Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 438 - Cholesterol Myth Author Dr. Jonny Bowden

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Dr. Johnny Bowden is a PhD in holistic nutrition, and the “Nutrition Mythbuster”. He was once a fat and out of shape musician on Broadway who was addicted to drugs and alcohol, until he changed his life and embarked on a mission to train and educate people to become their own Nutrition Mythbuster. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: https://drinklmnt.com/powerproject Purchase 3 boxes and receive one free, plus free shipping! No code required! ➢Freeze Sleeve: https://freezesleeve.com/ Use Code "POWER25" for 25% off plus FREE Shipping on all domestic orders! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

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Check out enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two day shipping. Oh, that mind bullet time. Mind bullet time. Yesterday I took the potion and then I took four mind bullets, I think before jujitsu.

So during jujitsu, I was just like, Ooh, let's go. And then after jujitsu, I was just like, yeah, I was,

I was on, I was on it. It was great though. love it got a lot done i love me some mind bullet it's great does it use it every day you know what let's just go a little extra on it let's pop six see what happens bastard never know gamble oh no oh whoops well you can't do all that i'll do i don't feel it's not sanitary to put the pill back in the bottle though. So I'm just going to put that in my pocket. That's how you, what?

I'm not going to take it, but I'm also not going to put it back. Do you guys want to use the mind bullet that I put my fingers all over? I don't care. You don't care either. Okay. We're the only ones in here. All right,

let's do it. That's great's great oh but you grabbed it weird i grabbed it with the fingers i don't use no the pinky you ever uh either one of you guys ever put a sandwich in your pocket and then ate later that's disgusting and if you've done that shame on you trying to think i definitely never have done that but i don't know i don't think i've really put any kind of foods no i haven't done that oh thank god but that's what everyone's doing with their mask just something to think about legit you know pulling it out of your pocket yeah just take it on your face doesn't seem like a good practice picking it up from the cracks of the seat to your car and everything else yeah and i

will say the fanny pack has come in huge with having to carry a mask around. Cause I would, I would always forget if I didn't have that. There's no way I'd ever remember to like, ah, shit again. Yeah.

But you know, there was a podcast where you mentioned people taking it off the floor of their car and putting it on. And the other night it was hella funny. It's also for mask. I saw him on the floor of my car. I was like, shit.

Yeah. I mean, I legit did that. Well, there's nowhere that's safe in your car probably either. Your car's probably a petri dish of disgustingness. Yeah. Right? Everything.

I mean, everything's contaminated. Everything's got stuff all over the place, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, everything has germs and cancer. Pretty much. But does it have high cholesterol? It might. It could. Eggs do. do yeah and you don't want that shrimp has it i think uh maybe all maybe not all but yeah i think most of the not seafood but most of whatever the hell shrimp is like mussels and all that stuff and

oysters i think they all have high cholesterol i love all of those what are those things called what are they like they're i mean i know crawfish is one, is a different thing, but. Crustini's? Crustaceans. Crustini's is something else. Is a crustini something real? I don't know. Both sound like there's some form of like a dessert.

Crustaceans? I think crustaceans is like a, I don't know, like it's like a piece of cake, but it has like a hard surface on the outside shell type of thing like either that or a crustacean could crawl out your underwear too i think if you're not careful yeah yeah that has happened my girl doesn't eat crustaceans because apparently like uh her dad said they're bottom feeders they are she doesn't eat shrimp and stuff because she's like that is a bottom feed it is all right we got our guests in the house now. Awesome. Yeah. We got to get ready and put on our game faces.

We got to act professional. Yeah. I'll just leave then. All right. There we go. Hey. Yes. Hello. Hello.

Hello. Hello. We got a connection. We're Hello. Hello. Hello. We got a connection. We're all set here. So it's going to be great to uncover some of this stuff for you today because we get so many questions. We get a lot of questions from people that have concerns about cholesterol. And Dr. Ken Berry directed us your way. Ken.

And he said that you might have some more information for people, you know, when it comes to their cholesterol and what's healthy and what's not healthy. So can you maybe maybe dispel some myths out there about cholesterol and about I guess maybe we can kind of first start off with maybe your background, kind of start there and then we'll we'll kind of lead into it from there. maybe your background kind of start there and then we'll, we'll kind of lead into it from there. Well, I was a, I was a former musician and grew up in the sex, drugs and rock and roll era was a health mess. Everything you would imagine somebody who grew up during sex,

drugs and rock and roll would look like I thought coffee and cigarettes was the regular breakfast to have. I was fat. I couldn't run around the block. And I kind of got bit by the fitness bug out of boredom traveling on a roadshow, you know, and you stay in these towns and there's nothing to do during the day. And so I started asking the actors just out of sheer boredom, show me how you do some of these weight lifting exercises. And it was one of those things where like you get bitten by the bug and like, wow, I see some differences here. And it was one of those things where like you get bitten by the bug and like, wow, I see some differences here. And I was not the kind of guy that like it was an instantaneous change for me. I was the kind of guys I'd go to the gym, do a set of bench presses and then go out

and have a cigarette in between. So, you know, it took me a while to make these changes. But when I did, my health improved so much and my energy improved. And I looked younger and it was just like everything changed. And I decided I'm a New York overachieving, academically trained Jew. And the first thing I thought, I wonder if I can go to school for this. There must be a degree you can get in this thing, right? And sure enough, there were certifications you could get as a personal trainer. This was totally new to me because the only way I knew anything was reading Muscle and Fiction magazine, you know, all the steroid stuff. And you don't know what's

true and what's not. So I got a certification as a personal trainer. I thought it would look good in the playbill, you know, in my little bio. Oh, isn't that interesting? He's also a personal trainer, but I loved it. And by sheer luck, I was in New York actually doing a show in New York. So I was actually living and working in the same city, which was where, and I see a big sign for a new gym and they're hiring trainers and it's called Equinox. Never heard of it. Looks really good, really classy.

And I'm, you know, I walk in and I go, I'm a trainer. Never have put a hand on a client. I've never done this. I've just accumulated a bunch of certifications. And for whatever reason, we connected. They hired me. I started with Equinox Fitness Clubs. I don't know what city you guys are in, but it is now one of the biggest chains in America, one of the most successful.

Started with the original owners, 1990, Columbus Avenue, Manhattan. And I was there for seven years. And I eventually stopped doing music. And I started doing, I was good at this. I was okay as a musician. I was really good at this stuff. And at the time that I started, low fat was the religion of the day. And everybody was like ordering egg white omelets. I was ordering egg white omelets. I was so brainwashed about this stuff that I would be one of those people who would send the egg white

omelet back if there was a little bit of the yolk there because I knew I was going to get a heart attack from that. So there I am, low-fat diet, all of us were, all the trainers, we were into that stuff. There was no talk of keto, none of that stuff. And we had clients who weren't losing weight and the religion of the day was, well, then they must be cheating because our advice is right. It can't be wrong. So it must be if they're not losing weight, they are either not telling us everything they're eating or they're not working out that hard. And can you imagine talk about blaming the victim? So around 1992 or so, Atkins' new diet revolution, third edition of Atkins, Atkins started writing in 1972. So 20 years later, new edition comes out. And I'm telling you, this low fat diet that we had everybody on and that we were all doing worked very rarely. I don't want to be a jerk and say it never worked for anyone because obviously some people it worked for, but it did not work nearly as much as everyone thought. but it did not work nearly as much as everyone thought.

And people were frustrated. So we would have clients come to us and say, you know what? This stuff's not working. I'm trying that Atkins thing. And every one of us would say, you cannot do that. You might lose a pound or two. But that's like these models who lose weight on cocaine and asparagus. It's not, you know, that's not a life. So you can't do that. You'll die of a heart attack. But they didn't.

Not only didn't they, they'd come back defying all logic with better blood lipid tests and more energy and their waistline was shrinking and their eyes were clearer, their blood pressure had gone down. And I began to think something's not right. Either what we have been taught is bullshit. It's not, I don't know. I forgot what podcast I'm on.

I don't know if I'm allowed to say that. You're allowed to say whatever you want. Okay, good. Okay, so one of these things is bullshit. Either everything we've heard about eating fat and cholesterol isn't true, because if it were true, these people would not be doing well. One of these things can't be true. And the clients who are standing in front of me who are doing clearly better,

that can't be a lie because there they are. who are doing clearly better, that can't be a lie because there they are. So I began to question whether or not perhaps some of what we had been taught about cholesterol and fat wasn't quite right. And if you think about it, the only reason you and you and me and everybody else we know has ever been told to stay away from animal products, cholesterol, and fat is for one reason only, because we believe it causes heart disease. What if it doesn't? What if that information wasn't right? What happens to the dietary guidelines? They crumble like a set of dominoes. They crumble because they're based on something

that might not be so. Now, here's the interesting part, I think. So here I am. I've got a master's degree at this time. I had a master's degree in psychology. That was another career path I was going to go down before I found music and fitness and health. But I didn't have any training in nutrition other than what we learned as trainers. And now that I teach trainers, I know how bad what we learned back in 1990 was. It was all the American Dietetic Association, which is most backwards

and possibly one of the worst influences on American health that ever existed in an organization pretending to be healthy. But we learned everything from the American Dietetic Association. We learned that you don't need supplements because you can get everything you need from food. We learned that. We learned that a low fat diet is the healthiest and you won't get a heart attack if you eat low fat. And we learned the cholesterol causes heart disease. We learned all the standard talking points. And I taught those. I was,

I was the Dean of the Equinox Fitness Training Institute. I taught that crap. As soon as I began to question it, I started to say, you know, not so sure about this. They all said, will he get his credentials? He's not even a nutritionist, not a doctor, and he's not a nutritionist. What do you mean? They never questioned it when I parroted the talking points, when I said low fat diets, lots of Stairmaster, cut the fat. Nobody questioned my credentials. Now that I'm saying, guys, I think we might have something wrong here. It's like, where'd he get his credentials? So I went back to school.

I got the credentials. I got a Ph.D. I got board certified by the American College of Nutrition. And then I said, you're all wrong. And now I can tell you why. So that's my background. You're all wrong, and now I can tell you why. So that's my background.

And the reason the great cholesterol myth got written was that I wrote a very successful book back in 2006 called The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. I had just gotten my PhD, wrote this book. It's a bestseller. They just had a 10th anniversary edition released in 2016. And publishers like sequels, just like movie producers, like, you know, Die Hard 6. So we had the 150 healthiest foods, then we had the 150th best ways to increase your energy and the 150 best ways to live longer. And we had a whole series. So the publisher comes to me and they said, we got the best idea for the next book. How about 150 foods to lower your cholesterol? And I said, well, great idea. Not

for me, because I don't think lowering cholesterol is important. I think it's the wrong focus for the prevention of heart disease. I'm not interested in telling people how to lower it. I'm interested in telling people how to prevent heart disease. But lowering cholesterol, here's take-home point number one, lowering cholesterol and lowering the risk of heart disease are not the same thing. They are not the same thing. It's very important that people understand that. We know how to lower cholesterol just fine. Saving lives, preventing heart disease, not so much.

But we can lower cholesterol. So when they proposed this book, I said, it's not the book I want to write. If anything, I'd like to write why this whole notion of measuring LDL and HDL is obsolete. I'd like to write why this is all a myth and we're putting all this energy on a target that shouldn't really be the target. And they said, well, every doctor in the world thinks. I said, well, yeah, they're wrong. Finally, they agreed. I showed them enough studies. There was enough growing body of research.

I didn't make this stuff out of my head. It's not a conspiracy theory. There was real research going on. It was just not talked about the way the low fat thing was. And they said, we'll let you write this book. But they needed covered. They're not going to let some cockamamie nutritionist, you know, write a book that dispels all. They said, we need you to have a co-author who's an MD.

And he needs to be a cardiologist and he needs to be a world famous cardiologist. Can you find one of those who agrees with you? And I said, no problem. So I call up Steven Sinatra, great cardiologist, world-recognized cardiologist, author of many books, who also thinks that cholesterol is not the target for the prevention of heart disease. And we wrote the book, The Great Cholesterol Myth, in 2012. And it became, it was, thank you, a bestseller. And 10 years later, we thought it was time to do an update because so much new information, what we were saying wasn't as controversial. It still is to most audience.

When you hear cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease and lowering cholesterol isn't the same thing as lowering the risk of heart disease, people are astonished by that. But in the medical and nutritional communities, this was no longer quite as crazy an idea. There's a lot of research. So we went back and we looked at the cholesterol tests that we use today, which I hope we will get into because that's one of the big myths you should walk away with is that using, I'll tell it to you right now, using HDL and LDL cholesterol as a predictor is like using a flip phone when you have an iPhone 11 and a Samsung Galaxy. It is the most basic, dumb 1963 test you can imagine. Doctor, can you give us the analogy? It's a challenge you to know that there aren't two kinds of cholesterol.

There are 13. Wow. Oh. There's LDL-A. There's LDL-B. There's LDL-3B. There's 2A, 2B, 2C. There's LP-a, there's oxidized cholesterol, there's 13. We can measure all of them.

But these idiots are still measuring two classes, which is kind of like I'm going to put you all in a health category based on if you're short or tall. And you can decode the entire human genome, 30,000 genes. You can see all those metrics. But we're going to go with short and tall. We're going to go with that. We're going to go with HDL-LDL, which they figured out in 1963 and is so out of date that when people tell me, oh, my doctor's putting me on a statin because I have high HDL-LDL, I want to scream it's that same to me. My doctor's putting me on a very

strong medication because my horoscope and cosmopolitan said i should be on that that's what it's like so would you mind nothing else out of this for god's sake if your doctor wants to put you on a statin drug which is a very powerful medication with a lot of side effects and i'm taking it that there's a big guy audience for this podcast. One of those side effects is impotence and loss of libido. It's one of the most profound ones. And we have millions of men on it that don't need to. Some may be, but based on the LDL and HDL, no, no. You have to ask your doctor for the more modern test. That's the take-home point, number one. If they're prescribing a statin drug based on high LDL, do not take that and say, I want a better test. I want the particle test.

I want the NMR test. I want the ApoB test. All of these tests give you real information about cholesterol, HDL and LDL, bupkis. I think it's great to have somebody like yourself with an unconventional background because you're going to poke holes in the conventional. You're going to poke holes in previous people's education, and you're going to poke holes in some of the things that people thought were true before. In one of your seminars that I've seen you do, you give an analogy of a lady looking for her keys. Would you mind sharing that with us? I really think that analogy is fantastic. Kind of looking in the wrong spot type of deal. Yeah. Well, Esther Perel, actually the great couples counselor and relationship advisor once said that people look for truth where it's easiest to find it, not where it

necessarily is. And that's kind of what I was talking about, the lady looking for her keys under the streetlight because the light's better there. We know how to, we're looking, cholesterol is easy to lower. The question is, does it lower the risk for heart disease, which is the only reason anybody wants to lower it. Do you care what your blood cholesterol is?

You only care if it's a sign that something bad's going to happen. Well, we talk in the book about studies that looked at hospital admissions, 375,000 patients for cardiovascular events. Over 50, 60% of them have normal cholesterol. It doesn't even predict heart disease. And yet we're prescribing based on it. We're deciding that our heart is healthy based on it. And I guess that's the big myth is that we've got this easy to measure thing like the looking for the keys under the streetlight,

but that ain't where the keys were lost. That's not where we should be looking. And understand, I'm not saying that cholesterol means nothing. I'm saying that the way we're measuring it is not capturing what's important about it. And that that's a big part of the picture. And you were mentioning that low fat. You said you didn't want to say it doesn't work for everybody.

Do you think this is more of a problem of just energy, like people consuming too much energy? So perhaps some of the people that were doing low fat, maybe they were struggling to stick with the diet and maybe they were overeating because they were eating low fat, maybe they were struggling to stick with the diet and maybe they were overeating because they were eating low fat foods and just didn't have the nutrients that their body really needed. And so therefore, maybe they were over consuming and ending. Is this is this an energy problem?

Having just heart disease in general is an energy issue. You eat too much energy, taking too much energy. Well, you're on to a good point there but i would i'd flesh that out a little bit people eat too much of processed carbs because there's no nutrients in them right so it's very easy i always say how easy is it if you're watching reruns of friends or seinfeld to go through six boxes of cocoa puffs or six bowls easy right how easy is it to eat three steaks and three servings of brussels sprouts not at. You can't even imagine it. Our body knows what to do with real food. It signals to the brain, OK, we got some fat, we got some protein, we're cool.

When you give it Twinkies, the equivalent of Twinkies, and don't think those granola cereals are any different. They're the same shit, right? They're high sugar, high starch, low nutrient, moderately high calorie stuff. And your body's going, what's this? Give me more, give me more so I can finally get some magnesium in my tissues. So I think what you're saying is an energy problem that is very, very connected to what you're eating. You never hear people on, and I'm not advocating for keto diets all the time, 24-7 at all. I think they're very, very healthy and important intervention to use for some people. But the point is, keto diet people, guess what?

They don't overeat. They can forget to eat. Because first of all, their metabolisms have adjusted to burning fat rather than sugar. And that's the goal. That's the trifecta of anti-aging, of weight loss, of high performance athletes. You want to be able to access fat, not sugar. You can only store about 1800 calories of sugar in your body. You can store 87 gazillion calories of fat. That's your best source of energy. So a really healthy person who cares about performance, who cares about anti-aging, is going to want that fat

accessible. And when it is, you don't get hungry every two hours. That bullshit we taught people back in the 90s, you should graze, you should eat mini meals, you should eat every two hours. That's because none of us knew how to access our fat. We're basically living on sugar burning metabolism. So we need that power bar every two hours when you actually learn to adapt to fat as an energy source and as a food source a you don't overeat as much two you're satisfied with less food and three you're not constantly hungry because you're trying to get more energy you've got the energy already there and you know doctor when you were talking about fat being demonized a specifically saturated fat has been something I consistently hear within like family groups, friends groups like, oh, wow, you eat a lot of saturated fat.

Are you not worried about your cholesterol? So I'm assuming that a lot of people listening are like, oh, well, I'm still not going to want to eat a lot of saturated fat. Maybe I'll eat a lot of these other fats, but saturated fat I'm going to be careful with. What should people try to pay attention there? You know, I wrote back in 2016, I wrote a book that nobody bought called smart fat. It was not a bestseller, but what we basically said is instead of classifying fat in terms of animal and vegetable, or in terms of saturated and unsaturated let's talk about toxic versus non-toxic you take a vegetable oil but somebody did oh i was watching oh yeah cool um you take quote-unquote vegetable oil one of the most inflammatory things in the american diet

these waste products of things like corn and soybean that they couldn't sell so they made them into oils now let's sell that that's healthy it's not saturated you take those oils and put them in restaurants you fry foods up in them then you let the frying cool like they do it most fast food restaurants and then you heat it up again the next day you reuse it seven times that thing's got more toxins and more carcinogens and more trans fats in it than anything you can imagine, and it was vegetable oil. On the other hand, you take a healthy saturated fat from grass-fed beef, I'll eat that all day long.

No toxins, no hormones, nothing inherently inflammatory about it. So the notion that everything that comes from a vegetable, first of all, those vegetable oils are not even vegetables, they're seed oils, soybean, corn, I mean, they're basically seed oils. And they're highly inflammatory. And as we say in the book, two of the biggest drivers of heart disease are inflammation and oxidative damage. Oxidative damage is what happens if you cut an apple and you leave it out in the sun. It gets brown. That happens to your cells. That damages them.

That damages cholesterol. All of these things increase the risk for heart disease. So why would we eat more fats that are inflammatory just because they come from seeds or vegetables and not very healthy saturated fats like, for palm oil perfectly healthy coconut oil these are not even animal products and they're perfectly healthy and then the if the animal products are coming from humanely raised grass finished farms and i get it's only five percent of them but if i could only get meat that was factory farmed from those horrible factories and everything is shot full of hormones, I'd become a vegan. And I'm very far from a vegan. The fact is you can get

that other kind of meat and just eat it less often. I'd rather see two burgers a month of grass-fed, grass-finished than seven meals a day a week from McDonald's. So the point is, there really isn't anything inherently bad about saturated fat. Not only that, starting in 2010, they started researching that. And the first study that came out in 2010, American General Clinical Nutrition, Ron Krause was the lead researcher. They pooled about 300,000 patients from different studies looking at, you know, what they ate versus endpoints like heart disease. And they found absolutely no relationship between the amount of saturated fat you ate and getting heart disease. And that was the first of, I can, I'm not even a research like nerd where I look at everything. I can offhand right now quote you five studies that

show the same thing so over the last decade you know there was just one in malaysia where they even looked at patterns of eating like high fat low carb high fat high carb low fat low carb low fat they looked at all the different patterns and they found out that the amount of fat didn't make any difference at all but the amount of carbohydrates did. So the high-carbohydrate diets did the worst, regardless of whether it was low-fat or high-fat. And the low-carbohydrate diet people did the best, regardless of whether it was low-fat or high-fat. Fat was irrelevant. Carbohydrates were not. And that's kind of the biggest finding in the new edition as well.

If we had like a food hierarchy, what would kind of be on top for you? Like would it be proteins or, you know, what are some of your main focus when you're trying to help people, give them a simple message? Protein and fat are always the building blocks you start with. I always, I used to, when I lectured, I used to, survival was very big, and I played tennis with the host, the survivor. So it's always on my mind as a great analogy. So I said, if we were doing a survivor, and I divided the room into two groups,

and this group, I'm going to put you on an island, and you're going to have nothing but carbohydrates for a year. And this group, I'm going to put you on an island, and you're going to have zero carbohydrates for a year. You're going to have nothing but fat and protein. What do you think is going to happen? And everybody is shocked to find out that this group is dead before the year is over, and this group is doing it. And that's 100% true. That is not a made-up thing.

There's no physiological essential carbohydrate. Look it up. You can find essential fats, right? LA and ALA. You can find essential amino acids. Where's the essential carbs? Zero. No one's saying you don't have to eat them ever. There's good things in carbs, especially like real carbs, not processed carbs. But the point is there's no physiological need for it. You take away protein and you take away fat and you're dead. So always I start with the ones that the body needs, actually needs. The rest of them are kind of, you know, protein. The Greek protein means of first of prime importance.

You don't live without protein. You need it for hormones, for neurotransmitters, for bones, for muscles. It's everything in your body is made out of proteins. And that is just everything else. And there have actually been in the book, we talk about a very interesting study done in the 20s. There was an explorer who went up to a greenland where they didn't have any, and he ate like they didn't. He ate this like practically a ketogenic diet they didn't know what ketogenic was but there was there's nothing up there to eat that's plant matter so it's all walrus meat and seal meat and protein and fat and he was very very healthy as

after that and the doctors at the time said you know well it could be a could would you be willing to submit to a study so they actually put this guy in a metabolic ward in Bellevue. We have this documented to the T, even to the names of the doctors who were in on the research study and the thing. And they kept them. They kept one of them, him and his associate. They put them in a metabolic ward for about nine months. One of them ate nothing but protein. The other one ate protein and fat. Now, the one

who ate only protein didn't do well and they had to change his diet because there's something called protein starvation. You get too much protein, but you're not getting enough fat. The other guy ate the way it normally occurred in wherever they were, Greenland, where they were doing the, you know, fat comes with meat. So you're getting both of them. The guy who ate them protein and fat had, it was in defiance of what everybody thought. I mean, blood lipids were great. Cholesterol was great. Triglycerides were great. Blood pressure was great. His energy was great. Every metric of metabolism was fine. So we don't have a lot of studies like that. Obviously, you can't put a lot of people in

metabolic ward who are willing to do that. But the studies that we do have show that you will do just fine on protein and fat. And some people do need more carbohydrates. And nobody's saying that they're the devil. We're saying that the sugar, starchy, processed versions of them are the devil. But fruits, vegetables, apples, beans, of course, they're fine. But that's not what is making people sick. What's making people sick is the empty nutrients of processed foods that are being sold as healthy because they're low fat. And that's just a crock.

You know, a lot of I have a lot of friends that this has happened to where they've gone on diets. Maybe it's been a ketogenic diet or a low carbohydrate diet or even a carnivore diet. And they start getting in better shape. This is an individual that starts off, they have high LDLs, they have high HDLs, and they're not in great shape. They do this, they start losing weight, they start feeling better. They go to their doctor, and their doctor is like, hey, your HDLs are still high. Your cholesterol is still pretty high.

Maybe you should take out a lot of that fat. Maybe you should start eating some fibrous carbohydrates, et cetera. What should those individuals question or think about? Because I mean, it's really confusing when your doctor is telling you something different from something that seems to be working and what do you do? Well, let's take a little bit of a, let's back up and look at a helicopter view of this a little bit. I always say to people who are rightfully confused by the contradictory nutrition advice that they get that if you think about how you live your life and the information we're exposed to

let's just look at the news right now with covid there are seriously differing opinions about what's going on in real time. You can all see it. For some reason, we think nutrition should be different. We think that somehow all the nutritionists and doctors get together like a convention. We go up to a mountain. We decide what's true. We come down and tell you it ain't like that. It's as acrimonious and well-thought as what's going on in Congress and what's going on about COVID.

So I expect there to be this kind of contradictory information. Doctors are raised in a system that is based around pharmaceutical interventions. That's what funds their education. That's what they get from the time that they're in interns and the reps from the companies are giving them free pads and taking them to lunch to teach them about the drugs. It is a drug-based system. It's not a nutrient-based system. There are conventions for nutritional medicine. I go to a lot of them. I see the same 300 doctors at all of them. There's 800,000 doctors in America. 300 of them show up at the nutrient conventions. Most of them just do not train

this. I mean, I've actually looked at the medical school curriculum on nutrition. It's less than high school. 25% of medical schools don't even have one course. The rest of them have like a course that's equal to a high school, a home economics class. So they are not taught to make nutrition and health one of the pillars of good health. They don't know what they're talking about. And they get their information kind of the same way we do from CNN. They're not reading all these journals. They're not checking out all these different things they hear.

Sanjay Gupta said, no, he's a good guy. But, I mean, they hear that and they hear about low-fat diets like everybody else. and they hear about low-fat diets like everybody else. And getting them to change that opinion, well, Upton Sinclair once said it's very difficult to get a man to change his opinion if his salary depends on not changing that opinion. So it doesn't surprise me that many doctors still think this. I would urge people to do some research on their own and to look some stuff up. And YouTube has become Stanford University.

Every lecture you ever wanted to see is on YouTube, including some of the most brilliant PhDs. And they give actual – go watch some of this stuff. There's some great people talking about cholesterol and high fat diets. And interestingly, you mentioned earlier about somebody coming as an outsider. There are two people in this field who are systems engineers. And they came to this because both of them had weird blood tests, but neither of them are like, what do you say, doctor? They were like, okay, let me figure this one out. I'm talking master. The people who go to solve major problems at IBM, like look at systems that are

incredibly complicated. One of them is named Ivor Cummings. He's an Irish guy. And he started looking at what the doctor was saying. What do you mean? Why is my cholesterol high? And why does that mean that? And he did a systems engineer. This guy is now a guru in the low carb world because he said, it's like an emperor's new clothes. He said, when you look at it, he said, if the evidence against cholesterol is bad for the products I take to market, they wouldn't let me take it to market. This is horrible evidence and he shows it to you. So sometimes an outsider who wasn't indoctrinated with that point of view does have a fresher perspective. I'm not saying we shouldn't get a big believer in credentials, but sometimes coming a little bit from the outside and approaching it with a different set of eyes can make you see some very obvious problems that aren't there if you live in that world.

And the other guy you're talking about has also been on this show dave feldman and ivor cummings the other guy i was going to tell you about yeah so feldman and cummings right it's two outsiders man right um in your opinion you know with uh things that are going on with covet and with being an expert and somebody who's uh written so much about nutrition, what are some nutritional changes people can make and maybe some changes in terms of their fitness? What are some things that people can do to maybe safeguard themselves against some viruses so we don't maybe have to deal with this kind of lockdown and some of the things that we've seen?

Well, actually, I'm so glad you brought that up because I was getting so into the weeds on the other stuff that I almost would have forgotten one of the biggest points of this. The reason I feel so passionately about this, my 15th book. And yes, of course, we want to sell books. And of course, but I'm fine. I mean, that's not that. What I really care about is that right now we're in this COVID situation. Every think about it. Every metabolic precondition, every one of the preexisting conditions that they talk about that spell disaster if you happen to contact COVID.

Because remember, most people are asymptomatic. Most people recover quite well. But who gets really bad results? People who have what? High blood pressure, prediabetes, diabetes, heart disease, obesity. Every one of them starts with insulin resistance, with the inability to properly metabolize carbohydrates so that you wind up with elevated blood sugar because the insulin can't get it out of there.

And you wind up with elevated insulin because the canker keeps throwing out more of it to try to lower your blood sugar. That condition is called insulin resistance. And it shows up a good 10 years before this other stuff. And insulin resistance is 100% treatable, preventable, or reversible with the right diet. And the right diet is not a low-fat diet. The right diet is a higher-fat diet. And so this information that's in the book is not just about preventing heart disease. It's about building your immunity. And it's about preventing all the portfolio of cardiometabolic diseases that go all the way up to Alzheimer's, which they're now calling type 3 diabetes because it's got the same roots.

And that's really what I think is so important about this. This isn't just about eat higher fat, lower carbs, so you'll lose weight. That's great. It's also because the underlying metabolic preconditions don't happen when you're not overwhelming your body with sugar, starch, and junk. Now, as far as overwhelming the body with sugar, starch, and junk. Now, as far as overwhelming the body with sugar, starches, and junk, when you were talking about earlier, the health foods, and we talk about that a lot here on the podcast where foods are marketed to people as being healthy, but they end up just being these highly processed, high carbohydrate health foods that people start eating continuously

to try to help themselves lose weight. Now, if you're looking at an individual's diet and they're trying to build better habits for that diet, what would the foods that you, what are foods that you would tell them to start getting rid of in their diet and substitute them with another food instead? How would you have them navigate that? Well, if I'm talking one-on-one with a specific client, I'm going to obviously be more detailed and we're going to really look at what. But when I have to talk, as I mostly do, to large audiences and I don't have a lot of time to outline things, I try to make the advice something really simple that they can hang their head on, that they can put into practice immediately. And I have a three-word mantra that kind of sums up everything you need to know. And it's going to sound really simple, but when we flesh it out, you'll see that's really, if you needed one piece of nutritional information,

this is the one I would, this is the sword I'd plunge myself on. This is a hill I would die on. And what it is, is eat real food. Now, people say, are kale chips real food? No. So here's how you figure out if it's real food or not. First of all, if you left it outside, would it spoil? Yes, probably real food. Would your great, great, great, great, great grandmother recognize that it's real food? Now, this is an important one, because when they did the research on the blue zones, those sections of the world where people live forever and they're all healthy, they took some supermarket food like Lunchables and they showed it to these people. Oh, what is this, Grandma? I don't know.

What is that? They didn't even know what to do with it. So would your great, great grandmother know what this is? Oh, yeah, that's cauliflower. You throw it in the pot or would it be a mystery? If it's a mystery, it's not real food. Is it something, I always say the Johnny Bowden four food groups, food you could hunt, fish, gather, or pluck. Is it something you, if you were naked on the plane in the African Savannah with a hard hard stick could you hunt it could you catch it could you gather it or could you pluck it if you could do one of those four things probably good for you and the only thing people have to get behind is like if I'm not sure it's in the bad category just don't leave any room for doubt there's no doubt about an apple or a steak

right make it that clear And if it's in that category, I think that's more important than the amount of fat, the amount of protein, the amount of carbs, the amount of calories. If it's real food, quality of food takes precedent. You're not going to do that much damage. You're just not. And a big reason for that is just quite simply, it's very hard to overeat those foods. Very hard to overeat those foods. You mentioned earlier, yeah. Yeah. It's way easier to drink apple juice by the gallon than to eat, you know, six apples.

Right. It just is. So. Yeah. What about, because a lot of people that listen to this podcast, they're, you know, they're in the gym. They're trying to get as big and bulky as possible. So what about athletic performance? Can somebody still thrive on a high-fat diet

and maybe keeping the carbs low? Or is that when you would bring back some of the 90s information that you guys were getting into? I was very into the gym world in the 90s and I followed all of that and I've moved into just general health and longevity. And so the latest thinking about coaching bodybuilding is not right in my wheelhouse. However, I worked extensively and lengthily with Charles Poliquin, the late Charles Poliquin, who was maybe one of the most successful and famous personal trainers in the country and in Canada. And man, he was all about high fat diets. Now, could you make the argument that certain athletes can process some carbs and even some junk foods more efficiently? Of course. Of course. foods more efficiently? Of course. Of course. And I know some people, at one point, the president of Atkins, Stuart Traeger, was an Ironman. And he used to, for him, he would do 125 grams of carbs a

day. And he considered that, you know, very high for and because he's in training. That's about one third of what Americans eat. It's not really a low carb diet, but it was relatively low carb diet for, and, but he's a triathlete. So we know that, you know, different situations for performance and athletics may need a little bit

more, but you can still build that pretty. So the old, the days of carb loading, I believe like when I stopped it was already it was already kind of passe when I stopped really like living in the gym culture. They were not doing carb loading anymore. But but it's kind of an old concept. So I do think it's possible to do high performance. But I also know that there are vegan bodybuilders. You know, I don't think there's a lot of them, but there are some people whose metabolism is adapted enough to that, that they can do it. I don't know if they're taking steroids. I don't

know if it's real or not, but there are some who are pretty strong, very few, but there are some like that. When it comes to the amount of fat, you're mentioning high fat. What are you considering to be high fat? Is it a hundred grams a day, 200 grams a day? I'm sure it depends on your body weight, your activity and so on. I hate to give numbers or amounts because people get obsessive about 13 blueberries is one portion. I just, that has never been in doing this now 30 years. I've never found that to be a successful strategy. First of all, no one follows it. Second of all, nobody's doing calculations with an albacore about the percentage

of carbohydrates and fat in the food that they're eating in restaurant. Nobody does that. So you can't follow it really. So I rather think of it as like the same way I think about healthy foods, put them in heavy rotation. Don't worry about how many portions and how big in one ounce of nuts and all that stuff. Like I have about 13 foods that I know are good for me and I just eat them all day long. And I don't really worry about the portions of the amounts. So I think it's possible to do a high fat diet. Maybe we should not even use the term high fat because that means relative to something else. At one point, the Mediterranean diet, which is 40% fat was considered a high fat diet, wouldn't be considered a high fat diet now. And that's only because our diet was supposed to be 30% or less.

So 40 is high. So it kind of depends on what the standard is. But one more thing about the bodybuilding thing that just occurred to me when you were talking about that. One thing I do remember, not only from working with Charles, but when I was living in the bodybuilders a week before contest time, when they have to really cut up, but they still need the energy to work out. They used to use MCT oil, which is still around today. It's a

medium chain triglycerides. And it's a kind of fat that tends to be used by the body more for energy than for storage. So these bodybuilders would load up on MCT oil. It's a kind of fat that tends to be used by the body more for energy than for storage. So these bodybuilders would load up on MCT all as a high fat diet because they have enough calories to work out enough energy. But it was unlikely to be converted to fat or to store water the way carbohydrates do. So, you know, that I hope that adds a little bit to the performance of the bodybuilding aspect of it. I like what you're saying about, you know, I'm not a big fan of counting stuff either. And I think it can work for some people that like to be meticulous about it. There are people in the fitness community.

They will count stuff and they will have benefit from it. But I agree with you. I don't think it's a great way to live your life. I think it builds too much anxiety. And I would love to see if that works for people, then that's fine. But I would really love to see people be able to eyeball stuff and be able to say, hey, you know what? I had a ribeye last night.

I'm going to have a chicken breast tonight just to make decisions kind of based, just kind of auto-regulate. I ate a ton of fat yesterday, so I'm going to back off just a pinch. Or I ate a ton of fat yesterday, so I'm going to back off just a pinch. Or I ate a lot of carbs yesterday, so I'm going to back off a little bit. And I like doing things that way a little bit better for myself personally. But I think also when you make the correct food choices, that these things kind of start to happen automatically. Because as we mentioned earlier, you start to eat these correct foods. You eat a baked potato and a steak.

That's very hard to overeat. It's a lot of food. I agree. I like very much what you're saying about that. But I think what we're both saying is that we want this to be more instinctual or natural or more organic rather than sitting there with a calculator. Now, I agree with you about the measurement. In 1989, I took a month, and I tracked every frigging – the sugar in the toothpaste that I brushed my teeth with.

I was – talk about fanatic, and I kept a chart. How many calories do I need? How much exercise do I need? How much – I kept it meticulously. I've never done it since. I learned what I needed to learn. I learned my base basal metabolism by 1800 calories. I needed about this much. If I go much over that with the I learned it. And for the rest of the last 30 years, I've been kind of

learning how to do it more intuitively. And I you both look really athletic. I don't know what sports you play. The only sport I play is tennis. So I'll use tennis as an example. When you start tennis, you're very meticulous about your follow through. You're very meticulous about standing in a certain place. When you get good, you don't think about that stuff anymore. And that's kind of the purpose. That's the kind of what we're talking about. You have to be very careful about it when you're learning the data and you're getting, you're developing habits, but then you want to get where you're like, yeah, I'll have some fat and I think I need a little protein and my body is telling me this. You can't just listen to your body if your body's all screwed up. I mean, that's one of the problems with the listen

to your body philosophy. If I just listened to my body back in the 80s, I would have eaten bonbons and alcohol all day and watched soap operas. You canas. It's like listening to the airwaves when you've got static. It's great to listen to your body when you're in tune with it, when you've gotten all the cravings gone, all the crap and all the chemicals and all the toxins and all the things that muddy up the water. Then your body is able to kind of tell you more information. That's good. But if you're listening to your body and you haven't done that fine tuning, all you're listening to is your cravings, not what you really need. You know,

doc, make sense. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I want to ask you, because you mentioned a little bit earlier in the episode,

how there are different tests that an individual should be asking their doctor about rather than just the specific cholesterol test that people are told to go do. And especially within the context of an individual that they've gotten into better shape, they're a little bit older and they are worried about heart issues, high blood pressure, heart disease. And their doctor says, you do have high cholesterol, but they're like, I'm feeling great. What other tests should they pay attention to? And what maybe should they not pay too much attention to that their doctor is going to be kind of egging them on about? Well, this is going to sound very inflammatory and probably very inflammatory to most of the doctors that use them. But the one thing I would not listen to is the HDL LDL test. I would base nothing

on that test. I would not take a prescription based on that test. I wouldn't take a treatment plan based on that test. I would ask for a more comprehensive, more modern test. And I, as I've said this in a million, I hope I don't remember if I even said this at the beginning of the interview, but the HDL-LDL test. You remember what cell phones looked like when they first came out? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There were these big monster things. They're like, you all right?

The big. And then we got flip phones. The HDL-LDL test is like a flip phone when we have iPhone 11s or 12s and Samsung Galaxies. And we are looking at a test that is so antiquated and old-fashioned and basically useless. So the first thing I would do is not listen to that and ask the doctor. I'm going to give you one

simple one that is going to be least controversial. Tell them, write this down, ladies and gentlemen, ApoB test. Now, this one is not going to meet with, it's very funny because I just was listening to a podcast. Do you guys know who Peter Attia is? Absolutely. So Peter Attia was talking to his mentor, Tom Dayspring. These are two of the top lipidologists in the world.

I mean, Dayspring is it. And Peter Attia, if you know him, you know how brilliant he is. And he learned from – and they're talking about advances in cardiovascular research and testing. And this is after the book came out. I was just jogging yesterday listening to it. And they are saying, yeah, well, nobody's using – we can't use that LDL, HDL thing anymore. It's just kind of useless. But both of them have switched to ApoB. And one of the reasons why is there is a test that we talk about in the book called the particle test. It's a little more esoteric,

although Quest gives it now and LabCorp gives it so your doctor can order it. But Atiyah and Dayspring were saying, yeah, but you know, the labs are a little inconsistent. The ApoB test really gives you the same information and doctors know what it is. It's in the regulations. It's in the recommendations now. So if you go to it, it's not like, well, what's that? No, they know what ApoB is. ApoB tells you how many particles you have. Now, this is why everyone will understand that when you get the concept. Cholesterol doesn't travel in the blood. It can't. It would be like throwing oil in a lake and hoping that it's going to get to the other side and you'll be able to use it for cooking. It has to be in a package. It has to be in a container, okay? Because cholesterol

just will not, it won't travel in water in any aqueous. So the container is called the lipoprotein. So think about it. HDL is high density lipoprotein. LDL is low density lipoprotein. Lipoprotein is the boat. The latest research in cardiovascular literature, as stated by Dayspring and Etia and as written about and quoted in studies in the book, is that it's not the cargo that matters. It's the number of boats in the water. Think about it. The more boats in the water, the more likelihood of an accident.

The more people in a bar, the more likelihood of a fight. The more cars on the road, the more likelihood of a fender bender. So knowing the number of particles is where it's at, not how much cholesterol they carry. And the particle test, which is what we also all thought was like the kind of be-all and end-all,

and it kind of is, but the one you can get your doctor to do because it costs about $4 and they know what it is, is ApoB. ApoB attaches itself to all the particles that cause damage. So knowing your ApoB is almost identical to knowing. There's just some slight biochemical difference that the ApoB sometimes attaches identical to knowing. There's just some slight biochemical difference that the ApoB sometimes attaches to a remnant. But basically, you're getting a particle count when you get ApoB. And there are danger risks for that.

And those I'd pay attention to. Because you've got a lot of boats in the water, there's more likely they're going to crash. And the cargo, the cholesterol, is kind of not the important part here. It's like, are the boats going to crash? Because if they don't crash, the cholesterol doesn't spill out into the arteries. So there it is. You look like you stay in.

So that's what we should be looking at, particles. Particles are ApoB, not the cargo in those particles. You look like you stay in great shape. You mentioned tennis. I heard you mentioned jogging. Do you still lift weights? And what else do you do? I have discovered after years of tennis that I had severe arthritis of the shoulder. There's no cartilage in my right shoulder. The doctor said, you'll be lucky to open a jar.

Little, right. So I got myself the best physical therapist in L.A. I designed a joint supplement program of my own design. I did it religiously. I did the therapy. I went to physical therapy. I now play tennis five to six times a week, pain-free. I'm playing better than I ever played before. I made adjustments. I have a two-handed forehand instead of a one-handed forehand. So yes, I do that. I do that all the time and I just recently the shoulder got strong enough the muscles that I had been over

using to compensate for no cartilage have gotten strong enough that I can now do I bought a Bowflex so the Bowflex is very easy on joint injuries and so I do that I do long walks and I play tennis five times a week.

Out of curiosity, what's like the mix of, you know, supplements that you're using for your joints? I think initially someone is going to think of, oh, glucosamine, but I'm guessing it was definitely more than that. It's more than that, but that glucosamine can drive you in the right dosages. I use something called UC2, which is a cartilage derivative from chickens, believe it or not, but it's a very strong cartilage formula. CBD on occasion, I've tried and it's very good for pain and sleep. And I'm not sure it's the top one I'd use for joints, but it's good. And tons of omega-3s, quercetin, all the anti-inflammatories that you can imagine.

Tons of omega-3s, quercetin, all the anti-inflammatories that you can imagine. And yeah, the glucosamine, chondroitin combination and the UC. Got it. You know, Doc, there's something I do want to ask you. It's something that myself and Andrew have noticed. But heart disease, hypertension, high blood pressure is something that you see the black community talk a lot about because statistically, those are some things that it takes a lot of people. And within the past few years, the main popular intervention for that is getting rid of red meat, going low fat, getting rid of most meat products in general, going vegan.

That is the popular thing right now, especially within the community. So do you have any advice to like individuals that are talking about that specifically? Because honestly, like you'll see a lot of that type of information now, like in music, like I don't know if you ever know the artist Nas, but he had this song. What was it called, Andrew? Well, the whole album is called King's Disease. King's Disease. He's rapping about getting gout.

And it's it's pretty interesting. Yeah. But like that is the popular thing, especially within the community, because, again, these are big problems that like that, that they suffer, that we all suffer from. So do you have any specific advice for the, for that community? Well, it's a great question. High blood pressure does tend to show up more in African-American and, and, and people of color than it does in what, I mean, it is statistically a higher incidence rate.

It is statistically a higher incidence rate. I think that a lot, again, when we talk about the community, I mean, there's rich communities and there can be, you know, it's a very big cross section. I think it might be more. I mean, I think one of the confounding variables here might be a poverty level and and accessibility of food quality real food and not junk food i mean in a lot of uh and it's also to an accolade here so i mean it's across the board when you're in very poor neighborhoods and there's not much access you're talking about 7-eleven food there's not even groceries let alone and there isn't time to make stuff the way we would want to make it so we rely on convenience foods they're very high in we would want to make it. So we rely on convenience foods. They're very high in sodium. That doesn't make it easier for people with high blood pressure.

It's, you know, the sodium, the additives, all the other stuff. So I understand the theory of like going vegan is like, okay, we're not going to eat processed food. The only problem is a lot of people go vegan. And what we used to call it Equinox, they become twinkie vegetarians. In other words, they won't eat anything that came from animals, but they're eating Cocoa Krispies all day long and Ronzoni macaroni and fake cheese. I mean, the fact that it doesn't have animal products doesn't make it healthy. plants and nuts and legumes and all of that, that's going to be probably a good move for somebody who has high blood pressure and the rest of it, because they're going to be eliminating

a lot of really bad things. But I still think that the processed food is the real enemy, and it may just show up more. I mean, I once I did an interview, I think it was for Essence once, and we were talking about iced tea in the South and how culturally iced tea, which is sweetened with about 16 sprinkles of sugar. It's a cultural thing. And I've had Asian people write to me, how am I, everybody in my family, all they eat is rice.

And so sometimes some of these things are difficult to change because they're not just food things. They're also cultural things and familiar things. And they're difficult to break those habits. to break those habits. But these high sugar, high salt things are really much more the problem than any inherent condition that any group might have. I mean, when you eat real food and you really get that crap out of the diet and it's harder to get out in some places than others, I would think it would be harder to eat real food in Appalachia when all you've got is a gas station and a convenience store. And then it would be when there's actual food available to choose from. But the advice still holds.

If you eat real, unprocessed food with the least amount of crap added to it, you will make metabolic improvements wherever you are to start with. I have a pretty specific question, but I'd be upset at myself if I didn't at least ask you while we have your time. And since it is a certain situation, I understand if you want to tread lightly as far as giving advice. But my dad was diagnosed with high cholesterol, but he ended up getting triple heart bypass. I don't know all the ins and outs exactly, but he currently is on statins. I'm not sure exactly how many blood thinners he's currently on. By listening to you, listening to Ken Berry, a bunch of other people,

I understand that statins are just a terrible thing. However, since he did get the surgery done and there are things inside his body that are foreign should i mean as far as i understand he should still remain on the statins or is there a way to kind of wean him off of those and he's he's 68 years old by the way okay um first of all i would never ever advise i mean doubt even if Ken would, because they're not our patients. Correct. And I'm not a medical doctor, so I never would tell your dad or anybody else, get off of statin or don't listen to your doctor. That's the first thing.

Right. Second thing is that I think that we were slightly misunderstood in the original edition. A lot of people thought we were anti-statins. We're anti-statin over prescription. Got it. We're anti the notion that this drug should be in the water supply, that this is the answer to everything, that it solves all these problems. Statins had a limited use for middle-aged men who had already had a heart attack.

It was somewhat effective at preventing a second heart attack. But then the companies that made them did what every company that makes any product in America does. How do we expand our market? Well, middle-aged men is not enough. How about middle-aged women? In fact, how about people who haven't even had a heart attack? Maybe it'll prevent the first one.

Hey, how about kids, 13-year-olds? They have high cholesterol. Let's get them on. And every time they do this, the market for statins increases and increases. And this is a powerful drug with a lot of side effects. We're not saying there's no place for it in treatment. Steve Sinatra, who almost never prescribes them, says there are cases. There are cases when I'll give them.

But for them to be the standard of practice, everybody gets them as soon as this stupid measure of LDL goes up. I don't agree with that. But I would not tell you it sounds like your dad is being managed. And I certainly wouldn't scare him that, oh, these statins are terrible. They may be doing what's necessary for him at this point with a triple bypass. I mean, that's way beyond my pay scale. I will tell you that the benefits of statins, that there are some minor benefits to statins. And what drives me crazy is that they have nothing to do with lowering cholesterol.

They are slightly anti-inflammatory and everybody needs that. And they slightly thin the blood, which everybody, most people could use. Problem is you could do the same thing with fish oil with no side effects. So I don't really understand. The statin manufacturers are now kind of pushing that because they're getting that there's a backlash about this cholesterol thing. So, oh, these are very valuable. They're anti-inflammatory, and they thin the blood.

Yeah, and you can do that with vitamin E, ginkgo, and omega-3s. So, again, I'm not to Andrew. I'm not telling you to change your father's thing in any way. But in general, I think that it's over prescription of statins and the expansion of the market well beyond what the evidence shows that we really objected to. Not that they are necessarily the most evil. You know, they're not thalidomide. Do you know what I mean? Got it. Awesome. Thank you so much Do you know what I mean? Got it. Awesome. Thank you so much for clarifying that. I really appreciate it.

You mentioned earlier studying some psychology, and then you mentioned also, you know, being involved in drugs, but then making this transfer over into fitness and living a healthier lifestyle. How did you attack that from a mental standpoint? You kind of mentioned you just had some people kind of show you how to lift. And I mean, it seems like you're doing great now, but you know, that's a long, that's a long, probably a long story. So I spent my 90 days in 90 days and 90 meetings in AA. I am not a good AA person.

I've been maybe three times in the last 30 years. I, I, I respect it. I think it has saved many, many lives. It did what it needed to do for me. And that was a big part of the turning around. And I had a relapse in there. And it wasn't until 1982 that I was really completely done with alcohol, cocaine, heroin, all the rest of it. And yeah, it's hard. And it's also one reason why I think I've been successful as a weight loss coach, because I understand addiction. I understand food addiction. It's just a different substance.

I get it. In many ways, food addiction is even harder than drug addiction, because in drug addictions, you can't eventually just be without drugs. It's a hard transition, but you can do it. You can't be without food. So it would be like telling an alcoholic or a heroin addict, you can have a little taste once, once in 12, you know, but, but that's all. And that's brutally hard. But understanding the mechanism of addiction has helped me a lot with weight loss and with making those changes. I mean, I go out, my, my fiance is, she drinks, we have alcohol in the house. I go out all the time.

Socially, everybody drinks. I can pour them drinks. Doesn't even, doesn't even like light up a molecule of anxiety for me, but that took a while. And I, but I know it can be done. And when people say, Oh, we're going to do without my Dunkin' Donuts. You do, it can be done. It's not. It's remarkably easy once you've gotten past the hump. I mean, I was a cigarette smoker.

That was not easy to kick. I can tell you right now. And if you've ever smoked that, that's a bitch. But, you know, eventually I did it. You know, it's a lot of there are a lot. I'm a big believer in programs that that actually have group support i i did the american cancer society stop smoking program i mean it's a conditioning program took six weeks it worked for i had one relapse but i eventually in 1982

i stopped smoking and i i haven't craved a cigarette ever since so can be done you know i definitely want to ask you uh to see if we can dig on that in terms of food, because a lot of people, they can be someone that, you know, has a cookie every few days and they're perfectly OK. But there are other people that when it comes to sugar and when it comes to these types of highly palatable foods, they can't seem to kick it. Like when it when they when they go without a few days, they're like, oh, my sugar levels are low. I need it. Like they always give themselves an excuse to go back and eat some of these foods. I totally understand that. So what would be your advice for people who know that they are actually addicted to these types of foods other than just getting rid of it?

Because obviously, you know, we can get rid of it, but it's not that easy. It's not easy. But is getting rid of cigarettes easy? Nope. Is getting rid of alcohol easy? Maybe not. It's not easy, but is getting rid of cigarettes easy? Nope. Is getting rid of alcohol easy? Maybe not. It ain't. But I get that it's not easy. And I think that we in the weight loss diet health industry have done people a disservice by putting out these infomercials and these articles that say, oh, it's easy. It is not.

It is simple, but it's not easy. Stopping cigarettes is a simple solution. Doesn't make it easy. Stopping sugar, not easy. But you know, I have a perspective of this. Till the age of 38, I mean, I was shooting heroin and I was drinking and getting, I mean, it was really, I'm going to be 74 next month. I have a perspective on this. And when I meet, and I meet them all the time on the tennis court in real life, people 20, 25 years younger than me that look like my father, that look older than me, that have no excitement about life,

that if you, you know, they don't remember the last time they had sex, they don't even have the energy or the libido for it. And they're literally, I meet Uber drivers all the time when I used to, not now, but I used to do a lot of morning TV shows and I travel all the time and Uber drivers would go, oh, you're a nutritionist. Can you tell me me I can't even have sex with my girlfriend? I've heard this so many times I can't even tell you. And from the perspective of being 74 and feeling the way I feel, I just want to give this information. I want to say everybody, I know it's hard to give up some of this stuff. It is so worth it. It's kind of like the older guy that saved

five bucks a week every week, and now he's a millionaire with compounded interest. And what you want to do is you want to say to the younger people, dude, just start saving now. It will be so worth it when you're this age. And that's how I feel all the time when I talk to audiences, most of whom, most of my audience is 30 to 35 years younger than me. And that's what I want to say to them.

My children, you too can have an incredible life. Life doesn't end. I had the best year of my life this year, between 73 and 74. Made the most money, had the best relationship, had the most happiness, the most successes. It doesn't have to end. But you got one body. And if you don't take care of it, man, it doesn't, it's a very grim future and it doesn't have to be. And, and that's, that's why I care so much

about, about getting this stuff. I think what's great doctor is that you don't really have to say anything. Your energy is obvious and you look great. You look like you're in great shape. And I think that that's, you know, seeing you on YouTube and seeing different lectures and stuff that you do, you have a ton of enthusiasm. So I think most people are going to admire that and see that without you really having to say, hey, you know, you should do A, B and C like me. I think people are going to want to follow along anyway. Thank you for saying that. I still would rather have your arms. Well, I probably wouldn't be very advantageous for tennis, you know, probably slow you down out there, you know.

Well, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. How can people find out more about your books and websites and stuff like that? It's johnnyboden.com. Just remember, there's no H in Johnny, J-O-N-N-Y-B-O-W-D-E-N. And The Great Cholesterol Myth, it's number one on Amazon and heart disease now. And I really do hope everyone takes this message to heart, whether you buy the book or not, or listen to

the YouTube things, or just like listen to this great podcast. This information can really make a big difference in your life. And I do care about that. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir. Peace out. God dang.

And the guests we have on here, man. I know. We had Ivor, right? We had Dave Feldman. We had Ken Berry. We had Ivor. Ivor, oh shoot. Yeah, but no, we had the cholesterol all-stars.

Yeah. You know? Yeah, that's, this guy was sick though. Like he keeps, came out the gate on fire. Straight up. I know all of you guys have family, right, who needs to hear this type of stuff. Yeah, pass it on, man. You need to pass on this podcast.

You need to pass on Ken Barry's. You need to pass on Eivor. Eivor. What are you saying wrong? Eivor and Feldman's. You got to send this to people, yo. Like, if you want your family to be healthy, if you want them to live a long time, send this their way.

Do it. Listen to them. listen to them listen yeah and that was just great um information and it was you know it was um it was pretty straightforward pretty general you know i do think that um he maybe has a language that i that i would choose not to use on certain things just because like he says high fat, but it's like you need to you need to present a dialogue to somebody. You need to say something. So I probably wouldn't necessarily choose to say high fat, but that's also something that's changed for me over the last couple like years or months. You know, I do like ketogenic diets, but I try not to really even say keto anymore because

the ketogenic diet means you have your protein and fat identical to each other pretty much at a one to one, one gram of fat per gram of protein. And I don't really, while I do think that that diet can be good to do for a while or for a period of time or for people to switch to for a while, or maybe just a pure dietary intervention for somebody to go, you know, quote unquote high fat for a while, or maybe just a pure dietary intervention for somebody to go, you know, quote unquote, high fat for a while might be a great idea because they're just they want to have the extra calories. They want to eat the cheese and the bacon and so on.

And so some of those things for maybe a couple of weeks might be good to get into because it might be fun to have avocado, bacon and cheese omelets every morning for the next month as you learn to recondition yourself away from sugar. It might taste so damn good that you don't even notice that the sugar is gone, you know. And so some things like that, I think, can be helpful. But I think I think, you know, one of the things he said was like people that do a keto diet don't overeat, which I think you just need to be careful because, again, there's plenty of people that do keto that do overeat. There's plenty of people that do a ketogenic diet. And I agree with everything the doctor said.

I agree a lot, a lot of with what he said. So I don't want to make it seem like I'm disagreeing with him. I just I'm just nitpicking at a couple of comments because I do think that there's a lot of people that go on a ketogenic diet and they're well-meaning and they're trying to do the best job they possibly can. They're trying to follow along and not eat any carbs and stuff. But then what happens when they mess up, which people do, right? Well, then you're going to end up with, you're not going to end up with heart disease necessarily,

but you could end up with issues because now you're eating a large amount of fat and you're starting to eat sugar because you're getting these terrible cravings. And on the weekend or whenever it happens to you, maybe a couple times a week, you find yourself eating ice cream or eating pizza. And that's when the diet gets to be really dangerous. He did mention some stuff about like egg whites and stuff. I also want to make it clear that egg whites aren't necessarily bad. Chicken breast isn't necessarily bad. necessarily bad. Chicken breast isn't necessarily bad. The problem with egg whites, the problem with chicken breast can be that it might not have enough nutrients in it for you to stay on plan,

on point for a long period of time. Because if you're trying to eat just that and you're not getting in some fats from steak and some fish and stuff like that, you're probably not going to be getting the nutrients that you really need. Therefore, you're going to have cravings, you're going to have hunger. It's going to be very hard to stay on plan and that is the main thing is to stay on a plan for a period of time so you can continually not overeat on a daily basis that's why time i think is like the biggest thing giving yourself time to actually do one of these diets because like you just mentioned there's a lot of nuance with what's going on here when people typically start diets and something works for them they kind of get married that that is the like best diet to do so people that are married of nuance with what's going on here. When people typically start diets and something works for them,

they kind of get married that that is the best diet to do. So people that are married to keto will look at individuals that eat quite a bit of carbs with absolute just nasty, it's wrong, right? But after you do it for a certain amount of time, you can build a knowledge base to be able to see where you can add in certain carbs here and there. Like, okay, I did a really adult thing that I've never done before a few days ago. Want to guess what it is? I mean, it had to do with ice cream. Ice cream. Oh, did you not get any?

No. Did you scoop it out into a bowl? No. I had a pint of bed and cherries, but I didn't eat the whole thing at once, guys. It's still in the freezer. Yo, I ate a fourth of it. And I put it away. Guys, it's been in the freezer for three days.

How did you eat a fourth of it? I only had like a fourth of it. Now it's not going to be the same consistency. Air got to it. It melted and then refroze. Yeah, you're screwed. But guys, this is huge. You throw that away.

You just have to get a whole new one. The level of difficulty of that. All right. It's possible. Hand over your your man card just put it on the table we don't have to make a big deal about this but see it's so funny because adults won't do that no seriously past and seem would have been like yo let's go and sound let's eat the whole thing i would have not done that but now because again isn't that so weird when you hear people say oh yeah just eat a little you know they'll get a thing at ben and jerry's and it'll last them like you know the week or whatever and you're like what that doesn't make any sense i never thought that could be me i almost want to cry i'm happy

man it's i've grown well and if you did eat you know half of it or let's say quarter of it i mean how many calories is that really it's two three hundred calories yes it's not that like literally it's probably the whole thing as like a thousand or something, right? Or yeah, I think it's like 700 for this one. So,

but that's the thing. Like, again, it's not like I'm the habit of eating that whole thing or eating a lot of this stuff at one time is gone because of all the habits we've been able to build through speaking to these types of people, trying out different diets, seeing what works,

seeing what's sustainable, getting better nutrients throughout the day. You have it. You're like, ah, it's good. And it, and it actually tastes exponentially better than normal when you have it. Smokey was, Smokey was mentioning, he stopped at a gas station and had like some sort of lemon protein bar. And he talked about how good it tastes. Cause he's been on point with his plan for a little while now too. because he's been uh on point with it with his

plan for a little while now too and he's like i'm sitting there eating it and i'm just like dying he's like i'm like drooling and he's like then i had to stop myself and then be like it's a luna bar dude like what are you you know he's like i couldn't believe how excited i was to eat that but that's what happens after a while your taste buds uh get so used to some of these other foods that the second that you bite into like an apple or something you're just like holy shit man that has a lot of flavor or even having spinach i mean spinach and certain vegetables have kind of a nutty flavor to them but if you always just dump ranch dressing on them you don't ever taste any of that you never you never learn to enjoy and you don't even recognize that it tastes that way yeah one thing i found interesting and it's just timely is perfect

um we did a poll on our youtube channel just to see what type of diet people are following right now um i'll just read the list and see what you guys think but carnivore 16 keto 7 uh vegan laugh out loud, 3%. And then other, I guess we can easily say, because it was just like other, and then you guys leave a comment. It was something meat-based at least. It was like protein leveraging, PE diet, vertical diet, or just straight meat-based. But 53% said that they were doing calorie counting, which is macros or if it fits your macros type of thing. I was surprised.

I thought it'd be a lot more. And I like, you know, what he was saying, you know, I think it's weird because I think everyone's kind of saying some of the same stuff. Like, I don't think that he means a hammer calorie counting. I think that in general, the people that he talks to, I think maybe for him, he thinks it might be too hard for people to count calories, which it might not be. It might not be a bad idea for him to mention that option of saying, hey, this is what you can do and this is how you can do it. But I think for him, I think he thinks it's easier just to sell people on, hey, there's

about 15 or 20 foods that are pretty damn safe. If you just go with eating them, we don't have to really worry too much about being meticulous. What you'd have to keep in mind with the people that follow us is that a lot of people that follow us, if they were to lose about 20 pounds of body fat, they'd probably look fucking amazing. Right. And that's not true of the general population.

General population has to probably gain 10 to 20 pounds of muscle, lose 50 to 60 pounds of, you know what I mean? And so it's, it's a bigger, it's a bigger thing for the, for a lot of people to climb, uh, than just maybe some of the people that are already at least halfway into fitness, or at least lifting, they kind of get most of it and they just are recognizing, Hey, I overeat. So I should probably just track my shit. Yeah. Very well said. And thank you for saying it that way. Like I could have never put it in those words, but that's exactly why I wanted to bring it up too. Cause he said like, you know, it's not going to work. But then I look at our, you know, the people on YouTube and I'm just like, Oh shit, that's half of us now. But it's easy to say that stuff's not going to work. You know, it's, it's, that's because, because in your

head, you're shutting it down. Cause you're like, that doesn't work good for me. So how could it work for anybody else? You know, um, that happens all the time in like sports, you know, they'll, until someone comes along that shows people a new way of movement or a new way. I always think of Michael Phelps when he won. I mean, he just won every race pretty much he ever did. But like there was that one instance where he won the race out of the water and he out of the pool where he barely beat the other dude i can't remember who it was i think it was another american but whoever it was that he beat that no one ever saw anything like

that before and they didn't think that that was the correct way they actually would tell you to finish under the water to be as long as possible but now you think about it a little bit more and you're like yeah well he did totally make sense because you move way faster out of the water than you are in the water. And so I think a lot of times it's easy to dismiss ideas or concepts and say, nah, it's not going to work. It didn't really work. It doesn't really work well for me and didn't mention it to the seven people that I mentioned it to.

So therefore, it just can't be a thing that can work. But it obviously it obviously can work. I personally. I wouldn't want to count my calories. Like I love what I do. I love training. I love the whole process. Um, if it was for a specific reason to get in, to get leaner or to do a show, if in SEMA said, Hey man, like you're doing a show and like, here's what you got to do. Then I would just follow along with what he said. And I would, I would count the calories if I thought that that was the best option for me, but day-to-day living, I don't, I personally don't like that, but I know a lot

of people have adapted to making that part of their life and it doesn't bother them at all. And I think some people enjoy it. Yeah. And you know what, I mean, this might, this is probably obvious to almost everyone that's listening, but I think there are still a few people that may be listening and they're not sure when it comes to IFYM, like what the difference is. IFYM, you could be doing IFYM while you're doing keto. You could be doing IFYM while you're doing carnivore or literally any type of diet. All that means is that all you're doing is tracking it. Like you're just eating the same foods, but you're just seeing how many calories is in the stuff that I'm eating. That's why I kind of don't really get the distinction. Or I understand it because when people looked at IFYM back in 2014, 2015, it was the intention of the diet. This is a way to fit all the trash into what you want to eat. You you can meet a deficit of calories but you can still eat a lot of cookies and these types of foods that's kind

of what was the popular idea of ifym which is why there's still people that are giving it a distinction now but i really don't think like it's a distinction because if you're doing carnivore but you just want to track because you want to make sure that you're not eating too much even though it's kind of hard to eat a crazy amount of food on carnivore um all you do is track it and that's like ifym with carnivore you're just tracking your calories and you could possibly make it more effective i know that uh sean baker hasn't really tracked his calories but he cut them he switched the type of meat that he was eating he was eating like like three or four ribeyes every day and he switched to leaner cuts of meat man he got a lot leaner yeah um he didn't

necessarily count anything but it goes to show you that things do count you know just i think it's like an einstein quote maybe you could look it up andrew but it's something the effect of like just because uh i don't know i don't want to mess it up but basically if you're not counting your calories it doesn't mean they don't count you know what i mean so it's just something to kind of kind of keep in mind but i also think like a lot of times I think about who likes to cheat the system, you know, people that track calories or people that do keto, everybody, the answer is everybody. The people that are tracking and the people that are trying to fit things into their macros and fit things in their calories, they like to kind of justify it and say, Hey, you know,

this still fits like this is this is the information that I gathered from Jeff Nippard and I'm going to implement it this way. And they bastardize it and they stretch the truth a little bit to fit their their need. And they're eating something that's a little bit out of balance from what they should have eaten. They maybe didn't they maybe didn't track something earlier today. There's like little things that we all do that you're going to cheat.

And then on the keto side, we're eating a lot, you know, people that do keto stuff, we're eating tons of stuff that they shouldn't eat that you're still going to overeat on. You have a Quest pizza. I mean, I love Quest. I love the company. I love the Hero Bar.

I love a lot of the products they make. There's a lot of companies that make things that are fucking delicious. But then where do we end up? You know, now there's kind of like keto ice creams. There's like a paleo ice cream. Where do we, you know, there's gluten free stuff, but a gluten free brownie tastes fucking awesome. Yep. And then you end up in the same spot, the same position you would normally be in, which was you again, you fucking overate.

And there you are, you know, in the same, you know, and it just happens over and over again. So I think that when it comes to health, when it comes to cholesterol, when it comes to body fat percentages, when it comes to any of this stuff, we keep kind of repeating some of the same stuff said in many different ways.

And we're all yelling and shouting and no one can really hear each other, but we're all sort of saying some of the same stuff. Figure out a way to control yourself, which we've talked a million times about on this podcast in many different ways, in many different ways throughout your life. Figure out a way to gain control over your diet. And some of the most popular and easiest ways to gain control of your diet is to try to have a diet that's rich in protein, a diet

that's rich in nutrients. And when you do that, you'll probably have some animal products in there. If you don't like animal based dieting, then you can seek some other options. But if you're going to do that, then you have to probably, again, make sure the foods aren't processed because you'll end up in that same category of overeating. Once again, something I was thinking about the other day is I heard, I hear this a lot. People are always talking about, and he mentioned a little bit healthy fats and high quality proteins.

And I was just like, I was just thinking to myself, I'm like, what the fuck is that? Like, if you just eat natural foods, they already fit that category. It's like unnecessary to say, like, there's no reason to say healthy fat because fat that comes from steak isn't unhealthy. And when you eat protein, there's really no reason to say high quality protein because again, if it's a natural, if it's not a processed source of protein, then you're good to go. Or massively processed because like this is, you know. Yeah. There's sometimes there's minimally yeah yeah it's like you know when a lot of people hear this

then they're like oh i can't afford that type of meat because it's a little bit too expensive etc so it'll make them shy away from that but if you go to costco or the department store and you grab some chicken or meat or whatever that's like it it's not grass-fed or whatever free range and all that type of stuff that's still better than probably the stuff you're eating before it's not you know it's not more expensive but like i i feel like people should be able to do what they they can afford at the time right and that's a big thing when he was talking about like they're like you know the hypertension and the high blood pressure that's within the black community. It also has to do with a lot of individuals and not just the black community, just the communities that live in poverty don't have access to super high quality food.

But if they can still get their hands on, you know, real foods, they don't have to be grass fed, grass finished. It's still much better than the highly processed packaged up food that a lot of them are eating in massive amounts. Whatever way you need to figure out to not gain excessive amounts of body weight, you know, in particular body fat. So whatever, whatever way you need to do that, if you need to do that off of eggs, because you can't afford certain types of meat, or you need to do that off of some other type of,

there's never going to be proof. I'll just say this, and he mentioned McDonald's, but there will never be proof enough, in my opinion, to where you could tell me that McDonald's or anything else is, is more unhealthy than some sort of grass fed grass finished thing. And the reason why I say that is because you can't tell the people that go to McDonald's, you know what I mean? It's going to be hard to extrapolate out the people that go to McDonald's with, with any sort of health, right? But if you have people that are healthy that are choosing to eat McDonald's here and there because they're eating just the meat or they're choosing to go to In-N-Out Burger because they're following some sort of carnivore plan, I don't think that that's an unhealthy practice at all. And also, I would say, like, you know, maybe you're not doing that every day.

Yeah. I mean, it's not an excess. Yeah. maybe you're not doing that every day. Yeah. I mean, it's not an excess. Yeah.

And I think we, when we had Dr. Kenberry on, I think you had asked him like, what, you know, what the heck is up with hot dogs or something? And he's just like, yeah,

there's really nothing wrong with processed food. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and you know, along with the,

uh, today's episode and episodes that you're going to go back and do your homework on, you'll catch that, you know, some, some differing opinions and whatever, but yeah, like he already

said it, there was really no proof. But I mean, they can't be, I would still say there is an advantage to getting higher quality meat. There's an advantage there. It could very well be that you get what you pay for. You know, and as he was mentioning, real food.

You know, like if you can put it out in the sun and it doesn't break down then there's probably something up with it i mean then those they're mcdonald's burger that was like left in his show right but he wasn't talking about that though there's something else no but i mean i i mean as he was pointing out, I think the real food thing was, was good. Right. Like, I think that was, uh, I think that was well said, you know, if your grandma, your great, great grandma can't recognize it. And some of that stuff, I think that that made a lot of sense. I think, um, some of my other friends that I've talked

to on this kind of same topic, they just said, Hey, look, you know, the higher quality stuff could be higher quality, or you could just be getting ripped off, hey, look, you know, the higher quality stuff could be higher quality or you could just be getting ripped off. But hard to hard to really sell it and say. But I would, again, you know, reference the stuff that's like packaged and sitting on the shelf for a long time, you know, salami and pastrami and pepperoni and all that kind of shit. I mean, it's just it just sits there for a long time. It's sitting in a bunch of salt. I mean, it's probably not as healthy as getting a good Piedmontese steak. Mm-hmm. Yes.

Dude, actually, I cut up one of the, what was the, is it the Bavette, the big square one? It kind of is a big, sometimes it's a big square. Okay, maybe it is a big square, but I had that the other day. Put it in the air fryer, cooked it, snipped it up, fried it. It was so good. Scissors. Yeah. And I used the scissors, like you mentioned.

That is clutch. That is clutch. My dad stopped me and he was like, why do you cut it up with scissors? And I'm like, because it's way better, way easier. It just, it's just far superior than using a fork and a knife. High society. Yeah. it's fucking amazing now here's where people get really pissed at me because sometimes i'll use the scissors uh like while i'm cooking you know like before i cook it so i'll chop it up sometimes before i put it in the pan but that's just to get it like cooked up faster yeah but then also

my argument for it is i can get it like seasoned more i can get like salt or whatever i'm putting on it yeah i can get like more stuff on it but then it cooks in like two minutes three minutes yeah and i mean you know dr today just said it he's like we used to have gigantic cell phones right now we have iphones like we had knives Now we have scissors. Yeah, I cooked up my parents. It was a Bavette steak, a New York strip, and then two flat irons. And I was just like, hey, try out whichever one. Let me know which one you like the most. They all like the flat iron.

Flat irons are really good. So good. That's the steak that my girl likes the most. She doesn't like eating a lot of red meat in general, but she will eat the flat iron. likes the most she doesn't like eating a lot like a lot of red meat in general but she will eat the flat iron um yeah they said that the uh the tenderness of it was like the most enjoyable but they said the most flavor was a new york strip yeah i got some 96 for ground beef the other day fried her up and then threw some tomato sauce on that bitch and then dumped a little cheese in there it was fucking unbelievable.

It was just like a giant thing of meat sauce. And the fattest part of it was is I made it and I was like, oh, I'm gonna leave some for everybody else too. And I was like, no one's home yet. So I'm just gonna... I just crushed the whole thing. Everybody's like, oh, what are we doing for dinner?

I was like, I don't know. Great question. I'll go wherever you guys want. It smells like food in here. What was that? No, not for me. What does it mean? Yeah, exactly.

It was amazing. It was amazing. It sounds incredible. Did you put any seasonings on it at all? Yeah, I threw some garlic and shit in there. I need to write down the recipe. I threw in some fucking garlic you know that kind of stuff let me just talk with a New York accent the rest these podcast man the Falcon the fucking islands

it sounded like Maureen when we had her on the show awesome we were passing around a thing this morning that had just basically somebody with a New York accent, Brooklyn accent and they were just using cuss words as like transition words, like as an adjective and it's just I mean, Mike Ryan

is like a great, he's like fucking this, fucking that. For everything. Yeah. He's like, I went to the fucking store, you know, and you're like, does he really need to swear that? But I don't think think he even notices no no it's just like me when i say um yeah and and um and er yeah yeah um fucking so good but wait andrew can you tell people how to get pete montes yeah i can't thank you for reminding me can they get it?

I mean, they can get it. Not at a discount, though. Okay. Don't be handing out those discounts. All right. If you guys can keep this a secret within this room and anybody that downloads this podcast and wants to share it with anybody and everybody, we have a way of you guys getting 25% off Piedmontese beef. For more information on that, there's links in the description, YouTube and Facebook,

as well as podcast show notes. Head over to piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping. We have the Jacked and Tanned box, as well as the Power Project Deluxe bundle. I think both of those have been price adjusted, so our code doesn't work on those but code works on everything else so no matter what just you're gonna get an awesome deal um i highly recommend the flat irons those are just my absolute jam you guys just heard even uh my parents liked

it so yeah that's all you guys need to know but also just super high quality beef if if you guys are you know right now we just high quality beef if if you guys are you know right now we just got done talking about like you know good better best this is the absolute best high quality uh nutrition that you can have uh you know in yeah any walk of life tastes amazing we always talk about how lean it is it's a great way to get jacked and tanned it is jacked and tanned real quick though let's never we don't need to end on this note, but one thing I want to talk to all my men about, and it's important for women, too, but this whole podcast was about, you know, fats aren't bad.

Fats aren't bad. And a guy's messaged me about this along on Instagram. I just talked to a buddy of mine. He's a photographer the other day, and he was like, yeah, I'm dieting, but lower fats and i cut him off like your dick doesn't work right he's like how do you know like how do you know look at that thing man not straight up like like if you guys are feeling like you have really low energy you're dieting have really low energy and you're just not feeling like great and maybe it's not moving the way it should right chances are you probably you you got to get those fats up i'm always telling like guys especially you know there's a minimum amount of fat you want intake just just don't go under 60 or whatever what you know i was thinking about

when i did my bodybuilding show and i got a cheat meal yeah so like no uh no sweatpants on the bench press that day nice no straight up even when i did uh my look my shows back in 2015 and i was dieting on low fat there was a span of months because i was eating like 30 or 35 fats a day i didn't have urges and that's not common for me. Like I had nothing. The only urge I have is to get in these little pants and pose in the air. Like seriously, there's nothing I want us to do than eat food. I didn't care. So weird.

It's like there's another reason. Just don't take the fats that low. Crushes your hormones. Crushes them. And it took me a long time to get my hormones back to a normal level after that. Now, since then, I have been that lean, but since I had more fats in my diet, didn't have any types of those issues. So,

men and women, but men, you want your dink-a-dink-a-dink to work. How long did it take? It took me like three months. Three months to start feeling normal again. Well, and you need a willing participant, too, so make sure she's eating enough fat, too. Damn it.

It's real, though. You sure you don't want the ribeye? For real, though. Are you sure? Oh, God. These flat irons are too lean. Now give me the ribeye. Mm-hmm.

All right. I think you're up in SEMA. Well. I'm up? Did you take us out yet? No, not quite yet. But, hey, whatever. Take us out of here SEMA. I'm up? Did you take us out yet? No, not quite yet. But hey, whatever. Take us out of here.

I will. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. I mean, if you guys are still hanging out with us, then you've gotten some value out of today's episode. So please hit that like button. Please make sure you're following the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on Twitter. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ.

And SEMA, where are you at? At NSEMAYINYANG on Instagram and YouTube. At NSEMAYINYANG on Twitter. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at? At NseemaYinYang on Instagram and YouTube. At NseemaYinYang on Twitter. Mark? Hey, do you guys vote yet? I have to do that today. I have to mail my... You have to mail that in.

Yeah. Nice. Can I put mine in your envelope? And then just bring it here? So that way I don't have to go do it. Wait, what? I don't know if I'll get arrested for that. Wait, what's going on?

You'll be fine. Huh? No, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. Can you vote for Kanye? You have to write in, right? Do you have to? So I think... Can I write Mark Bell?

In California, I think his name was on there, but he was on there with somebody else, I think. Wow. And then in Nevada, he wasn't there. I voted twice. I mean, why not? Why not, right? Mark, don't say that on there. No, I didn't.

We were trying to have you Get arrested bro No I mean how How much of a mess Is this going to be When it comes down to it Oh the worst Especially

I don't think we're going To have a president You know I think it's going To like just be controversial For a little while I think it might take Until like December Or January

Before they get Before all the smoke clears Unless it's just really clear That somebody won By like a landslide But yeah Anyway People Vote You, throw your vote in there. I think it's important. I don't care who you vote for, but make it make a choice.

Make a decision. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch y'all later.