Mark Bell's Power Project - I lost 100lbs and Kept it Off!

Episode Date: March 10, 2024

In this episode of Saturday School, Mark shares talks about his journey to losing 100lbs and his current strategy to keeping that weight off.   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶 ➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/untapped ➢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 #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

I think that the human body works in a three-day delay. Today, I'm going to absolutely blast and destroy Andrew Huberman, Michael Trenn. The only true caloric deficit that you can have is when you're actually losing body weight. I think that losing weight works a little bit like stealing sand from the beach. Could you imagine my hunger at 330 pounds versus my hunger now at 220 pounds. All right, I'm Mark Smellybell and welcome to another Saturday School. Today I'm going to absolutely blast and destroy Andrew Huberman, Michael Trenn, and every other... No, just kidding.

I think that's a popular thing right now. So I'm just trying to hop on that bandwagon. Now I'm friends with those dudes and I don't care to jump on the bandwagon of getting the clicks and the views over stuff like that. I'm here today to talk to you about my favorite topic, which is myself. I wanna talk to you today about losing 100 pounds.

And the reason why I wanna talk to you about my journey to lose 100 pounds is because not only have I lost 100 pounds, but I kept it off for many years. And I think that's a really important thing for people to think about when they're thinking about weight loss. And when they're thinking about calories in, calories out, does it work? We hear from Mike Israetel. We hear from Stan Efferding. We hear from all the greats. We hear from Coach Greg. We hear from all these different people that will share with you. Mike Dolce, the people will share with you. Lane Norton, right?

These people will share with you that calories in, calories out works, but then they'll also be smart enough to give it some context and understand that human beings aren't just robots. So on paper, if you are a person that could handle 2,500 calories a day, and that was your maintenance level to maintain your body weight, let's try to define some things a little bit And keep in mind, I am not a scientist, but this is stuff that I have researched, looked it up on YouTube. And this is stuff that I want to share with you today because I think it's more practical than a lot of the science and a lot of the research. But anyway, let's say that somebody found that 2,500 calories keeps their body weight stable. Now, when somebody talks about

being in a caloric deficit, the only true caloric deficit that you can have is when you're actually losing body weight in accordance to some people like Lane Norton and stuff. And hopefully I'm not misquoting him, but hang with me here for a second. So if you were to subtract out, let's say 250 or 300 calories out of your diet, that might be a small snack. That might be a protein bar. That might be a half of a PB and J or something like that. If you're to subtract out 250 to 300 calories out of your diet, and then you're also thinking about, well, I should probably expend a little bit more energy too, because I want to get sliced up. And then you try to pick an activity. Maybe you walk for an hour a day. Maybe you try to increase your steps. And you're thinking, I would like to expend 250 to 300 calories.

So now we're getting into being in a caloric deficit of five to 600 calories. And let's say you did that over a period of time. Well, the scale should result in going downward, right? But here's one of the reasons why I continually say that the calories in calories out model, it doesn't work maybe the way that we think it does. Like it will work. Like it will actually work if you do the math and you're able to maintain it. The problem is a lot of times it can be very difficult to maintain. And the people that can maintain it are the people that are meticulous, that write it all out and that track everything. And they pay attention to the amount of cardio they're doing. they pay attention to the amount of cardio

they're doing. They pay attention to the amount of lifting that they're doing. They pay attention to every little detail of what they eat in a given day, all the way down to, you know, weighing their food and measuring and all these different things. And these can be all, these can be super effective to help someone control their body weight. But what will happen a lot of times is once you start to have a reduction in your calories, you're reducing the amount of energy you're receiving. Does that make sense? We're all on the same page, page 43 class of Saturday school. All right, we're all on the same page. We're in agreement that when you start to bring that energy down, that maybe, just maybe, over a period of time,

you might start to have a little bit of a lull. So after a while, after two weeks, three weeks, you might start to feel fatigued. You might start to feel a little bit run down. Now, the amount of calories we selected is really not that much, so it shouldn't bother us too much. But I think here's where you need

to probably be more mindful of the calories in calories out equation. And here's where you need to be more mindful in general about losing weight. I think that losing weight works a little bit like stealing sand from the beach. If we were to steal giant tankfuls, 55 gallon drums of sand, and we stole, you know stole hundreds of them every day, well, eventually you would be like, holy shit, somebody's stealing sand from the beach. We want our calories in, calories out equation to be much different than that. We want to have it be something that the body doesn't recognize, and certainly something the body doesn't recognize as a stressor. Just a tiny amount.

So we just want to steal a little bucket of sand every single day. We want to steal just a little bit of calories. And that way we can lose weight over a long period of time. 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 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 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 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. All kinds of stuff. There's chorizo sausage. There's maple bacon.

That stuff's incredible. The maple bacon is so good. The maple bacon is really good. 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? 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. In addition to that, what we also want to do is we want to have some flux with our plan. So I used to weigh 330 and nowadays I weigh between 220 and 225. I am not against, I'm not opposed to going back up in weight and I've done this many times. The whole entire journey from 330 downward, I went from 330 down to about 320. And then I went from 320 down to about 310. But while I was 310, I also entertained the idea that I might need to kind of go back up to 320 so that this isn't so painful, so that this isn't so hard. And it sounds

funny to say that now because 310 pounds is heavy and I was fat, right? That amount, when you're that big and you have that much muscle mass, it requires a lot of energy being consistently delivered to you. So could you imagine my hunger at 330 pounds versus my hunger now at 220 pounds? My hunger now today is way crazier than it was when I was 330 because the answer always lies in the middle. My body weight naturally when I graduated high school was around 240 pounds before I ever got introduced to PEDs, before I ever went to the dark side, before I ever messed with any of that stuff, I was around 15 to 20 pounds more than I weigh right now today on PEDs.

So it's an interesting thing. But what I'm trying to communicate to you here is that you might need some diet breaks. Now, you fat sons of bitches, you fat motherfuckers out there. When I say take a diet break, it doesn't mean that you get to have a party. It doesn't mean you get to eat all the shitty foods that you were eating before. And I want to address something right here. I want to pause for a second and go in on this idea of bad food. I really dislike when people say there's no bad food. It I also think that if we're being honest, there are some really nasty words out there. And there's some really nasty things you could say and do to people that are bad.

They're just flat out bad. Going and assaulting somebody, it's bad. It might have a contextual thing. Maybe they assaulted you first and now you assaulted them, right? I get it, but it's bad. Rape is bad. There's certain things that are just bad. There's racial slurs. There's all kinds of things that I could say, hey, you know what? I don't see a good circumstance to really use that.

I think it's inappropriate. I don't really dig that. Now, when it comes to food, I think we want to try to say, hey, there's no bad food, it's okay. You can eat some of this stuff. But the truth is, is that when you're a fatty and when you're really heavy, you probably should not be participating in eating a lot of these foods. And the foods that got you fat

and the foods that made you unhealthy, I recognize you made yourself unhealthy because you chose not only to eat those foods that are probably poor choices in the first place, but you also chose to overeat those foods. Nobody said that you have to eat a whole sleeve of Oreos, or maybe they did because that's the way I always treated Oreos. Destroy the whole thing, rule and conquer. And same thing when you get a pint of Ben and Jerry's, might as well eat the whole thing, right? It's like 1,200 calories in some cases. And that is a lot for someone to be able to handle. And so for us to think that it's not that bad, I could just have a little bit of it,

I think in many cases is a giant mistake. So for me personally, I have found in my own journey and in sharing a message to a lot of other people, I've helped hundreds, if not thousands of people lose a hundred pounds. And if you want me to help you lose over a hundred pounds, hit me up on my Instagram, you know, go into the comment section and say, Hey, I want some help popping slide into my DMS. And eventually I'll see your comment and I will help you. I've communicated with so many people that I don't even know. I left them voice messages. I've left them DMs on Instagram and so on. I help all kinds of people because this is a big mission of mine. And I really think that it's important to make sure that we share the correct mission. And who has the correct mission? Is it Mike Dolce? Is it Stan Efferding? Is it, I think they all do.

I think there's a lot of great messages out there and I think you should consume a lot of it because I think that this can get complicated and it's not as easy as calories in, calories out because there's a lot more to think about. So I'll get back on track with what I was talking about. The foods that made you fat in the first place, to try to think that you're gonna just simply eat less of those and move more, I think is a mistake. I think we have to face the facts that a lot of us are addicted to these foods and whether it's a true addiction or whether it's

something to do with self-control is a matter of like nuance, right? Self-control is really what we're battling. We're not really battling anything other than being able to control ourselves. And when you think about it in that context, is it easier for me to, is it easier for me to eat junk food if I have a lot of junk food in close proximity? I would say for most people, they would say yes.

There are some people that have plenty of self-control and they can say that doesn't bother me at all. But I think a lot of people are wired to food. I know for me personally, I am wired to food. I am connected to food. I am tethered to food. I think about it a lot. And it's something that I have to continually work on. Not necessarily for an aesthetic standpoint, but just simply for the

side of things of gluttony and a side of things of just working on myself and working on having like inner peace and just being cool with being sober, just being cool with being stationary, being cool with just being calm. Like I don't always need a drink. I don't always need something to eat. I don't always need this next thing. I don't always need kratom or I don't always need alcohol. These are all things that I have examined over the years to make sure that I have inner peace so I can handle the stresses of life as they come at me and as I so I can balance myself out and have the equanimity that I'm looking for back to the matter of hand back to this kind of food equation so again you know in this equation of somebody you know losing

weight they are on 2,500 calories a day they ditch out 200 to 300 calories. They start to have two to 300 calories where they are moving around a little bit more. That plan can work, but how long is the plan going to work for? If we reduce calories, if that's our only strategy, reducing calories and trying to move more, there could be a lot of things to consider. And one of them is just your energy output. So now your energy output might start to stink. So let's say that in this equation of someone having around 2,500 calories, let's say they lost eight pounds in the course of six weeks or something like that. Well, that sounds amazing. They made some really great changes and they lost some weight,

but they want to take it a step further. Well, now they're just like, hey, I'm going to run the same play. And so I'm going to go from 10,000 steps a day to 15,000 steps a day. And I'm going to go from, you know, reducing that 300 calories. I'm going to now make that 600 calories. And here's where we start to get into a problem. Remember, it is very difficult to find a diet. And this is a, this is a message for people in general to just do your best to not ever get fat and do your best to not ever allow is kind of the wrong word here, but do your best to not ever allow your children to get fat. Do your best to protect them from that almost as the same way as you perfect, the same way you protect them

from you know sticking a fork in the electrical socket or the same way you protect them from running out into the street we got to really protect our kids and protect ourselves if you don't ever allow yourself to get fat in the first place and you don't have to worry about what i'm about to say next but most often when we lose weight, we also lose muscle. And there's probably people that are so big right now, they're like, man, I could really give a rat's ass about losing some muscle. But losing some muscle can be a really frustrating piece of the equation because your metabolism is now moving. So as you lose, you're losing muscle mass and muscle mass is active. Muscle mass is going to burn calories. Muscle mass needs glucose. Muscle mass needs energy. Whereas your fat mass, it

doesn't really need. I do think there has been some science recently that shows like your fat mass is a little bit active. I don't know what the current data on that is, but I know it's like relatively flat in comparison to muscle mass. So the more muscle mass we have, I'm not saying the better, but holding on to muscle mass as we lose weight can be really important. And you might think, well, I'll just slap some muscle back on later. Well, it gets to be harder and harder. And this is why somebody at 40 years old will say, man, I'm having a real hard time. Like I used to just basically cut some carbs out, cut some alcohol out, reduce my sugar and boom, I'd lose 15 pounds. And it's not happening the same way

anymore. And one of the reasons why that's happening, one of the reasons why that's going on is because that same individual probably doesn't have the same muscle mass, even if they didn't recognize it. There's kind of a natural degradation of the body over a period of time. You're going to start to lose some strength and start to lose some muscle mass unless you are sending a signal to your body. So you want to try to figure out how do I send a signal to my body to hold on to muscle mass where we're going to need some protein muscle synthesis and you get that through eating protein you get that through lifting you want some good resistance training um and you and you also again we always talk about sleep and people get frustrated about that but you're going to really want to try to focus in and hone in on how you rest and recover from these workouts. But getting the proper amount of protein in

is going to really help. It's during your dieting, as you're starting to lose weight, having the proper amount of protein, which I usually recommend about one gram per pound of body weight, one gram of protein per pound of body weight, approximately, give or take 20, 30, 40 grams. I don't think it matters that much. But protein is usually kind of a flat thing. You weigh 200 pounds, you have 200 grams of protein. You weigh 300 pounds, you have around 300 grams of protein. Now I know some people are like,

well, that's a lot of protein for someone that's 300 pounds. Well, someone that's 300 pounds has to eat something and they're gonna be very hungry. And protein, in my opinion, is not a great energy source. The energy sources are fats and carbohydrates. And that is exactly how I lost 100 pounds. I lost 100 pounds by utilizing protein leveraging, by eating large amounts of protein,

normally up over 250 grams. I'll give you the exact diet right now. Up over 250 grams of protein for many, many years. The fat calories, kind of depending on what I was doing, was probably around 200 grams. And the carb calories for a large portion of my dieting was very, very low. And by very, very low, I would say probably for most of that journey, I'm trying to give you an accurate account because I switched carbs around quite a bit. I would say for like maybe 75% of that journey, the carbs were under like 50, 60, something like that. So relatively low carb in my journey from going from 330 down to where I am today,

So relatively low carb in my journey from going from 330 down to where I am today, around 225 pounds. The reduction in carbohydrates is not the most important piece of the puzzle there. Again, the reduction in calories is something to really think about, but also how I did it. I lost weight in stages, and that is exactly how I think. I don't really like absolutes, but in this case, I'm gonna use an absolute. That's how everyone should lose enormous amounts of weight is in stages and is in phases. And even if you're just trying to get sharp,

you're trying to get real lean. Recently, I've been working on really leaning out. I've been going from like around 12%, working my way down to about 8%. And I think I've gotten to about 8% and I think it fluctuates a little bit. But I got down to 8% and you know what happened? Exactly what I'm sharing with you today.

I got extremely hungry. So I was like, let me bump everything way back up again. So I brought the calories back up and that's an attempt to try to get shredded even more. So I'm gonna take the 8% and I'm going to see if I can get down to like 6 or 7%. But whether we're talking about somebody going from 23% down to 18%, or we're talking about someone going from 10% down to 6%, it's all very similar. And you really have to be careful on how you manage and how you control your energy.

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 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, 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. 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. Links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. When we miss a workout, a lot of times we get super frustrated or we get super concerned about, man, I really let myself down today. Like I'm fatter than I want to be. I'm trying to lose weight and I didn't get in my walk and I didn't get in my lift. And you have to think about, you have to pause for a second and think about where did this start from? What was the driving force behind this? Why did this happen? It happened probably because you've been super strict with your nutrition.

Or it happened because you've been emptying out your tank. You've been excessively lifting or you've been excessively walking or running. And now the body's like, yo, we are fatigued. And I've seen this happen in individuals to where they are fatigued for a few weeks. So I don't like to use these things as excuses. I do think it's important that we always find a way to get back on track. But literally sometimes are, sometimes the drivers of not getting outside, not getting sunlight, sometimes the drivers of not getting enough sleep and not getting enough rest, sometimes these things really catch up to us.

I think it's important that we let things happen. When you're hungry and your appetite starts to really raise, I think it's important to examine that and to look into that. Why are you getting so hungry? Well, maybe you're getting hungry because your calories are reduced. Maybe you're getting hungry because you went on a five-mile run a couple days ago. These are all things to really consider, and these are things that you want to examine. You want to think, what's the driver behind these things? I think that the human body works in a three-day delay. So what did you do, not yesterday, not the day before, but probably the day before that?

And you might go, holy shit, you know, my watch or whatever said I had a sleep score of 30 on that particular day. And you'll start to see the effects of it, get a little bit of a delayed response. And so these are all things I think that you wanna examine, you wanna look into. Are you staying hydrated? Are you well slept? Are you well recovered? If you have a burning desire to train hard every day, that's when you know your calories

are right on track. That's when you know your sleep is right on track. If you're fired up and excited for it. Now I know not everybody likes to just go off of motivation because motivation can be fleeting. Some people talk about discipline versus motivation. They go back and forth. But a lot of people are kind of missing, they're missing the bigger picture. What is the motivator?

What is the discipline? For example, how disciplined are you going to be if you're really sick? If you wake up tomorrow and you're like, holy shit, man, my throat's almost totally closed. You have like strep throat. How disciplined are you then? You're going to fold up shop and you're going to say, hey, this is ridiculous. There's no reason to train under these conditions. Or what if you woke up tomorrow with a fever?

Or what if you had a lot of vomiting and a lot of diarrhea and stuff like that? There's just explosive diarrhea. That's going to keep your ass out of the gym, or at least it should, right? Even just the thought of like maybe getting other people potentially sick. Sometimes you're like, you know what, I should probably just use this as a rest day. But for some reason we have a hard time with a rest day. We have a hard time understanding that that day. We have a hard time understanding that that could be really critical for us to make the next leap. I've had this happen to me before where I took a few days to strategically get a little bit more sleep and a little bit more food. And you know what happened? I lost weight and looked leaner. Look in the mirror

and I'm like, holy shit, like veins are popping and everything's all Shredded up and everything's looking all dry and and wild that can happen sometimes and i'm not saying that Eating more is ever necessarily going to result in somebody like losing weight But there's a time and place for these situations and there's weird things happening inside the body that we're never going to know about Talk to any coach that puts somebody on stage, any coach that puts a bodybuilding person on stage, a bikini athlete, any of these people

that helps people get on stage for men's physique or classic physique or any of these things. They'll say, yeah, man, we can't quite put our finger on it, but sometimes, man, someone just gets real bloated out of nowhere. And then you'll have people like they speculate, oh, it's inflammation or it's, I don't think anybody really knows why these things happen. They just happen.

Can it happen from being overtrained and underslept? Yes, it can happen a ton from that. And I think that's usually where we see it, where somebody, they were on a good streak, their body was looking hard, their body was looking dense, they were looking in good shape. And then the wheels fell off somewhere in there. And so we really have to try to concentrate on this energy balance equation over the long haul, I guess is my main message here today. For me to go from 330 to 230, it's like people sometimes like, how long did that take? Well, I'm sure if there was some sort of contest for it, I could have made it maybe take like a

year or something like that. But that was never the goal. I'm still managing it. I'm still working on it. I think the last time I weighed over 300 was probably a good like almost 12 years ago at this point. So I've lost the weight and been able to keep it off. And we hear people oftentimes talking about losing weight. They drop a couple pounds and then they go back up. A lot of times people lose weight and then they gain more weight back. Sometimes people will talk about,

oh, I tried this diet. I tried a keto diet and I lost weight while I was doing it. But as soon as I came off of it, I gained all the weight back or I gained all the weight back and then some. And that's a really interesting criticism because that doesn't mean that the diet didn't work. That means that you had a hard time with the compliance of that particular diet. What it does show us is it does show us that if you can stick to something that you will most likely be able to lose weight. And I think for those of you that are interested in losing weight and you're interested specifically in reducing body fat, I think the following

statement is important to think about. If you would like to burn fat, then reduce your carbohydrates. If you want to burn body fat, reduce your carbohydrates and your dietary fats. That doesn't mean to get zero of both of those things. That would be a horrible idea. And to only eat protein. However, if you were able to manage that somehow, you would get very lean, but you also might get sick. You might not feel good. Your hormones might be tanked because we need some fats in our diet. We need some fat in our diet for our hormones. So I wouldn't suggest going under like 50 or 60 grams of fat for any real length of time.

But if you want to get shredded and you want to get really lean, it's a great idea. Now, what about what I said earlier? What about this energy equation, Smelly? Like, don't we have to try to keep it balanced? Don't we need it? Otherwise, we're going to go haywire and we're going to want to cheat on our diet. Well, here's something that you can try. And for $30, no, I'm just kidding. Here's something you can try is you could $30, no, I'm just kidding. Here's something you can try is you could just submarine your calories every once in a while.

So if you're active, you're running, you're lifting, you're doing some of these things, or you're walking and you're getting some lifts in and stuff like that, maybe two times a week, you could really bring your fat calories way down. Let's just say for the day you only have 50 grams of fat. On another day, you could do the same thing with your carbohydrates. You can just

submarine your carbs. You've heard of carb cycling before. You know, reduce your carbohydrates by 50% or only get in 50 grams of carbohydrates. And then you could even theoretically have a day where you submarine both. Just go 50-50 on both, 50 grams of carbs, 50 grams of fat, and the rest comes from protein. The rest of your calories for that day, you can even kind of have at it with protein because I personally don't think that protein even should count as a calorie. Go ahead and come at me. Go ahead and clip that. Whoever wants to clip that, that is my belief and I stand by it. I think it's true. Protein is a zero. It's not anything to really worry about.

It's as free as fiber is kind of my thought process on it. Just to go back to like a little bit of the details of the diet that I've been on for a long time. I did mention that a lot of the, most of it, you know, a lot of it was protein heavy, meat based. Some people think that I'm carnivore. Some people think that I'm keto. I'm really, I'm really none of those things. I'm not necessarily on a bodybuilding diet either. But if I did have to describe it and to kind of pigeonhole it into one thing, I would say that I'm on a meat-based bodybuilding style diet. And the reason why I choose that wording of it is because I do eat a lot of meat. Most of my meals are centered around meat, specifically Piedmontese, grass-fed, grass-finished fillets. I like those a lot. Super lean meats.

I'll also eat chicken and turkey and bison and elk and lamb and fish. I've been eating a lot of fish lately, a lot of oysters and a lot of mackerel to really bring up some omega-3s. I don't really think the fish oil cuts it. I don't think fish oil is a great... Getting fish oil from fish, I think, is awesome, but the replacement of just fish oil, I don't think, is enough. So I think if you're going to supplement some fish oil capsules, I think it would be wise to also, uh, get, uh, to actually eat fish because in my opinion, fish and some of these

other things that we're eating, there's a lot of other nutrients. There's cofactors in there that is going to help you with, uh, being able to really utilize omega-3s that you're having in the supplementation. And I just don't think we get it from the straight extracted fish oil. So I choose to have it come through my food. But yeah, the protein has been around 250 grams this entire time, going from 330 to 225-ish. And carbohydrates have kind of been all over the place, depending on what I've been doing. But I would say it's really rare for me to get over 400 grams of carbs in a day. And if I was to kind of pin it down and give you an exact amount for me, I would say, I think that

you're going to be doing pretty well, being able to have proficient and efficient and strong workouts with around 100 to 200 grams of carbs. That's been my experience personally. You might have to find, you might have to ramp that up a little bit. And what you're going to want to do is if you're going to bring carb calories up, then you're going to want fat calories to come down a little bit and vice versa. If you're going to bring fat calories to come down a little bit. Um, and vice versa. If you're going to bring fat calories up, you want the carbs to go down a little bit. And then remember the protein is just flat. So that's kind of the way that I view it. That's the way that I look at it. Um, and grams of fat. Again, I think, I think for most people,

you're going to want to go under a hundred grams of fat for a day and maybe even getting closer to like 60 grams of fat. A bunch of other ways I've managed this whole process is through walking. So this is probably, if you do a couple 10-minute walks a day and you do that for three months, you might notice a little impact. But if you do a couple 10 minute walks and you do it for three years, you're going to notice a huge impact. If you lift weights three times a week and you do it for three weeks, you might notice something. If you do it for three months, you might notice something. But if you do it for three years, that's when other people go, hey man, like, you know, it's the summer and you got your shirt off and someone's like, hey man, what you been doing?

Well, you know, about three years ago, I started lifting and I started paying more attention to my diet, got my diet intact and I started to lift, I started to walk and boom, now you're, you know, now you're in a lot better shape. But being in shape is a full-time job. And I think that's probably the hardest thing about this whole thing for a lot of people. I think oftentimes, and I could be guilty of this as well, a lot of people try to make it seem easy. And a lot of people try to make it seem like, you're not really, oh, you're not really on a diet, but you really are on a diet and it really can be super challenging. What I want to share with you in concluding on this, I've always been a huge proponent of whole foods, natural foods. The only other consideration I have in my diet for other foods

is just some protein shakes and stuff like that. And that's well before I ever sold any protein powders. You guys know I have the steak shake, which has liver, kidney, heart, spleen in it, and has an array of amino acids coming from beef protein, egg protein, as well as whey protein. And I also make another shake, which is a total carnivore shake. And it's absent of any allergens. We got rid of lactose and so on. But even those foods, those are processed foods. And any processed foods is not real food. So it's important that you understand that. Like a protein powder is a supplement and it can supplement your diet. What's it supplementing your diet with? Maybe an abundance of amino acids and maybe it's helping a little bit for, but for me, I don't think so much of it as it's helping me to be more muscular. It's helping a lot with muscle mass. Although I do think that it's been productive for that because there's a wide array of amino acids in there and a lot of other nutrients. acids in there and a lot of other nutrients. But I look at it like it's hyper palatable.

It tastes really good. And that can be the problem a lot of times with processed foods. So if we can find hyper palatable foods that taste really good, that we really enjoy, that are healthy for us, and we limit those things and we understand and utilize those things as a supplement, I think that's where they can be of benefit. Last night, I had a Legendary Foods sweet roll. Absolutely fantastic. A chocolate one. I put a little bit of whipped cream on there. Now, look, I know that that's not the secret to health and longevity.

I know that that's not the secret to me staying longevity. I know that that's not the secret to me, you know, staying in great shape and stuff like that, but that can be something that you have on occasion where you have, you have one, you're kind of one and done, and you're able just to enjoy that. Now, for some of you other people, there might be a lot of people watching that don't have any problems with control. They could have a piece of cake. They could leave it at that. They can have a slice of cheesecake and a scoop of vanilla ice cream and be good. Well, for me, I have struggled with that. So if I eat like that, sometimes it flips my taste buds inside out is the way I like to think about it.

my taste buds inside out is the way I like to think about it. So my taste buds are, are mainly into, um, savory foods, even though I do like sweets, I do enjoy them. But my, for the most part, I'm eating a lot of savory food. Even when I have my rice and my potatoes and I season stuff, it's like, uh, we got garlic and salt and pepper, uh, on these different meats and some of these different starchy carbohydrates. And so most things are savory. Most things kind of taste like bone broth or something like that, right? Most things aren't like popping with a lot of flavor except for some fruit that I eat on occasion. But fruit is another thing that it's kind of hard to overeat fruit. You know, something like watermelon, you might really like watermelon or different melons.

You might really like them a lot, but they're full of a lot of water and they're also, there's a lot of volume to them. And so those things will fill you up pretty easily. And so, you know, eating a lot of fruit is really not going to be a problem. However, it's when we start to mix a lot of ingredients together that we can run into trouble. So, and I've done this

before. I've made like a yogurt and cottage cheese with honey and fruit and definitely have overeaten the shit out of stuff like that, making these giant kind of fruit bowls. And so once you start to mix ingredients, you might want to be a little bit more cautious in the things that you're doing. You might want to be cautious with fats and carbohydrates. Putting fats and carbohydrates together in the same meal is not going to make you explode. You're not going to go to jail. However, bringing carbohydrates and fats together makes the food hyperpalatable, makes it that much easier to overeat.

In some cases, if somebody's bulking, that could be magnificent to have 80, 20 ground beef and to just smash the shit out of that. And it's got some rice in there, kind of a stand-efforting monster mash style, then that might be something that might be beneficial to you if you're somebody that's looking to gain weight. But for myself personally, the whole foods

and eating an array of whole foods, getting in some different vegetables, even something like onions and peppers and various forms of vegetables, a lot of times will make it easier for you to eat the plate of meat that you have. The leaner that the meat is that you have, like if you have a chicken breast, or if you have something that's kind of dry turkey, the easier it will be to eat with some vegetables, because it can just be tough to kind of get through some of those foods

without any sort of moisture. And so that might be something that you want to do. But again, I go with Piedmontese beef because it's by far the best. It's super tender, and you don't have to worry about the shit being dry. So if you want to pick some of that up, you can use my code MARKBELL, and you'll get 20% off. Check out all the stuff they have. and you'll get 20% off. Check out all the stuff they have.

It's not only Piedmontese, but Piedmontese is owned by another company, which I forgot the name of. Piedmontese also owns Good Life Proteins. So goodlifeproteins.com is the website you're going to want to check out. They have a lot of offerings. They have fish, They have chicken. They obviously have tons of steaks and red meat and all kinds of delicious stuff.

But that's where I get my stuff from. It's been extremely valuable to be able to rely on those sources of meat. And I recognize that, look, some of this stuff can be expensive. Even going and buying a carton of blueberries is now pretty pricey. And I understand, but I do think that if you're gonna invest your money in something, I think that's a good spot to invest it in. And I would also say, invest your money in a good coffee maker

so you don't have to spend $5 every single day on getting coffee from Philz or Temple or Starbucks or wherever it is you're going. You'll be able to save some money on that as well. As I'm thinking of kind of wrapping all this up, the walking has been huge for me over the years. I was able to go from 330 down to probably around 270 fairly quickly, mainly with this lifting, walking, and adhering a little bit more to my diet. And then the extra weight loss from that point onward was something where I had to get a little bit more thoughtful. But again, it's all been in stages and in phases. It's taken over a decade

to lose that weight and to now be to a point where, I mean, I guess once I got below around 250 or so, I kind of told myself I'm never going back. So to get yourself to that stage is not easy because you need to have the correct mentality and the correct tools for it. But you're going to hear so many people tell you so many different things about your diet and about your nutrition. And I want to kind of just leave you with this. It's important to protein leverage. It's important to understand volume of food. Protein leveraging, when you increase the amount of protein, it can help to control your hunger and it can help drive your hunger down.

It might not do much for your cravings because your cravings are kind of a different thing. You still might crave peanut butter cups and ice cream and stuff like that. But when you stay on the diet and you continually stay on the diet and you continually reach for the things that you don't necessarily want or when you continually do the things

that you don't want to do, guess what it does? It increases your willpower and expands the part of the brain that willpower actually comes from and you'll be stronger and it'll get easier and easier and easier and to the people around you you're going to seem weirder and weirder and weirder they're going to be like man he just he really lost his marbles look at him he's just eating meat all the time but that is what happens is

because the diet itself encourages the diet itself. Failure of the diet and going off the diet and cheating on the diet is going to be something that actually encourages that behavior as well. So you want to be careful. It's a double-edged sword right there. And that's why you might want to maybe reevaluate what a cheat means. And so for me, if I'm going to have a day where I just feel like being a little looser, I feel like eating a little bit of whatever I want, it's thought about a little bit ahead of time. And I just say, I'm just going to, today is a free day. I don't really look at it as a cheat.

So that way there's nothing to actually feel bad about. It's like, okay, I'm going to, I'm accepting that I'm going to eat some of these foods. It's kind of like sitting on the couch and watching too much TV, right? It's like you make a little truce with yourself. You're like, all right, I'm going to do this for today. Tomorrow I'm going to get back on track. But today I'm just going to veg out, sit here and chill and watch some football and just for once, just really let, let loose and relax. Right? And I think that's okay to do occasionally, but you want to be mindful of all these things. Hopefully this has been helpful to you. Hopefully this is something that you can hold on to. This should be a recipe for

you being able to lose weight. I don't think you need to like get out a calculator and figure out your exact body weight and your exact calories. I don't count calories. I don't walk around with Tupperware. I'm not like super tethered to my food. I don't necessarily use intermittent fasting, although I have used that over the years. Instead of like fasting, maybe traditional intermittent fasting. Obviously I'm fasting through the night and then, uh, some days I'll have breakfast and I'll kind

of fast through like a portion of the day and then I'll eat. But I usually eat around three or four times a day. I found that a lot of what Mike Dolce has been preaching to be fairly true. You know, if you eat an omnivorous diet, for me, it's more meat-based. I eat fruits, I eat vegetables, and I basically like eat when I'm hungry. Just watch out for the curve balls and the sliders. Watch out for the, not literally sliders. Some of you guys are so fat, you're thinking sliders, but, um, you know, things like peanut butter and things that are just, they're just dense. There's things that are just dense calorically that you want to be mindful of. And you want to kind of just ask yourself, like, is that really worth it? Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Thank you

guys so much for following along with this version of Saturday school. Catch you guys later.