Mark Bell's Power Project - 10 Years Without Carbs: Robert Sikes Reveals Keto Secrets for Fat Loss and Longevity || MBPP Ep. 1134

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Robert's FREE Bodybuilding Masterclass: https://www.ketobodybuilding.com/registration-210 years without carbs?! How does someone achieve fat loss, build muscle, and live a long, thriving life on a diet most people think they can’t survive on? Keto expert Robert Sikes shares the secrets YOU NEED to know to make it work for your health and fitness goals.In episode 1134 of Mark Bell’s Power Project Podcast, hosts Mark Bell and Andrew Zaragoza chat with Robert Sikes, the “Keto Savage,” to uncover the hard truths and powerful strategies of ketogenic living. From mastering fat adaptation and crushing sugar addiction to using the power of nutrition for longevity, this episode dives into everything keto—simplified and straight to the point.If you’re focused on maximizing fat loss, improving strength, and unlocking health like never before, this is THE podcast you’ve been waiting for. Don’t miss Robert’s breakthrough insights that make the keto diet sustainable for real results.Savage Shred Challenge: https://www.ketobodybuilding.com/savage-shred-2025Buy Keto Bricks: https://www.ketobrick.com/Natural Bodybuilding Competition: https://naturalstatesavages.com/Robert on IG: https://www.instagram.com/ketosavage/Special perks for our listeners below!🥜 Protect Your Nuts With Organic Underwear 🥜➢https://nadsunder.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 15% off your order!🍆  Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECTUse code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained:   ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast➢ https://www.PowerProject.live➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerprojectFOLLOW Mark Bell➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybellFollow Nsima InyangFollow Nsima Inyang ➢ Ropes and equipment : https://thestrongerhuman.store➢ Community & Courses: https://www.skool.com/thestrongerhuman➢ YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=enFollow Andrew Zaragoza➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/➢ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamandrewz

You have been carb-less for the last 10 years. You are the keto savage. The reason why he's the keto savage is because he's got down to 3.9% body fat. The longer you are deeply fat adapted, the more efficient your body becomes at mobilizing glucose and glycogen in the muscle and the liver. Have you gotten your cholesterol check? I want to say my total cholesterol was right around just shy of 300, so higher by modern day standards, but my ratio was totally fine. My HDL was very high, my trigs were very low,

so my actual ratio was in the green. If a keto diet was to be dangerous, it would be the same reason why any other diet could potentially be dangerous. So when it comes to the ketogenic diet, is it just the inflammation or is there anything else going on there when it comes to pain management?

Yeah, I mean the anti-inflammatory component is one of the biggest You know benefits of a ketogenic down ketones are very anti-inflammatory in themselves And that's honestly one of the benefits of why I do this because I want to be able to do this for the long haul Alright keto brick. Welcome to the show. I got a clip here to show you Ryan if you can just start it up fire it up Being fat adapted is the guy who actually interviewed on my podcast. He ran five marathons in five days, completely fast. He wanted to show that being fat adapted essentially gives you unlimited energy.

Now, if you are doing a fast pace close to your VO2 max, you're going to run out of glucose and glycogen stores, and it's going to be a little bit different story. But basically anything that's 50% of VO2 max and below, you have almost endless energy if you're fat adapted.. You don't rely on carbs, you don't need to eat. That's what he went out to prove. The dude ran five marathons in five days without eating any food. That's insanity.

Robert Sykes, you have been carb-less for the last 10 years. You are the keto savage. What are some of your thoughts when you see a clip like that, a guy talking about running five marathons in a row with no carbs? I can't say I've done that. I've run one marathon without carbs. I've done 50 mile marches without carbs. I've been strict keto now for 10 years without carbs. I think it makes total sense. I feel like it's totally doable.

If I was an endurance athlete, I would do it without carbs. So I don't see any reason to think that it's not optimal. What about, do you have any conjecture against what he said when he was talking about, you know, if something's more glycolytic, maybe you do need carbs because you're a bodybuilder and bodybuilding is straight up glycolytic. Yeah, I feel like with that, my argument with that has always been the longer you are deeply fat adapted, the more efficient your body becomes at mobilizing glucose and glycogen in the muscle and the liver.

And I don't feel like you would need to introduce carbs if you are deeply fat adapted. That's kind of why I've stayed strict keto because I feel like from a glycolytic standpoint, I don't have any barriers, don't have any issues, don't have any adverse effects. But I think if you're doing like, you know, extensive endurance stuff like that, you just really got to hone in on truly getting to that deep adaptation phase. And there's guys like Zach Bitter out there who's played around with a lot of different versions of keto, but I think that he utilizes a little bit of carbohydrate in his food. Yeah, Zach does a little bit.

Mike McKnight is another example. He does a lot of, you know, 220 mile crazy runs. And I think he'll sometimes do carbs, sometimes not, but both of them have done extensive distances without any carbs to prove that it can't be done. Really, I think it's just all a matter of how deeply adapted you are. I feel like if you're not deeply adapted then yeah,

your body's gonna be familiar with carbohydrates, it's gonna want to use that as a fuel substrate, but if you've been strict long enough, there's no need. Your body finds a way without it. You don't seem like you're on a mission to prove everybody else wrong. You seem like you're just on your own mission, doing your own thing your own way, and this is just so happened to be what you prefer. Is that kind of correct?

You're not trying to be like, everyone needs to do it like me and get rid of carbs, because carbs can sometimes be convenient for some athletic endeavors, right? Yeah, I don't ever want to be, you know, stuck in my own information silo and become dogmatic with nutrition. Like I've done it the different ways with carbs, and I've landed on this because this is what I find to be optimal.

And other people have followed suit and also find it to be optimal. So I'm just simply wanting to offer this as a suggestion or an alternative that many people would likely find successful with. What are your guys thoughts on when he said the like below 50% of their VO2 max? The reason why I ask is like, well, how does your body know? You know, like it's like, oh, here we go.

We're over 50%. You know, open the floodgates. It's on now. Like what are your thoughts there? You know, I think, you know, having Chris Henshaw on the show and some other guests on the show who have kind of explained like the zone two type stuff, you, you go from zone two to zone three, you, you go from using your slow Twitch muscle fibers to using your fast Twitch muscle fibers. And sometimes what happens with sometimes in a case of running

is that sometimes people are asking their fast twitch muscles to do the things that the slow twitch muscles are supposed to be doing. Their heart rate gets to be a little bit too high and so on. And so your body kind of it is interesting. I do agree with you. It sounds like hocus pocus a little bit, but your body sort of does shift into these like different energy modes. I would also agree with you though, that it's not like that black and white. I can't just say, oh, Andrew's heart rate's over 140.

He automatically is now burning carbs instead of burning fat. But it's believed that you burn carbohydrates in a particular heart rate zone. And I think that heart rate zone could vary for each individual a little bit. And I've never actually trained via zone training. I've never actually looked think that heart rate zone could vary for each individual a little bit. And I've never actually trained via zone training. I've never actually looked at my heart rate as I'm doing cardio or anything to manipulate

my nutrition or training accordingly. I've actually never done a VO2 max either. So I don't know. I mean, your heart probably doesn't even work at this point. Well, the fat you eat all the time, saturated fat, I mean, shit. Yeah, I don't know. I'll tell you what though, like when I was going elk hunting this past year, we were hiking up mountains and I'm putting in some pretty good work there.

And like my heart rate was dropping down to 70 after hiking up three miles pretty quickly. So like I feel like from a conditioning standpoint, I didn't notice any detriment to not having the carbs. Yeah, sorry for a dumb question, but like have you gotten your cholesterol checked? Because within a span of like 24 hours, you had like 40 eggs, like a couple days ago, right? So like, I'm just kidding. And some keto bricks. I'm sure of it, yeah.

Yeah, I think I got checked like earlier this month in January, and I believe my total, I want to say my total cholesterol was right around, just shy of 300, so higher by modern day standards, but my ratio was totally fine. My HDL was very high, my trigs were very low, so my actual ratio was in the green. I've never done a CAC scan, but I don't have any reason

to think that I'm at any issues with them. I want to point something out. Medically, these are amazing pictures, by the way. Robert here has got down to, the reason why he's the keto savage is because he's got down to 3.9% body fat. We'll talk about that more in a couple of minutes. But something that's critical to point out is there's not a pill for heart disease.

I think it's important to note. And so all we have is pills for other things that we think contribute to heart disease, but there's still a lot that's like unknown. Andrew, we've had how many guests on the show talking every little thing about like seed oils and cholesterol and LDL and HDL and this lipid and that lipids fluffy and that lipids heavy and this, you know, and it seems to be a lot of guest work. Like we do have quite a bit of knowledge now

about these different lipids. And there is, you know, calcification and stuff like that, that happens. And it appears that we want to avoid that as much as possible. But at the moment, we don't even know how to get rid of the plaque once it gets there. And they actually don't know, it's my belief, as of right now, that they don't actually know scientifically

how the plaque gets in there in the first place. Cause the plaque is ending up in some spots to where they're like, there shouldn't really be any plaque here. But there is, and there's not a pill for plaque. Now I know that there's some people who might say, oh, well, there's this one and that one. There's not really at the moment,

there's not a clinically tried and true pill for plaque. There's only things that can help with your, mainly your cholesterol. There are some other drugs that they're coming out with that can help with some other things. There's obviously drugs that can help you manage your body weight, helping you manage your energy consumption.

And really, if a keto diet was to be dangerous, it would be the same reason why any other diet could potentially be dangerous. If you did a keto diet was to be dangerous, it would be the same reason why any other diet could potentially be dangerous. If you did a keto diet for 20 years and you overate the entire time, just like with any other diet, if you overate the entire time, had a hard time controlling your body weight,

you could have some maybe health outcomes that aren't great. Yeah, and like when I'm doing a prep, like I'll get my blood labs drawn at the very beginning when I'm at a, and like when I'm doing a prep, like I'll get my blood labs drawn, you know, at the very beginning when I'm at a surplus and also when I'm at a deficit. And my lipids and my cholesterol numbers and my hormones change quite a bit throughout that entire time.

So like you can change those depending on what your consumption is for sure. Mark, with that stuff, like maybe this is a little bit too deep of a question, but have they found any like commonalities in someone that has high, you know, plaque or low plaque or whatever? Like do they, does, has anybody put that kind of like information together? Cause that's, I don't know, man, that sounds scary. And that's part of why I haven't done it. Cause you know, I, again, we've had carnivores on here tell me like,

ah, it's no, that it's not that big of a deal. And then we've had someone like Stan Efforting, who I'm not going to ignore what he says and he's like yeah You should probably cut back on the saturated fat. So Again, we have a lot of information coming at us. It's a lot of different information But the one thing that you know, like Mark tells me or you know just said it's like well We can't really do anything once it's there And I think those in tandem like if you're consuming a lot of carbohydrates and a lot of saturated fats, those two together is where you start to run into some risk. Whereas if you're kind of picking your fuel substrate as your predominant consumption,

then you can kind of mitigate some of those adverse effects. Like I've been very, very low carb, so my ratio is good. But if I was still consuming the amount of fat that I am currently in tandem with a bunch of carbohydrates, I'd like to have more issues. Okay, so you're like, that's the first time I've heard that. Yeah, Robert's bringing up an excellent point. We don't know this, we don't know that, but we do know that fats and carbohydrates together

just have a potential for disaster in terms of overeating. I see, yeah. You're like, it's just tough. It's tough not to overeat ice cream. It's tough from a caloric perspective. It's hard not to overeat pizza. It's hard not to overeat ice cream. It's tough from a caloric perspective. It's hard not to overeat pizza. It's hard not to overeat if you're eating Doritos and sandwiches and so forth each day. Some of these things don't fill us up enough.

There's not enough of a satiety signal. So all kinds of things like that happen when we eat some of those foods. One thing to really be cautious about though, which people should be paying attention to if you're considering a keto diet or considering a carnivore diet, which I think everyone should. I literally think that everyone should consider these styles of diets.

And I think that everyone should just try it. Just try it for a bit. But what I want to say is that if you yo-yo and you go back and forth between keto, carnivore, and just reckless eating, binging, you could be causing a lot of damage. You could be causing a lot of trouble. So that would be something to actually pay attention to. And in that case, I would say as much as I don't want to promote that people go lower fat, but if you are really struggling and you tend to binge often, you might want to keep those fat calories

and fat grams just in check. I'm not saying to have them low, but you might want to keep them in check. If every weekend you fall off and the wheels fall off and you're eating pizza, that could be a recipe for disaster. Yeah, I mean, kind of from a metabolic flexibility standpoint, that term gets thrown around a lot carelessly,

but like we're pretty much born more or less fat adapted, like breast milk has, you know, lactose in it, but I mean, we're pretty much born ketogenic to some degree. And then that gets stripped away from us when we started getting fed, you know, baby food and all the fruit purees and things like that. So most people would benefit from a period of time eating a ketogenic diet so they can upregulate those fat metabolism pathways.

They don't have to necessarily stay that way. I think it's optimal to stay that way. That's why I have. But if you're going to go back and forth and maybe doing so seasonality with the seasons would make sense. But yeah, you don't want to yo-yo and change it up every week by any means. So when I first even discovered the ketogenic diet, which was still way later than a lot of people, but the goal was we got to get in ketosis because that's where the magic happens.

Should people be concerned with like, oh no, my ketone levels are this or that and I'm no longer in ketosis, what's the point now? Should ketosis be the goal? No, you don't have to obsess about the ketone levels are this or that and I'm no longer in ketosis, what's the point now? Should ketosis be the goal? No, you don't have to obsess about the ketone numbers. I mean, if you're eating lower carbohydrates, higher fat, moderate protein, like you're going to have likely more circulating blood ketones, but not having excessive carbohydrate and sugar consumption and processed foods and seals, you're going to have less inflammation, you're going to have more insulin sensitivity, like all those benefits will come to some

degree, even if you're not registering high on the ketone stick, you know? Yeah. Carbs under approximately how much? Under like 30? I mean, because carbohydrates is sort of pop up in everything and some people are going to probably want to eat some vegetables and stuff. So what, where's your recommendation on carbohydrates? I mean, I keep mine less than 20 total typically with the foods I eat pretty effortlessly.

A lot of people, you know, if they're at less than 50, that'd be totally fine. And I could consume more and my body would burn it up based off of my activity. There'd be no issue necessarily, but most people don't need nearly as many carbs as they're consuming. I mean, you don't need to carb up before you fold the laundry. You know, people are doing all these crazy things and it's like, you don't need that. Your body doesn't need that, you know. It's a lot of laundry though, you don't know.

And then just so we're kind of like, I was painting a picture of like where the macros should land because I know that you track yours and you've helped a lot of other people with tracking theirs to get great results with their physique. Where should the protein be-ish and where should the fats be? Kind of depends on the goal. Like I'll change mine quite a bit depending on where I'm at in a fat loss or muscle building phase. Most people would benefit from starting at a higher fat ratio, as high as like 80%. Get those metabolic pathways in place and they can kind of titrate the protein up and the fat down to find their sweet spot.

A good, you know, one-to-one in grams of fat to protein works pretty well for most people. And then again, depending on what the goal is, you can kind of finesse that as needed. But a lot of people don't start the diet with enough dietary fat. They remove the carbs so that the energy from that is gone. They don't replace that with dietary fat. So they're hoping that it's just going to tap into their stored fat right off the bat. But they don't have any energy coming in until those metabolic pathways get put in place. They feel miserable. They deviate from the diet and they're back at square one. fat right off the bat, but they don't have any energy coming in until those metabolic pathways get put in place.

They feel miserable, they deviate from the diet, and they're back at square one. And one-to-one protein to fats with this tiny amount of carbohydrates in there probably is what, like 55, 60 percent? It's like 69, 68, 69, 70. Of your calories are coming from protein? No, that's from fat. So when you're at one-to-one, you're at about a 68% fat. I see.

68 to 70, depending on how many carbs you're consuming. And then when you get leaner though, you start to hedge towards almost like a two to one protein to fat or? So I've got my seven phase protocol. So I'll start with the higher fat, you know, 80% fat, and then I'll titrate that down while simultaneously bringing my protein up

until I find my protein threshold. For me, that's around 200, 220 grams of protein and then I'll start dropping both dietary fat and protein, so overall calories are continuing to drop. And then towards the latter half of my prep, I'll start throwing in ketogenic caloric refeeds. Those will typically be 30 to 50% calories above baseline. And at that point, I'm at a higher fat ratio, normally 70 to 75%. Sometimes it's even as 80 depending on how my body's looking getting up close to a show day. I see.

So it changes a lot based off of you know how my body's functioning. I want to optimize my performance that I'm recovering well and able to preserve the muscle that I've got because when you're dieting down you know you're going to be depleted so preserving the lean tissue I've got because when you're dieting down, you're gonna be depleted. So preserving the lean tissue you've got is gonna help keep that metabolism functioning at high rate and you're just gonna feel better. Like you're gonna have more energy. Like whole process. Is it kind of almost safe to say like your protein

in certain parts of the prep might be 180 to kind of match your body weight or 170 and your fats might be like 100 and then on the days when you are refeeding that's sort of flipped. It's like 200 grams of you know something like that. I'll actually drop my protein quite a bit more than that like it'll get as high as 220 when I'm figuring out what that protein threshold is but my first ketogenic prep I took my protein as low as 65 grams a day which is pretty low and that was for a very acute

period of time. I don't recommend that, but what I was shocked by was that I didn't really lose any strength or lean tissue when I was at that super low consumption. I don't go near that low now because I can, you know, manipulate my macros differently and not need to go that low. But it's amazing how low you can go for a finite period of time without really noticing any adverse effects from a muscle loss standpoint.

Do you ever concern yourself with like the, what is it called, the thermic? Thermic effect of food? Yeah, when it comes to the protein of things, right? Yeah, so protein has a higher thermic effect of food than carbs and fat, obviously. So some people think if you're consuming more protein, you're going to be burning more calories to metabolize that protein. I'm one of those people, by the way. Yeah.

If you look at it, and actually, Lane Norton talks about this quite well. I mean, there's different points of opinion on him. But when you look at the actual increase in caloric expenditure from the thermocaffective food, even if you quadruple your protein, that's not gonna result in that many more calories burned. So I don't really use that as a variable

that I'm manipulating. It's just gonna be a small amount. Yeah, super small. Like, you don't want that to be the main lever you're pulling. Yeah, if you're eating like an extra 200 grams of protein, it's not like you're burning an extra 500 calories. Yeah, and if you're eating that much, like if you only get so many calories to work with

and you want it to, if you're going really heavy-handed on the protein, and that's obviously going to mean your fat is going to be lower, but that's where you're getting your energy from. So if your energy is tanking, your performance is going to tank. So you're going to lose more lean tissue and the protein is going to lead to more inflammation and you're just not going to feel as well.

So I don't typically go too high. Yeah, I think a really good point here is that protein is not a great energy source. It's not normally, I mean, I guess if you took your protein super low for a long time, like you probably feel bad, maybe lose muscle mass and so forth, but protein is kind of almost like a thing that it's not a great energy source. The fats are the great energy source and sounds like because you don't manipulate carbohydrates

because you don't really eat them, you mainly manipulate the fats and it sounds like you also would manipulate the fats with the protein because the fats are protein sparing, especially when you start to get in more of a ketotic state, the more ketogenic that you are. And that's probably part of your experiment of going way down to 65 grams of protein. You probably can eat 90 grams of protein and 70 grams

of protein and probably still hold on to quite a bit of muscle mass because you got some circulating ketones going. Yeah, I mean, now, like my last prep, I think I got down to like 115, 120 grams of protein for that last couple of weeks, but that's in the context of also having a ketogenic refeed once a week.

So that's going to have a bolus of protein there. So it might even out. Yeah, so at that intake, I didn't notice any muscle loss at all. So to simplify things for me and potentially the other guy that's listening right now that just can't keep track of all the percentages you guys just laid out. For someone like me, I like to keep it simple. Okay, one gram of protein per pound of body weight. That seems pretty straightforward.

Is there a ratio like that for fat? And then we can also take, okay, one gram of fat to one gram of protein, like one to one ratio. Is there something there where like, I'm 180 pounds, how much fat should I be consuming? And then can I just roll that over and say, that's also how many grams of protein I should be consuming? I don't really ever recommend like a set it

and a forget it ratio, because as you lean out, your hormones level change, your energy demands change, like everything changes. So I like to manipulate my macros to kind of follow suit with that and stay ahead of it. So I'll typically start at about a two to one ratio. If you have a healthy, you know, maintenance caloric intake at the onset to begin with. And then from there, it kind of becomes more of a one to one.

And then I start dropping protein and fat simultaneously. Usually protein a little bit more aggressively than the fat. So I'm typically operating between about 70 and 80 percent of my calories coming from fat throughout the entirety of my fat loss phase, just depending on where I'm at in that fat loss phase. Okay, and sorry, Mark, because for me it's really easy to get the protein pretty high and the fats pretty moderate. Just consuming a lot of Piedmontese beef, like the Bob Vette steak, 100 grams of protein, 16 grams of fat for the entire steak. It's freaking perfect.

What does it look like to go two to one to protein though? Because in my head, I'm like, dude, I don't even know what I would eat at that point. Yeah. When you're at 80% fat ratio, you gotta get a little creative, but you're not staying there for long, so you don't have to do anything crazy for long. But I'll typically do a keto brook a day, so it's 90 grams of fat there.

And then I'll have a lot more butter or duck fat or ghee or some fat source from that, olive oil, avocado oil, and then I'll opt for a fattier ground beef, like an 80-20 or 75-25 or something of that nature. And then as my protein increases and my fat drops, I'll swap that 75-25 out for an 80-20 or 85-15 or something like that. And I think there's some obvious things to do here as well.

Like you can cook stuff with, you mentioned duck fat, you got tallow and maybe some coconut oil. I don't really love cooking stuff in like oil, but I will utilize some tallow, and maybe some coconut oil. I don't really love cooking stuff in oil, but I will utilize some tallow here and there. But basically if you cook up some eggs and you cook them in a little bit of tallow or a little bit of coconut oil, and then you throw some butter on them,

now you're in a pretty good ratio. Eggs are usually one to one, usually six grams of protein and six grams of fat, depending on the size of the egg. I think one to one is a really nice ratio to just kind of have in the back of your head, just as a convenience thing, because it's easy to see. And like when you're talking about, it's easy to think about, like, I weigh 180, so 180 grams of fat, 180 grams of protein.

But if I want to consider more of what Robert's talking about, maybe I want those fats to be a little higher for energy purposes. So I feel good on the mat. So I feel good with my jujitsu. And so maybe just, especially because you're not familiar with that much fat, you know, be cautious of otherwise you're going to have disaster. Yeah, you don't want that. On the mats. And we don't wanna add a bunch of oil and stuff. You wanna try to add things that are like more natty. You probably don't really use like butters and stuff like peanut butters and almond butter and things like that.

But I suppose you could. You could use, you could eat some almonds and walnuts and things like that, right? Yeah, I'll do that on occasion. I'm kind of doing like a meat and bricks only diet right now, but I'll sometimes have the almond butter. One of my clients sent me this jar of this coconut peanut butter from Hawaii. And man, it's just dangerous to have those in the house, man, because I could eat like

the whole thing. It's like one gram of carb per serving, whereas most peanut butter is like six or seven. So I could just crash that whole jar pretty effortlessly. So I got to kind of moderate that. My brother's girlfriend had a really genius idea the other day. She said, a peanut butter tallow. Oh yeah, it's coming. It's coming.

Peanut butter and tallow. I know you're making the bars, all the different bars, but I would like peanut butter and tallow like in a little bucket. Yeah. Yeah, peanut butter's like a kryptonite, man. I could just go down on that. I know. I don't know why peanut butter is like a kryptonite, man. I could just go down on that. I know, I don't know why peanut butter

is ever like a diet food. Yeah. You know, like it's in people's prep. It's like, are you crazy? Yeah. That sounds like madness. Well, it's not satiating, you know, it's not satiating. It's hyper palatable.

I mean, you can just eat it in excess. It's not really natural. I mean, you don't really find that in nature, so to speak. So yeah, you can just get a lot of calories without much satiety from it. So probably not the best thing for fat. But yeah, keto brick goes a long way. Yeah. In terms of adding the fats.

I just crushed one right now. It's the first one I had in one sitting. It was the new one that you guys collabed on and that dude, that was incredible. A thousand calories, like 86 grams of fat. That's the most I've had in one sitting. I know your stomach sometimes is a little bit here and there, but I'd be interested to learn more about what happens later on tonight. Curious as well.

It takes me two hours if you're doing all right. Sounds good. So assuming... Doubled over in pain in the corner. Dude, I did get a squatty potty recently. Nice. Yeah. I was just thinking like my shoulders been banged up and I'm like, dude, if I'm sitting on the toilet, like, you know, like maybe this will help.

So I think we're on the same frequency because I've been, I've been really thinking about it. Like I was taking a shit this morning actually. And I have like this thing that's next to my toilet that I do put my foot up on, but both my feet aren't up. So I need to get off balance, dude. I'm off balance. I need both feet.

We had a Dr. Sean O'Mara on the show. He talks a lot about like sprinting and how you, when you take a dump, you shouldn't really O'Mara on the show. He talks a lot about sprinting and how when you take a dump, you shouldn't really be even sitting on the toilet. You should be like squatting. Yeah, he's a great guy. I was like, I could use, I probably need to get the squat. Yeah, it was, what's the guy's name? The guy that we talked about foreskin with. Oh yeah.

He was great. Do you remember his name, Ryan? I don't. Dang it. I feel bad. I always forget his name. But he's the one that told us we're all in deep shit because we're not using squatty-potties. I have heard a lot about those.

Like, Ryjo, my son, we got him a little step stool, you know? So he can use the full-size toilet. So it's like, I could probably double as a squatty-potty. I'll have to use that. Oh, yeah. That'll work. Yeah. Totally free.

Okay, yeah, if somebody's getting their numbers right, their macros, their ket NIS is on point. Their, their diet wasn't a ketogenic diet, but they are in a good caloric maintenance phase. Like, so they're, they're in a good spot to drop weight. What are some of the first things that they'll experience? Right. Cause like, I just want to know, like, am I going down the right path? Like, cause like the first time I was, I was fasting and I started eating.

I'm like, Mark, dude, my body's tingling. Like, am I having a heart attack right now? And he's like, sometimes that can happen. So what are the, some of the first things that can happen when somebody starts diving into a ketogenic diet? Well, they're coming from a carb heavy diet. They're going to probably flush out a lot of water, which is going to flush out a lot of sodium, potassium.

So increasing their electrolyte consumption at the onset is going to be key, just so that they're feeling good, they don't have any muscle cramps or headaches or things of that nature. It kind of depends what they're doing. If they're trying to do a fat loss phase, I recommend people actually stick with a maintenance intake of keto for a few months prior to actually dropping calories because it takes a while for those metabolic pathways to get put in place so your performance isn't hindered. And you don't want to start a fat loss phase and automatically not be lifting as much because

that's going to build both well for preserving the muscle you've got. So I would recommend staying at that maintenance intake with ketogenic foods for a few months prior to actually going into the fat loss phase. And you mentioned ramping your salts up, your sodium up to around 15 grams? Let's go. Not initially, like when I'm deep, deep, deep into a cut, like when I'm sub 10%, my craving for salt goes to the roof.

So I'll go as high as 15 grams. Generally speaking, about a two to one ratio of sodium to potassium works pretty well. So I'll start people at like 4,000 milligrams sodium, 2,000 potassium, then just scale that up based off of how they're feeling. But yeah, when I get lean, man, I crave the sodium. Yeah, that's interesting. You know, I know that between fasting and keto, sometimes you go to workout and you because like a lot of times fasting and keto are utilized. We always

have to point this out because they're utilized for weight loss. A lot of times fasting and keto are utilized. So we always have to point this out because they're utilized for weight loss. A lot of times that's why you're not feeling great. And if you were in a surplus of calories, we probably wouldn't run into half of these problems because you'd probably end up with a better electrolyte balance just because you ate more food. Food is like a shuttling system of electrolytes and so on. And you put salt on your meat and so on.

So I think it's important to point that out, but sometimes when somebody's training, they might feel like they're gonna pass out. I've heard people say that they've had kind of heart palpitations or cramps, there are a lot of these things. Almost all of these things will subside either with more food or more salt. Yeah, 100%, man. Like I was competing one year and the guy I was stepping on stage with couldn't hit the poses.

Like he was cramping so bad he actually had to walk off stage, which just sucks. I mean he puts on all this work and he can't even compete on show day because he had like done... I mean like, you know, like all these crazy peak week protocols people go through. Dehydration, carb loading, diuretics, like it's not healthy, it's not optimal. So yeah, you gotta stay hydrated, you gotta keep the electrolytes in check and you'll feel way better for it. I know you guys don't mess with this stuff,

but I guess what are some of the, I guess I'll say positive negatives of like keto bombs and those sort of things, because like that gets people excited, right? Like I'm a huge fan of peanut butter cups and I can Probably go on a rule to dot me and find like a dope like recipe for something that's like Should I eat that without a ketogenic diet which would then cause a lot of havoc on my stomach and more calories for no reason But with some of that stuff where can people run into some problems?

Yeah, I mean you could definitely incorporate it But like a lot of people in the keto space that think it's all about insulin and calories are not, you know, necessary. Like, I mean, they don't count. That's what a lot of people think, which is just not true. I mean, everything counts, you know? So like, if you're eating a bunch of hyper-palatable keto treats

and you let your calories get away from you and you're over-consuming, you're not going to really optimize for fat loss. So you got to be careful of, you know, full consumption. But yeah, you can certainly use some of those. Now a lot of those are just packed full of erythritol and those are going to cause some GI distress for some. So I try to minimize all the sweeteners.

Plus when you're eating sweet foods, you crave more sweet foods. So you're less satiated in the first place. And if I'm in a deficit, I want to make sure every calorie I'm consuming is as neutrally dense as possible and actually bodes well for my goals, you know? Yeah, it's taken me to be nearly 48 years old to look at a food and just be like, it's

not worth it. Yeah. All that food's going to do is trigger me to want to eat more of it. It's going to be satisfying in the moment, but I can't eat half a slice of pizza or I can't have a slice of pizza. Maybe the only way I could have a slice of pizza is if there's only one slice of pizza. Maybe the only way I could have a slice of pizza is if there's only one slice of pizza in the house. But if there's like more than a couple,

then that means if I'm gonna eat one, I'm gonna eat all. And so we have to be very cautious. And I think it's important. I think what I admire about you the most is the fact that you're unwavering. You've been on this keto train for a long time and you haven't like bounced, you're not like, oh, Paul Saladino's eating fruit

or this guy's only eating meat and I'm gonna go this way and I'm gonna now go a different route rather than being keto. You've stayed keto the whole time and I think that that's admirable. It's not easy to do that. Cause you're seeing, we just see so much stuff on the internet.

But I think a really key factor for people is ask yourself, why are you doing what you're doing? Why are you doing the current diet that you're doing? Why did you select this? Why did you choose to do keto? Did you choose to do keto to bake up a bunch of keto frankenfoods that are just going to put you over your caloric limit? Being over your caloric limit is by definition the standard American diet since most people

in America continually gain weight every single year. The only way to gain weight is to be in a caloric surplus consistently. So you might switch to keto or you might switch to carnivore and then you're just doing the same thing again. And so I think people need to be really cautious of this. And we've seen this with paleo. We've seen this with like a gluten-free movement. It's like, oh, I'm eating a gluten-free donut.

It's like, well, okay, it's nice that you have that option. It's nice that we have technology today that can make that for us. It's nice that we have these keto pop tarts and these different options for us. But let's not try to like live off these things because it's just going to get us in a caloric surplus. Yeah, I feel like people that are in traditional society, they can eat intuitively with keto

and they'll see a lot more success necessarily than they would with a standard American diet because it's less hyper palatable but with all the advent of new keto foods and treats and processed junk, that water becomes muddy. And to be fair, even your bricks and even the products that I make, the electrolytes that I make, they don't have any calories, but the protein powders and stuff that I make, you make one of my protein powders, you take the total carnivore steak shake, throw some heavy cream in there, and you're over your allotment for calories, and it's going to taste amazing.

But if you do that day in and day out, you're not going to make the progress you're looking for. Yeah, I make a keto brick. I make a keto product, and I'm always the first to tell people like, look, this should not be the staple that you're consuming. Like, eat other whole foods. I'm not losing weight, Robert. I know what's going on. Eat whole foods and then use that in tandem with it. Like, it's a great option. You know, I eat one every day when I get down to 3.9 percent, but like, you got to make the base

of your nutrition come from real wholesome foods for sure. All right, Mark, you're getting leaner and leaner, but you always enjoy the food you're eating. So, but like you got to make the base of your nutrition come from real wholesome foods for sure. All right, Mark, you're getting leaner and leaner, but you always enjoy the food you're eating. So how you doing it? I got a secret, man. It's called good life protein. Okay, tell me about that.

I've been doing some good life protein. We've been talking on the show for a really long time of certified Piedmontese beef, and you can get that under the umbrella of good life proteins, which also has chicken breast, chicken thighs, sausage, shrimp, scallops, all kinds of different fish, salmon, tilapia. The website has nearly any kind of meat that you can think of. Lamb is another one that comes to mind.

And so I've been utilizing and kind of using some different strategy kind of depending on the way that I'm eating. So if I'm doing a keto diet, I'll eat more fat and that's where I might get the sausage and I might get their 80 20 grass fed grass finished ground beef, I might get bacon. And there's other days where I kind of do a little bit more bodybuilder style where the fat is, you know, might be like 40 grams or something like that.

And then I'll have some of the leaner cuts of the certified Piedmontese beef. This is one of the reasons why like neither of us find it hard to stay in shape because we're always enjoying the food we're eating and protein, you talk about protein leverage all the time, it's satiating and helps you feel full. I look forward to every meal and I can surf and turf.

You know? I could cook up some chicken thighs or something like that and have some shrimp with it or I could have some steak. I would say the steak, it keeps going back and forth for me on my favorites, so it's hard for me to lock one down, but I really love the bavette steaks. And then I also love the rib eyes as well. You can't go wrong with the rib eyes.

So guys, if you guys want to get your hands on some really good meat, pause. You can head to goodLifeProteins.com and use code POWER for 20% off any purchases made on the website, or you can use code POWERPROJECT to get an extra 5% off if you subscribe and save to any meats that are a recurring purchase. This is the best meat in the world.

Yeah, so every time we talk and we hang out, I always want to jump on a ketogenic diabetes because of everything like you're promoting, not that you're promoting it, but you just speak so well about it. And obviously you're, you know, a walking billboard for it. It's jacked.

Yeah. My thing though, cause you're like, why would you want to do it? And it's like, well, you guys saw me in the gym. I couldn't, I couldn't press, you know, as much as I wanted to, as my shoulders banged up. I get choked out in jujitsu, I get my arms broken almost in jujitsu all the time. So like my tendons, my joints, obviously my back is still,

it's kind of always in the background literally. It's gotten a lot better. But for me it's just the pain. So when it comes to the ketogenic diet, is it just the inflammation or is there anything else going on there when it comes to like pain management? Yeah, I mean, the anti-inflammatory component is one of the biggest benefits of a ketogenic diet. Like when I was doing standard American diet, carb heavy diet, you know, I would do heavy leg day and then I'd be wrecked for the next week. I couldn't do squats for another

week. Now, I mean, I literally just got done doing two years of full body doing like legs every single day. And I wouldn't have been able to do that previously. Like I was training with that degree of frequency without any issues from a joint pain or inflammation standpoint. I mean, ketones are very anti-inflammatory in themselves. And that's honestly one of the benefits of why I do this because I want to be able to do this for the long haul. So yeah, in your situation, I feel like that alone would be reason enough to do it. And then the other thing too is like I hear a lot about this and you spoke about it with like fasting, but like the cognitive enhancements that you could get from a ketogenic diet. Obviously we had several doctors on this podcast talk about like the mental health aspect of a

ketogenic diet and how that can be beneficial. But is there also something there for like just literally day to day getting productivity done? Again, like maybe even memory retention and that sort of thing. Because I'm also always chasing nootropics like we talked about earlier, like to improve all that stuff. But maybe I could just get all of this from my diet and not go chasing supplements and you know, all these like hacks and that sort of thing. Yeah. I mean ketones cross the blood brain barrier. They provide direct energy for the

brain. And you just have much more even keel energy. Like you don't have the hypoglycemic, hyperglycemic moments due to blood sugar regulation with carbs. So you just steady state with energy. Like I eat two meals a day at the moment and I'm just productive. I'm not fixated on food all day long. I can podcast and record content and have meetings all day long with that issue. So yeah, I think from that standpoint it's great. And then as far as the neurological component, what you do long term I think is really, that's one of the reasons I do the diet.

Because when you look at neurodegeneration, it's coming from insulin resistance in the brain. It's coming from inflammation or oxidative stress. And if you're able to hedge against all that via the ketogenic diet, you're going to set yourself up for better success long term, more so than any other diet in my opinion. And I don't want to be plagued with Alzheimer's dementia when I'm 78 years old. I want to be able to play with my grandkids. I personally love the convenience of the ketogenic diet. Years ago, I chose to eat out more often and getting food from a restaurant and not having

carbs was not hard. Might seem like for some people might think that it would be difficult. Sometimes people get confused on your order or whatever, but it's like, it's not hard. They forgot. They gave you a bun or whatever. It's not hard just to not eat it. You know, I would say, hey, no croutons and things like that with a salad and it would have croutons on it, but no problems. Swipe them away, give them to whoever else I'm eating with. Maybe they want to eat them.

It wasn't really a big deal. Nowadays, I've taken it upon myself to cook more often. And even back then I'd cook a little bit, but I just, to be honest, I didn't know how to cook very well. And so sometimes I'd rather eat at a restaurant, even though I didn't really have the money for it. I was kind of like scratching together whatever I could to kind of get an omelet or whatever for breakfast and things like that.

But over time, I've learned to cook my own meals a little bit better for myself. My wife is, you know, she's always cooking up amazing stuff that sort of fits the recipe. But I believe that you've gone a step further. Like you actually hunt a lot of your own food. It sounds like you have like a sanctuary where you can, you have your own animals to hunt, like almost on your own property, it sounds like. You just walk outside and with a shotgun and I'm picturing you with a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and going out and hunting. I know nothing about hunting. You probably don't even use a shotgun. I don't know.

It depends what I and hunting. I know nothing about hunting. You probably don't even use a shotgun, I don't know. It depends what I'm hunting. Yeah. See, I know nothing about nothing. But anyway, as you're going out there and killing hogs with a knife, jumping out of a tree, you have learned to do all these things. And I think you have a garden at your house and all that.

Like what's the evolution of that? Like where did some of that come from? Did you grow up that way or is this something that's newer? Yeah, no, I grew up hunting. But then once I started doing keto, it made sense, because I started doing it before it was popular. So it was before there was any processed version of keto. So it was just all real food, all whole foods.

And once you start eating all real whole foods, you want to try and just blend that into your life as much as possible. So, and then I've really started talking with a bunch of local farmers. I've had, you know, I've been to White Oak Pastures, had him, Will Harris on the podcast, met with him. It's like we're all part of a unique system. We're all, you know, symbiotic in nature. We eat predominantly fats and proteins, animal-based fats and proteins.

A lot of people are removed from that transaction. They just get their food wrapped in cellophane at the grocery store. But like when you are trying to eat the highest quality, most nutrient-dense foods you can, you want to source that the best you can. And that means you're not trying to step on the toes and just play in because you vote with your dollars. So I don't necessarily want to support these big bucks conglomerations that are doing factory feedlot beef because that's not a good quality of life for the animal. So I can kind of relate with the vegans that don't want animals to suffer. I don't want animals to suffer. But like when I hunt, I complete that circle of life. I take that

life but then I make every use of that animal that I possibly can. It's the highest quality animal that I can consume. You appreciate the life all the more. You're feeding your family, you're providing for them, and you're just completing that circle of life. And to me, I mean, what more can I ask for? It's just interesting. Like I've never felt that before. I've never done that before. So I need to come to your- Come on, man. I need to go out to Arkansas and check some of this out because like that seems like an amazing experience. It seems like a way different experience. I mean

You know, I've been to ranches and I've seen cows and like I where I live is like kind of out in the country and there's Cattle down the street and stuff like that But I don't really know a ton about like the processing the slaughtering the all the different things that are kind of involved in that I guess the closest thing I do have to that I guess that when I was a kid I used to fish and I'd fish with my grandfather and you gut the fish and all that kind of stuff. So I have at least some version of that, but for the most part, it's like, yeah, grab something out of the freezer, make sure it's defrosted, have it on a plate and just shove it in my face. There's not really much gratitude there. There's a chunk that's probably missing. Well, I hate food waste.

I hate when people throw away food. And when I went elk hunting and caught it out of this past year, we shot a big bull elk at 600 yards. And then we had to hike three miles in to get it. We backpacked it all out. We got almost attacked by a mountain lion. It was quite the ordeal. But you complete that circle of life,

you put in so much freaking work to get that meat back. You don't want any of it to go to waste. You don't want to lose any of it. It's like the last thing I want to do is throw something away. Like I make use of every single part of it. I want to respect that animal by giving it a good clean death, which is more enjoyable, not enjoyable,

but like if they were to die out in the wild, they're going to be ripped to shreds alive. A clean kill with a well-placed bullet is less suffering for them. And then that food nourishes me and my family for months to come. That's a full, complete, full circle of what it should be. And you can tell the,

it's gonna be the dumbest question ever, but you can definitely tell the difference between something that you hunted versus something that is wrapped in plastic inside a Walmart or something. Oh yeah, man. I mean, when you're eating wild game meat that's been living off the freaking slopes

of Colorado mountain tops for its whole life, there's just a whole nother level of flavor and nutrient density in there. So how long does it take to chop it up, and I think the proper term is to quarter it up and then backpack it out? What's the process? It just depends. So like for that elk, we shot it at 650 yards.

I was hunting with my good friend, Michael. He's a former Green Beret. We shot at the same time. We did like a countdown, like sniper style. We shot at the same time. We hiked up there, the bull dropped almost instantly and the bullet holes were four inches apart. We get out there and it's like 6 p.m. at that point.

We start cutting it out. We were done by 10 p.m. I bumped my there and it's like 6 p.m. at that point, we start cutting it up. We were done by 10 p.m. I bumped my backpack and this walkie talkie. Four hours cutting. Yeah, no joke, because he's like on the side of a mountain. So like you're rolling him over and it's just, it's hard work.

And then I bumped my backpack, my walkie talkie went off and this mountain lion that was like 20 yards away growled at us. So we hightailed it out of there, came back the next day to get the rest of me. He had drug the head off 100 yards, eaten out the tongue and the eyes. And we never saw him, but I mean, definitely a mountain lion. And then we brought some friends, they helped pack it out the next day,

and we spent all the next day butchering it up, grinding it up, packaging it up. So it was a 48-hour ordeal for sure. So the lion didn't go for the liver? Because I thought that's what they go for first every time. I didn't know this, but apparently mountain lions, they really fixate on the eyes and the tongue. So like they went for that head, man. Creepy ass cats.

Yeah. How much does an elk weigh? This one was probably about 800 pounds. Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot of meat to haul around. Yeah, I mean, I was hurting, man. Like, because we were out there at night, I'm climbing over Dead Falls. It's cold. I got this heavy pack on full of meat and

Can't see anything. I mean, it's you gotta be in shape to do that. What did you shoot it with 300 win mag? Yeah, I asked that like I know what you're gonna say. I don't know shit about guns either Yeah, no 300 win mag for that one Which six hundred for the yards a long shot man. It's longer than I've ever killed anything. Yeah. It was cool. It was cool. In your, you know, as you've been doing the keto diet and stuff, what sort of gave you

the idea of making the keto brick? Like where did this come from? So when I was, like I said, I started keto 2014, 2015. Wasn't any products on the market at that time. I did my first ketogenic bodybuilding prep in 2017, and I wanted a way to just streamline my meal prep and just simplify things. So I started out formulating a bunch of different things,

you know, throwing some foods together, see what works, see what didn't. The cacao butter was a good quality fat source, high in stearic acid that was relatively shelf stable. So we made that, and I was, you I was eating a version of it early on. I never planned on it being a product, but people were, I was documenting my prep on YouTube and people kept asking about it.

Hey, what's this? What's the recipe? Where can I get it? And I just kind of wrote it off. And then my mom was probably one of my few YouTube subscribers at the time. She was like, man, you got to make this into a product. So my girlfriend at the time, wife now,

we rolled up our sleeves and started diving in to the wonderful world of food product manufacturing. And we've kept everything in house from day one. The first night we did production, we made 142 bricks, each one, one at a time with a measuring cup and a spoon. And we put it on the website the next day, they sold out in like two minutes,

and I'm like, all right, I think we got something here. We've just grown it from that. What was the first brick? What was the first flavor? It was weird, man. The first legit brick was the Mocha cream, which is like her OG, but before that, like the earlier versions, we made like a turmeric brick,

so it was like yellow. So we tried all different kinds of things, but I tried baking them, I tried all different kinds of like keto brick cereal, So all kinds of weird stuff. But the brick that we got now is kind of what the first aha moment was. Yeah, I have seen people put little dots in a mold and then they would just eat that as cereal. Yeah, it's pretty good. They would do little dip and dot molds.

A bunch of them and then they'll put a milk alternative in there. Here's one of the keto bricks and this is a Primal Fudge that we did together. This one has the total carnivore chocolate and also beef tallow. Forty grams of protein. I think that one's forty three. Forty three grams of protein. Forty two and eighty nine fat. And eighty nine fat.

Every brick has around a thousand calories ish, right? Yeah, every brick's pretty much a thousand calories. So that's a constant there. You were mentioning early in your lifting or early on in your life, you were 115 pounds. Yeah, I was 115 pounds soaking wet, man. I was scrawny, super tiny, super self-conscious. Didn't wear a t-shirt my last two years of high school because I didn't want anybody to see me.

And then my uncle who owns his own business, he was big into like football and he was outgoing. He kind of took me under his wing, showed me how to do a bicep curl and I just got hooked, man. And then I just fell in love with it. And then I was kind of subscribing to the whole eat big to get big philosophy. So I was eating 6,000 calories a day, bulked up to 230.

And that's when I was just like, this is not healthy, not good. Then my first prep lost 80 pounds. And that's kind of what was the catalyst for my eating disorders, which led me to keto. And what was your eating disorders? Like, and how did you kind of break free from them? After that first competition

where I lost all that weight so quick, I won the show, but then that night we all went out to Red Lobster to celebrate. And I ate like everything, man, everything. And I ate everybody else's everything. Man, I was so sick. I was laying in the hotel bathtub, couldn't puke, couldn't go to the bathroom, couldn't do anything.

I was so sick, but I put on like 20 pounds overnight. And then I like just felt defeated. Like I had thrown away all the work that I had put in to get to that point. And then I just kind of started binging and purging and that just plagued me for two or three years. remember going to IHOP one day ordering everything on the menu Eating it all paying my tab walking out the parking lot puking it all up and then doing it over again That day like right the next day. Yeah, the next day

I remember going to this super fancy steak house in Minnesota and it was like This is a place we take your family to you know, cuz like the portion are huge. I went there by myself and I was with the railroad at the time I was working on the railroad So I like overalls on and I was like not looking like I was supposed to be there and I ordered everything They were like worried that I wasn't gonna pay I probably look broke or something and I eat like all the steak all the cream spinach and the brownie came out and the brownie was like literally a foot by foot square brownie. I ate half of that thing puked and then I was like trudging back to the hotel.

I stopped somewhere and finished eating the rest of brownie. It was like weird stuff, man. Like people shouldn't live like this. Just savage everything. Yeah, yeah, but just not healthy, not sustainable, not good. How'd you get away from it? How'd you get help or? So I didn't really get form of help.

I just recognized that that wasn't gonna work for me. I was just a slave to food, which is super common in the bodybuilding space. So I started doing all these different types of diets. I was doing flexible dieting, if it fits your macros, bro dieting. Then I started playing around with carb backloading by John Kiefer.

And I mean, you know that it's basically keto during the day and then you're supposed to eat a bunch of high glycemic index carbs at night. So I'd be slamming down mean you know that it's basically keto during the day and then you're supposed to eat a bunch of high glycemic index carbs at night. So I'd be slamming down you know brownie and ice cream covered in syrup and peanut butter and it kind of made me justify the binge you know because that's kind of how it's supposed to be. But then I recognized that I just felt better without the carbs so I started doing carb back loading without carbs which lo and behold is pretty much keto.

So then I kind of dove into that world and just fine tuned it. Yeah. Backloading is an interesting, an interesting concept that didn't quite pan out. It's kind of like the, I would put it in the same category, but it, it had a lot more legs than this, but the croissant diet. Yeah, exactly. Remember the other croissant diet guy? Yeah.

What's the deal with stearic acid? Cause you mentioned that also. It's in theissant diet guy. Yeah. What's the deal with stearic acid? Because you mentioned that also. It's in the bar, yeah. Yeah. So he's got a lot of interesting information on that. And a lot of the research is still up for debate, but stearic acid is basically a long carbon bond, which is why the bricks are so shelf stable at higher temperatures, because that long carbon bond.

Cacao butter is the highest source of stearic acid, followed by beef tallow. There's a lot of, you know, guesstimations as to how beneficial that is, but his theory is that steric acid makes the actual adipocyte itself, so the actual fat cell, more insulin resistant. So normally we want to become more insulin sensitive, but if you're speaking about the fat cell itself, if it's more insulin resistant, it's going to be less prone to store more fat. So that's one of his theories. The jury's still out, but from a GI standpoint, it's usually tolerated very well. People don't typically have GI distress from a long carbon bond

like that in steric acid, so it's good for energy substrate, doesn't cause GI distress, and it works well for the bricks. And where does all this knowledge come from? For me? I just trial and error, man. Like just life of trial and error, experimentation, just a passion for this lifestyle and helping people become their best self, man. 115 pounds, eating a bunch of junk food, throwing up. You start to end up doing keto and you're lifting and so on.

And how did you get to be like 140, 150? And like, you know, what did that feel like? When's the first time you like wore tank top or t-shirt? And kind of maybe felt a little, felt less self-conscious. So this is kind of a funny story. You're like last year. No, not quite last year. So like I said, I didn't wear a t-shirt.

3.9% body fat was the first time I took my shirt off. No, no, no. So in high school, like I said, I didn't wear a t-shirt. My last two years, I just like became a slave to the gym and I was eating everything. I was training hard, training like a mad man. My first year and a half was training at my dad's house. It was like tractor weights and pieces of random equipment I had laying around. My first bench was a green igloo ice chest with a towel over top of it, like super primitive stuff.

But then my senior day of high school, the last day of school, I'm like, all right, y'all hadn't seen me for two years. I'm gonna take my shirt off and unveil myself as a bodybuilder. So that was like the last thing you're seeing here. I had everybody come to the English class and I did like a pose down in front of the school. And that was my first, you know, quote unquote bodybuilding

show. And then I competed for the first time in 2012 in college. But yeah, I was, I was more confident then, but I hadn't really, you know, I was still self-conscious, but at least I was wearing t-shirts at that point. That's amazing. Have you seen the clip of Arnold like posing in front of that girl? Have you seen that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It reminds me of that. Like it is like super awkward. He's like flexing and he's thinking she's gonna get turned on.

She just starts like giggling. Yeah, that was pretty much the case for sure. Yeah, this is my very first competition here. I was shredded, but just scrawny, man. Just tiny. You did a good job, especially with your legs, your hamstrings and some of the other pictures that we've seen of you. What are some things that you did to bring up your legs, your hamstrings, and some of the other pictures that we've seen of you.

What are some things that you did to bring up your legs? You did mention training them every day. Yeah, I mean, just more, I mean, my first year, I didn't really train legs, because I was the bro that just trained upper body. But once I realized that I got to get my legs caught up, I just started hitting them hard, heavy squats, astrograph squats,

just all the basic stuff, compound lifts, with more frequency, heavy squats, you know, astagraph squats, just all the basic stuff, you know, compound lifts with more frequency, more intensity, more volume, and then just eating for recovery. It's kind of easy to see when you look back, it's easy to see like, oh, that dude just needs more time. Yeah, I mean time, especially with natural bodybuilding, man,

like a lot of people that are at their peak with natural bodybuilding are older, you know, a lot of them now that are young, it's just crazy, they're like phenoms, but a lot of them now that are young, it's just crazy. They're like phenoms. But a lot of them... And we're not even talking about more prep time. We're talking about just needing more years under your belt.

More bent over rows, more stiff legged deadlifts, more... Yeah. Yeah. Just a little bit more of everything for a while, right? Yeah. I mean, time is where the details get worked out. And the beautiful thing about bodybuilding is it's an old man's sport, as they say, like you just keep getting better.

I mean, I feel like I look better now than I did five years ago. I mean, there's not many sports where you can say that. Yeah, we've seen, and Seema, you know, who's a natural pro, other people kind of say like, oh, you know, I want to do a show and they're like, I'm thinking about doing this. It's like six months away. And he's like, you need like a show and they're like, I'm thinking about doing this. It's like six months away.

And he's like, he need like a year and a half. Yeah. You know, like he, and I think that that's, I think that that's a wonderful thing. You know, hopefully that's not crushing anybody's hopes and dreams, but same thing with like a marathon prep. Yeah. Like don't start running and then be like,

I'm going to run to, you know, because you had a family member die and you're gonna run in their honor like next week or whatever. I mean, you can do what you want, but it doesn't actually make any sense. Like you're not gonna feel the way that you think you're gonna feel.

You're just potentially gonna have a bad time, get hurt. You might learn some things because it is kind of cool to jump into some stuff here and there. But I think, you know, having some patience and just taking your time and saying, you know what, why don't I learn this sport? Like I'm not just going to all of a sudden try to get in shape and learn body building midway like, you know, with a, with a contest, you a contest six weeks away or something like that. It's like you'd be better off bodybuilding for a little while,

do your three sets of 10, get used to counting your calories, get used to tracking everything, get used to balancing everything out, and then maybe start to have it, oh yeah, I think maybe sometime next year, I think maybe I'll do a show. 100%, man.

The first marathon I ever ran, I listened to Joe Rogan's podcast with Goggins and like after the podcast was over, I'm like, all right, I call my buddy up and we booked ourselves for a marathon like the next week. I hadn't run in years prior to that point. I bought a pair of tennis shoes for that event and I just ran the marathon and my feet were wrecked for a week afterwards. Like it was no way enough. So you don't recommend that.

All the mistakes that you tell people not to. Yeah, yeah. When it comes to your training methods, I mean, is it just pretty straightforward? Like, you know, barbell movements and that sort of thing? Yeah, pretty basic, man. Like I've got my own gym and I've got, you know, just the basic barbell, free weights,

little bit of cable attachments and dumbbells. And I'll typically, you know, do, like I was doing the full body. So that was pretty good, because it was good with my travel schedule, because there wasn't any big holes in my split, depending on when I was traveling. So every body part gets trained every day,

typically five or six exercises in total, and then four to five sets with one primary compound movement. Now I'm doing a heavy hypertrophy split, so a heavy push, hypertrophy pull, something like that. And then I'll just alternate it every time I target those muscles, but nothing fancy, super basic stuff.

Where's this, where's your drive come from? Is it grandpa, is it your dad, is it, where's, is this like in your family lineage? Like what's going on with you? Yeah, I mean, I've got, I don't know, there's probably not any one factor. Like my family's pretty driven in general in their own rights and ways. My parents just retired.

They bought a sailboat. They're about to set sail and sail around the whole world. What? So, like, we do crazy stuff like that. That's cool. I'll go with them if they want. Yeah, man. They won't even.

I'll be like a fly on the wall. Yeah, so, like, I like that. I'll bring a couple bricks. Yeah, bring a couple bricks, man. I hooked them up with some bricks for that trip But then my uncle's an entrepreneur But I just I don't know I feel like I've got the potential to keep going and keep doing keep building I want to build a legacy. I want to build a business that I'm proud of I want to be a light for others

I want to be a good role model for my son and my kid on the way my wife I want to just you know be a light because there's so much negativity and bullshit in this world. If I can counteract that by just being the best I can be, then that's what I'm going to live for right there. How about, you said your uncle, but like, dude, I'm barely seeing this side of things, but trying to run a successful business, freaking hard. So did you have somebody in your corner that's like, was that guiding light for you or is this again, you and your wife just getting together like, was that guiding light for you? Or is this,

you know, again, like you and your wife just getting together like, well, that didn't work. Let's try this instead. So my uncle was a big role model for me to want to start a business. But I lived away from him when I started my business. So he wasn't like in my back corner, you know, showing me how to do things, but he was a good inspiration at the onset. But like we do very different style of businesses. Like he was before social media and the onset. But like we do very different style of businesses. Like he was before social media and that kind of marketing came to be.

So like he still doesn't do social media. So like a lot of what I do now, I just learned, you know, bootstraps and then just kind of dove into the research, read a bunch of books, watched a bunch of YouTube videos and just trial and error thing, kind of like I did with bodybuilding.

I mean, I've got people that have certainly taught me things, but yeah, this is a clip of us during the first production running on Keto bricks. My wife and I, yeah, that was long days, man. Oh, I got those bricks. Yeah, that's when we wrapped them in tin foil. We were both working like four jobs, and then we'd get off work, drive three hours

to the nearest commercial kitchen, stay up all night making bricks, drive back, and then do it all off work, drive three hours to the nearest commercial kitchen, stay up all night making bricks, drive back and then do it all over again, like no sleep. Do you think, so the first batch sold out, do you think that came from just the fact that people were looking for that type of product

or do you think it mainly came from like the YouTube channel? A little bit of everything, like I came into the keto market at the right time because like I said, there wasn't really products there. So I was coming into keto and putting out content around keto when keto was gaining in popularity. So that certainly helped, but I think like I've got a super low customer base, like I'm very, very grateful.

And I think they're so low because they've, they can go back and look at this footage. They can go back and see me busting my butt in the very beginning with no two pennies to rub together for my name. And they just want to see it succeed because they're the reason it's succeeding. They're the ones that make this possible. Well, I think it's cool that you are the brand.

I think that's helpful. How many followers, subscribers and stuff did you have before you made the product? There must have been some sort of jump off point where you're like, this really makes sense to make this. Did you have 10,000 followers or how many? No, because I mean, I started putting out content in 2016. So I started the podcast and Keto Savage and coaching July of 2016. I had no followers then.

And then we launched the Keto Brick in, I believe, March of 2018. So we probably had a couple thousand followers on the different platforms, but I didn't know if Keto Brick would take off or not. I had no clue. I just felt like it was a very tangible way for me to do something. And I never originally wanted to have like a physical product. I wanted to just work nomadically from a computer. But now that I have it, I love it. I love that I've got my own warehouse space. I love that I can go into the warehouse on Saturday with nobody there, crank up the music and sweep my own damn floor. It's my space.

It's tangible. We don't live in a world where people make things anymore. It's all digital and transactional, whereas this is something physical. And how many people do you have now working for you? There's like eight or nine of us on site and then I've got a couple different agencies and teams that work remotely But there's about nine of us. I guess eight of us physically on site Digital marketing and all that kind of stuff too Do you guys mess around with much of that a little bit like we're trying to you know Really just ramp up the social platforms and the organic reach and we've downed a little bit like paid advertising and trying to figure that out.

But it's pretty much all just been organic up to this point with a little bit of ad spend but basically just putting out content. I've been, you know, I originally- Sending out free bricks too. Yeah, sending out free bricks. But like I got into content creation after reading Gary Vaynerchuk's book, Crush It, and he was basically like, look, figure out what you love, figure out how to add value with it and just put out as much value as you can. So that's when I started the podcast, Crush It, and he was basically like, look, figure out what you love, figure out how to add value with it, and just put out as much value as you can.

So that's when I started the podcast, the YouTube, everything. Gary V, unbelievable, calling shots back in the day, talking to us about how the news reporters aren't gonna be the news reporters, it's gonna be the people that are gonna be the reporters, that he's gonna be your next door neighbor with their phone and all this stuff.

And I remember reading that being like, what is he talking about? Yeah. And then that's... Exactly what happened. That's where we're at now. All right, dude, he's... I mean, so the book, Crush It,

has a lot to do with the success of this podcast. Because after I read it, I was like, all right, here we go. And I was trying to publish something on literally every platform, like 25 times a day. Like that's what it was. And you can see like the downloads kind of a day. You know, like that's what it was. And you can see like the downloads kinda track in here and I started doing that and it was like boop.

It like tripled overnight essentially. It's just not easy. You just gotta put in the work. It's really difficult. You know, like you gotta grind. And like people that are working a nine to five, they wanna come home and watch Netflix, prop their feet up. But like if you wanna build your own thing,

there's no rest for the wicked. You gotta just, you know, hustle it and make it work. You know? It's great when you do own a business or you have some social media platforms and things like that and people are like, Hey, you should try this. And you're like, yeah, I know, but I'm already trying so many other things. You know, like, Hey, have you ever taken your content and like made it smaller? You know, Why don't you put the podcast in 10, 10 minute clips so it's shorter with different titles? How come you're not on Rumble? That's what gets me on every time.

I went to look for you on Rumble. You weren't there. You're like, man, okay, I can only do so much. That's one of the things is you have to figure out what your core competency is. Like, what are you, what are you good at and what do you have right now? I think that that's a really critical thing. You know, where is somebody at in their career? What do you have right now? And what's the tangible thing that you can offer to the public to maybe like give to them, you know, rather than thinking about like a money type thing, but what can you give to somebody? How can you provide value?

You hear that often. How can you provide value? And then the money and the success and the clicks and the likes and some of that positivity, it will happen over time. And that's honestly why I'm so happy to be a part of this ketogenic carnivore community

as a whole. Cause like most of the people, and there's some bad apples for sure, but most of the people are in it because they themselves experienced some life changing benefit from eating this way. And they're just compelled to bring that to the forefront so other people can benefit from it. Like most of the people are here for the right reasons.

It's just a really solid community of people that want to help other people. And if you're doing that, the value, like the money will come if you're just in it for the right reasons. I think you said one of the reasons you started the ketogenic diet was you listened to Dominic D'Agostino on Tim Ferriss' show, right? Yeah, way back in the day. I guess that was published in 2015.

He was on there talking about the benefits of keto, eating sardines and all that good stuff. And I'm like, it's crazy because I've had Dom on my podcast several times now. He's an amazing individual. And to think that, you know, I heard about it originally from him way back then. It's pretty cool. And he was talking about deadlifting like 500 pounds for like a five day fast or something 10 reps or something like that.

He's a beast. He's a beast. Yeah. I remember hearing him on on Rogan and stuff like that too. And for my brother and I, you know, we've been doing ketogenic diets for a long time. I think like mid nineties is sort of where we cut our teeth on some of the ketonists that was going on back then. The body opus diet, the metabolic diet from Mara Opedit Pasqual and a bunch of different

things and we've done it and then we've come off it. And like I've done different things. Obviously when I was powerlifting and I weighed 330 pounds along with eating meat, I was eating a lot of other things, eating pizza and stuff like that to keep my body weight up for a period of time. But I always go back to keto time and time and time again. And every time I go back to it, I'm like,

why don't I just stay here? And so maybe the last, maybe like the last two years or so, I don't wanna say I've been keto, because like if you pricked my finger, if you walked up to me and pricked my finger, I might not be ketogenic because A, I might not have eaten enough fat, or B, I might have eaten a little

bit of carbohydrate from like fruit or something like that. But for the most part, I've been either keto or carnivore for the last couple years and it feels awesome. And I'm doing it with, you know, doing 200 meter sprints, 400 meter sprints, you know, running, you know, 10 miles a week, 15 miles a week. I'm not running crazy amounts at the moment in terms of distance, but even when I was running greater distances, it felt good. Injury wise, I feel really good.

I don't have an injury. I'll get a tweak here and there just like anybody else. I might get too sore. I might end up with this or that, but a little myofascial release type of stuff. Sometimes just bumping up my calories a little bit seems to solve a lot of those problems. Yeah, I mean, people are obsessed about the ketone readings but like there's times when my ketones are low but if I'm not eating carbohydrates and my ketones are low, it's not like I'm using carbohydrates.

My body is still optimized for fat metabolism and consuming animal fats and proteins. So like don't obsess about the ketone readings. I mean you're metabolizing fat for fuel, you know? I remember when we used to go visit Chris Bell when he was living in LA, both of you guys were putting a lot of MCTs in your coffee and you were having Bulletproof coffee. And it just seemed like it was a different phase

of the ketogenic diet at that time. Just like carnivore goes through phases. It's like hardcore carnivore and then now all of a sudden it's like, well, you can have some fruit here and there. Like it goes through phases. But what do you guys think are some of the biggest changes from, let's say, you know, again, like maybe just as short as like 10 years ago or five years ago to now? Like is there anything really has, has anything really changed in a ketogenic diet? The biggest change for me has been just a manipulation of fat.

I still will have a, I still have a bulletproof coffee. Like I, I luckily didn't fall into the trap of like trying to eat a crazy amount of fat because I think I did that when I first started the ketogenic diet, like eat a crazy amount of fat. Because I think I did that when I first started the ketogenic diet, like long ass time ago. I remember like getting the 80 20 ground beef

and having bacon and cheese and just like thinking like the more fat that I consume, the more fat that I'm going to burn. And I had the wrong kind of idea of it. It didn't work the way that I wanted it to back then. So, but now I just have a better understanding of like kind of idea of it. It didn't work the way that I wanted it to back then. But now I just have a better understanding of like, if I just want to get a little bit leaner, I'm just going to manipulate the fats and proteins just slightly.

So as an example, I might, you know, forego the bulletproof coffee on a particular day. I may choose to get a little bit leaner ground beef. I may choose to do things a little bit leaner, but it has to be for a short period of time. Otherwise I'm going to run into a brick wall. I'm not going to feel as motivated. I'm not going to feel as good during my workouts. Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I feel like from a societal standpoint, you know, the really low protein, super high fat was popular 10 years ago. And now it's like super high protein, not enough fat. Now it's weird because like that pendulum man, it's just swung and the answer's always been right there in the middle. You know, like people go to these extremes with things. But yeah, I feel like you get the right ratio of fats and proteins dialed in,

you know, for you as an individual. Like you don't need to go to the extremes necessarily. Not to date this podcast, but we're a couple of days away from Trump getting inaugurated. And I believe he's starting to follow a low carb diet. Right, Ryan? Is that what we were talking about earlier? I would love to get your guys' thoughts on this. Hey, I mean, I'm all for it. I feel like, you know, there's so much noise right now in the dining space and from, you know, it's funny because like within the keto carnivore sphere, people have always said it's not going to

come from the top down. it's always gonna be a grassroots movement, which I agree with, but if we can have a couple positive momentum shifts from the top, I'm certainly all for it. Yeah, I just think it's freaking great, because who better than to be an advocate for it than the guy that's supposed to be in control of the most powerful nation in the world?

It's an easy diet to follow. I know that people think it's hard. It can be hard, but it also can be easy. I mean, the fact that you can eat like hamburger patties and cheese and bacon and sausage. I mean, you're not going to want to eat that all the time every single day in excess, but it's a good place to start. And where can you get that? Yeah, everywhere.

You can get that everywhere. You can go to McDonald's and get that. And when I was talking about like eating out at A restaurant and stuff like that when you have breakfast in the morning every place has eggs Every place has bacon. I mean, it's really rare You'd have to go out of your way to find some place that doesn't have eggs and bacon for breakfast and then when it comes to when it comes to you know dinner options at almost every place in America anyway, either has a steak or a chicken option or a

Or a burger you got a video to play? Yep. Just check it out. I saw a tweet last night. You're sitting like at a table with Trump. What's going on? A couple of weeks ago, we got an invitation. President Trump would like to have dinner with you and your wife. He'd like to invite you down to Mar-a-Lago for a meal. And he's gearing up towards obviously an election that's coming up here in very short order.

He's already announced, he's declared and so they said, would you be available on this night? And I said, I'm going to make myself available. So yeah, we flew down and we had an excellent meal with the 45th president of the United States. And I can tell you, by the way, for a fact, he ate a cheeseburger with ketchup, no bun, three barbecue ribs, grilled jumbo shrimp that he loved, which is fantastic, by the way,

and for dessert, bananas foster with the caramel with sugar donuts, however, he didn't eat the donuts. I was like, okay, he's going keto, he's going carnivore until you got to the bananas foster. I think it's Trump keto. I saw a tweet. Trump keto. Trump keto. I think it's it's Trump keto I saw a tweet Trump keto Trump keto Yeah, that's great in talking to his son. I know Don jr. A little bit. I'm like, hey, is your dad like he's like I'm like hey, man, if you're he's like, nope, he's like he just Hopefully he does hopefully does make a change.

Cause again, I think the keto diet again, like one of the cool things about it is, I realize it's absent of some of the foods that you love, but I think a lot of the foods that you love are present and those foods taste good. They're satiating, they're satisfying. When you have a lot of fat, you eat something like a ribeye, I mean, that just kind of checks all the boxes. That feels really good when you have an opportunity

to eat something like that. And then if you need to reach for something sweet, you grab yourself a keto brick. Yeah, I mean, it's all just a matter of what do you want to sacrifice, what do you want, and at the end of the day, like I haven't deviated in 10 years, but like that doesn't mean I haven't had an enjoyable

you know moment from time to time like on Christmas my wife will make like a keto cheesecake it's still totally ketogenic it's all using high quality foods sweetened with stevia so like I don't have any blood sugar response it's not breaking my ketogenic meal but it's not something I would eat every single day. Cheesecake brick. Yeah it's pretty good but like this thing is freaking delicious man like I like it more than a normal cheesecake but I can feel good about eating it and it's keeping me on track. So it's all just a matter of what are you willing to put in?

I liked fathead pizza when I was messing with the keto diet. That's what I used for my refeeds before a competition. I'll make a big fathead pizza and that's my bolus refeed meal. What's a fathead pizza? I gotta kind of forget about the ingredients. I don't remember. The crust is made with almond flour and mozzarella cheese. Yes. And it's so nice, thin crust, crisp up.

I'll put like my ground beef or ground lamb on that with some pesto sauce and some anchovies, anchovies for the salt. Oh, that's not me. I know, I know that some of us, you know, we get focused, we get honed in on our meals and we have basically the same meal kind of all the time. But you can make a lot of this really fun. I mean, you can have a fathead pizza night. You can have a night where you have Mexican food.

I mean, a lot of these foods, you just get rid of the tortilla or find a low carb tortilla There's egg life wraps for the bomb. What's that? Those egg life wraps? If you have those those are super tasty and like restaurants are willing to work with you Like I'll go to a Mexican joint and I'll bring like a bag of pork rinds and I'll say hey Can I get the nachos and just swap this bag of pork rinds out for the chips and they totally accommodate me You know, so you can make it work. Yeah. Yeah. Or like hot wings, right? Or what are buffalo wings from Buffalo Wild Wings? Supposed to be cooked in tallow? Yep. They're cooked in tallow. I think, I don't think they have bread on them.

Stuff like that. So, I mean, and then you can cook a lot of these things at home. There's another option. Porking Good, that company makes a lot. Yeah, they're super delicious. They make a lot of really great products. pork and good pork rinds they have. The mix they use. Yeah they have the mix that you just dump on your food. That shit's awesome. Yeah I tear that stuff up.

That shit's really good. Are there any other products that you like that are kind of in the keto realm that you'll have here and there? I don't eat a ton of product. I mostly do on my own cooking or my wife does I should say. Carnivore bar is really good. I like their stuff. The keto bricks obviously I eat a lot of.

I don't really do much supplementation. But my staple is ground beef and eggs, man. I can eat ground beef and eggs or ground lamb, or some ground meat on steaks, obviously. But if I'm tracking macros and ground meat, it's super easy. And then eggs, you're set. That's all you need.

I know you just literally said the two different things, but what are some combinations that you also like? Because that's kind of what it is for me. Like if I have steak, I gotta have it with rice. You know, like I gotta have the one, two punch. And if I, my thing, because I'm not experienced with the ketogenic diet, I just think, oh, I'm gonna go keto.

That means I'm basically going carnivore because I'm just gonna eat the steak without the rice. But like I want some variety in there still. Yeah, I don't need a ton of vegetation, but my wife, go keto, that means I'm basically going carnivore because I'm just going to eat the steak without the rice. But like I want some variety in there still. Yeah, I don't need a ton of vegetation, but my wife, like when we have people coming over, she'll make like Brussels sprouts or broccoli cooked in bacon grease or she'll just cook up a bunch of bacon, the cast iron skillet, then throw in some Brussels sprouts with that, you know, mix it all up and that's, I mean, you can't go wrong with that.

Steak and eggs, man. I know. You know, like just cook up, cook a couple Just cook a couple eggs and throw some butter on there. Yeah. It'll be awesome. Yeah, eggs make everything taste good. Yeah. They do.

That's wild. They do. Yeah. I think the evolution of the keto brick is amazing. I think a lot of the new bars that you have the tallow in gives people some other great options. I know you have a lot of different ideas and stuff coming down the pipeline, so congratulations on all that.

Where can people find the keto bricks? Where can they find out more about you? Appreciate it, man. Keto brick for the bricks and then keto savage for the content on social. I'm keto savage. And then I've got, if people are interested in competing, we're hosting our first competition this year in September in Northwest Arkansas, naturalstatesavages.com for that one. And then my course and all of my content framework, the AI, the tribe membership, all that's at ketobodybuilding.com.

Strength is never weakness, weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.