Mark Bell's Power Project - The Sugar Diet, Immune Cells & Why Diet Isn’t “Static” | Joel Greene

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

Mark sits down with Joel Greene to unpack the sugar diet—why it can work short-term (hello, glycolysis), what it may shift long-term (gut taxa + immune cell metabolism), and why the body isn’t a ���static machine.” They also hit insulin sensitivity, keto/carnivore blind spots, the “calorie is a calorie” debate, and why rhythms/pulses beat doing the same thing daily.Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast➢ https://www.PowerProject.live➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerprojectFOLLOW Mark Bell➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybellFollow Nsima Inyang➢ Ropes and equipment : https://thestrongerhuman.store➢ Community & Courses: https://www.skool.com/thestrongerhuman➢ YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=e

We're operating under the assumption that the body is this static mechanism. That is absolutely 100% not true. In a system that is a balanced-based system that is always seeking its equilibrium, what you get over time, you don't get a straight line. You get a curve. Primary reason I think the sugar diet works. Primary top of the list is just glycolysis. I hate when people are delivering things with absolute certainty.

You know, it's become a bit of a grift in our industry now. The closer we are to nature, the more optimized our body is. All right. So it wasn't that long ago. I was messing around with the sugar diet. That's right. And you're the guy that I like to go to to reference for all different types of diets, all different types of foods and how they break down the body.

So what are some of your thoughts on the sugar diet? A lot of thoughts on it, man. High level, I think that it does bring something needed to table. I think that it does, something people haven't. really thought about, so that's great. I think it could be a very effective kind of short-term adjunct, you know, short-term insertion. So I think it's, and I think we need as many of those we can get. And I think that it brings up a lot of unacknowledged aspects of diet and nutrition that are missing, that it kind of unknowingly gets itself into. And I would categorize like

probably two or three main things. One would be the impact of diet on immune cell metabolism, and that's a real big deal, I think, with the sugar diet. And we'll dive into that. I'm just trying to give the high level. Yeah. That's a big deal. That's a real big deal. And then the other would be the long-term, there are unacknowled, in my opinion, unacknowledged long-term patterns that result over a lifetime from diet incursions and they're not they're not even acknowledged or talked about and I think the sugar diet kind of like it's a good entree into talking about those things because they're not they're not even known they're not talked about you know and that gets into that gets into our ideas about what the body is could you explain a little bit further on what you mean like are you kind of basically saying

that this short term keto diet that somebody might do or this short term thing that they might do in short terms like I guess we've got to kind of define it right but just say short term someone plays with a diet for three months and they occasionally go back to it. Yeah. Are you kind of speculating that even though it seems short and sweet, there might be some ramifications we're not thinking about? Well, it could be good. There could be bad. But there's an underlying big idea and it's not really understood. It's like if I, if I explain this to you, it's going to seem perfectly sensible. It's going to make a lot of sense. And it's it's just not even in the picture of diet. And it's this.

that we're operating under the assumption that the body is this static mechanism. And so you throw something at it and then you get this response and then you continue to throw it and you'll always get that response. So that's what I would call the static mechanism of diet. Like we think the body's static. That is absolutely 100% not true. Yeah. And even some stuff that we know from, say, something like massage manipulation,

It's been said that like if you poke a finger or something at like a spot on your forearm that every single time that you tap the arm, even if you use the same amount of pressure, that the fascia and the muscle tissue is responding slightly differently every single time. Really? I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. There's just a lot of weird stuff like that in the human body that I agree.

It's not accounted for and we don't. Just because you put in 40 grams of carbohydrates doesn't mean that you're going to get the result. of 40 grams of whatever those particular carbohydrates were, depending on the type of carbohydrates they are, depending on the type of person, depending on probably the time of year, depending on how much sunlight somebody's getting. I mean, it just, we can uncover so many things, and it might be small, but like as you're pointing out, if we start to think about over a lifetime, these, the way the body reacts Could end up being either problematic. It could end up being on the good side, but it is a

It's a long it's a long road that we have that we have looking at. Yeah, so And this is to my mind like this is like so foundational so important such a big deal Like it kind of needs a big hammer to to hammer it out and it's just simple this We think it's static, but it's not what it is like if you if we really look at what the body is It is a set of variables that are chasing an equilibrium. And that equilibrium is dynamic, meaning that, you know,

just think of a seesaw, you load one end, and then there's a shift, and then you load the other end, and there's a shift. And because that's what the body is, it's a system with variables chasing a dynamic equilibrium. That sounds like a bunch of big words, and I don't want to, because this is so important. I want to...

A dynamic balance that falls within a particular range because it's a balance, but the balance has a little bit up, a little bit down. Right. But you start to get outside of that is when things can start to get a little. And we can load variables on different ends of the seesaw, you know, whatever you want to load in there. And there's always going to be some kind of reaction.

And so over time, there are different forces at work. There's things can accumulate. Things can degrade. Degradation. Things can attenuate. There's all kinds of forces at work. So what we get then over time is in, a system that is a balanced-based system that is always seeking its equilibrium, what you get over

time is you don't get a straight line. You get a curve. That curve can be good, it could be bad, but that is the most accurate way to characterize a way our bodies work over time. So as it comes to like, you know, let's say the sugar diet or, you know, fat losses anyway, we just think that it's this static mechanism and it's always going to do the same thing. You input A, you get B. And probably some of the most knowledgeable people in the world are this would be like,

like competitive bodybuilders now in their 50s and 60s, because they've actually been down that road. They've been down the road of like umpting weight cuts and umpteen, you know, and very often they'll tell you like, yeah, things are different now. It doesn't work the same as the way it used to. You hear that a lot. And all that just points to this underlying missing

meta framework for diet that there's a lifetime roadmap and you're gonna do these things and then they can create shifts, sometimes good, sometimes bad. But so that takes us out of the whole thing of like, you know, is keto good? You know, is carnivore bad? It takes us out of that. And it just takes us into it.

Just tell me how to lose weight, man. Yeah, right. Yeah. So that's, I don't know if I ever told you my story on that, but when I first started doing this full time, like back in 2006, I wanted to do kind of what I'm doing now, but I didn't have the right words for it. And I called it longevity-based fitness. And I was just trying to publish good content. What a dumb name. Look at how many people use that.

I was just trying to speak the truth and what I quickly found is nobody cared. Nobody cared. Nobody. All they wanted was, yeah, I mean, I just want to lose 10 pounds. Just tell me how those 10 pounds. They didn't give it crap what you had. No. So all that, no, they didn't know. So all that to say, just that it's a big picture getting back to the sugar diet thing that it brings up this discussion of kind of like, you know, you go on this thing and it worked. It worked. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. It worked. And I started this off by saying, yeah, I think it introduces something new. I think it could be effective. But I think also there's a bigger discussion of the long term. Yeah, and worked for what and for how long? Did it work to get you to, was the goal to get a certain body fat percentage? Was there a particular performance marker that you were looking for and you were able to hit that? Well, then maybe to the individual, maybe it was worth it. And maybe it's worth some of the potential risks. But in your opinion, what are some of the,

because we've had you on the show many times, and you've said repeatedly, you haven't changed your stance. Your stance is the same. You haven't changed you. You like to personally change your diet and have the people that follow your plan, they do many different styles of nutrition,

all the way to the point where I've heard you say, you know, tomorrow's like an anti-cancer day. I was like, well, who the heck talks that way? I never heard any, and that's what intrigued me when we first started communicating, I was like, I really heard anybody talk like this guy. This is super interesting. But you wouldn't necessarily say that keto is bad or this is bad or this is this way. But what you would say is that if I do this for this period of time, it will put this amount of pressure on this system.

And it could allow me to go down the road that I want to go down. Maybe and maybe I get to offset some of the negatives and I get to go towards some of that equilibrium. that you're talking about. Yeah, let's take like, either we could take either carnivore or sugar. Either one is an example, and I'll just take one thing, one variable.

So one of the reasons I would say, like, that the sugar diet, well, the primary reason I think the sugar diet works, like primary top of the list is just glycolysis. So you're giving more substrate for glycolysis, and glycolysis will get you lean. Like the more glycolysis that's going on, you're going to lean up.

Cancer patients know that. It makes you lean. Okay. But along with that, you have, you're feeding the gut and you're feeding the gut like food and substrate. So you're going to advantage some species, disadvantage others. And then it just depends on the variation of the sugar diet. You're doing it.

You need more fruit, you know, are you more in that direction? Are you more kind of pure sugar? That's going to steer a different taxa in the gut. Okay. So you're going to see like this sort of short-term benefit, like you're going to drop fat, you know, for a number of different reasons we can talk about. But then what happens long term is if you keep you keep you keep. If you keep down that road, you're creating shifts in the gut taxa that eventually can

lead to maybe some routes that we don't want. Okay, just by virtue of feeding certain groups of bacteria and then you're just giving them what they need to multiply end up with like an overgrowth of some sort. I'm not so much that, but you could one like the big one it really is just looking at what happens within immune cells. So The way to steer immune cells is sugars. And the metabolism within immune cells is this, I would say it's probably, if you were going to look at one thing that's missing in diet, like a specific thing, like a specific mechanism, it's the metabolism within immune cells because it has a disproportionate effect on the rest of the body.

And that could be good, it could be bad. You can, so immune cells are extremely sensitive to sugar because they rely on glycolysis. And when I say sugar, what I mean is like table sugar, like sucrose. And they have a particular isoform of the insulin receptor. Okay? And so by advantaging immune cells through sugars, you can get different effects. So, for example, you could take Manos, which is one type of sugar, and then you could take sucrose, which is another,

and have completely different effects on populations of immune cells. One of them is beneficial, like by feeding Manos to immune cells. you're going to get these really beneficial effects in terms of immune cell type, population, types of regulatory C cells, they're going to kind of line up in the right direction. You feed them sucrose and you're going to get the opposite. And it's just through the metabolism that takes place within immune cells. And the reason it's disproportionately weighted is because immune cells are attractive by their very nature. They're designed to proliferate and attract other cells.

and they do this through inflammatory signals and all other types of like mechanisms. And so depending on the tissue, when you are feeding specific types of sugars to immune cells, you're going to get these very specific outcomes. And it may not show initially, okay? But then over time, you can sort of get an imbalanced population of maybe the wrong types of immune cells, just through sugar.

Have you heard some people talk about this idea of like bioenergetics, like this idea of just kind of a fancy way of saying let's not necessarily go on a diet and let's not necessarily just take calories down right off the bat let's maybe explore some other things and what I think the sugar diet brings to light is the potential that we could burn an extra five 600 maybe even more calories just by the type of food that we eat and I believe it was the boost It's an FGF21 that believed to be responsible for some of this. And we also saw there's some research, and I don't know how much repeatable research they've had. I don't know how many studies have been done on this, but there's been a few that have shown that, you know, even going the route of fat can cause something similar where you get this extra 400 to 600 calories to 400 and 600 calories to play with, which is really interesting.

I haven't personally heard that many people talk about nutrition that way. Although I think people have been trying to communicate about that in a particular way for a long time when you talk to bodybuilding coaches You're like oh no 16 weeks out. You know our calorie counts up here and and we're only going to really drop the calories way down we get about six weeks out Yeah and things like that and I think that maybe the general public and and people don't necessarily know That the metabolism is a moving target Yeah, but if we just like plummet the calories down then everything kind of slows down a little bit we burn a little bit less yeah But we can train our body to burn a little bit more. Kind of on that topic and in that vein, how can somebody, or is it even advantageous,

for somebody to get themselves in a better position where they can burn carbohydrates a little bit more efficiently? Do you even think that's a route that someone should bother to go down? Well, to your point, I think the specific food matters a lot, a whole lot. this gets into or rather the specific type of carbohydrate matters a lot and this just gets into like we're clashing paradigms now so well i'll just give everyone a just a quick example if you if i was on a lower lower carb diet for a while you said hey tomorrow in the next couple days or i want you to drink a bunch of orange juice and get in some good training have you know a little bit of orange juice here and there throughout the day you know drink a whole quart of orange juice

or something like that right it's an extra x amount of carbohydrates that i'd have every single day and you could say hey how they're pumps in the gym and how's this going how's that going well lights are going out maybe maybe we need some movement in here to get the lights going back yeah maybe just we'll get the lights back i thought there we go yeah i thought they were dimming i was like what's in my mind it's kind of cool it's kind of cool now it's not cool yeah yeah it's too a little mood lighting it's too moody as i was saying with with uh you know sugar so if i'm drinking a bunch of orange juice you might say hey you know how are your pumps and I might not I might say hey I I'm not really noticing big difference there's

let's get rid of the orange juice why don't you try potatoes and try some rice now I'm gonna you know because you know some of my belief is and some of what I understand about these different carbohydrates is that there's more you're gonna maybe store some of that fructose in the liver when you're talking about fruit juice as opposed to I guess having glucose from the potato or from the which might be stored in the muscle cells and which has been utilized by bodybuilders traditionally not that bodybuilders haven't but they do drink some juice here and there but normally it's like kind of in smaller amounts and their their carbohydrate sources

almost always potatoes and rice yeah I mean I think that I mean there's a lot of things there let me just rapid fire a few things here so differences between fructose metabolism and sugar metabolism there's some really interesting new that has demonstrated that Fructose from whole fruit never reaches the liver. It's actually metabolized in the gut So it brings it the question, well, what about from fruit juice? I don't know. We don't know 100% now Maybe possibly, you know, so so the stage that we're at where we still don't know some stuff, you know? I'm more at the stage now I don't know anything really

That's so true, but yeah, so that's interesting So just just the difference is between types of fructose sources so apparently there's a massive difference between whole fruit and possibly juice, although there's some decent research that shows you get mostly similar effects from fruit juice, I think as long as it's in sort of like normal amounts where you're not like mainlining massive amounts of it because then you override the capacity of the gut to simply metabolize that. And then with whole fruit, you're getting all of the essentially what amount to cofactors. You're getting all of the different like, you know, phenols and enzymes and all this stuff. So very different with

whole fruit. But then another, I just think that, you know, how do we know what's true? I think one of the best sources of truth is just what people have done for 40, 50 years and kind of figured out. And so when you see like really good bodybuilders who have just been able to reliably reproduce results, whether or not they're on steroids, you know, they've kind of figured something out. And so those carbohydrate sources that you're talking about, they just tend to work really well, you know? And then that's just the bottom line. But to your question, I think, you know, shifting metabolism through carbohydrate source. Yeah, it's a very real thing.

And what that does is we're up against two different paradigms. One of them is the new one, and it's really not known, and the other is the old one, and the other one is a religious belief. So the one that's the religious belief is the one that's tied to the first law of thermodynamics, and this is just sort of a really quick, interesting intellectual exercise.

So there's the calories a calorie paradigm, and that's based on the idea that we're talking about thermodynamics. like the first law of thermodynamics. And it's based on that, that's baked in science. How dare you? How dare you contradict that? How dare you?

But if you actually read the papers in this world, there's a really robust discussion going on between two different factions. On one side you've got Kevin Hall, and the other side you have some other dudes. And to me, the other side is a little bit more convincing, and what they've shown is that it's not about thermodynamic energy, the way calories are utilized.

It's about mass. It's about when mass changes. Specifically, the conversion of fat into CO2 and water. So you're losing fat that way. And it's a way of explaining energy balance that is not based on the first law of thermodynamics, based on the second conservation of mass. And all I'll say on that is I've actually read

through these papers and there's these big, long pages of equations that very few people could understand. And it just suffice to say that there's actually healthy debate on this between people that that's all they do is look at this kind of stuff and it's not settled it's they go back and forth with their papers and one side goes ha respond to that the other side comes back with ha we got this so there's a robust healthy debate when the answer really is and on top of that I'll add there's some new research that has shown I wrote about this in my last book

that the mitochondria seemed to be able to throttle ATP production be coupled from input. In other words, we have this idea that, you know, a certain amount of substrate comes in and you get a certain amount of ATP coming out and it's fixed. There's some evidence that's not true, that depending on the need of the cell and the tissue, they can use different gradients and throttle ATP output. So you have the same input, but now you're getting seven times the ATP. Okay? So all I'm saying is that there's reason to believe this, that the religious idea that calories a calorie may not be true. Do we know? for certain I don't know I'm just saying that there's a really good debate that that might not be true

So to your point you know what about can we can we in some way throttle metabolism by the very specific foods that were taken in? There's probably pretty good reason to think that might be true When it comes to When it comes to somebody believing that they are sort of curing themselves of pre-diabetes diabetes diabetes Just disfew dysfunction around consuming carbohydrate. And then they go in this like to go into this,

they dive into this like tunnel where they just go keto, war on carbs. And they just say, I'm not going to eat any. All right. The carbs is a problem. Because the carbs are manipulating my insulin, manipulating my glucose levels and I'm just not going to. But I think maybe what people are missing, and you can add to this, maybe what people are missing is that they're not really correcting anything. Getting rid of the carbohydrates might be a good practice, especially for a little while, see how your body responds and see how you're feeling from all that. But once you start to maybe add some carbohydrates back in, it might be a great opportunity right there to get your body to start to react to those carbohydrates the way that the human body is meant to be able to

to react to those carbohydrates by being able to clear them out efficiently. What are kind of your thoughts there? Like if somebody's, because I think that's why, that's the same. That's the selling point for the keto diet and the selling point by Ben Bickman and some other people. They just say, we're just going to completely go this opposite direction where we don't have to really deal with insulin. And to me, it sounds like you're just kind of sweeping things under the rug. You're not addressing the actual issue potentially. I mean, look, I don't claim to be to be all and all knowledge source for this, but I find that pretty astonishing from a couple of perspectives. One is that, and I don't know, first of all, I hate certainty. I hate when people are

delivering things with absolute certainty. You know, it's become a bit of a grift in our industry now, you know, and it's, it's like whenever I see certainty ramp through the roof, I'm like, mah. Okay. Okay. Yeah, backup. But I think there's something that we can speak with a reasonable degree of like, we probably shouldn't ignore this as the way I would put it. And it's that insulin seems to work in a family of hormones, okay? And all of them, all of them need regular stimulation. So that's, you've got insulin, that needs, let's just say regular fine-tuning through carbohydrates and very specific types of carbohydrates that fine-tune insulin.

And like just looking at pulse crops, like if you go and you look at like different types of legumes and there are scientific studies taking black bean versus like red beans versus like soybeans and then just showing literally like the different effects on on different parameters like this one increases p-par gamma this one increases lipolisus this one decreases insulin sensitivity and so you can see that these different types of just carbohydrates have wildly different effects on parameters that affect insulin sensitivity so so we can say okay yeah we can make a really good case you need to stimulate insulin on a regular basis and what happens when you don't by eliminating carbohydrates we see the reverse happen you see you actually get um

that you're fasting glucose, you see lots of cases where it tends to increase. But then the other side of that is adiponectin. So adipenectin is a fat hormone. It sensitizes insulin, does a lot of other things. I got to interrupt for a second. Pay attention to these words that Joel is saying because it'd be like five, six, seven years from now when people start to catch on and speak the same language you're speaking now. It's happened a bunch of times on the podcast already.

Tell me to slow it. I'll tell people. All right. I know, I appreciate that. There's adiponectin. So adiponectin is maybe the first. gotten insulin hormone and it may be it's as important as the glp ones because it it affects so many things it affects muscle like when you look at old age and circropenia there's all this really

great research on like whoa you need adiponectin because it oxes a binding element between muscle fibers and when you start to lose that you can't you can't gain muscle it's not the whole picture but it's in the picture so adipenectin is really important adipenectin is stimulated by certain types of foods and it needs to be in the picture. Then you have GIP, GLP, one, the ingredients. And those, you make a really good case that, well, you know, your animal-based, like, I hate that term, but your meats and your fats and your animal products really do a good job with that. Okay, great. Then you have glucagon, and fasting and your meats do that. So just by looking at the, oh, and then on top of all that, you have the microbiome. So the microbiome works

in concert with these hormones to help fine-tune them. So now we have this picture of insulin sensitivity and health ultimately because you cannot have health without insulin sensitivity. It's impossible. So long-term health and insulin sensitivity go together. And then when you break that down, okay, well, we've got a family of hormones here and the microbiome and then you just reverse engineer. How do we hit all these? And you come up with a very diverse diet just by asking the insulin question. And what you see, I would say more often than not, long term by the omission of a key variable in there, which is carbohydrates, particularly insulin sensitizing carbohydrates. You see the microbiome go the wrong direction.

You see insulin sensitivity go the wrong direction. You just see that there's an incomplete picture. So that's what I would offer. What are a few good ways to help insulin sensitivity, minus the exercise side of things. I think most people know that, but you know, and that's a great area of expertise for you as well, but mainly on the diet side, what are some strategies that people can utilize? Well, big picture is variety. So I just think that we have all accepted this idea that the master programmer of human optimization is nature.

Okay, like we've all kind of subconsciously or consciously bought into that because I think it's true. I do think it's true. And the closer we are to nature, the more optimized our body is. And the farther we are from nature, the more sick our body is. So that's not too hard to get your arms around. It doesn't matter what camp you're in. Like, okay, I'll go with that. So when you look at the dietary aspects of nature, what you find is that nature just forces you into these patterns where, you know, everything is sort of unpredictable.

Like you'll have a microseason of something like, oh, yeah, we killed a buck, man, and we're going to eat for two weeks really good, you know? And then, you know, after that, no game for a while, we're eating these other things. I didn't really want to eat, but we're going to eat them anyway. And so nature forces variety and diversity. And variety diversity are very standard. I mean, I've talked about this ad nauseum. But varietying diversity are not the enemy. They're actually essential in the picture.

So big picture is diversity. And then a subset of that is just you can look at different categories and each has their own benefit. So berries and all these phenol containing foods, they have their place. They sensitize certain aspects of insulin function. They fine-tune the microbiome at the same time. So they're very good for insulin sensitivity. They downregulate some of the enzymes needed to absorb carbs, so they even help you pass carbs through.

Then you look at resistant starches, like your potatoes and rice's and things like that. And they have their own benefit and they seem to do the similar things. They help the microbiome. They help insulin sensitivity in different aspects. And there's even good research on this. You can look at like, you know, resistant starches and their impact on insulin sensitivity. Then there are the leafy greens and, you know, things that stimulate nitric oxide, which is kind of essential for insulin sensitivity.

And it's a key player in the way insulin works. So you can't ignore those either. Then there's dairy. Dairy is incredible for sensitizing insulin. It has lots and lots of benefits. And then complementary to all that are all of the, you know, your meats and animal products, which stimulate the other family of hormones. So all this stuff works together is what I would argue.

Man, how do I get ripped? You're 61 years old and you're staying in great shape. And I saw you running on the treadmill the other day. That looked awesome. And I hope that you're able to make a good complete comeback. because I know your Achilles was bothering you for a while and stuff like that. What are some things that when you're, because you kind of circle the wagon so many times with nutrition, you've done every style of diet.

I believe you've done nearly every style of diet. And you've kind of combed over all this research over the years. What are some, like, what are some do's and don'ts that are maybe in your head? I know that they change from like day to day and they change seasonally for you. I know that you make these like small changes, but are there some like, are there maybe like three steadfast rules that you've had that really are standing the test of time and you feel really comfortable about doing almost on a daily basis? Or is it, or is it so varied with you that you're always moving it around a little bit? Well, so I think you kind of actually hit on

one just by the nature of your question. So the big one is just, and this is just me, my opinion, but I think that as an industry, the entire industry is set in the wrong direction with respect to one thing. And it's the idea of daily. Okay. If you actually think about it, like daily is inherently going to imbalance the seesaw. I don't care what it is. We do anything daily. If what we're talking about is a system that is dynamic and you're doing the same thing all the time, then you're loading up one end of the seesaw.

I'm really going to get 40 grams of fiber every day. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Where if you actually take a, take time and just look at how things work, rhythmic pulses are actually how things work. So in nature, you're going to get pulses of things, like rhythmic pulses. Like, you know, oh, we had a few days where this is all we could find and we ate that. It was like a pulse.

Okay. Well, it turns out, take the immune system. The immune system responds best. to rhythmic pulses of things. So what rhythmic pulses do, and by that I just mean the big bucket of rhythms. So I'm not necessarily doing the same thing all the time. I have a rhythm, but I'm not doing the same thing. And then what that rhythm does is keep balance. So like in my case, you know, I have a very simple pattern where I'm eating like kind of foraging foods, lower protein one day, and then feasting foods, higher protein the other day with a little fast. That's

basically it. Okay. But it's just not the same thing every day. That's all. All right, Mark, you're getting leaner and leaner, but you always enjoy the food you're eating. So How are you doing it? I got a secret, man. It's called Good Life Protein. Okay, tell me about that. I've been doing some Good Life Protein. You know, we've been talking on this show for a really long time of certified Piedmontese beef.

And you can get that under the umbrella of Good Life Proteins, which also has chicken breast, chicken thighs, sausage, shrimp, scallops, all kinds of different fish, salmon, tilapia. The website has nearly any kind of meat that you can think of lamb. There's another one that comes in mind. And so I've been utilizing and kind of using some different strategy, kind of depending on the way that I'm eating. So if I'm doing a keto diet, I'll eat more fat. And that's where I might get the sausage and I might get their 80-20 grass-fed, grass finish ground beef. I might get bacon. And there's other days where I kind of do a little bit more bodybuilder style where the fat is, you know, might be like 40 grams or something like that.

And then I'll have some of the leaner cuts of the certified Piedmontese beef. This is one of the reasons why, like, neither of us find it hard to stay in shape. because we're always enjoying the food we're eating. And protein, you talk about protein leverage it all the time. It's satiating and helps you feel full. I look forward to every meal. And I can surf and turf, you know? I could cook up some, you know, chicken thighs or something like that

and have some shrimp with it or I could have some steak. I would say, you know, the steak, it keeps going back and forth for me on my favorite. So it's hard for me to lock one down. But I really love the bovette steaks. Yeah. And then I also love the rib eyes as well. You can't go wrong with the ribby. So guys, if you guys want to get your hands on some really good meat,

you can have to Good Life Proteins.com and use code power for 20% off any purchases made on the website. Or you can use Code Power Project to get an extra 5% off if you subscribe and save to any meats that are a recurring purchase. This is the best meat in the world. So that is probably number one. This is not the same thing every day. And that's the opposite of the entire industry, which is no, you know, you're, daily, your daily antioxidant, your daily, you know, whatever it is you're doing daily. And I think that's actually the enemy. So that would be my number one that I can think of. So you have

some days where you're manipulating how much fat you're consuming. Is that kind of via almost how much protein you're consuming because of the convenience of protein and fat usually showing up together in nature? Yeah. Well, me, just me personally. My, my, my vector is protein. So I have, and this is contrary to the industry, I just have a low protein day a couple times a week, usually two to three days where I have a low protein day. And how low for you being 210 pounds or 225 or whatever you are? I'm not really counting grams.

I'm just kind of eating ad libidum, but it's more, so it's higher carbohydrate, higher carbohydrate moderate fat, kind of what you would find foraging in nature, so it's hard to get. You and I are similar in this way. I don't really count anything. So it makes it hard,

for the audience to sometimes follow along with what I'm saying because I'm like, yeah, high, low and I don't define it sometimes. Yeah, I, but it's by feel. 100% by feel, yeah. Like you're, you're probably most likely quite a bit under 200 grams of protein on these lower protein days. Maybe I only had like a hundred. Stantially, I think sometimes, yeah.

But probably not at 50 grams. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I just go by, I go meal to meal by both my body's telling me. And if hunger's, you know, coming up too much, that's not good. So I'll, I'll have more protein. it, you know, but it's, I'm just, big picture, I'm just trying to kind of get close as possible to mimicking if I were in nature and just kind of eating foraging foods for a day. And that's

contrary to kind of the, the, what most people are doing where it's, no, dude, you need X amount of protein every single day, you know, protein is that, you know, it's contrary to that. But there's other variables that matter. And one is just simply how fast you're using up the body, your cellular machinery, how many growth pulses, you're pushing down, your your cellular pathways over a lifetime. And so I'm just, I'm just sort of like slowing up the pulses of IGF1 and all the growth pathways, mTOR and all that. I'm just slowing that up three days a week.

That's what I'm doing. Because what matters to me is more longevity than muscle. You've told me some really interesting things over the years, like that you fasted a lot and you fasted way too much and that you did certain things and the end result in the long run, not the short term, but in the long run, It made your body composition worse. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And that's a really interesting thing that people, like, so somebody's working towards something, like, I wanna really work towards this over the next three years. Well, maybe that's great to have that goal, but maybe you should think about what are the years after that gonna look like? Because you end up in these situations where you end up with, and then what?

Because as you and I have been talking, I remember you saying, I think at one point you were saying, you were like 8% body fat, and you're holding like a term, tremendous amount of muscle mass on your body. And then it's like if you are, if some people out there they're listening are really starving their body of what their body wants to do. Like if you're really hungry daily and you're like, damn, I'm just, I'm just really hungry. Why not just examine that a little bit rather than kind of, you know, having this halfway eating disorder thing that

might be going on in the background. Why not just think about it a little bit more and say, you know what? I probably just need to go through a different phase. I probably need to like change things up. So maybe they're not changing stuff up quite the way you are with the frequency. But maybe this kind of get on board with like, let me go through some waves of stuff for two, three weeks at a time and kind of mix things up a little bit. Yeah, I would totally agree with that.

Yeah. I think it's tough when those hunger signals hit people. They, they change, they change who somebody is, almost like a drug. You know, my oldest brother, you know, Some people like, oh, how was he? It's like, man, it was hard to tell because he ended up taking so many drugs. It changed who he was.

Oh, yeah. But we see that a lot, too, with even with nutrition. You'll see that somebody had all these good intentions to do these things for themselves. They told other people, you know, I'm doing this this year. I'm going to do this this way. And then there they are, you know, 9.30 p.m., 10 p.m. ordering DoorDash or whatever it is. it's like they turn into a almost completely different person and those hunger pulses hit.

And maybe they could circumvent that whole thing just by having a nice breakfast. Gosh. Just by relaxing a little bit. Have a freaking pancake or something, right? Yes. So prior to RETA and all these GLP-1s that are, you know, everybody's on right now, I had a protocol, which was for that, which was, so hyperphasia is runaway hunger. And it's not, unless you've ever experienced it, you wouldn't, it's not what you're thinking

it is. It's not like I'm hungry and I ate a meal and I was satisfied. It's, I ate a huge meal and now I'm hungrier. And then another big meal, now I'm hungrier. You know, so hyperphasia is like this, the brains and the guts connection to telling you, okay, we're good, that kind of gets broken. And for me, I can't really fast long term anymore because I did it too much years ago. And I get this insane hyperphasia if I go like, if I try and do like, you know, there's, I even try it as an experiment a little while back.

And I just try, well, I'll just, I'll just see what it's like eating every other day. I'll just because, you know, I know people are trying that. So I'll try it. I got this crazy hyperphasia from that. Like, and it was like, so I would have like 2,000 calories and then I would just be starving. And I'd wait like two hours. I should be good, right? And I'm starving.

So that's a long-term dysregulation of the brain's circuitry that's telling me like, eh, we're not going to let you go hungry anymore. Sorry, you've done your lifetime allotment of that. But so I used to have this protocol. I still have it, but it's with all these GIP ones. You don't need it really. And it basically was, okay, so you're going to have, we're going to correct all this in one day.

You're going to have a massive breakfast. It's going to be, you know, probably two, three grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. and they have a massive amount of carbohydrates, like four or five hundred grams of carbohydrates and a bunch of fat. I had a real... It's so exciting. I remember you talked about this previously too,

but this is amazing. Well, I had a real go viral off that, and the comments were hysterical. They were like, oh, how brilliant, eat a big meal and you're not hungry. And I was like, okay, Einstein. This is not hunger. This is hyperphasia.

But along with that, you had to jack a ton of vitamin D and a few other goodies, like right around breakfast time. And the research has finally caught up to you on that, by the way. Yeah, yeah. So when it's all about resetting the, the, the brains like super chisematic nutrients. How much vitamin D? Massive, like 50,000 I use. Yeah, with vitamin K. And in one day, you could reset hyperphagia from that. So, and the funny thing is I'm actually dealing with this right now with someone, um, where like, they, uh, they want to make a change and they're in these

really bad habits. And, and so I'm like, okay, all right. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to invert all this where you're eating a huge amount in the morning, but I'm not hungry in the morning. I know. We're going to fix that. Okay. And I'm fixing that just through a reverse fast where they stop eating it too. And so what happens is by about 8 o'clock at night, they're out of their mind. Insane for like I need to eat.

I need to eat. And so my response is, yeah, I get that. So have some jello, just get something in your stomach and then go to bed. That's the thing. Well, what I started to really figure out is that the other component with this is just horrifically bad habits. which is stand up late, watching TV, and then munching, and the dopamine hit, or rather the serotonin hit you get from that. And it's like, it's this whole thing.

It's not just one thing. It's the whole collection together of like the way that, you know, if you have a real job and you're stressed out of your mind during the day, then the way that you're dealing with that is through television and food later at night. And that's how you spin down all that stress, get your serotonin up. You know, there are so many people caught in that cycle. And the biology only goes so far. Like, like I can say, okay, we're going to make these shifts here and do this and do that.

And that will correct a lot of the biology. But then the other piece of it is just pure psychological. Like, you got to go to bed early. Stop watching television. Like, you know, do what super successful people do. You know, go to bed early and blah, blah, blah, and all that. Sorry, kind of rambling that. No, it's tough because we're addicted and it's easy to get into that hamster wheel.

There's some people, you know, I have a friend that owns a coffee shop and he explains to the people at work there. He says, you know, hey, you know, make sure you're patient. Make sure you're really kind to every single person because some people, they don't have anybody. Man, you hear that. You're like, oh, my God, that's brutal. And then so sometimes here we are preaching about like your diet, you know. But meanwhile, somebody had a 50-hour work week and they don't have someone that loves or cares for them. They don't have a family.

They don't have maybe some of the dynamics. or maybe they're just in a phase in their life where they don't have some of those dynamics. And so they're kind of relying on these foods, video games, porn, whatever else, you know, insert there, just to try to cope with their day-to-day. And it makes it very difficult.

And then they end up, you know, going down this rabbit hole of kind of eating these junk foods. They don't want to eat the junk food. They don't, they are what most people are aware of some of the information that's out there or they're at least aware that there's tons of information on YouTube, tons of information on podcasts, on nutrition, health, fitness.

But sometimes people are at phases in their life where they don't have really, it's going to sound lame or sounds like an excuse, but they don't have the energy to look at a food label. They don't, they're just not, they're not quite there at that in that moment. And I think that sometimes we forget as we are sharing this information, that there's so many different levels. There's, you know, people that are listening to this, that maybe they are on their path to be the next Thomas DeLauer, right?

And there's maybe people on their path that are listening to this that haven't really heard a lot of the stuff that we've communicated about today. So I think, you know, try to have grace for people. And along with people, you know, working on the standard health that we talk about, you know, being able to like go for a little jog or being able to walk or run or have some mobility. I know you talk quite a bit about flexibility, which I think is great. And have some of these health practices with food. but man we forget about our connection and how powerful that is you know to hear that somebody the only person they kind of communicate with all day is the barista at the coffee shop it kind of sucks yeah I think about this a lot of late I think about a lot because this is you know this is the

most compelling point in all of history that we're in right now I mean it really is with the introduction of all this stuff so fast and AI and all this stuff and dopamine scrolling and you know all that and there are things that are things that are just I think a lot about kind of people that are not in the fit for a living space and the anxiety the average person is under is off the charts and it's it's underappreciated because there's just so many unspoken variables that go into maintaining a gig it's it's there's just all this social pressure and to go and show up somewhere and, you know, kind of like just, you know,

step through the hoops and be available and do all this. It occurs all this anxiety and creates all this pressure and eliminates all of these things that we think, that we kind of take for granted. Like, you know, well, you need to do this. You need to do that. And it's like, you know, I understand, man. It's like that window for me looks like this because of the pressure I'm under,

blah, blah. And so you see a lot of what we see now from that, which is just wanting to get stressed down. And there's all these readily available ways to do it, which is screens and, you know, food. And the thing that's in the middle of all this that's being lost is just to deeply, like, connect with someone, like to be heard, to be seen, to really connect. And it's getting harder and harder because I just see this all the time.

Like, wherever we go, whatever we do, you know, there's always a screen. And it just creates this third party that is taking away from, like, you know, getting to something. Right. And it's just, we're just kind of in the shallows all the time, you know, We're just kind of lingering in the shallow water all the time. And it's, I mean, there's just so much going on right now. I think that humans in general are up against that have never happened before,

that it's really tough to quantify and keep up with, but you hit it with connection. I mean, it's like probably the number one longevity factor is just being connected to people. Where can people find you? Where can you find your books? Where can they find your teachings? courses and all that's good stuff. Oh, just Instagram, real Joel Green. And I have a I have an AI now, which is cool. It's like, oh yeah. Yeah, it's cool. It's called Joel GPT. Just go to my

Instagram and just click on the link tree and there's my GPT and it will tell you everything I would. I have to check that out because I've had Joel GPT for a long time by being friends with you. So it's been great to be able to ask you questions or send you a reel and say, hey, what do you think of this. But I'll have to actually give that a shot. It sounds really neat. Thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate it. And we're going to do a few more episodes with Joel. So everybody check those out too. Cool. Strength is never a week. This week, there's never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.