Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 646- Thomas Delauer Benefits of Fasting for Fat Loss & Performance & Why You Should DO Keto

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

Thomas DeLauer is an author, health expert, and performance coach who is most noted for his own personal health transformation. He went from a 280-pound corporate executive to losing over 100 pounds and being on the covers of health and fitness magazines worldwide. Today we dive DEEP into all of the benefits of Fasting and who it's for and why you should give it a go. Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for free shipping and two free meals + a Kooler Sport when you order 16 meals or more! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: Visit https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Power Project family, happy holidays, because this is probably going to be out on Christmas Eve or Christmas, and this is going to be quite a gift, because we have Thomas Moth DeLauer on the podcast. Now, if you don't know who Thomas DeLauer is, he's this really, really jacked dude that Mark and I learned fasting from a few years ago. He has a lot of information on his channel about fasting, insulin resistance, just a lot of different diet practices. But specifically in this podcast, we talk a lot about fasting, insulin resistance, just a lot of different diet practices. But specifically in this podcast, we talk a lot about fasting, fasting for athletes,

the ketogenic diet, and how athletes can apply it to their lifestyles. You guys are going to get a deep dive into these topics because I know you guys have been curious about how we've been doing it, how we've been maintaining muscle, because all of us, Thomas, Mark, myself, and Andrew, we all use this shit and we're all jacked so i hope you guys really enjoy this episode with the great the awesome thomas de laur pat project family we're partnering with an amazing brand called the ori now andrew can you tell me your favorite piece of the ori clothing yeah dude i was so shocked when i pulled out the strato tech t i was like okay cool i like and sima's been talking about it mark's been talking about it this was my first experience and when i pulled it out i'm like oh like there's some this is different i know this is gym apparel

like this performance apparel but i was like i don't want to like i kind of want to mess this up but it i mean obviously it can handle it so that for me dude when i that was like the biggest eye-opening thing i was like okay now i get it you know what about you what's your favorite piece well i love the strato tech t because i'm wearing the strato right now i love the ponto short because the ponto shorts like i wear those to chill at home but i can also wear those to work out but the feeling like i have two of this same exact t-shirt one to excel that i wear during podcasts and stuff and the excel i wear during working out but i have two because it's just so oh and this is the last thing i'm going to mention right the colors bruh they have so many sick

colors that you just don't see in other workout gear i just i dig it so much andrew how can people get it yeah you guys got to head over to viore.com slash PowerProject. And when you do, you're going to get 20% off this amazing performance apparel. This is second to none. You can put them in comparison with the absolute most expensive, most popular brands, and Viore is going to beat them out. So, again, that's Viore.com slash PowerProject. V-U-O-R-I.com slash PowerProject. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Head over there right now.

All right. So we have Thomas DeLauer here, but we've run into some problems because he doesn't want to be people's guru. And this puts us in a tough spot because both Nsema and I, I believe, I don't want to put words in Nsema's mouth, but I believe that he has gathered information from you and so have I. And I've actually been utilizing a lot of the information that you put out there, even from like years and years ago. Same for you, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So you come here and we're on a walk.

And today you're like, man, I don't want to be everybody's guru. And I'm like, I don't know. Okay, I guess I got to try to forget all that great information I learned from Thomas. Now I don't know what to do with myself. So I think I'm just going to, I guess, just go into a perpetual bulk. I'm going to stop fasting, eat some carbs, cut all the fat out of my life, start weighing all my food. What do you think? I think that's a great idea, actually. I mean, why not just go on a bulk now? We've been fasting

for the past four years. Why not just reverse it and see what happens? What's the worst thing that could happen? Get a little fat? Just lose it again? Be all good. Totally fine. Yeah. I don't want to be Bill's guru, but I mean, I want to be able to disseminate good information and have people to make a decision for themselves and it's just i've just reached this point where like how egotistical are we in social media and it's like it's it's a certain point it gets nauseating right like i just i don't i love it when people are changed by the information that i put out. I love changing people's lives, but I also want to make sure that people are not just completely oblivious to all this other amazing information that's out there.

I am forever changed by different content that I see. I am always changing my stance on things based on the evolution of my nutrition philosophies. And people, just by nature, if they start subscribing to just one school of thought, they tend to become not necessarily dogmatic as a, like someone that's consuming content doesn't necessarily become dogmatic in their way of thinking, but they become very just focused in that one way. And they're unwilling to look at other ways because they seem, it seems disloyal to what brought them to the dance in the first place. And I just, it makes me sad to see that people aren't willing to look at other diet philosophies. They're not willing to try

because I've always thought, and the reason that I like fasting is because it's applicable with so many different diet strategies. It's a timing system, right? Yeah. I mean, I'm a keto guy, but that's just me. And I'm pretty clear about that. Like, I just like keto. I like to talk about it, but fasting, it's like, you know, if you're vegan, if you're paleo, whatever, you can fast. So like, why do I have to sit in this fasting only camp or this keto only camp when I know what works for me?

But that doesn't mean that's the only thing that's going to work for you. If you like what I say and it resonates with you and it motivates you, by all means, stick to it. But I don't want to be your only school of thought. Why do you think we're losing? Like, why are our family members obese, dying? Why are our friends sick? You know, why is so much of the, I mean, you have millions of subscribers on your YouTube channel and you've been pumping out information for a long time. I've been doing the same, and Seema's got like half a million on TikTok. We've been talking about this. We've got millions of downloads on this show.

There's many other people that talk about fitness and health. But why – like it's still so uncommon to hear somebody talk about keto or fasting when we're outside of our own little bubble or any diet implementation at all. So why do you think here in the United States, like I think the fitness industry is getting its ass kicked, even though we've seen a lot of people profit and do really well based off of it.

And we've seen a lot of people make a lot of progress and lose weight and so forth, but there's still millions upon millions upon millions of Americans that are suffering. Yeah. Now you think you nailed it. We're in this sphere, right? And in the fitness industry and the health industry and the nutrition world, it's like we're in an echo chamber. Like we are, we're like, we're talking to ourselves and we're just getting our rocks off because we all like validate each other. And it's just not, sorry. Damn, that was put way too simply.

I got to leave. I got to take off after that. I'm sick of it. Like I'm sick of just talking in an echo chamber. Like I'm sick of, it's like how many times can I talk about like X number of carbs? Like that's, first of all, it's not mentally stimulating, but okay, I'm not going to go on that. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Point is, I still do keto.

So let me put that out in the open. I still do keto. But seriously, how many carbs do you eat? 29.3, unless it's a Saturday and I'm fasted, then it's, no. I was about to say, I don't think he's joking. I just wrote that down. So, but as a whole, like why it's so interesting that you put that, I mean, the, the world

as a whole, not just the United States, but especially the United States has a serious obesity problem. And we have a serious problem with just the abundance of food in general, right? Like we have so much available, so much that's hyper palatable and it's just, it's just available. We have, I think that's hyper palatable and it's just, it's just available. We have, I think it's a dopamine issue. Personally, I think, uh, I'm pretty intuitive with this kind of stuff and I, I'm very self-aware and I noticed a very direct correlation with how much I'm checking my phone, how much I'm on my phone directly with how much I crave snacking and how

much I want to snack. It's like this dopamine hit, right? We are constantly seeking something. We have instant gratification with everything. So I think we have a bigger fundamental problem than too many carbs or too many of this or too much fat or too much saturated fat. Sure. All those things have an interplay, but I think our biggest problem is we constantly have an itch that needs to be scratched and we are always going for it and we always have a solution and we have instant gratification and we have a sense of entitlement as a society where we feel like if we get the slightest bit hungry, we are entitled to eat a bag of chips and we should. And it's, that is our problem is abundance and availability. And Amazon's just going to make that worse, right? Because it's just conditioning us. Like if I don't have something in a day, I get pissed. Like, you know, that you say that dude. Okay. First off within diet culture,

it's like high frequency eating is still something that we talk about. Like, Oh, breakfast and not like breakfast is bad, but breakfast, get your, your healthy snack, lunch, get your healthy snack, eat your dinner. Um, and it's just consistently, if you ever feel hungry, have this, have this fiber rich meal to curb your hunger. Always respond by eating something. But Mark and I mentioned when we started doing fasting, initially it was a little bit frustrating. But it's the only thing added to my diet protocol that's allowed me to be in total control of my hunger. Because I'll be hungry. I haven't eaten this morning.

Last time I ate was like 7 p.m. last night. I felt a little bit hungry, but it's not a big deal because I'm used to that feeling that I can just keep going until I need to just eat later on in the day. But fasting is still something that within fitness, a lot of other individuals are like, oh, people are talking about it like it's magic or like it's going to make a big difference, et cetera. When it actually does, at least up here, mentally. Yes. Mastery, power, you know, like mastery is everything, right? That's the mental fortitude to be able to handle anything. And fitness in so many realms is just discipline.

And is it discipline to eat six meals a day, you know, exactly on the two-hour dot? Or is it discipline to abstain from food? And it's like when you look at, we just, we always need to solve a problem rather than just like stopping, letting our body solve the problem. And I almost liken it to the men are from Mars, women are from Venus conversation, right? Men like, what is the problem that women have with men? You're always trying to fix it. You're always trying to fix it. Just listen to me. Just stop trying to fix it. We're always trying to fix every little thing that goes in our body in an element of control. Like we want to, we're a little bit hungry. Let's fix it because we're in control and we're doing the right thing because

we're aware of our body and we're listening to our body. Listen to your body. That means, oh, you know, every single little thing we try to fix it. Okay. Like I understand that philosophy, but take a back seat for a second and realize that there's a lot more like that our body can do outside of just our conscious thought, right? How much, I don't know what percentage of our brain is actually operating in conscious thought versus subconscious thought, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we probably have more going on in our subconscious than in our conscious. So if our conscious mind is saying, solve this problem, eat, our subconscious is probably saying something different. So by trying to override our subconscious all the time,

by trying to like prefrontal cortex our way through everything, we're just messing ourselves up more. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. Cause you know, like you mentioning there, there are a lot of really delicious foods out there, but now I'm starting to see a trend of there's delicious choices that are more nutritious. I mean, we can argue about like some protein bars and stuff like that back and forth. And like they might put you in the same spot because you might overeat them as well. Yeah, for sure. And overeating is overeating. But we're starting to get get more and more options. So I like the fact that we're seeing Coke Zero, Pepsi Zero.

At least there's a movement. At least some people are paying attention and they're conscious. If we get the big soda companies and some of the people that are behind pumping out a lot of sugar and a lot of these convenient products and they start putting out products that are at least, quote at least quote unquote healthier, maybe that's a good start. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, you could always rain on that parade and say, oh, it's still hyper palatable food. And so, and it is, but I think we're still missing the point

that we can't just rain on big food all the time because they're just, they're just following the money. Like we're voting with our dollars, ladies and gents, like weents. We are. So if you're going to continue to buy the chips, then they're going to continue to make them. But if you start, I guarantee you, if everyone were to make a pledge, no one's going to do it, but if everyone were to make a pledge on January 19th, mark your calendars,

we're all going to go out and we're going to wipe out every single store of broccoli. We're going to buy every bag of frozen broccoli. We're going to buy every broccoli stem stock. They'd be like, what's going on? Broccoli's the new thing. Forget the Doritos. Everyone's going to buy every bag of frozen broccoli. We're going to buy every broccoli stem stock. They'd be like, what's going on? Broccoli is the new thing. Forget the Doritos. Everyone's going to start making broccoli chips.

And we vote with our dollars. Like they're just following. They're not necessarily, I mean, some would argue that they're trying to actually like make us sick and unhealthy. I think to a degree, maybe that's true. I don't know. I'm not qualified to say. But the point is, is that they're just following our traits, our habits, our spending habits. And I think that if it starts

becoming big business to be healthy, then, and I think we're seeing it obviously, like the better for you options are just there. They're a thing. But just like anything, if they become hyper palatable, you know, well, that's like for, with keto snacks, for instance, that happens all the time, right? Because keto snacks are delicious, but they're also four times as many calories. So, because they're concentrated with fat. Fat bomb. Yeah, exactly. So it's like, oh my gosh, some of that keto chocolate, like it's so easy to overdo it because it's just like a fraction of it, you know, in terms of volume. So you just got to be careful. And that begs the question, get down the biochemistry rabbit fraction of it, you know, in terms of volume. So you just got to be careful. And

that begs the question, get down the biochemistry rabbit hole of like, does a sweet thing trigger a cephalic insulin response? Does something that's sweet, whether it's sugar, sucralose, aspartame, stevia, monk fruit, does it still make you crave more sweets? Is it psychosomatic or is it physiological? I don't really know, but it's doing something. For me personally, it's not great. I got to just pay attention to everything because I like food a lot. And so once I eat something that tastes really good, it just seems like I just want to eat more and more of it. And I'm better off just abstaining from it or trying to figure out a way to occasionally just cheat on my diet and eat something that's off plan. Yeah. You're like me, man.

Like I like, I like food too. And you know, I mean, we were both pretty hefty before, right? It's like, I'm not going to deny that I like food. So I think I catch flack from some communities because like I still try to, try to relate with people. Like I'll talk about keto snack foods and I'll talk about my favorite keto snack foods because you know what? Life is short.

And, but you also, yeah, that's where I like fasting. It's like, I get to like kind of, people are gonna say, oh,

that sounds like a binge and purge type mentality, but no, it's, it's, I like, it's like a mental reset for me. If I am going to enjoy something, then I do also feel like I can still maintain control by having some elements of fasting in my life.

And it's, it's okay to like food. I mean, it's a pleasure that we have, right? But before we go, because we're going to end up talking about a lot of different things and I don't want us to talk about fasting,

let's talk about something else and come back. So let's talk about some of the main benefits of fasting and why maybe some people should implement it because there are people within different realms of like fitness, especially within the bodybuilding side. They seem to dislike it quite a bit. And I've seen that it's been super beneficial for me over the years and it's been super beneficial for people I know,

not just because of the way you can control your hunger, but also, I mean, conceptually, if you can just get in all your protein and your calories during the day, I haven't seen it really affect your ability to build muscle over time. Yeah. You know what I mean? People have the argument of, oh, even protein feedings and all of that, but it doesn't seem to make that much of a difference. No, I think one of the biggest levers that you can pull in terms of bodybuilding, building muscle in general is manipulating your insulin sensitivity. Like I can't think of a better way to manipulate insulin

sensitivity more than to take a break from eating. like it's the same reason we used to talk about constantly oh well after a workout you're insulin sensitive so you have your anabolic window right it's been preached for years by our the fitness community themselves the bodybuilding community so they can't like say that that works in one situation but not in another that's completely bs like come on so like and you're seeing much more of the bodybuilding community being accepting of intermittent fasting now. Like it's, it's becoming much more talked about. I just had a Stan Efferding on my channel, you know, and we were talking about that and Stan Efferding even said himself, he's like, the anabolic window is kind of BS. Like you have a lot more time to eat than that 30 minute

anabolic window. So it was nice to hear from someone that's been on an Olympia stage that understands, right. That is respectful of intermittent fasting. And so, and that's just one person, but I know that there are multiple others. And for me, I've had some of my best gains in terms of muscle after my weight loss, you know, so after I'd lost weight and of course I lost a lot of muscle with that weight loss, but then, you know, I've built it back slowly and now I've kind of lost it again cause I'm doing a lot of running. But the point is, I mean, it's... How many miles are you doing per week again, just so people can understand this? Right now, about 25, but normally anywhere between 40 and 70, depending on what I'm training for.

He said that. He said that. Yes. 40 to 70. Okay. I'm nothing like Nick Bear. I'm not fast, but you know, I can maintain my speed for at least seven, eight miles after that. I'm just, I'm just a slow nine, nine minute mile guy just cruising along. So, and then, uh, and people say, Thomas, you don't have huge legs. Well, yeah, cause I'm kind of running a lot, but it's all good. And also just because maybe I'm just a big giant pansy. I don't know. But anyway, point is, is that, and I still managed to maintain muscle even still doing so, but with intermittent fasting, you're, manage to maintain muscle, even still doing so. But with intermittent fasting, you're allowing your body to become much more insulin sensitive. And when you do that, then of course, yeah, you have an opportunity when you do break your fast to capitalize on that.

So one of the things that I really like doing is either having like a really early dinner or sometimes just skipping dinner, which is hard to do with a family because it's kind of rude. But when you're a man and you sit there with your wife, the last thing you want to do at a restaurant is let your wife eat food and you not. That doesn't exactly make them feel good. And you kind of feel like a jerk. But anyway, when I have that in my ability to do so, yeah, I'll just skip dinner

or I'll have dinner early, which is great because we have small kids. So all about having dinner early we'll have it you know be done by five right and then uh that means if i go and i work out the next day at you know 8 a.m or something i'm pretty deep in a fast right so people like well you're gonna break down muscle during your workout no it doesn't work like that like not at all especially if you're producing ketones at that point even if you're not doing a ketogenic diet, you're eating carbs with fasting after 18 hours of a fast, you're probably producing at least trace amounts of ketones, which are pretty muscle preserving. Now that doesn't

mean that everyone's not going to lose some muscle, but you're going to offset that muscle burn by when you finish your workout, then you break your fast. You're breaking your fast with a double advantage. One, you're insulin sensitive from your workout. Two, you're insulin sensitive because you haven't been eating for 18 hours. So the quote unquote anabolic response, if you want to call it that, is going to be significantly higher. And yes, it matters how many calories you take in a day, but we all do know that there are specific times where you can get more benefit, right? From insulin signaling and from muscle protein synthesis

after a workout is one of those times, at least a few hours after a workout, it's a little bit more, a little better. And so I feel like it's all about manipulating timing and really looking at that big equation versus, you know, and how many calories are you getting in total, right? Just because you're fasting doesn't mean that you're only eating 1200 calories. If you're actually paying attention to it, it's not that hard to meet your daily amount of calories. So what I do is I look at my calories over the course of a week versus each day. How many calories am I at the end of a week? So if my, you know, if I'm supposed to consume 3000 calories a day, then I want to be around 21,000 calories for maintenance at the end of the week.

Some days, maybe it's 1500. Some days, maybe it's 3,500. Some days, maybe it's 4,000. At the end of the day, I'm ultimately getting to the same point. And it's, if I want to gain weight, then I bump that up and I've tried to get myself in a surplus of like three to 400 calories for the week. Okay. For the week, I don't go into these massive crazy bulks. I try to get a small surplus. Same if I'm trying to cut a small deficit because I have these like macro deficits that are happening over the course of the week. And then I have these micro deficits that are happening during my, by spacing my meals apart certain ways. Right. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So intermittent fasting is just for me. And then let's just back up for a second and let's think about cortisol and stress and sustainability, right?

Bodybuilding is not necessarily sustainable for a lot of people. We were talking about your competitive history, my competitive history. That's not realistic. Like, I don't want to, once you have kids, I mean, I can't speak for everybody. I speak for myself. Once I had kids, I'm packing their lunches. I don't, last thing I want to do is pack my little like lunchbox too. Like I just, you know, I'd rather just, come on, man. Like, what am I three? This is dumb. So it's like, and yeah, you're, you're, you're going to title this.

You're like, Thomas says bodybuilders are dumb. No, not at all. But my point is that I don't want to do that forever. And it just made a lot more sense for me to say like, Hey, okay, well some days I just take a break and I can actually do it for a longer period of time and keep it off. I'd like for people to start to think of things a little bit differently. So like breakfast, for example, whenever you eat, that's breakfast because you broke your fast, right? Yeah. Post-workout nutrition. Anytime after a workout that you ate, that's post-workout nutrition. It doesn't matter how far away it is. I mean, I guess you could say, hey, well, if it's three days later that you ate, then maybe that's not post-workout or whatever, right? Any food that you eat after a workout, you could have worked out at 8 a.m., and then you could eat at 8 p.m.

It's still a post-workout, and we can argue about glucose, and we can review a bunch of studies, but people don't study everything. And people don't study individuals that are usually pretty hardcore. You don't really see that. So when I hear people mentioning studies all the time, I'm like, well, they haven't fucking studied me. Maybe I'm being arrogant about it, but I'm kind of thinking to myself, well, I'm doing the exact opposite of what that study shows. And for some reason, this feels great. And for some reason, I'm starting to hear more people say that this is working. So when it comes to like breakfast, post-workout, pre-workout, same thing.

Maybe you didn't eat at 7.30 because you're going to train at 8.30 a.m. Maybe the food that you ate was the night before. It's still pre-workout. It's still pre-workout. Yeah. I mean, you understand the body really, really well. Does our protein disappear 12 hours later?

Does our glucose disappear? Does our fat? Our calories actually reset every day at midnight. Oh, wow. Yeah, so everything. I thought that happened to me. Yeah, yeah. If you're awake and you pay attention to it, you can feel it.

It's really cool. It's like, yeah, it's like you feel it. You sit there and it's like there's this subtle click. And that's your body. I've felt that before. That's their body resetting. It goes back to zero. Okay, I thought that was a boner or something.

I misinterpreted that. No, it's. No, go ahead. No, no, you're good. No, that's the one thing you're mentioning there. That's one thing years ago, especially when I've been focusing on building muscle, and also being an athlete, you always hear your coaches say, for soccer, have a carbohydrate-rich meal two or three hours before practice. Bodybuilding, have a carbohydrate-rich meal before lifting, and it'd be in my head.

So whenever I would lift on an empty stomach before, I'd be like, fuck, I'm so weak, blah, blah, blah. But after I started implementing some fasting and then after I just started doing some training and not getting in my head, along with finally getting some electrolytes, because that made a big difference for me, especially while fasted, I was like,

damn, my performance is actually really fucking good. Whether it's in the gym, whether it's doing jujitsu, I can be fasted in training and I'm doing great because I ate enough food the day before. And one thing people mess up. Exactly. It's the day before. They don't eat enough food in their eating window sometimes. Yeah, dude, you nailed it with the day before thing. Cause it's, it's taken me a long time to figure that out too, because, um, especially with fasting, you get kind of addicted to it and you start, you, you, it makes you so present that sometimes you forget about those, I say this term a lot, but like those lagging indicators, those things that do, you know, what you ate before is going to rear its ugly head the next day. You know, especially with

intermittent fasting, when you're like kind of running on, you're just running on a very thin Delta to begin with. So yeah, I think, I think you nailed that. But another interesting piece is that, uh, for me, I've been training fasted for so long that I actually was getting in my own head and finding that if I were to train in the afternoon and I had eaten, I would have a crappy workout. And then I realized that I had to go back to some of my old school days and think like, no, I know this isn't real because you can still have a good workout fed. Plenty of phenomenal athletes do, you know, however you can get yourself, there is a real thing. It's, you know, peripheral insulin resistance when you are trained, fasted for so long that your body, I'm going to make this exceptionally colloquial, but basically your body is almost rejecting

nutrients when you eat before your workouts. And when I say rejecting, it just means the cells are like, whoa, you're trying to like cram glucose into me right now. I'm not used to this. So what I've actually done is, I'd say 90%, probably more of my workouts are fasted, but I will consciously make sure

that I do occasionally do a fed workout too, because I don't want to lose the tolerance of that. And the interesting thing is, yeah, I mean, I'd say with specific anaerobic activities, I feel, if I had to put a random number on it, maybe 5% stronger if I have some carbs in me. But I definitely, again, I feel my body very well and I feel like I'm definitely not burning as much fat, right? I feel like that's stopped. That's just how I feel, but I'm pretty sure that's fairly accurate that if I have a high degree of like insulin spike while I'm working out, I'm probably blunting

fatty acid oxidation to a certain degree. But what I find that does is it maintains my glucose tolerance so that I'm good at both ways. I'm good at training in a fasted state where my body's good at usually utilizing fats as a fuel source and going through, you know, liberating glycogen for the proper usage. And then I also want to be able to occasionally marinate my cells in glucose. So they still know how to use that because- Marinate your cells. Marinate your cells in glucose. I like that.

Yeah. Because it's like, get some of that Newman's own dressing. You know, just, I find that pancreatic beta cells really, and hepatic cells really like Newman's own. They like the thousand island dressing. Yeah. So- Delicious. Yeah. So it's uh i mean because i think all of us here i mean mark you came from a you know power background but you're much more of a hybrid athlete now you're definitely a hybrid athlete i consider myself a hybrid athlete um you want to be dual fueled you know you want to be able to be best the best at

using both and um like who are we just like carbohydrates are not bad we just need to find the place that they work right like they don't work when you're sitting down they don't work when you're not burning them they're designed so for an active person it's foolish to to not occasionally convince your body to use glucose because you'll develop a degree of glucose intolerance and we we want to be the best we can possibly be, not necessarily so one track minded on just like looking a certain way. We just want an overall optimization, right? Yeah. Did you, I'm just curious, did you find yourself having, when you started doing some fasting, you leaned really hard into it. Then over time you became a little bit more lenient because like, I find that I fast pretty much every day, but there are some

days where I'm just like, I don't feel like I need to fast, and I don't. And it's perfectly okay. But some people, I guess they're maybe afraid of doing it because maybe they think they'll go too far, they'll lose too much muscle, they'll lose too much weight, or get themselves into a place where it turns into slightly an eating disorder. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's common. Yeah, that's common. I mean, that's the people that are naturally going to like intermittent fasting or fasting in general are the people that thrive with it are probably going to be the kind of people that have that kind of inclination to go that way. Hey, can you support me?

One of those two. Awesome. Here we go. Give you the citrus. Sharing some spicy. Sharing some like. That is not a plug, but I guess it is. Yes, it is. It can be.

It's awesome. It's awesome. It's a butt plug. So you're doing some lemon. Yeah. Yeah. Lemon one's good. Which like for fasting, by the way, is amazing what a little bit of salt does in terms of like,

if you start finding yourself getting a little bit hungry, it's amazing. Like salt just kind of like nips that in the butt pat project family i know you guys are enjoying this episode but i need to talk to you real quick about element electrolytes now we've been taking electrolytes this past year and they're one of the biggest supplements that's made a difference for all of our performance number one because we don't cramp up during workouts anymore but they allow us to be truly hydrated most people when they're dehydrated just reach for a jug of water and drink it but you're not replenishing the electrolytes that you lose when you sweat.

That's why Element has 1,000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium per easy-to-use packet. Pour it in some water, drink it pre-workout, post-workout, or even during your workout, and trust me, you're going to feel a difference. Andrew, can you tell them how to get it? Head over to drinklmnt.com slash powerproject. Get a value bundle because you're going to get four boxes, any flavor you want for the price of three.

That's what we do. That's what you should do. Links to them down in the YouTube description, as well as the podcast show notes. Let's get back to the podcast. So yeah, kind of the addictive side of it. I think it comes with some maturity with fasting, right? Yeah.

So people are inclined to think that they're tougher when they grit through it and fast longer. And it's kind of one of those things like I liken it to the same aspect as like rest days with training. It doesn't make you tougher because you went 10 days in a row working out. What makes you a better lifter and a better athlete is having the mental toughness and the know when it's time to stop and the know when it's time, know when you're overtraining, right? I made much more gains when I did that, right? When I was like, wait a minute, you know what? I'm probably doing too much. Let my body recover. That takes a lot of strength. That takes a lot of work. And it's the same with fasting. It doesn't mean you grit through more. Sometimes the answer is as simple as being a

little bit more lenient and taking some time off. But the other thing is that simply put, fasting needs to always remain the anomaly. It needs to be, it needs to continually be ever so slightly the minority of what you do, because then it's going to maintain its power. That being said, if it is a lifestyle that works and you enjoy the lifestyle aspect of just skipping breakfast and stuff like that, by all means, that's fine. But if you're trying to get it to elicit a change beyond where you're at now, it needs to be the anomaly. It needs to be the different shock. I hate saying shock to the body because it's like so muscle confusion.

Shock your body. Guarantee you that your body knows what is going on way more than you do and you're not going to shock your body i say your body's going to shock you when it decides to like you know you keel over with something because you thought you shocked it right yeah point is is yeah so take a break become more lenient but also like how long are you in this for you know for the long haul because you're not going to fast every day for 20 hours. I do seven 24-hour fasts a week. You know, while we're sharing all this information,

I think, you know, put very simply, a lot of people that struggle with their nutrition, they need to spend less time eating and more time fasting for a period of time. Whatever shift that is, whatever, you know, maybe it's just that they start to just eat later in the day or maybe they start their fast at night just a little earlier. However, it's also important to note that the people that are under normal circumstances, the people that are in the best shape, the people that we see on Instagram,

most of the people that are in the best shape, the people that we see on Instagram, most of the people that are super jacked, most of what Stan Efferding preaches and what a lot of his athletes follow, these people are burning tremendous amounts of energy every single day and they're consuming tremendous amounts of energy every day. So I want to make sure that people fully understand that we're not saying that if you're looking for maximum performance, we're not saying that you have to fast to have great workouts. And we're certainly not saying that you need to stay fasted after your workout.

This is just something that has worked really well for the three of us in some of the information that you share. It's helped a lot of the people there as well. But there's, this is where stuff gets kind of confusing because you were mentioning, there's even like some research and some studies showing that the goal and objective overall is to be a fuel burning machine that is consuming quite a bit of fuel. Yeah. This is, this is the big paradox though. Um, it's called G flux and there's some interesting stuff and I've recorded a few videos on it. Um, you know, Chris Melding did some interesting research on this, but it's essentially, people are going to flame me for saying this, but the goal, the goal, okay, is to be able to be at a net neutral, you know, that balance of calories, calories in, calories out at net neutral at the highest caloric intake possible.

Okay. You shouldn't say possible, but maybe like the more calories you take in and the more calories you burn, the higher your resting metabolic rate will be. Okay. So it's called G-flux. You would look on paper that someone that is consuming 2000 calories a day and is burning 2000 calories per day is going to end up in the exact same position that someone that is consuming 2000 calories a day and is burning 2000 calories per day is going to end up in the exact same position as someone that's eating 5,000 calories per day and burning 5,000 calories per day, right? Like they're both at maintenance. So they're both going to maintain the same weight, right? Wrong. The person that is eating 5,000 calories and burning 5,000 calories is going to have quite a significant resting metabolic rate increase.

Okay. Because it's called G-flux and nobody is really 100% sure as to how it works. Right. The mechanistic target, like we don't really know. So maybe because of that, the 5,000 calorie person might be getting like leaner and better results than the 2,000 calorie person. There's an increase in basal metabolic rate and that's been demonstrated, but it's even the researchers that are in it are like, we don't really know why this is happening uh but g flux just by very nature g flux itself just means like the energy cost of like burning calories so one of the possible theories is does the actual

act of burning a calorie burn calories and it certainly well it certainly does with uh with protein and things like that right yeah that's a thermic effect, but when you get down to the physics of it, and I'm not a physicist, so I'm not qualified to talk about that really, but it's interesting. And a lot of it just comes down to the fact that it's just more overall turnover. Just more shit is happening. And everything is working in overdrive, but that's also having an afterburn effect on everything. Whereas like, okay, now as a result of that, you're exchanging more nutrients, more nutrient partitioning, more kinds of things going on. So, but, um, you know,

one of the things that I'm really just adamant about is that fitness and health, that combination that when I set out to build my brand, that was what I wanted to do is I wanted to bridge the gap between health and fitness. I was like, there's this gray area between there. It's like, you're either a foo-foo weirdo granola person, or you are like a meathead juicer. Like how come there's no, like, why can't we talk? Why can't we bridge that? Because fitness should be healthy, but fitness is not generally healthy and healthy is not necessarily fit. So let's bridge that. So I think it's a balance, always a balance of mTOR and autophagy, right? mTOR and AMPK in these two worlds. So that means periods of time where you

have high calories with high output, but also periods of time where you have low calories with low output and being able to rev up sort of the autophagy process. You do that also periods of time where you have low calories with low output and being able to rev up sort of the autophagy process. You do that for periods of time for the autophagies, for the longevity, for the cellular signaling, for the rejuvenation, if you want to call it that. And then you have periods of time of growth, right? Because when you look at the research too, people think that mTOR automatically, you know, mTOR for the listeners, mammalian or mechanistic target of ratmax that is ultimately the anabolic signal and although it has some negative connotations surrounding it with certain cancers and things like that people automatically assume that mTOR

is bad no there's also a lot of evidence that mTOR is very good and pro longevity but it's a balance of mTOR and autophagy which oppose each other so with that it's just it's frustrating because you like which camp do I sit in? But you always need to find a balance. Like you need to have pro-growth signaling to repair, to rejuvenate, to have cells do what they need to do. But then the other piece is if you have, and people will probably make this argument, people that are understanding of the subject matter. If I am encouraging people to eat significantly more calories but also burn significantly more calories wouldn't that equate to more oxidative stress because the burning of

food in general creates oxidative damage like it creates reactive oxygen maybe inflammation and stuff like that yeah it can and you know but we have to take that with a grain of of salt because no pun intended um you know it. Some Himalayan sea salt. I'm such a dad. I was like, that's living. I don't take it with a grain of salt. I take it with a chunk, a Himalayan salt lamp. With a cube of sugar.

Yes. So, you know, with that, it's like the more oxidative stress that we create in a healthy, operative word, healthy human body or body in general the more that our body develops the ability to deal with that so it's like for example when we fast we are we are creating an oxidative stressor we are stressing our body because it's under stress it's not being fed so wouldn't that argument apply there too? But one of the benefits that we talk about so much with fasting is that when you are under that stress, your body upregulates super oxide dismutase, upregulates glutathione to deal with it. And you become better at that. Your

body's inherent detoxification processes. I hate that word detox, but like it's, you know, that process. So it's a balance once again. So when you eat more calories, but you're also burning more calories, you're kind also burning more calories, you're kind of bringing yourself to a net neutral at the reactive oxygen species level. But again, if you do that every single day, you know, what's that saying? Burn hot, die young. It's like, if you are burning a lot,

it's like, yeah. So you should take some periods of time and just fast. And, you know, Dominic D'Agostino is someone I hugely respect. And this video will probably, might even really, I don't know, but I D'Agostino is someone I hugely respect. And this video will probably, might even really, I don't know, but I'm flying out to Tampa

to go to film with him because I think he's, he's one of these guys that's like, like he looks at it like this, right? He's a big keto guy, but he's obviously, he looks at this.

Have you had him on the show yet? Yeah, I have. Yeah, he's amazing. I've collaborated with him in the same spot that you're going to coming up. I actually don't remember.

We had him on, did we have him on the show? Actually on the show? Yeah, I think we did. Okay, yeah, via Zoom. But yeah, I met him

in person. Dude is just one of the most incredible human beings. The guy is just so calm, cool, collected. Just walks with a big stick.

The guy just has so much confidence and doesn't need to flaunt it. I don't know, just nothing but respect for that guy. Super kind, yeah you know, his, yeah, he's kind of got like that approach too, where it's like, I mean, what did he like, I can't remember, I'm going to put you the numbers, but I think he like deadlifted like 700 pounds after a seven day fast or something

like that. I mean, it's just like, talk about like taking that whole thing that people think and flipping it on its head. Yeah. Right. And so I know that he kind of shares the same philosophy with me on a lot of that with like it's a balance of mtor autophagy and um you know reactive oxygen species and how that works in the body and what you're saying with this uh g flux type of thing um is there any research or information that you're aware of that like the more you know people sometimes say like a sugar burner or the more i guess maybe carb tolerant somebody is are those people usually not heavy are those people usually like pretty healthy like a question so i mean i just it's just popped

into my head because i'm thinking of like you're talking about some of these people that do like 5 000 calories and burn 5 000 calories they're kind of like running off of diesel rather than running off of gasoline almost. That's a good way to put it, yeah. And then maybe some of the people that are maybe a little bit more carb tolerant, maybe they are naturally a little thinner. Maybe some of that is a genetic component along with the stuff that they've been doing over the last several, like he grew up playing soccer. It's like maybe from running around playing soccer, all that movement,

as opposed to maybe me sitting there playing Tecmo Bowl and eating Doritos. You talked about that. Exactly. And I ran my first marathon when I was 11, right? So same thing. We both were conditioned. I mean, you'd say that soccer is still largely more aerobic than anaerobic right yeah yeah so i mean we both grew up in heavy

like aerobic settings um and then got the itch to build muscle right so it's like um yeah you that's an interesting rabbit hole to go down that could can really influence i believe how we oxidize like different substrates umrates. And it's tough because it can flip a lot of the calories in, calories out conversation on its head and make it a very difficult conversation to have. And I'll get this off the table first, is that the calories in, calories out is still going to matter, but it's going to matter at a different varying rate that we may not be able to know, right? So it's like you may think I need 3,000 calories a day, but maybe there's all these different things that are influencing that

throughout the course of the day that make it different. The law of physics and math still applies. We just don't know where it is, right? We just don't know where that number is. So it's like we know this exists because it's fundamental. But there's also just things, holes that you could poke in that too. It's interesting to look at both sides with that uh as far as i think what you're ultimately alluding to is like a an epigenetic sort of thing right so if you put it like this let's say i'm in a locker room and

there's 100 lockers and all of those lockers are my genetic code. They are my genes, right? What people don't understand is that you don't just have these God-gifted genes that you express, then you just open all of your genes, right? So it's like Pandora's box, almost literally. Like you might be, you might open 75 of those 100 lockers in your lifetime and you still have 25 lockers that you never opened because you never encountered a circumstance, encountered a circumstance in which you needed to open those 25, right? That is called gene expression. Each time you open a

locker, that is gene expression. You are expressing that gene in order for it to act upon your DNA, your cells, and do something. Gene expression, if you you ask me is one of the most powerful things that we are starting to no pun intended unlock right and so perhaps you and i by doing aerobic work at an early age we opened up 10 other boxes 10 other lockers that allowed those genes to express such an early age that made us the kind of people that can thrive with fasting because aerobic work is definitely very much so beta oxidation, very much so trace levels of ketones, very much so fatty acid oxidation, which is also coincidentally what works well with keto and fasting. So maybe we respond really well to that because at an epigenetic level early on, we opened those lockers. Whereas Mark opened a different 10 that maybe we haven't opened. And later in life, this is hypothetical, but later in life, perhaps it's harder to open those.

I opened up a pantry full of Snickers bars. Yep, exactly. What was in your locker? That's in my new mantra. That's my new shirt. What's in your locker? Kind of like what's in your wallet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Andrew is always kind of like in a constant flux of his own over there with like whether he should fast or not fast.

Because I think Andrew kind of fights what a lot of the people that are listening to the show fight. They like want to get more jacked and they want to have more muscle. So then they're kind of like, I know that fasting might help get rid of my belly, but I don't want it to get rid of my arms too. Like people are kind of what are some of your recommendations for that yeah when someone's in that bubble and i also i wanted to ask is like just if there's any evidence or anything that would i don't make sense of my experience with fasting um prior to fasting i you know was just like many people i'd consider myself a hard gainer yeah and you know i, I was like, I eat so much,

I can't gain weight. But what I would do is I would eat breakfast, oatmeal, something very not satiating. I'd get here and I'd eat something else small, not satiating. I'd have like a very simple lunch. I'd go home. So I'd have like a decent amount of calories, but like not a lot, right? I'd get home and by time it was dinner, I'd be like, I'm not even that hungry. Like, ugh, like I'm not, I can't eat a lot. Cause you know, whatever, blah, blah, blah. So I'm curious, is there any evidence that would show like once I started fasting, I, you know, okay, food was all off the table. So no, no more bullshit food throughout the day. But then dinner time came and I was like, dude, I could eat so much.

Now this is amazing. It seemed like it like sparked my appetite. It did like the opposite of what kind of it gets promoted for. You know what I mean? Like it, it didn't, I mean, it helped me control my hunger, but it made me eat more and I was very grateful for it. But I didn't know if that was just my one-off experience or if that happens like, you know, to everybody else. That happens to me. That's definitely the way I am. So I think that that is definitely just a, uh, how you're wired. Um, for me too, it's, you know, but if you do it, if you were to do that every day, eventually your basal metabolic rate would slow down to a point where you probably wouldn't have as much appetite. So that's, if you ask me, that's how you know it's working. I don't, I don't want to use intermittent. If you're not hungry, that is a good indicator your metabolism is slowed down. Not saying that that is necessarily a bad thing.

It's what it's supposed to do. Because your metabolism slows down as a compensatory mechanism to preserve. So if your body recognizes, oh, this guy's only eating 1,200 calories per day. If your metabolism stays elevated to where it was before, while you're still eating 1200 calories per day, you're going to be burning up all your tissue. So your body does it to save you. It's a good thing. So stop hating on the body for doing that because it's saying, oh, let's, let's bring

the metabolism down. Let's shut down some processes, make some things more streamlined. So this guy doesn't burn everything because this is the new norm. This is what he's doing now. So I like it when fasting, when I'm done with a fast and I'm ravenous because that means my metabolism is still at a decent rate

and it means that what I am going to eat, at least as far as I'm concerned, it feels like it's going to be assimilated. I love that feeling. Like nothing is better than, it's like an orgasm when you're hungry and you be assimilated. Yeah. Um, I love that feeling. Like nothing is better than, it's like an orgasm when you're hungry and you get to eat. Yeah. No,

honestly. Yeah. So it's like, we make that, that, that, uh, connection all the time.

Yeah. Yeah. Every day I'm fucking event. Every day I'm literally my fast. I'm coming. It's just, but like we, we talk a lot about like strategies for curbing hunger, youbing hunger on the show quite a bit.

And obviously protein is super satiating. A lot of people talk about fiber. But I think it is super beneficial to pick up the habit of fasting and structure it into your lifestyle so you can get used to hunger. And so you can get used to letting it not be uncomfortable to you because that gives you, if you're able to do that, because most diets or a lot of diets that people talk about are diets that whenever you do feel hungry, you respond to it. And you get in your amount of calories, you get in your fiber, you're getting your micronutrients, but you're always responding to it. So in the long run, if you do manage to drop the amount of body fat you're trying to drop and you get to this body composition, hunger is still up here and it's still something that you're

always, that's always honestly in control of you. And if you can somehow implement fasting and get yourself used to feeling hungry and not responding and rep, like rep that out over the months and years, you get to a point where we are, where your hunger isn't a factor for you, you know? Yeah, totally. That's a big deal. Totally. Yeah. You, you kind of learn to appreciate hunger because hunger is, I talk about this in videos a lot, like hunger typically tells you that you're actually probably in burning fat at that mode, right? Now that's colloquial because there's a hunger is complicated. It is complicated. Lots of

different hormones interacting, lots of different signals. So it's immature to say that that just means you're burning fat. Jack LaLanne used to say that. He used to say you should be hungry and his thought was you should also look like you need to eat a sandwich because your face should be kind of

gone. Like that's the... It sounds kind of funny, but that's where you get to when you're doing keto. He's laughing because like, oh man, it's like, I think people... Your audience. Oh my gosh.

Thomas's face looks sucked in. He's got circles under his eyes. Let's just clear the air for a second. I maintain 6-7 percent body fat year round i have for what eight years now okay like i sleep like shit because i've got a toddler going through a sleep regression and it seems like that's anyway point is i'm not going to justify i don't sleep real great okay and probably because i train a lot probably because i you know i think you look great but you do look you know okay and probably because i train a lot probably because i you know i think you look great but you do look you know okay and i'm not gonna i'm not just going to i'm not just

saying this because it's a justification okay but scandinavian descent i've got okay i've got these high this is so good seriously i got freaking high cheekbones all right and then i'm lean on top of it and then a lot of times i'm doing my selfies with a hat so it's casting a shadow so i get this weird i'm telling like and then people see me in person i've literally had probably five or six people that have seen me in person be like oh you don't even have dark circles on your eyes in person you don't you really don't it's like it's the way that you know maybe you should all like that's so good people say that to you in person that's so funny oh because i made a big deal i made it back to be a whole campaign out of it because i was just like

this is just getting stupid like every like be like well i can't take health advice then don't fucking take my health god like go somewhere else i don't care like are you that concerned with like my welfare like i love it are you gonna call cps on my mom i was uh i was unaware that like you were getting that oh that's a thing it's's a thing. It's probably on Reddit somewhere, too. If you're getting shit for your looks, we're all doomed, is what I'll say. You look great. And you look fucking super fit, and you look more jacked than I've ever seen you. And 6% to 7% year-round.

That's impressive. You know, what do you think, and how long have you maintained that lean of a body fat percentage year-round? Because years ago, when I was was 2015 when i prepped for a bodybuilding show i got that lean but because like i was still eating all the time right when i got that lean i was just like there's no way i can maintain being super lean year round yeah after i started doing some fasting control hunger slowly got back to a lean body composition and now i can maintain seven eight percent that's to say you're about seven, eight right now, right? Yeah. But before I would have never, I would have like felt like absolute crap. So what do you think are the protocols or what allows you to maintain this and feel great? So here's,

here's where I have to get on my keto high horse for just a second. Okay. I definitely tried it both ways. I feel like maintaining, like maintaining uh okay this doesn't necessarily apply for weight loss right not necessarily for weight loss for maintenance i do feel like keto allows me i have more energy at that low body fat range on keto than i do uh with carbs agreed i'm low carb i'm fairly low carb i have really high fats but right now in the past few years i've been this body composition the only the only reason I think I've been able to feel good this lean is because my fats are pretty fucking high. I'm pretty low carb. And it doesn't feel bad at all.

Yeah, definitely. Because as soon as I – your calories are pretty good because jujitsu, like just to your point about the 5,000 calories versus the 2,000 calories, all you change really, you just expended more energy and then you started eating more energy because you had to, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to perform well on the mats, right? No, you're exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I think, uh, and some of it comes with just like, you know, this is where my body likes to be actually like it's, you know, or I, I haven't asked it lately, but you know, I can assume. Your body's like, fuck you, man. Yeah, like I was doing some like VO2 max testing and like bod pod stuff like a while ago.

And I was at like, and I wasn't feeling at my absolute best. And I was, you know, when I did the bod pod on that one, I was like 7.7% or something like that, which is on the, it's still very lean, obviously, but it's on the higher end of where I usually sit. Okay. Right. So like it's a, and I noticed, and then, so I'm like, okay, I just bring it down a hair, bring it down to like six and a half to seven, which I feel really good at. So I think my body's just, it's been there for so long. That's just where it feels good. And any increase in body fat with anybody is likely going to trigger at least an initial inflammatory response. So perhaps I just am so in tune with my body that as soon as I start to feel that

inflammatory response, I reel it back because I feel it. I feel it in my joints. And I think a lot of it is because being previously obese, being really overweight before, I think that I'm probably like, I start to feel the stuff in my joints really quick. My joints aren't that great. So when I, when I start finding any kind of inflammatory factor, I feel it. So I just feel better being lean. I think I sacrifice some things. I think, you know, it might affect sleep. It might affect these things that are happening kind of unconsciously. What happens when, cause you mentioned this like enormous amount of running. And so the calorie equation always baffles me. Yeah. You know, I'm always, I just find the whole topic really fascinating and I see all the

different sides of it and I just have always been really interested in it. So like, I don't know, let's say that your knee is jacked up or your ankle and you have a couple of weeks where you're not running. Is there, do you start to make a conscious effort? You're like, there's less output or are you trying to get output somewhere else? Or like, what would happen to you if you didn't have that output? Yeah. Well, I go through periods of time where I definitely don't. Right. Like right now I'm living up in Tahoe and we just got like six feet of snow. Right. So like more coming tomorrow. tomorrow. So you know what I did? I did the thing that people will probably make fun of me. Like I got a Peloton, right?

So like, I think, by the way, like for, I was telling you earlier, like someone that's like a competitive guy like me, like talk about gamifying it. Like I had no idea that I'd ever be that geeky guy. Is it a bike or is it the treadmill? Oh, I got the bike. Well, I got the Echelon bike,

which is the Costco version, which is like, you know, way cheaper than the Peloton bike. I can picture him and Seema getting all competitive on there. It's like a video game. I don't do the live stuff, but it's my name on there, Thomas DeLauer, that's popping up. I guarantee you there's people that are going to be like, that's Thomas DeLauer.

If I suck on it, my whole business could tank. I'm going to get on the bike. I bike i'm like amber don't bother me our income depends on it yeah you're totally out of your mind by the way but your attention to detail is is i think uh while you're why youtube and stuff has been so popular yeah it's but I mean, I guess. But it's also crippling, you know. But I try not to let it paralyze me. Right.

You shot a video one time, and this is how I knew you were my boo forever. You shot a video of you eating at Starbucks. And then you were trying to navigate the best way. And you went over every tiny detail that's the coffee thing uh it wasn't just coffee although he's done amazing stuff with uh the coffee stuff but this was more like talking about the food at starbucks at starbucks and he was talking about the that's the video and he was talking about the uh the egg white uh the egg white egg bites being like just a smidge better he thinks in his opinion than the egg than the full egg ones because the full egg ones have

fat in them and because they have fat in them it might have like exogenous estrogens or something like that i was like i think it was vice versa but yeah it was oh there you know it was about the uh um yeah it's like, you know, the white is pure albumin. So that there's kind of an argument that like, you know, the white is just like, you're just getting protein.

You're not really getting the nutritional value out of it. But the Starbucks protein bites or the big egg bites, excuse me, are, they have a bunch of potato starch in them. So there's like eight grams of carbs in those suckers, which is weird. Like,

so there's a, what is that? That company, the three bridges or the company that sells them at Costco, those egg bites, they don't taste as good as the Starbucks ones, but those are missing that potato. Yeah. which is weird. So there's, what is that company, the Three Bridges or the company that sells them at Costco, those egg bites, they don't taste as good as the Starbucks ones but those are best.

Those are missing that potato. Yeah. That's funny. Yeah, that potato starch. I was like, Sam, he just went over this so precisely.

This is awesome. I remember being so bummed. So my wife and I have been watching you way before I ever was working here but I remember watching one where you went into,

I'll just say a Whole Foods and you're breaking down all the healthy section things and how we basically could eat none of it and i'm like well fuck what am i supposed to do now like i thought i was doing the right thing so that's hilarious someone commented on that the video that i did with lane norton and uh you know lane norton reposted that on his channel and it actually exploded more on his channel than my channel probably because people on lane norton's channel know who Thomas DeLauer is because he's,

you know, flamed me a few times. Yeah. People on my channel don't necessarily know who Lane Norton is. So it was like on his channel, it exploded. It went, it blew up.

One of the, one of my favorite comments was like, um, I have some more respect for you, but I still hate you because you made, you gave me anorexic tendencies. And, um, I was like okay

i sincerely felt bad and then like and then i realized like i think he was he's kind of just prodding because he was just like i you know but anyway the point is is that yes i like i've sometimes i've scrutinized things so much to the point where people are just i realize that like my audience isn't necessarily going to be looking at things with the microscope that I look at and they don't necessarily necessarily cross-reference like all my videos in the right way. Right. So it's, which is hard when you're pumping out 60 videos a month,

like I, you better watch every single video because otherwise you're going to miss something. Right. The point is, is that like, yeah, it's,

it almost makes it seem like nothing is edible, but what I do, like, you know, I'll have a, that's what it was like though yeah it's like a glass of water and an air sandwich but make sure that it's uh you know this water that's i don't remember any of the ingredients but you would be like this one's actually pretty

good then you'd read them off and like ah but it has like maltodextrin or some shit like that and it's like fuck okay i can't have that either i'll go have some water i think in oxygen you want to just let people know that we've invested in a fasting restaurant that we're going to be releasing pretty soon? Yeah, margins are incredible. With looking at ingredients and breaking those down,

people have to take it for what it's worth. It's there to be able to explain, this is not necessarily the best. But then there's certain things where i'll be like yeah absolutely do not eat this like i think this is terrible but everything should be kind of with that thomas de lauer sort of twist to it right like this is just because thomas de lauer says it's just like this wouldn't fit into my diet it doesn't mean that you can't eat it and that you're going to keel over dead it just means like this is a no-go in my list. And it's, but I've realized that not everyone thinks about this stuff the same way that I do. Like, I realized that I have a lot of responsibility because people, they really do hang on my every word. And I guess I didn't, I come from this background where like, I've always had to kind of

justify myself. I've always had to be able to have to explain myself. I've always, you know, I was either the skinny guy or the skinny kid or the fat guy. Right. And it was like, never really super good at any one thing. I mean, I would do pretty crazy feats, like run a marathon. I backpacked the John Muir trail from Yosemite to Mount Whitney when I was 12 years old, you know, two times. I've done cool shit and I've done mostly endurance stuff, but I've not, it was never like world-class at anything. And, uh, so I guess I'm still adjusting to the fact that people like really trust me and really listen. And when I, when I say avoid maltodextrin or something like that, they take it to the bank and I'm like, I am like, I am paralyzing people with that. And I have to be careful. I still don't think maltodextrin is good. And I definitely highlight it in videos, but I need to reel back the demonization of things

because it wasn't to be gimmicky. Like it really wasn't like it wasn't to be gimmicky or isn't to try to like get clicks. That's not what I'm into. Like, and people that have watched my channel for a long enough time know that that's like, I'm not a clickbait guy. That's not what i'm into like and people that have watched my channel for a long enough time know that that's like i'm not a clickbait guy that's not what i'm into i like to explain i really do and i like to explain how something works in the body and i sometimes over justify the reasoning behind it and so i just yeah it's like publicly like people need to take it for what it's worth like if you're consuming like ridiculous amounts of maltodextrin it's probably not good but if you avoid maltodextrin altogether you're probably not going to be eating much because it's in just about everything right so looking at the ingredients it's just like you have to just understand what is good what is bad keep a

little bit of a tally of it and just don't overdo it and just keep a conscious eye for those things as some of the youtube and uh like youtube comments along with being an influencer and all these things have ever like truly hurt you or hurt your interaction with your family at all because maybe you were doing it too much or like the comments were super damaging and hurtful like have you run into stuff like that?

Oh the comments can be interesting because they I always try to take the high road like I try to you know, comments that I do see, like I'll reply with a sophisticated response and always understand that people are usually coming from a place of hurt, not coming from really being vindictive. Um, it's usually coming from either place of jealousy or a place of where they feel wronged by something. Or I had someone yesterday that posted a comment um i think literally said like

you are so stupid because you said that catalina crunch is okay and it spiked my blood glucose think let's let's like let's reverse engineer that comment for just a second okay you are so stupid because you said that Catalina Crunch is good and it spiked my blood glucose. So I am literally stupid because I didn't know how you would respond to a food. So out of 3 million subscribers, 20 million views a month, I didn't know that it was going to spike Jane, you know, not literally her name,

Jane, Jane Doe's. So it's interesting. And I replied and I killed her with kindness. And I said, you know, what's interesting is, uh, when I wear a continuous glucose monitor, I have found that sometimes Catalina crunch spikes my glucose too. It's really interesting. Um, perhaps there's some cross-contamination with something in their lab or in their food facility or something. Uh, but other times it hasn't. And, you know, for the record, I've never had a fiduciary responsibility with that company. I've never actually promoted them.

I've mentioned them in videos. And she got delicious products, by the way. It does taste good. You know, I actually don't get kicked out of keto with it, but occasionally it does give me a spike. So who knows? And she replies like nothing ever happened. Like she never called me stupid.

She's like, I really appreciate your videos so much. Like you've helped me so much. And it sounds funny, but the point is, is that this person just called me stupid five seconds ago. Didn't apologize for calling me stupid, but I killed her with kindness. And then the truth really comes out. Like you've helped me so much, but it really does tell you that this comes from a place of hurt. I use this as an example because she was genuinely, like genuinely like insulted by the fact that I led her wrong. And so the reason that these comments hurt me isn't because I give a shit that you think I have circles under my eyes. Like I really don't like whatever you're like,

I've been the march to the beat of a different drum my whole life. It actually affects me because I know that how they're interpreting something that I said actually led them astray and led them wrong. And that is the last fucking thing I want to do. So like when I see that shit, it's like, ah, shit, like here's another one I got to clear up. And then I internalize it because I'm like, maybe I didn't do a good job explaining this. Because one thing that I need to do is I'm not a researcher. I'm not a scientist. I'm an articulator of complex subject matter. And so then I take that a little more personal because I'm like, I need to do a better job of explaining this. And, uh, but now then it gets to a point like right now where I'm just like, how much more can I explain things in extreme depth? Like, let me just almost have to

take a step back and just say, do what works for you. You know, here's the science. Here's what I see. Do what works for you. But please don't take my word as gospel because it could lead to disappointment. And that's the last thing I want to do to you. But then again, it's like one of those things where is it just the loud minority that you hear? Because most of the content that I put out is helping millions of people. And it's just the small minority that I hear. So I don't want to let that small minority dictate the direction of my channel. I just want to do what's true to my heart. Right. What about the, uh, like the small annoyances, like, uh, when you run a sponsored ad or something, like how do you like navigate not doing too much?

And, but also, I mean, you got to make something out of it, right? How do you make money on YouTube? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I have zero problem with having sponsors because every single sponsor that I would ever work with is a product that I use or recommend or think that people would get value out of. I'm not a shabby business development person. I have a decent business background

and I was in the private equity world before and I know how to strike a deal right so if i come across a product that i like i will reach out to them directly me not my team me because there's a little bit of a like a a nice effect when the person themselves is reaching out because they like your product um not only do i feel like you know there's a cachet with that, but I feel like that way it's really making sure that the product is vetted. And then another thing with sponsors on my channel is I have thrown products to the side because I don't like the people involved with the company, or I don't like the interaction because I really believe in character and I really believe in

culture. And if a company, the people running a company have poor values, it's only gonna be a matter of time before the products do as well. They may start with good intentions, but it tends to, you know, let's cut corners later on to increase our margin and you know, whatever, it's gonna happen. So I usually look at the people.

So I have zero apologies whatsoever for having sponsors on my channel because the products that I recommend are good. And I think people trust me. And if I put my stamp of approval on something, then it's great. And it's also from a marketing perspective, it's conditioning.

They have known from almost day one that every single one of my videos is going to have some kind of call to action in it. Whether that call to action is to buy a product or to implement something that I recommend, there is a takeaway. One thing that I'm very careful of, and I was not so good in the past, but I've definitely evolved in the last two, three years, is that the net impression of the video should never be by this product.

Okay. That's, you don't want the net. First of all, you run into a big FDA, FTC issue there. If the net impression of what you are talking about, if I'm doing a video talking about sugar and I'm trying to sell sugar cubes, you better be making sure that everything you say in that video has your T's crossed and your I's dotted because that's the kind of thing where you just basically created a sales video. So if you're not like aggressively using the right kind of vernacular, the right kind of lingo, We haven't gotten to the stage yet where I think the FDA, FTC is like really coming down on this stuff, but it's going to come like there's too much money being made from influencers. Eventually they're going to slap it down. So I'm extra careful. And I make sure that like, if I do have a relevant sponsor that is overlying with subject matter, that I am

very clearly disclosing that this is, this is a sponsorship. And it's, I have no apologies about that because I feel like people understand, most logical people understand that it is not a bad thing to have businesses think that you're good. And to, I come from an era where back in my day, I sound like an old man, it was a good thing if people wanted to do business with you. If people wanted to do business with you, it meant that you were good at something and it meant that you were integrity driven and it meant that you, your heart was in the right

place. So yeah, I have brands that are knocking on my door, not just because I have traffic, but because they want my stamp of approval. That is the highest form of compliment. I love, and I shouldn't say the highest. I think the highest is like the individual person that approaches me and says I've changed their life. But from a business perspective, that's like, if I had them clawing at my door because I'm respected, I take that to the bank because that's good. So I monetize YouTube, uh, with that strategy because it's, it also makes a lot more sense for me because

I did a video breaking this down before sort of the economics of YouTube. There's like three different ways in my eyes that we could make money on YouTube. Way number one, via AdSense revenue, typical revenue strategy where YouTube pays you money for ads being overlaid. The wild West days are over people getting, you know, half a million, million dollar checks unless you have a massive channel, unless you're like Mr. Beast. Like it's not like it was 10, 15 years ago. It's not. Trust me. People think we're making all this crazy money on YouTube. The AdSense numbers aren't what they think they are. I can tell you that. Okay. In order to make that revenue model work, you need to have, you need to go for clicks

and you need to go for views. So what that means is that you are creating material that isn't necessarily what you want to create. You're creating material to get views. And that is fundamentally flawed because that is not your authentic self. So that's revenue model number one, revenue model number two, a circumnavigating content machine that ultimately leads back to your own product. And there's nothing wrong with having your own product, but especially in the consumable space, we see it like, so you're telling me that everyone else is bad except for your product. How on earth is that an unbiased approach to nutrition? At least in the nutrition world,

this applies. I think there's other categories that it wouldn't apply in the nutrition world. That's tough, right? So if you're not having sponsors, if you're having, if you have your own product and you're not having sponsors and everything comes back to your own products, what are you God? Like, like, so it's just, that's not how it works. So for me, it makes so much more sense to be like, I'm going to have multiple different products that I work with, not in like the traditional influencer capacity, like where, like, hey, these are my like, like, LED underwear, check them out, like, you know, swipe up, like, this is red light underwear. Yes, exactly. So it's much more like I would rather have a diverse amount of brands that like to work with me.

And because you also back up like, up like you think they're good shit and think about it like this let's say this was i did this i use this analogy right let's say i wanted to do a video about mud flaps on my truck okay there's like 17 people that would actually want to watch that video okay let's be realist maybe 5 000 people that would want to watch a mud video about the benefits of mud flaps on my truck. If I was going with revenue model one, that would never work because I could never make videos on that. I would never make money because I'd make like 30 bucks. Okay. But by being able to go out and reach out to a mud flap company and say, Hey, mud flap company, can you sponsor this video that I really sincerely want

to make on mud flaps because I'm passionate about mud flaps. And they're like, well, yeah, that's a very like niche to video about mud flaps. We'd love to pay for that video. I just got paid to create a video I want to make. So by having my revenue model, it allows me to create those esoteric topics that may not get extraordinary views,

but are helping that niche group of people that really want to see that content rather than just some generic bullshit. Like, so for me, it just makes a ton of sense to say, I would rather have a sponsor promote or support this content, even if it only gets 5,000 views, because this is something that needs to be said. Hope that makes sense. I just feel like it's just, it's allowed me to have the breadth of content that I have. It's allowed me to have the breadth of content that I have. That's awesome. Does the sponsored,

we'll say the sponsor company one is going to get today's video. So does that product dictate what the video is going to be about? Or do you kind of have the content already recorded and then you're like, oh wait, that's right. This is a perfect spot for that. No, I don't plug and play. I try to

craft subject matter in a delicate way so that it works without seeming contrived. It's difficult to do because you want that, again, like I said, that net impression. You don't want it to be by a product. You want to extract value from the conversation.

So I have different models. Yeah, you did a commercial for the slingshot yeah exactly yeah and you talked about you're like you guys know that i do this movement and you talked about bench pressing and you went over like all kinds of different stuff on bench pressing and then you also mentioned the slingshot but it wasn't like hey this is the best product and i gained 75 pounds on my bench and you need to get one today yeah here's how i get it i think i did like five things to on my bench and you need to get one today. And here's how I get it. I think it was like five things to improve your bench. And one of them was using your product, you know,

and it's, again, it's, so yeah, it's something like that. Or if I'm doing a video talking about, uh, different forms of protein or something like that,

that might be a good integration for, for butcher box, something like that. As we get, as long as you're transparent with the fact that it's a paid promotion, then you should have no shame or apologies for making an honest living, right? Like if there was some other like sneaky way that I was trying to make money, then it would be bad. But like, I take, you know, no issues and have no apologies for like respectfully disclosing

that this brand has supported my business, helped pay my employees, help keep everyone on staff. So I didn't have to fire people during a pandemic, help keep everything thriving and put food on my table at the same time. Like why on earth is that effing bad? Like what world are we living in where like everyone expects everything for free? Like, and you don't need to.

So with that now I've seen, you know, three years ago when I went from having no sponsors on my channel to having sponsors on my channel, it was like, oh, you sold out. It finally happened. Like, oh, boo hoo. You have to skip through 15 seconds if you don't want to watch it. Like, it's not the end of the world.

But the biggest thing was that now read the comments and so different. Wow. Your, your videos have changed me and the products you've recommended have changed my life. And Oh, because of thrive market or because of element. Oh, because I've been able to fast better. Oh, element has made it. So now I can get through my fasting. Guess what? I actually added value to your life. So the people that aren't that are pissed off about it, those are the people that are what are called energy suckers. They just want to extract a little bit from your content.

And you know what? That's fine. I hope you learned something. But they're not the people that are actually really going to make a long-term change from your content because they're not open to it. And you have to look at everything with an open mind. But the funny thing is, is now you see more and more channels are doing sponsors. Why? Because as YouTube cranks back how much money you make from YouTube, they're like, oh shoot, how do I keep this going? Because if you're running a big channel, you have a lot of overhead. I have a lot of overhead. If you're doing it right, and you're also stimulating the economy by hiring employees and doing a good thing for the world and

the country, then you're going to have overhead. And if one of your revenue streams starts to go down, then you do the right thing to maintain cash flow and you double down on another area. So now people are experiencing that and they're like, oh shoot, I'm not making as much money with AdSense revenue. I guess I need some sponsors unless I got to start cutting some heads and get rid of people. Was there ever a video that like kind of launched everything? Was there ever like one video in particular where you were like, oh shit, like, you know, I need to, you know, make, I need to continue this and really push harder on it type thing. In terms of?

Like a viral video or a video that like, or has it just been just, I think you said you did six, you do 60 videos a month. Like has it? 40 to 60. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. So has it been just the simple fact that you're super consistent with content? Or was there some banger of video where you're like, I need to do this more full time?

That's a good question. It definitely was a consistency thing, I think, at first. And it still remains a consistency thing. That's one thing that I do feel like, you know, there's always these, now I have enough data to look at over the last five, six, seven years where I know the seasonal ebbs and flows, things that used to like kind of really fuck with my head, like really used to mess with me and be like, come on, every November and December, I should know by now that views take a lull, you know, in the health and fitness world. Like they just do, especially on YouTube. now that views take a lull, you know, in the health and fitness world,

like they just do, especially on YouTube. But for the first couple of years, it's like, oh my gosh, like it's ending. It's over. It's finally done. It's finally, that was a good run, Amber. Let's go find a good cardboard box because we're done, you know? So, but now like understanding like consistency really just makes me see those patterns and realize that you're always going to weather the storm if you're just consistent. Algorithms are weird and cannot really manipulate those. But one thing that you can always manipulate and I shouldn't say manipulate, but stay steady with is just the quality of content and the quantity of content that you put out. I definitely noticed that there was, I've tried a lot of different things to test it out. You know, I find that when I am simple and very just

basic with my content, like long-term views are really, really good with that because people want simplicity, but it doesn't satisfy my existing audience, which is now conditioned to biochemistry. And it's like, if I don't put something out that's relatively complex, they're like,

what are you, babying me? It's like this challenge to be like, if I don't put something out that's relatively complex, they're like, what are you babying me? So, and that's like, it's like this challenge to be like, now I have to like make things more complex, but that's off-putting to new people. So it's like a balance. So I've definitely found that there's like, I have to have this balance of really basic videos that kind of dumbed down everything for lack of a better term. And then I have to have still a couple of days per week where it's like intense biochemistry because that's where a good portion of my audience really likes.

But there's 3 million subscribers on my channel right now. And I don't think there's 3 million people in the world that really want to like go into intense biochemistry. So I have to like remind myself of that. Maybe I don't have to always go super deep, but it's also like what I enjoy. I like going deep because how I understand things. But I would definitely say like what's tough is I like going deep because how I understand things, but I would definitely say like, what's tough is that initially the intermittent fasting topics just exploded for me because I was like right at the right time talking about it. Uh, now it's so saturated. Those are actually not my top performing videos anymore. The old ones are because they're ever green videos that are just, uh, they're like the pinnacle intermittent fasting like i've

got that one that's like six or seven million views or something or like you know that's like the complete guide to intermittent fasting that one is always like ranked number one for intermittent fasting on youtube and google it's like those are like the flagship videos so based upon that you would think oh well you should do more videos just like that but now it's so saturated with intermittent fasting unless i'm coming at it from some like esoteric angle, uh, they don't perform as well. What seems to perform really well is just, um, you always want to look for that balance of search engine optimization that is like doing really well with SEO, something that's got a high search volume without a lot of competition so finding that

number finding that balance is tough to grow a youtube channel it's like you have to find something that has okay what is searched quite a bit what has a good search ranking but what is not super competitive yet because that's how and usually what you know the the search volume is going to kind of preclude the competition right So if people are starting to search for something a lot, that just means there's demand. What do you use to find that out, by the way? I use a couple tools, but a lot of it is just kind of just keeping my finger on the pulse of the industry. And I feel like the more people you talk to, and you guys are at a good advantage with using a podcast because you get to talk to people. You can kind of think about, ah ah i see where things are going and you need to always be kind of

looking around a corner that you know something is around that corner but you don't know what yet but you have to be you know taking some chances on what is around that corner and mark you're really good about doing this i feel like you're always a little bit ahead and i feel like you you take things that people say i see you do it and you make it work for. And then you think ahead with it and you're probably doing it subconsciously. And it's kind of what I do too. Excuse me. So I think that that's a really good, good way to do it.

Um, there's one that I use, uh, called vid IQ, which is, you know, hang on. I want to cut this out.

I have to cough. Don't worry. It's not covid it might be yeah omicron yeah so uh vid iq is a good one because it kind of breaks the competition part down yeah uh have you also used tube buddy heard of it i've heard of it but we use uh well i use vid iq yeah vid iq i think is better than tube better than tube buddy for sure yeah and then what about like i mean because you're you're learning stuff all the time as you know we all are being on this podcast but do you circle back and kind of like i don't want to

say recycle but just like a certain topic that did really well like fuck okay i'll probably hit that again in like six months or anything like that do you do stuff like that uh yes to a certain degree um and always like with ever-evolving research too you know so like that uh yes to a certain degree um and always like with ever evolving research too you know so like i can handle a topic that is different sorry what's going on i can handle a topic in a different direction in a different way with different material uh and just using a slightly different title too, because that's the thing with the YouTube algorithm is it's so not all 3 million subscribers are seeing a video, right?

So if I know that only a hundred thousand people are seeing this, then I know there's a good chance in six months. If I do a very similar video, a different hundred thousand people will see it. And you got to remember it's about impact, like not about one video. So one of the most important things I did was stop being so obsessed and married to the beauty of one piece of content because I got into it because of creativity,

because I'm a creator. I like to create, I wanted to build a production company and, but I was too sucky for Hollywood. So I built a, uh, built my own production company. So I would like sit there and be like, this video is glamorous. It came out so beautiful. It's so well, it's so tasteful. The production quality is great. Lighting is perfect. It looks so good. Then I'd be disappointed if it only got 50,000 or a hundred thousand views and you get down on it. Then you realize, no, I'm actually after impact. So if that, if I take that same video and I just articulate it in a slightly different way and release it again, six months later, even if it has a slight overlap, first of all, I highly doubt people are going to

get pissed off about that if it's six months down the road. But the impact that it's making on the other 95,000 people, that's what matters. And also it's a numbers game too. Like, so it's like, you know, eventually you do that enough times, one of them is going to blow up and one of them, and some of them are not, nine of them aren't. It's a failure thing. It's like, people think that they get so married to their content like it's okay to fail like you're gonna fail like most of your content will fail and not every video is going to be a blockbuster and youtube even is very clear about that like in the youtube partnership program like they like kind of set it up with like this hub hero content like where you have certain content this is just

your your baseline content look at how a media company would run. Look at how a TV company would run. Look at how a channel would run. Why do you think they have prime time slots? Because they put their money on the fact that those are going to perform. Sometimes they don't, but a lot of times they do. And then they say, okay, well, this is off time.

We'll do reruns here. We'll do regular videos here, whatever. Thomas died on the Mark bill so you know on a lot of your content like actually all your content you go deep on the biochemistry so i was curious like how did you educate yourself on that because you didn't like go to school for that that's something that you taught yourself yeah over time and you don't hear that often so what was that process yeah and i'm I'm proud of it. And that's why it's like, it's sometimes off-putting when people are like, I get contact form submissions that'll come through. It'd be like, I really like what you're saying. I love everything you're saying.

And it's worked so well for me. I've lost 50 pounds, but I have to ask, you know, what's your education background? You know? And I'd say, you know, most of the time when I reply and say, I'm just a dude, you know, and I'd say, you know, most of the time when I reply and say, I'm just a dude, you know, most of the time they're like, oh, it's a bummer because I really liked your information and it worked really well for me. I'm sorry. You know, I'm like, what world are we living in? My background's in psychology, but I was a, you know, I was in essentially, I'm going to make it very simple, but I was in kind of the private equity healthcare world and ancillary lab services, which basically meant that I was like involved in biomed sales and stuff like that.

So I had a, just by very nature, my ability and my gift was the ability to like articulate how devices worked in the body. So I learned that by being around phenomenal doctors that were good at what they did. And since I was in like the lab services world, we were looking at, you know, salivary cortisol testing, looking at these things and selling them to physicians and practices and

hospitals and, uh, you know, physician known hospitals and all these things and being able to explain like mechanisms and different blood panels and different, like you learn a lot really fast. So, and I realized within that, that I got really good at that. And I was really good at relating to the physicians and being able to understand that and them to understand me, developed phenomenal physician relationships and realized that

I already had kind of had the knack for nutrition with going through my own transformation. And I had enough, you know, nice, good people in my industry that were like, dude, you're really good at this. Like, and physicians themselves, I would say, you know how many hours of nutrition information we would get? Like we would get practically no education in nutrition and be like, Thomas, you're like really good at explaining this. And like, this is coming from doctors in nutrition and be like, Thomas, you're like really good at explaining this. And like, this is coming from doctors. And I realized like, wow, this is actually my,

kind of my gift. Like I'm not a doctor. I'm not a biochemistry major. I have the ability to articulate it. But the thing that separates me from the others is I'll put my money where my mouth is and I'll do it myself too. And I want to be a doer, right?

So being able to do that and being able to experiment, but then be able to rationalize why it's potentially working is a really powerful thing. So that's how I developed my ability to explain things. I think people really undervalue the ability to communicate that kind of stuff. Like, you know, someone like Joe Rogan or someone like a great host, for example, like he talks about some pretty high level stuff that

he's not credentialed in, but people listen to it hundreds of millions of people because that is a gift for him to be able to extrapolate that data out of people. That is a gift. And I, again, I have no apologies. This is confidence. I'm confident in the fact that like, I am happy with the fact that my gift is being able to take the work of amazing people and parlay it to people so they can actually apply it. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's a subculture of people that think that like this highly just only academic world that think because I don't have a PhD after my name, that it's just not credible. It's like, I'm not trying to pretend to be a doctor, but it's funny the amount of comments

that I get or emails that I get. Hi, Dr. DeLauer. It's kind of funny. Yeah. When it comes to keto, what are some of the reasons on why, I mean, I guess you were probably part of it, but like, what are some of the reasons on why you think it like blew up so big just a couple of years ago? And then also now maybe it has a bit of a decline. Yeah. I think, I don't know why it took off out of nowhere. Um, it's funny because it's been talked about like in the bodybuilding community for a long time, right?

It just kind of took off out of nowhere, like 2016-ish. And then I'm trying to think if there was any specific call to action that made it explode. Yeah, I remember there was like one of the most researched words on the internet for like maybe like two or three years. Yeah. Well, and here's what we have to remember. So if you were to go to trends.google.com and look at the trends, you will see that to the naked eye, it looks like keto is on a decline. So there's been people talking about this like, is keto dying? Is keto dying? No, it's reached somewhat critical mass is what's happening. to drive a car. You're going to search how to drive a car. You're going to look, you're going to look, you're going to look, you're going to look because you're learning and it's new and it's something that you're trying to learn. Once you know how to drive the car, you're not searching

for how to drive a car anymore. So that doesn't mean that for every notch that keto comes down on search indexing and for search volume, that doesn't mean that that's for every one person that drops off on search volume. It doesn't mean that's one person quitting keto. That means that's one less person that's searching how to do keto because it's not that complicated. Keto does amazing things in the body and I make it complicated because I want to dive deeper and deeper and deeper. But the basic fundamentals of keto are pretty damn easy. And once you've got it down, you don't need to be searching for how to do keto and this and that. So just because search volume is down, that doesn't mean the interest is down. It means new interest is down. So that means that as far

as a growth model, growth engine, maybe it's not a good time to like try to like build something educational on keto. But I think productizing and stuff like that, I think you're still in a great spot. And I think that it's still gaining momentum. And I think it has more potential for a resurgence than it does going down. I think it might go down a little bit, but I don't think people are going to say that it's just gone for good. The thing that can hurt keto the most is kind of what's happening right now, which is you have keto influencers that are just like butchering the education on it and saying crazy things like, you know, fat burns fat. And like, I get what you're saying, but that's not

the big problem. The problem is like when you're discounting decades of peer reviewed research to push one like keto agenda. And we're seeing a lot of that. That's what's going to be off-putting for people because the more kind of spammy type stuff that is out there, the more that keto is going to get hated on. And I think if people were to approach keto as a tool in the toolbox rather than only an alternative, granted, it can be a perfect alternative lifestyle for people like it was for me until I realized that over time,

it's just a better tool to use at times than it is to be like my alternative way of life. So that's not to say that doesn't work like that, but I feel like there's a lot of people that are kind of making it so that it gets some bad juju around it. I don't necessarily want to be associated with a good majority of the keto crowd. And when I say the keto crowd, I love them and I appreciate the fact that they are big on it.

But who I want to be associated with is the leading researchers with it, with Oxford, who's doing great research with it, with Don DiAgostino, the real credible individuals. Don't you think when it comes to keto that they're like, it's hard for me to put into words, but there does seem to be something like interesting and intriguing about it, maybe over other diets. But again, I don't know how to articulate it, but it just seems so different. I don't know what makes it so different, or why I feel that way necessarily. I mean, I love the foods that are part of it

because I like kind of like those kinds of foods that are higher in fat. Yeah, I mean, for me too, that's like I've always been a bacon eggs kind of guy, but the biggest thing with keto that is pretty undeniable is the impact on the brain. So I think that network you know, network stability, ability for regions of the brain to sort of communicate, that's pretty pronounced in the

evidence. And I feel so good mentally on keto. It's hard to, again, we discount that a lot, right? Like I feel very strongly that mentally I am just a better person on keto. And that's what keeps me with keto more than anything else. You know, if that part went away, I don't know if keto is what I would like stick to all the time. Cause I don't think it's the Holy grail for body composition. I think that it has its advantages, but as far as being like stricter keto, like getting ketone levels relatively high, it's all about the brain for me. Like that's just for doing what I do to be able to articulate the stuff that I articulate and to be kind of thinking or speaking almost as fast as

I'm thinking. That is where undeniably, like I work better with keto. So like, even if I'm not keto, I will take like the three days before I film or two days, I can get into keto pretty quick. Like two days before I film, I'll go back into keto because it brings my brain straight. So I got almost never will be filming on a day that I had carbs, practically never. And some people will say that's, oh, that's like bullshit. You know, your brain on carbs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, tell that to me. Cause that's how I, that's how I feel.

Like, um, it's interesting too, that it has like a, a pre, a prerequisite, you know, like you can't, you know, it takes a couple of days just to even get into ketosis. And for some people like when they're first starting out and they've never tried it before, it might take them two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely, I mean, it's, um, I'm going to, I'm going to hold my thought on this analogy, this kind of metaphor thing for a minute

because it's really awesome. So I want to come back to it. So just remember the word train so you can remind me to come back to it. But back to kind of what you had said, like what is different about it is I think, so I think we discount the fact that when we get like mental satisfaction out of something,

we don't always recognize it and associate it. So when you take someone that's not super aware with their body and all of a sudden they're just like, I feel really good, but I don't know why. Uh, that's going to be something that is that big differentiating factor for them. Like maybe they've never experienced mental clarity before. And that is like, you know, Pavlov's law, right? Like it's Pavlovian. Like I feel so good mentally when I do this, I'm just unconsciously going to keep going back to it. So keto just is that way for people. It's like, it feels good, you know? And it's, that's, that's where I stand behind with it. And okay. So with the train thing,

getting back into ketosis and stuff like that, if you take a, a train track and a train thing, getting back into ketosis and stuff like that. If you take a train track and a train track, you know, goes into a Y, it can go to the train, go to the left or can go to the right. And there's that big lever that you can pull, you know, and so someone gets out of the train, pulls the lever to the left is carbohydrate utilization to the right is fat utilization. Okay. If you take, if you're always going to the left, always going carb utilization, if you take, if you're always going to the left, always going carb utilization, then that lever is going to be pretty rusty. And when you do try to switch over to fat utilization, you're going to have to get some WD-40. You're going to have to chip away some rust and you're going to have to pull that lever fucking hard. Okay. And that's going to make it so that finally

that lever gets switched. Same thing. If you've been doing keto for a long time, you've been doing keto for a long time, your trains always go to the right and the lever to move it to the left is getting a little bit rusty. But what happens if you do switch back and forth a lot? The lever is nice and smooth and you can be dual fueled and you can move back and forth a lot. And so for me, I'm in keto a majority of the time,

not a large majority, but like I said, seven-ish, eight-ish months out of the year or so, you know, it varies. But most of the time, by a small margin, I'm in keto, which means that I'm predominantly going to the right. I'm predominantly driving down that train path, but my lever is still pretty fluid. I can move to the left pretty quick. And that means when I do go on carbs, I can go back to keto and be fat adapted pretty quick because my lever is not having to get a bunch of freaking WD-40 and all that stuff. Yeah, I know you're enjoying this episode, but I have a question for you. Are you still dieting off of broccoli, chicken, and rice,

and maybe tilapia if you want to spice things up? Well, it's 2021. We're past that. That's why we've partnered with Piedmontese Beef. Now, Piedmontese is an amazing company that has cuts of beef that are really high fat or cuts of beef that are low fat. So if you are dieting on a low fat diet, you don't need to resort to the weak bird of chicken. You can instead eat some beef, eat some steak and still end up getting the results you're looking for. So, Andrew, can you tell people how to get it? Yes. You guys got to head over to Piedmontese.com.

That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E dot com at checkout. Enter promo code PowerProject for 25% off your entire order. And if your order is $150 or more, you get free two-day shipping links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes let's get back to the podcast so you're talking about like more more in terms of like an if in an in an inefficient way rather than just because like it's not like your body like is like super confused like you just went from eating primarily fat and protein. And then when you switch to eating carbs, is there a real true problem there? Or is it just not efficient?

No, no. I wouldn't say a problem. But it's called glucose intolerance. I did a video a while back. Because there was a paper that came out that was like, the know, the paper said keto is making us diabetic, you know, and it's like basically like that. So I titled the video that and I was like, is keto making us diabetic? Because on paper, someone that is doing keto for a long period of time, you develop a short-term glucose intolerance. Glucose intolerance is basically like an extreme insulin resistance, right? So you're basically,

the cells aren't using glucose very well so glucose is staying really high because the mitochondrial machinery has gotten so used to using fats everything in the mitochondria has shifted towards the mechanisms used to break down fatty acids and acetyl coenzyme a and go that route right whereas you know anaerobic glycolysis that whole process and oxidative phosphorylation going that route has taken a little bit of back seat because that wasn't the predominant. So in a way it is, yes, it's efficiency because the body is always trying to maintain efficiency, but that inefficiency can become a problem. Just like in an insulin resistant or diabetic individual, that inefficiency and insufficiency of insulin becomes

a serious problem. So you don't make yourself diabetic. I think that was overreaching with that paper to say that because a lot of the studies, at least in rodents, because it hadn't been done in humans, but the rodent model studies show that that is reversed pretty quick. The insulin or the glucose intolerance that comes as a result of doing keto for a long time takes about two weeks before it's kind of reversed again. So you have a period of two weeks where your mitochondria, your cells just don't seem to use glucose very well. And I mentioned this on the Lane Norton interview on my channel, and he didn't really say anything about it. He was nodding his head, like he actually, he agreed with that. And it is like, which is interesting because like that's,

maybe he agreed with it because it was sort of almost negative surrounding keto and maybe it was easy for him to agree with that, but it applies the other way too. And I'm not saying that even to shame him on that. I'm just saying maybe it was easier pill for him to swallow to relate to that. But then with the same thing can happen with fats. It's the same with fat adaptation. If your body is so used to using glucose, it takes a while to readapt or adapt in the first place that mitochondrial machinery to use the fats. This is why, I mean, like, for example, if you do quite a bit of fasting, it's easier to get into ketosis. But also, wouldn't it be beneficial just to adopt a diet that has a low amount of carbohydrates from a day-to-day basis?

Maybe not every single day, but on some days. Because initially when I started fasting, I did find that I went no carb for a period of time. When I brought carbohydrates back, I felt pretty tired. I was like, whoa, what's going on here? But as I just made that a part of my diet and kept it low, some days it's a little bit higher, some days I have none, there's literally not a shift really in the way I feel anymore. It's actually interesting.

When you said the mental aspect of fasting or the, um, um, more so the, the feeling of better focus. That's why I started doing fasting initially. So I could focus on the work I was doing on a day-to-day basis better. But now it's like, I have that feeling, that feeling doesn't really ever go away anymore. I think it's partially because my diet, it's low carb, but I, I, I don't restrict anything anymore. Yeah, that's a good point. You're constantly sitting in this mildly deprived state. Your body's kind of adjusted to it. And rather than vacillating back and forth, it definitely makes sense. Because I feel like low carb versus keto is you kind of sit in a gray area that could be

detrimental at first. But I do think that once you adapt to in a gray area that could be detrimental at first. But I do think that once you adapt to that, just that gray area, it almost puts you, like I see that, I think there's serious advantages to consistently putting yourself in like, and when I say deficit, I say that not in a literal caloric sense, but like exposing yourself to mild hormetic stressors. And I think by like dangling the carrot a little bit with just a small amount of carbohydrates, it's like you consistently keep the cells slightly conditioned enough for it, but they're still opting predominantly for fats, which probably explains why you stay so lean. But you're still having enough glucose availability to fuel an animalistic workout, right? Yeah.

Yeah. It's definitely a wild world with that. And I think that, again, bioindividuality, excuse me, comes into play too. And it's like epigenetic history and how, how you've trained going through life. Again, I think a lot of it again comes back to your soccer history, my running history, things like that. Do you track anymore? I mean, I do if I'm making some changes or if I just need to keep myself honest, you

know, on some stuff. And I will say like, I mean, I talked about this with like the one that I, like Lane Norton's carbon app is actually a pretty good app like for tracking because it kind of gives you, even with keto, and this is not a plug. It's, I just thought it was kind of cool. I don't know what they did kind of with the math there, but basically like even with keto, I could put in my food and then it will kind of adjust and sort of give you a breakdown of, Hey, here's where you should be. If you want to lose weight,

here's where you should be. If you want to gain weight. And it kind of has a whole system that's algorithmically kind of tailored with that. So I feel like that's pretty cool. It's a pretty cool app. Um, so I do that just to kind of gain insight based on my activity and things like that. No, the things that I track the most, uh, cause I know where I stand for the most part, my calories. I don't, I'm not increasing my activity extraordinarily or decreasing it extraordinarily. I generally know where I am week over week. So I try to like get a baseline. I know what's in a tablespoon of peanut butter. I know like, I, so I generally know where I am at the end of the week. The one thing that I do track like religiously is my steps. And I know Mark's huge on that. And it

sort of shouldn't say our relationship ever fizzled Mark. I've always loved you, but the, uh, um, you know, I, did I go wrong somewhere? No, but just, but what rekindled sort of my, uh, my interest in a lot of your stuff is when you, you got big into the steps again. Cause I'm like, oh sweet. Now you're speaking my language. Cause I'm like so big into that. And, uh, so yeah, I think that's like, that's the biggest lever that we can pull is just how much we're moving throughout the day. That non-exercise activity, thermogenesis, that's like so big. And when it hit with me, like it's always kind of hit with me, but it hit with me big time last year. I took the kids to Disneyland and, um, and I was like, after three days at Disneyland, I was like, holy shit, I'm so

like, so lean. What happened? Like, you know, and I wasn't eating park food or anything, but I mean, a abstaining from like certain foods. Cause I was just in some ways it's easier because I'm like, I'm just flat out not going to eat park food. So there's no temptation whatsoever because that's like definitely a no go. But, uh, then when I look back at my steps, I'm like 30,000, 35,000 steps, pushing a stroller. I was like, holy crap, you know, walking 22 miles or something. I'm like this. And it didn't feel like I was doing it. We have such a, like a, a warped perception of how many calories we burn during a workout because the perceived exertion fucks with our head because, you know, we had a hard workout this morning, we were huffing and puffing, it was a good workout, right? So it's easy to think because

for that concentrated period of time, we were working so hard that we burned 700 calories. No, we probably burned two. Sure, there's different metabolic things that come into play, but it is a much bigger lever to pull to just move throughout the day than it is to try to get the hardest workout possible. And it's like, we just become so mind fucked by that because we're just like, oh my God, I didn't get a good workout in. Just go walk, you know, especially for the regular person. I mean, we're all fitness people.

We have different goals. Some of our businesses depend on looking a certain way and doing things. So there's different pressures there. And yes, but for the 99% of the population, like if you're pissed off because you didn't burn 500 calories your workout guess what like you probably wouldn't anyway it's more about like how much you're moving throughout the course of the day so that's the one thing that i track because that can get very distorted because there's a lot of days where

i feel like i moved a lot and i didn't and the numbers don't lie i mean sometimes the apple watch isn't always accurate, but it's fairly accurate. And then there's other days where I actually felt like I was pretty dormant and sedentary. I'm like, oh man, I actually got 15,000 steps today. I guess walking around Target with the family actually did add up.

So it's like these things that you would never think about because I know that I screw myself in my head with the whole workout mentality. It's like, man, like I didn't work out today, but I actually walked 15,000 steps around target with my wife and I actually net net ended up actually burning more than had I not missed my workout. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, we got super sidetracked when Mark had asked you about like slim gyms, like myself fasting. Uh, so if somebody is trying to gain size, you know, not necessarily just like a

dirty bulk, right? But just trying to add some size, should they just completely avoid fasting? No, I don't think so. I think, because fasting is still really good for that insulin sensitivity piece that can help you with that. So I feel like, you know, maybe doing it as like a reset, like one or two days per week, you know, that way it remains, again, the anomaly, you know, so you're like fasting like one day a week with like a 20 hour fast. per week, you know, uh, that way it remains again, the anomaly, you know, so you're like fasting like one day a week with like a 20 hour fast and then, uh, you know, keeping the calories decently high. So what I found is that fasting operates as a nice little like stop gap to keep you from getting too fat when you're bulking because that way you can add more calories. Yeah. It's like, it's kind of like a quick correction because nothing is going to like, it's a, it's almost like if you did a 24 hour fast, okay, let's say

you're eating 3000 calories a day because you're trying to bulk. Okay. And that would normally make you fat. Well, nothing is going to be more aggressive than taking one of those days and not eating at all. Cause I basically put you into a 3000 calorie deficit. That's pretty significant. It's way easier than measuring out your food if you ask me. So it's like you get all these growth signals, growth signals, growth signals for six days out of the week. And then you get one aggressive drop, keeps your insulin levels in check, make sure that you're staying lean and insulin sensitive. So I find that like people that are bulking, like it's, yeah, it's a great modulator to not get fat with a bulk that's awesome yeah i hadn't

considered it like that because like i said with my experience like i don't i mean i i had no idea what was going on but it was something similar like that to where i would stop eating and then the hunger growing and all that shit would would go up but well i was almost like i was able to utilize the nutrition that was coming in so that makes a ton of sense yeah totally and and don't forget just to, you know, especially on the days, well, if you're doing a 24 hour fast, it's kind of irrelevant,

but you know, as Mark always says too, like, I mean, prioritize protein, but it's tough because sometimes when you prioritize protein, it's so satiating, it's hard for muscle building because it's like, I remember when I was trying to put on muscle

and I was trying to cram 300 grams of protein a day. It's like, wow, actually, I'm not hungry. I don't want to eat, but I need to. So it's like, where do you draw the line? But also, that's where it's really important to think, how many grams of protein do you actually need for your body weight? And just hit that number. Don't necessarily try to go above and beyond that number

and get the rest from fats, really, so you can get the most caloric density. And along with that, we've had multiple guests come on the show, Jay Tata. He's awesome. And a few other people talk about the effect of fasting and woman when fasting. A lot of them don't tend to tolerate it as much as men do. What have you seen and what do you think they should just be careful of if they're trying to implement some fasting into their protocol? Yeah, they just have a more complex set of systems that are communicating. So with women, with men, if we shut down leptin response for a little bit

and things like that, it can mess up some metabolic effects. But with women, leptin and estrogen, progesterone, follicle stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, all that stuff is closely tied together. So women have more at risk. However, women also respond better to hormone sensitive lipase that's stimulated from adrenaline, from norepinephrine. So what that means is that the stress of fasting has been demonstrated to be more effective in women than it is in men when it comes down to oxidizing fat. So women have the ability to actually do better with fasting than men. The big caveat is if they overdo it, it's more damaging. So the big important pieces do not overdo it. pieces do not overdo it it's like with women if you're just starting fasting i would say do a 16 8 method three days a week and stick with that until you really feel like you're you're ready and if you start feeling like you know your your period's delayed or it's coming early or it's that's a good indicator that you may need to kind of like back off a little bit and some it's just

some women are just not cut out for it they They just, their bodies just don't respond well to it. My wife actually is one of those. She's, she's big time keto, but fasting just messes with her. And that's the key. Even if it's just like not eating for what? She can do okay. She can do okay with that. Like she's, yeah. Like she still follows almost the same pattern that I follow where like, whether it's a fasting

day or not, I'm always at least doing a 12 hour fast. Like 12 hours is like, that's just normal, right? I just stop eating at 630 and I definitely at least won't eat until at least 630 the next day. So with women, it comes down to like, you know, right, like when you're in your estrogen phase or your progesterone phase, you could get pretty granular with that. So during the progesterone phase of your cycle, it's interesting because during the progesterone phase of your cycle, you actually can burn more fat, but the problem is you're also catabolizing and breaking down more muscle during your progesterone phase.

And because you're burning, basically your body is in a much more catabolic mode in general. So to the naked eye, again, you look on paper, you probably lose more weight by aggressively fasting during your progesterone phase, but not necessarily fat. You would just lose weight. During your estrogen phase,

you're much more naturally satiated. Estrogen kind of keeps your appetite at bay. That's why during the progesterone phase of a cycle for women, they get crazy hungry. That's like right before their period, they're like, oh, I need to eat chocolate. And if you talk to women, during their period, isn't necessarily like my wife. Let me just tell you all the gory details about my wife. Basically, I mean, just using her as an example, like during her period, she's really not that hungry during her period. Like she's more just miserable. Like it's like uncomfortable and annoying. The hunger is like a few days before the period. And she's always, my wife is always saying like, oh, I know when my period's coming because I start getting ravenous, right?

I know when it's about to hit. And that's very common, right? It's not just my wife. So I'm not just calling her out on that. It's like women across the board would be like, oh, I get so hungry. Yeah, because the progesterone kind of stimulates that, which is like telling you to eat more.

So when you're fasting, even fundamentally, mentally, that is tough. Why would you want to fast when it's going to be miserable for you? you actually want to eat whereas during the estrogen phase you're satiated you're you have a lot more control that's an opportune time to fast so i usually tell women like during the estrogen phase after your period that's the time to like maybe if you're gonna push it a little bit more try a longer fast do it then during the progesterone phase maybe a shorter 12 16 hour fast a few days per

week. And just really lean into and kind of double down on the estrogen phase. Yeah. How'd you get into this whole keto thing? It's what worked for me. Yeah. I mean, that was the biggest piece for me. I kind of became obsessed with inflammation, actually. That was like my big thing is, you know, back in what was like 10 years ago or so, like like I really just became fascinated with how inflammation worked. And one of the things that was fairly unanimous around most of the physicians that I talked to was keto for an anti-inflammatory purpose. And, you know, given my wife's kind of history with Hashimoto and kind of inflammatory things, it just seemed

like something that I wanted to do. So she and I kind of embarked on it together, helped her issues and I lost a bunch of weight with it. So I had tried a few things. I did, I don't know, I did the typical kind of like counting calories thing and it worked for me, but it didn't feel sustainable. Like I'm not denying that when I went keto, I didn't cut calories. I'm sure I did. But one thing I liked about keto is I didn't feel like I needed to count. Whereas otherwise I was counting, you know, I was counting and that didn't cut calories. I'm sure I did. But one thing I liked about keto is I didn't feel like I needed to count. Whereas otherwise I was counting, you know, I was counting and that didn't feel sustainable. When I went keto, the weight was falling off and I wasn't counting, not saying that I wasn't in a deficit, but I wasn't counting. So you were satiated more? I think so. You know, and I think I just, you know, I just, but again, full disclaimer,

this was 10 years ago. There were not a whole lot of like keto goodies out there. So by default, I was going back to like very whole foods with that. It's a lot of eggs. It was a lot of like good quality cheese. And there wasn't Catalina Crunch keto cereal, right? There wasn't that stuff. It was just, you know, so it was nuts, seeds, peanut butter, almond butter, things like that. Lots of butter. I still liked ghee then.

I was like way ahead of the curve with ghee. So that's kind of how I, I mean, it was really just, I liked it. And, you know, again, just having people that understood it. The physicians that I worked around were fee-for-service docs. So they were like doctors that weren't necessarily influenced by insurance reimbursement. So they were like really into like cutting edge nutrition. Not that it was necessarily cutting edge, but they were like, hey, this is like what we've used with patients because they don't have to prescribe or subscribe to some particular notion.

Yeah, I think, you know, when it comes to keto, it's like there's so many mistakes people can make. What are some of the common ones? I know you've done so many videos on this, so I'm hoping that the people that are watching this, I hope they dive into your YouTube channel. But what are a couple of things that, uh, people kind of screw up when they're trying to keto diet? Yeah. I think it's always good to, to like do a revised

keto mistakes video, like every six months anyway, because like we all learn so much and I catch so much crap for that because like you said that this was a mistake. Now this is a mistake. How many mistakes are there? No, we're like new mistakes guys. Cause we don't live in the same era all the time. It's cold. Yes. It's a, I would say one of the big ones is like freaking out about protein. Like being concerned with protein is a keto mistake. Like when people are like, Oh, if I eat too much protein, it's going to kick me out of keto. That's like, so 2015, like that's been, we did kind of think that early on and even some of the research kind of suggested it, but that's not the case. If anything, protein is going to, at the very worst, it's going to maybe slow down ketogenesis, but it's definitely not going to kick you out of keto.

And the long tail benefit of having protein is going to far outweigh potentially knocking you out of keto. Even though it's not going to, it might lessen it. I think one of the biggest things is when you're looking at blood work, not looking at your triglycerides is a big mistake. And I know I'm taking this higher level than the basic keto mistakes, but that's the one thing you should really look at. Because if your triglycerides are high on keto, that's a good indicator that maybe keto is not for you, or maybe you're reaching some level of malfunction. Because the triglycerides are high on keto, that's a good indicator that maybe keto is not for you, or maybe you're reaching some level of like malfunction because the triglycerides are the storage form of fat. And if they're not actually going to the liver and forming ketone bodies

properly, then those triglycerides are climbing and climbing. And that's not necessarily good for, for gaining weight, but it's really just not good for your overall health. Like, so if your triglycerides are high when you're doing keto, be careful, maybe take a brick or at least lessen the fats. Um, another one that I would say is, I mean, I, it's kind of generic, but the electrolyte thing, you know, I think that's like, I, I, I went years without taking in electrolytes when I was doing keto and people are like, Oh, well then like if keto is such a natural, good thing, then why do you need to add in additional things? Well, because in a lot of ways, like keto is such a natural good thing then why do you need to add in additional things speak well because in a lot of ways like keto is kind of i don't want to say it's unnatural but it is kind of unnatural because we are like artificially kind of manipulating things by like restricting

consciously restrict restricting a food that would normally be in our diet right so we're already making things more complex so sometimes you have to embrace a little bit of complexity with him. Um, as far as like my muscles being able to contract properly when I'm working out, like I thought it was a carb thing for the longest time. Like, Oh, maybe I need to have a little bit of carbs pre or post workout because I'm just like, I don't feel like the mind muscle connections there. I don't feel like my muscles are working. And then for me, I'm fairly heavily muscled guy. So I found that like 2000 milligrams of sodium between my pre and intra,

like what I drink before and during about 2000 total milligrams of sodium, game changer, like re-volumized my muscle tissue. It felt like, and I feel like that would be, I think that gets rid of the whole keto flu thing altogether. I think the biggest reason of the keto flu

is a massive change in your electrolytes that's making you feel wonky. You know, one thing I'm really curious about too, as far as I guess performance athletes, when it comes to a lot of this is what other things do you think that individuals who are really deep into the cardio side of things can take advantage of if they're trying to do keto or low-carb. They're not just trying to lose body fat when doing any of these diets. What do they need to add in, if anything? Because, again, I just didn't start this to drop body fat. I wanted to try and improve my performance,

and it has increased over time. But there's a lot of athletes that are like, there's no way I can fast or there's no way I can do low carb or keto if I'm trying to gain muscle or improve running or jujitsu or any of those types of things. Yeah. That's, that's common because it's almost like in some ways it's great for when you're already there and you've reached this point and for maintenance, but to achieve a different

level, um, you know, I can't go into like a whole lot of detail, but I mean, like I work with, you know, a lot of the military and special operations and keto is a chunk of that. Right. Because it's like, like,

okay, well obviously this becomes very important with how do we still maintain performance? And it's the same kind of thing. Like when I work with like a professional athlete, it's the same kind of thing. It's like, that is so important to be able to get better.

And I will say that you definitely have to become more targeted with your approach. And that's literally why it's called targeted keto. So it's kind of doing what I do, like where I sprinkle in carbs sometimes post-workout or I'll sprinkle in carbs consolidated to a specific period at night. When you've been doing keto for a while, like you have to get through that fat adaptation phase first, but then you'd be surprised. Like if you're doing a lot of athletic activity, you'd be surprised at how many carbs you can take in without kicking you out of keto. Yep. So I think that that's the thing is like, you don't need to just constantly being crazy high ketone levels. If I am training for two hours, you can bet your bottom dollar.

I can have like a hundred grams of carbs and still be registering. I'll kick out of keto for a minute, like maybe a couple hours, but then a couple hours later, I'm right back in it because why? Well, my muscles are saturated with that stuff. They're sucking it right up. So it's all relative to your activity level. So for performance keto, it's about having just the enough, the right amount of carbohydrates to offset the workload that you did. So you're providing your body

with carbohydrate backload for that training that you did. So it's like if I trained and I did a full body load where I was like really depleting glycogen levels, then it comes down to really getting to know your body and how many carbs you can get away with, that tolerable upper intake. It's like, what is my threshold for carbohydrates before I spill over? So yeah, I mean, I've gone as high as like 150 and still been in ketosis by the end of the day, which sounds like a lot of carbs, but like it's really 150 is really not that much. And it just, it sounds like a lot to a keto person because they're so accustomed and

acclimated to 50 grams at the most, like 150. Are you crazy? It's like two bowls of oatmeal. Like it's not that much. So not hard to offset that workout with carbs. So that way it's like you're, you're conditioning the body to be able to be repleted properly, but then you're still getting the benefits of keto because the majority of the time you're still in ketosis. Which especially for like, that's good for like a hybrid athlete. For like endurance athletes, it just takes like some conditioning. I think endurance athletes can actually thrive keto because it lends itself quite well. I know a lot of the triathlon community is getting into that. Some of the top marathoners are doing it.

So it definitely applies there. And they don't even ever add carbs in. They just stay strict keto because over time, your muscles will learn to adapt to keto and be able to still store glycogen from pathways like gluconeogenesis, where extra protein or the glycerol backbone of a triglyceride is broken down and used as a carbohydrate store. And do you think it's that important to be tracking your ketones? Because there's a lot of people who are consistently just, like Mark said, chasing ketones all the time.

Yeah. So it's not a bad thing, but it's one of those things where it's going to mess with your head. Because like for me, my ketone levels are never that high because my body's adapted. We talked about this a little bit before the show, but like you just, it's efficiency. Like why would your body produce a bunch of something that it doesn't need? Okay. If you flip that on its head and you think about glucose, if you were to like having high levels of ketones is like saying that you want to have high levels of glucose. Just because ketones are fuel doesn't mean you want more of that fuel. Just like glucose is a fuel doesn't mean you want more of that fuel. You want enough to show that you're alive and

to sustain life, just like you want enough ketones to sustain life. But what I need in the way of ketones is different than what you might need in the way of ketones. I'm so keto adapted. My cells are like, oh, we know exactly the signaling pathway. We know exactly how much to create. So the liver is going to pump out X number of ketones because I've been doing it for so long. It's trying to find the right number. It doesn't want to produce extra. That's not the goal.

The goal is for the body to produce enough ketones to sustain life and to give you energy. Once it has that dialed in, you can't expect your ketone levels to go super high because your body's found its efficiency. So people find over time their ketone levels go down, down, down, down, down, down, down, and they think they're failing. I'm like, that is a good thing. If you know your diet's good and you know you're not like munching on cereal and stuff, then as long as you're doing the right stuff with your diet, then nothing's wrong. It's doing what it's supposed to do. So yeah,

it's, but measuring ketones, especially in the beginning can be very helpful just because it gamifies it and gives you something to track. What about overdoing fat? You know, a lot of times when people start getting into the diet, because they might be trying to chase ketones, they're consuming like large amounts of fat. Is there still some worry? And I get questions all the time about heart health and lipid profile and all that kind of stuff. So what are some of your thoughts when it comes to, is it something that people should be mindful of, how much fat they're consuming? Yeah. I'll cover just from a body composition piece first. I mean, we have to remember the basics that

fat is nine calories per gram carbs or four calories per gram. So, you know, if you go over this much with fats, it's going to do a lot more damage than going over this much with carbs in just a grandiose, like global setting, not necessarily keto or not. It's just like, no matter what kind of diet you're doing, extra fat is still more calorically dense. So you can't eat unlimited fat bombs because gram for gram, you're going to gain more out of that fat bomb. So, but you know, there's a complex situation with insulin and stuff like that. So that's, that's arguable.

But the fact is, is that if you're on keto, no matter how strict a keto you are, if you eat 5,000 calories in fat bombs, it's not going to magically disappear. It's going to go somewhere. So yes, we still need to be aware. And this, I catch so much flack for this and it's just, it's simply a misunderstanding because it's hard to really articulate. But molecularly speaking, fat still stores easier as fat fat still stores easier as fat than carbohydrates do as fat okay carbohydrates can can spike insulin which can slow down potentially some of the fat loss effects yes i think we could see that you know and again it's not proven but kind of see that that insulin kind of stops that but carbs in order for a carbohydrate to turn into fat it has to go through de novo lipogenesis, and it has to go through this whole complex pathway with like eight different steps where

it's basically like converting into malonyl coenzyme A and converting, and then it's fatty acid synthase combining with the fat. It is complex. Talk about an inefficient process. Whereas fat, if you overdo fat, it's already fat. So it stores and goes right into adipose and turns into a triglyceride essentially. Whereas with a carbohydrate, you're literally creating fat from a random carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. That takes a lot.

So simplicity, like the body is much more likely to store extra fat as fat than extra carbs as fat. But again, it's a complex situation because you can factor in insulin. So don't take that 100% to the bank. Point is just simply put. The other side, like fats are the dangerous. I still believe, and I catch so much flack for this, that excess saturated fats are probably not the best thing for us. There's some pretty strong evidence that fatty liver can definitely be triggered by excess saturated fat consumption in addition to

fructose, in addition to excess glucose, in addition to insulin resistance, in addition to trans fatty acid consumption. So do you overdo saturated fat? I would definitely recommend not. The general rule of thumb that I typically say is 20% of your total fat intake should be coming from saturated fats. So if you consume 100 grams of fat a day, 20 grams of saturated fat is plenty. If you consume 200 grams of fat a day, then 40 grams of saturated fat is plenty. And the main reason behind that isn't necessarily for cardiovascular disease or atherosclerosis or anything like this. That's not even why. Point is, is that saturated fat doesn't have a whole lot of nutritional value

outside of like myelination and some brain support. It's more about if most of your fat calories come from saturated fat, you're missing out on all the benefits that can come from like the monounsaturated fats, like the olive oil, the avocado oil, things like that, that I think have huge benefit and have been published in literature

for the last like 60 years, like good, healthy monounsaturated fats. I know the carnivore community doesn't like it, but I mean, it's, and I, whatever. It's just, you know, no one's going to agree on everything, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that olive oil is probably pretty good for you. You know, it's like, I'm a big fan

of like a Mediterranean approach. And I'm not just, this isn't just Thomas DeLauer talking. It's not just me. It's just because of the nutritional antioxidant value that you get from avocado oil, from olive oil, from other oils, other fats, not necessarily seed oils, but there's other fats. If you're having so much saturated fat, then you're getting a smaller amount of that. And saturated fat just doesn't have a huge nutritional value. It's just kind of there, you know? And again, it's not saying it's bad, but it's just, it lacks, it's like, would I rather eat a piece of white bread or would I

rather eat a piece of like Ezekiel bread that has some nutritional value to it? If you gave me the option between the two, right? How much fat would you eat when you were tracking? Usually like how many grams or so? 150, 150-ish. So your protein was still higher than your... Yeah, I'd say like between 150, 180. My protein, I would usually be 50, 50-ish. And then I'd usually have like 10% of my calories coming from carbs, you know, sometimes a little bit more. So my carbs are actually higher than most people that were on keto

simply because I was training hard and I could get away with more. So, but I'm also not opposed to having more protein than you are fat. Like, I don't think it's going to hurt things. Like I actually recommend that people periodically cut their fats down and just kind of, you know, switch it up on the system a little bit. Probably get leaner. Yep. Go high protein, you know, kind of think of it like this. You're conditioning your body constantly to utilize fats as a fuel source. And then all of a sudden you rip away the fats. It's going to be looking for the fat. So where is it going to look for them out of your tissue? You know, you, you do a lot of stuff as far as performance is concerned. And, um, I I've seen a lot of things on your channel, like from sauna to red light stuff. And I'm curious, what do you still use

red light therapy? Do you still sauna? I'm curious about that you still use red light therapy do you still sauna I'm curious about that those things sauna 100% like I just uh I'm up in my home in Tahoe and I just have a sauna showing up there like tomorrow it's yeah like I brand uh this so I have a Nordic at my Carmel house and then uh my other home we have in in Tahoe I got an almost heaven almost and it's not because I I think I I think I like Nordic, but Nordic is, they're backward with like 16 weeks. Almost Heaven hasn't been stocked.

They're very, very similar. They're all using the same KIPP heater, the same heater. So it's really like whose wood do you like more? It really doesn't matter much. So sauna, I'm going to become like the Wim Hof of sauna, i'm i'm gonna become like the the wim hof of sauna of heat right like whereas he's the ice man i'm gonna be like the fireman i am so obsessed

with it and like i crank up my um you know i've rigged my sauna so that it gets up to like 240 degrees so i mean i like i like it hot like do it hot get the hormetic stressor out of it um i feel like short stents at a high temperature, you know, I feel are better. Just make sure you wear like a sauna cap when you go that hot because it will fry your hair and your hair will start to like, you're like, wow, my hair's falling out. But it's like, it just dries out your hair. So that's why they make such things as literal sauna caps because they're like these wool hats you put on. You look like a total doofus. And my sauna will get really hot, especially if I pour some of the water in there.

It just goes fucking crazy. It's really, really like, it's like a steam, you know? It can burn you. I actually just throw a towel over my head. Yeah, that works too. It's like just everything just feels like it's frying. Yeah, you don't want to fry your CPU, your whole brain. But yeah, like the heat shock protein effect,

we could go down that rabbit hole for sure. The red light therapy, definitely love it. It's mildly inconvenient. I stand behind how well it works. Like red light therapy uh definitely love it it's mildly inconvenient i stand behind how how well it works like red light therapy is awesome uh for inflammatory responses for antioxidant production or sorry antioxidant production in the body so it's like helpful for that uh injuries things like that a lot of evidence there it's difficult in the way that like you do have to commit to it and you have to sit in front of that light

for 10 or 15 minutes and you really do need to do it a lot. Why don't they make one that goes in your shower, one in your toilet bowl? There's your next idea. Get your butthole and your balls all full of red light therapy, right? That's what I said,

a ring light around the toilet bowl. Yeah. Jesus Christ, what do we got to think of everything around here? I think we do. That's a good idea. Especially for like, but it should definitely be in the shower. Shower makes sense around here. I think we do. That's a good idea. Especially for like, but it should definitely

be in the shower. Shower. Shower makes sense. Toilet makes sense too. Especially if you're like, you know, you got small kids and like the place

that you hide is like when you go in the bathroom and close the door. Thank you. Yeah. That's exactly my problem with the red light therapy right now.

I'm like, I got to get my everything out there. It's like, I got nowhere to go. So I'm happy I have no kids. Yeah.

I can just stand there just balls out. Yeah. I can't go balls out. What you doing daddy yeah well no the kid doesn't call me that but trying to make it grow was it like the uh yeah yeah yeah so what's the movie where they talk about with the dogs or like put peanut butter on your balls and the dogs let the dog what movie was that? American Pie maybe? Was it American Pie? Something like that.

Yeah. Just made me think of that. I don't know. I don't know why my brain went there but I don't know. You've been hanging out with us way too much already.

It's only been a day. My wife's gonna come home and she's gonna be like who are you? Oh gosh. How do the kiddos eat? I'm curious. I have a

he's about to be 11 months old and then my stepdaughter's 13. She's doing really well. He's about to be 11 months old. And then my stepdaughter's 13. She's doing really well. We actually did a really good job with her. But for my kid, my son, I'm feeding him as much steak and eggs as possible. Sometimes he's chewing and he's just laughing. And I'm like, dude, you got to swallow that stuff.

But I'm just curious, how do your kids eat? Yeah. I mean, we did baby-led weaning with both of them you know we so we just uh what was that baby led weaning where you basically at a young age um you know like three months or so you start giving them solid food and let them got it uh you know not dangerously solid food like i'm not going to give them like uh you know a piece of steak at three months but like we were you know let them let them pick and let them learn because that's how they actually develop the ability to like masticate, masticate, not masturbate. They'll learn that on their own.

So that's like the ability to like really chew and develop that is very important for them. So we did that with both of them and we thought that helped tremendously because I think it also develops a palate. Like they learn like what they like, what they don't like, and it gets them the taste of food early on. So we did that with them.

But then how they eat now, Tommy's four, Emma's 19 months, or she's, yes, we have 20 months in a couple of days actually. So she just like, she's weird. She just likes to eat like cottage cheese. Like she just like, we almost can't get her to eat a whole lot other than cottage cheese. She likes cottage cheese and she likes broccoli. She's just like, we almost can't get her to eat a whole lot other than cottage cheese. She likes cottage cheese and she likes broccoli.

She loves broccoli. She loves broccoli with nutritional yeast on it. So she's a little bit of an odd one because she's just like, no, we'll make a nice, she's like, cheese, I want cheese. She's your daughter.

I mean, she eats other foods. It's like she wants that. Tommy is, it's funny because he's like not, maybe it's just by watching, but he's not a big carb kid. Like he won't, like we've tried making him like mashed potatoes. We've tried even like mashed sweet potatoes.

He's just like, nah, I'm not really into it. But you give him a plate of like broccoli and chicken and he's wolfing it down. He's, he definitely, you know, we face any problem that a parent has where I am convinced that kids have two stomachs. They have a snack stomach and then they have their actual meal stomach and their meal stomach is really small, but their snack stomach is huge. Yeah. Snack. I want a snack. I want a snack. I want a snack. Okay.

Oh, I'm not hungry for dinner. Five minutes later, I want a snack. You know, it's a, so that's just a psychological thing. So then it's uh so that's just a psychological thing so then it's like okay well we can't feed the snack thing because then they never want to eat their actual meal but you also do have to kind of give them a snack because they're growing and they're hungry and i'm not going to be like no four hours between meals like so in seamless said meals at meals only no snacks yeah exactly yeah it's- You're pricking their finger and checking their ketones. Yeah. They're big fruit eaters.

They both like fruit, a lot of berries. You know, we don't do like super sugary melons or anything like that. So we do a lot of berries, a lot of strawberries, a lot of blueberries, a lot of raspberries. Big fans of that. I think that cottage cheese is, they both love cottage cheese. I do a lot of Bulgarian yogurt, which is like Greek yogurt, but lower lactose content and super high probiotic content.

So there's like White Mountain and Trimona are like the two big Bulgarian yogurt companies. They're just, taste so good. I, if I had to put it in a nutshell, they're like, they basically eat paleo

with the addition of like cottage cheese and yogurt. Like, don't worry. They're eating pretty damn healthy because of the food in the house. And that was the other side to you. It's like, we really don't restrict what they eat. They just eat what's available in our house.

They don't have gluten because we don't keep gluten in the house. You know, we can go down that rabbit hole. I don't feel good when I eat gluten. It doesn't take much to not make me feel good. I don't know why, honestly. They can look at lots of different mechanisms there, but we don't have gluten in our house.

And my wife with her Hashimoto's, that definitely the gluten messes her up so really there's not like bad options floating around and when we do have like chocolate or treats laying around it's usually like chalk zero or something that's like you know like a keto kind of chocolate so they get to indulge every now and then and not have a sugar high yeah you had mentioned uh halo top right yeah do you keep that around quite a bit i wouldn't say i keep it around so here's what we do so actually i'm much more of a fan of enlightened than i am halo top uh just consistency wise i ice cream is my kryptonite like i love ice cream so much and i could live off of it

uh what we typically do we don't make the kids do this but we my wife and i when we have our cheat meals we call it our call it a karma party because there's a place down in LA when we were living down there called Karma Donuts. And they would make these like spilt flour, gluten-free donuts with coconut, like made with coconut sugar and stuff. They taste so good, but they're, the impact is just less there. You know, it's not, it's lower glycemic and coconut sugar is a little bit better, but they're just effing delicious. And we would get those.

And then what we would do is from our house to the store was three miles. So we'd be like, if we're going to do this, we're going to get our donuts and then we're going to walk to the store. We're going to get our enlightened ice cream from the store, walk back, and then we'll eat it. So we're kind of earning it. And we sort of indoctrinated our kids into that too. Like where like, you know, Tommy rides his bike. He's been riding a bike, a two wheeler since he was three, no training wheels. He's impressive with that. Kid's going to be a little BMX or like Josh Perry. He's awesome. And then Emma's in the stroller, right? And Emma doesn't participate. She goes to bed before karma party. So grow up Emma. And then, yeah, exactly. So, but you know, Tommy rides his bike, you know, and I'm not trying to like,

you don't want to necessarily treat food as a reward because then obviously that breeds, but you also have to like, that's kind of how I grew up a little bit. It was like, my mom was just like, Hey, we're going to go for a long hike. And you know what, after that, yeah, you reward yourself, have a milkshake, do something, you know, because you also got to live and what kid doesn't like ice cream, but I do want him to also learn that like, it comes with a calorie cost. And that's what I'm trying to like teach him but we do it in a very productive way we get him excited he wants to go ride his bike of course he does and they'll be like yes hey guess what cool you see how hard you're working let's have some ice cream let's

do it together it's not like we're and uh i think it's fun and some people have given me shit about it i mean like that's like messing with their heads i don't think so at all not in the way we do it we're not like you go out and you run around the block six times if you want to have dinner. Like, oh, it's, hey, as a family, we're going to go walk, pick up ice cream. We're going to choose our flavors. We're going to come back and we're going to have it with our little, you know, gluten-free donuts. And we're going to have a good time and we're going to enjoy life. And so that's kind of what we do. So yeah, I'm, I'm in with the enlightened ice cream. I don't usually bother with the keto stuff too much. The keto one, I just get the regular one because the keto ice cream, I don't usually bother with the keto stuff too much. The keto one, I just go for the regular one

because the keto ice cream is delicious, but it's so caloric. Whether you're keto or not, there's a lot of calories. So I just go for the regular Halo Top and just accept the fact that I might get knocked out of keto for a half a day. Got it. And then, so you had mentioned, you know,

like just now getting knocked out of ketosis. Is ketosis the ultimate goal? Like should people be striving to get into ketosis and like staying there forever? No, I feel like if it works for them, then yes. And if you feel like you're not depriving yourself, then I don't really see a huge problem with it, but I feel like you should, excuse me, still dabble in carbohydrates now and then just to keep yourselves conditioned to using it. You know, I just, I'm a really big fan of just thinking how our, you know, like an ancestral way of living, you know, um, you know who I really like, I don't want to get on a rabbit hole, but that liver King guy is

pretty awesome, dude. Like, I mean, there's some stuff that's kind of maybe out there, like, you know, like whatever, like that may be not real or maybe, maybe somewhat fabricated. But I think the overall like message that he's sending, he's like paleo 2.0, paleo 5.0. He's like, let's, this is what paleo really is. Like, so I kind of like, that's, that's almost like what I would say, like default to, like he doesn't eat keto, but he also has periods of fasting and, you know, he would probably go out and have some you know he'd probably forge for some nuts and berries if he needed to you know he'd probably like you know javelin a hog and then like whatever he would and then he'd eat some uh carbs and stuff like that yeah so i just feel like i think like long-term, like having some carbohydrates and

just thinking how our ancestors would really like eat, you know, that's probably how our bodies are like at a root level, like designed to function. Small amounts of carbohydrates. I also feel like seasonal eating probably makes some sense too. Like in the wintertime, it probably does make more sense to have, be more keto, right? Because like, that's what's more available. Like you might get some meat, very little seeds little fruits very little why do you think people get so uh like upset with someone like liver king do you think that they're maybe they feel they're like somehow being deceived by something are people upset with him i know what's his name james or whatever um you talked about him like uh yeah i hear people uh well

people message me all the time and they're, I think this guy's full of shit. And I don't know what they're like. I mean, they will question PEDs and stuff like that. Yeah, I think he's a drudger. That's not ancestral. But that whole thing is just so, it's so hard to figure any of that out. Yeah, why even, it's such a mute point. Like, it's just like, I don't know, you can't really, the PED thing, it's just like, oh, God.

I mean, if he says he's natural, I mean, I, you know, then I. Dude, I mean, whatever, dude. The guy is, he's building a hell of a following. Whether he's natural or not, he's jacked. It looks like, you know. It looks pretty badass. His messaging isn't bad. Yeah.

Yeah. And like, so I don't know if his, I don't know if he's writing his copy or someone else is writing his copy. I get the inclination that maybe someone else is actually behind writing his copy, but who knows? I love how he talks in third person. I think that's fucking awesome.

Like liver King and liver queen. He's got a great, great thing going on. So like, but whatever is he's inspiring as all fuck. And that's what matters. And like, I just feel like why can I don't,

it's bullshit. Like why do people need to like, like, do they understand like this day and age that people might develop a persona, but if it's in good intention and it's doing good things, then what the hell? Like he's not telling people to go like hurt people. Like he's, he's telling like motivating people. I'm not seeing a hook either. I'm not seeing him try to really sell you on it.

No. And that's probably coming. I mean, it's going to come right. Like it's just like happens with every social brand monetize it yeah and that sounds great yeah i mean it's like build the brand and then you know i didn't monetize my channel for years right and it's just like it's uh so that'll come and who cares and when it does it probably he's probably gonna kill it like it's probably gonna rock so um but i think that his way of eating is is. You know, he strikes me as a guy that's like, I don't know.

He's just got a very commanding physique. He's got this unique look. He's definitely like, like you're scrolling, you see him. He can't help but stop. Right. And the kinds of workouts that he does are exactly what I like aspire to be. Like, I love that. I love the idea of just carrying some heavy shit.

It's an untraditional workout. I mean, he does work out in a gym sometimes too, but he's out carrying stuff and walking and stuff. It's more fun. I don't think his body was built on that. I mean, there's clearly, I think, that's like me saying that the kind of workouts that I always do now,

just the hybrid types are what built my body. No, I mean, big compound moves built my body but it's uh and i'm sure that was the case for him but you know i don't know we don't know what our ancestors really looked like from a muscle standpoint you know we know what their bones they probably didn't look like much yeah they probably didn't honestly i mean they didn't hold that i mean you you were saying in the gym earlier today that, you know, it's not like the body's not trying to get rid of muscle. But I actually kind of think that it does work on getting rid of muscle in some ways. I think nowadays, you know, we have skewed things so much because of, like, we lift in the gym and we do these, like, just like artificial exercise that we made up because we don't have to move as much.

But, you know, it wouldn't have probably been of benefit to be really heavy, you know, a long time ago. Because the amount of walking and in SEMA or myself or whomever, if we were all traveling together and trying to move and trying to, I mean, it's all speculation. I don't have no idea how the fuck people used to live. I mean, it's all speculation. I don't have no idea how the fuck people used to live. But I'm just assuming that we would be 30, 40, 50 pounds lighter, most likely just because of all the movement that it would require and all the hardship that we would go through. Yeah, that's a good point.

I mean, I don't know if we're designed to be, I don't know. Super jacked. Yeah, or pushing extreme loads for long periods of time, too. So, yeah, it's a very good point i think that um you know almost uh when i say unnatural i don't mean peds i just mean you know the sort of unnatural level of muscle we carry now it's like uh induced by artificial exercise yeah right so like going to the gym is artificial exercise. I had a guy that, a friend of mine,

was like a mentor, business mentor, and his dad was a professional hockey player back in the olden days in Canada. And I remember him always telling me like, yeah, my dad would always say like, oh, you're going to go to the gym

and do that artificial exercise. So even like a- Do all that bullshit. Even a professional hockey player that is like the epitome of like, you are going to do like an artificial sport their training clearly was more about just life like no just live a healthy fit lifestyle so you can be good at your sport less sport specific it's kind of funny so it's like yeah we're influenced by this artificial exercise that is very unnatural so what we have created is unnatural to be super jacked whether there's

peds or not is kind of unnatural because it's like if you want to get down to the gritty of it because i don't think that it was natural to be like me lift big rock me lift to get big bicep like i don't who knows but so that's true i mean where do you draw the line with natural what does your training look like? It depends. If I'm in a heavy endurance phase, then it's more skewed towards the running in that piece. But as far as my lifting and that kind of thing,

two or three days per week, it's much more of a hybrid, almost, I would say, CrossFit style, kind of like what we did today. Not that it was CrossFit, but it's hybrid, a little bit of everything. I like to get my heart rate up. And then I'd say a few days out of the week, it's much more, like I do an upper lower split. So I like full body, but if I'm running a whole lot, I can't smash my legs either the day before or the day after because either

I'm not going to run good or I'm going to be already obliterated from running. And that kind of ties in closely with like my fasting. If I ran a lot on a fasting day, then I don't recover. I feel like kind of crap the next day. So yeah, so I usually like alternate. So like upper, lower, upper, lower. And then three days out of the week, two to three days out of the week,

it's going to be more of like a functional style day. And then the running is just a constant. And that's the thing that modulates. You know, now I'm doing more of like that bike and stuff like that. I've got, you know, L4, L5, L5S1 like that i've got you know l4 l5 l5 s1 ruptured discs so those are how about uh that's a old leg press injury yeah we've all kind of seen before right and taken out ronnie coleman style yeah well that you know the funny thing is is that like happened when i was overweight and it actually didn't bother me that much right

but what happened was and we've all experienced this, uh, shortly before my son was born. Uh, so five years ago, dead lifting, warming up one 35 always happens with the warm up. Like, it's so funny. I talked to so many people. It's like, yeah, it's like, I guess you're just not set up for it and you're not warming up. Yeah. You're taking it easy. You're not treating it like a heavy lift. Yeah. And you know what else is interesting? I don't want to, this is super weird, the biomechanic piece but um you know you have to you sometimes have to lift with your own mechanics the way that things would be like sometimes when you force people to dead lift a certain way that's when injuries happen and i have very tight hamstrings and like i have a little bit of like kyphosis anyway from having big lats so like when i try to really pull my

shoulders back and really like you know hip hinge super like pronounced it puts a lot of stress on my lower back i'm actually one of those guys like if i have a slight rounding to slight not a lot rounding to my upper back it's actually you know easier on my lower back so with the lightweight i sometimes will try to go so strict form that I would actually like hinge at the wrong point and like pull with my lower back versus driving. So it was anyway. So that's but then that's like the same injury that had happened when I was super overweight and young that I thought I recovered from it reared its ugly head then. But it came at such a bad time right before my son was born. And I went through six months of practically no sleep with a newborn.

So it's like the recovery just sucked. And, uh, it's just when like everyone knows with like back injuries, it's just like, you think you heal them and then they just, they come back. You think every, and it's like, Oh, everyone should just unsubscribe now. Cause Thomas, uh, has a bad back and everything he says doesn't work because his back is busted. Uh, so yeah, so I've been trying to just do a little bit lower impact stuff for a little bit, but it sucks because my heart is really running and it's, whatever.

We've been going for what, three hours? Not too bad. Two and almost a half. I agree with you a ton about that last piece you were saying about the back and I think that more of us need to follow our intuition. It's great to take advice from other people, but always do so with some caution. Somebody's talking about a particular exercise, a new diet, jump into fasting, whatever it is.

Why not just try a little dose of it first? I really have loved over the years that when you promote fasting, that you're oftentimes saying, hey, maybe this is something you do every other day, or maybe it's something that you just use for some leverage here and there just to make up for overeating on other particular days and things of that nature. I think it's really helpful. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Take us on out of here, Andrew. Sure thing. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode sincerely appreciate it uh please make sure you guys like this video comment anything

that you guys found uh beneficial uh during today's conversation and subscribe you guys if you guys are not subscribed already uh please follow the podcast at mark bells power project on instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter my instagram and twitter is at i am andrew z in sima where you at and sima yin yang. NSEMA yin yang on Instagram and YouTube. NSEMA yin yang on TikTok and Twitter. Where can we find you? Where can't you find me? That's the problem.

No, it's Thomas DeLauer on Instagram. Thomas DeLauer on YouTube. That's more or less it. Thank you so much for coming here to Super Training. Really appreciate it. You bet, guys. Thanks for having me. I'm at Mark Smiley Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Thank you so much for coming here to Super Training. Really appreciate it. You bet, guys. Thanks for having me. I'm at Mark Smiley Bell. Strength is never weakness.

Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.