool too, because there's no real draw for me. I took one today. I like it because it's a mild stimulant that's not racy the way too much caffeine is. But it's nootropic. It turns me on. And it's also mildly euphoric.

It's great on road trips or long travel it's also mildly euphoric. Like it's great on road trips or long travel. It's mildly euphoric. And I also should say, because I'm kind of the guy telling people to take it, you have to be careful with it too. Because like yesterday I worked out, I got up at, I did a 4 a.m. workout and I got up and I did an hour on the step mill. And in order to do an hour on a step mill, you got to be fired up, like especially four in the morning. So I had my Terminator soundtrack cranking with my beats on and I had, and I took like six kratom. And so I did that. And then I went home and I forgot that I had taken six kratom, you know, and done a whole hour workout.

And by the time I took a shower and felt good again and was going to go back and train legs, I took six more. And it was just too much. Like the whole day I felt like, you know, I didn't actually, you didn't feel that bad, which is nice to know that you don't, there's not really that bad of repercussions. I just felt a little racy, you know? And so I always tell people like, be careful with it and take it and play around with the doses. Cause people like, they want to hit me up on Instagram and go, how many do I take? I'm like, well, I don't know.

Like, if you're not sensitive to stuff. And that's the problem with, like, a lot of the stuff with the FDA and the dosings and the things like that is, like, if you're – everybody – it's got to be subjective because we're all different. And so, like, for me to say, like, me ingesting this much of a plant versus you ingesting that much of a plant versus you ingesting that much of a plant, there's, there's obviously a difference there in our size and our weight and the things that are carried in our blood, et cetera. And, um, that's why it's hard

to tell people like how much to take. And I say, well, with kratom, you got to kind of mess around with the doses. And I think I heard you actually talking to somebody about that just before with supplements, you got to play around with the doses, no matter what supplement it is. Yeah, that was just in the cafe. Just talking about that with AlphaBrain. There's a lot of people like that. AlphaBrain, yeah. That's what it was.

A lot of people, the recommended dose is two capsules. I took two before and liked it all right, but I didn't see what the fuss was about. And I heard Rogan talking about taking four because he sweats a lot and he's a bigger dude and has good muscle size. And I was like, all right, let me try four and i was like oh shit yeah all right there there there we go and i think that's i think that's the thing it's really easy to discount something uh if it didn't hit you you know and so a lot of people will take kratom like oh i took kratom nothing happened and i take more of it like try more you know like let's go and uh i did that with uh dave

asprey from bulletproof i gave him some crazy i didn't feel anything i'm like we'll take more like you're the you're the biohacker not me like you know what to do you know and i don't know if he ever felt it or not i don't know if he ended up liking it or not but that's the beauty of like these supplements and these things is like uh we have so many people in this kind of space that we're going to find all these neat little herbs and neat little things and i've actually been finding things that have made a comeback for me. For example, my shoulder, my rotator cuff is completely blown out on my left side and it's 70% torn and nothing can fix it. Like Kratom, nothing I've been taking was helping it. Kratom would help a little bit

because it lowers the inflammation. I'm rubbing CBD right into it. Nothing's working. And I went into the health food store the other day and I saw this DMSO. It's a solvent that they use for horses. I've used it on horses for years for arthritis and stuff. I rubbed that DMSO on my shoulder. And next thing you know, I'm like lifting my arm up. I'm going, wait, I used to have to throw my arm in the air to get it to go up. Now I can lift it up without that pain. And then I- They sell that in a store? I thought you used to have some special order of that. It's weird. It's in some weird health food store. I found it, right? And so I wrote that. And then I remember it's a transdermal also. So it'll actually take those, whatever you put in with it

and drive it right in your muscles. So I was mixing DMSO, Kratom, mariva curcumin, which is the only kind that our bodies will absorb. And along with that, using CBD oil, like right on the joint itself. And my shoulder hasn't felt better in like a year, you know? And it's just a combination of all these things. Plus probably some sort of placebo effect, because I think I'm a mad scientist. And that probably helped a little bit too. But hey, a placebo effect can work up to 16%. So I'll take whatever I can get no matter where I'm getting it from. Yeah. Well, and then all the other factors, you know, we were talking about

kind of what does that roadmap look like to wellness? Yeah. And it's, it's really about all the things and it doesn't have to be, if it's too daunting to say, I got to figure out how to move and diet. I got to figure out how to move and diet i gotta figure out how to sleep i gotta figure out all these practices like well just fucking take it piece by piece and over time over the long game i think um we talked about it in the car and away from the airport it's one step at a time we talked about sleep and uh you get plenty of sleep and i i get plenty of sleep my sleep sucked in the beginning so you said well how you sleep and i go great now but it was really crappy and then uh and i think if you talk to guys like Jesse Burdick

and those guys, and you're trying to lift the most amount of weight, that's what my brother would always say. He said, you don't sleep enough. And Jesse would tell me, Stan Efferding would tell me all of our friends are like, you don't sleep enough. You're always kind of burnt. You know, I see what time you post on Instagram. You're not, you know, you're not sleeping enough. And so, um, you know, you get found out and then, you know, you get found out and then, you know, you get in trouble and then, but you really realize when you take a step back and you actually just focus on sleeping and you say, I'm going to do myself a favor. And at nine o'clock, the lights are going to go off and I'm going to go to bed and I'm just going to, I'm just going to forget about everything at 9 PM or whatever, 10 PM, whatever time it is, you know, usually it's

one o'clock in the morning or whatever. So when you shut down early and you get out of bed, you get to bed early and you make it a plan, it just becomes such a different thing. Once you get your sleep in order, you're like, oh, well, now I'm not tired. Now, I can actually optimally do these other things in my life. Yeah. It's weird how it snowballs into all avenues, right? Like with the hormone levels, ghrelin and leptin affected by sleep, how your appetite has changed throughout the day, positively or negatively. And you know how they say we're connected from like our heads to our toes. And like, as I'm getting, you know, massage work done and things done to like help heal my body and fix my body. I'm like, well, there's something wrong with my feet. My feet have always been messed up. And so I went out and I threw out all my sneakers that I had. I had all these Nike Air Maxes and

they were just squishing my feet in. So I went and bought some Metcons, which were a little bit wider. I bought some Hoka walking. Yeah, those are really good. Walking sneakers. They let my feet sit a little bit more splayed out like they're supposed to be. I bought these things called yoga toes or awesome toes. And they're like, they're toes spreaders. Spread your toes out. And I put those on at night and I just keep them on and they just keep, my toes are so hammered and knurled together like this that if you walk around like this all day, you're going to feel like that. Right. My feet are like this. I'm like, Oh, I, my feet actually feel relaxed when I'm walking now. It's weird. I'll be, I was just walking through the airport and like stumble every once in a while

because I'm not used to, like my feet are, have been so out of whack for so long that now my feet are working right. Sometimes I'll misstep even because my, I'm not even aware that my feet are, because they're working correctly and that I'm not used to that, you know? So that's sometimes weird, but yeah, like you said, it's a snowball effect and you fix every little thing as you go along. And then you start, I tell people that about their diet too. It's like, when you start your, your diet, don't just go all in, don't go in and like rip everything out of your house and throw it in the garbage. Just start throwing things out, you know, start getting rid of the garbage, you know, and start getting it out of your house. I love that. Yeah. Get it out of your house, you know, but just start, just do things slowly. Don't, you don't have to do everything at

once. And I, I've always found that like when you do everything at once, uh, it comes back to you all at once, you know? So if, if I throw out everything in my house at once, I'm going to end up binging and going to Costco and buying the giant bag of Oreos. That's the opposite of throwing everything out. And so that's just, for me, the way I tend to do things. So the past two years, I've been working on losing weight, which just sounds crazy for most people. The past two years, I've been working on losing weight. Even saying that and coming out of my mouth sounds like, well, you must not be successful. I'm like, no,

actually I've been the most successful I've ever been because I've taken two years to do it. I haven't taken 30 days to do it. You're not going to get, if you get there in 30 days, you'll lose it in less than 30 days. And that's the way I look at it. So I'm just trying to take a nice, even approach to get there. Hell yeah. And that's kind of I look at it. So I'm just trying to take a nice, even approach to get there. Oh, yeah. And that's kind of the topic. I mean, weight loss is, I could say, maybe one factor of it. But what diet's impact is on our bodies?

What is the title of your new documentary? Well, right now, Mark and I are working with a tentative title of The War on Carbs. And The War on Carbs, it gets a lot of people mad. I think inflammatory titles are necessary sometimes because it'll make people watch it. So like, sometimes you'll go like, well, carbs aren't bad. Am I okay? Cool. Then I'll make you watch it. Right. Cause you'll want to watch it and tell me off. But then when you actually see what we're talking about, and I think that if you really look at it, uh, obesity is a scourge. We have five scourges of society, right? That is five scourges of health. We have obesity and obesity leads to

things like cancer, diabetes, it leads to cognitive decline, and it leads to heart disease. And those are the five scourges of health. Those are the things that we can avoid. Over half the people in the United States are in the hospital because of metabolic disease. If you were to remove carbohydrate from the diet completely, those things I don't believe would exist in the way that they do now, right? Now that might sound crazy for most people. We're not going to remove the carbohydrates from the diet. Don't think I'm trying to do that and trying to say that we should do that for everybody. But I'm saying that we have a massive amount of people in this country that are not carb tolerant. So what we call insulin resistant, which means insulin, which is the fat storage hormone doesn't, or the storage hormone in general doesn't work for a lot of people. So if it doesn't work for you, removing carbohydrates

is a very simple step to get you out of it. And so what Mark and I mean by a war on carbs is like, hey, look, we launched a war on carbs. I'm not going to eat any carbs for a while. And then by doing that, it just gets you in a mindset. It gets you in this mindset to be a soldier in the war on carbs. And I got to do good things. And actually, by doing this low-carbohydrate diet, what it led me to was a no carbohydrate diet, which I actually thought was really crazy. So when I was doing a low carb diet, I'm like, well, how much lower could you go? And somebody said, well, you could just eat meat. And that would be like no carbs. And then I heard that there was these like zero carbs and people on,

on Facebook. And then of course in gold's Gym, things just start floating around. And I hear that there's some crazy guy on Joe Rogan's podcast yesterday talking about just eating meat. And I'm like, well, that's not that crazy. I used to do that 20 years ago. And I was explaining to you before that back in 1994, I went to Gold's Gym Venice for the very first time. And I started training there and I was training with guys like Mike O Michael Hearn. And there was this guy there named Ron Fedko and Ron Fedko was a power lifter. And I said to him, you know, he said to me, uh, you need to lose weight. If you're going to be a good power lifter, you're just too fat. Like I was about 240 pounds. And I said, well, I don't know how to lose weight. I'm not really, you know, I'm good at lifting weight. I'm not good at losing weight. And he said, well, you got to stop eating carbs. And, uh,, well, what do I do? What do I even eat? He goes, go get a piece of paper and a pen

and write this down. So I like run over to the front desk. Like I'm 23 years old. I'm all excited. And I, not even that, I was like 19, I think. Cause I was just, I just got to USC. This is before I graduated. So I went over, I grabbed a pen, piece of paper, and he just says, okay, red meat, water. And I write down red meat. I write down water. Okay, what else? I'm like, he's like, that's it. Red meat and water. I'm like, wait a second, red meat and water. That's all you had me write down. He goes, yeah, that's your diet. For the next two weeks, that's all I want you to eat. I'm like, but what about pasta? What about- What about my whole grains? It's not. He's like, do you see that piece of paper? Do you see what about pasta? What about my whole grains? It's not.

He's like, do you see that piece of paper? Do you see what it says? Red meat and water. That's what I want you to eat. And I did that. And I won my next powerlifting competition. I didn't know at the time that red meat has all the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that we need to sustain life.

And I'm not saying that it's for everybody. It's just what I did. It allowed me to lose a lot of weight because I didn't have constantly elevated insulin levels anymore. I lost a lot of weight, but then I abandoned doing it for a while. And by a while, I mean like 20 years I abandoned doing it because there was really no proof that it worked. Yeah, that was way ahead of the curve. And Mark and I were always following keto diets. We were fans of Dan Duchesne, who was like the steroid guru back in the day,

wrote the book, Body Opus, which was like a really low carb diet. And we would read all that stuff and we were very, very into it, but there was no real medical proof. Now, if you go to something like KetoCon or you go to Low Carb USA, there's, you know, 40, 50 people speaking on low carb diets and all the benefits of them.

And I think that we're going to see – I think that that's where nutrition is just moving. I don't see it going in any other direction. I don't see anything else that's even hot in nutrition now or even really talked about like keto is. And a lot of times it's like it's overkill because we're in that space. I kind of almost hate hearing keto, keto, keto. You're like, ah, you know, you kind of want to just jump out of it sometimes. Um, but it's what works, you know, it's, it's seen, it's been seeming to work for so many people. It doesn't work for everybody, but that's what we're talking about. Like we're not talking about, we're talking about the obesity epidemic. So like, let's talk about how

a keto diet works for the people that are trapped in the obesity epidemic. Like if 66% are overweight or obese, that means that's a large percentage of it. So we're not worried about the people that aren't. I'm not, I am not concerned with the people that aren't obese. I'm not concerned with the people that are healthy on a vegan diet. If you're healthy on a vegan diet and you're happy, God bless you. Like, I'm not concerned about you. I think you'll be fine. You know, what I'm concerned about

are the little kids who have no guidance. They have no nutritional guidance. They have nobody to look up to. They have nobody giving them answers. And that's what we need to fight for is these kids. You know, because look at what happens. Like, if you look, the saddest thing that I see is that the disregarded food in this country, the food that is the lowest, uh, lowest on the totem pole, the food that nobody gives a shit about is in the school cafeterias. And that's a problem. These are growing kids. These are kids

that are, that are growing and we're feeding them pizza i mean and it's like the worst fucking why are we feeding earth but why are we feeding our kids pizza like that's egregious to me you know and people might oh you're crazy like we don't even you're not gonna give the kid pizza you're probably not gonna give them oreos either like no i'm not gonna give them i get into fights with my family and i'm not gonna give them oreos holidays and if you know yeah it's listen listen, man, there is nothing worse than going through high school and being fat. I did it.

I can tell you there's nothing, there's no worse feeling than being left out because you're fat because you're the chubby kid, you know? And my brother, my older brother suffered through it more than I did because he was fatter than I was. But I always was affected by my weight, always. It always bothered me inside. It always made me feel less than everybody else because I couldn't control my weight. And I don't know, people might challenge me on that. They go, oh, you always look try to be in shape and I wasn't in shape. Now the things I'm doing are actually very easy and I'm getting in better shape than I've ever gotten into. And that's what's confusing to me is like, wait, wait a second. All I did was like flip the script on the knowledge a little bit. That's all I did. You know? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, that's odd how you can make a dietary change that impacts not only your fat loss and your weight loss but cognitive function sleep performance uh aerobic capacity

like i when i'm in keto half the year and then i do like carbohydrate backloading on the other half the year um but especially in that six months keto in the winter months like there's just a different level of fitness my resting heart rate's lower you know i'm in the high 30s low 40s right now and you just there's like something it's feelable, you know, it's palpable. It's not like that. Oh, I don't know if it's working. It's like, no, you fucking feel different. And why do you do the different diets? You like just switching it up? I think ancestrally it would make sense for us to cut carbs when they weren't seasonally available, like pre refrigeration, pre shipping, you know, where you can get bananas from Panama year round, shit like that berries from mexico year around it's like if it's not seasonally available to me

and i have family that's my my genetics come from closer to the poles and northern northern european ancestry like yeah there was a period of time yeah every fucking year where my family didn't have access to carbohydrates yeah period so like i I'm going to at least take that long. And then in the summer months, and there's some research from Dr. Sachin Panda that shows we can tolerate carbohydrates a little bit better in the summer months when they're more seasonally available. I don't mind playing around with some carb backloading and things like that. Taking up training intensity, getting more glycolytic workouts and just trying to, just

a shift. It's really just to break up the monotony you know it's not it's not necessarily because i think one way is healthier than the other i just like i was talking about before i said war on carbs right and i was just talking to you before we got on here and i said like you know i'm gonna switch to something else after i get to be as lean as i feel like i want to be and um that switching to something else would be like adding in a sweet potato or adding you know these foods that we know aren't going to insult the body

and make us fat again or make us go back to where we were. And I think there are a lot of foods like that. I think Stan Efferding's vertical diet is amazing. I don't know if you ever looked at that. Yeah, Jesse Burdick was telling me about it. So Stan incorporates a lot of the same principles that are on keto.

Like I say this, I say why take a multivitamin when it's made of all this synthetic shit when we know that a piece of steak, a four ounce piece of steak has all the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that you pretty much need, right? Just eat a little piece of steak a day, you know, instead of, instead of your multivitamin, get your whole nutrients. And then Stan really has things like that in the vertical diet. Like you have, you'll have some red meat every day, but you'll have some rice with it and you'll have some, maybe some sweet potato and you'll have some

fruit, you know, and some vegetables and stuff as well. You know, because you're also trying to add muscle mass and we know that like glucose can help with that a lot. So I'm not going to be, you know, saying a war on carbs isn't to be like an idiot and be like, there's no value in carbohydrates. It's just saying to all the people that have no idea, like, oh, it's carbs. You know, like it's, it's like, it seems so obvious to us, but it's obviously not until we don't have, until people say, oh, fat people, that's still a thing. Like, I didn't know that was still a thing until we get to that point, then we need to have a war on carbs. It's bottom line. people say, oh, fat people, that's still a thing. Like I didn't know that was still a thing until we get to that point, then we need to have a war on carbs. Yeah. It's bottom line. Yeah. There

needs definitely needs to be a shift in education when it comes to that. Like what's causing this? Most people haven't spent, I mean, in my first 34 years now, 30, 32 years of life i had never gone a day without carbohydrates and i'd probably never gone five hours without carbohydrates during my waking time wow right yeah in fucking 32 years that's crazy think about that but that's why you're so accustomed to it and that's why it's so weird that's why people even professional athletes endurance runners dr tim noakes talks about that a lot of them become pre-diabetic a lot of them get fucked over time because you know as you age your body doesn't deal with shit in the same way anymore and you're slamming all these goos and energy packs i just want to say one thing to our our keto community and this is like you know kudos to the keto community it and this is like, you know, kudos to the keto community. It's like almost everybody

in the keto community has come to the keto community because why? Because the system's broken. The system that they're using is broken. The system that the FDA and the people that want us to eat certain foods have put in place, it's completely broken and backwards. And so people come into the keto community and there are always people that were like metabolically damaged, had a disease, had some sort of mental illness or mental problem that they were able to fix, some physical ailment that they were able to fix, some autoimmune disease that they were able to fix. And so when you look at the community of keto, a lot of these people, like you were saying, they've tried everything else. They've already tried it. And the reason why they've landed here now, it's like their last resort

and their last resort seems to be working. So what do they do? They change their entire life going from a, you know, there'll be like an engineer. Look at these guys, like Dave Feldman. He's an engineer and he's like an expert in cholesterol now because he had a cholesterol problem. But they, you know, they're really smart people who take their knowledge and apply it to something else. And now like the keto community is just full of people when you go around and you ask people what they actually do. It's really weird because they're not doctors and you know, the normal scientists they're from all walks of life that are just getting involved in the ketogenic community. They're fighters and filmmakers and people like that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's, everybody's seeing the benefits.

Yeah. It seems to be pretty cool. Like to me, I, you know, when I wanted to make this movie about five years ago, you know, I wasn't even doing keto. I'm like, there needs to be a keto movie, like something you need to do. And there's been a couple of things that have like, sort of like hinted at that. And, uh, there's this movie that I think is pretty good called the magic pill that really exemplifies a lot of it. I think the barrier there is it's an Australian film. And so that's just a little hard for our American audiences to really swallow and grab hold of. I know it was, you know, I'm just speaking from my own experience. It's hard for me to grab hold of things that aren't happening, you know, here. So hopefully like Mark and I can bring some more attention,

like what's going on here. And also we'll bring a lot of like fun and flavor to it. It'll be hilarious. It'll be fun. Like there'll be a lot of ridiculous shit in there, but like, we're going to, we're going to tell a story by entertaining you and leaving, you know, I want, I want people, I want people to really think about what they put in their face every single day, because it's one thing that we aren't cognizant of. We know everything the president tweeted. We know everything that he said, right? We know, it's like, we have access to countless bits of information on our cell phones. We know what everybody posted on Instagram, but we don't even know what we put in here yesterday.

You know, like that's bad. When you ask somebody, what would you eat yesterday? Like, I can't even remember. It's like, you can't. And I remember because it's beef, beef, and beef. But you know, that's the thing is like, people just, they're not thinking so they don't remember. Yeah.

You know, and if you think, if I ask you, you could tell me what you ate yesterday because you'll think about it and think about it for many you'll go okay hide for you know you'll you'll know if you think put a little thought in a big ass salad with cruciferous veggies steamed and uh some free-range chicken breast with uh some of mark sisson's primal primal kitchen caesar dressing loaded on top and probably two avocados mixed in. It's perfect. Yeah.

Incredibly high fat. I love avocados. They're the best. I can eat them all day. So good. Yeah. It's crazy because I'll use the avocado oil dressing on top of an avocado, right? Uh-huh.

It's avocado on avocado. It's doubling up. Avocado on avocado crime. So you can chew avocado and you can drink avocado. Yeah. Get it all in. You know, it's awesome to eat this way, too, because everything tastes so good. And I think, like, we just have, what did we just have?

Coffee with ice cream in it? Yeah. We had this keto ice cream from Mammoth. They're a local place out here in Austin. And they're incredible. They're doing it right. Grass-fed butter, free-range, low carb, 100% keto, really high fat, heavy whipping cream. Yeah. And it's loaded with high quality ingredients.

That's the other thing we got to talk about here is like all these keto foods and snacks and things coming out. And it's like, a lot of times I'm against a lot of that stuff because it promotes, usually promotes bad habits a lot of times. But on a keto diet, on the flip side, I've been sending my mom, like anytime a new keto thing comes out, I'll have the company send it to my mom. Cause Mark and I know everybody through like Instagram and stuff like that. So I'll see like, oh, there's a new keto ice cream. There's a new keto cereal, you know, like, Hey mom, why don't you try this? Cause I know my mom, she likes all the garbage, you know? So why not give her garbage replacement, you know? And it, and it works. Like the thing is like, the garbage, you know? So why not give her garbage replacement? You know? And

it, and it works. Like the thing is like, you'll, you know, for guys in their thirties, I wouldn't recommend you go on a keto cheesecake diet, but like, look, it's better than what my mom had been eating. You know, my mom's lost 38 pounds on keto already. And she just started like, you know, when she had her back surgery a couple of weeks ago and just to lose 38 pounds when you had back surgery, you're like, what's that going to mean for her? You know, my mom said something to me that like we did an interview with her and she's had a bad back for a long time. She's been on a walker for a long time.

And Mark's daughter, Quinn, has her bedroom and it's upstairs. And I said to my mom, like, what's your dream in life? What do you want more than anything in life? She's like, I just want to walk up those stairs and see Quinn's bedroom. And to me, that's like, it's heart wrenching. It's so sad that she can't walk up the stairs and see her granddaughter's bedroom. It's like, I get choked up just even talking about it. Right. And it's like, for me, that's the goal. Like, how do we get mom, you know, besides trying to like, uh, put her on her back and lift her up the stairs, like Mark and I would try to do, how do we get her up the stairs to see, you know, to see Quinn's bedroom? The way we do that is we get her to continue on the diet

and we get her, we keep encouraging her and we keep giving her foods that she likes. And we, we don't try to make it hard. Yeah. It doesn't have to taste like shit. It doesn't really do hard. Yeah. Yeah, it really doesn't. Yeah, and thankfully, there's enough books out there with the right knowledge and awesome films like this one that's going to come out here. Yeah, there's a ton of books, a ton of information. It's everywhere now, and that's what's nice about it. It's accessible now.

Hell yeah, and a lot of good recipes too. It's like some of these low- low carb Instagram is like straight food porn. You know, and that's the thing I tell people is like, when you do this keto diet, I think you need to allow for stuff like that. And those become your cheats. Like, so I used to do a keto diet and then do like straight cheats, but there's like no way I can eat flour anymore. There's no way I can eat vegetable oil. There's three things that are cut out of the diet. They're off the team for good. You're off the team. Yeah, it's the vegetable and seed oils.

It's the wheat products and the flours. And it's the sugars. And those things are just, they just don't come in the diet anymore, regardless of anything. You know, it's like, I just don't have them anymore. I don't want them in my diet. I don't want them around.

There's no good that can come out of those things. All the other carbs, I'm fine with having them once in a while, but not those. Yeah. Agree 100%. Yeah. Well, shit, brother. What else you got? You got anything else you want to add?

I got nothing, man. We covered the whole gauntlet. Yeah, the whole gauntlet. My movie, A Leaf of Faith, comes out on Netflix on August 27th. I would really love for everybody to watch that and give us some feedback on it. And also, naturalorganicswithanexontheend.com is where people can, if they want to order some kratom, if they want to try it out, people can hit me up on Instagram at bigstrongfast. If they have questions, like I said, a lot of people hit me up and ask me about addiction.

And I can't answer every single question, but I try to get to as many of them as I can. So if you have questions about addiction or the diet or whatever, but also I encourage people to really read the posts because I'm sure you do this too. You go to town on a post and you write out everything

that you could possibly explicitly write out and somebody goes like, hey bro, what do you eat? I'm like, I just talked what do you eat? I'm like, I just talked about how I eat beef every meal for like the past 80 posts. And you're asking me what I eat. Like, come on,

like look through for a minute. So I'm saying it's like, if you're on a forum and they're like, Hey, read first, like in the FAQs on any forum, like read through some of the other posts first before posting a question. Cause somebody has already asked that shit.

Exactly. You know, exactly. If you're like, if you're late to the comments, to the comments, then go through a little bit first. Yeah. That's the advice I have. Fuck yeah, brother. It's been excellent having you, man. Awesome, man. Thanks, Kyle. Awesome, Chris. Thank you guys for tuning in to the Human Optimization Hour with my man, Chris Bell. We had an absolute blast having him here in town. Got to train with him, do some fun stuff. Make sure you check him out, but also go to Netflix. If you haven't seen these movies, take a deep dive through them all. Also, if you're a pro wrestling fan, I didn't even

realize this. He was a producer on the, uh, he was a producer on the resurrection of Jake, the snake Roberts, which is an incredible documentary on Jake, the snake Roberts from WWF way back in the day. And how DDP diamond Dallas page got him to clean up his life, get sober and start doing yoga. It's an amazing story. I didn't realize he was a producer. Also didn't realize Chris was involved in the wwe as a writer um just a

fascinating story totally cool guy appreciate you guys listening give us a shout out online if you enjoyed it on the social media channels and as always go to on it.com slash podcast for 10 off all food products and supplements