Mark Bell's Power Project - How to Get Ridiculously Shredded With Fasting || Saturday School

Starting point is 00:00:00 A lot of people ask me, they say, oh my God, you must have lost so much strength. Yeah, I've lost some strength for sure. A lot of people when they fast, they're not fasting long enough. Oh man, I don't know if I should do that. My wife's gonna think I'm crazy if I do that. I think one of the things we're trying to do

Starting point is 00:00:14 when we're fasting is we're trying to burn off these urges to eat. TRT and steroids are the same thing. When it is time to eat, I primarily eat protein and fats. Mark Smellybell here. Welcome to another Saturday School. Today I'm going to tell you how to get ridiculously shredded and the mindset that it takes while doing some fasting. Over the last couple weeks, I've been utilizing some intermittent fasting as well as some long-term fast. Let me try to explain some of this so you guys have the details on how you can maybe try some of this yourself. One of the things that I think is important that Kyle Newell pointed out to me,

Starting point is 00:01:00 he shared with me that a lot of people when they fast are not fasting long enough. And I messed around with fasting a few years ago and I liked it. I continue to utilize it here and there, but I was using it like more recently, very sparingly. And now I'm starting to reintegrate it. And what it's done for me is it's done a couple things. And I think that this is something that people can utilize maybe throughout the rest of your life is it has it helps me to sever away from some bad habits it also helps me to regulate when I'm actually hungry now I know that sometimes when people talk about fasting sometimes people think it's almost like an eating disorder in some ways but I think it's important that you really get in tune with when you're actually truly hungry and having you

Starting point is 00:01:46 know 16 hours away from food really isn't much of a fast to be honest with you because we're going to sleep for eight hours and we just are overfed in today's world we have to admit we eat way too much and we're seeing that not just the United States but we're seeing it everywhere and I believe the obesity rate in the United States nowadays is in like the mid to high 40% range. So we're just way too fat when we have to figure out a way to correct it. And sometimes when we go to correct it, sometimes we overshoot a little bit. But in this case, I think that you can utilize fasting and I think you could be mindful about it. And there's a couple things that I think fasting is amazing for aside from just getting shredded.

Starting point is 00:02:28 I did mention it can help kind of re-regulate you to how hungry you truly are and it can assist you with eating just purely out of boredom. We see that a lot. A lot of times people are just bored. They're watching TV. People tend to have these habits where, and when I say people, I'm including myself in that mix. We have a tendency to dopamine stack. It's like, okay,

Starting point is 00:02:54 I'm watching my favorite show. I'm watching my favorite show with my wife. I'm watching my favorite show with my best friend or, or what, or going to the movies. Right. And then how do we make this experience better? Oh, this would be cool if I had a beer while I'm watching this football game. Oh my God, how amazing would this football game be if I not only had beer, but if I also had nachos and I had some cheese, right? And now we're really having like a real party. But fasting over a period of time and just even learning about nutrition proper nutrition has really kind of linked me into locked me into I should say eating healthier foods what I've

Starting point is 00:03:35 noticed from fasting is when I fast the next meal that I want is a nutritious but delicious food it's going to help recalibrate your taste buds. I think right now a lot of people have what I would call gas station taste buds. Gas station taste buds to me means that you're desensitized to how good a steak is. You're desensitized to how good an avocado is. To me an avocado with some salt and pepper on it is one of the best things ever to eat. But we have a tendency to be so locked in to some of these other foods,

Starting point is 00:04:13 these highly palatable, highly processed foods. And if we can agree upon anything, as a fitness community, I think we could agree that it's a good idea to not overeat and not have too much of these highly processed foods. One of the issues with highly processed foods is that it's so difficult to, even if you're going to try to get yourself healthier by eating less of them, it's the environment that you made yourself fat with. And in my opinion, it's best to have a

Starting point is 00:04:44 disconnect from some of that. So for me personally, I've always liked the idea of fasting. I started it years ago, but more recently have been introducing it and I reintroduced it in this way. I don't eat every Monday. Today happens to be Monday. So Monday kind of sucks. But rather than viewing Monday as sucking, I've just viewed it as a challenge. This fast actually starts on Sunday. So if you wanted to kind of cheat the system, what you could do is you could start your fast earlier on Sunday, 10 a.m., noon, 2 p.m., whatever it is. And then you'll be able to eat sometime on Monday.

Starting point is 00:05:27 But for me, my window didn't shut down until around 10 p.m. last night. And so therefore, I'm going to probably forego eating at all for Monday. And then I'm going to resume some eating sometime on Tuesday. And I'm actually going to be traveling on Tuesday. So I will probably not eat until after I worked out and after I did a couple things. So now the fast starts to get pretty long. We went from, you know, originally kind of a planned 24 hour to 30 hour. Now we're looking at, you know, 36 and maybe it will even go longer than that. What do I eat during a fast?

Starting point is 00:06:00 Sounds counterintuitive. You're not supposed to eat anything, I thought. It's just water. That's one way of doing it. But what I've noticed for myself and what I think will work really great for a lot of you is you can have some influences of food. Now, some people like to talk about autophagy and people like to talk about longevity and all these kinds of things. And I don't really know much about any of it. And I don't know how important it is to have your body eating its own cells and so forth and regenerating. Who the hell knows? I know that exercise can help with autophagy. I know that caloric restriction can help with

Starting point is 00:06:37 autophagy, but I don't really know what it means. And I don't really give a fuck, to be honest with you. I am talking to you about getting in better shape. I'm talking to you about losing a lot of body fat. I'm talking to you, the person right now that's watching, that's 14% body fat that wants to start to get the single digit. I'm talking directly to you because it takes a monumental effort to go from 14% is pretty damn good, but to be able to get down to 9% or 8% or cut your body fat in half when you're already, you already have a bicep vein, that's pretty amazing. And in my opinion, you're going to need some measures that are going to be more difficult than what you've done in the

Starting point is 00:07:16 past. Can you count your calories? Can you restrict every day? Sure, you could do that. But to me, it's pick your poison, right? There's a lot of ways you can do this. And I'm not saying that fasting is the only way to do it. But this is the way that is working great for me for right now. So when I do a fast, I allow myself to have olives. I allow myself to have pickles, fermented vegetables. I try to read food labels and pay attention to every little thing that I can as much as I can. But to be honest, if there's like a little sugar in something or things like that, I'm not overly worried about that. I will also allow myself to have bulletproof coffee. What's bulletproof coffee? Well, remember Dave Asprey years ago

Starting point is 00:08:02 came out with bulletproof coffee. Bulletproof coffee Dave Asprey years ago came out with bulletproof coffee. Bulletproof coffee is normally a coffee that you put butter and MCT oil in. For me personally, I use Bub's MCT oil powder because it adds a kind of a rich creaminess to my coffee. And then I'll also add in some electrolytes. I don't usually add in butter, but I use the Within You brand chocolate or the salted caramel hydration. If I could have even just one of those in a given day, that makes a huge difference for me. If I have two of those in a day, then the fast seems super easy. The other thing that I'll allow myself to have is bone broth. Bone broth makes the fast way easier as well. Bone broth typically doesn't have a lot of calories. There's hardly any fat. It's primarily protein. Again, I do realize there's people that are having criticisms right now. People are having a fit over the fact that

Starting point is 00:08:58 I'm mentioning that you could eat during a fast or saying there's no way. I'm telling you, this is what I've been doing for the last couple weeks and my body fat has gotten lower and lower and lower. I just continue to get leaner and leaner and my performance with running seems to be getting better. I'm moving faster. When I'm going for miles and miles, my times are a lot better and when I'm sprinting, I'm also moving a lot faster. So I'm getting a lot of residual benefits because I'm also losing body weight. I mentioned some of the foods you can have. I forgot to mention supplements are okay. I get a lot of questions about that. A pre-workout, I don't have a problem with. I don't have a problem with EAAs, BCAAs, creatine. All those things are okay in the Mark

Starting point is 00:09:43 Bell world of fasting. So one thing that's not talked about a lot of times when it comes to running or even when it comes to exercise in the gym, a lot of people ask me, they say, oh my God, you must have lost so much strength. Yeah, I've lost some strength for sure. I used to get down on the bench press, really didn't need much of a warmup and I could bench four or five plates for repetitions. It just, it got to a point where I had that kind of strength and I could call upon that kind of strength at any time. If you're someone that's taking supplements or vitamins or anything to help move the needle in terms of your health, how do you know you really need them? And the reason why I'm asking you, how do you know is because many people don't know their levels of

Starting point is 00:10:23 their testosterone, their vitamin D, all these other labs like their thyroid, and they're taking these supplements to help them function at peak performance. But that's why we've partnered with Merrick Health for such a long time now, because you can get yourself different lab panels like the Power Project panel, which is a comprehensive set of labs to help you figure out what your different levels are. And when you do figure out what your levels are, you'll be able to work with a patient care coordinator that will give you suggestions as far as nutrition optimization, supplementation, or if you're someone who's a candidate and it's necessary,

Starting point is 00:10:56 hormonal optimization to help move you in the right direction so you're not playing guesswork with your body. Also, if you've already gotten your lab work done, but you just want to get a checkup, we also have a checkup panel that's made so that you can check up and make sure that everything is moving in the right direction if you've already gotten comprehensive lab work done.

Starting point is 00:11:16 This is something super important that I've done for myself. I've had my mom work with Merrick. We've all worked with Merrick just to make sure that we're all moving in the right direction and we're not playing guesswork with our body. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject. And at checkout, enter promo code PowerProject to save 10% off any one of these panels or any lab on the entire website.

Starting point is 00:11:40 Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. For me to do that now, those weights would cut me right in half. But I've gotten stronger in other areas. I just told you how much faster I've gotten. Well, being fast is a strength. I've also gotten better with pull-ups. I've gotten better with push-ups. I've gotten better with bodyweight exercises. My mobility is better. So I think for a lot of you that are kind of reluctant to drop weight, reluctant to drop body fat because you're nervous or scared that you're going to lose certain things, think about everything that you're going to gain. And for a lot of people, like let's just be honest, some of you lifters out there are 60 pounds overweight, 50 pounds overweight. You could

Starting point is 00:12:22 definitely afford to lose 20 or 30 very easily and still hold on to a lot of strength. The other thing that you need to realize is that for me, if I wanted to turn it on, I could do it in a second. If I wanted to flip a switch and I wanted to focus and hone in on getting stronger again, it would just simply mean I have to do the same old exercises I used to do. So even while fasting, I could still bring my strength back up. And for some of you that might be on a journey where you're losing weight and you're like, oh my God, I'm losing strength. That is temporary.

Starting point is 00:12:56 Maybe your strength won't get back to where you were when you were at your heaviest, but your strength will continue to get better. I know for Nsema and Andrew and a bunch of other friends I have that have gotten into jujitsu, some people that get into grappling or they get into other sports, there's a huge dip in performance in the gym at first, at first. But once you get used to that, the body will accommodate and the body will start to kind of normalize everything. And once you do that, you'll be off to the races and you'll be able to build that strength back up.

Starting point is 00:13:31 You'll be able to build that capacity back up. I want to get into a little bit of the mental side of fasting. It's really easy to say that when you're not eating that it sucks. It's really easy to be like, well, what do I do? Like I'm on a plane and I, you know, or what do I do? I'm watching TV and I'm used to eating. This is where the mental side of it comes in really handy. I personally like to do things a little differently than a lot of other people. I know that there's people that are similar to me that like to take on challenges as well. I know there's people that work way harder than I could probably ever imagine.

Starting point is 00:14:07 I understand that. But I like to challenge myself with a lot of things. And fasting is a fun and cool way to do things. You might feel like a square, you know, if you go to a family gathering and you're like, oh, I'm fasting for today. That does kind of suck, but you can also kind of plan your days around that and you're like, oh, I'm fasting for today. That does kind of suck, but you can also kind of plan your days around that and you can fast appropriately. But it's just one more area for you to be. I'm not saying that it's important for you to always be

Starting point is 00:14:36 different than everybody, but it's another area for you to work on yourself. When we're talking about self-improvement, we're talking about personal development. What greater way is there to work on personal development than to make an agreement with yourself and then actually follow through on that? Most people don't ever follow through on the things that they talk about and the things that they do. Andrew Huberman recently was talking about this and he was saying the dopamine that hits people and the reward system that hits people just from mentioning a goal is enough for them to not ever start it. Pretty wild, right? But you know what I'm talking about. I've done that before. And if you're being honest with yourself, you got to admit you probably have done that before as well.

Starting point is 00:15:22 The thing that stops people is the trickiest thing in the world. It doesn't even make any sense. You know what stops most people? It's the start. It's the start that stops most people. I'm giving you reasons on why you should fast. I even gave you a safety net of like foods that you could eat while fasting. And still there's something playing tricks in your brain on like, oh man, I don't know if I should do that. My wife's going to think I'm crazy if I do that. What's my family going to think? Ah, you know, my friends are gonna make fun of me. Uh, cause I always fail with my diet. I think that this, this way of taking on a challenge, let's just have you start. Let's just have you, I just mentioned, the thing that stops people the most is a start, right? Let's just have you start.

Starting point is 00:16:16 After you watch this video, make a commitment to yourself on what day you're going to fast. Hopefully it's just today. If you didn't eat yet, if you ate already today, you can start right here. This video could be the start of your fast and you can go for 24 hours. Just give it a try. For most people and most of the people that you care about, most of the people that you know, they probably really haven't had much of a dietary intervention that's been successful for them. They probably haven't tried anything that's really worked or spoke to them for long enough to where they wanted to follow through and do it day in and day out. But if we can get people just to try stuff, I know a carnivore diet might sound wild to somebody, but why not take on this 24 hour fast that I'm mentioning to

Starting point is 00:16:57 you now? And why not apply that to other things? Why not say, hey, I just am kind of curious what it would feel like if I mainly only ate meat for one day. If I got rid of the protein shakes, the diet sodas, the yogurt, the this, the that, and I only ate meat for a day, meat, water, salt. I just want to see what it feels like. You would probably have a dietary intervention that would give you more information than you listening to me or than you listening to any other influencer or any other YouTube video or any other podcast that you can think of because you're gonna have the most important information that you can ever gather and that's information on yourself.

Starting point is 00:17:40 That's what you need to be able to gather and so when you try a fast you're going to learn a lot about yourself. What I'd like to see you guys do is give the 24-hour fast a shot. If you wanted to take on this challenge and you wanted to just completely cut out any food, any pickles, olives, and so on, you can do it that way as well. But a lot of information I've seen over the years, some of the work from Walter Longo comes to mind. He is a guy that created a fasting protocol that goes for a whole week. You might want to look some of that stuff up. But he actually mentioned some of the foods that I'm talking about here as being things that can help to amplify a fast. One thing to consider and one

Starting point is 00:18:21 thing to know though is that, this is going to sound kind of funny, but if you open your mouth up for food, it might be game over for you. You might fail there because once you start to like chew on something, the urge to eat might start to be too great. Again, I want to reiterate that fasting over the last couple of weeks has helped lean me out quite a bit. I think when I started this, I weighed 230, 235-ish. And this morning I weighed 217. And I'm going to be working my way down to probably around 205 or 210. I guess getting below 210. I'll just put myself there. And that's the goal. There's only really a couple more pounds to go. Now what's going to happen to you, you're going to do the 24 hour fast. Depending on when you weigh yourself, depending on what you did for the day, you might

Starting point is 00:19:17 be dehydrated. And you might notice that you're like six pounds down. You're going to be like, yeah, it's working. Then you're going to go to weigh yourself again, maybe a day or two after you did the 24 hour fast. And you might be slightly heavier than you were previously. Something to keep in mind with fasting, an important thing to hang on to is, and I think this is one of the most important things to hang on to, is you have to forget that it ever happened. So now when it's time to eat, it's not make-up time for the food that you didn't eat for the day because it would be really easy if you have a 2,000 calorie a day allotment approximately. It would be very easy to overeat that in two or three meals

Starting point is 00:19:59 if you're a bigger guy. It wouldn't probably be any problem. So you have to almost have amnesia about the fast and kind of forget that it ever happened i forgot to mention that it might be critical for you to consider electrolytes you don't necessarily need electrolyte packets or anything but you may want to salt throw some salt in some water or you can buy the within you brand hydration packets that I sell. But some sort of hydration is going to be important, especially as it gets hotter out anytime you fast. So aside from the 24-hour fast, I will, in addition to that,

Starting point is 00:20:37 oftentimes do one meal a day, sometimes two meals a day. I've learned something interesting about this whole process. two meals a day. I've learned something interesting about this whole process. And even though I recommend, and I say often have one gram per pound of body weight in terms of protein and to do that every single day. One of the reasons why I say that is because you need to eat something and I want people to be full. So if they do that and they have some fruit and have some vegetables and so on, you're going to be pretty full and you're going to be able to make it through each day without overeating, without being in a giant caloric surplus. However, what I'm learning from this process is

Starting point is 00:21:14 I don't necessarily need near the amount of protein that I thought I did. So this idea of thinking like that you need X amount of food and X amount of calories and X amount of protein to stay big, I'm finding out for myself, it's a, it does exist. I'm finding out for myself, it's way lower than what I thought it was. So I weigh, you know, in the 200 range and for me to get anything above 150 grams of protein in a day is probably good enough for me to hold on to the muscle mass that I have. Lastly, I want to finish with being authentic and being upfront with everybody. Because sometimes people are like, well, it's different for you because you're on TRT and so forth, or you're on steroids or however you want to say it. I think TRT and steroids are the same thing. I utilize testosterone. I utilize some primobolin. Throw me in jail, lock me up,

Starting point is 00:22:02 or do whatever you need to do with me. I think it's important to share that information with people because I see a lot of comments about that. And then people are just saying, it's different for you. It is different for me. It's different for me for many reasons, because of my age and because where I'm at in my life, I realize, you know, if you're mid-career and you have a nine-to-five and you have a lot of responsibilities I'm a little older I'm done with a lot of those responsibilities and I'm taking on things in a different way I've also acquired some wealth and that changes things for a lot of people as well so it does make things a little easier for me but I understand what it's like because I used to have to fight for every single day, the same exact way that some of you guys and girls are

Starting point is 00:22:49 doing right now. I think one of the things we're trying to do when we're fasting is we're trying to burn off these urges to eat. We're trying to burn off how attached you are to your hunger signals. to your hunger signals. And for me personally, it's kind of retrained my association with food, my association with eating. However, I'm still hungry. And I guess something that's important to illustrate here to talk about is that when I was 330 pounds, I was still hungry. When I was 270 pounds, I was still hungry. It didn't matter what body weight I was at. I've always been hungry. I enjoy food a lot. I love it. But how hungry and how manageable. So, you know, it's easy to talk about the fancy thing that you're doing currently and how well it's working and you want to tell everybody about it. But I can envision utilizing

Starting point is 00:23:43 forms of fasting pretty much forever because I've never stopped utilizing at least intermittent fasting intermittently. I didn't love doing it every day because sometimes when you fast, you'll start to feel like you fasted too much. You'll actually be able to kind of notice that in your own face. You'll be able to see that. You'll be able to feel that. You'll be able to feel that. And once you start to feel some of those signals,

Starting point is 00:24:08 it's probably time to start to move in a slightly different direction. But I can visualize utilizing the types of fasting that I'm doing right now probably forever. So again, I just want to reiterate how important it is for you to get kind of rewired to your food. I know people love to snack and they love to like kind of eat all these things all day long throughout the day. I think the average person is consuming calories like 12 times a day. I heard someone else say 16. I don't know what's true, but it's apparent. It's obvious that we overeat. And so how do we,

Starting point is 00:24:48 you know, without, without a pharmaceutical interventions, how do we reestablish how we're going to eat? I think most would agree that probably doesn't make sense to eat, uh, you know, eight, nine, 10 times a day, or consume calories that many times through liquid and through your food and so forth. And so I think one of the best ways out is through fasting. And for those of you that are, for those of you that are really heavy and really, really struggle, I think you should give this some serious thought. Something I forgot to mention earlier was that what I've noticed has helped me with fasting even more is when I do eat, when it is time to eat, I primarily eat protein and fats. A constant thing that's been beneficial for all of our health has been intaking enough protein, but also intaking quality protein. And that's why we've been partnering with Good Life Proteins

Starting point is 00:25:43 for years now. Good Life not only sells Piedmontese beef, which is our favorite beef. And the main reason why it's our favorite is because they have cuts of meat that have higher fat content like their ribeyes and their chuck eyes, but they also have cuts of meat like their flat iron. Andrew, what's the macros on the flat iron? Yeah, dude. So the flat iron has 23 grams of protein, only two grams of fat, but check this out. Their grass-fed sirloin essentially has no fat and 27 grams of protein. There we go. So whether you're dieting and you want lower fat cuts or higher fat cuts, that's there, but you can also get yourself chicken. You can get yourself fish. You can get yourself scallops. You can get yourself all types of different meats. And I

Starting point is 00:26:25 really suggest going to Good Life and venturing in and maybe playing around with your proteins. I mean, going back to the red meat, there's picanha, there's chorizo sausage, there's maple bacon. That stuff's incredible. The maple bacon is so good. Yo, my girl put those in these bell peppers with steak and chicken. Oh, my God. It was so good. But either way, guys, protein is essential. And Good Life is the place where you can get all of your high-quality proteins. So, Andrew, how can they get it?

Starting point is 00:26:52 Yes, you can head over to goodlifeproteins.com and enter promo code POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your entire order. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. It's not that I don't eat any carbohydrates, but the protein and fats, it's like, uh, it seems like I want to repeat that behavior. I go protein and fats, protein and fats, protein and fats, because you build up this crazy amount of hunger. It's almost like it killed off cravings for junk food. It's almost like it killed off. I know it sounds like completely backwards because you're so hungry. You're like, Oh, I'm so hungry. I'd eat anything. No, I think what happens is you get so hungry. You're like, I need the most valuable thing. And so if you're not hungry for steak and you're not hungry for

Starting point is 00:27:35 protein and you're not hungry for these things that normally taste delicious, then you're not actually hungry. I like to call it fake hunger. You have what I would consider to be fake hunger. If you're not hungry for protein and fats, you have a fake hunger. And so I think trying to rewire yourself to protein and fats is going to be critical. I don't know if it has a lot to do with ketosis and ketones being produced and all these different things that people talk about that could be a factor, but it's something that's helped me keep my hunger at bay. And I know it's going to be able to help you. Hopefully you found this to be useful. Hopefully you guys will at least give the 24 hour fast a shot. Try it every single week until you get down to the

Starting point is 00:28:17 body fat percentage that you want to get down to, or until you get lean enough to feel amazing. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.

Mark Bell's Power Project - How to Get Ridiculously Shredded With Fasting || Saturday School

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