Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 195 - Mike Mutzel

Episode Date: April 25, 2019

Unpublished but not forgotten. Episode 195 slipped through the cracks and never saw the light of day, at least here on the audio only side of the podcast. Our apologies, but please enjoy this great conversation.  Mike Mutzel is a father, husband, urban farmer, and founder of MYOXCIENCE Nutrition, a supplement company that strives to help people maintain and sustain their metabolic health and body composition by supporting the health of their muscle. He obtained his MS in Clinical Nutrition and regularly conducts live webinars and workshops to help healthcare professionals keep abreast of the rapid advancements in the fields of nutrition, metabolism, and immunity. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

This guy always tries to tell everybody he's natural. We've been trying to, we've been trying to, yeah, I know. We've been trying to figure it out. We're like, wait, what? Good genes, man. Yeah, we're good to go. We're ready to go. All right.

Well, you know, and SEMA and I have been talking a lot on this podcast about keeping our mouths shut. I don't know if we do a good job of it. We've been talking a lot about the mouth tape, and I've been recommending it to people. But some of these things are not in my wheelhouse of knowledge. What does something like that do for somebody when they tape their mouth shut when they go to sleep? Yeah, that's a really great question. I mean, it's a game changer, right, for your sleep and recovery and everything like that. Well, it turns out, and let me just pause. I'm not a sleep expert. I've just learned from a sleep disorder specialist,

Mark Brehena, who I'm actually skiing with tomorrow. So that's part of the trip here. I got to link you guys up. He'd be a great person to have on your show. But when we're in REM sleep, rapid eye movement, our muscles become temporarily paralyzed. And so if we're breathing wide open through our mouth, basically our tongue can collapse on our airway and cause hypoxia and hypoxia symptoms. And so it's, you know, the so-called sleep disordered breathing is on the spectrum of sleep apnea. We know that, you know, obesity is kind of a spectrum. You kind of become overweight before you become obese. Well, some people have sleep disordered breathing and they don't really

know it. They just think that, you know what, I'm a snorer or I wake up with a dry mouth. I can't remember things. I'm not recovering and all that sort of thing. And so it's really a game changer. Once you really kind of, and we were talking about this morning, Mark, this morning, when you breathe through your nose while you're sleeping,

you're just, you're not causing that mild stress signal. And so that's the kind of cool thing. So essentially your REM sleep is uninterrupted and that's, what's really nice. So if your tongue is collapsing your airway, you're not getting oxygen. What that's doing is causing the stressing over and over again. And you're not really aware of it. You just wake up unrefreshed. And so it sounds a little barbaric. Like I've posted pictures on Instagram of my daughter. She was four at the time, but she was a mouth breather. So my wife, and it comes back to how we were raised. You're like, we can't have this in this house.

Can't be mouth breathing. Shut up. Yeah. And so a lot of us were not breastfed for a long period of time. So it's kind of a developmental thing. I haven't been breastfed in a long time. I know, man. I mean, for a long period of time, I misspoke there, for a long enough duration. And so our neurological system is not trained. So we were not trained from that early age because if your child is on the nipple, they have to breathe through their nose. And so a lot of us were just given a bottle and we can move the bottle, kids move the bottle in and out, in and out. So they don't really train that neurological pathway. What is a hypoxia? What is that?

Yeah. So it's a dearth or a lack of oxygen. And so- Would that cause you to wake up a lot in the middle of the night? Is that, is it that kind of stuff? It would. And, but most people are unaware that they're waking up. They just, they just wake up unrefreshed and they start to notice like athletes will notice my recovery is not as good as it used to be. My blood sugar is rising. Body fat is accumulating like it didn't used to be. So that's where it comes in. You know, I think it's specifically for athletes, particularly like powerlifting athletes, people that have bigger chest, thicker necks and everything like that.

They really benefit from this. Sounds like he's talking about us. Exactly. Could be. Yeah. Have you been able to solve the riddle of being able to sleep pretty well for yourself? Because for some of us, it's difficult, right?

It can be. My wife is a much better sleeper than I. But what I found, and there's some weird hacks, I don't know if you guys want to get into it, but we turn off the power breakers in our room. We get kind of weird about that. So let's just big picture overview. A good night's sleep starts

with good sun exposure during the day. So that's the thing. So a lot of people think it's all about your pre-bed routine, but it's really like what you're doing in the morning, your daytime, how much light you're getting to expose your retina. So the 10 minute walks that you and Stan have talked about

and a lot of people are doing, which is great. If you do that outside, you're getting a lot of exposure to your brain. It's also worth noting, like, if you're wearing, like, long sleeve or sweatshirt, try to get as much skin exposure as possible. You know, like, obviously you don't want to get, like, any sort of cancer from too much sun exposure, but you do want some, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Get it on your skin. Photoreceptors in the skin, which is really cool. But, and a lot of people, they wear sunglasses,

you know? And so if you're wearing sunglasses, you go from, you get up in the morning, you hop in your car, you go to work, you come home, you feed the kids, you eat dinner and you go to bed. You never really see sun unless you are, you know, making a volitional effort to get out there and do that. So that's a big part of like people have sleep issues and they don't even realize it because they're in the subway, they're indoors. If you're in a major city like Manhattan or New York or, you know, LA, whatever, you're in between buildings, you're not getting the sun either. So that's a big point. And then making sure your room is cold. So we know that like professional athlete teams and so forth, when they have coaches that travel with them, they actually put specialized bedding

on top to make sure that the room is cold. So that's important. Get the TV out of the bedroom. So it's really simple, but a lot of people don't realize that because TV is kind of a way to turn off the brain from overthinking, but it really can be stimulatory, particularly the light that's coming from the TV. We like to turn the Wi-Fi off and then the circuit breaker's in the room. And one thing we like to do is after dinner go for a walk with the kids and just get outside. And so that helps to not only lower your blood sugar, but it's relaxing. So those are some things that we do, but the mouth taping is a game changer too. We're in a time where we seem like in a constant effort to abstain from our desires.

We have to do it all day long, every day. There's so much convenience with food nowadays that you're passing by tons of fast food places all day long. You're trying to avoid snacking, and we're trying to avoid these things that we know that aren't great for us. Do you do a lot of that in your life? And then also, do you piece some of it in here and there? Do you occasionally enjoy some pizza? Do you occasionally like just kind of like let it fly? We've had some people on the show before that don't do that, that just are all in all the time. And I sometimes look at that and think, you know, I, I like to work hard and I like to, uh, you know, uh, get, get the benefits of, uh, of putting in the work. But at the same time, uh, you know, if my kids want to go for frozen yogurt, I can take them to frozen

yogurt and I can watch both of them eat it, but it's a better experience for all of us when we all have it together. You know, it's not, it's not saying I have to like engorge myself with it or anything like that, but what are some of your feelings on some of these things? That's a beautiful question. And I think a friend of mine taught me this quote, you know, everything in moderation, including moderation. So I think if you become too strict about too many things all the time, you're going to break at some point when that is, when it's going to happen, how it's going to happen. It could be porn, it could be online gambling, it could be who knows what. But I think we only have a finite amount of willpower, right? And so people talk about this,

like do your most productive things first thing in the morning and all that. But if you're constantly using willpower to guard against some of these food exposures, something's going to break. And so what we do is when we have like a cheat meal, cheat day, we live a little bit, we'll go for a walk afterwards. Like I just kind of mentioned, we'll go for a hike. Try to balance it out somehow a little bit. Try to mitigate it, right?

And so, because having a little bit of ice cream is better than just going off the rails and having like 14 donuts because you haven't had one in 10 years. You know, and some people do that. And so I think, so what we do is we have ice cream in the freezer and stuff. It's locally made grass fed cows. There's real sugar in there,

but it's a small amount. There's some blueberries in there. So we try to get the healthiest version of that unhealthy food that we can. And so that's what I suggest to people. It's like, you know, just, but don't have it every day because then it becomes a habit. So it's like, okay, Nez, my daughter, she's six now on the weekends. That's what we do. So it's like, we have a little bit of ice cream, put a little blueberry in there, raspberry. And it's just mitigating that having a walk afterwards and making sure that we're active during that day. Now, if we're traveling, sitting all day, we're not going to be having ice cream because it's not going to help us, you know, in that way. And we didn't deserve it. We didn't earn that,

that treat. So that's just my perspective on it. How about for people that find that, like they, cause like I used to eat like a Ben and Jerry's almost like maybe three times a week. And that was like a whole pint. You know, I used to always have a feeling that I craved it. How would you like, what would be the way that you would help people stop that craving? Or is that a craving for something else that they don't really realize? That's a beautiful question. You know, I think this is where fasting comes in as a tool to make you more aware of true hunger cravings versus emotional cravings, right? So, so was that Ben and Jerry's ice cream, was, was that filling some emotional void that you were unaware of? Or was it a truly, I, you know, rocked it in the gym. I did jujitsu. So I'm craving

just calories, right? Fit my macros. Yeah. So that's where I think fasting can be helpful. And I know that this is so controversial, right? Because people say, well, the only benefit of fasting is that you're going to calorie deficit. And other people say, well, it affects your hormones.

And I kind of believe in that camp. But I think the real benefit of fasting periodically, even just intermittent fasting or time-restricted feeding. So say you cut off your feeding window at 8 p.m., you don't eat again until at least 8 a.m. or maybe 14 to 16 hours in there. You start to realize like, okay, this is true hunger again. A lot of us have lost that

because we've been taught by Weight Watchers and I'm not picking on any companies in particular, but that we need to eat every two hours to stoke our metabolic flame. And what we actually see is when you do that, insulin rises and actually slows down fatty acid oxidation. So eating all the time doesn't necessarily raise your resting metabolic rate,

nor does fasting all the time raise your resting metabolic rate. It actually slows it down over an extended period of time. But back to your specific question, I think trying to intermittent fast periodically, if you struggle with a food addiction or some sort of maladaptive behavior related to food, for me, I love kombucha beer. It's like my thing, right? And so fasting has made me realize like, okay, why am I craving this? Is drinking this beer going to make me feel any better? And after I have a sip, I'm like, it doesn't taste as good as I thought it did. Let me have one more. Because you're trying to revisit old memories because food is so interconnected with emotion,

with people and all that. So it's kind of hard to separate that from the food that we eat. So I think fasting can help with that. Yeah, within your desires, I think this is a good thing for people to recognize. There could be a lot, there could be a lot of suffering on the other side of it, right? If you, if you just follow through on every desire that you have, whether it's to go to strip club or snort Coke, or just like, you know, you might have some crazy desires, right? If you fulfill all

those, I mean, you're going to end up in a world of hurt, right? And even if you just follow along with some of the more innocent ones of having some ice cream and kind of just getting that case of the, ah, fuck it. I'm just going to do this, or this doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that much. If I wake up for tomorrow's workout, I'm going to have an extra couple of drinks. It doesn't matter if I eat the ice cream at the end of the night, like, and then it just then that's a cascade of things, and now you're really sliding downhill, heading in the wrong direction. And you're also training the taste buds to the point where your body starts to feel like it needs that, or again, you're craving it.

You want to have that. It just becomes a creature habit at that point. It's a vicious cycle, and scientists literally call this the second meal effect. So if we eat a lot of carbs, your body says, Oh, carbs are coming in. So we're going to respond to carbohydrates. We're going to raise more insulin. And so I think that that consistency matters, not only just for your routines and your habits and everything and holding yourself accountable, but literally metabolically you become adapted to the foods that you eat. And so that's where I tell people, if they're going to do keto, like do keto for like 10,

12 weeks, like be a little bit consistent with that. If you're going to do high carb for a competition, great, be high carb, but don't do one day keto, then I'm going to do high carb and then flip flop around because what you're going to see is your metabolic responses are going to be a little bit exaggerated. So there's been plenty of studies that have shown this. And so I kind of learned this a hard way when I'm doing powerlifting started about a year ago and I was keto for three years prior to that. And then started adding in a lot more carbs. And I was like, wait, why am I feeling shaky now? Why are my blood sugar swings all over the place? And I was kind of like going into the research and there's all this huge body of data called the second meal effect. And I was like, wow, the body's adapting in real time. And it kind of makes sense, right? Evolutionarily and so forth

so that the body can become more efficient when it sees that fuel source again. So yeah, try to be consistent. We get into a lot of conversations about carbs and we get a lot of conversations about fat. You know, you kind of, you kind of pick like, am I going to run off of some carbohydrates or am I going to run off of fat? And I think, you know, we, we kind of protein, which has been, uh, you know, suggested a lot by bodybuilders over the years. I really think that people just, you can't really go wrong with protein. At least that's my, my feeling on it. What are some of your thoughts on like, look, if you just probably follow eating protein first

in every meal, that's probably a really good start to your nutrition. I would agree a hundred percent. The caveat that I like to tell people is you want to have some stimulus to your muscle so that those amino acids and protein and growth factors go somewhere. And so what I see is some overweight people that are sedentary eating like six pounds of meat a day. So I'm like, yeah, that's satiating. There is some thermogenesis that might be increased from the protein and all that. But it's like, I don't know,

where are all those growth factors and amino acids going if you're not adding that stimulus? So, and we know from various studies, I mean, strength is independently correlated with a reduction in mortality, like grip strength. If you look at epidemiologically throughout the world and in different cultures and people are eating all these different diets, grip strength has a, really predicts mortality and living independently. So I encourage people, absolutely,

protein is probably the most satiating. You can't really go wrong with it in terms of a macronutrient, but you need to have that stimulus. For some people that can just be walking, right? But I do encourage, and I know you talk about this a lot, put strength first and strength, I think gives you a nice barometer for how your diet is doing. So if you're doing keto and like your deadlift keeps going down and you're bent, you're like, well, something's going wrong here. And I think strength, you know, kind of predicts like your overall vitality, you know? And so if you're, it doesn't matter, you know, what someone's absolute strength is, it's just relative to their fitness history and their goals. But I really like to prioritize that.

But when it comes down to the macros, what I think is most important is like the metabolic signaling. So a lot of us know that if we go do two different exercises, we hop on the elliptical or we deadlift all out, we do top two max effort. The signaling to our muscles is totally different. Like, yeah, you exercise for 20 minutes,

but you're sending way different signals to your muscle tissue. And I think that's where kind of parsing out what diet is gonna be best long-term for health and even short-term performance is trying to figure out, when you have ketones around, they send totally different signals to your muscle,

to your liver, to your brain, to your heart, to your immune system, then say that metabolic equivalent of carbohydrates. So that's kind of why I think from a longevity standpoint, from an optimal health standpoint, being a little bit more trying to be like high protein, higher fat, and then use carbs as fuel for specific workout in physical events. That's a lot of stuff that Stan Efferding has talked about. You know, you're sending a signal to your body of we're not going to feed you enough

and we're going to try to lose weight. Like we're in forever, almost like starvation mode. And your body's like, hey, like, I don't think, I don't think you know what you're doing up there. Like this isn't a good idea. And it becomes difficult for people to lose weight. And then they kind of end up think you know what you're doing up there. This isn't a good idea. And it becomes difficult for people to lose weight. And then they kind of end up yo-yo dieting and stuff like that because what they're currently doing is a little too difficult. When somebody's trying to just get started, somebody's trying just to kind of put one foot in front of the other, where should someone start?

Do you think somebody should start out by counting their calories? Or do you think they should start with like a keto or just reduce sugar? Where do you think somebody should start? That's a beautiful question. And we were talking about this earlier. Like when I first got into this, a bodybuilding friend taught me how to track macros back in 2001. And that to me was a game changer. I don't track them anymore, but at least it gave me a reference point. It's like when you first go to a new city, you need a map to know where you're going, right? And once you see the map, you're like, okay, Sacramento is oriented like this. Here's I-80 and whatever.

Then you kind of get the landscape. And then once you drive down a few streets, you don't need the map anymore. So that's where I think it can be helpful because obviously calories matter, but they're not the only thing that matters. It matters in the context of hormones, sleep, emotional reactions to food and connections with food, your social isolation. There's a lot of exercise. There's a lot of things that play into that.

So I think starting out with figuring out what macros are gonna work for you, adding in stimulus to the muscle every single day through exercise and 10 minute walks spread out throughout the day, prioritizing sleep. But I think most people can benefit from going on a low carb, you know, moderate to high protein, high fat, because we've been eating carbs forever.

I mean, you know, if you look at, I was at the airport yesterday in Seattle and there was this family of three that was next to me. And there was like this, it was in the American Express lounge. Have you been in those? So they have all kinds of rice and chips and just a bunch of junk. And the parents the whole time were on defense, like navigating, like how much carbohydrates these kids can have. That's like, okay, you can have one pop either now or on the airplane. You have to decide. And they were constantly like navigating that.

So it's like, they don't even know that their kids are becoming more metabolically inflexible, sugar burning and insulin resistant. They're constantly eating this stuff. So I think a lot of us can benefit from going low carb-ish. Is that where you need to stay long-term? Probably not. But like you said, Mark, with Stan Efferding, he talks about this so-called adaptive thermogenesis.

So right now I weigh about 185 pounds. If I were to over-exercise and under-eat, I would lose weight. My resting metabolic rate would go down with that weight loss. And that happens for a lot of people. A lot of people say, I have a sluggish metabolism. I'm just overweight. It's actually not true. If you look at their thermogenic rate and their resting metabolic rate, overweight people have way higher metabolisms. They're just burning the wrong fuel

source. And so it seems that this was research in Spain. What I'm getting back to, they've showed that when individuals lost weight on a ketogenic diet, they didn't have the associated reduction in their resting metabolic rate, the so-called adaptive thermogenesis. And I think that speaks to, again, it's not just calories, it's the signals.

So ketones change the way that genes are expressed. They literally alter these so-called histone deacetylase inhibitors, the so-called HDACs. People can refer to them. When we exercise, we affect these same HDACs. A lot of the oncology and cancer research is focused on these metabolic signaling hubs for how they protect our DNA and so forth. What turns out that a lot of things in food affect these as well, including ketones. So ketones offer unique signaling properties to our metabolic machinery and our DNA that other macronutrients don't. And so going back to where

the hell do I start? Would I benefit from keto? You might be sending unique signaling to your cells so that you don't get that weight loss associated suppression in your metabolic rate that leads to this yo-yo effect. Because we know if you just look at calories, the biggest loser study, did you guys see that came out a few years ago? It was tracking- I've heard of it before, yeah.

Yeah, so these people, their weight's just bounced around, right? Because of this so-called suppression in your metabolic rate. New England Journal of Medicine actually did a study where they tracked individuals for 12 weeks. They said, okay, we're gonna, here's your energy expenditure on a given day. Okay. We're going to drop that by 40%. Okay. So it's just like a pretty aggressive, low calorie diet. They tracked them for 18 months. The diet

was only 12 weeks. So just three months, right? Over 18 months later, they still had a suppression in their metabolic rate and all these hormones, the ghrelin, the adiponectin, the leptin were all suppressed. They were all out of whack. Some were higher than, but yeah, they were misaligned, shall we say. So we don't necessarily see that with keto. That's what I'm saying. Now, of course, I want to just throw this out there. I'm very biased because I've covered, I've interviewed a lot of ketogenic experts. I've personally benefited from this when I was younger, played a lot of action sports, football. My older brother

beat me up pretty good often. So I'm worried about head trauma and things like that. So that's why that's my bias. So I just want to throw that out there. So a lot of people listening are athletes and they're probably pretty concerned about going on keto because there's, you know, some people say that if you eat too much protein on a keto diet, it'll knock you out of ketosis. So first off, is that true? And then the second thing I want to add on to that is like, depending on the individual, let's say they're pretty active. What gram per pound of protein would you suggest that this individual should try and intake? Yeah, these are beautiful questions. Well, I think that idea that if you

have protein on a keto diet, it'll kick you out of ketosis is old science. And a lot of people have talked about that. So what they're referring to is this process known as gluconeogenesis. And that is the body's ability to create glucose from anew. Because let's face it, all three of us sitting here right now, we're both burning sugar, fats, and carbs, maybe ketones, depending upon what you had this morning or last night.

It's just what we're talking about with ketosis, it's a matter of proportions. It's causing more of your muscle tissue, more of your brain to utilize these fats. Gluconeogenesis, if you're in ketosis, gluconeogenesis, that is making glucose from a new is happening. You can't fight it. You want that to happen because your red blood cells, parts of your adrenal gland, various neurons, abs, I call them, scientists refer to them as obligate glucose utilizers. They must have sugar.

So this idea that we should be scared of protein because it spikes blood sugar is totally unfounded. And even like the, I'm sorry, what is it called? Gluconeogenesis, right? Exactly. That happens more because of the supply of protein, right? Like, so it doesn't automatically happen all the time, right? Right, exactly. But it's not going to happen to a super physiologic amount

that you're going to have health complications as a result of it. And so I think if you're worried about protein, what you need to look at is the insulinogenic effect, meaning how does that protein affect insulin? And this is an interesting, you guys saw me have ghee butter just before this because I'm kind of fasted, but I love the metabolic effect that ghee butter offers.

But interesting about dairy, it's low glycemic, but it paradoxically spikes insulin. So that's the thing where it could be problematic. And again, I'm not anti-dairy at all, but if people are worried about protein and chasing ketones, which we can talk about may not be the best thing anyway, then they should worry potentially about dairy.

And then the second part of your question, which is brilliant, is how much protein do we all need? I think, again, there's so many different experts at what, you know, Stu Phillips has different ratios and everything like that. I think if you're active, at least a pound per gram of body weight a day, you know, but there again, does it need to be every single day?

If Mark Bell is traveling, not exercising, do you need to have 240 grams of protein that particular day? Maybe, I don't know. Do you have a competition coming up? It, you know, I think context matters. I like this idea of just like with training, right? Like if I do banded belt squats every week, like I'm adding that same stimulus, my body's going to adapt to that. That could be good for two weeks, but I should change it up and maybe do box squats. I should change up the tempo, the rest.

And I think it's good to kind of oscillate your protein sources, oscillate how much protein you get and fat you get. So like some days, again, I'm not a vegan at all. Some days my wife and I will just have like a vegan day. So we'll do soaked and sprouted nuts and seeds and everything like that just to switch it up. It's like, there's no, we're just like, you know what? We had a bunch of ribeyes yesterday. We feel full. Let's switch it up. And people are like, whoa, where's the protein? It's like, look, humans, you know, we evolved in like unpredictable environments. That's the thing. I mean, I think if you look at historically,

if you were to turn off the power, electricity, running water, food intake would be so unpredictable. And I think at some level, that's good for your body. Yeah, I think it's really important to point out there should be periods of time where you're maybe eating less

because you have a goal to lose some body fat. And there should also be a period of time where maybe you're more focused on either performance, strength, building muscle. And I just see too many people making the mistake of, they just always want to continue to be smaller and smaller. And you're like, Hey, you know what? Like when you continue to try to do that, you start to not really end up with the physique that you wanted anyway, because now you don't really look like you have, you didn't really hold onto your muscle mass. And I think that what you're talking about with, you know, the metabolism kind of like slowing, you know, quote unquote,

slowing down. If we keep changing things and we shift from one thing to another, doesn't have to be all the time, but at least a little bit here and there, we're not going to allow our body to get so suppressed because we did 18 hour fast every day for six months. The body adapts in real time. And anyone who lifts weight or exercise knows that, right? And so metabolically, like when we're eating food, it does the same thing. So yeah, I think it's really interesting to think about, you know, and I think the other thing that people should be aware of, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners already do this, but what I see is I get direct messages on Instagram from people about their macros, and I think the other thing that people should be aware of, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners already do this, but what I see is I get direct messages on Instagram from people

about their macros, what they're doing and everything. And I love hearing from them. I like to reply, but people are afraid to try something new, you know? So they're like, why try keto? But I'm so scared of trying carnivore. So just try it. What are you going to look like the, you should be, you know, uh, constantly like, what, like have a beginner's mind when you approach things. And I think it's, you know, so I'll flip through Instagram and see like different chaos methods, holding bands with kettlebells, doing different things. I'm like, I'm gonna try that. Like, although I have this on the program today, I'm going to play around because I think that's kind of cool. So I think

having this ability and understanding that like, it's okay for you to like customize things for you. But for some reason, you probably get these messages all the time where people get stuck in this. They think they have to be so regimented, but they get kind of stuck in this attitude of they think that they have to do something. I mean, that's the words that they use. They're like, this week I have to do a five by five.

And it's like, well, yeah, maybe you want to do it because maybe you think that's going to give you the result you're looking for, but you don't really need to do it. I mean, there's, you, you, you have a lot of options, you know, and you can, you can audible away from those options. And it's actually probably really wise if you go to bench press and you got a five by five and your shoulder hurts as you're warming up, your shoulder is not going to really feel any better as the weights get heavier and heavier and heavier. So there's no reason to put yourself through this form of torture.

And you've got to realize, look, this is a long road. And hopefully all of us end up doing these things long enough to where we can experience different movements, different sports, different exercises. You've done like a 50 mile bike race. I think you've messed around with some bodybuilding as well, right? You mentioned having a bodybuilding, somebody teaching some bodybuilding years ago. And then more recently, you're doing some powerlifting. What has kind of been your experience with some of these different things and what's

your favorite? Yeah, I love that question. Can I just add one thing there with it, with we were talking about if it fits your macros, right? So like you're saying, you go to the gym, you have to do, you think five by five is on the schedule. So you have to do that. I think the same mistake can be made with if it fits your macros, right? Because you're like, well, I'm supposed to have 2,700 calories today, but I'm full. I guess I'm just going to crush some ice cream, you know? And so I think that's the other part of it, that it,, it's the same analogy with, you have to do the five by five. And so again, I think again, tracking can be great. It gives you that baseline, that barometer, but it enables you to then like eat when you're not hungry or when you have been sedentary or whatever. So I think being able to have a little

flexibility is cool, but yeah, coming back to like what I personally, um, my favorite exercises, you know, right now. And again, it's, I love powerlifting. Again, I'm not the strongest guy in the whole wide world. Um, ironically for my weight, like my bench is the best for whatever reason. Cause for years I did kind of bodybuilding type stuff. I started working out when I was 14, like any, like all of us, you know, we idolize Arnold and Jean-Claude Van Damme and all these, these bodybuilders, you know, one of the first books I ever read, cause I was not a good student early in life was Lee Haney's.

By the way, go back and watch Bloodsport. Everyone listened to the show. Do yourself a favor and watch Bloodsport. It has got to be one of the worst movies ever, but it's great. It's great in so many different ways, but I just, I caught it the other day and my son started watching and I started watching it with him and my son and my daughter and myself, we were just all like, I'm glad that my kids, uh, got to, got to not only see it, but they kind of understood like how cheesy, how cheesy it was. But back then it was like a bad-ass movie, bad-ass martial arts movie. And Van Damme was jacked. He was in amazing shape and flexible too. I mean, he could do splits between chairs. Yeah.

Yeah. I think he's coming back. I saw him on a commercial where there was two diesel trucks. Yep. And he was doing the splits between them. I'm like, he is still around. Thank goodness. Yeah.

Yeah. He's, but his physique, right? I mean, just the symmetry. Yeah. His chest and everything. So I aspired to do that and then started working out, played football in high school at defensive end, um, really wanted to be a bodybuilder. So after five years of putting in the work, I was like, well, I don't look like these guys. I'm looking at the magazines that I've been learning from. So my buddy who taught me about

carb cycling and macros and everything like that, uh, also taught me about gear and anabolics. And so I did a couple of cycles, um, really hurt my back deadlifting. And so I was like, it was like five 15 and I was dieting down. It was after a, a test trend, Winnie cycle for those that care about. And so I was, I got really, really strong, really quick. And then, um, so yeah, so right now I'm like one 85, my first cycle, I got up to two 35. Okay. Um, strong, like way, way strong, crazy. It was, was yeah a lot of people were like no way but i've shared some i've been really open about it on instagram so i've shared some pictures and people like dude i don't recognize that person my face was so much bigger i was not healthy this

wasn't a healthy 235 i was but i was a lot stronger and so um yeah i hurt my back really good and i didn't think i would be able to deadlift or squat again And so going to the gym was just sucked. So I was like and it was my identity, you know This is early college people thought me looked at me as the big guy the strong guy And I was like crap What am I gonna do? And this was when lance armstrong was racing in the tour de france And I had strong legs from squatting and deadlifting and doing all that And my dad was a cyclist and he was like just come on a bike ride with me

And I just crushed him up these hills and all that. And he was like, dude, have you like done any cardio? I'm like, no. And I was like, well, I'm going to just keep doing this because I could put in that same intensity of squatting and deadlifting in a different way. And I could just, and so I could just crush people. And I was like, I just, so I started bike racing and then I wanted to be a pro. So I knew after college, I did the pre-med undergrad biology, moved to Boulder, Colorado, which is where every endurance athlete. So Boulder, Colorado is like Santa Monica or Venice in terms of the golds, the Mecca, like all the pro- That's where you go.

That's where you go. Cause you're training at high altitude in the mountains. So then you go to sea level and race and you just can crush people because your red blood cell saturation is so much higher. So got into bike racing and wanted to be a pro, got into the pro one, two category. There's different categories in that. Just realized there was no real future in that. And so then just went back to my roots and I still lifted weights, but not like I lost a lot of my size riding. And so now I've just been trying to maintain strength. Did you mess with any PEDs while you were cycling? I didn't. Yeah. But I can see how they would really help. Um, because is there any chance that they would hurt in some way? I mean, like you said, you, you know, you got up to like 235, obviously you wouldn't take the same amount and you wouldn't be on like a bodybuilding cycle for

cycling necessarily. But, um, you know, just, just gain, just gain that amount of muscle mass period. Like it still costs you something, right? Totally. Yeah, that's a good point. So if I was to, and I'm not giving advice to anyone on PEDs for endurance purposes, but if I was to do, say, a stage race, like a Tour de France, I think at least like being on 200 milligrams of test a week would be good, maybe some growth hormone, because your recovery is so much better.

And what happens in any, you know, if you're training, doing high volume CrossFit, like CrossFit games, you know, stage race, like the Tour de France or the Giro d'Italia, it's multiple days of really intense physical. So your free testosterone is going to take a dive. And so having that extra testosterone and having some GH in there. It might even just keep you at a normal level, right? Exactly. And so I think a lot of those guys, because I knew that Lance was doping because I could see like the roid muscle. And if you go back and look in like 2005, 2006, Lance Armstrong's quads and his calves, man, they were just jacked. Multiple striations. The vascularity was like, to me, that looked a little bit unnatural.

So I remember talking to my dad. I'm like, there's no way he's not on something. He's like, he's the most tested athlete in the world. You know? I mean, I still respect him. I don't care, you know, because a lot of people in the tour were doing that. But yeah, I think it's the recovery is really a different, it's a game changer. How did you get into taking antibiotics? Cause you, you mentioned that you started training at 14 and then how old were you when you started taking them? Yeah. So I was 19. So I was young. So yeah, back then this was like,

I can't remember if I ordered this book on Barnes and Noble or amazon.com. All I know is that I ordered this anabolics Bible. I guess there's like two authors. There's some iterations of these things. So yeah, William Llewellyn. Yeah, Llewellyn. So I remember, so I was checking my AOL email and stuff like that

because I was living with my dad, right? And I was going to get this fricking book on steroids because that's how I was going to teach myself. There were some, so I remember the mailman coming down. I'm like, oh shit, I got to go get the book. Because if my dad, he would be excited that I'm buying a book, but he'd want to know what it is. So I got this book and I immediately went to the library

and I just like sat, I hid from everyone. Cause I'm like, I don't want anyone to, you know, they have syringes and bottles and a lot. The front of the book has like a ton, like it's got like hundreds of steroids all over the front of the book. And it says it in giant letters, right? So I knew I'd be busted.

So I was trying to hide because people that I knew were studying for college and this. So I went to the public library and I just started reading everything I could about it, every different drug. And actually, you know, like you guys did a podcast a few days ago, like if it weren't for PEDs, would Mark Bell be Mark Bell or all these different people? Arnold, you know, you talked about if it weren't for steroids, I don't know that I would be interested in science. I might have a totally different career path because I started learning

about, you know, cellular receptors and down regulation and the endocrine system. And those books were great. And so I started to figure out, okay, I probably don't need halo. I don't need, there's a lot of like drugs that only if you're really cutting, I just want to do put on some size. So I was like, all right, I like Deca, Equipoise.

And then I asked my buddy, he was like, and tell me if this is still the thing, because I've been out of this world for a while. He said, look, your first cycle, your receptors are most, oh, there we go. So that was, I wasn't the biggest there, but I was 215, right on the right. So anyway, so, you know, my buddy was like,

you know, the first time you do this, your receptors are going to be very sensitive. So you just want to go big or go home. So I'm like, all right. So I did 800 milligrams of test. Deca was 400. And then just a little D-ball to kick it off. D-ball was like, I think in 25 or 50 milligram tabs. I can't remember. And I just did like four weeks of that. Probably got you super bloated, right? Dude. Yeah. My face was just blown up, but right away it was like, and that's the thing. I think the power of the mind,

like after your first injection, I remember that. Like I had a PR on the gym and I was like, there's no way it could. Yeah, it doesn't hit you. But don't you. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, no, you, yeah, you feel superhuman. You feel superhuman. Because you know what it's supposed to do.

So, but even, even the training intensity, you know, when you get into like a middle of a set you can kind of actually feel them it's weird it's um it's hard to really describe because it does take a while for steroids actually like really get into your system most steroids anyway um but sometimes you can feel it like mid set and you've seen in here when people are just kind of going ham and they do a set of like six but then they end up you know or they're going for a set of six and they do like a set of 12 yep it's that that push through like eight nine and you see the guy snap almost in his head like i'm going for it and they they do extra it doesn't mean that they're on steroids all the time it just when somebody is on them and you get to like that eighth ninth rep it almost feels like it almost feels like it's a little easier to

finish them off because you get like a you get like a surge almost it doesn't really give you energy and it's not going to really uh it's not going to automatically improve your endurance or anything like that but it can help uh with almost just i guess uh aggression might not even be the right word but um the ability to really drive through something as hard as you possibly can. Totally. I think you feel mentally like there's a spotter there, even if there isn't, right?

And so I've been, now I've been trying to say, because it's very tempting once you've done even TRT or whatever, or a cycle, you feel like I got to be on it forever. You know, I had that mentality for a long time. And now I just convinced my mind that, you know, I basically, you know, I can do this naturally. And so I think a lot, some of it obviously is real. There's changes anabolically and so forth. But I think like,

if like I said, that first shot was way stronger, there's a big mental placebo component. So I try to play tricks with my mind to tell myself that I'm giving myself steroids, even though I'm not so that I have a PR so that I'll do that fifth rep. So I'll push it. And I think that's a big element that people should realize, whether or not placebo is about 30% of any given thing studies have shown. So you want to take advantage of that, trick your mind into thinking that you're taking stuff. How much weight did you lose that weight rather immediately when you started biking from 235 down or did it come off slowly? That's a really good question. So the first, it came off slowly, but the strength dropped like a rock. That's the thing. So, you know, I could incline bench. I love to just put three

plates on. You could hear the iron shake everywhere. I just love that. Right. And then it was like, literally after, you know, doing the PCT. So I did a Clomid, a little HCG and then Novodex and whatever. I started to notice cause I had these little HCG and then Novadex and whatever. I started to notice, cause I had these new lifting buddies and they were jacked as hell, natty. And so I was just getting weaker and weaker. I'm like, shit, how the hell am I going to explain this? You know? And they didn't know at the time I later told them, but- So you grab your shoulder, you get off off the bench each time. You're like, oh man, something's clicking in there. You guys hear that? You guys didn't hear that? That's weird. Yeah. So I think that's where it becomes a challenge now with people trying to get off if they post every workout on Instagram and they identify with that.

It's like how you even give your body a break if you are going to do PEDs, which I personally think if you're going to do it, it is good to cycle on and off periodically to just reset. You know, maybe if you're over 40 and you're like, screw it, I'm just going to blast and cruise, fine, whatever. But I personally think long-term that might be helpful. So, yeah, so the weight, I would say I got down to like 205. So I lost a good 20 pounds over like three or four months. And then I started to get depressed too. And I think DECA has that effect on the HPA axis due to how it affects.

It's really important to mention that when when you come off like so some of the effects of like being irritable or void rage and some of these things i didn't really realize that they some people that take stuff they're like oh it doesn't exist it certainly exists and to some extent but i didn't realize it it exists more when you come off of them because now your body's trying to like get the hormones back in place and your estrogen is probably higher and your testosterone is probably lower. And it's a, it's a hard, it's a hard thing to deal with. And then also what you're talking about with the loss of strength, you, in a lot of cases, you end up being worse off than you were that within when you started, which you would think, oh, if I was natural my whole life, if I just ran a couple cycles, maybe I could gain 30 pounds and maybe I can hold on to 10. It does not work that

way. Right. Yeah. I think, and I wish I knew that, you know, and I think a lot of us learn the hard way. It's a good warning to people that are on the fence about thinking about doing it. Cause you, when you're on them, they work. And when you're off them, they don't do it. They're obviously, they're, they're not doing anything for you because they're no them, they work. And when you're off them, they don't do it. They're obviously, they're not doing anything for you because they're no longer in your system. And I think, you know, people say, well, steroids aren't addictive physically, but I think that's how they become mentally addictive.

No, they're definitely addictive. Because you're like, dude, I don't want to be like, I could just take five plates on deadlift for a ride and just like, it's my warmup, you know, now I can barely do three, like what's up with that? So I think it's challenging, but it's a great perspective. And I think, I hope a lot of people share this with young men that are considering this

because getting steroids now on the internet is like, I can order steroids as fast as I can order a slingshot on the internet, right? I mean, it's literally crazy. And now- You go to the back end of our site, it's actually- There's a little like promo code. There's a drop down.

What was that gym? Diana Ball. Gym in Florida that did that? Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, in Miami. Yeah. Anyway, it's crazy. And then now there's this whole other category of drugs,

the SARM, selective androgen receptor modulator. So they're just hitting the receptor that the androgens would hit. And so it's different. You're not getting that conversion of water and all that. And I, you know, we were talking about this earlier. Um, I've never taken those. I would say if you're going to do anything, just do juice, just do straight up steroids because we don't know long-term. Okay. So you stimulate that receptor over and over again. Is it going to become desensitized to those androgens? And then when,

or if it does, what the hell are you going to do then? Because I think it could be problematic. Do you think SARMs work? Or you're not sure? So I've seen the research. It looks pretty good in chronic diseases like HIV, cancer cachexia. I think there are certain situations they would work. I personally don't know anyone that I really trust that's used them, that's vouched for them. So I'm not saying they do or don't work, but I think the idea seems pretty novel in that regard. But I just worry about, so for example, if I give you a bunch of insulin, your receptors are gonna become desensitized to insulin. It's called insulin resistance.

It happens to like 20% of Americans are insulin resistant. What happens if you become androgen resistant? I don't know if or when or how much SARMs or how long you need to be on them for that to happen. I just personally wouldn't want to learn the hard way. There's definitely got to be a repercussion, right? There's pros and cons of everything. Yeah. That's right. They don't usually just get away with the reward, right? Yeah. So I think it's, yeah, it's interesting to think about. Where are you seeing people in today's society kind of making their main mistakes?

Like not in today's society, but rather kind of in our fitness community. Like where are you kind of seeing people maybe, you know, maybe people are kind of messing up messages by maybe speaking too much in absolutes or something along those lines. What's something that you see? Yeah, that's a good question. I think a lot of us that come from a traditional fitness background, we are just kind of indelibly inked this calorie model as kind of the end-all be-all because we've heard it so many times. I mean, I started out as a kinesiology exercise science undergrad before switching to biology. I remember that was like hardwired in me. So I think that can be one element of it. Myopically looking at the musculoskeletal system as just like independent of the whole body, like not realizing that like, hey, sleep affects your hormones, which affects

recovery. You know, there's a lot of that. So I think just looking at the body as a more holistic perspective, and then also maybe not taking into account that we're all going to get old and we're all going to die. And at some point, it doesn't matter if you're 19 years old and you're the strongest person, you're Larry Wheels, right? Larry Wheels will get old and weaker over time. And so you can do things now to mitigate how hard that crash could be. And so I think a lot of us are looking for short-term gains at the expense of our long-term vitality. And as I see just my daughter's only six,

it's been, it's a fluke, right? Six years went by really quick. I'm going to be 50, I'm gonna be 60, I'm gonna be 70. And I want to be able to move around and things like that. So what I'm doing is taking, you know, my exercise and nutrition in context of like, I'm going to appreciate this later in life. And so thinking about that down the road.

Now I understand, you know, it's easy for me to say because I'm not, you know, in a place where I'm gonna win Mr. Olympia, right? I'm not gonna win the Arnold, right? So it's easy for- You're not striving for something crazy that can make you unhealthy. Totally, it's easy for me to say that. Olympia, right? I'm not going to win the Arnold, right? So it's easy for- You're not striving for something crazy that can make you unhealthy. Totally.

It's easy for me to say that. So I understand if I was in that position where it's like, I could be the best of the best, would I have a different mindset? Probably. But I think a lot of people are good or average, right? And they don't take into consideration long-term lunchroom health.

Yeah, Stan Efferding says, if you want to be healthy, don't compete. Yeah. What do you think are the big things that like the IFYM crowd, um, and the calorie tracking crowd, what things do they leave out? Because when you look at someone who's doing it successfully, right, they're tracking every single day. They're eating the foods they want to eat. They have a great body composition, not even a competition bodybuilder, but they just have a great body. And they're just like, Oh, this is, this works. What do you think, what are the big pieces of the puzzle that they're missing? Because I know there's a lot and you could go on for hours

with this question. What big things do you think they're missing out on? Yeah, this is a beautiful question. I think it's just their gauge or their proxy of evaluating whether or not if it fits your macros is working is just based on body composition, I would say. So they're not looking at things like blood glucose. They're not looking at other markers like heart rate variability. Mark, do you have an aura ring? It looks like one. I do have like a sleep tracker, but this is just a rubber ring. But yeah, I've used that. I've used things like that before. Yeah. So looking at other insights or what we call proxies or biomarkers that would reflect your overall health. And so again, it comes at like everything we eat, like I have a little filtered water with sea salt, right?

So that's sending messages to my body. If I have Gatorade, that's sending messages to my genes. And so, yeah, I could be shredded and have Gatorade, but it's like, what's going on under the hood, right? In my body that is being affected. So we have things like the microbiome. So the whole calorie thing, you have to have this many calories

based upon your energy expenditure and so forth. That was created pre-microbiome project, which only really got published. It was June of 2012. I remember because my daughter was literally in the labor and delivery. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is so exciting. So I wrote a book, Belly Fat Effect, all about it.

But I think a lot of people don't look at, well, how are these macros affecting my microbiome composition, my gut integrity, and that determines how well you metabolize the macros that you just ate. And so actually a lot of studies will actually give, this is kind of a knock on keto a little bit, but basically give people like a milkshake, like high fat, high carb. And then what they see is there's a lot of gram negative bacteria that's in their blood. It's called metabolic endotoxemia and that causes insulin resistance and other long-term health issues. So you might be able to stay ripped having say a high calorie shake like that, but long-term you could be causing your metabolism damage. So to answer your question specifically, I think they're just looking at body comp as a myopic focus and not looking at other proxies or indicators that can evaluate how is the body functioning at a more deeper level.

So heart rate variability, sleep architecture that the Oura Ring offers, deep sleep versus REM sleep. It even looks at your respiratory quotient and count throughout the day, heart rate, body temperature, looking at expanded blood work. I think everyone should be looking at their blood work and you can order this now on the internet, which is great. You don't even need, I mean, obviously work with a healthcare practitioner, but a lot of people can go to any lab test now, get a comprehensive metabolic panel and look at their liver enzymes, look at their hemoglobin A1C, like look at iron. A lot of women have iron issues and they don't even know it. So they're tired and they're fatigued

and they can't figure out why. So that's what I would say. Yeah, a lot of women have sometimes thyroid issues as well, which could be just not necessarily even from a body fat composition standpoint, but even from just not feeling good, just tired. And then even for everybody in general, getting your blood sugar tested and looking at your A1C and some of these things could be really important

because, you know, you just don't really know what's going on inside. And, you know, it's not even what we did the last few months or last few weeks. It's more about, you know, what was your childhood like? You know, did you spend most of your childhood eating ice cream and cookies like Mark Bell or did you have a different lifestyle? That's such a great point. And one thing about the ketogenic diet, again, I'm biased here, but I think it can be beneficial is for the first time people are tracking their blood sugar and their ketones. And so it gives them like, okay, if this happens, then this happens. And they start to make more educated and congruent decisions because while I don't think it's good to chase

ketones, they start to realize, well, if I fast, then my ketones go up. So, okay, well, metabolically that's dropping my glucose. And just as a little backstory, physiologically, in order for ketones to be elevated, you need low glucose and low insulin. And glucagon is another factor. So when we exercise, we do all that. We drop glucose, drop insulin, increase glucagon. That creates the metabolic or hormonal environment that causes your liver to make ketones. So that's another thing. Like even if you're not going to do a ketogenic diet or you don't care about ketones,

start testing your glucose and ketones anyway. And that was pretty interesting for me when I started powerlifting and adding in more carbs. I was like, wow, I can afford my buffer room for carbs just increase because I'm causing that stimulus through the weight training. And I can still have more carbs and be in ketosis, you know, and why would someone care? Again, ketones kind of changed DNA expression, gene expression,

metabolic expression. And so from a long-term perspective, I'm excited about that. That's actually really, it's really interesting. I've heard other people kind of talk about that. So you're saying that you can still have carbohydrates, your body's still producing ketones. And I would imagine that's the case in all of us. It just depends on kind of how much, right? Because it's my understanding that we produce ketones anyway, even if we eat carbohydrates. But what you're saying is even just the reduction of them exercising is going to kind of bring up those ketones. And that might be a more favorable position to be in to have some ketones being produced and keeping the glucose levels down and keeping insulin levels down. Absolutely. Because, you know, the ketones offer this

anti-inflammatory property throughout the body. For the nerdy listeners, it's called this NLRP3 inflammasome. This is basically like a big molecular switch. And when activated, everything bad that we think about related to inflammation increases. People are familiar with C-reactive protein, various interleukins and cytokines, like interleukin-6 and TNF-alpha, all these things that are maladaptive if they're chronically stimulated. And by the way, those cytokines also cause blood sugar issues and insulin resistance. So inflammation is kind of a double whammy. It damages your tissues, but it simultaneously affects your blood sugar regulation properties and so forth. And most people trying to lose

weight have extra inflammation anyway. So the more body fat you have, the more inflamed you are. So that's where I think at least initially a ketogenic diet can be helpful because this big metabolic hub that's very problematic and inflammation is downregulated by these ketones. So I think that's where the side benefits become helpful. And again, you don't have to be a strict ketogenic person. You can exercise and eat a moderate carb diet. And if you test, you'll be so surprised because what happens is if we, if we go train after this, we hit back pretty good legs, whatnot, we're depleting glycogen during that workout. And so when the post-workout window, the body's like, okay, we need sugar because if a saber tooth tiger comes in this room, we need to run like hell. So the body knows how to prioritize the replenishment of glycogen. So it says, okay, well, while we're kind of fixing the glycogen problem that we just caused through this exercise, let's pivot the body into a fat burning state. And so ketones rise and what's called beta oxidation

or the breakdown of fat rises as well. So exercise is a natural way to just pivot your body. Even if you're, this is the operative thing that I think people get hung up on. Cause they're like, well, if I exercise and do cardio, I'm burning more fat during that session. So I want to lose fat. So therefore I should do cardio. It's like, well, if you only want to burn fat for 45 minutes out of

your 24 hour day, yeah, hop on the elliptical, right? But if you want to burn fat for hours after that session, hit weights, deplete glycogen. You can even do it fasted. If you're not training for a PR, for example, you'll deplete more glycogen. And then in the post-workout window, example, you'll deplete more glycogen. And then in the post-workout window, first studies show between up to 36 and even 48 hours, our fatty acid oxidation is increased dramatically. So I think it's good for people to hear that because I still see well-intended people at gyms I go to on the treadmill. They're not hitting the weights. It's like, gosh, if you only knew, I just want to go shake them and be like, dude. Yeah. And, and the treadmill and you don't want to discourage people from exercise because some movement is, is better than none. And it's, it's great. But I think that the problem sometimes is just like, this just

isn't really doing for you what you think it's doing for you. And so, you know, just being a little bit more knowledgeable about it and knowing how to use it because, uh, as you were saying, um, you know, if you're going to eat ice cream with your, with your, use it because, uh, as you were saying, um, you know, if you're going to eat ice cream with your, with your, with your daughter, uh, maybe you guys are going to plan for a walk. So let's say somebody goes out, they enjoy some food and some drinks with a friend and next day, you know, maybe they're not someone that gets outside that much. They go to the gym. It probably makes sense to start your workout with a 20 minute walk, but don't, you know, don't do the cardio with the intention of like,

this is going to, this is what's going to get me shredded. It's going to be a more about your, it's going to be more about everything else being in place and not just that little bout of cardio where you're burning a couple hundred calories. Right. Yeah. You're not causing that enough debt,

really enough. What, what, like I call medical researchers talk about this metabolic debts. You're not, you're not dipping in there to cause those adaptations that will in the longterm help you in the post-workout window. And so I think, you know, people talk about like exercise efficiency and that's where I love. And again, I'm very, we're all, all three of us are very biased because we like lifting weights. So I think, but you can't

argue with the research when you lift weights like that, cause oxygen debt, cause that metabolic debt by depleting glycogen and so forth, you cause your body to burn more fat way longer than you would just for that 45 minute session. And this isn't to say that cardio is inherently bad. We were talking about autophagy earlier. Endurance exercise, even walking, increases autophagy, which is the way that our cells kind of regenerate themselves and clear out protein aggregates and other problematic issues

like damaged organelles. So we have these cells and then inside we have little compartments. Like in our home, we have specialized things like furnaces, refrigerator, and water heater. Our cells have appliances, if you will. Those appliances can become dysregulated or bad or dysfunctional. And autophagy helps to clear that out. And so if you look at a hallmark of aging, one hallmark is dysregulated protein aggregation. So within the cells, proteins are accumulating. And then the hardware of the house, the appliances inside the cells are dysfunctional,

like the mitochondria are dysfunctional. So there's some truth to, you know, cardio, that can be great. And because you're kickstarting autophagy. What about a combination of, you know, some weights, maybe some HIIT training here and there and some, you know, cause there's a difference between, you know, spending 30 or 40 minutes at a given heart rate, just kind of a straight up, you know, cardiovascular training session versus, you know, the sprints and stuff like that. Do you think it's a good idea to train multiple ways? I absolutely do. Yeah. So I think sprints every day, probably not a good thing because that's going to cause, you know, can't recover from it very well. Can't recover. Right. So I think, you know, having that flexibility built in, you know,

so, um, but the cool thing about doing the HIIT training is like right now, all of us could go sprint as hard as we could for a minute and stop. We can come back and do this or go to a business meeting afterwards and we're not going to be stinky and sweaty. So I think the stimulus intermittent periodically push to threshold, assuming people have good biomechanics that is. And so they're not going to like, you know, tear out a ligament or anything along those lines, but it's way better than just sitting there doing this steady state. So steady state is good for causing increased capillary density. So if we're going to train for a marathon, we need to weave in some steady state with some high threshold stuff

because that's going to cause the best ratio and so forth. So like when I was racing a lot, like two days a week would be like four hour bike rides, really low power output to cause more capillaries to go there. But it wasn't the best to like stimulate your mitochondria and everything. So I think people need to balance. And this is where you can look at your heart rate variability, tracking your sleep data and say, okay, so if I sprint Monday, Wednesday, Friday, then I do power lifting or bodybuilding style, some resistance training weaved in there, then maybe I can do longer steady state stuff on the weekends.

And so figuring out what I like to tell people to do, and I'm not world's personal trainer or anything like that. I'm not pertaining to be that, but figure out what works for you and gets you into a flow state. So if I tell Mark Bell, Mark Bell, the only way to be healthy is if you do yoga. You probably do it a couple of weeks

and then you're like, eh, it's not my thing, right? So I think it's good for people to realize whatever gets them into that flow state where the world's problems kind of fall off and disappear and you're in the zone. That's what really you should do. And if for some people it's booty bar classes, okay, fine, right? But you might need to supplement a little bit if you want to have really chiseled glutes, for example, right? So I think it's important for people to realize that there's many ways to do this and do what you're going to do long-term, like whatever gets you up out of bed and like, I can't wait to go do this thing. For us, it's weightlifting for me. You know,

I couldn't spin classes. I'd be like, do I have to do another spin class? So. With the mouth tape, have you used it for exercise as well? And if so, what benefits have you seen? That's a great question. We were talking about this earlier. I think there is some benefits for that because it's like a stress test for these neurologic patterns that are holding your mouth. So the mouth taping, obviously,

it enhances sleep quality, dream recall, and so on. But when you do it, when you're training physically, what you do supposedly, and there's not a lot of good data on this, but it can increase nitric oxide signaling, which as we know, can help vasodilate our muscles and get more nutrients in more waste out of an exercising muscle. So I think there are some benefits there. And what I found is if I just do even 20 minutes of even walking around, it doesn't have to be powerlifting. If I just mouth tape for the rest of the day, I'm way more conscious and aware that my mouth is open or closed. So it's, it's, you're really kind of rewiring those neurologic pathways. It's like learning how to do for the

powerlifters, learning how to bench powerlifting style versus bodybuilding arms flared or in. And so once you, you know, the slingshot really helped me with that because I had a hard time. I'm like, I, how are you guys doing this? And the slingshot really kind of helped. So I liken mouth taping to kind of like a slingshot. In that way, it's teaching you how to breathe more effectively. And it's good at almost diagnosing problems because some people will say,

you've probably heard the kickback on your comments. People say, well, I tried mouth taping, but my nose is clogged, so I can't do it. And it's like, oh, so that's the end of the story. So that's it. You're just going to go through life with a clogged nose. So it really helps people become more aware. Like you have a nose for a reason. Like you should figure out what is the root cause behind why your nose is clogged. Is it food sensitivities? Do you have a deviated septum? Is it mold in your home? Like we can't just look at that and ignore it it up on youtube you'll find

within 15 minutes you'll find a couple good videos on how to clear out your nasal passages i mean it's it's not it's not hard you basically breathe through one side breathe through the other the guy's got a few different what's the guy's name again do you batoko there's a bunch of different people we talk about patrick is it patrick mck? Yeah. McKeown. The oxygen advantage guy. Yeah. Yeah. He talks about how to kind of clear them out. You clear out your nasal passages and it's,

it's really simple and easy and effective. I've used it a couple of times. Don't you, I think I've heard you talk about like single nose breathing in like the morning or something for, and you've mentioned it in relation to gut health. Yeah. So that's a way to stimulate

the vagal nerve. And so the vagal nerve innervates the GI tract. And so like if, you know, we're eating when we're really stressed out, for example, we're not innervating that whole gastrointestinal system to release gastric acid, bile, pancreatic lipase, and all of the things that we need to really break down and absorb the foods that we're eating. So a lot of us, and that kind of goes back to the, if it fits your macro thing, again, not trying to pick on that, absorb the food that we're eating. So a lot of us, and that kind of goes back to the, if it fits your macro thing, again, not trying to pick on that, but some of that is not really talked about, right?

So if you eat a calorie balanced diet in a totally stressed out state, studies have shown that post-meal processing will be altered. So it's great to be in a really calm state when you're eating and humans naturally did that with friends, family, we'd get together, we're talking, hopefully it's not stressful.

But if you're eating by yourself, which a lot of us do, do the alternate nasal breathing. I'm not an expert on this, but there's, this is a big aspect in Kundalini yoga, which is a type of yoga that has been studied. And there's this like technique where you kind of plug one nostril and move around and it kind of actually affects different lobes of your brain. And so like, for example, if you want to be really fired up, you know, your right brain will make you more aware and so forth. But if you want to go into a meeting and have like more emotional intelligence, connect with people, pick up on nonverbal cues, maybe you'd, you know, activate, am I saying this right? Your right brain, left brain would be more logical, analytical. So yeah, I guess breathing through alternate nasal breathing can affect that and can help to stimulate the gut.

So it's a good thing to do. I learned this from Charles Poliquin actually, because I live in Colorado and so on. And so he would always say, look in the post-workout window, like your body's pretty fired up. You took caffeine, maybe a pre-workout. We know that cortisol is very catabolic on muscle tissue. So a good thing to do post-workout is to kind of calm the central nervous system down. And so adding in nutrients that may affect that. And then even meditation could affect this and this nasal breathing. So what I would suggest people go on YouTube and just type in nasal breathing or alternate nasal breathing. There's a few videos and tips that have come up, but a lot of people try to meditate and they think, I suck at meditating. I can't do this.

I'm thinking about my to-do list bills, whatever. But if you like do a little bit of nasal breathing beforehand and then you try to meditate, it's a totally different animal. Like you're really kind of, it fast tracks that feeling of being calm. That's actually made a big difference for me. I remember in the past years ago when I attempted meditation, there'd be days where my nose was stuffed up because I wasn't so focused on nasal breathing and that like breathing through the mouth made it so difficult for me to try and get calm. But nowadays it's so much easier because of just like breathing through my nose. It's made a massive difference. Jiu Jitsu, endurance, all those types of things. That's cool. Yeah. I've even used the nose tape before and had success with that.

Just, you know, the little tape thing. It just pulls you. Breathe right strip. Yeah. Breathe right strip. That's helped a lot. Cause yeah, sometimes I'll get like, I'll get one nostril. It's kind of more clogged up than the other for who the hell knows why.

Yeah. How has that mouth tape been with your kids? Or I seen a kid on your Instagram. I'm not sure if that's your daughter. He's taping up random kids. Yeah, I know, right? Just break in in the middle of the night. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you might be entertained by looking at the comments. So there's a lot of parenting experts that tell me that I'm a bad parent. I'd imagine so, yeah. I don't care about my kid. But it's been a game changer because I think this is really important

for any parents listening because how you breathe, and again, I'm not this expert on this. There's many other developmental neurologists and so forth. I learned this, by the way, from Mark Brehena over at askthedentist.com. So please check out his website and his book,

The Eight Hour Sleep Paradox. This will shape your jaw and your overall body structure, everything. Totally. Yep. So that's the thing. So for parents, it's really key because this little,

I mean, you can go and get a 3M micropore tape. It costs next to nothing, six bucks. You can maybe even affect braces and how the jaw shapes and the tongue and everything like that. And we know looks matter. I mean, let's face it, right, in our society. And so if you want a more pronounced, prominent jaw, which I think is attractive for both men and women, studies have shown then you want to be breathing through your nose while you're sleeping. So, yeah,

it's been at first. So here's what we did for the, for the parents listening. So we tried it on our kid, but at first we did, made it cool. So his mom and dad did this cool thing with the mouth tape thing and, and we, we hyped it up and then we would do it like in the evening. So it became, so she became comfortable with it. Just did that for a few nights. And then before bed, we're like, okay, we're gonna do this really cool thing. And she was like excited about it. But at first, you know, dad was like, Hey, just me, Nez, put this on your mouth, do it. And it didn't work very well. So then we had to figure out, okay, how can we make it cool? And now she used to, cause she used to sleep with us. We have a California King, whatever. And she would kick and turn. Sometimes her feet would be upside down. Like, so that's a symptom of sleep disorder breathing because these children are trying,

they're like you asked hypoxia. There was a dearth or lack of oxygen. So she's wiggling it around. So that is, if your kid or your spouse does that, that's a sign they have sleep disordered breathing because their body is starving for oxygen. So it's wiggling and moving. Now, when she mouth tapes,

she's just like still as a log doesn't. And so she can sleep with us. Or if we go camping, it's not a big issue. Dude, that's huge. Because my fiance, when she sleeps tapes, she's just like still as a log doesn't. And so she can sleep with us. Or if we go camping, it's not a big issue. Dude, that's huge. Because my fiance, when she sleeps with our daughter, she gets beat up pretty bad. And it's like she has to like consciously think about it. Like, do I want to take a foot to the head, you know, tonight? Because she will flip all the way around.

She'll do all of that. And I hadn't even considered. We've been taping our mouths ourselves and, you know, having a lot of fun with it, you know, because we wake up fully energized and whatnot. But as far as like the kids, I seen a picture of your daughter. I'm like, Hmm. Okay. Like, but that's cool. They started off slow and then kind of ramp it up to, you know, sleeping there out the night. Totally. Yeah. It's a, and I mean, think about when I was a kid, so I was, I mean, the reason why partly I'm interested in this is I was a mouth breather and had braces and all this sort of stuff.

When I think back on school, I was always tired, sleeping, just not engaged, man. And if I would have known about, if we'd have known about this back then, who knows how, not that I would want to change my life, but who knows how things would have been differently. So as a parent, I feel that responsibility to do this for my kids

so that they have energy throughout the day. Because if you're not properly breathing and your brain is not working while you're sleeping because you're interrupting sleep phases, you're not going to remember stuff. We know that most of our memory consolidation occurs during that REM sleep. And that's when the challenges are going to be problematic for the mouth breathing. Also, a lot of our listeners are power lifters and a lot of people have sleep apnea. Even if you have a sleep apnea machine, you can use the mouth tape and it actually will make the breathing

a lot more effective. I've seen some videos which are kind of funny, but like, you know, people have the mask on and stuff and their breathing gets all off track. And sure enough, their mouth opens up and then they start kind of, uh, they're, they're really like losing a lot of sleep because now they're starting to get awake. They're still not breathing, even though the mask is supposed to kind of be pumping air through the nose,

through the nostrils. And so even for them, uh, taping the mouth shut would be great. Yeah. Great tip. A lot of people ask about that. If I have a CPAP machine, can I still do this? And I always tell them the same thing, which is great. Yeah, it can be really effective. I also think I've heard some people talk about how it can tape in the mouth shut during exercise, can increase some of your cardiovascular efforts so you can become a little bit better quicker, basically, getting in better shape faster.

Have you seen any research on that? Or is that just kind of people just, uh, you know, kind of trying it themselves and having their own, their own thoughts on it? I think that's a good question. Uh, published research. Haven't seen any, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I just haven't seen any. I've tried to look for that, but I have seen quite a few people on Instagram, like posting videos of them doing workouts. And I think it just causes you to be more vigilant about your breathing. A lot of us are unaware of our breathing. And so I think that that's part of it. And it could affect potentially lactate buffering. It could affect, like I said, that nitrogen oxide NO increase.

And again, there's not hard data on this either. A lot of people kind of say, oh yeah, if you breathe through your nose, all of a sudden you're going to increase your NO. I haven't seen a lot of data there, but it kind of makes sense from like how the physiology works. But I think it's totally worth trying, you know, and trying like, like if you're doing the 10 minute walks, like you recommend, try it during those. That's great. And you'll be so much more acutely aware of your tongue position, mouth position, and breathing through your nose through the rest of the day, just by doing it during your walks. Are you a supplement guy? I am. Yeah. I like supplements. And then, uh, what, what have you used, uh, during your walks. Are you a supplement guy? I am. Yeah, I like supplements.

And then what have you used that's been effective for you, you think? Yeah. So fish oil, I think is a big one. There's a lot of good research on omega-3 fats. This guy, Bill Harris out of University of Iowa has done a lot of research showing that if our omega-3 index, which is how to quantify in your red blood cells, if that's below 3%, our risk of sudden cardiac death is really a lot higher compared to individuals that have an omega-3 index of 8%. So that's one that's really got a lot of evidence behind it. So I definitely recommend omega-3s. A lot of good research showing that omega-3 users tend to spare more lean muscle during cardio and burn more fat, oxidize more fat. There's some cool human studies on that. So I take fish oil. Vitamin D is a no-brainer. A lot of people, I mean, if you're

north of Atlanta, Georgia between October and March, you're not getting vitamin D, even if you're outside. I used to live in Colorado and when I wanted to go to med school, I was working with an MD and we did this study with the fire department. So firemen, their schedules are pretty flexible, one day on, one day off. So they often have side hustle jobs like construction, they're outdoors a lot. Basically, it was like 95% of these firemen were below even the low end of the cutoff on serum vitamin D in Colorado, which people don't know, aren't familiar with Colorado. It's one of the, even though it gets snow, it's sunny, like 300 days. So it snows and it's sunny, snows and it's sunny. And so that to me was an eye opener. And so I think so many people are vitamin D deficient. So that's an easy one. And if we look

at like even vitamin D affects autophagy, even affects hormones. So that's a big one. I'm a fan of probiotics based upon the strain specificity. So you go to Whole Foods, you're like, oh, 10 billion, that sounds cool. I'm just going to take 10 billion. But these probiotics are as specific and unique as all of us. We're all homo sapiens, all three of us, but we're totally different from a metabolic standpoint, phenotypic standpoint. Bacteria are the same way. So you want to look at not only the number of CFUs or colony forming units that you're getting, but the genus species and then the strain. For example, it will say Bifidobacterium lactis, subspecies animalis.

That means there's human data on that particular probiotic. And not only is it safe, it's not going to cause issues, but usually there are some, we know the immunology of it. So really what probiotics do, if anyone takes one, a lot of people think, oh, it just like makes more bugs and so forth. But really what they do is they send unique signaling to your immune system and change

immunologic pathways within the body. And so what we're really kind of getting when we take a probiotic is that bacterial DNA. And we're relying upon that DNA to change our own gene expression. And so you want to know like what kind of DNA you're getting. So that's what I suggest with that. Can you just have some yogurt or it's not that simple? I think fermented foods is a great place to start. I think if most people just have some kimchi, sauerkraut, little kombucha periodically, probably a good thing.

If you've had antibiotics, if you were not born vaginally, you were born C-section, you've taken proton pump inhibitors for heartburn and all that, all these things. Even ibuprofen. I go skiing with a lot of buddies and stuff and they're, they're into health, but not like this. And they're after every day, they're taking Nexium and ibuprofen. I'm like, dudes, you're, and then drinking. I'm like, you're kind of causing some issues in your gut. You know, so we have to talk about that. Yeah. In college soccer, a lot of my teammates would be taking ibuprofen every single day. Yeah. And I mean, so ibuprofen literally causes intestinal

permeability and its studies have shown this. This isn't like the journal of naturopathic voodoo science. These are like hard, like new England journal of medicine has shown this. And so obviously there can be some short-term benefits to like the Cox two inhibitor inhibition, but you're really can cause some issues in your gut. Right. So, and you're inhibiting. So if you do this after a game, right. a game right inflammation causes that adaptation that's good so you don't really want to inhibit that and so that's one thing i'm not a fan of is like antioxidants per se because a lot of people think oh i create free radicals when i exercise so then i need to take an antioxidant and that counteracts things so

yeah then you have some some of your own companies as well. You, and you're, you're very much into like a kind of natural foods as well. So you're, you're probably, you know, you're, you're probably taking some supplements, but in addition to that, you're trying to make sure that you're getting a lot of the nutrients from the foods that you're eating, right? Yeah. That's a really good question. You know, a lot of people kind of get junky food and spend all this money on supplements. So I, you know, I do have a full disclosure, a supplement company called Myoscience, and it's been a kind of a dream of mine for a while. I've been a consultant in this space. So I know a lot of different manufacturers throughout the U.S. and Canada.

And so I partner with a really, really good one that does a lot of third party testing and all that. But I tell people all the time, like, if you can't afford healthy food, don't spend your money on supplements. Like, go all out on the food. And the supplement is just like it sounds. it's supplementing what you are not getting from your diet. And so I, you know, I see a lot of people, they buy these like $80 plant-based proteins and then they eat a bunch of junky food. And it's like, you know what, you could really reallocate your spending because protein is like a commodity, right? P protein and things like that. All these things are, you know, you really P protein and things like that. Um, all these things are,

you know, you really can get that from whole food. So yeah. So the idea on the name, so the myoscience is someone had myoscience with an S M Y O S. So it's muscle science, myo for muscle. And X is just kind of a way to, I found with companies in general, preparatory names kind of do better than non. So yeah, so if folks are interested, that's how. And how long ago did you start that? So it was kind of funny. I came up with the idea in 2014. Maybe it was 2013.

So I got it trademarked and everything, but I was too much of a pansy to go through with it. So I was like working as a consultant, started this YouTube channel thing, interviewing people, but I was always scared about making that leap as an entrepreneur. And it wasn't until I was like working as a consultant, started this YouTube channel thing, interviewing people, but I was always scared about making that leap as an entrepreneur. And it wasn't until I was like, you know what, I'm just going to, I don't care what people say. I was always worried about being criticized. So we didn't really fully launch until September of 2018.

So it hasn't been that long. And then how do you kind of like make your living, you know, to be able to work out and be able to research all these different things? Yeah, that's a good question. So through consulting, through supplement sales, advertising, and my wife and I have courses. So we have a lot of courses that teach people. Yeah, you do online courses, right? Yeah. So that's been fun, you know,

because we can't respond in full detail for every Instagram direct message. How does some of that work? That's really interesting. And SEMA does a lot of like online coaching and something like that. Like maybe that would provide some value to some of the people that are already, you know, subscribed to some of the stuff that you do. Totally. Yeah. So we use a software called Kajabi. So there's a lot of different softwares that you can use. And so it's kind of like a customer management software, email marketing,

but enables you to password protect content. And so what I found is I do online courses and I have a finite date when it stops and starts, because if it's an evergreen course, people are like, well, I'll get that later. And that later never comes. And so for example, we just started this autophagy enhancer masterclass to help people better understand kind of what autophagy is, how to enhance it based upon the data that we have available. And by the way, exercise is a wonderful way to enhance autophagy. You don't need to fast for that. And so like I have a call tonight. So we have like 75 people that have signed up. So I have a PowerPoint presentation. They hop on and then I have some private membership only videos. So it enables

entrepreneurs, coaches, nutritionists, trainers to scale their talents and to really help more people. I really feel that all of us are put on this planet to serve other people and finding out what that is and then how do you affect more people? It's great to help people one-on-one, but the only option to make more money or have more reach is to see more people. And there's only a certain number of hours in a day. So it's basically impossible. So I encourage anyone to, uh, to create an online business like that. And it'll be slow at the beginning, but just, you know, do, um, I think things like that are great because somebody, you know, obviously they're already interested in the stuff that you have to say. They're already bought in. Right. And then now they can go and they can learn something very

specific and they can pick what they want. They don't want, they're like autophagy. Don't want to know about it. I just want to know about being ripped or whatever. Right. Totally. And they can learn something very specific and they can pick what they want. They don't want, they're like autophagy, don't want to know about it. I just want to know about being ripped or whatever, right? Totally. And they can kind of pick and choose what they want and they can, but that it's, it's just a great way to get information, great way to consume information. I agree.

And then it gives you the ability to spend a little bit more one-on-one time. And then the cool part about it is you can have people learning from other people as well. So there's the element of social proof, like human beings, we look to others for confirmation of our decisions. So you have the social proof because there's other people, you're in the position of authority, and then you've already give them, like from a business standpoint, this whole thing of reciprocity. It's like with you with the free gym, people are probably like, how in the heck

are you ever going to recuperate from that? But it's that feeling of reciprocity where if I give you something, you'll feel obligated to repay me in some way. And you don't want to manipulate that per se, but if you give a bunch of free content on Instagram or YouTube or whatever, say, hey guys, we have this upcoming course. It's even, you have even more details coming. And then you can bring in your friends and say, you know, on the 22nd of April, we're going to have some deadlift expert, you know, give a presentation and so forth. So it can be, it can be great for trainers. I don't know what you want to go on, but we, you touched on this a little bit in terms of the gut microbiome and gut health. Um, how does one that, you know, cause it seems so like you said, there's been research started in like 2012,

but it seems that people are really starting to talk about it now. And a lot of people really don't know all the things that they can do to start optimizing that and how beneficial it is for them. So for like athletes listening, why should they think about trying to optimize their gut health? And then what kind of benefits is it going to bring them when they, you know, do the things that you're about to mention? Yeah, that's a brilliant question. Well, I think just on a fundamental level, basic level, it will enhance absorption of the nutrients that you're eating. So that's one of the things that our microbiome does, a healthy microbiome. So if we take foods that people call superfoods, blueberry, spinach, I don't necessarily, I don't believe that they're superfoods per se,

but most people do. We could not garner the health benefits from those purported superfoods without our microbiome. So it really helps us. If we think about our liver, our liver has about 5,300 metabolic functions. Our microbiome has over 6,000 metabolic functions. So we have in our body the most metabolically active organ. Our microbiome literally squashes that in terms of its ability. So it gives us a lot. And so we want to be able to optimize that. So on a very basic level, you're going to have better

digestion, less inflammation. So the less inflammation you have, the harder you can work out because your baseline level is just lower. We think about this glass is half full. If I move a little bit, it's going to spill everywhere, right? So we're bringing that inflammation level down so that that stimulus, your immune system can then respond to making muscle recovering from the exercise. So you're going to train, you know, you can train harder, recover faster. And I think, and again, the long-term perspective is having better blood sugar regulation. So what people find, you know, one of the things that actually, one of the only medical interventions for type 2 diabetes is bariatric surgery, gastric bypass. And a lot of people will say, oh yeah, that's because you're restricting

how much food people can eat. You're like, well, that's only a small fraction of the mechanism. The real inherent efficacy or the way that bariatric surgery causes literally rapid restoration of type 2 diabetes. You take an insulin-dependent type 2 diabetic, meaning they can't have food without insulin. They undergo, there's a Rau and Y, there's a few subtypes of the procedure. They get bariatric surgery. Within hours after the procedure, they don't need insulin. Literally, their diabetes is gone. You're like, how could, wait, they haven't even had time to eat food or not. Like, how does that work? It's because you're changing the gut hormones in the microbiome.

So that's how powerful. So I had an overweight individual that was working in this medical clinic I was working in. She was an MA, a medical assistant, morbidly obese. Every meeting she had diet, soda, Mountain Dew. You know, she was eating a bunch of junk, right? She had bariatric surgery, didn't change her diet at all. Was eating still the same junk,

shedded a bunch of weight, got off her diabetes medicine. So this was in like 2009. I was like curious on the mechanisms, how is this working? And that's what kind of unearthed this huge body of research on this whole gut-brain connection, the gut hormones. So a lot of us hear about insulin and

glucagon and testosterone, but there's this whole category of hormones called incretins. And these are hormones literally that are higher order or upstream of insulin. So they're released from the gastrointestinal tract and they tell insulin to be released. They tell glucagon to be released. And as people get more and more overweight,

they're eating when they're not really hungry, they're emotionally eating, these hormones become desensitized. And so when they undergo this procedure, and let me just pause, I'm not advocating this procedure. I'm just admiring the pharmacology of it. When they undergo this procedures, those gut hormones become re-synced and they're working again. And it turns out that our microbiome, to answer your question specifically, our microbiome crosstalks with our gut cells and affects these gut hormones. And so I think from an athlete's

perspective, you're hedging your bets that long-term you can maintain this shredded abs urine day in, day out, or you can maintain this high level of training and still have normal blood sugar and insulin function. So I think that's the value add for an athlete. And some of these synthetic sweeteners and diet products, even in some of the protein powders in the market, Monster Energy drinks, and there's a million of them. The data shows, at least in animal models, it depends on which sweetener we're talking about, aspartame, sucralose, whatever, that our microbiome and potentially our gut hormones are altered from consuming that. So again, I just think it's a long-term play. You could probably be shredded and do

everything right and say, screw my gut hormones and screw my microbiome. But I think long-term, if you want to have, make this a career instead of a fly by night, do one competition and be done. I think that's where the microbiome, at least awareness about it and about how the food impacts it is helpful. So what can we like add? Like what could people add to their diets? What maybe supplements could they take to optimize that? is part of the deal, right? And some of these people are in their 70s and 80s and they look great. So, and I think that's a way, I think a lot of us have put a big emphasis on eating vegetables. And I think part of the way to mitigate

some of the damaging effects of vegetables is fermenting them, you know? So we know that plants can't run away from predation, right? They're stuck, so they make anti-nutrients. And then when we ferment them, we can mitigate some of that. So I do like having fermented foods.

I do like having kind of a diverse diet. So I'm not eating the same thing every day. You know, so I'll have like egg yolks and, you know, ribeye and then maybe organ meats and other time, you know, so you're constantly having different foods and that can increase diversity. And so at least the data is kind of mixed on diversity in terms of health. But I think overall, if you were to, there's a great researcher here at Stanford, Erica and Justin Sonnenberg, I think they would tell you, you know, because they have a microbiome lab. They wrote a book too, I think called The Good Gut, but you

know, that diversity is kind of what separates Westerners from other healthy people throughout the world is we just eat such narrow diets. And so our microbiome is not diverse. And why does diversity matter? It's linked with stability. Yeah, it actually makes a lot of sense. It's like inoculation towards something. So if you were to, if you're sensitive to lactose, right? It's like, you're probably better off being less sensitive and having more variety of foods cause less inflammation because your stomach is, as your gut is able to actually

handle it. You know, we've had Dr. Davis on our podcast in the past, and he talked a lot about the gut microbiome and some, you know, different ways you can, you know, help it. And he's suggested some of the things you're suggesting. He also suggested some like prebiotic fibers. Have you messed around with anything like that? Or, or, cause it seems like it's hard to get prebiotic fibers. Have you messed around with anything like that? Because it seems like it's hard to get prebiotic. Probiotic fibers are everywhere. People make millions and millions of dollars off of selling them, but the prebiotic fibers are kind of hard to come by. Do you think they're effective? Yeah, it's a great, great point. I think there's a lot of good research

on prebiotics like inulin and different resistant starches and so forth. But then there's also, they can be a ticking time bomb for people that already has gut issues. Yeah, they can really hurt your stomach, right? Yeah. So five years ago, I promoted prebiotic fiber all the time. So my first book, Belly Fat Effect, I was like, you have to have this stuff

because there was tons of data pointing to it. A real simple example would be a green banana, a banana that's just not yellow yet. Totally. But we have a lot of people that have had antibiotics. They have poor guts already. So you're giving them this fermentable thing and it can cause a lot of gas and bloating.

And the thought process was like, well, you just haven't changed your microbiome yet. Just give it more time. Keep suffering through. Your spouse, just tell her to plug her nose. And so I think the data is mixed on that. If you can tolerate prebiotic fiber, cool. But to me, it also seems a little unnatural

that we're taking this thing to supposedly, I think it's better to get it from your diet, right? So if you're really worried about diversity, try to get it from your diet. Some of these things can kind of happen naturally by eating vegetables and beans. And like your stomach will probably take care of some of these things on its own,

don't you kind of think? I think so. So like when we cook eggs, sometimes we'll put in onions or leeks. So that's a specific food that has the same prebiotic fiber that you could get in a supplement, but you don't have to pay an arm and a leg for it. But if that causes gastrointestinal pain or dysfunction or stool changes or you're constipated, then like you, you know, custom tailor this thing. So that's what we like. And then the other thing that we like specifically foods is just herbs. So you can be on a carnivorous diet, but you can say, cook it with rosemary, ginger, garlic. I love turmeric. So these are all compounds.

We think about antioxidants are categorized as polyphenolic. They have multiple phenolic rings. Those rings, it turns out, fuel good growth of bacteria in our body. And so they can be helpful in that regard to increase diversity. So even like red wine, the polyphenols in there that make dark red wine so dark and will stain your clothes, it selectively fuels the growth of healthy bugs, you know, and they can out-compete in the environment,

the pathogenic bugs. So more color in your diet and it can be helpful. And that's easy for people to think about like, hmm, should I choose a banana or blueberries? Like, well, which one has more color? Blueberries. So I should eat that instead. This is all very interesting because, you know, there's a trend right now, you know, moving towards a carnivorous diet or moving towards like an elimination diet, which I think an elimination diet is a great practice for just about anybody just to kind of find out, especially if you've had problems, like,

what the hell is it that's bothering my stomach, right? It's good to kind of narrow it all down. But I think where people get confused is, is like, you know, you're advocating, you know, a mixed diet. And then, you know, the next guy is talking about, you know, mainly eating fish. And the next guy is talking about mainly eating red meat. And you got Dr. Baker saying, all you need steak basically. And you got Saladino saying, well, you know, you got to eat nose to tail. And there's just a lot of, what I, the conclusion that I've come to from talking to so many of these different people over a long period of time is that if you, if you start to eat some different foods, maybe the rules are a little bit different for you as opposed to somebody that sticks to like a carnivorous diet. And for example, there's been studies that show people that have more variety in their diet and

that eat more carbohydrates, they may actually need more vitamin C, right? And there's cases where people that don't really eat a lot of carbohydrates, they don't need as much vitamin C. The word need gets to be very complicated very quickly. But I think it's important to explore different diets and it's important to try different things. And that's, if you go back to the beginning of this podcast, it's kind of where we started.

You talked about different types of training. Don't do a five by five every week for the next four years with the same exact weight in the same exact way. And a ketogenic diet's great, but do you always need to be in ketosis? Probably not. You know, do you always need to be on a high carb diet? Do you always need to utilize flexible dieting or intermittent fasting? You can pop in and out of these different things with great success and you should be kind of mixing things up here and there. just simply eat more and simply eat less. If you feel like you've been eating less for a while and you've lost like 20 pounds, congratulate yourself for a little while, just for the next week or two, just start to eat a little bit more. It's not a free pass to just go ahead and do whatever you want, but why not just switch something up a little bit? Why not take that time and say, you know what? I wonder, I wonder how a bodybuilding diet would work for me. Or I wonder how the carnivore diet, just give it a damn shot. Try something a little different. It's beautiful.

There's a book out there. It's a business book, but it speaks to what you're talking about, Mark. And it's, I might botch the name, but it's what got you here won't get you there. And it's these steps going up. That's a saying by Albert Einstein. Yeah.

So I think, you know, like you said, so if you did this diet to lose 20 pounds, well, if you want to put on more muscle, it's going to be a little bit different. So it's really good to think about that. And what I like to do, you know, so Sean Baker, really big guy, very strong, right? So again, he's moving a lot of weight. I think he can rep 500. He's a monster. He's a monster. He's huge, right? So, so just because he eats six pounds of meat a day, if you're five foot one, 110 pounds soaking wet, you probably don't need that much

meat, right? So it's context and you need to consider their health conditions too. If someone has autoimmune disease like Michaela Peterson, right? Okay. If she has leaks, like I just recommend she might flare up and I don't want someone to flare up, right? So you need to consider the experts, health issues, their own biases, their exercise strategy and their health goals. And then how does that align with yours? Right. So anytime we do complex decision in business for life, you have pros and cons. There's pros and cons to all these things and it's different. Right. So I think that's important for people to understand. Who are some of the people that you follow? Because, you know,

traditionally, you know, years ago, if you had a mentor or somebody that like, you know, it'd be like a grandpa or be like, you know, somebody that you met maybe through, like maybe it'd be a professor or something like that. But who are some of you have some, I've heard you mentioned a lot of other people. Do you have some people that you really like to follow online and get some similar information from like a Mark Sisson or a Rob Wolf or some of these people? Yeah. So I would say if I had like a man crush would be Peter Atiyah. I really, I had the opportunity to interview him a few weeks ago. I know you've been on his podcast. Handsome guy. Not a bad man crush. Well, he's super smart, right? He can sit there and his ability to communicate complex ideas and

make them into stories that you'll remember it. So that would be someone that I, you know, kind of look up to. And I admire people. Not just all brains either. He's, you know, he's physical. He used to be a boxer. Yeah. And he fasts. He does.

He's seven day fast. You're like, how are you preserving that mass? Man, that's impressive. Yeah. He's pretty good shape. Yeah. So yeah, I follow people in all different spaces. A huge fan of Stan.

I know he's been a longtime friend of yours. I love that video. Monster. You posted a video of the best of 2010 or something last weekend and he was hitting 800 on the spot. He's eating all those eggs and everything after the workout.

Egg whites and egg yolks together and disgusting. I follow your work a lot. I admire you, Mark, because you talk a lot about strength, but also life and business. And I like the kind of that you do lives on like a 4 p.m. sometimes. You talk about mindset

and what it took to create your business. And I think that's really admirable and so forth. And so I follow a few different people in that realm. But I would say if people are interested in nerdy metabolic stuff, Peter's a good guy to learn from. I'm impressed with Ben Greenfield. I know he's controversial.

But seeing how he lives his life and chickens and goats and his house is kind of off the grid. And again, he exercises. So I like people that are not just talking to science, but they can actually move their body and they prioritize physical activity. Sometimes some of these people are so smart that, you know, they're not always going to be accepted by everybody. You know, I think Ben Greenfield kind of falls into that category where he's so different, you know, but look, there's been a lot of people throughout the years that have been, that later on you're like, wow, that guy was kind of right, you know? And so I think at first people are like, what's he talking about? I got to shut off my wifi. I got to do this. I got to do that

just to go to sleep. Guy's crazy. He's talking about taping his mouth and he's talking about doing all these other things. And now you're starting to see more and more people kind of follow along doing some of that stuff. What about in your, uh, in your real life? Um, who's someone that's been a mentor? You have a father figure, your dad, a cousin, whoever. Yeah, great point. Yeah, I would say my dad, you know, he was really successful and still is in business. So he actually, it's funny that I'm in the health space.

So he distributed ice cream. And so like he brought Dreyer's ice cream to the- That son of a bitch. So I'm kind of cleaning up the mess. No, but yeah, just his ability to make decisions on the fly and communicate and really lead people. So his business was acquired back by Dreyer's Ice Cream because he had a distributorship. And so they brought him in for all this testing and everything like that

to figure out like, okay, if we're going to replace you, who would that be? We got to like pick your brain. And so I've always been admired by that ability to communicate and lead people because I feel like that isn't something that I'm innately good at. And I realized that as I try to scale my business, like I can't be everywhere all the time. And I think none of us can. We need to realize like what our strengths are,

exploit those or take advantage of those and then delegate in a polite way to other people that those strengths that they have are not yours. And so trying to figure out that has been interesting. Man, what was that like growing up with dad those strengths that they have are not yours. And so trying to figure out that has been interesting. Man, what was that like growing up with a dad that's distributing ice cream? I loved it. So I would like, when I was 13 or 14,

I would go in there and chip ice in the freezers and everything like that. And yes, we had ice cream all the time. So like, you know, I was interested in health, but I would just, we'd have like an ice cream cone or we'd have little, so they distributed Nestle, Haagen-Dazs, Ben and Jerry's, everything. So dryers, which was eventually acquired by Nestle, they would distribute all this stuff.

And then it ended up being its own brand as well, right? Exactly. Yeah. So it's more of a West Coast thing. I shouldn't know so much about ice cream. But you know, back- This is just stuff I've heard. Right.

You've seen it on YouTube on youtube no but um i think ice cream was better back then this was kind of right when trans fats were being introduced the partially hydrogenated fatty acids that are really bad and um so they were using more whole ingredients but it got really bad right after he sold it i think uh 98 or something like that then there was a lot of food coloring synthetic sweet sweeteners. And so it became less natural. Was your dad kind of always doing business? Like when you're young, did you kind of, cause my dad, um, he does, uh, taxes and real estate and stuff like that. And so as a kid, I kind of always saw him, uh, with kind of, kind of like hustling all the time, you know, go just, I saw him working all the time. Cause a lot of times he worked, um, we had our, you know, garage gym set up and then he had his tax practice kind of on the other

side of our basement. So, uh, talk about mixing, uh, lifting with money. I mean, that's, that's what I was exposed to as a kid. So I saw that all the time. And, uh, I remember I'd like work out and then I'd kind of go over to his side, uh, when he didn't have a client and I would, you know, he would tell me like how much money he made or something like that for the day. He'd be like, I made a hundred bucks off of this and I made this money with this guy. And I thought some of it was really fascinating too, because he also made money in different ways. So it was like, he would sit down with some clients for a few hours cause they were like

kind of friends or, uh, somebody that had a more complicated tax to do, or somebody just that mailed it to us. And then he would do it, mail it back. He never had to see them and he made money that way. And I was like, damn, this is a pretty good gig he's got going here. That's awesome. Did you see your dad kind of doing a lot of work? Yeah. I mean, so the facility was far from our home, maybe 20 minutes. So I would go with him because he would work on the weekends usually. But what kind of related story with that is I would say he was up at five in the morning. It was like Saturdays, weekends, whatever. So I always feel like if I'm sleeping in, like I'm missing out. And so that can be problematic because you need rest. But that's been inked in my head. Like if I want to be successful, like you got to get

up before other people and do this. That can be from a fitness goal. That can be business, whatever. And so I know most of the successful athletes I know get up early and train first thing in the morning before, you know, Mike O'Hearn, I see him posting Instagram videos at like 4.30 in the morning.

I'm like, wow, in LA, that's impressive. Well, in LA it helps a lot because then you don't have to deal with the traffic. Yeah. It's like a completely different city when no one's awake yet. I can imagine. Yeah. So, you know, we do learn a lot from our mentors and, but, you know, I think a lot of us have

access to so many mentors through books, which is great now. And we can learn through podcasts, which is really cool. So yeah, I think it's important though to learn from other people. When I was younger, I used to be embarrassed to ask for help. Like I can figure this crap out on my own. I don't need help. And now I've realized that the most successful people around me, like with like, buddy in mind, great business doing 22 million a year and everything like that. When he has an issue, he'll just take me like, Hey, what was this? And I'm like, well, you can't figure that out. But I'm like eager to reply. So I'm like, this is how successful people became successful.

They're not embarrassed to ask questions. And so I think having that mindset that there's really never a dumb question within context. And so I've been more open to that. What you got, Andrew? When you're talking about supplementation and you said fish oil, is krill oil that much more superior as the nutrition companies make it out to be? Great question. So krill oil is just a slightly different shape, if you will. So if you look at a fish oil versus krill oil, it's a phospholipid background, the krill oil is. And so it's better

able to be absorbed in your cells. And so what I personally do, I'll just make it very simple. I rotate them and I cycle them. So I'll do one month krill, one month fish oil, because they are different. Most krill oil has on its backbone, a fat soluble antioxidant called astaxanthin that's kind of baked into the phospholipid backbone. So that's a great way to get that into your tissue. There's some good research in human studies actually showing that astaxanthin helps to delay muscle cachexia. So it's not that it's pro-anabolic, but it may be muscle sparing. So long story short, I think rotating them in, one is not good or better. They're different, and so trade them out.

So it's taking them both at the same time. Overkill? Probably. Yeah, save your money. Just rotate them instead. Gotcha. And then another good question that came in from YouTube. Are there any foods that promote a higher metabolic rate? Well, yeah. So things like pepper, like cayenne, capsaicin, there are foods that are stimulatory in that regard, but it's short-term thermogenesis, right? It's not necessarily, if we think about what is our metabolism, it's really adrenaline, noradrenaline, thyroid hormone. Those are pretty much the hormones

that kind of regulate our metabolism. You can speed those up with stimulants. Remember Ephedra and everything that came out in the late 90s? And you're like shaking. Hell yeah. We talk about it quite often. Yeah.

Where is that stuff, by the way? Yeah, it got banned. Yeah, I can't find it anymore. So now you just get a bunch of caffeine and caffeine derivatives and all that. So yeah, I mean, I think banned. Yeah, I can't find it anymore. So now you just get a bunch of caffeine and caffeine derivatives and all that. So yeah, I mean, I think long-term, are those foods going to move the needle? There's been one study, one research,

one company that sells a capsaicin, Anjinomoto, they've done some research on it. And there's very marginal between control groups versus intended to treat groups, the increase in fatty acid, the amount of fat you're losing from those thermogenic agents. What about something like carnitine?

Isn't carnitine supposed to kind of help you release fatty acids or something like that? Yeah, so carnitine is basically like a door into the cell. So it enables long chain fatty acids like fat that are stored in our fat cells and olive oil, fats like that, to be better burned as fuel. It doesn't directly enhance fatty acid oxidation.

So if you have a carnitine deficiency, maybe you've been a vegan for 22 years, you would definitely benefit from that. If you have a lot of lean muscle mass and you're not eating meat, you could benefit from there. But carnitine can help ketone synthesis. So I do recommend it, particularly if people are like, you know, some people are like,

I just don't like red meat, I don't digest it. It sits in my stomach like a brick. You might want to supplement with a carotene. That makes some sense. What have been some ways that you've been able to, you know, try to relax, like unwind? Like what are some things that you do for that kind of stuff? Yeah. Alcohol. No, I'm just kidding. Tons of it. Yeah. Actually, I found alcohol while you get some short-term, like, sedation. Oh, don't give us bad news about alcohol. Long-term. Man, that's all the time we got.

Yoga. So that's what I do. So when I hurt my back, back when I was juicing and everything like that, one of the only things I could do was ride my bike and do yoga. And so I kind of got into this practice of, there's different forms like power yoga and vinyasa. And so that's, I'd still do that routine. And so I think it's just a great way. Cause again, it speaks to what you're talking about. It forces you to breathe through your nose. So the so-called, I'm not a yogi, but a guy you breath is like this breath of fire.

And you're kind of like really over-exaggerating breathing through your nose. And that's a great way to stimulate that vagal nerve that we talked about, which is key. And actually in weight loss studies, this is interesting to bring it back to fitness for folks that are interested in fat loss. There's weight loss studies where they'll take morbidly obese people

and zap their vagal nerve, which by the way, you can do with like an electric probe and they lose weight. But you can also just improve your vagal nerve stimulation by practicing intentional deep breathing through your nose. So you don't have to get an electrode shoved in your butt. You just say, how do you find this vagal nerve? Yeah, right?

I don't know. Mark's down to test it out right now. I'm going to start chasing people around the gym with a probe. Get over here, chubs. Well, there's a cool thing called heart math. Have you guys heard of this? No. Okay, so it's a way to, in real time,

assess your heart rate variability. So you want more beat-to-beat variability. That's kind of like we talked about bacterial diversity. It's like linked with resilience. And so you put a little, it's a little clip on your earlobe and it faintly senses your pulse. And so you can then see literally

the improvements in your heart rate variability and your stress response going down by just practicing breathing. pulse. And so you can then see literally the improvements in your heart rate variability and your stress response going down by just practicing breathing. And so I think that's for people that are kind of the accountants, engineers, people that need to see data. How would you utilize that device? Would you wear it for a whole day or something? No, it's more intentional. You would do it before bed. You could do it before bed. I used to do it when I was a sales rep. I would sell supplements. I've never heard of that before. That's pretty cool. Yeah. It's a way to see it. And then once you kind of see these things, it makes it more tangible,

you know, because if I tell you to close your eyes and you've never meditated, you're going to think about all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Everything. Everything. Right. But if you can see and hear this thing improving, so yeah, people, I think it's just HeartMath Institute or HeartMath.com or.org. I think it's only 99 bucks and they make a probe that hooks up to your iPhone now, which is cool. Have you ever had a chance to talk to Joel Jameson before?

He's up your way in Washington. You're in Washington, right? Seattle area. Yeah. Saladino's, Paul Saladino's moving up there or maybe has moved up there already. Right. I've heard that. Yeah. He'll, he'll be, uh, he'll be in your area. That'd be good guy for you to collaborate with. But Joel Jamison is the heart rate variability. Uh, he's one of the heart rate variability guys. You know, he's one of the people behind it. Cool. I'll have to look them up for sure.

Got any other questions? Yeah. One last one. It was something that we were talking about earlier with, uh, you know, fasting and you, you know, taking ghee butter to the dome, right? Um, a lot of people, a lot of people, when they fast, they're like, okay, if I, if I only, you know, just drink water and black coffee, anything else, I'm going to break my fast. But you mentioned, and you were taking that for mental clarity and it wasn't really breaking your fast. Can you go into that so people can understand things that they can do? I think he made that up.

He got his own rules. Real quick, Mike, before you get started, do you have your keys? I think we have to move your car. Oh, yeah, yeah, I do. Okay. Yeah. All right.

People on iTunes are gonna be like, what are they doing right now? Yeah, so this is a common question. I'm sure you guys get this all the time. And so what does it really mean to break a fast? And I think what it comes down to is you're inhibiting autophagy. I think that's what people are,

when you're trying to fast, most people are trying to enhance this euphoric like physiologic state where your cells are recycling each other and so forth. And that's known as autophagy. Right now, all of us and anyone listening, autophagy is going on, right? Even if they probably just ate, it's still occurring. It's just like ketosis, to what degree, to what

proportions. It's improved through exercise. It's improved through fasting. Why is that? Because just like in ketosis, glucose is low and insulin is low and there's lack of growth signals like insulin around. So in the post-meal state, autophagy is blunted because insulin's around and there's glucose floating around, okay? And mTOR is activated. So then you got to think, okay, well, what affects mTOR and the other signaling pathways of autophagy? It turns out that fatty acids like in butter don't. If there was sufficient protein in that, because that's clarified butter, ghee butter. And so it's just a small amount of energy that will, in this context, I like to have ketones around

when I'm doing a podcast or interview. It's just like a thing that I've done. Anytime I do a presentation from a stage, I just find that I'm more clear. I just have more energy. I'm not like, oh crap, when is this going to end so I can eat food, right? So what people need to understand is amino acids.

And again, I love amino acids. I sell branched chain amino acids. But if you're fasting for autophagy, you don't want to take branched is amino acids. And again, I love amino acids. I sell branched chain amino acids, but if you're fasting for autophagy, you don't want to take branched chain amino acids. Glucose, insulin are going to effectively negate the benefits of fasting for an autophagy enhancement. So that's important for people. So if they're like, well, can I have sugar in my black coffee? No, because glucose will, I'llulate mTOR, stimulate autophagy. Now, if it's one gram, is it going to be a big deal? No, context matters. But that's where I think people need to understand. People think, well, if I fast and I don't take my BCAs, I'm going to

strip away muscle. But here's what's really interesting about the physiology of fasting is one of the aspects of fasting is growth hormone will increase because IGF-1 is low. So low IGF-1 enables growth hormone to increase, which actually has a protein sparing effect. And we talked about gluconeogenesis earlier. Growth hormone increases gluconeogenesis so that your obligate glucose utilizing cells have fuel. And it also enhances ketogenesis. So we know from studies where individuals have a growth hormone deficiency, they're very susceptible to hypoglycemia. Like they can't have any swings in blood sugar where they're going to be off the rails. And so like, that's a good thing for people to figure out if

they've like, well, I tried fasting, but I'm like shaky and jittery and all that. That's because your body is not able to kickstart the gluconeogenesis. And it could be because growth hormone is not being released properly. So long story short, does that help clarify it? So again, amino acids, growth factors, insulin, and just nutrients that affect insulin, like potentially dairy, could break your fast or inhibit autophagy. A little MCT oil, a little fat, probably not a big deal. But if I

were to have half that jar of whatever ghee, that would be a problem. And then it comes down to what are your goals? Like, is my goal to have optimal autophagy and I don't care about brain performance for this podcast, then maybe I shouldn't have had anything, but I'm trying to, you know, I haven't eaten anything since like 1 PM yesterday. And I was like, you know, I haven't eaten anything since like 1 PM yesterday. And I was like, you know, I'm just going to have a little butter just in case. Yeah. I've recommended to a lot of people before they're like, man, I don't know about fasting. I'm like, well, just start out with 500 calories in your 16 hour fast window. It might not be the most optimal thing, but it's like, look, all I'm trying to do for you is, is teach you about what

it feels like to be hungry, at least a little hungry, so you can learn what that feels like. And then we're also just trying to separate out your calories so you can eat more of them later at night. Just because, not necessarily later at night, but just so they can eat more kind of in almost like one sitting. Because what I've learned is a lot of people that have been bigger, a lot of people that have been heavier for a long period of time, that's what they're used to. that have been bigger, a lot of people have been heavier for a long period of time, that's what they're used to. They're used to like eating and they're fairly full and they're used to kind of continuing onward. And so that's where intermittent fasting can be super beneficial.

But if the main goal is weight loss, there's a million different ways you can go about doing that. And you can, you don't have to adhere to these exact, you know, 16 or 18 or 20 hour windows. You can kind of make up your own thing as long as you follow the rules. Right. Yeah. So keep your goal top of mind, you know? So again, if weight loss is a goal and it is having a little bone broth during your fast, it's not going to negate weight loss, right? But if you have stage four cancer, you're trying to recover, maybe avoid the bone broth, right? So it's like, again, you just got to put things in context. Yeah. Where can people find you? Yeah. Thanks, Mark. It's highintensityhealth.com. My channel that I'm most active on is YouTube and Instagram.

So if folks are there, send me a note, say hello. We'd love to connect with you and really appreciate you guys having me on. Yeah. Thank you so much, man. It's been a pleasure. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later.