Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 582 - Protein Is King & We Don't Need Fiber ft. Alan Aragon

Episode Date: August 31, 2021

Another heavy dose of info on all the benefits of consuming more protein with Alan Aragon! Alan Aragon is a nutritionist, author, and health educator. He has a monthly publication called Alan Aragon��s Research Review, often abbreviated AARR, where he analyzes the most recent supplement, training, and nutritional information which he started in 2008. Alan's Protein E-Book: https://alanaragon.com/product/proteinbook/ Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use code "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb 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 ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

oh my god are we on uh no well we are but like i haven't changed the camera or anything it's okay it's okay we're i mean well we are we can't all right we're rolling we're rolling you guys are ready sorry mark i got a funny story for you i won't tell you right now but it's oh that's for the pay site that you can only share that on yeah only stands only stands would be a great thing yeah yeah just to have stan efforting on there well that that would make a lot of money but you know what like a stan is i'm not sure okay remember the m&m song yeah of course yeah we're like you know stan so a stan is like uh just a crazy admirer

like you you have a lot of like stans right um dear mister i'm too good to call or write my fans this will be the last package i ever send your ass yeah yeah that was an amazing song great story but someone should make that website only stands jesus where where you become a stan or you get nominated as a stan it's just for stands to put their content up i don't know oh i see yeah so it's it's like a instagram for stands where they publish their fandom. Who they're stanning from. For.

Yeah. Who they stan for. Yes. Yes. Yeah. United we stan. This could be a million dollar idea. I stan up for this person. Stan up.

Yeah. Stan up. United we stan. I don't know. What's going on? I don't know. It's a good idea. Let's do it.

All right. Today's episode on? I don't know. It's a good idea. Let's do it. All right. Today's episode is sponsored by Merrick Health. We appreciate their support and they've been great to me. I get my blood work done and then I have a doctor giving me all the information about my blood work, helping me kind of transcribe it because I don't know what I'm looking at. Also really helpful. Yeah. Also, along with all the blood work guys, Andrew will tell you about how to get a discount on it. They have great treatment plans.

So if you guys actually want to get a treatment plan with a doctor, um, Merrick health has a team of really awesome doctors. We had Dr. Gillette on the podcast where he went over a lot of the awesome things that Merrick health does. Check that out. If you're really interested in figuring out what you should do as far as

potentially HRT supplementation, all that type of stuff, hair loss, check their treatment plans out with their doctors. How about Andrew Huberman coming in and swiping Dr. Gillette for his own show? Right? That was, yeah, what kind of move was that? Wild.

Just cherry picking. We want Dr. Gillette for ourselves. For reals. He's all ours. But yeah, so if you guys want to take advantage of utilizing the exact same treatment that Mark Bell gets, you guys can head over to MerrickHealth.com. That's M-A-R-R-E-K-Health.com. You'll see a bunch of different panels. You see the services and treatment plans that they have. And then if you did want to get just some lab work, maybe you want to check your testosterone levels, your estrogen, some of these other panels that maybe you guys do know more about.

You can use promo code PowerProject15 for 15% off all labs. Any lab that they offer, you guys can get 15% off. Or if you have no idea where to start, you can go to MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject, and you'll see the PowerProject panel. That's a panel of over 26 different labs that we put together for you guys. Because again, sometimes you just don't know where to start. That will cover literally everything. And promo code POWERPROJECT will take $101 off of that. And with that plan there, you actually do get a patient care coordinator to look at your labs and decipher everything for you because

sometimes this stuff is a little tricky. Again, Merrick health.com links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Highly recommend it. What's happening today, fam. We got Alan Aragon on the show today.

I'm super pumped. The sick name. He's a legend. He is a legend. Like he, um, I think that was the first newsletter that I actually ever subscribed to. The ARR, it was 10 bucks, 10 bucks a month, where Alan would interpret all the research, all the nutrition research. It was super useful, super useful. But he's been in the game for a long time.

I really appreciate the information that he shares, especially about protein. You know, you're going to hear him today talking about people utilizing carbohydrates and stuff to get in really great shape. An interesting thing is, you know, on this show, we, you know, I've chosen to kind of go like a little more low carb route. I know in SEMA, you kind of have made the same choice. And these are things that we do for ourselves. And these are things that we recognize have just worked well for us. They feel good for us at the moment. But I've have used carbs before. And when I did a bodybuilding show, I ate more like a bodybuilder. But I didn't consume like a lot of what I would consider a lot of carbohydrates. But anyway, the main point in

this is that a lot of high level bodybuilders, but anyway, the main point in this is that, is that a lot of the high level bodybuilders, the people that you're seeing on stage and even some of the fitness and figure girls, a lot of these people are consuming quite a bit of carbohydrates. And so, um, and they're tracking their calories, which is something that I'm not a huge fan of. I'm not a huge fan of like, you know, tracking your calories, but I guess the argument could be made when you're about to step on stage, you want your shit to be like precise. And so I would like to kind of ask him a couple of questions in terms of like bulking and cutting, you know, what are the, because it does seem like if you kind of go on a drier diet, you know, a diet that doesn't have

like high amounts of fat in it and it has, you know, a diet that doesn't have like high amounts of fat in it. And it has, you know, more carbohydrate and protein. It does seem like people get some really, really good results. So I'd love to hear from him why he thinks that is. Is that just the way that it's been? And is that just what people are used to? And maybe there's not as many people who have competed on a higher fat diet at the moment. And so maybe this is just a trend and the way that things are at the moment, but maybe there'll be more people like Robert Sykes who kind of break through on a higher fat diet. Or does he think that that's just not the best way to go?

It'd be really interesting too. Cause when he had men on something on, he was talking about a lot of research that was done on individuals who were doing higher fat, low carb diets and individuals who are doing, you know, moderate carb, moderate fat diets. And they were able to lose the same amount of body fat. They didn't like that.

They were expecting that the high fat individuals would lose more muscle because the lack of carbohydrates. But that wasn't the case either. So it would be really I'm curious, too, because he's he's seen a lot through the years. And you just don't see a lot of people, especially getting ready for shows, do high fat, low carb diets. But I think that the only reason it's not done is just because most people don't do it. And it's like if you're getting ready for a show and you are taking account of everyone who's been doing it, why would you want to do something different? You're kind of scared, right? You don't want to.

You're like, I don't know. Well, you're in such scared right you don't want to you're like i don't i don't know well you're in such a vulnerable position it's like dude everyone's gonna see me in this tiny little g string you know and it's like what if damn if i do high fat like that's gonna mess me like whatever it is you know if i am one percent less better than i could have been you're not gonna take that risk at least i know i wouldn't want to but um what I was going to ask is like if somebody is listening and they're just like, yeah, but OK, when I say somebody, I'm really mean me. But like carbs are fun, like they taste great. And if I can monitor my calorie intake and I can stay within a decent range, what's the harm in consuming carbs? I don't really think there is a lot of harm in consuming carbs.

However, I think there's a lot of people that just in general, we have a tendency to like lie to ourselves really bad. And so I think a lot of people lie to themselves and they're just not quite in the shape. Like if you're, if you are not in the shape that you want to be in, then I would encourage you to reevaluate the current nutrition plan that you're on. If you feel like you're kind of already there, then I don't think you have much to really worry about. And if you feel like you're continuing to make progress and you're doing so with carbohydrates, I don't see anything wrong with that. I can't think of like one single thing that would be problematic other than if you're getting into really crazy high amounts of carbohydrates, could maybe possibly negatively impact your health in some other way down the road.

But I don't even think that's possible because if you're staying lean, that's probably showing you that you're not over-consuming calories in general. over-consuming calories in general. Absolutely. And then also, I think one of the other things is just making sure that you're not consuming too much processed carbohydrates because we know how that affects your hunger and how that affects cravings. Most people, including myself, when I was eating a lot of carbohydrates, I would add in a lot of processed carbs, which would make me hungry for more carbs. And it would be really hard at the end of the day to stop myself from eating more, making it actually, it wasn't easy for me to maintain a lean physique. It took a lot of work. It took a lot of mental effort. Whereas now that's the, the main reason why I do like the way I diet now is it's because it literally feels like less work. It feels like less effort, uh,

maintaining such a lean, lean physique because I'm not having to deal with so many cravings that I was in the past. I think that's just my, you know? Yeah. I think you're trying to kind of marry these two ideas together of what's optimal and what's easiest, you know, and fasting and being low carb, uh, have fulfilled those things for me. Um, could my diet be more optimal? Could I have a little bit of carbohydrate before training a little bit after, um, could I have prepped meals and, and be a little more diligent and, uh, pay attention to my calories? And could I potentially through all that effort, could I be in a little bit better shape? Probably.

Yeah. The answer is probably yes. But I also, I also, you know, even just the thought of a lot of that, I don't really care at the moment to go into that or towards that. I feel like I'm continuing to make progress with doing what I'm doing. It's just a little slower. Absolutely. When you say it's a little slower, what do you mean, though? It's just, you know, it's just like if you said, hey, Mark, do this, and you wrote down

like a plan to like, you know, lean out, I think it would happen faster if I was on something real specific, because I'm not really following anything real specific. I just have certain rules for myself. I utilize intermittent fasting i don't really eat carbohydrates unless it's from like fruit and i want to do so a couple times a week and that's kind of that's kind of the plan i don't really count calories calories i uh crushed uh four piedmontese uh patties the other day i stacked them all on top of each other and just sucked them right down. It was so good. I was like, actually, I was thinking like, this is going to be a little bit challenging.

I don't know if I'm this hungry. And they just disappeared. So, you know, if I was measuring stuff out and only ate two, you know, only ate until I was like satisfied, not stuffed. ate too you know only ate till i was like satisfied not stuffed uh yeah i could i could maybe get leaner faster but um i feel great about what i'm doing currently it's just you're not as strict right now basically yeah and if you have rules but yeah i wish we had a uh i wish we had a suction fan back here because i'm just telling it hasn't happened yet but i like i really feel sorry i saw you grab your stomach yeah i really feel sorry for mark sometimes because this morning i haven't gone yet and like something's dying yeah your stomach helen's not

here yet maybe i could just rush this out but dude yeah you got like sometimes when i when i do my thing back here i'm just like oh mark, Mark's keeping a straight face. What a trooper. Knocking the mustache right off my face. I know a few times I did my shit. I looked at Mark and he was just like. The air is thick back here. We got to get the engineers that design casinos. Because there will be people smoking at the poker table. And you can't really smell it too much.

Like a cooking fan almost maybe yeah oh yeah yeah a hood right overhead thing do this to you right yeah the uh bend the knees it's like a yeah keep those knees bent when you're running because if you run with the straight knees it's just gonna the shit's just gonna plop out like you're a horse i thought about it more and i think it's because like where like the tie in is for the hamstring, you know, and then like the glute tie in is up top. But like when you're when you're up higher, it's just hard. It's hard to explain. This is the go, go, go.

I forget how to say it. The goguile tendon. I think it is. Oh, I think I think it has to do with that. Just look that up. You don't want to override that because then you'll shit yourself. Yeah, you got to go to PubMed to find it, though. Yeah, we'll call Caldeets and he'll give us the rap sheet on how to not poop yourself when you're running.

Joel Green, I'm sure, has done a study on it. Oh, yeah. Or he knows the paper that was written on it. He talked about it 12 years ago. Right, yeah. Damn damn it i forgot what we were talking about sorry oh i was going to mention that uh in sema right now he's dealing with the uh there's like a little uh troll like in his stomach right now and it's like um it's got like a wizard hat on and it's in front of a cauldron and it's just like stirring it and the smoke is you know

coming out of it and it's like boiling over. That's what I always picture. The butter's churning. Especially when you get that hot burning feeling in your stomach and you're like, oh my God, this whatever is in me is going to be liquefied. I'm just curious because like when I wake up, it's kind of an emergency. I go, I drink, I drink element. And then I just have to sprint to the bathroom because I'm like, fuck it. Like today's the day I'm not going to make it.

I knew this was coming, and then I always make it. Except for that one time where I kind of peed myself a little bit because I missed the doorframe. I meant to grab it, and I just missed it, and I peed myself. I hate shit like that, and also I don't really recall a lot of that happening when I was young. also i don't really recall a lot of that happening when i was young like i i do remember like occasionally like just like you know you had to like run to the bathroom to take a shit or something um but man i think it's all happening to me more and more as i'm getting older i mean maybe the prostate or something like that too but um i was in new york city and uh i was really really lucky at this one restaurant they They like let me use their bathroom.

I such a rarity. Yeah. I tried to go to a couple different coffee shops and I don't know if it's like pandemic wise or whatever. All their bathrooms were shut down. I can't even remember. I think I already went that morning. So I thought I was OK. But the second wave second wave and it was bad. Like my stomach hurt so bad.

It was like I couldn't really even walk. And so I'm like, man, I'm in some trouble. I tried to go into like a hotel. I tried to go in like a bank and I tried to go into a bunch of different places. And I'm like, I just might shit myself. This is horrible. That's making my palms sweaty. I'm so nervous.

Riveting. horrible that's making my palms sweaty i'm so nervous right now riveting but i think when i went to this diner i think the woman saw the seriousness in my face and she's like the bathroom's right back there she was so kind i was like oh my god she saved my life yeah and it was just one of those like my my shorts weren't even down all the way and just boom blasted right out of there did the poop defy gravity did it like go up on the seat and stuff no no it wasn't a splatter no no no it wasn't a sprayer but i don't know why i mean it hurt really bad yeah like it didn't hurt my butthole but it hurt my stomach it hurt my uh hurt my stomach really bad i was like kind of doubling over in pain yeah when i started messing around

with a lot more like artificial sweeteners and some of these uh you know some of these fun foods that i like to make like the ice cream and stuff dude i'd wake up the next morning and i would just like i couldn't walk like i'd be like hanging over on like the uh the countertop just like oh shit like the cramp would call on us solely yeah and i would just have to be like okay let this pass let this pass and then it would kind of like click in my stomach and all right cool let's go and i could walk and i'd run to the bathroom and then that was that that doesn't happen anymore but every once in a while if i have like um if i go to in and out and i have uh before i started getting like a single slice of cheese like chris does like yeah i do if i have a lot of cheese like that will have the same reaction where i'm just cramping your food matters a ton when i'm when i'm eating

on point like i don't i don't really have nearly the amount of issues as when i even if i go slightly off plan it's not like my stomach really hurts or anything but i am like shit i'm shitting a lot more it's it's uh it's fascinating you know, how, how, uh, how much of a difference it makes. Yeah. I referenced our boy, uh, solely. So you guys heard us talk a lot about the second wave, you know, again, the second wave for those that don't know is like, you take a shit, you do a full evaluation and review of yourself. You're like, okay, that was my poop. My, that was my morning poop. Good job, everybody. And I can go on about my day and i can i could spend my time elsewhere you know i can go and journal or i can go and walk or i can go

for a run or i can go lift some weights and then it happens again you're like and it feels like you got struck by lightning because you're like eyes open wide and you're like, oh, man, something big's going down. And that's wave two. But our boy Sully, who defies strength and defies gravity with his enormous lifts that he's done here at Super Training Gym. The kid's a mutant, very dedicated to the game. But he said that he would get three waves. I don't envy him for that. But he said that he would just stay at home because he knew better.

He's like, I'm not going anywhere. And so he said in the morning, he's up for two hours. And he would train pretty early in the morning a lot of times. So he's like, I'm up at like 3.30. And I'm hanging around until 5.30 making sure I get all my poops out. And he said he just leans on his nightstand. Yeah. I heard it was his dresser.

His dresser. Yeah. I can envision him. He's like, I got my phone with me. And, you know, he's just super chill and always has his, like, beanie on and just has that, like, kind of Cartman look to him. Yeah. He's just, like, totally. He's totally.

He's just totally chill. And he's, like, looking at his phone. Like totally, he's totally, he's just totally chilling. He's like looking at his phone and he's like, I just keep looking at my, you know, scrolling through social media until, you know, the next wave comes and the next wave comes. I just thought it was so funny. He's like, I lean on my dresser. That's a solid thing to do. But I feel like we need to have a different thing for like, okay, there's, there's a first

one, then there's a second wave. Well, the third should be like the third tsunami or yeah typhoon i feel like there needs to be a an escalation in terms of the i agree severity i agree and i think that um like when you have a third wave you should be able to like call in sick you should be able to say hey you know what that's just not a good idea for me to leave the house today like dude and sema why are you late like dude the third tsunami oh or dude thanks for stepping up and actually showing up today it's a tsunami oh my gosh but in sema when you wake up like you don't have to take a shit i don't have okay so i got this from andrew huberman uh thank

you dr huberman um is he he's a doctor yes he's Hooperman. Anyway. So he doesn't drink coffee until about 90 to 120 minutes after he wakes up because he finds that like if he drinks it right when he wakes up, then he'll have like a lull in the middle of the day. But if he drinks a little bit later, he doesn't. And I found when I started doing that, I don't have a midday lull. That also causes me to have my first after my coffee, which ends up being after I get here. So I usually do the same thing. I usually make sure I'm awake for a while before I drink my coffee. Because otherwise, I think your coffee is kind of like driving you to be like stimulated when you're tired. And that's the worst.

Being wired and tired. That is like a nightmare. That feeling. I hate that. Yeah. That's funny. that is like a man that is like a nightmare had that feeling i hate that yeah that's funny this is too good that is it looks good what you drinking it's the same thing man it's the uh grande nitro cold brew with a some heavy cream and then some pumpkin cold foam and then i put some of the chocolate um protein in here and it's i just can't you know no i can't you know you have a fair life people listening they don't know about fair life but oh peeps fucking check it out you can get it on amazon even i think um they have it they have it in stores and gas stations and stuff yeah um just make sure you're buying the ones that have like they don't have a lot of sugar in

them because i think you can buy some that have that are deceiving they're like called performance or something they have like 30 grams of carbs or something like that oh wow yeah you can get and then even just like regular chocolate milk you know it's one second it does have oh yeah and then oh there you go yeah they have they have some that even have more protein and they have some that have like 40 grams of protein core power core power yeah they make like strawberry flavored ones now too that have like 40 grams of protein core power core power yeah they make like strawberry flavored ones now too that's what 30 grams of protein for fat or something or two and a half grams of fat okay uh four grams of carbs and 30 grams of protein two total sugars how many calories total 150 per bottle the fuck yeah oh and it, and it's also lactose free. So people that have, I sometimes will have issues with like regular milk or ice cream

or stuff like that. I don't have, I've never noticed anything with that before. So. I thought that was going in. I thought that was going in. That was the closest one I've seen. The gods are against you. It's like, I haven't had anything for a while, man.

Like nothing's gone in. I know. All right. We can get out of the sl you. It's like I haven't had anything for a while, man. Like nothing's gone in. I know. All right. We can get out of the slump. That's all good. It's the world working against you. You know, it's not allowing you, not allowing you to win. Not allowing you to be victorious.

I had a joke, but no. You got bad jokes? Jokes. Jokes. I'm not going to go there, guys. How much does that coffee that you got? I'm not trying to hate. It's $5.95.

That's fine. I tried to find another coffee shop in Elk Grove, which hopefully nobody hates me for. You're drinking a $10 coffee when it's all said and done, though, because of the fair life. That's different. Why you got to do that? That's not bougie coffee just stop we don't need to do this

right now that's okay and see what it's a morning treat yeah well anyway long story short the best best place in el grove is just still at dutch bros like probably yes and and so i was tripping because i'm like man like this nitro cold brew like it comes out to like six bucks and then i'm gonna tip them so i'm like dude i can't be spending like so like the way they ask for tips now because of the the tablets they're like so would you like to tip me then they make eye contact and are you gonna be like no i'll be like no obligation or whatever like i'm gonna tip no matter what just quit making me guilting me but at least if i didn't want to let me do it in secret yeah right because then you're absolutely right because then they do it and they turn around oh

okay no tip no no i'll never not tip i'll never not tip them because i'm looking at them i'm looking at their face if there was a time like if they just gave it to me and let's say like let's say i didn't like him that much for some reason let's say just wasn't good service right i wouldn't but because they look at me and they they ask me and they're like oh would you like to leave a tip that weird moment of silence yeah here you go i learned it from mark bell a couple years back always tipped and tipped well and this was after i think i saw him it was like i don't know like a couple like 30 bucks or whatever he tipped somebody like a hundred dollars and i was like oh yeah it was

like damn and then he just said hey always leave a big old tip it would it would take a lot for me not to leave a tip it would take a lot but i So even, even like more so with like young people, you know, if I have like a waiter, a waitress, that's like really doing a good job. And they're like, they look like they're pretty young.

I always like to just, just cause I'm thinking like it, this probably fucking helps. It probably means a lot to them, you know, probably be something that would be memorable for them for the week or whatever, you know,

that is very true. It is always nice. And also just like being able to uh-huh you know it's i don't know it means a lot to me so but yeah let's get alan up in this piece oh there he is hey guys what's going on what's up what's up so okay So I know Mark and I know of the buffest dude in the world with the Chinese last name. But what's your name, man? I love it. I'm happy that you said that.

Nsema Iyang. Yeah. Nsema Iyang. That's epic. So like your mom is Chinese and your dad's like Filipino? No, they're both Nigerian. Oh, nice. Even better.

I love it. We have a good blend here today. We do. This is like the whole epic thing. It's all about diversity. I wouldn't have come on here had you guys not had the diversity that you have. I would have boycotted it. I would have called for a mass lynching on Twitter.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No cancellations. What's going on? What are you sipping on over there? Some protein powder. You know, you know, guys, I am not a morning guy at all. So I just like threw some coffee together and, you know, hoping that the caffeine kicks in. And this is not my normal morning. I usually throw like a couple scoops of protein powder in here, but I'm going to be dead honest the whole time and say, I did not do it this morning. So do as I say, not as I do. I know that you've researched protein quite a bit. Why do you throw protein into your morning coffee normally?

It's what the freaking researchers call an opportunity to feed as if we're you know farm animals so it's an opportunity to to dose protein where um it would be a benefit to guys who generally want to hang on to muscle or or grow muscle a little bit. So general population is like, you know, get your, get your protein in at whatever point you can and, and hit your total for the day. But, you know, um, for, for myself, uh, I, I need every opportunity I can to, to get the protein in. I, I I've read about what you all do with, with your one meal a day thing. And that sounds hella fun. But for me, yeah, yeah. It's just, it's just the way my routine goes and just getting the protein in when I can

is, is part of the routine. And in the morning when I get up is one of those opportunities to feed. What are some of your thoughts on fasting? Yeah, it's fine. Honestly, it's fine. My main issue with fasting is when people put it up on a pedestal and attribute special metabolic effects to it. I think it's got fantastic behavioral effects and effects on maintaining routine and effects on single meal satiety and how that might benefit people who enjoy larger meals in a sitting, whereas other folks who are not natural grazers would just go crazy and feel like they're chomping at the bit all day with six small meals.

So I think it's a really great tool for individualizing programs. And this makes me curious. And I really want to know for individuals who do want to try out some fast, it doesn't need to be one meal a day, but the big thing that I noticed, cause I, there, there was a time that I did a lot of, like I had multiple four or five meals a day, even protein feedings. And I picked up some fasting and now not every day is one meal a day, but some days I'll do two or maybe one or two. Um, and the behavioral effects in terms of like my cravings, my urge to eat because I am a garbage disposal. Like everyone here knows I can put down a lot of freaking food. I don't have that as much anymore. So the behavioral benefits were really good, but for somebody who wants to maintain or build muscle, right. Um, but they

do want to maybe get some of those benefits from fasting. How would you suggest that they go about it? Would it be ideal maybe to have just like protein shake in the coffee in the morning and, and go about things? How could you, how could they structure it so that they still don't, they still get all the benefits of gaining muscle over time. Yeah. You know, even in theory, oh, goodness, is your name like Nimcy? Nipsey. No, Nsema. Nsema.

Double up. Nsema. Okay. Okay. Nsema. Do you have like a nickname that's really easy? Like a one-syllable nickname? The Natty Professor. That's what that username used to be shoot what's uh uh what do you guys sometimes call me no okay just so i get it right i don't want to say it wrong hold up okay in sema yeah that's perfect

man yeah you got it in sema yes usually we'll call them okay okay i i swear i will try to get that right. Okay. I just know you as Chinese last name dude. That's all I know. You can call me Yin Yang. If you want to call me Yin Yang, that works. I don't know. It's your TikTok name.

Okay. So just kind of approaching this question and making sure that the goals are stratified. It's like you can gain muscle, honestly, on any number of meals a day. You can gain muscle on except for zero meals a day. You can gain muscle on one meal a day. It just will not be as maximized or optimized a process in terms of your rate of muscle gain over the course of months or years, if you maintain a low meal frequency. So, and this is a huge gray area in the literature. I want to get that straight first. We have not systematically compared one versus two versus three versus four versus five versus, and found this break over point where there's some magical acceleration in muscle gains,

you know, after like right after three meals a day, you're fricking flying with muscle gains. No, we, we don't know that at all, man. And that's something that people don't, people don't talk about that enough. We have not systematically investigated what's the optimal lower threshold of meal frequency to the target muscle gain and still have it compared to something like, you know, four to six meals a day. So there seems to be a gray area with three meals a day. It might work just as good as four meals a day for, um, let's say simulating muscle protein synthesis, which is the short-term marker that we can look at without having to throw together like a 12 week trial and see if muscle is actually gained. We use muscle protein synthesis as this kind of surrogate index of what, of what might be going on. And, and usually what's been seen is the, you know, the a little bit more of the higher frequency, the, the bro,

the more brotacular distributions of protein intake seem to work better with that. But I would speculate that if somebody wanted to kind of strike a balance between the lower frequency without compromising gains in muscle, it is right around the three-ish doses per day. So if somebody wanted to have, let's say two meals a day, I would definitely suggest that at some point in the day, they down like 30 to 50 grams of protein real quick, either with a chunk of meat or with a protein shake. If they're wanting to gain primarily. So I think that three is speculatively the lower threshold of what people can still

maximize their gains with. I could say four, but in the real world, man, you know, the difference between three meals and four meals a day, the difference in gains, you might be looking at a placing of like second versus third and Mr. Natty USA or something like that. And that makes me curious. Cause I asked Lane this question too, when he came on, because all over social media, you sometimes, cause we don't do one meal a day all the time, but when we do, people are like, but you can't absorb all that protein. Like I'll eat 240, 250 grams of the city. I'll eat all my calories. Um, and people will be like, you can't absorb all that. I thought you can only absorb 30 to 40 grams of protein in a sitting. That's, um, that's still a thing where people are like, you can only absorb 30 to 40 grams. So my question here is number one, where does that come from?

Because we know that like apparently even protein feedings is better for muscle protein synthesis. But what does happen if an individual does choose to have all of their protein in a sitting? Can they not absorb it? Is there something actually super negative about that? That's a really good question. about that? That's a really good question. Where it comes from is short-term studies on muscle protein synthesis response, literally within a few hours of consuming the meal. That's where this stuff comes from. And so what we see is there seems to be a ceiling of protein dosing where muscle protein synthesis will reach max and then it'll start dropping down regardless of the protein dose.

And what we did, we did get that right. We did get that right. That muscle protein synthesis has to be regulated somehow. Otherwise, people would just turn into the Hulk with huge, you know, 100, 200, 300 gram protein doses. Right. So we did get that right. What we didn't get right for a long time was thinking that limit was like 25 grams. So we tried different protocols over the last few years and saw that, well, in older folks, that limit is

higher. And with higher training volumes of the prior resistance exercise bout, that limit goes higher. And so we're looking at potentially, you know, in the 40 gram, 50 gram, possibly 60 gram, depending on the population and the protocol. Now, moving on to the next part of your question, that's a little trickier because, first of all, there's not this perfect correlation between the amount of muscle protein synthesis you can stimulate per meal or even per day with X number of meals versus how much muscle you'll gain or retain over a period of months. There's kind of a disconnect there. There's not only a disconnect, but there's a, it's a vast gray area that we really need to investigate, you know, but the only a few people really care about that. The thing is when we ingest a meal, especially a solid mixed meal, there's multiple regulating systems that, that really tightly regulate the flow of that meal through the GI tract. So, you know, we've got the, we've got

the limit of, of how fast food can go down the esophagus. We've got the freaking esophageal sphincter regulating entry into the stomach. Uh, we've got the, we got peristalsis, we've got everything. We've got the pyloric sphincter regulating entry into the duodenum. Then somewhere in the GI tract, we have the freaking jejunal break. So we have the duodenal break, the jejunal break, the ileal break towards the distal end of the GI tract. And we have all these freaking regulating systems that, you know what, if you can actually eat 200 grams of protein within a meal, it'll take the whole damn day to digest and absorb. And therefore, you're not going to lose much of it to waste heat, to excretion. It's not going to disappear.

You are going to absorb the vast majority of it, and you are going to use the vast majority of it. of it. Now the mystery, the great mystery is what is the ideal distribution and dosing of these peaks of MPS through the day to expedite muscle growth? And do these individual peaks in MPS even matter that much for muscle growth over time? And we're hypothesizing it does, but we just don't know the magic number. And we can only speculate and hypothesize that somewhere three-ish and up MPS spikes a day that would perhaps optimize this process. And I want to put an emphasis on optimize because you can still freaking grow on one meal a day. It's just not necessarily going to be a process that's maximized in terms of rate of gains over a period of weeks, months, years. What do you think would happen if your average person was just to increase their protein percentage that they ate in a day, maybe by like 10%? Because it's my understanding

with the standard American diet that people have like 12, 13% of their calories come from protein. So what if we saw that jump to 23%, what would happen? All kinds of good things, all kinds of good things. You know, the average American consumes somewhere between 14 to 16% protein a day. Also, you know know the average american consumes a really crappy diet otherwise as well right but protein is is uh it's really quite the the mvp of of macronutrition since it'll not only um increase satiety or or increase hunger control but it'll also increase the so-called thermic effect of the diet. So it costs more energy, you burn more energy to metabolize protein. And also you'll increase your chances of gaining or retaining lean body mass, especially in resistance training conditions,

which honestly is a non-negotiable if you care about health. So, so those are the three big benefits of increasing protein in the diet. Would people automatically lose weight as well? If just their percentage was increased? Uh, kind of depends. Um, but it would, there would be a tendency to, there, there would be a tendency to, because of the increase in hunger control and because of the slight thermic increase you'd put those together and um there there would definitely be an increase in lean body mass percentage um there there's some controversy going on now with with how much exercise helps in in weight loss but people are looking at the wrong things they're

looking at total body weight they're're looking at total body weight. They're not looking at body composition. But yeah, with the question of protein, increases in protein, there definitely would be a tendency to decrease body fat over time if all the other variables are health constant. Yeah. What if someone's had like, let's say a 2000 calorie a day diet and they had 200 grams of protein and then say that somebody else had like 75 grams of protein. Do you think over time that you're going to see the person

with a higher protein, uh, continue to maybe make some positive changes in their body composition versus the other individual? I would definitely put my money on that for sure. putting my money on that for sure. I was going to say, so I woke up at around 4.30 this morning. I trained around 5.30, trained for about an hour and a half. I'm not hungry at the moment. I was planning on fasting, but every time we have a guest talk about the benefits of having protein throughout the day, I instantly think that my body's eating itself. So am I making a mistake by continuing my fast and not breaking it to just have like some quick protein the way you just described with like having coffee and protein? Should I jump right over there and grab a protein shake? Because that's kind of what I want to do right now. For you.

Yeah. And I, I will, by the end of the day, have at least 200 grams of protein. Like that's like bare minimum and I'm 185 pounds. Um, so with that in mind, yeah. Yeah. For, for you and the, the population, the training population you may represent, the demographic you may represent. Now, Encima is completely separate from everybody, so we're going to leave him out of every conversation. He's on a planet all on his own, okay? Now, it's so funny. Quick diversion. I showed my wife a video. I'm like, look at this

guy. He just looks like this every effing day. Like he wakes up like this. This is insane. And no, no, he doesn't compete in physique. If he competed in physique or Bible, he would embarrass everybody. Look at this guy. No life is not fair. You are an example of life is not fair. Okay. So back to your question, sir. If you do skip your protein and you extend your fast, the demographic you represent, which is young, resistance-trained, active, that's not really a concern. If you were like 80 over 65, then it might be an issue if you're skipping opportunities to feed because, um, with the elderly population, their training capacity tends to go down quite a bit. Their physical activity goes down. And without the same training stimulus, it can be a kind of a convergence of negative things when you're skipping protein opportunities. But for you in particular, unless your goal is to gain muscle

above all other goals, then you'll do just fine. You can still grow on a in quotes, suboptimal protein intake distribution through the day. So I like what you're saying there, because you know, what we try to preach is like, it's about the longterm, you know, it's, it's not, we're not trying to seduce stuff for like a day or a week or a month. It's, It's more about the long term. So I like what you're saying there. It's like, yeah, we could probably, you know, nitpick every little thing that we do and be slightly more optimal. But if what you're currently doing is something that's easier to adhere to and it still has a net positive, then don't fucking worry about it too much.

Don't overstress about it. Think a little bit less and just keep plowing forward. A hundred percent agreed. And, and, you know, Mark, you bring that point up. It reminds me of people who nitpick to the point of not only are they policing your, your feeding window, but they're policing when in the day you can eat, when in the day should you move this feeding window. And so there's a bunch of research showing that it's potentially more optimal from a glucose control standpoint to front load your calories rather than backload them. But that doesn't apply to people who have non-stupid macros going and who are not totally sedentary. And the leaner and more fit you get, the less those things matter. The leaner and more fit you get, the more that the totals by the end of the

day matter and placement of it doesn't. So with that being said, for an individual who, let's say that they're not as lean, let's say that it's a male at 18% body fat or something, or a woman at 28% body fat what as far as like the time that they should eat what kind of role would that play or how important would that be for them 100 what they prefer and can stick to okay some people are nighttime types some people are daytime and chronotypes and if you take somebody who would rather eat a large dinner at a later time point and you say, you know, I don't care what your preferences are, what you can stick to. You're going to eat all of your day's calories and be done with your with all your days eating by 4 p.m. You're going to screw that person in the long term because they're not necessarily going

to be able to sustain the program. So I'm very much a proponent of not missing the forest for the trees. There's a lot of interesting findings with chronotyping and optimizing placement of, for example, carbohydrate. there's a body of literature showing that, oh, maybe we should front load carbohydrate. And then there's another body of literature showing that maybe we should backload carbohydrate. I'm like, you know what, make sure your diet is sound, train regularly, and eat when it's most convenient and when you can most stick to that over the longterm, because that's ultimately what matters. But the thing with saying that is you can't,

you can't come up with any, any, any provocative or sexy ideas based on, um, okay, just hit it by the end of the day as, as of primary importance and make sure it aligns with your personal preference so you can adhere to that. So it's very anticlimactic. And with that too, um, since we're still on the topic of protein, a lot of people are there, they're concerned if they drink a lot of whey protein, let's say that they just don't have the time to cook up a lot of their protein via meat or other foods. And maybe 40% of their total protein intake comes from shakes or whey, et cetera. Is that a problem as far as the actual protein, or is it just a problem as far as maybe their hunger? It's mainly, it would mainly be a, it mainly be a, be an appetite issue.

I think, uh, there's, there's a lack of studies and this would be, it mainly be a be an appetite issue i think uh there's there's a lack of studies and this would be it would be really interesting to run a study that compared let's say 50 to 100 percent of of the day's protein from powders versus 100 of the day's protein from just just animal flesh let's say it would be interesting to see satiety ratings, changes in body composition and or athletic performance. Unfortunately, you know, we just don't have that research. But I can say anecdotally, it's very common for people to get like up to half of their protein intake from powders. it's very common for people to get like up to half of their protein intake from powders and they do just fine in terms of progress, in terms of being able to maintain their, their, their gains, et cetera.

But, but yeah, I, I know somebody and I actually had him chronicle the intake of just whey protein and Ben and Jerry's ice cream for a hundred days. So he hit his macros, which were, which were decent macros with Ben and Jerry's ice cream and whey. And dude, guys, he hated it. He, after a few weeks, he was hating life. His digestion was way off. His workouts really sucked. And he just felt like dog shit. He really did.

And you would hypothesize that, hey, whey is a great source of protein and, you know, hey, carbs, fat, whatever. But no, this dude really screwed himself over the course of 100 days on whey protein and Ben and Jerry's ice cream and a little bit of whiskey. Sounds rather disgusting. That's my friend, Anthony Howard Crow. Would you say it might be true that the faster that we digest something, maybe the faster that we're hungry? So maybe in the case of certain types of protein and maybe in the case of certainly something like a protein shake, maybe sometimes the faster that we can kind of digest those things, maybe the faster it leaves us with kind of an empty stomach and a hungry

feeling. So maybe the shakes are good to help us get the amino acid profile that we're looking for, but maybe they're not great in terms of our satiety. I would, I would carefully say yes. And the reason why I say carefully is because there's, of course, there's these short-term studies lasting a few hours long comparing the different protein sources and either failing to find a difference or putting way above casein in terms of satiating uh capacity but uh in the real world and across the the spectrum of foods and nutrients generally speaking the more solid a food is the more satiating it's going to be. So that would, you know, working in practice with clients, definitely a steak would be more

satiating than a couple of scoops away, for sure, for sure. And when it comes to fat calories, the fat can slow down the absorption and maybe that can potentially help you to not be hungry, right? Because it can just slow down the gastric emptying of what you just ate. Yes, that can contribute. The whole phenomenon of being satiated is a multifaceted thing. It begins with anticipating the food, smelling the food, seeing the food, chewing the food, getting the full experience of the tastes, whether sweet, savory combination. combination, you know, the bigger the event, the bigger the eating event, the more satisfying it is than the more satiating that somebody, the more satiated that the person is going to be. And, and so if you're looking at downing two scoops of whey, which you can literally do in 15 seconds, that satiating experience is going to be

far less than, you know, that whole thing I described previously. So there's a lot of aspects to satiety. And that's why when you look at these programs and these products where, hey, we just threw a bunch of everything you need together in this powder and you just sip on this soylent drink all day or when you need to eat, you'll be fine. You'll live happily ever after. Well, no, you won't because it doesn't provide the multifaceted satiety experience that you would get from an actual meal. And also how about protein overfeeding? You know, they're the individuals that they choose to eat two grams of protein per pound or or 2.5 grams per pound so is there are there any massive negatives to protein overfeeding um for someone the general population

but then also someone in athletics bodybuilding powerlifting etc any dangers in a word not really in a word not really no uh you can build a case for somebody who has chronic or acute kidney disease you can build a case for that person restricting their protein to the rda but you know aside from kit, it's almost like with carbohydrate, it's like, can, can we really over carbohydrate ourselves if we stick within the calories and we're really over fat ourselves? Well, why would it be so special with protein because of the policing of the kidneys because of this or that? Hmm. Um, we just haven't seen that in controlled interventions, actually. And my friend, Joey Antonio, is responsible for a lot of the findings in that area where he puts subjects through these rather massive amounts of protein over extended periods of time. extended periods of time, anywhere from gosh, uh, the mid twos to the high three grams per kilogram of body weight, even up to, um, one of them was 4.4, I believe grams per kilogram of

body weight and no ill effects, no ill effects on, um, on any of the, the blood parameters that would send up red flags about liver and kidney dysfunction, no red flags about bone mineral density. Our body apparently is perfectly adept at metabolizing high amounts of protein, you know, believe it or not. And so the interesting thing about protein overfeeding in free living conditions is that it seems to to disappear into thin air. So if you take a group of resistance trainees, add four to eight hundred calories of protein on top. And Joey actually utilized quite a bit of protein powder to this away protein.

quite a bit of protein powder to this away protein. And so we're, you know, we're not talking about chunks of chicken or steak where you would imagine that really kind of satiating and, and in quotes, uh, driving down the intake of the other macros, but protein powder did protein powder somehow disappeared into thin air in free living conditions for the tune of adding four to 800 calories of protein, raising protein from like, uh, like 2.2 ish grams per kilo, all the way up to about three point, the mid threes, low threes, nothing happens in these resistance trainees. And so it's kind of a beautiful thing. And we can take that data and, um, apply it to dieters who want to kind of take a break from restricting. So what, what we can do is just keep them training and, um, add higher protein phases or protein hyper feeds and, uh,

keep them satiated and happy and not feel so deprived. And we can use protein as that kind of tool. So it's been, it's been an interesting, uh, observation set of observations lately in the past few years with protein overfeeding, thanks to Jody. But matter can neither be created nor destroyed, bro. Yeah, calories in, calories out. The subjects in Jody's studies did complain to him that it was difficult to get all that protein down. It's difficult. And so we can interpret that as maybe there was a certain degree of, um, over-reporting protein to avoid being shamed by

the, by the, uh, research personnel for not following the assignment. And it's really interesting with these studies. When, uh, you look at the macronutrients carbohydrate, like carby fatty foods, like sweet dessert type of foods, they tend to get underreported. And then the healthy foods, including a high, high protein and protein based foods tend to get overreported. So, so yeah, that it's an interesting thing in free living conditions, which is cool. And then you can compare that research to metabolic ward research where they overfed protein and saw fat gain, but they all, but they saw equal fat gain and, and an increase in lean body mass with the higher protein conditions. This was Bray

and colleagues in 2012. And so, um, it, it's just an interesting area of research and what's really important when you look at free living conditions, you get to see what happens in the real world outside of the lab when you assign clients or subjects more protein and it's all good actually. So there was some fat gain when the protein was raised in the clinical ward. Is that what you mentioned? Yes. Yes. Yes. There, there was fat gain. Um, they, they compared 5% protein in the diet to 15% protein, the 30% protein in the diet, the 5% protein diet rather unsurprisingly, they, they lost lean body mass. Um, and the 15 and 30% diets gain lean body mass. I don't think it was a significant difference between the, but, but the raw data showed the highest lean mass gains in the 30% protein diet.

Uh, and they all gain an equal amount of fat, but that's when you're, you put subjects in a metabolic ward and you watch everything that goes into their mouth 24 hours a day. And you, you prepare their food, you feed them their food and they're, you know, they're on camera the whole time. So, um, but once again, there's, there's definitely a disconnect between that and what happens in the real world when you assign somebody an extra, uh, a hundred grams of protein a day, an extra, let's say 60, 60 to a hundred grams of protein a day, 50 to to 100 grams of protein a day 50 to 100 grams of protein a day they're going to get satiated um if they focus on the protein target there will be a tendency for the intake of the other macronutrients to be driven down and um they're also experience uh potentially

greater or more favorable changes in body composition, especially if they had priorly been eating a suboptimal amount of protein. So it's very tough to find negative effects of overdoing protein, especially in free living resistance training populations. So with all that in mind, and even like the thermic effect of food, do you think it's still accurate to track protein as four calories per gram? Or do you think maybe that might possibly change? That's a great question. I think just technically it might not be totally correct to do the four calories per gram. correct to do the four calories per gram, but from a practical perspective and with people's tendency to underestimate and tendency to overeat, I think it's safe to keep that calculation at

four calories per gram. Now, as far as protein and being satiating, I don't want to switch topics. I think this is great for us to be on, but a lot of people, when they look at our diets and in the past for me, when I ate a lot of carbohydrates, especially like when I was getting ready for shows or whatever, I would have a lot of fiber in my diet. But when I switched to being lower carb, honestly, these days it's, it's, I might get flamed for this, but I almost don't have any fiber in my diet. Like none, almost whatsoever. Many days a week. For how long now? Uh, I've been, I've been low carb. I've been doing like low carb stuff for around two and a half, almost three years now. And there, you've been like almost no fibering for two and a half to three years. Pretty like pretty much I'll have fruits here

and there, but like, I don't, so like, and I have nothing against fruits or anything like that. Um, but most of my diet, when I eat carbohydrates it's usually rice because they're like i do jujitsu also so there are certain days where i'm like i need some extra carbs today so i'll just eat some extra rice of course it's of course it's rice mr yang yeah you know how it is you and i we're we're you know we're rice brothers over here but. But you see it. But with that being said, like, it makes me wonder for are there are there certain individuals? Watch yourself over there. Damn it! Are there certain individuals in different diet groups that may need more fiber? Are we doing anything wrong by limiting our intake of fiber to potentially having no fiber with our diets? Because I felt no digestive issues. I'm just curious.

It's a hard question to answer definitively because all we can really do is point to observational data that correlates higher fiber intakes well with with lower incidence prevalence of uh chronic disease um and then from that point we just kind of speculate about what what are the mechanisms behind this phenomenon you know uh but with observational data it's always tough to um establish you know what might be the causative factors to this disease prevention phenomenon. So I think just, you know, if you were to look at the data and look at the weight of the evidence, you can say that, hmm, I might be sub-optimizing health by consuming a low to no fiber diet.

However, that might be perfectly fine for you as an individual, because typically what people look for with the inclusion of fiber is improvements in blood lipids and glycemic control. So if you have great blood lipids and you have great glycemic control, then honestly, who gives that much of a shit? How much, well, you know, no pun intended, how much fiber that, that you're taking in per day. Um, you know, there, there's a decent body of data showing anti-cancer effects of foods that happen to be fiber containing. So anti-cancer effects of the various fruits, vegetables, etc. The things that get vegans real excited. But really, with fiber, we're looking at glycemic control we're looking at um blood lipid profile and also uh once you start like saying okay well you got you got less firmicutes than you so you got more you know like the the gut biome

diversity goes down or whatever with lower fiber. That gets into a real kind of reachy level of speculation of what might be going on. So I don't know. I don't see a high fiber diet as something that needs to be imposed or mandated on everybody, especially if their other markers of health are fine because when we look at health we have to look at the whole picture i mean you know you can look at somebody who is consuming a high fiber diet and they're consuming everything great but they're inactive and they have lots of excess body fat and you can take somebody who's getting the big rocks in order um physical physical activity uh and that includes you know a balanced program with

resistance training and and the rest and their total diet macronutritionally is good most of their food sources are uh mostly whole or minimally refined and minimally processed for the most part, the fiber starts becoming a smaller and smaller factor in the whole equation. And anecdotally, there's a lot of people who consume low fiber diets and do just fine over time. So I don't know. I can, I can say with confidence that fiber is a factor in, in optimal health, but in the, in the big picture, it might be, it might not be an essential factor. But with what you just said there, like, for example, like one of my mom's house or something, I'm going to eat an orange or an

apple because she has that stuff laying out of your head so i think that like seeing what you said right there it would be beneficial if i like purchased a few fruits and some carrots or some shit and just put that in my diet because i it's like i'm an individual who has some people have like issues when they eat those foods so they they take them out of their diet i've never had that it's it's never had that. It's, it's never been that type of thing. It's just been laziness of being a single man.

Here's my, my speculation on the whole thing is that for people that are sicker and for people that are heavier, that have made poor choices with their nutrition for long period of time, I think fiber would probably apply to them a little bit more. That's my own personal, just kind of a thought process. And like, you know, the phytoestrogens and all these weird things that are like accumulating in the body, I think one can speculate. If you eat crappy foods, like maybe the fibers would help kind of take some of those things out of our body.

What you mentioned about cancer, I find really fascinating because cancer would be probably associated to those other risk factors that you mentioned earlier, along with a lot of other things, but glucose and your blood lipid profile, like if those things are compromised, then yeah, you probably do need a nutritional intervention. You probably do need to examine what you're eating currently. But if your digestion feels good, you feel good every day, like you can perform well every day, your sleep's good. Um, probably not a ton of reasons to go way out of your way to eat fiber, but to consume some, I don't think it would hurt any. Yeah. Fiber is one of those,

one of those public health, uh, well, you know, it's like, it's like public health wallpaper. Well, you know, it's like public health wallpaper. And it's very difficult to study health in general because you have to rely on population studies and the inherent inability to control and keep an eye on all the variables to see what's affecting what. what um so the increase in fiber has a has a good evidence basis for for improving health or or preventing chronic disease but um but in what absolute need and what population knows what i wonder you know that's yeah that's where my curiosity is yeah no i'm mark i, I'm with you. It seems that if you can just freaking stay relatively lean and active and get enough good sleep, a lot of the other stuff, and of course, you know, psychological, psychosocial things have to be in place. You can't necessarily be going insane. be in place. You can't necessarily be going insane. A lot of the other stuff, a lot of the other stuff is just, just, you know, not meaningless details, but almost hypothetical things of optimizing health or, or, or not. It's a lot of it is speculative, but yeah, no, no, I see what you're saying, because if you read about folks who live the longest, they coincidentally happen to be eating a certain amount of fiber, selecting those populations and keeping an eye on them. There is some convergence of data from interventions that show beneficial effects of fiber.

But yeah, there are a lot of populations, for example, that entire low-carb population who are improving their health markers and who actually prefer a lower fiber intake from just a digestive tolerance standpoint. They're living happier lives by not Dutch ovening their significant others every night. And I can see that as being a health benefit in and of itself. It's also maybe safe to say that your body can kind of like do what it needs to do, regardless of whether you're having fiber or not. It's my understanding that you can produce like butyrate and some of the things that your stomach needs, regardless of whether you're eating these fibers or not. Is that is that correct? I'm going to go ahead and say that I don't know the the rate of which it is capable of doing that.

I've never looked into it, but I can imagine that being the case. Yeah, I'm just not comfortable with saying that fiber is essential. I'm, I'm comfortable with saying that it can benefit health. And there is a, there's a relatively large body of literature associating higher fiber intakes with a reduction in chronic disease. What I'm not totally comfortable with saying is that everybody needs to emphasize fiber and get on a high fiber diet. What do you say? Maybe it's comparable to like just carbs in general. Like I know that you're

a proponent of carbohydrates for some folks that are trying to get like, you know, in shape and get on stage and bodybuilding and stuff like that. So fiber maybe could be something that maybe it's more optimal for overall gut health, but it's not necessarily needed much in the way that an individual can choose to go low carb and have great benefits of being in shape and staying in shape. Is it kind of like that? Like the carbohydrates are like, as we refer to them, we refer to them a lot as being like performance enhancers in a way.

And maybe fiber is that like it's not going to really be a super net negative if you don't eat a lot of fiber, but it could be a little bit of a net positive if you just eat some fiber here and there you know i i can get on board with that i can't um and and yeah i i do i do love love my carbs and um but i i have to clarify that um carbs in the general population are kind of a double-edged sword and public health guidelines regarding, um, predominating your, your diet with, uh, with grain products. Um, that's a double-edged sword as well. And, uh, I think that the human organism can get along just fine on low carb. I'm not a proponent of what some people are. They're just super duper anti-carbon keto for everybody.

I think that the human organism is just highly resilient and adaptable to shoot anything from 30 to 300 grams of carbs a day, depending on who you are and what your, what your program is. And of course we get some people doing 600 grams of carbs a day and doing fine. Right. But, um, but yeah, it's a highly individual matter. The body, the body can adapt. And, uh, and once again, I, I would, with fiber, I'd circle back to what we're mainly looking at with fiber is glycemic control and blood lipid profile. You have, if you are, have just fine parameters on those fronts, go low fiber, you know, as far as I'm concerned. This will probably be an, it depends type of question, but it does make me curious when a lot of people within the, I guess, physique community or the body composition community, when they look at fiber, yeah, there's the health idea of it, but then most people look

at it in terms of its satiating benefits. Like, oh, well, it'll make me more full. I can just increase the volume in my stomach, right, without drastically increasing my calories. But let's say calories are somewhat equated. How the satiating effects of protein versus the satiating effects of fiber. What would I don't even know if this makes sense, but what would one be more satiating than the other? I took a quick look at this at this question, actually, and I'm came up kind of disappointed about the so-called satiating power of fiber. The mantra in, in, in the literature is usually a protein and fiber are satiating, but in the case of fiber, you, if you go through the different meta-analyses on the effects of fiber on satiety, you've come up kind of dry, man. You kind of, it's like maybe a little bit, but

it's very meh in terms of that. And whereas with protein, you have some pretty robust effects on satiety. Um, I would think that with fiber, you're just, you're getting a bunch of water in there as well. And the water associated with the fiber containing foods would displace a lot of stomach space and do, you know, stretch the stomach and, and, and provide the satiety signals that way. And it might not necessarily be the fiber per se, but, but there is weak evidence that it, that it could be as well. So, and of course there, there's the possibility that a combination of protein and fiber and water is kind of the money for satiation. You've had some interesting findings with competitive people that get on stage and physique and bodybuilding and things like that.

And I think I heard you reference that there were some commonalities amongst like the top five in the amount of carbohydrates that they take it in. And I think you even kind of boiled it down to maybe where they had similar macros. I don't know if they all had similar coaches or what the deal was with that. But I find this kind of stuff really interesting because we always hear that there's no cookie cutter program, which I think is a joke because when you see people that go in the military, when they come out of the military, uh, when they come out of the military, they come out of bootcamp, they all look the same.

And it's, and it's because of, it's because of what it's because they had no choice. You know, they were served a certain amount of food every day. They train the same every day. They got the same fucking haircut and everything else. So when I,

when I see onstage bodybuilders, it just appears almost every single time. There are some small things here or there that might be a little bit different, but it seems like the macros are kind of similar. It seems like the diet is pretty similar. It's a pretty low-fat, higher-carbohydrate, high-protein diet that seems to have been working for many, many years. What have you seen? That is interesting. There's a bit of a divergence when you look at the natty competitors versus the enhanced competitors.

The enhanced competitors, and there's not much literature on this, so we just have to go by speculation and field observations and stuff there's a bit more of a diversity of approaches with enhanced competitors with regard to the carbohydrate intake some go low carb some go even keto um some there's a lot of cyclical keto um now with the natty competitors there's a bit more of a uniform high protein high carb low fat type of intake and i think that makes sense um just from the standpoint of doing whatever you can to maximize resting glycogen levels, muscle fullness, et cetera, as you lose body fat, especially with the natties. Um, and this would include preserving, uh, training performance and, and the ability to carry out the kind of, uh, training volume that they're, that they're aiming for. And so low-carbing would definitely impact performance and resting

glycogen levels. Whereas with the enhanced guys, there may be an advantage there that they have in terms of, who knows, intramuscular water, and any number of, uh, of, of, of variables in that mix. So, so I have to agree. I mean, when you look at the work of, um, various dudes who, who are now ex-competitor, ex-competitors who are now researchers in the natty bodybuilding area, you've got protein intakes for men who place in the top five. They're always like right around three to low threes, um, grams per kilogram of body weight. So, you know, roughly one point would, would that 1.3, 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight. Um, carbohydrates are in the double body weight grams per pound. Um, and fat is just kind of disgustingly low,

like, Oh, like nasty low. Um, if I'm, if I'm remembering the, uh, if I'm remembering the, uh, like let's say about 0.3 grams per, per pound or less in terms of, of, of fat intake. So very low fat, um, the kind of fat level that you look at it and you feel like crap as you look at number. Um, yeah, it's just, it's great for the physique, but just horrible for, you know, functioning and everything else. And Alan, that makes it's just, it's great for the physique, but just horrible for, you know, functioning and everything else. And Alan, that makes me really wonder, cause we kind of talked to men and henselmans about this when he was on. But, um, when I was doing a bunch of competitions and bodybuilding back in like 2013 to 2015,

each one of my diets, like at the tail end, um, especially even at like WNBF worlds, I was working with Alberto Nunez. My fats were at like 30 to 40. And like my libido was tanked for months before I stepped on stage and my libido was tanked for months after I got out of stage and when I was trying to gain body fat back. And now it's made me wonder the past few years where I've been higher fat and my carbs been lower and I've just been slowly losing body fat over the years. and my carbs been lower and I've just been slowly losing body fat over the years.

And now chilling at single digit, I would be 12 weeks out and I could see myself being still high fat, fairly low, moderate and high protein and getting to stage lean with the preservance of libido, et cetera. Cause like with the body composition I have right now, if I had the same body composition back then my libido was gone, pure gone. Like I had like nothing, right. Because my fats are so low because we were maintaining carbs. Right. But now I feel like literally I feel nothing in that realm. And I wonder is one of the reasons why this hasn't been so popular within that community of natural bodybuilding, because number one, no one really tries for long enough to adapt. Because one thing I know is that when I was doing low carb, it took me a while to get used to performing in the gym and using high fats. But when I did get used to it,

it's like everything just feels really good. And it could be the dissonance between it's been a while since I've done it the other way or something like that. But like, again, just like the body composition currently, I could get ready for show. I could maintain my hormonal health rather than what I see with a lot of natty bodybuilders that do choose to go the low fat route. And they're like, my dick don't work. Yeah. It's very, very sad thing. I can see that. I can see that being a possibility. It reminds me of, um, this, this so-called faster study by, by Jeff Volek and Steve Finney, where they looked at elite endurance cyclists, I believe. And they put them on keto and it was a minimum of six months that they were on keto and they ended up the same resting glycogen levels as the control, which is fricking fascinating.

I mean, the body's ability to take fuel substrates and assemble glycogen is, is, is just, just, it's fascinating. It's incredible. Unfortunately Unfortunately they didn't assess performance in the faster study, which is a bummer. Um, but, but that's just kind of how it is. So, um, no, I can, I can roll with you on that. You know, um, I can see that possibility because there is a lot of, uh, tradition that goes on with prepping, um, contestants, but then again, tradition is, is, can be a pretty powerful thing as well. Cause it's born out of trial and error and what ends up working ends up kind of rising to the top. So, but I, I would say that in your case,

we could be open to that possibility. Okay. And what are you, uh, with, uh, when it comes to carbohydrates, what do you usually recommend for people that are stepping on stage? Do they have, did you kind of recommend that they can utilize some flexibility or is it kind of like rice, potatoes, those types of things? Ha, um, there, you know, there, there's a balance between these whole food carbs and the more refined stuff and, and people respond differently to them. Like a lot of times, if you were just to load somebody up on, on sweet potatoes and broccoli, they would be farting and shitting themselves to death alive. They're just not used to that. So I think what you would need to do now,

this is interesting. And I, I got a bunch of my influence from Alberto Nunez on this. He just threw through trial and error and diet history knows that he digests corn tortillas the best so so you on one hand you'll have alberto nunez pounding the freaking corn tortillas and then you've got freaking jay cutler pounding the freaking asparagus and shit with his white fish oh man can you imagine living with him? And so it's such a highly individual thing, Mark. You know, if you tell me that you just feel amazing on broccoli and fricking sweet potatoes and apples, it's so crazy. that's what, that's what we roll with. You know, um, other people will just feel horrible and even perform crappy on, on different carb sources. So highly individual. I will have to say that in my history, um, and in my field observations, a mix of crappy carbs and, and, and quotes, clean carbs is usually best for folks. It's not all the way straight through oatmeal and sweet potatoes versus all the way straight through, you know, dextrose and, you know,

Jolly Ranchers and stuff like that. It does seem to be a little bit of magic with some of those processed foods and the way that they kind of make you feel and the way they can fill you up. But it's probably just because they taste good and you can eat a lot of them and you're probably just eating some enormous amount of carbohydrates or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And, and some people swear by certain carbs on, you know, contest day, pump up time and swear by that, you know, the Targo and, you know, those kinds of like hyper carbs make them feel like they're on crack or something. Um, so yeah, yeah, it, it, it's a highly individualized thing, Mark. Um, also I'm curious about this too, Alan, cause I know that earlier when we were talking about fasting, we were mentioning how, you know, it's, if you're an

individual who is focused on optimizing your muscle maintenance and optimizing your muscle gain, meaning you're trying to eke out every ounce possible of muscle, it might be ideal to space out your protein feedings, right? Well, I'm curious about the behavioral benefits of fasting for individuals that diet for contest. And the reason why I'm asking you this is like in the past, again, when I was dieting for contest, I had even feedings. But man, if Alberto probably remembers, there were multiple times where like I binged because at the end of the day, I finished my macros and everything was even. But like I just it wasn't satisfying. Right. And over the years of like utilizing some fasting, now I really do have control over my response to hunger, even when leaner, even when restricting calories, where I like I'm used to feeling hungry and just being like, it's not really that big deal because I've repped that out with fasting. Right. It's made me curious in how that could be beneficial for individuals who are trying to get contest ready if they built that up just because when you're working with caloric restriction, but now you're going through your day and you're going to be able to eat a few meals at the end of the day, but you're not now always responding to hunger because you're lean and you're dieting, you're clerk restricted. It could be something that makes the diet easier. And I'm, I'm, I'm curious about that. If you've seen many people doing that within that community, because I mean, I've, I've still, I'm still in that community. I don't see a lot of people

talking about it. It's not a lot of people do it, but I've seen the benefits for myself. And obviously it's an end of one. So it's, it is what it is. It's anecdotal, but I think it could be very, very useful for individuals who are dieting. It's anecdotal, but I think it could be very, very useful for individuals who are dieting. I think that it would be a very useful tool for individuals who have that kind of proclivity, that kind of profile, and who really feel like they're chomping at the bit on the multiple meal, the spread pattern. And I think that with contest prep, the objective is mainly to hang on to the lean mass you've got. And there is a ton of pretty good data, even data on zero calorie alternate day fasting, showing maintenance of lean body mass. Not even necessarily in resistance training individuals. There's going zero calorie every other day and muscle is not flying off them.

And so you can build a pretty strong case for dieting conditions, even pre-contest, as you say, for lowering meal frequency and increasing meal size and maybe entrainment of a different kind of grayling pattern, a different hunger pattern, a more manageable one. So I can definitely see that. Okay. Earlier, we had talked about meal timing and this just because it does come up amongst the, uh, the, the bro circles, but, uh, pre and post workout meals, the, uh, that, that tiny little window at the end of the workout where you're in a catabolic state or whatever, I mean, I'm sure the terminology,

but is there any truth to kind of trying to get food right after a workout to help with that protein synthesis and all the muscle gains and stuff? Good question, man. And before I answer that, like I want to take responsibility, take partial responsibility for bros eating protein a minimum of four times a day, because that's kind of the practice guidelines my colleagues and I put out there. So like Alan Aragon and Brad Schoenfeld says I need to eat protein four times a day. Yeah. Yeah. Look, that's definitely not going to hurt. It might even optimize it, but I have to admit that you might be okay with three for maximizing muscle gain. Okay. So with that out of the way, the whole anabolic window thing is interesting because when you look at the effect of, of a resist, a single resistance

training bout on muscle protein turnover. So the increase in that cycle of muscle protein synthesis and breakdown. So muscle protein turnover, um, and the muscle protein synthesis in particular, that's elevated for like 24 hours after your um after the resistance training bout so you got this enormous anabolic garage door of peace to um take in or be have an extra heightened level of receptivity to protein feeding after the resistance training bout so i, I mean, in the beginning, it's kind of absurd to, to, to make the claim that you've got this narrow window of opportunity to feed. Now, um, when Brad and I did Brad Schoenfeld and I did this, the, did the research and questioned the whole anabolic window concept, we pissed off all of our colleagues because they're

like, okay, well now people are avoiding their post-workout meal because of you guys. And we said, well, we didn't say that. Hey, don't blame us, you know? Um, but the fact of the matter is when you look at all the studies comparing, you know, tightly sandwiching the, uh, the, the resistance training protein feedings versus a protein neglect for a minimum of two hours, there's no difference in muscle gain, um, over time, as long as total daily protein is fine. So whether or not you can neglect protein for beyond two hours consistently, like adjacent to the training bout and still maximize your gains that that remains to be seen. training bout and still maximize your gains that that remains to be seen but what we're saying is that you don't have to run to the locker room and plow through people to get to your freaking weight

and dextro shake in your locker um and to in order to make gains after the workout um yeah that that's a whole that's a whole other lecture man man. I could talk an hour on that. Is there anything that, like, since we're on this topic, I think this would be interesting. Since you, I mean, you've been in this for a long time, so you've seen certain habits come and slowly go, and some are still here. So from what Andrew said, you know, some people are like, oh, God, my workout just finished. Where's my Rice Krispie treats and fucking protein shake? Right. People are still feeling like that.

But are there any other, I guess, habits within bodybuilding that you're like, oh, I don't think it's that big of a deal. For example, remember the whole six pack bags thing, right? Hold all your six meals. We don't need to have six meals or eight meals a day. Are there are there other habits kind of like that that you're like, we can back off of that a little bit. That's not that necessary. Anything else that comes to mind? That's a great question.

Now, before I tackle that, I want to qualify the whole anabolic window thing. Because the concept of maximally expediting the resynthesis of glycogen, that goal amongst the competitive endurance population is totally legit when there is a minimal amount of time between glycogen depleting events or activities. When there's like eight-ish hours between events where you deplete glycogen in the quads, for example, you do have a very narrow window of opportunity to get in nutrients and carbohydrate in particular, and protein can help in certain situations. So that anabolic window of opportunity situations. So that anabolic window of opportunity got mistakenly conflated with the anabolic opportunity to make muscle gains over time. So that's where they all got fricking confused and screwed up. And, um, that's where the clarification needed to come in. That's where hopefully Brad, you know, Brad, me and Brad and the bros came in and cleared that up.

Now, as far as the question you asked, is there any other things that are might be kind of misconceptions as far as like, like you're talking about the six pack things where you carried around a cooler, right? Yeah, yeah. He's got bam, bam, bam. You were the coolest guy on the block with that yes that thing walking around i used to have one love it i love it how about the dudes who walk around with like a gallon of water that was me yeah but my bcaa is inside of it yep oh my goodness did you have the i forget what crazy where did anybody have crazy where do crazy where with the, like the, Oh God. Okay.

I'm dating myself. Okay. So, so the other thing, the other fricking thing along these lines actually is the concept that you needed to consume carbohydrate with your protein post-exercise to maximally recover and grow. And that has been found to not be true. And the origin of that is when they were feeding folks post-exercise, these suboptimal amounts, it's small amounts of protein to like the equivalent of like 10 grams of protein post-exercise. They saw that when you added carbohydrate to that, you would raise insulin levels and you would raise muscle protein synthesis. And so that this assumption was

built on these short-term MPS response studies that you need to consume carbohydrate and protein together in order to maximize the effects of the anabolic window. While it sounds great on paper, what they eventually ended up doing is testing higher amounts of protein, like 20 grams of protein, 25 grams of protein, 30, 40. And at least in younger subjects under the, you know, the volume that they tested, the addition of carbohydrate to the protein did not increase muscle protein synthesis, even as long as the protein was a minimum of like 20 ish, 25 grams. So, and they, you know, they added robust amounts of, uh, highly glycemic, highly insulinemic carbohydrate to protein and compare that with just protein by itself. And as long as the dose was about 20, 25 grams or more, there's no increase in, uh,

muscle protein synthesis. And so it's one thing to look at short-term response to muscle protein synthesis, but it's a whole other thing to test it over a period of weeks or months and see what happens with changes in body composition. And so we've got a bunch of studies showing no difference in MPS once your protein dose is high enough. But we finally, I believe it was a 2015 where Juha Hulmi, H-U-L U L M I. He tested the co-ingestion of protein and carbs post-exercise versus protein by itself. It was roughly a 30 ish gram dose of protein. And they found no

difference in, um, body composition and, uh, strength and body composition improvements and strength increases between the groups with a carb protein co-ingestion versus protein by itself. So now we've got a convergence of this short-term hypothesis generating data with a, an actual longitudinal study that measured the, the, the hard endpoints like, like body composition. And indeed you don't have to have carbs with the protein post-exercise to maximize the gains. Will it hurt? No. Can it help in situations? Yeah, maybe. Do you have to have it with the protein?

Apparently not. I want to point out a couple things. Number one is if carrying around your meals helps you stay on your plan, then continue to do so. around your meals helps you stay on your plan, then continue to do so. If carrying around a gallon of water or BCAAs encourages you to stay on point and stay on your plan, then continue to do so because all of us recognize that there's nothing more powerful than you being able to stick to whatever the hell it is that you're trying to do. So we're talking about those things because we recognize that maybe we don't need to implement them anymore for ourselves. But if you're utilizing them, I don't see any real dangers to it.

I'd also like to throw some just kind of general conjecture at this whole entire thing, because I think what's not being focused on and what's not being really looked at enough is the hydration aspect of it. And so one could make an argument, carbohydrate is going to help hydrate the muscles. And if we have carbohydrates and we have electrolytes during our workout and maybe even post-workout, I think that's where we can kind of start to say, I think that might have a little bit of a benefit,

at least my understanding is that when you're dehydrated, that you start to lose some performance, you start to lose some strength and things like that. So I do think there's merit to it. I do think there's merit to like intra workout. I'm not saying that you have to have it. I don't even practice it at the moment, but I normally will have some electrolytes during a training session. I found it useful in the past to have branched chain amino acids during a training session. And I never thought that it was because of the amino acids necessarily. I think it's just because it had like salt and other stuff in there. So I think that as you were pointing out with a

lot of the endurance athletes that because they have a shortened window or people that train multiple times a day, it would probably be good to get a carbohydrate in there as you're going from one thing to the next to help kind of replenish the body and make sure you're just replacing the water that is lost in a training session. Agreed on that, Mark. Now, there's actually a couple of lines of evidence that show the benefit of intra and or immediate pre-exercise fueling when the training bout is 70 to 90 minutes or longer of continuous exhaustive work. So there are training populations who will freaking hit the gym and pound it for 90 minutes straight.

Two hours straight if you take a third scoop. You said pound it. We're struggling over here. You said pound it. We're having a hard time. Pound it for two hours straight. I died. It should be an Olympic sport for some people that's right but um but yeah no there the specific research on this shows that now this is an interesting

area like i took an interest in it anyway, where is intra-workout carbohydrate and or carbohydrate electrolyte solutions, is it beneficial? And is it beneficial to have intra-workout amino acids? And a lot of this really depends on, well, of course, the nature of the workout, how long it drags out for and whether or not there was a pre-exercise meal. And so in a lot of the research, they look at overnight fasted subjects. And typically, there is some benefit to intra-workout carb electrolyte intake when you're looking at overnight fasted subjects.

I tried to be smooth. I tried to like mute it while I clear my throat. And so what happens when you consume a, let's say a full-size mixed meal two to four hours prior to the event, if it's an endurance event, then that endurance event has to be like a minimum of, uh, 70 to 90 minutes for that intra workout, um, carbohydrate to be beneficial. So, um, you know, once again, if we, if we look at the nature of the training bout of a dude who does curls for 30 minutes he's he's going to have minimal benefit for intra now if we look at a training bout that lasts over an hour multiple muscle groups and uh pretty exhaustive uh work not you know not five minute rest periods between sets then that training population could benefit from intra-workout fueling so so yeah

i'm curious to the effect of like electrolytes on individuals who do low carb because i didn't really start using electrolytes until like the past year and a half. And I noticed that there – let me say this. When I used to utilize a lot of carbohydrates, I used to have quite a bit of carbs before workout because throughout all my sports career, soccer, everything, my coaches were always like, two hours before you work out, have a meal rich in carbs. So then I took that into bodybuilding and powerlifting. And if I didn't have a meal with some carbs before working out, I would feel like I'd have a shitty workout. Right. Um, and electrolytes made a, had a massive benefit for me in that realm. Cause if I just had some electrolytes, I, if it was a day that I didn't have any carbs, I still felt that I was able to

get a pump or it was still a good workout. Um, now many of my workouts are fasted. I don't really feel that much of a detriment. Um, so I'm just curious what, I guess, electrolytes in the absence of carbohydrates, what you would say that that does. Well, you know, generally speaking, um, it's important to not hit critical, uh, sodium losses. Um, well, sodium being the, the, the main electrolyte lost in sweat. Uh, that's kind of the thing that, that we need to keep an eye on as far as, um, staying in, in quotes, electrolyte balance. And if you train in environments that are conducive to a high sweat rate, then, um, performance can decrease. Uh, actually it can be pretty dangerous if you're just over hydrating without, uh, without the sodium element. And so, yeah, it would be a combination of performance concerns and, and acute health concerns when people get hyponatremia

without enough or a proper sodium balance. Gotcha. Now, I'm curious about this stuff because you worked with a lot of people. And on the show, we talk a lot about nutritional habits that help keep things in line. Even though I may be doing what I'm doing, I don't keep snacks in the house. Cause I know like, if I have something in my cabinet and I get, you know, if I want to eat something, if it's in my cabinet, I will demolish it. So I just, that one of my practices, I just don't keep snacks or easily like, like process snacks in the house. Cause I will demolish them. Right. Um, what are some nutritional habits that you think for the general population or a population that is trying to get their diet to a place that it doesn't feel like work? What are some good habits for them to try to keep in line with their diet for things to work? And I know it's very individual, but there might just be some general things that work for a lot of people. You know, there's a researcher named Brian Wansink who wrote a book called mindless eating. And he did a lot of the seminal research on the visibility and availability of certain foods in the household and the tendency to mow through them. And he did a bunch of research

also on like, like the size of your plate and whether or not you you eat straight out of the bag or whether you portion it out and stuff like that um unfortunately he got popped for like some some kind of academic uh misconduct issues and whatnot but i've spoken to to him, you know, he's a good guy. Sometimes people get caught up in, in recycling their shit and whatnot. Um, but when you, when you design the food environment of a house, you want the foods most conducive to your goals to be the most visible and most easily accessible. And you want the stuff that is not conducive to your goals to be, if possible, very hard to get to or out of the house completely.

And this applies to the office as well. You know, you don't necessarily want to have like impulse by an impulse by a stand there with a bunch of Snickers bars and things like that and expect to succeed. And it is kind of similar with things like alcohol as well. You know, you take somebody who has an alcohol abuse problem, you're going to want to keep the alcohol locked up in the chest or out of the house completely, if possible. And the same thing can apply with foods. Interesting research on getting people to make healthier choices and stuff. If you just put a freaking bowl of fruit out and maintain it, then people will have a tendency to eat that stuff because it's there. It's available.

It's easy to reach. that stuff because it's there, it's available, it's easy to reach. And if you just simply make it a policy to not eat food out of huge bowls or out straight out of the bag, and you can portion stuff out, then you'll, you'll succeed quite a bit more. Other little sort of tactics and hacks for especially people who want to, who want to control body weight is you can use just drinking plain water as this kind of weapon for satiety. So like, for example, if, if you were to consume two tall glasses of water within 10 minutes of each meal, or even right before each meal, or you commit, you commit to two tall glasses of water done by the end of meal, you're going to significantly cut the chances that you're going to go for a second, second plate. You're going to significantly cut the chances that you're going to

order the cheesecake when you're at cheesecake factory. And, um, if you commit to the two glasses of water before every meal, you hit a sushi, uh, situation, highly likely that you will eat order like three less rolls and you would have, um, and the cool thing about what that, which I call the water trick two tall glasses of water before each meal is that it's not a deprivation tactic. It's an addition tactic. So, um, and another addition tactic, which we can circle right back to at the, at the beginning of the, of the, of the show here that Mark brought up adding protein to the diet will have a tendency to increase satiety, drive down the intake of the rest of the stuff and support lean body mass, increase thermic effect. And then you kind of have this beautiful convergence of variables that can

result in controlling body weight, controlling body fat and possibly even decreasing body fat. And what you've done is you've added to the diet instead of taking away. I carefully say that with the addition of fiber, I used to think that that fiber was something real special. So you just look at the evidence of fiber and satiety. I really wanted to be able to say protein and fiber, but now I'm saying protein and maybe fiber to a much smaller degree.

Adding that to the diet can help people control their gains in body fat. But, um, those are the things off the top that I would think. And also, you know, just generally everybody is so different. I mean, some people will succeed on grazing patterns while others will succeed on gorging patterns. And it really is different with everybody. You cannot universalize this prescription that everybody needs to go on and succeed. And that goes with almost everything too. People have different tendencies to show addictive behaviors to certain foods. Um, and, and that varies quite a bit too. I used to be highly against the idea that, um, food can be addictive or there could be like an

in quotes, food addiction. I'm still against the idea of carb addiction because it's more like a, an addiction to eating hyper palatable foods, which are usually like a 50-50 mix of carbon, fat, and salt, and just highly hyperpalatable stuff. But there is addictive light behavior with certain people. I used to be dead set that everybody can moderate everything in terms of food. But I'm beginning to open my mind to the idea that a little more strict avoidance of things can be more appropriate for some individuals. And why would we deny that or impose some sort of belief that everybody can moderate everything? So yeah, I think um, so yeah, yeah. I think that

can be individualized as well. Moderation versus absence. Have you come to some of these realizations, uh, through going through your own bouts of addiction, if you wouldn't mind sharing some of that? Uh, yeah, that definitely had an influence that definitely had influence. I used to drink like an absolute fish up until three years ago. influence. I used to drink like an absolute fish up until three years ago. Good for you. Yeah. Thanks, man. Thanks. Yeah. And unfortunately, when people ask me, when people relay me their situation and say, tell me how you stopped, tell me how you stopped. I'm like, everybody has a unique way that they stopped and you'll just have to find out what works for you.

You know, you might not have to go full blown abstinence. I had to go full blown abstinence through a number of, of reasons that are, are, you know, very uncommon unless you're a public figure and you fuck up publicly and you, you know, you put everything in jeopardy from livelihood to, you know, to, to relationship stats that put marriage in jeopardy. The whole thing is a huge shit storm. Not everybody's going to have that multifaceted shit storm to scare them straight. So, yeah, it's a very similar principle. I tell folks, you have to decide whether you can moderate intake or whether you need to cut back or whether you need to cut out. And when you cut back, there has to be some very specific limits in terms of dosing and frequency through either the day or the week. You have to set those limits if you want to succeed at moderating. And if you feel that you will succeed that way better than just cold turkey gone abstinence, then cool, that's you. But there are folks who need to take the abstinence route. And actually, who need to take the abstinence route. And I actually, I looked at some of the research on abstinence, abstinence versus moderation therapy with, with alcohol intake and the people

who succeed with moderation therapy are folks who didn't necessarily have a very severe degree of alcohol use disorder. So you have to be a really freaking, uh, if you're a really hot mess, then abstinence might be the ticket for you. If you didn't reach like severe degrees, then moderation is, is a, is a possibility. And I think that, um, And I think that there may be some parallels with that, with food intake as well. I really, I hate the idea of equating food to drugs, because with drugs, there's a much higher magnitude of immediate effect on the brain, on euphoria, on perception on perception, on, on just the, the magnitude is much higher. I equate, um, trying to draw a parallel between drugs and food as trying to draw a parallel between a fricking bicycle. And one of those like crotch rockets, one of those Yamaha one thousands or whatever, or whatever, uh, in SEMA, you know, rides on the weekends, you know, um, we're not allowed to talk about you know rides on the weekends you know um we're not allowed to talk

about what he rides on the weekends so so the magnitude of effect is much different the um but then again you know when you when you consider that there are behavioral addictions then that kind of challenges the whole model because gambling is a is a legit addiction in the dsm-5 and um and so you know addiction to certain foods possibility you know so my mind is is opening to that i just hate hate freaking hate it when people say sugar is like cocaine because it's it's freaking not you know and now maybe endomens would like sugar butter fat salt combo maybe that's like a mild version of cocaine but um but yeah that that's a very uh interesting and a lot of gray area there open for debate discussion.

That actually makes me real quick, curious about the sugar thing real quick. In terms of the messaging about sugar, what do you think needs to be changed? Because yeah, you do hear that a lot. You hear people saying, oh, sugar is addictive. That's the big thing. It's, it's super addictive, but I mean, you just kind of mentioned it. It's a mixture of sugar and a bunch of other things together that make it kind of wild. You know, no one's addicted to eating 20 oranges or 20 apples. Yeah. And people don't just spoon sugar into their mouth. No. So,

so as far as the messaging behind sugar, what should people understand about it and be careful with about sugar intake, if anything? Yeah, I would rather have people think in terms of the concept of hyper palatability instead of just sugar, because you can do the, you can do an experiment. You just put it, get a jar of sugar in front of you and see, just spoon it into your mouth and see where you stop. You know, you'll stop after like the freaking second or third spoonful. It's like, oh, that's kind of gnarly. Now, put a pint of Ben and Jerry's in front of you. Then you've got that magic combo of sugar and fat and flavor. Even mix peanut butter and honey, something that's like natural.

It's like when you're done, you're going to eat the whole thing. Oh, dude. Peanut butter and honey. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you can even take combinations of foods that are savory as well. Like, like for example, um, you, you guys may have heard of the satiety index, Susan Holt's satiety index of foods where white potatoes had the highest satiety rating. Okay. That's cool. But who eats boiled white potato by itself? No salt, no nothing. Um, and so we have to consider the

limitations of, of that research. You know, you take white potato and turn fries out of it while you're done your toast. So, um, so yeah, with same thing with sugar, it's you're, you know, you're being overly reductionistic when we're looking at sugar, what we're really looking at is these hyper palatable, extremely yummy combinations of the macronutrients within the foods. And of course, flavoring agents like salt in addition to sugar and, and with the, with the, um, carbohydrate and fat mixtures. And there's even savory foods, honestly, that, um, are hyper palatable, um, bacon, uh, cheese, you know, stuff that's,

that's low carb, but it's still hyper palatable. And you mix that stuff together with hyper palatable carb based foods, and then you, you know, you eat a Thanksgiving meal. So yeah, it's not just sugar. We're kind of missing the forest for the trees if we're looking at just sugar, because can you imagine trying to get full off of eating, or rather, imagine trying to, somebody puts a bowl of apples in front of you. What effing drag would that be to eat like even two apples straight? You know, so it's not, and that's all, that's fricking sugar, water, a little bit of fiber, but it's a different game when you're talking about added sugars, extrinsic sugars. Um, when you, you sprinkle them on a nice, uh, cinnamon roll, you know,

it's different game. Thank you so much for your time today. Where can people find out more about you? AlanAragon.com. That's, and I guess my most active social media, I don't know. I don't know. Social media is an odd thing. I've taken to Instagram. Twitter and Facebook are pretty cool too twitter is

isn't it's quite the entertaining animal i try to avoid the try to avoid reading the the political arguments where people just want to kill each other but it's like what it's like a train wreck you can't help but just see the degree of like like you, you know, malice that people have for each other and stuff on Twitter. But yeah, man, alanaragon.com. I've I have a book. I just finished a protein book. I've got my ongoing research review. That's my baby that I'm, you know, that's probably my best work. What's the name of the book? It's called protein,, All Your Burning Questions

Answered. And I'm actually working on another book that has a fast approaching due date. That's just driving me insane to get this book done, but that'll be released next year. So I don't know. Maybe I'll have to come on here again on like the book promo mode, like Gary Taubes does, you know, every few years. Wait, that protein book is about to come out or it's already out. It's already out. It's already out. But the other book, the protein book is a, uh, it's an ebook. It's something that I just wanted to do for myself, self-publish and get it out there. But I do have another book coming up that is a, I was approached by a big publishing house.

I was fortunate enough to get approached by, by them. And, and I'm working on that and that is due for release mid ish next year. So, so yeah, I'm going to do the whole attention whoring tour for that at some point, and I may hit you guys up. That would be great. Thank you so much for your time today. Man, I really

appreciate you guys. I was super excited to be on here, and I know that our schedules didn't work out for like a year, but I'm super glad we did this, and I really appreciate all you. Hopefully we get to meet in person sometime. oh for sure for sure man catch you later awesome thank you see how that was so dope that's good info man so much good info about protein adding it to the protein university series on youtube YouTube. Oh, yeah. That's a thing now.

Yeah. If you're not subscribed on YouTube, make sure you do that shit right now. That was fucking awesome. It really was. It really was. Right? Yeah, it was. Fucking awesome.

Yeah. One thing I wanted to mention about pre and post workout is that, you know, you got to, first of all, keep in mind any. If you're, if you're fasting, the first meal that you have is always breakfast. So people always talk about the old research of the most important meal of the day or the old saying, the most important meal of the day is breakfast. That still might be true. The first thing that you eat might be important. I don't know. Um, but also I would say that, you know, don't think that things just all of a sudden disappear. You know, when you eat a certain amount of, uh, carbohydrate, when you eat a certain amount of protein, it stays in your body.

You heard him talk about how long it could potentially take for you to digest and break down protein. I mean, it could take hours for you to digest, uh, 50, 60, a hundred grams of protein, even sometimes, uh, having one meal a day, it could take you all day. So by the time you work out the next day, eight hours later, 12 hours later, even 16 hours later, it's not like all those nutrients are no longer in your body anymore. We wouldn't have survived if that was the case. Absolutely.

It's an interesting thing. That's why when I eat a big meal the night before and have great workouts, it's still kind of interesting to me today because I would have not thought that that would be the case a few years ago. But my workouts are fucking awesome. And I would say, like, for me, you know, I might have, like, a run. And then later on in the day, I might lift. And then, I don't know, 6 o'clock or something rolls around and I eat. So that would be considered post-workout. Now, I know it doesn't hit that.

It's not what people think of a post-workout meal. It's not 30 minutes after and it's not in the form of a protein shake. But that's also my pre-meal too, because I'm eating, you know, if I'm only eating once a day, if I just eat in that time slot, or even if I eat a little bit after, those two meals are my pre and post-workout meals. It doesn't matter that they're separated out pretty far from the training session. What I would say is that if you are trying some of these things and it doesn't feel good to you, then, you know, implement what you think you need so that your workouts feel good. So if you, I don't see any harm in like, you know, having a small meal before you go and train, you know, you go do jujitsu and

you have a couple of eggs and a little bit of carbohydrate with it two hours before you train. And you're like, I don't know what those guys are talking about. I feel unstoppable when I do that. Well, then that's great. Keep doing that. That might be, uh, it might be something that feels good for you. Then that's totally fine. Two things that are pretty damn dope is first off, I do, you know, if you're someone who you taking four or five meals around during your day is easiest for you, continue doing that. Like you mentioned, but one thing I do appreciate, especially like when we had Alan on Brad Schoenfeld on, um, these individuals, and we were kind of like myth busting old bodybuilding myths and, and, and dogma is what

I've found is when I've talked to people that are getting into dieting or trying to build a habit, they feel a relief because they're like, Oh, I thought I had to eat five or six meals a day. If I was going to do this, I thought that was the only way I was going to be able to lose this body fat or gain this muscle. I thought that was what I had to do. And it's great that I could just do it in two meals, right? So I like that there are multiple ways of doing this that will yield you the same exact result. And for some people, doing things a different way is way more stress-free than carrying

around six meals and having to prep all of that and do all of that. They, you know, it's good that we have all these options now. Yeah. And if you don't get emotional, then you don't block off the fact that there's an option right in front of you. Like that's all we're presenting is more options. And sometimes I think people get frustrated. I heard Andrew Huberman talking about, um, and he's talked about it on our podcast too,

but he was talking about walking and moving your eyes back and forth and how that can relax the amygdala and it can help you to manage stress or traumas that you've had in your life. This is an actual therapy that they use with people that have real trauma in their life. And the point of me kind of bringing this up is that in that context, he said, when you, when you relax, you can now see options that were there the whole time that you couldn't see previously. So I have a tendency to do it. I think everyone has a tendency to do it. Somebody says something that's different than what you're used to. And you're like, no, that's incorrect. Uh, but that is a, that is really just a foolish mistake.

You know, just relax. Think about it more and say, oh, that's kind of cool. It actually just drinking two glasses of water with each meal just presents me with more options rather than saying that's a bunch of shit. Let me see the science on it, you know, or whatever it might be. Yeah. Yeah. Science. Show me the research. I love those people i really do they're fun yeah now it reminds me of uh so when i first started you know like oh i gotta have my pre-workout

meal and then i'd go do crossfit and man my stomach's always hurting like this sucks and like i would throw up because crossfit's terrible CrossFit's awesome. But like when you don't know what you're doing and then you have a pre-workout meal and you're out of shape and you try to go do like the, you know, the workout of the day, like that's just not a good combination. And then thankfully discovered fasting and was like, wow, I actually feel way better when I don't eat before the meal or before the workout. And so like, I've just been kind of rolling with that ever since. Take us on out of here, Andrew.

Yeah. Thank you to Merrick for sponsoring today's episode. Make sure you guys drop by the links down in the description as well as the podcast show notes to head over to MerrickHealth.com and pick yourself up some labs and some treatment. Get what's going on under the hood all straightened out. Follow the podcast at Mark Bell's power project on Instagram at MB power project on Tik TOK and Twitter, my Instagram and Twitter's at I am Andrew Z and at the Andrew Z on Tik TOK and SEMA.

And see me ending on Instagram, YouTube. I didn't see me ending on Tik TOK and Twitter. And by the way, guys, I'm actually going to resubscribe to the ARR used to be subscribed a few years ago. Um,

and then I think I just forgot about it, but it it's like a it's a really good research review like he literally goes through all the relevant research and gives you the summary of what's important to take away the practical applications of it so that and mass are two really good research reviews which you guys should all check out if you are interested. How long ago were you, uh, looking at some of Alan's stuff? Well, I've been paying attention to Alan's stuff forever. The research review though, I think I haven't been subscribed to it for about like two years now.

Um, but I'm still subscribed to mass, but I like his information. I've been paying attention to his information ever since I started getting into this stuff, which was like 2012. How did it feel to have him give you props like that? That was pretty cool. For real. That was sick.

Fucking great. It was fucking great. I thought it was dope. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciated that. I'm at Mark's Millie Bell on all platforms. Strength is never weakness.

Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later.