Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Meathead Clubhouse EP. 02 - Question Vs. Statement ft. Flex Wheeler Mike O'Hearn & MORE!

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

A statement, "I am not strong", ends the conversation. You have officially accepted it and can't change. A question, "how can I get strong?" leaves the door open to all kinds of possibilities and gives you the opportunity to improve. That was today's topic for this Meathead Clubhouse which features guest appearances from Chris Bell, Flex Wheeler, Mike O'Hearn, Jenn Thompson, Joel Greene, Carl Lanore, Zach Bitter and Co-Hosts Nsima Inyang and Andrew Zaragoza! Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢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 $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #MeatHeadClubHouse #MarkBell

What's up, everybody? This episode of Mark Bell's Power Project podcast is brought to you by Piedmontese Beef. Yeah, World Carnivore Month is over, and I think I'm totally done with me. No, you're not. I'm going vegan. You're fibbing. No. That's, no, fake news. Yes, I am actually lying.

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i think we got to play uh 50 cent right like every time we go to Clubhouse, I think we got a... Go to the club? Yeah. I like that. I'm into having sex. I'm into making love, right? Yeah.

Come give me a hug. Give me... That's one of the sickest songs ever. The music in that. Yeah, the beat on that is fucking crazy. I like that a lot. And 50 Cent was awesome. I like some of these guys now that rap

and they kind of sound like they're half asleep. That's a talent. It's called mumble rap. Yeah, yeah. Which is fucking stupid. It's like, dude, are you awake, bro? How high are you exactly? Alright, let me get this one going.

I want to get some credit for it too. Street cred? Yeah. It's going to echo. Will people be accredited for this? Do schools have federations to where these credits work here, but they might not work over there in the spf yeah right region you know it's uh it's interesting like school credit is an

interesting thing like my son the school that he's going to um they're they don't they don't have that they don't they don't use that they don't have they just think that's bullshit and i think it's bullshit too because what's it for do you get accredited accredited for what what do you want credit for i don't know you're either smart or you're dumb you know you know like you don't you're you're being accredited uh doesn't really mean anything necessarily are we on clubhouse we're on clubhouse no yep how do you you know? I can't even see it. So did it happen? Is it there?

That was the best conversation we've ever had about you not actually seeing Clubhouse ever. Yeah. But being an awesome authority on it already. Right. Everyone can see me, right? Right now? Is this how it works? Am I on video?

I mean, ish. In post, you'll be in video but as of right now now nobody can but clubhouse does not have a visual component to it correct and they got some bullshit why not why don't they add that in oh hey we got uh chris bell no hey oh hey what's going on, kids? Hey, Boar. I was walking with your dad today. How dare you? I know. What I noticed about him is he's actually not that tall.

He's actually shorter than I am, which is really, really crazy. And wasn't his... I never feel tall. And wasn't his dad shorter than him? Right? Kind of the same as me and him. Yeah, Grandpa Bell, Sheldon Bell, the original Sheldon Bell, he was real short. Probably about five foot

three. And then Marie Bell, our grandma, she wasn't even five feet tall, was she? I think she was about 4'11". That's wild. Why is everybody so fucking short, These short Italians. I don't know, but it's still...

You and Mad Dog screwed me. Yeah, we fucked you over. We stole your height. And then I punched you over the bench in the backyard. We were boxing. Yeah, the kids always ask me about that. That was amazing. My brother, we were boxing. Yeah, my kids always ask me about that. That was amazing.

My brother, we were boxing, and I was starting to learn some pretty good stuff with boxing. And so I was able to throw some pretty good combinations and stuff. But I really thought I was kicking his ass, but I was younger, so I don't think it was having a ton of an impact. And I had an opportunity for like a really good shot. And I thought it was because some of the stuff I was doing, but it turns out my brother got stung by a bee. And as he got stung by the bee, I punched him in the face and knocked him over this bench.

It was amazing. I was like, I knocked your ass out. And he's like, I got stung by a bee. It was pretty funny. We got a flex Wheeler in the room. Boy,

you've ever heard of a guy named flex wheeler before? Absolutely. I love flex. Well, how are you doing flex? Yeah, let's get flex on here to speak. You ready to go? What's up guys? How are you guys doing? We're doing amazing. And man, I got to thank you for, uh, you know, coming on our show a while back and, and sharing your story with everybody. People love that. and people still are talking about that podcast that we did several months ago. Well, thanks for the platform, bro. I greatly appreciate it. And congratulations with all your success. It's definitely inspiring everything. How are you feeling nowadays? How are things going for you?

About the same as far as pain wise, but I mean, you know, um, I'm, I'm pretty much tired of complaining about it. It is what it is. So, um, I'm just going to ride it till the wheels fall off. Understood. Do you, uh, think that you would ever turn to, uh, maybe some psychedelic type of therapy? I know my brother's had some success. I've heard some others. Is that something you would ever consider or you don't think that's for you? No, I don't. I don't really think it's for me because even, um, even what regular opiates that I get when

I'm in a hospital, I, I hallucinate tremendously and it's, it's horrible. Um, how bad I hallucinate. So, um, I've heard stories about some of the different stuff that works and the possibility of them hallucinating. So no, if I lose it while I'm in a hospital, I definitely don't want to be around unprofessionals and lose it. That could be all bad. Yeah. Chris, what do you think about that? Do you think there could be, you know, potentials for some micro dosing of anything to i mean it's hard to

you know someone has someone's you can't really the hardest thing about pain is it's so hard to speculate how someone else how someone else's pain feels so uh it's hard to interpret that hard to make sense of that but chris do you think there would be anything that would maybe be beneficial to Flex? Yeah, I have a point with pain where... You still there? Oh, I think we lost you for a second there, Bor. Looks like we got some connection problems. But Chris, whenever you're available.

Oh, there you are. I think that psychedelics are just really misunderstood. Oh, there you are. and things like that. But I've learned that psychedelics can be very powerful, whether using them in a microdose where you don't trip at all or using them in a massive, you know, capacity where you do have a heavy trip. But for me and for people like Flex, I think what they do, which is really absolutely incredible that I never knew about, is they just rewire the brain. So a lot of times people get phantom pain, especially with an amputation like that. And like I said, I can't promise anything, but a lot of people say that that phantom pain will disappear. And I know for people that suffer from that, that could be a miracle. So I think that there are, there is

potential, but again, if the patient is, you know, against doing it, then I would not do it. Yeah. And also flex, you know, we, you know, we, my brother and I have been such huge fans of yours for so long, you know, we're highly motivated by, you know, the stuff that the stuff that you were doing and, uh, and you've become a great friend as well. So any help that we can offer, you know, we're here for you to, to support you in whatever way, uh, that we can. And, uh, I can send. And, uh, I could

send out some, uh, create them to you. I don't know if that will have any, uh, benefit to you, but we can see if that does anything, but, uh, you know, maybe, maybe some of these things could, uh, potentially help. I know my brother's been helping people with some, uh, ibogaine therapy and some different things like that. And, uh, maybe that would be something that you would look at down the road as a possibility to be something that would help or not. Either way, it doesn't matter. But we're here for you.

No, actually, I'm aware of you guys creating it. And I actually met with the person and I tried some. And it did give some relief. But there was an interesting part of it also. But I appreciate it. And that feeling is mutual. relief, but, you know, there was a, there was an interesting, um, part of it also. So, but I appreciate it. And, and, um, that feeling is mutual, uh, the respect I have for all of you guys, um, including your parents, you know, and, um, also, um, I know I said it privately, but, you know, my deepest condolence about your mother. Um, but you know, you guys, uh, I can't think of

a more dominant, um, than you guys and what you guys been able to achieve and everything like that. You know, my only regret is when Chris was getting at me to to do the movie, I was just so busy. I didn't really think too much of it. And man, that thing was just a landslide. So, you know, the feeling is greatly, greatly mutual. Awesome. Thank you so much. We got a little bit of a topic today. So while I was on my walk with my dad this morning, he mentioned about his the church that he goes to and the community that he's in being a I'm just going to mention this briefly because we got a couple other people hopping on that we're going to talk to in a little bit that are popping into the room. But my dad talked about his church being kind of poor and in the area that they're in, they're kind of poor.

And to me, that is the difference between making a statement and asking a question. And this is something that I've worked on with myself, my own internal dialogue. I've worked on this over the years to be something that was really beneficial to me. And I was like, damn, I need to share this out with people today. When I get on Clubhouse, I think people will enjoy this. So when you make a statement about yourself and you say, I'm too short, I'll never be, that's a statement and then it's closed off and that's ingrained into your brain and it's ingrained and absorbed into your body.

When you make a statement and you say, I'm too dumb, I'll never be able to be an entrepreneur. I'm not smart enough. I'll never be able to get a real job. I'm a drug addict. You know, it's going to be hard for me the rest of my life. I'm never going to meet anybody type of thing. Just all these statements we say about ourselves. I always get to bed too late.

Those are all statements. And then once the statement is made, once you kind of have said that to yourself, it's now ingrained and now it's part of every cell of your body and you got to live with it. Literally have to live with that, with that inside your body. But what you can do is you can say, rather than say, I always get to bed late. You can just flip it around and turn it into a question. How can I get to bed earlier? How can I sleep more efficiently?

How can I be more productive during the day? Oh, I wonder if I examined my sleep. I wonder if I stopped having, you know, pre-workout before my workout at 6 p.m., if it would be easier to get to bed at 10 p.m. You know, you turn these things into questions rather than having them be statements. Once it's a statement, it's now kind of locked in. And now that becomes part of your belief system. And that belief system can either make you a winner or it can make you feel like a loser a lot of times. And then once that starts to happen, then it only confirms the statement that you made about yourself. As opposed to posing the question and saying, what are some things I can do?

Rather than saying, my deadlift is always going to suck because I have a shitty back. Rather than saying that statement and closing things off, what are some things I can do to improve my deadlift? Or what are some things that I can do that would act as active therapy that would be good medicine for my lower back because my lower back's in pain and I don't think I'm very strong. And so if I, what are some things I can do to be stronger? If I'm stronger, then potentially maybe my lower back will start to feel better. And so this is something that, you know, was just coming to mind when I was talking to my dad about, this is something that, you know, was just coming to mind when I was talking to my dad about, you know, making a statement versus posing a question. You pose a question,

now your mind and your thoughts are still wide open. But the second that you make a statement, it's period, game over. And so be careful with the statements that you make. I would say, do your best to have your statements really have a lot of meaning behind them and have your, and do your best to keep your statements as positive as you possibly can. We got my boy Joel Green, uh, in the house. So it'd be great to, uh, talk to Joel. For some of you that don't know Joel, we've had him on a podcast a couple of times. We have him coming up again on the podcast. And Joel is just an absolute maniac. That's what I consider him when it comes to nutrition and health. I have not found anybody that knows the information that Joel knows. And so, Joel, how are you doing today, buddy? Waiting for him to, there he is.

Yeah. I think I'm here. Am here yep you're here you're in the house thank you thank you man you are you are very very kind um i'm i'm doing well just actually finished an instagram live and is flex wheeler on this he is oh my gosh i i'm i'm i'm having a fanboy moment here right i know flex wheeler has an impact on people right oh it just yeah good and bad i mean what can you say i mean just the the greatest natural i mean the greatest genetics ever in bodybuilding ever the only guy you know i want to talk about this when we do your podcast again. The only guy I think could come close would be SEMA. I think if SEMA took it seriously, I think he'd be close.

He might be. And SEMA is an absolute mutant of mutants. But, you know, I always just think of that. There's a kind of iconic double bicep pose of Flex Wheeler that when I think about Flex Wheeler, that always kind of comes to mind. And I'm just like, ah, no one could really fuck with that. You know, like, this is an unbelievable, uh, physique, unbelievable achievement. Flex, how do you sometimes feel with feel about, or how do you deal with sometimes people bringing up the genetic component? Do you, do you kind of hate that in a way? Because, like, maybe they're pulling away from your work ethic?

Or have you just accepted that that's just kind of the way, you know, things have been for you? Or, you know, what are your thoughts? No, not at all. As a director to a statement or anything, it's, I mean, it's true. I think, you know, a lot of us on this panel, we know of genetic freaks, but, you know, they just didn't do anything about it.

It was in high school or college. You know, we met them. They took that gift, and maybe they became a bad person utilizing that gift. So, no, it's a true statement. And without that like saying you know you know uh it costs you seven foot no it's it's you know tons of people out there are seven plus foot but they're horrible so um no i appreciate appreciate it. It's just, you know, for me, uh, personally, it's just not, uh, comfortable, um, accepting compliments, you know, that's just me as a person.

be like in your, in your own, in your own world, was that, was that the way that you had that, is that, was that the way that you felt that you had to lift back then you had to kind of create your own, you know, your, your little bit of your own bubble and to be really honed in and focused because Gold's Gym is an interesting place. There's, there's a lot of shit going on there. There's a lot of people there. Uh, there's a lot of, uh, different kinds of characters and different kinds of people. And maybe there's some people that aren't training for the Mr. Olympia. You know, maybe there's some people that are just kind of dicking around for lack of a better term, just mess around some leg extensions, some leg curls and some stuff like that. So for yourself, did you have to kind of

isolate your mind in some way so that you could really go in there and just kick the crap out of yourself you know it was really different than um it was great because you know goat goes gym was a melting pot of all different variety of people you know homeless people you know a-list stars gold medalists and olympic olympics and nba players um so but back then it was a mutual respect once you pierced through those doors it was about getting it in um and everybody respected everybody it didn't matter what you achieved when you walked through the door you were just a normal guy in their training so but i think from my my um my martial arts background it's such an individual sport, so I didn't know it then. I wasn't that cerebral about it back then, but I just created this environment. Going into gym training, eating crappy food and all that stuff, it's not my ideal of a great day.

So what I did is not really knowing it and understanding it back then, but now I do. I just brainwashed myself to think this is normal and everything else, everyone else did in the world was not normal. So it's normal going in the gym and training twice or three times a day. It's normal eating four hours a day and not doing anything, going to the movies or hanging out or going club or whatever. Those are normal, you know, things for me to do. And everybody else who does anything different than that, they're the ones who are not normal. I really just brainwashed myself to believe that.

For me, personally, it was impossible to live in both worlds. Impossible for me to go out and hang out and then go back into the dungeon and, and create havoc on myself. So I just, I, I prefer, I, uh, I prefer to just stay, uh, submersed into my, my work and I never came out. So, you know, it had its good and bad, uh, points about it, but you know, you know, a diamond is created in a very harsh and violent world. And what comes out of that is something rare and unbreakable. So I used to just think of that, you know, think of, you know, Olympic athletes who compete, you know, 363 days a year just to, for that one day to shine, you know, and that's me.

That's, that's what it's about. So it just became normal for me. That's interesting. Flex, I have a question. Flex, I have a question. That's interesting. Flex, I have a question. Flex, I have a question. I've kind of noticed that guys that have a very athletic background, it seems to create a sort of unique shape in the muscle bellies and the peaks

and the way the lines flow together. And do you think your martial arts background had anything to do sort of like with your shape like just just the the tie-ins and the muscle bellies and i'm just it's something i've noticed and i'm just curious what your thoughts are um possibly but i'm not so sure um i i always laughed at uh you know i won't say anyone's name but you know i always laughed that someone would come out with a you know best biceps or best calves or best quads when it was obviously you know their dominant muscle group they were just born with it you know um and they are then going to try to tell people how to build one like that you know it's it's not true uh you have to have that have that uh that um that body type by it has to be you know and somewhere

in your dna to even pull that out or else it's not going to work that's the same as you know now we all know that you know girls in a gym and they're just squatting like crazy and you know there's jokes like wow she must squat because she has nice glutes but you know the truth is if you don't have that extra gluteus chromosome you can squat and do every freaking butt exercise you want you might have a better butt than what you normally would but you're not going to have no brazilian or no butt like no sister you know what i mean so i think it homed uh and helped me with my focus and everything like that but you know that's just a was given. If you go back to my adolescence, you know, I always had, you know, nice little tiny shaped biceps and stuff like that. I just, I found the right world to nurture that.

Now, if I would have tried to be an NBA player or a track star, you know, like my brothers, I would have failed because I didn't realize what my genetic gift was. So, you know, by the grace of God, I found out, you know, what my genetic gift was. And I flourished in that environment. Joel, you know quite a bit about genetics. You can probably speak upon some of these things. Joel and I were discussing in a text thread the other day about how there's a subset of people that I believe are, and maybe I'm saying this wrong, but I believe they're immune to cancer. Um, and so sometimes we're just born with certain things that, uh, allow us to, uh, escape certain things or, or sometimes,

uh, we're born into something I've heard more recently that they believe there's like a serial killer gene, a murder gene, which I've never really heard that until just a few weeks ago. It came up on a TV show or on a program I was watching and I googled it and sure enough, it seems to be like a thing. Joel, what have you seen from some genetics? Like, is that true about there's some people that may be immune to like cancer or be able to have a propensity, you know, for muscle growth and things of that nature? Oh, sure. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's, there's, you know, a number of SNPs that lend themselves up. Muscle growth is sort of the easy one. Um, but cancer too. Yeah. I mean, there are some people that just make, um, they have SNPs that make just certain types of antioxidants a little bit more.

There's a SNP for glutathione in the gut. Some people have a little bit more of it. So you're just probably not going to get colon cancer. You know, there's lots of things like that. And then that's just kind of the starter, the nature. And then the nurture aspect, your environment. nature and then the nurture aspect uh your environment you know there's this massive interplay between um the gut biome and the mitochondrial dna and the human genome so you have this um sort of potentiality of about four million different combinations and you know

snippets you can get that you know can do can do a bunch of things. So, um, genetics play a huge part. Um, but then environment also plays a pretty big part too. And, um, I think there's some pretty good studies with twins that have actually shown some, some things along those lines. That might be something we want to talk about next time. Yeah. You know, um, I know Joel, you've been talking quite a bit about, um, dairy for, for a while now and some of the benefits of dairy. And we were just kind of briefly mentioning, you know, the environment and, you know, what you do with your training and how you eat. You know, I don't know how much it will impact, you know, how tall you're going to be necessarily,

because maybe there's something encoded in your DNA that you top out at a certain height, even if you have all the nutrients and stuff. But what are some of the information that you stumbled upon to find milk to be fascinating? How can people utilize not maybe necessarily just milk, but how can people utilize dairy to their advantage in their body in their quest for, you know, bodybuilding, looking bigger, being more fit, being healthier? Yeah, there's a couple of key ideas. One is this idea of grades of food. So when you look at any kind of food, you know, you're just going to see that it doesn't matter what you're talking about,

that there's kind of low-grade, medium, high-grade stuff. You know, I think of like a Piedmontese steak versus like your run-of-the-mill grass-fed steak. There's a huge difference. So most of us have been raised on kind of lower grades of dairy products that aren't very good. And one of the issues with dairy is that for most people, the genetic horsepower needed to digest dairy is not in the human genome. It's in the bacterial genome and the bacteria make the enzymes we need to break dairy down. So what happens is there's some pretty interesting research that starts, that's identified basically in the fifties when mass pasteurization began. The bacteria needed to neutralize micro RNAs in milk were destroyed. And so we see a lot of related issues,

like problems related to dairy starting with that. And anecdotally speaking, what's pretty common is, like I see a lot of people who, they'll go on very high-grade dairy. They'll go on grass-fed, unpasteurized. And they have no issues whatsoever with it. And then when they go on lower grades, they have all kinds of issues. So the first big idea is that there's this conflation of the bacteria with food. Like, is it really the food or is it the missing bacteria?

And I'm not saying in all cases, but in a number of cases, maybe even most cases, the problem with dairy is the missing bacteria, not so much the dairy itself. Again, that's not all cases. There could be things like a case of morphine allergy or different things you have. But many, many cases, the problem people have with dairy is just missing bacteria. When you replace that bacteria, the issues with dairy go away. And then the benefits of dairy are pretty interesting to look at. One of the interesting things about dairy is the way that it affects signal pathways. So it's loaded in leucine.

It turns on the SIRT2 and 1 gene. So it's very good. It's a very good, like, pro-health, pro-longevity, pro-muscle gene because of the way that dairy together with the type of calcium in dairy with leucine modulates key signal pathways related to both longevity and growth. So it's sort of an ideal food from that perspective. Dairy activates SIRT1. You get this modulation of leucine. And then the calcium in dairy, it's sort of unique. You hear these kind of myths that dairy calcium is not absorbable,

but it's exactly the opposite. There are very specific glycans, only glycans, glycomacropeptides in dairy. And they actually basically facilitate the absorption of calcium in the gut. And so what you see with, when you look at dairy is it actually aids insulin function in a lot of cases. So when looking at dairy, you come to like,

well, how can we use it strategically? And kind of an old bodybuilding thing is that, you know, like real colostrum, real colostrum, like the real stuff you get from a dairy farmer, it's very anabolic. So when you look at dairy as a tool set, if you have the right bacteria in the gut, it could be used in a number of ways. There's good research that shows that adding dairy in during active fat loss accelerates fat loss and mitigates weight regain. There's good research showing that when it's used kind of pre- and post-workout, it actually increases the rate of muscle synthesis.

And there's all kinds of good stuff on it. So you just kind of have to get past the mythos that it's all bad and then just start to look at the functional aspects of it. And, you know, you can just kind of check the list. So hypertension, yeah, it actually helps with hypertension. And again, it just comes back to the grade of food that we're looking at. So, and that gets into this whole thing of, you know, A1, A2 cows and, you know, genetics and all that stuff. But suffice to say that there are highly functional compounds in dairy. One of the most functional compounds is there are angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitory peptides in dairy.

So it actually inhibits the ACE enzyme, the ACE1 enzyme. And so that does a number of things. It makes it very good for stimulating muscle growth, makes it very good for mitigating weight gain and a whole bunch of things. So it's highly functional. And if you just break dairy down into its components, you can see that. So if you break it down into the whey aspect and you look at all the functional aspects of whey, it's very useful. Functional aspects of casein, it's very useful.

When you look at the glycomacropeptides in dairy, things like human milk oligosaccharides, things like that, it's extremely functional the uh the saturated fat that's in milk um isn't even the same as saturated fat that we have that we might find in beef is that correct yeah that's a that's a great question um so when you look at studies on dairy there seems to be kind of a little bit of conflicting evidence. You'll see some studies that show that dairy that's high in fat, which we think of as saturated fat, is actually oncogenic, promotes cancer. But then you'll see other studies that show the reverse.

And the farther you dig into it, it really just comes down to the old omega-6, omega-3 debate. And the further you dig into it, it really just comes down to the old omega-6, omega-3 debate. Like whenever you look at dairy from, you know, better fed cows, better fed animals, better fed, where you have a higher ratio of omega-3, you see that it's extremely good for ameliorating inflammation. It's anti-oncogenic. You have all this stuff. And then when you see lower grades of dairy with higher fat, that's where it can be a little bit problematic. You see a little greater risk of like prostate cancer, but it's a grades of food issue in the higher grades with the higher quality, the saturated fat in dairy is really kind of a non-issue. It's actually very helpful.

Flex, did you, uh, if you're still in the, in the room here, did you utilize, um, any dairy, you know, in your quest for bodybuilding, whether it be like at a younger age before you got really deep into bodybuilding? Did you utilize, you know, I know like years ago, people used to use to like guys like Bill Kazmaier would just drink nearly a gallon of milk every day, gallon of full fat milk. And that's the way they were able to get big. Did you utilize dairy in any retraining? No, not directly, but indirectly. Obviously, proteins, powders and stuff like that were quite different back then. They weren't as refined as now. So I didn't seek it out as far as drinking it wise. But, you know, obviously it was

involved in a lot of the protein drinks that I had back then. Remember the, uh, the original Metrex, they would like, uh, break your blender. Cause it was like, it would mix up so thick or the original like a myoplex and those kinds of things. Exactly. Yeah. That's, I didn't want to mention any names, but of course, yeah. I mean, just, uh, protein back then was just pure garbage. It was just pure garbage. It's just pure garbage. We got Carl Lenora in the house here too. And I had him on my podcast recently

and Carl and I were just discussing this morning. It was Carl's idea that in the future he and I are going to do a clubhouse talking about how to get a podcast started and how to keep one running efficiently, which I'm sure Andrew will have a lot to say about how to get a podcast started and how to keep one running efficiently, which I'm sure Andrew will have a lot to say about that as well. Welcome to the room, Carl. Thank you guys.

Thanks for inviting me. What's he got going on over there? Well, I'm hitting, I'm hitting upstairs in the bedroom because we have workers here putting down a hardwood floor, but I'm listening to the discussion on milk. And after my show with joel last week i went ahead and ordered some raw and pasteurized milk i've

consumed raw and pasteurized milk for years even decades uh but then i kind of i lost my farmer and i didn't put any effort into finding a new farmer, but I took my own advice and went to the website realmilk.com, which is managed by the Weston A. Price Foundation, found the new farmer, and I have milk that will be here in about three days, three gallons of raw and pasteurized milk. Thanks for inspiring me, Joel. I have a good note about Weston A. Price. Our good friend

Dr. Joel Gould is going to make a rap video about Weston A. Price, because what are his initials? W-A-P. So he's making a rap video about

that Weston a price, if you know what I'm talking about. So I think that's pretty funny. Very nerdy, but pretty funny. Yeah. Um, Joel,

you got any more questions for flex wheeler or Carl? You got any more questions for flex wheeler? Oh, I can go ahead, Carl. Well, I was going to, I was going to ask flex about,

you know, back in the heyday, uh, Carl. Well, I was going to ask Flex about, you know, back in the heyday at Venice Beach, there was lots of discussions about, you know, guys like Vince Gironda, Armin Tani, even Jack Lane providing raw to a lot of their bodybuilders that they worked with. And did he ever encounter that at all? No. When I got to Ghost Gym, they weren't that dominant back then. I'm not even sure if there was actually in Ghost Gym. I didn't get to Ghost Gym until like 90, and then from 90, 90 on is when I kind of banged there.

Okay. Okay. Okay, cool. Sorry, Flex. I can fanboy nerd up all day on you. Question. I don't remember the exact show, but I think you came in around 226. And there was nothing to improve on. I mean, it was sheer perfection.

There's nowhere to go from there. And then within a couple of years of that, kind of the keeping up with Ronnie, age came in, 60, which you had no problem messing up to. I'm just kind of curious your thoughts in terms of, like,

if you had to pick the winner of a Flex Wheeler, all the Flex wheelers, which version would you pick? It would actually be the 99 English Grand Prix. You can pull it up on YouTube. Yeah, I've listened to the arguments and I've actually compared photos to like my 93 when I was like 216 when I when i first won the honor classic and yeah my condition was

extraordinary and stuff then um but i was just i was too small and flat actually my my 98 um defeat in my mind would defeat my 93 but and um and in 99 uh at the English Grand Prix, I was able to reach a condition in size that I don't think was ever unmatched, ever matched throughout my career. And I was two forty two fifty six. I see me and Ronnie way the same weight. And yeah, I strided everything, glutes and everything like that. yeah i strided everything uh glukes and everything like that even even ronnie we did a podcast a few months ago and he's like yeah you beat me in that show you blew my ass and that's it's like it doesn't matter because you walked on you walked away with the trophy but um no um i and and yeah that's that kind of happened because i was chasing, I was always chasing a champion. So first it was Dorian and he was bigger. And I'm, you know, even after I won the Arnold Classic and they said, hey, if you think you're going to go up against Dorian, you know, you better get a lot harder and a lot bigger.

And I remember looking at the judge and, you know, in my ignorance, just look, I'm like, yeah, the only way I'm going to get harder than I am now is in my coffin, man. What are you talking about? But whenever you're chasing a champion, he's preceded as the standard. So, of course, they were all bigger than I was. So I just thought being bigger is better. In hindsight, I should have stayed right down 230, 245 and just tried to bang better and better conditioning. But, you know, hindsight is worth a million. When you were prepping for those shows, like what did your food look like?

You know, what, eating kind of high to moderate carbs, high protein, low fat, what were you doing? moderate carbs, high protein, low fat? What were you doing? Now, what I didn't understand is my kidneys was failing due to FSGS and the reason why I had to have a kidney transplant later on. But it was just getting harder and harder to reach my condition as I got older. So I had to start taking drastic measures and going, you know, anywhere from one to two and even sometimes a little bit over three months, zero carbs. And at that time, I would just I would eat 88 ounces of filet mignon a day would be my meals, you know.

So anywhere from seven to eight meals of 12 ounces of filet mignon would be my my meal along with um just drinking crystal light i did not know that you uh were such a low carb like you can would compete that way without carbs yeah so i would go all the way up and i um i don't really know if it's carb sensitive i think if you train your body it becomes normal you know just like you know like stan coming from cold weather places now it's he loves it here you know um you know i come from a hot area so there's no way in the world i would love to be in a cold area but if i lived there long enough you adapt right so um i just had to uh learn to um adapt to that because it was the only way I could achieve great condition and being a lot bigger. But no, so my carb would, you know, consist of maybe one or two meals going into the show.

And sometimes my carb up would be like two spoonfuls of oatmeal. And, you know, I would literally like light up like a candle. So kind of like, you know, if you if you if there's a fire going on in a room and there's a deficit of air, you know, so hence me just eating protein and no carbs. As soon as you open a door, the fire just it takes on a different life. It explodes. So, you know, what I found after going so long on zero carbs, all it took is just very little for my body to explode. I think Joel and Carl right now have a full erection, by the way, because what you're speaking about is stuff that these guys are, not only have they practiced a lot of the same things you're mentioning, but they also have studied it quite a bit. Joel, what have you kind of seen, you know, in people that, you know, switch to kind of lower carb diet for a period of time

and then they bring the carbs back in? It's kind of my understanding that in some cases, the carbs can almost act as being more effective as long as that's not done for too long. If we go keto for too long or kick the carbs out for too long, when we bring the carbs back in, it can sometimes be problematic. What have you seen? I've seen a lot of our, what I've seen, right, people that are coming off certain dietologies, like they did keto for three years or they did carnivore for a couple years,

and their insulin sensitivity has really kind of gone out the window and they're having to retrain that back in so um i would i would use the analogy insulin sensitivity is it's somewhat like a muscle if you're not training it it withers with use or disuse i i think you're right in terms of um there's a push pull between if you do it for a while you kind of go a little car but actually the reverse effect actually primes and some sensitivity um and then over the really long haul at least what i'm seeing a lot of is it um seems to in many cases um wither and then you kind of have to train it back in how about for you carl yeah i'll go. I would just say it's not for everyone. Some people just define the laws of everything that we learned or we taught. So I remember that had Ronnie try to go zero carbs. And I remember Ronnie telling him that he passed out. He went hypoglycemic and almost had to go to the hospital.

And he was actually having three times the amount of rice I was having, and he still went hypoglycemic. So it's just, everybody's just so different. You just can't build a platform for anyone just because it worked for somebody else. It has to be specific, and everybody has to be able to tolerate that. In your quest to get bigger, Flex, when you went, you know, 216, 218 to being 260, did you lift a lot heavier or like what did the training look like? No, it was always the same. I mean, you know, back then, if you didn't bang heavy and hard, you basically got your ASS whooped and kicked out the gym.

So, you know, my training partners was Rico McClinton and Chris Cormier. And we just not really, I guess, trying to do it, but we just were known to just throw some serious weight. We'd challenge anybody who came in to try to, you know, F with the trio. I remember, you know, a great friend of mine, Lou Ferrigno, you know, I had the honor of competing on stage. I mean, I don't know how many of you have actually been able to compete with your childhood hero, but just to stand on stage with the Incredible Hulk

is just, you know, I was just beside myself. But I remember the first time we met in the gym, he was actually, he was inclining benching, and me and Rico and Chris were incline benching on a bench next to him. So we would always, you know, we just always F with people, not being rude about it, just competitive, having fun. You know, it was all on love and respect. So, you know, every time Louie threw another plate on, we'd throw another play on, you know, and he and he did a couple of reps and then we all threw on four plays and we knocked out 10, you know, and then Mariko and Chris went a little bit higher. I think I went to like 465 and you

kind of just looked at like, you guys are strong, you know, so we are in disrespect, you know, but it was like that back then. But but no it's just an evolution of continuously doing the same thing you just get better and better if you you know if you're a martial artist you know um and you keep kicking you know you just get better and better at that kick you you it's it becomes lighter becomes faster becomes you know just second nature it's like you know bruce lee said i i fear not the man who practiced a thousand kicks. I fear the man who practiced one kick a thousand times. So imagine that, you know, doing the same kick over and over and over a thousand times. Imagine how supreme you're going to be at doing that.

I mean, people are going to know that you're actually throwing that same kick, but there's nothing they're going to be able to do about it. So it's just an evolution of just being in a gym and training. So you just get you know stronger and stronger uh again it all depends on your body type and everything but you know the same thing with sprinters or mma or grapplers they do the same thing over and over so you take a a grappler or a wrestler from the age of eight or whatever they're doing the same thing at the age of you know know, 29 or whatever, but they've been doing it so long, there's some more superior at it. So it's just kind of an

evolution of it. And were you able to get bigger, um, with, uh, without carbs or was that a different part of your career? No, well, I actually, the heaviest I was, was on zero carbs. And, um, there's a famous, uh, photo of me, um, doing back, uh, doing back, standing back rows and Charles glasses and reflection of the mirror. And all you can see is my back. And at that time, I was I think I was 269 going down to 249. And at that size and weight, my back is all striated and everything but it just you know it just felt great to me i didn't have a problem going zero carbs um i had tons of energy um you know and i can just go in a gym and just bang super super hard so i didn't lose my strength or anything like that it just really worked well for me we have uh go ahead i just want to i just want to

quickly say i've seen them popped up on here, so F Michael Hearn. Yeah, I got to say the same exact thing. Before we get to Michael Hearn, we're in the presence of some greatness over here. We have one of the strongest female powerlifters of all time. We have Jen Thompson has stepped into the room. And for those of you that aren't familiar with Jennifer Thompson, you guys need to do your homework because this girl, this woman is an absolute beast. I think a 314 pound bench press.

She has some all time world records. I want to say in like the 140 ish pound class. Hopefully I'm not way off with that. Welcome to the room, Jen. Am I way off? What did I do? I fuck everything up.

No, it's like 135. Plus 140. And I hit 330 bench the other day. Oh my God. You need to update my resume. Yeah, you guys have never seen anything like it before.

I had Jen at Super Training Gym at one point and she was on racking on a bench press 500 pounds, and it just didn't make any sense to me. I'm like, how does this, you know, normally, you know, I'm used to seeing guys that weigh 300 pounds, you know, be able to do that, and just to see a woman do that and to hold the weight there for 10 seconds as she was, you know, just working on getting herself conditioned to the heavy weights was unbelievable. And then on top of that,

I tried to work out with her, but it didn't really work out so well because she did so many exercises. I was like done after two or three and she went on to do like eight or 10 exercises in a day. So I was like, I need to just go home and lick my wounds. That was one of the best times. I got to get out to super training again. I'm really enjoying listening to all the speakers on here, especially a lot about carbs. You don't think about, you know, carbs or something as a power lifter to worry about. But a lot of us are in tight weight classes where, you know, we do really worry about carbs.

And there's the fine line between, you know, getting enough carbs for energy and then putting on too much weight and carbs are the best carbs to get. So I really am enjoying this conversation. Jen, how have you been doing this for so long? I mean, how long have you been powerlifting for? Well, my first competition was in 1999. And i'm so excited they're having uh usa powerlifting run june uh give me an opportunity to go for my 10th national um title oh my god and then how are the squats and deadlifts and stuff going these days are they're still moving along pretty nicely yeah i heard uh joel a little bit talk about uh injury and so injury and so I'm actually up with all this COVID stuff was actually sort of good timing for me because I'm coming off a broken pelvis so I've had to do

a lot of training and get ready back for that so I'm finally just starting to hit some PRs in my squat and get my deadlift back up for where it used to be. So I'm pretty excited to come back at 47 and show these youngins that I still got it. I absolutely love it. That's incredible. What do you think has been a key component to you staying healthy and still being able to, I mean, a 330 pound bench when you were already benching, you know, 314 pounds and already just having tons of strength. Do you think there's a big genetic component in there along with maybe some of the things you're doing in your training? I don't know about genetics. I'm not really built for a bench presser.

I'm tall for my weight class. I got really long arms. But we've always been really focused on form and technique and never breaking that. And so I honestly just think that that's been a savior of all these years. I've never had any shoulder problems, any back problems. I think just because we kind of have a staying in our gym, it's better to miss with good technique than to get it with bad. So, you know, you want a good miss, not a bad win.

So I think just sort of that philosophy has, um, kept us. And then we've always been for power lifters, like you were saying with all the exercises, um, we've always been huge into accessories. Everyone's always accused me of having more of like a bodybuilding workout than a power lifting workout. But honestly think with all those accessories and making the whole body entirely strong and not just squat bench and deadlift, that's been the one thing that's kept my longevity and kept me from being injured. We had Stuart McGill on our podcast yesterday and we were talking about the GOAT. We were talking about Ed Cohn. And one of the things that Stu mentioned was that when you do

a lift improperly, it's important to note, yes, yes, you can lift that way. It's that's, that's going to be a way that you can sometimes make a lift. It may happen here and there, but you're best off having that happen to you in competition and really trying to, uh, really you're doing your best to manage that. That doesn't happen in your training because what happens is when you make a lift with bad form you're polluting the whole system and you are encoding the whole system you're like you're you're signaturing your muscles to say hey i'm signing off on this this is the correct way to lift and that's like embossed into your muscles it's yeah it's it's basically it's kind of stuck there in a way and then you

would have to sort of work on relearning how to do the lift the right way. And I think Ed Cohn and yourself, I think both of you have done an amazing job of staying in your lane, making sure you're making the lifts. because, uh, you know, we get excited and we, you know, we think we're going to be able to make these lifts. We get fired up. And, uh, another person I've seen do a great job of this is Michael Hearn. Michael Hearn, you know, I it's, it's very rare for me to see Michael Hearn finish out a very strained lift. The lift is always done the way that it's supposed to look. And, uh, I've never really seen this from him where he's got to like put a weight back that was too heavy or whatever. It seems like most of the time he's doing a really good job of sizing up where he's at and knowing what he's able to actually lift. And as far as I know, you know, Mike has shared with me that he's had some owies

over the years, he calls them. Uh, but I don't think he's ever had a single injury. I don't think he's had a tear. I don't really know if he's ever had any back issues or anything like that. But I think when you go in the gym and you treat it like a martial art, when you kick a bag or you're kicking somebody's gloves and punching and stuff like that, they don't really get you, they don't let you get away with having bad form. But for some reason in the gym, because we get fired up and we like to crank the music and have some nose torque, we allow for that. And we really need to do a better job of managing that. Mike, are you still in the room here, buddy? I think I'm still here.

There we go. There's Mr. O'Hearn. How's it going, man? First time to be gentle on me. Yeah, you've said that before. And it actually turned out to be very, very false. A lot looser than I expected, if you know what I'm saying. Wow. One thirty five, Jen, and a three thirty bench. Truly impressive. Thank you. That means Truly impressive. Thank you.

That means a lot coming from you. No, I just, it's just, uh, I'm sitting here next to a WWE hall of fame wrestler, Billy gun. Who's like six.

I don't know what he means. Six, five to 70. And he can't even bench one 35. So it's, uh, that can't be true of the badass Billy Gunn. That's Mr. Ass that we got on the show right now.

Oh, my God. My husband's favorite thing is to say when we're training, we have friends come over, hey, that's good. You got close to benching, close to 135-pound girl. Nice job.

Everybody that comes in here, which is probably why we have trouble finding people to work out with us. Mike, you're going to have to put, you're going to have to put Mr. Ass on the, on the horn here. Well, I got a question for him. Yeah, absolutely. You want to say anything to everybody here? Yeah. I just want to let you all know that Mike O'Hearn is my best friend. Oh my God. I'm glad. I'm glad somebody

likes him. You can have him. Mr. Ass, I got to ask you a question before you drop off over here. What was it like to have the name Mr. Ass? I mean, that's an unbelievable, that's an unbelievable nickname. Well, it all, it all came around like unexpectedly and just, you know, attitude error, everything you did just stuck. So, I mean, I just ran with it. I mean, no sense in fighting it. So I just started pulling my pants down all over the place. Kind of a weird thing, but it was kind of cool. That was such a fun time in, uh, in professional wrestling. You were part of D generation X and that was, uh, that was amazing. You had the attitude error and then it kind of, uh, shifted over into, into kind of the Stone Cold

Era, which made the WWE go absolutely bonkers when The Rock was there, and you had Undertaker and Kane, and it was unbelievable. I would imagine you probably miss a lot of that stuff, huh? Yeah, you just miss, you know, the biggest thing is you miss the people because they were so, I mean, they were so live. They were so good. They were so full of energy.

You couldn't help but put on, you know, the best show that you possibly could just because the people were so into it. But, yeah, I miss it. It was a lot of fun. I mean, they're they're good today as well, but it was just a different time. good today as well, but it was just a different time. What's it like being more handsome and just a little bit taller than Mike O'Hearn and a little bit bigger than Mike O'Hearn? How's that feel? Well, it feels great. And you knew this was going to happen because anytime you're not talking about Mike, it's just, we have to switch the subject. He doesn't like it, but he has to deal with it. That's why he buried me at first when he came on

your show. You can't bench 135. She outbenches you. She does three times your weight. She's strong and does this for a living. I don't work out for a living. She does real lifting. I don't know about for a living. Let's go back.

Nobody can really power lift for a living but mark bell i think there you go i'll take that i'll take that from one of the goats of power lifting right there thank you yeah yeah mike what do you got going on i know you have something up your sleeve at all times so what do you have going on with your training your diet diet is you want some other diets yeah you mean diet number 10 this week right um i am slicing and i am getting the best shape of my life my career uh right now because we do have uh uh hercules coming up, a TV series. Awesome. Pretty stroked about that and just want to make sure that I come in the very best I can. They got classes this last year, which worked out great with COVID

because I've just been locked down with classes and training. So it's been a nice year for me, actually. You're going to get down to, what, 205 pounds? It's been a nice year for me, actually. You're going to get down to, what, 205 pounds? I will break 240, though. I have found something that Michael Hearn can't do. He cannot break the 220-pound barrier.

He's a big boy with a big old ass. Yeah, 220 was puberty. Right? Yeah. 220 was puberty. Right. Yeah. Your, your lower body, I think is too, uh, too jacked to be able to, to be able to figure it out. How has, uh, you know, some of the restrictions and stuff, you know, I don't believe, I think Gold's gym has been shut down for a while. Um, and I, and I also know that, you know, being in your house before that you've been working on your garage gym for a while, building it up and building it out. Um, did some of the restrictions that they have, they negatively impacted you? Cause I knew, I know that you loved being at gold's gym. You love being there at 4 AM or did you just stroll out to the garage and have it have the same feel lucky enough with the gyms. I've actually been lucky enough where, um where we've had gyms and there's been some

great gym owners in California, which is it, which is, I know a very shut down location, but they've fought against it and kept the gyms open. And then I've got a, a great setup at my house. And then a gold gym itself has been great to me during this last year.

So it's worked out good for me. You know, what was the greatest thing is that, you know, this years I've been having to be in a deficit easily this last 10 years of my career, just guest posing almost every other weekend. And it does damage to the body.

If anybody knows about nutrition, if you're always in a deficit, it kind of hurts you. And, uh, it was nice this year that I got to go off season and, and, and put that memory muscle back on and eat again and get the body functioning again. So it felt great to just, uh, get all that memory muscle back in that size back and went up to a nice 300 pounds. And it just felt, felt great and healthy. How do you, uh, uh manage you know uh just

getting fatter you know i think that's kind of tough for some people um what kind of goes through your mind are you just like i've i'm shifting gears and i'm not going to really uh maybe look at myself in the mirror as much i'm not going to maybe wear as tight of clothes or whatever like how do you personally manage that? Cause it can be kind of a thing that messes with people's minds when they start to gain weight. I know you get the benefit of getting stronger. So do you just kind of shift your focus on to other things?

I think for, for me, and I've been in this game and it was like, Jen was talking about, you know, she was competing back in 99 and stuff like that. And I remember that I was on stage in the early 80s. So the one thing I always accepted and wanted to do is be able to lift my life away. And I love lifting. And so when I got to go off season and put that weight back on, the one thing I knew more than visual is that whatever work I was doing now is going to help me to be able to continue my career and give me some more years in the industry. And so that's what was most important relative to the visual. I could always get in shape if my body was functioning correctly.

So that was the main. It wasn't about, hey, can you do a photo shoot today and be on the cover of the magazine? Well, no, but my healing of the body and making sure any always are okay. And stuff like that. Like you were talking about earlier, always we all get these always and stuff. And so calories help you recover and help you take care of those always.

So it was a great year for me. And it was just the focus on the future and the future, my possibilities of doing hercules and all this and you're 50 plus years old right dude i'm 175 what are you talking about oh you're almost you're almost up there with big will i think big will told me at one point why do you think i ended up with a romanian girl you know what? And I want to say that I used to think that it was a dream, but that would be weird for Big Will to be in my dreams. But I think he actually did tell me in person that he's a vampire and that he was about 375 years old. And he was very serious about it.

Has he ever told you that he's 375 years old before? Do you remember him with the fangs? Absolutely. He actually got fangs put in? Yeah, I was like, what happened to you? He said, I turned into a vampire, Smelly. I was like, what the? He really did turn into a vampire. It's a very uncomfortable

conversation. I don't know, man. It was crazy. We have Zach Bitter in the room, too. And I'd love to, uh, get some commentary from him. Cause Zach might have some questions for some of the powerful jacked people in the room. Zach is a, uh, long, long, long distance runner running over, uh, a hundred miles and doing these, these crazy, uh, endurance feeds. So he's on the opposite side of the spectrum. Uh, then the spectrum than us people that like to pick up some heavy ass weights. How's it going, Zach?

Yeah, Mark, I was just going to ask if anyone has any tips of how you go from 140 pounds to 280 pounds? You're going to have to eat a lot, lots of food. Is that what you weigh? 140? That's usually what I'm at about when I'm ready to do a race. So it ranges a bit in off season and things like that. Is it ever helpful for you to, uh, I mean, I would imagine it's helpful for you to gain weight, to be able to, uh, you know, perform in the gym a little bit better, gain some strength, do so in a safer fashion. And then do you usually, you know, do you try to lose weight going into some of the things that you're doing or do you just end up losing weight because you're running a lot? Yeah. The funny thing is like when I get into kind of the peak training phase,

it's like almost force feeding at that that point because there's days where I'm eating two to three times my resting metabolic rate. What I like to do is after I finish a big race, I'll take some downtime and intentionally gain anywhere between probably two to three to maybe up to five pounds. probably two to three to maybe up to five pounds. And then when I kind of start it makes it just a little more easy because for the first like third or so of it, I don't have to necessarily be eating past satiation because I've got that little bit of extra weight on. And I just kind of let that dwindle down. And then once I kind of hit goal race weight, that's when I have to start kind of focusing on maybe eating sometimes when I'm not hungry and making sure I don't dip below that. We had Flex Wheeler earlier talking about his experience with some really, you know, really low carb diet type of stuff, which I never even actually knew. Flex and I have never talked about it previously,

but you utilized a lot of low carb stuff and have gotten yourself to be to the point where your body can maybe a little bit more efficiently run off of some fats and stuff. Can you give us some commentary on what helped you to lean towards this and how has it worked for you? Yeah, yeah. I've been kind of skewing low carb since the end of 2011. So I've been doing it for about 10 years now. And my original kind of catalyst or draw towards it was when I first started kind of racing ultra marathons more exclusively. And that just kind of opened up some doors since it is relatively low intensity due to the increased duration. You have a few more options in terms of the rate at which your fuel source kind of gets to you.

So fat burning was a little more conducive to managing some of the logistics and longer workouts and races just because I was able to kind of reduce my kind of intra race fueling needs avoid some of the the stomach and digestive issues you get from trying to run and eat at the same time uh the the way I kind of went about it was I started with kind of a more of a strict ketogenic diet just to kind of get my body kind of used to that way of eating. And then once I, I started kind of picking up training again for, for a buildup, I started playing around with like, what is a low carbohydrate diet look like in the context of my life? Like where I am in training, if I'm recovering versus peaking and all that sort of stuff. So what I kind of found out in the first couple of years doing it was there was some reason to

be a little more flexible with what I kind of considered low carb and be a little more periodized with it. So like off season, I'll oftentimes dip quite low into kind of a classic ketogenic type range of 50 grams or less. As I start to kind of build up some of the lower end aerobic type workouts, I'll up the carbs a little bit, but not a ton. I might go up to maybe 100 grams or so phase. And then when I'm hitting some of the higher intensity and higher volume phases of training, I might flex up a little higher and get up to around 150 grams of carbs a day. And essentially what that's done is it's just kind of raised up my fat oxidation rate. So like if I go into like a, into a labbing, get hooked up to all the machinery and stuff, and they look at just like what I'm burning between

carbs and fats throughout various intensities, I'll just have like a much higher fat oxidation rate across the kind of spectrum of intensities. Um, you know, I still can go all out and sprint and be burning a hundred percent glycogen, but, uh, um, I'm not doing that in races. So it's not as big of an issue for me from a performance standpoint. Uh, but I think what I ended up doing when i've talked to guys like dr dominic diagostino and um dr jeff volick and some of the guys who've really looked into this stuff in a lot more detail than than i have and and their message has kind of been that there's probably some application to keeping some carbohydrate around just so you keep you so like so i'm able to utilize that as a tool versus kind of going strict ketogenic or zero carb in in some cases and essentially like eliminate

that tool altogether so that and just kind of working with the ranges of fat oxidation rates that are going to be like optimal for me versus going, going all the way in where, for example, like when I got my fat ox tested most recently, I was right around one and a half grams per minute. So at that rate, it's high enough where I can keep my intra race fueling down to like say 20 to 40 grams per hour versus what I would need if I were moderate to high carb, which would be closer to 60, sometimes even 90 grams per hour. Um, so there's really not, since I don't really get a whole lot of stomach issues when I'm staying like at or below 40 grams per hour, there's not as big of an incentive to dip much lower than what I have been nutritionally

because I just don't really need to improve my fat oxidation rates any more than that. So that's kind of where I got to with those numbers. Awesome. Very cool. What's up, Power Project fam? This episode is brought to you by Element Electrolytes. Speaking of Element Electrolytes, I actually wanted to ask you, Nsema, you being all jacked and tan and all strong and pretty, do you take your Element electrolytes pre or post workout i actually take it uh pre

during and post and sometimes i'll do more than one pack so if i finish the pack of element that i had during like my workout or my jujitsu session i'll pop out another one sometimes post and that hydration really helps my recovery because sometimes after you get done with a really hard workout when you are sweating a lot, you feel sore, you feel kind of tired and you feel drained. There is absolutely no problem with taking more than one pack of element. Yeah. I'm really interested in trying it like a intro workout, right?

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We got Nsema in here as well. And my brother Nsema does jujitsu and powerlifting and bodybuilding. And he's somebody else that utilizes some low carb as well. Yeah, I'm actually driving back home from training right now. Or not home, but I'm driving to the gym for training right now. But Zach, I was actually curious. Do you ever switch things around as far as like your, I guess, fuel for competition? Like, do you ever do,

do you ever employ high carb anymore? Or are you staying with what you got right now? Yeah, it's a good, a good question. I rarely, if ever go above about 30% of my intake from carbohydrate. There's a few days every once in a while where I'll just, like, for example, I was wearing a CGM monitor for a while and I just wanted to see kind of how it responded differently in like a moderate carbohydrate side of things. So I think that day I hit like 50 to 60% of my intake from carbohydrate. But other than like, you know, a couple days a year like that, I'm basically staying in what you would consider at least from a percentage standpoint, low carbohydrate pretty much year round.

Um, yeah, I haven't really, it's really weird since I've been doing it for 10 years now. It's just like, that's where I kind of gravitate towards. So it almost feels like if I were to go and eat the majority of my intake from carbohydrates, it kind of feels the same way as like for someone who's doing their first couple of days of a low carb or ketogenic diet, where it's just like, everything feels like it's flipped on its head. Very cool. Yeah. That's, it's, um, you know, it's fascinating on, on what, once you learn, you know, how your body really operates and what it can operate on and when you start to identify the fact that you don't really need that much dietary carbohydrates to get

a lot of great benefit from carbs. What I personally have recognized for myself is that by getting into like a keto diet and for a little while chasing after ketones and kind of playing around with that whole game and just being very inquisitive about it and learning about it and then experiencing a lot myself, is I learned that it's kind of great to not be in ketosis. here and there. Like maybe you're producing more ketones than the average person because they keep interrupting their ability to produce ketones by eating carbohydrates kind of all throughout the day. And if you just utilize a little bit of fasting, if you utilize a little bit of low carb throughout the day and you're exercising, I'm imagining that you're going to be getting some of the benefits of tapping into, you know, your own body fat, tapping into fatty acids in the body and being able to produce ketones and get some of the

benefits from them. So I think sometimes people maybe have the wrong idea about like a low carb lifestyle, but I like talking more about low carb or being meat minded almost more than I do talking about carnivore or talking about keto. Keto, you know, kind of to me implies that you're kind of at a one-to-one ratio with fat and protein and that just doesn't, it can work really well. It's not that practical and in some sense, it's kind of gross to, you know, eat something so fatty, especially before a training session. I realize you can, you know, rework your day and have it be later on in the day. But I also think it kind of shuts off the ability to eat carbs when you're eating so high fat. So I think, you know, again, like people always talk about the answer lies

somewhere in the middle. And I do understand people have different metabolism. So there's many people that could thrive off of having a higher carbohydrate diet, um, and, and bringing down the fat calories a little bit and having the protein be, uh, you know, one gram per pound of body weight, if they're interested in maintaining muscle mass and maybe even growing a bit while another person could, uh, you know, bring the carbs down to, you know, maybe, I don't know, you know, 100 or 50 and end up having benefits of, you know, producing ketones and being able to run off the glucose as well. Yeah, I really like this guy, Dr. Mike Nelson, who talks a lot about kind of the metabolic flexibility side of that and kind of highlights what you said, Mark, where this and what are you asking asking your body to do and what

give you that ability to shift back in between those two fuels certainly as you need to and um that's kind of the fun experimental side of it at this point I think when you start working with yourself and I'll add I think on this call to is um Douglas um, Douglas Hilbert, who is one of, uh, Verda's, uh, uh, Verda's, um, meat coaches. So he probably has a lot of information along the lines of just working with people that kind of maintain what Verda would consider a low carbohydrate diet as well. Yeah, that's great information. Uh, we got a question from a listener uh why don't you go ahead cool so i just invited him to speak as well as uh the douglas that zach was uh referencing but

daniel uh what what you got man hey what's up can you hear me we can there we go um thanks for inviting me up i really appreciate it mark and chris i uh first heard y'all on the peter atia podcast uh way back when and really love what you guys are doing in the health and wellness space. Just breaking things and making forward to it next year. I was wondering, what's your primary kind of like fat source? And are you incorporating any, any organs in your diet? Yeah, that's some, that's something I've probably played around with quite a bit over the 10 years I've done it. I've kind of, once I kind of found the macronutrient ratios that work well for me during certain phases of training, then it was just like, well, how do I get creative and switch those up within that framework to see like what particular foods I both, both kind of prefer or feel better on. So, you know,

I've done everything from, uh, just a very low animal product versions of like a lower carbohydrate to like almost strict carnivore versions of it. Um, at the moment I'm kind of probably somewhere in between with a, a fair mix of the two. So like some of the primary ones would be like from the animal side, lots of like egg yolks, uh, fatty cuts of meat. Um, usually the fat leftover from the amount of meat I'm consuming is, is enough, but if not, then I'll use like butter or ghee and things like that. And on the plant side, I'll do quite a bit with like, uh, olive oil, um, sometimes like almond oil and things like that. If I'm just putting it on top of stuff like nut butters and things like that, when I'm in higher training and just like trying to match the calorie need and things like that. From a little more of an engineered side of

things, I'll do, I work with a company called S Fuels that makes some like kind of, it's essentially like the fat version of like what you would get from like a Gatorade powder or something like that. So they've got a couple options that I'll use for training purposes when the intensity is low and I want some fuel on board, but I want to stay away from carbohydrates. And those are tend to be kind of my go. Um, I should add, I've been quite a bit of dairy recently too, just to kind of see, see how that goes. So like full fat yogurts, cheeses, um, that kind of, kind of thing too. How has that been working? You feel like that's been working pretty good? Yeah. You know, I've gone, I've gone back and forth with dairy just as it's, it's kind of like eggs where like one day you'll see all this positive stuff about it. The next

day you'll hear a bunch of negative stuff about it. So, um, you know, I've, I've gone through phases where I cut it out altogether. And when I brought it back the last time, I went with a lot more fermented products at first. And what I've noticed is I can eat quite a bit of dairy from full-fat versions, especially if it's hard cheeses and that sort of stuff um if i'm keeping in some fermented versions of it so at first i would only like fermented stuff like yogurts or and hard cheeses sparingly but uh after doing that for about a year or a little past a year i probably split that a little closer to a 50-50. And as long as I'm keeping some of the fermented stuff in there, it seems to be fine to have the non-fermented stuff as well. I haven't noticed any negative side of it. And being from Wisconsin,

I love cheese. So it's nice to be able to keep that in the rotation. And the organ meats kind of, they felt beneficial? organ meats kind of they've felt beneficial yeah yeah i i'll go i'll go through phases where i'll have more of it than than than other times it's been a lot easier now because i think with the most recent kind of push with the carnivore movement you just so many like organ meat all i don't want to say alternatives but i guess like you can get like beef jerky versions of organ meats now and um that sort of stuff too which makes it a little easier to kind of have it if you're not looking to prepare. The biggest hurdle for me is always like, am I going to get around to spending the time to prepare like liver in a way that's palatable versus just quick and kind of choking

it down? You're not going to have to worry about that anymore because I have made something called Mark Bell's Steak Shake. And the steak shake has whey protein in it. It has egg in it. It has beef protein in it. In addition to that, it has liver, kidneys, heart. It's got just about everything that you need in there. And the good thing is I made it taste good. So it comes in chocolate and vanilla and just tastes like a regular protein shake that tastes good. So I'll send you that as soon as we, we're about a, about a week out from getting that product. And as soon as we get it, I'll ship a bunch out to you. You can try it out yourself. Cool.

That'd be great. I think I heard you mention that on one of the more recent podcasts. So I can't remember who the guest was, but you guys were talking about blending steaks, I think. So you mention that on one of the more recent podcasts. So, um, can't remember who the guest was, but you guys were talking about blending steaks, I think. So in my mind, Douglas, uh, if you could chime in here from, uh, Virta health, um, I believe my brother, Chris and I went to, uh, Virta health a while back, but I'm not sure if that was the name of the company. This is a company that wishes to help solve. Yeah.

Yeah. We talked to the boss and I know that that, that company's on a mission to, I think serve like a hundred million people or something like that, that have had diabetes. I can't remember what the number was, but it was something wild like that. And I just thought,

man, what a, what a cool mission this company's on. Can you tell us a little bit about Virta Health and what you guys have going on there? Yeah, yeah. And I'm on the bike, so I try to slow down so I can have a breath. But, yeah, the mission is to reverse diabetes in 100 million people by 2020. And I've been there five years.

Did you meet, who'd you meet? Dr. Finney and Volick or Sammy Inconin? Yeah. We, we talked to, uh, yeah, the owner. Yeah. But we also, we also met with Dr. Finney, uh, on his own also. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I've been there five years. Um, yeah, it's amazing. And yeah, I was just on Zach's show and, um, you know, I've followed you guys for a long time, more into the endurance side, like Zach. But I really like the stuff you guys put out. I mean, coaching is coaching. Right.

It almost doesn't matter what the sport is. The principles are usually pretty similar. And humans are once in need. How do we reverse diabetes? Sounds like a tall order. Yeah. and once in need. So how do we reverse diabetes? Sounds like a tall order. Uh, yeah, you know, it's lowering glucose and, you know, getting people's A1Cs down and at the same time helping them get off some of these diabetes medications. Um, so yeah, so there's, there's a nutrition protocol, it's personalized and individualized and then everybody gets a

medical doctor and a, and a health coach. So that's my role there. Yeah. You know, I, I've, uh, you know, just, just in giving out information, you know, on, on diet and nutrition, I've just had so many people, uh, you know, say, Hey, like, you know, I, I've been able to reduce my medication. I've been able to, uh, get off of my medication. And as long as they can kind of, uh, you know, uphold their end of the deal of embarking on some walks here and there and embarking on some lifting and, you know, a decade or longer, reverse their way out of it in like three months. It's kind of unbelievable the things that we can control with our food. And I think that we always just think that we are a byproduct of our environment and we can't really make a change. It's too hard.

That's going to be too much. That's going to take too much time. And we just have a lot of, we do have roadblocks in our way, but I think it's our mindset that really screws us up because yes, you can look at the grocery store and say, Hey, 80% of the food there, uh, is processed food, uh, rather, but you can also look at it and say 80% of the stuff that they call food there at the grocery store is not actually food that was ever meant for human consumption we will never adapt and therefore never be

well I don't know about never but we will most likely not be able to adapt to Cheez-Its we most likely will not be able to adapt to Frosted Flakes or Cocoa Puffs or adapt to Cheez-Its. We most likely will not be able to adapt to frosted flakes or cocoa puffs or cookies or donuts or any of these things that are highly processed, potato chips and so on. And so I think when you start to recognize that, like, hey, you know, you're thinking that there's a lot of convenient foods around, but you're mistaken because those things are not food. And when you become a person that starts to get healthier,

you start to recognize that and you start to realize I've just been lied to because this is all the stuff that's advertised to me every day. It's very rare that you see a steak advertised on TV, but how often do you see Coke and Pepsi? And I think there's nine major companies. There's nine major companies. There's nine major companies that control our food in this country. And we show them respect every day by putting more money in their bank account. And we need to fucking stop doing that shit because we are our own worst enemies.

We are promoting diabetes. We are promoting to reach 100 million people that have diabetes, that to reach a hundred million people to reverse diabetes from, you need to have people that have diabetes in the first place. And we shouldn't be getting to this point. I do understand different people have different metabolisms and so forth, but we should be able to knock the shit out of this stuff. And it should be pretty simple, but we're seeing like, we keep voting with our dollars over and over again. We keep paying these companies every day, millions upon millions upon billions of dollars encouraging their behavior so they can come out with a new form of Oreo cookies that are,

you know, Oreo cookies with like cookie dough in the middle and Oreo cookies with cake in the middle and double stuffed Oreos and this version of Ben & Jerry's and that version of Ben & Jerry's. And it's like, man, I enjoy some of these foods from time to time as well, but they're not really, when you recognize that this is not really food, this needs to represent a very small portion of your diet. needs to represent a very small portion of your diet. The larger portion of your diet needs to come from natural foods that are meant for human consumption, things that we've eaten over the years. And we need to kind of stick to that. Fruit, vegetables, meat. If you stay in that land, 90% of the time, you're going to most likely be a very, very healthy individual without even a lot of exercise, without even a lot of lifting weights and stuff like that. Somebody else want to chime in? Hello?

Hello? Echo chamber? You crushed it. Well, I would say, like you you basically listed all my favorite foods so i know you're it's like uh research chemicals and peptides right it should be labeled not fit for human consumption right and uh yeah i came to this through um you know i'd been a collegiate athlete and then kids and a job and life kind of hits. And I ate myself 60 pounds heavier and into prediabetes and had triglycerides at 400.

And I bought Finney and Volick's book. And to me, I was like, well, this is not rocket science here. Eat real food and stop hitting the donuts and the pizza and the pasta. And to me, it was simple, but it wasn't easy. You know, I think that's where with Virta, where the coaching comes in is like, you know, the plan is not complicated. You know, the medical side can get a little complicated, but, you know, it's more about having that connection and community and human support, you know, to kind of get you

through those nights where you eat that whole pizza and then you feel terrible about yourself and the guilt and shame sets in. And it's always at night too, you know? Um, my dad used to always say like nothing good happens past 11 PM, you know, but when it comes to your nutrition, I think like nothing good happens after you eat dinner. Like once you've eaten your dinner, even if your dinner wasn't a great choice, whatever you're going to eat after dinner is probably going to be worse. You're probably going to be, you know, snacking on a bunch of processed foods and just, just eating calories that you don't need. And I think that if you can start to place that into your brain, that you literally don't need it. And you just have an understanding of,

Hey, I feel like just enjoying this anyway. I re I recognize that I don't necessarily need it and you just have an understanding of, hey, I feel like just enjoying this anyway. I recognize that I don't necessarily need it. Once you start to sort of recognize some of these things, I think it's a little gets a little easier to kick some of these things either out of your life or to just replace them. You know, can I replace my binging and snacking with an apple? And can I say, hey, look, you know, if you want something more to eat, eat another apple. And if you eat two apples and you want something more to eat,

eat another apple, you know, it most likely will fill you up like crazy. It might hurt your stomach, which actually might be a good experience. Cause you might say, shit, man, three apples is too much. Next tomorrow, I'm just going to eat one. You might be able to dial it back or find things that are just low calorie. I've been eating a Jell-O here and there and like Jell-O has like 10 calories in it. So if I ate 10 of these little cups of Jell-O, it's a hundred calories. Like what's that hurting? That's not, it's not a negative impact on my insulin and my glucose levels. Cause there's, there's no sugar in there.

I mean, it might have some artificial sweeteners and that's debatable on whether that's how bad that is for us or whatever, but you know, just see if you can make a little bit better decision. And I, I see so many people saying, I hear so many people saying, Oh,

it's just so hard, man. There's so many, uh, convenient foods around me again motherfucker those are not real foods stop being a pussy that's not real food don't let your mind be weak don't let people trick you stop falling for it it's time that we wake up and have an awakening when it comes to our food chain and that we recognize that that is not nutritious for us at all. It might be pleasurable,

but it's, it doesn't have the nutrients that we need in order to make progress in order to sustain our life. We, we literally don't have an actual need for it. I know how difficult it can be. I've been trapped by food myself many times and I still fall into these traps. I still, but it's just for those types of foods are, if you just can kind of put them in a category of like, those are things that are for pleasure. Those are things that are for maybe a slight form of entertainment, but how, you know, how much of your life should you have to be entertained? You know, that shouldn't be something that you have to go to all the time.

And even on top of that, we've got to be really careful with our children that they're not going there all the time. You know, you want to provide your kids with good options, good healthy nutrition, good healthy options, rather than, you know, saying, oh, we're going to eat these steaks and this fish, but we're going to cook some frozen pizza up for the kids like that is that's neglect and their life in your hands, to me, that's a form of abuse in a sense. And I know that people might think that that's a little crazy and that's a little wild.

And I'm not saying we don't cook pizza in my house for my kids. We do sometimes. But be in recognition of what it is that you're doing and just work on making better decisions more often rather than making the shitty decisions. Mark, would you say that it's, is it physical or is it mental, right? Because we eat dinner, we're stuffed, we're good. But why do we still kind of poke around the pantry and look for like the opposite of whatever it is that we just ate?

We ate something salty, we want opposite of whatever it is that we just ate. We ate something salty. We want something sweet. What is that? Yeah, I don't feel like it's physical. Um, some people might, it's debatable, you know, whether, you know, how addicting food is, but I do know the more, I do know the closer that you have your relationship to some of these foods, uh, the easier it is for them to come back in your life. You know, when you continually get a taste for them, you want to hit that taste up again. You're like, man, I would, I could really go for that. That would be great. But the more that you get into them and, or the more that you get away from them and the more

that you lean into your goals and the more that you, it seems like the more perpetual motion that you get, it feels like you got like a speed boost, like you're a video game and you got a little power up and you find yourself moving a little faster than normally. Like, shit, man, that kind of put me through a warp zone. I was just able to get right through that without a problem. And I think that a lot of times we're like right there on the cusp, but we don't know that we don't realize that we're there. And it's really easy to get involved in environmental stuff. You know, somebody

else in the household goes and reaches for something and you see what they have. And then you're like, ah, I'm without, you're like, I'm missing out. I want to participate in that as well. And there you are, but you don't have to, you don't have to not rummage through your pantry. I mean, first of all, people shouldn't have a pantry. There's really no reason to have a closet full of stuff that's not actually food. Like, let's just get that out there for now. Right? Like, it doesn't make sense.

And to have a whole entire, like, closet full of it is fucking ludicrous. It doesn't make any sense at all. A refrigerator is good enough as it is. That has a lot of calories in it that you don't have to fight for as well, which the human body is designed to go and fight for calories. You have to fight to get your calories. You have to hunt to go and get your calories. Now we just pop to the fridge and get them. But you should be having, you know, you should lean towards fresh foods more. When it does come to your pantry, since this is part of our life and we can't be too ridiculous

with our recommendations, scale things back, man. You know, get things that are, there's packages of food that say 100 calories on them. So if you wanted to, and if you can control yourself, but most people can't, if you're, if you're a person that feels like you can control yourself and you can have one thing of cookies, that's 200 calories. It's probably not a huge deal because it's probably a drop in the bucket to your overall 2000 calories that are required, uh, for you to maintain your body weight or even, uh, to assist you in losing some body weight.

It probably doesn't matter much when you ate, you ate well the whole day, you ate your steak, you ate your, whatever, whatever your diet is, you followed your plan. And then after dinner, you wanted something sweet. Like I can see people doing that without any problem at all. Or you can kind of go my route, which is I buy like, I usually buy like keto treats or I try to do something that's not going to have what I would consider like a negative impact on, uh, raising my glucose and spiking my insulin levels. So I try to go with a lower carb option. So I may have something like chalk zero. Um, I may have,

I mentioned the jello earlier. I might have yogurt and slingshotero. I may have, I mentioned the Jell-O earlier. I might have yogurt and slingshot protein. Like I try to do things that are just, you know, I'm trying to do things that are just less offensive to my body and just not going to harm, not going to really cause any further harm. And I'm trying to do stuff that's not going to set me back at all. If you are a rule follower and you are someone that can be organized, you can very easily say, you know what, I'm going to allocate 500 calories

every other day, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or I'm going to allocate 500 calories just on the weekends because I want to enjoy a little extra shit with my wife or whatever on Saturday and Sunday every week. And you can do that and you can have a perfectly normal and very healthy lifestyle and probably not really run into a lot of negative risk factors that we're talking about here today and talking about things like diabetes. You know, you can certainly, I know people that do that and they look great, they're in great shape. So there's a lot of stuff that you can do if you're able to follow a rule,

but there's a lot of stuff, if you're not a rule follower and you've always struggled with food, you need to trace the food back to where it's actually coming from. What if you're obese, I think that there was probably some childhood trauma. It appears that that's the case with most people that are obese. I think 60% of our population is obese at the moment.

And when I look around, I see 80% of the population being over fat. They're just not quite labeled obese yet because we keep upping the level of fatness that you're allowed to be, to be obese. So I think, you know, when you're, when you're, when you're examining how you are supposed to deal with these things, you need to examine yourself. I need to learn to know yourself. If you had a childhood trauma, I would encourage you to go and get help for that because if you can clear some of that shit up, it's going to be so much easier to make progress with your nutrition. And I'm going to tell you why right now. You need to be a healthy person in order to lose weight and to not gain it back again.

Anybody can lose weight. Anybody listening to this right now can lose 10 pounds in two weeks. Anybody. Eat chicken breasts. Eat three chicken breasts a day. Three of the biggest chicken breasts that you can find. Eat three of them a day, every day, and maybe some vegetables. Three of the biggest chicken breasts that you can find. Eat three of them a day, every day. And maybe some vegetables. You'll lose 10 pounds in two weeks. You will be 10 pounds lighter in two weeks from now.

Anyone can lose weight. Is that an effective plan for you to keep the weight off? No, it's not. You also lost the weight pretty quickly. And when things come really rapidly, oftentimes they're not sustainable. It's almost like, even though you may have earned it through doing that for two weeks, you kind of are shortcutting something and you're cutting back on calories so far that you better get ready for a rebound. And not only will you gain 10 pounds back, but you're going to gain 20 pounds back. You're probably going to gain back

almost double. And the reason for that ricochet backwards like that is because you didn't really learn nutrition. You didn't develop a new skillset. You didn't build in all the habits that are necessary to continue down the path of success. You only tried to memorize something for a period of time. What happens in school when you memorize a test or you memorize, sorry, you memorize the questions that are on the test, right? Or you memorize the answers that you need, right? You memorize these answers and two weeks later, they're gone because you didn't really earn them because you didn't really truly them because you didn't really truly learn them but if you went into the library and you actually studied and you dove into the

history of you know abraham lincoln or whatever this whatever this test is on and you started to you know read some of these things and you started to get fascinated by these things you're like oh shit i you know he did that i wonder if that's true and you go to look at another things and you started to get fascinated by these things. You're like, oh shit, you know, he did that. I wonder if that's true. And you go to look at another book and you look at another, and then now you actually have, you actually have a better understanding of what it is you're talking about. When it comes to nutrition, you need at some point to develop a skillset. The principle of awareness is a, is a massive part of being able to lose body weight and to continue and to keep it off. And if you're not aware of what you're doing and why you're doing it, um, you're going to kind of always be lost and you're going to always have potential

to regain that weight. then some. Boom. That was fucking awesome. I loved it. Yeah. So we still have Zach in the room. Uh, Boris still here. What's up, Boar?

That was a great, really was. Yeah. I got all fired up. I don't know what's going on over here. I'm four days into my fast over here. So I don't know. I'm losing my mind.

This whole time you've been levitating, but did that make sense? Did any of that make sense? I don't know. I'm losing my mind. This whole time you've been levitating by the way. Did that make sense? Did any of that make sense? I don't know. The entire thing made sense. And the best thing that you said was to, um, like, why does somebody have a pantry? It's the stupidest thing ever because it's not really food. Right. Yeah. And I think that that's kind of a stupid word too. Well, that's the center of a lot of this. You told me to throw out my couch because the couch is in the way you know like they sound ridiculous but these are things that people really need to think about i shit my couch a couple years ago that's one way to get rid of it do you remember that

bore i had that like i got really sick around thanksgiving you remember that i think you shit every couch you have that's probably i i had actually, I had to actually get rid of my couch because I shit my couch. Things happen when you, you know, when you get sick, when you're experimenting with nutrition. Last night I got a nice surprise. I was, I was like in my bathroom, I'm like brushing my teeth and I just tried to let out like a little bit of a fart, which I don't even know how I still have farts inside of me. And I like, it was, it was not a shart. It was just like, I didn't even really feel it. I wasn't even really paying attention. Cause I was like brushing my teeth. I'm doing something totally different. And I completely shit my pants. Well, it was just

you explain to everybody your new diet, just not eating any. Oh, just keep making yourself, uh, have to shit all the time. Yeah. That was your new diet. We didn't really come up with a name for it yet, but like, it's like a blowout diet, right? You like eat all the stuff like chicory root and allulose and all the stuff. You eat stuff that you eat stuff that you can't actually digest and all the ingredients of every keto products.

We were saying it's different than, uh, what anorexia bulimia is a bulimia when you throw up. Yeah. It's like bulimia, but it's out your ass. It's new. It'll catch on.

It'll, it'll, it just needs a catchy name and it's gold. We're working on it. I thought it was vegan diet. I think MCT oil and uh sugar alcohols and you'll be right there with me you know but i didn't know what to do with myself because i was still fully clothed and i'm like i'm like i don't know where to turn i'm like i'm gonna go into the

bathroom and see like and i was like i can't go into the bathroom can't address the damage and yeah i can't i'm like i first of all I didn't know how much damage occurred And it just blew out all over my Underwear and my shorts I started feeling it trickling down I'm like my only option right here Is to go into the shower With all my clothes on

So I just barely took my shirt off I listened to the best advice I ever got From Andrew I kept the knees kind of soft I kept them bent cause if I tried to you know if I tried to run into the shower with flex knees I A would have slipped and B might have shit my pants even more

so I turned the shower on and I had to shower all this shit off literally and then I had to try to wash my shorts and my underwear in there which i probably should have just thrown them away but i i just i didn't know i didn't know where to turn i didn't know what to do and now they're just they're sitting there in the shower like drying and andy's gonna be like what happened like why you know why are these part yeah yeah yeah now i

gotta explain to her like your husband that you've been married to for 20 years just totally shit himself grown ass man I'm supposed to be but I'm still having some elementary problems you ever wonder if that happens to women what's that boar you ever wonder if that's like stuff like that happens to women it's not

it's not supposed to it's not supposed to i don't know it's not supposed to happen to anybody but it must happen well women definitely have mct oil blowouts just like anybody else i'm sure did you finish brushing i i never yeah i i you know i i never did finish brushing no i mean i brushed later on that night, but it was bad. But since you're not eating anything, you don't have to brush anyways. That was a surprise, though, is that I didn't even know, like, I haven't shit in three days. And then I just squirt, okay. Yeah, and something just squirted out, and I was like.

That's from a fast that you took shit like that? Yeah, I know, and, you know, I was kind of excited because I was like, this means I'm going to take a shit. And it never happened. I just shit my pants. I guess I got it all out in one shot or something. I don't know what happened. I got to talk to Joel Green about this. He'll be able to dissect it.

I can rewind. One thing that really, really induces it is coffee and nicotine. Well, I did have bulletproof coffee, and I know sometimes the MCT oil can get the better of you, but I don't usually have issues like that. But in comparison to what's in your system right now, if it's 100% MCT oil, even if it's just a little bit, it's still 100%. Right. And I also have some electrolytes which i've had electrolytes mess with me before i've had like you know some magnesium and sodium and stuff and it's like it could get weird bam that stuff might come flying run right down your leg

zach zach must have shit himself on all these quote-unquote runs right oh yeah right like mile 98 trying to get to mile 100 don't, like, you poop when you trot. Runner's trot or something they call it, right? Yeah, I don't know if there's a name for it specifically, but every runner's got a story, for sure. That's gotta be awful. You're just, like, out in the middle of nowhere and you're like, holy

shit, literally. Yeah, well, middle of nowhere and you're like, holy shit. Literally. Yeah, well, middle of nowhere is not too bad because no one's watching that. It's when you're in the middle of the city where it becomes an issue. Yeah, you're like, people are going to judge me if I just go on the side of the road here and take a dump. Especially if it's not tapered. Those damn runners! You know when you see

it that it's not dog poop you know can't hide it daniel you have another question are you still around yeah man i got questions for days how many uh scoops of that shake mix did you have before you uh defecated how many who i know i'm looking forward to the uh the oregon shake protein shake oh awesome yeah yeah you're beta testing it which is why uh he had this leakage oh he's thinking that's that's the reason for the poop no no no i shit myself because of bulletproof coffee yeah if i can talk about the steak shake for just one second, obviously I'm biased, but it was one of the best things I've ever had.

I made a shake, and I never have done this before. Made a protein shake with the chocolate, drank it, and then immediately made a protein shake with the vanilla and immediately drank it. And I have to say the steak shake is going to be a staple of my carnivore diet. Yeah, I'm super excited for it it looks like uh we're about one week away from receiving it and then from that time period probably be about another week before we release it so it should be uh it should be ready like in march you know right around right around the first week of March, we should be able to launch that bitch. Will it, like, you know, we mix slingshot protein in with coffee and stuff. Is it going to mix about the same or I guess we don't know until we... Yeah.

Yeah. It does everything the same. Okay. I mean, you know, mixing a whey protein type thing into a hot coffee is always kind of a difficult thing. It kind of... It curdles. Yeah.

It kind of curdles and doesn't work well. But in a cold coffee, absolutely. You'll be able to blend it right in there. It was actually Tom Thornton that told me, he's like, hey, just let it chill. Literally, let it chill for a little bit. It can still be hot. Right. And then you mix it with the coffee and the protein.

Yeah, it works out great. Yeah, you let it cool for a second or throw an ice cube in there and you're good to go. Yep. Anyway, we're going to drop off here. Really appreciate everyone listening and participating and asking questions. Good to catch up with you, Zach. It's been a while. Yeah, thanks

for having me. It was the first clubhouse thing I've done, so it's pretty cool to check it out. Feels good to have popped your cherry. Feels good. Thanks, everybody everybody for listening. I appreciate it. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later. Bye!