Mark Bell's Power Project - This Is Why Your Diet Isn't Working - Debunking Fad Diets ft. Mike Dolce || MBPP Ep. 1037

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

In episode 1037, Mike Dolce, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about how fad diets come and go, but Mike's whole food approach never goes out of style. Mike Dolce has a 100% success rate in helping UFC Fighters make weight.   Follow Mike on IG: https://www.instagram.com/thedolcediet/   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/untapped ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

Why should we listen to these people? Is it because they actually care about helping the person who's listening? Or is it because they're trying to monetize their audience? The carnivore diet, like, what are your thoughts? Is the carnivore diet a good diet as compared to a multi-meal omnivorous meal plan? Absolutely not. So we have the healthiest humans and the highest performing athletes all eat very similar to each other. Why are we doing something different then?

If keto works, why is nobody doing keto anymore? Why is nobody really doing carnivore anymore? What do you think of Dana White's journey and his transformation? What he's doing, I don't think is ideal, especially for the 77% of the population that is watching

it and now trying to emulate the 72-hour fast. Do you think in some way you almost want to insult people because you want to kind of challenge their beliefs? He calls me out all the time. With what? With what? Exactly.

Only because I'm more successful than he is. Power Project family, we've had some amazing guests on this podcast, like Kurt Angle, Tom Segura, Andrew Hooperman, and we want to be able to have more amazing guests on this podcast and you can help it grow by leaving us a quick rating and review on Spotify and

iTunes. If you're listening to the podcast, just go ahead and give us a review. Let us know how you dig it and help the podcast grow so we can keep growing with y'all and bring you amazing information. Enjoy the show. All right. So we got Mike Dolce on the show today, and he's going to be telling us about his keto carnivore diet,

intermittent fasting style. Car blockers, waist trainers. Don't forget. Don't diss the waist trainers. Those things work. Of course they do. Just tell them the website that you have for them to purchase it. Yeah, it's fitnessfrauds.com.

I like it. Let's go there. Can you give us a brief description of some of your diet philosophy and sort of how it came to be? Sure. Simply, I'm a whole foods focused coach. We've made our name inside the world of the UFC. We work with some of the world's greatest athletes.

We have so for 20 years. Our system, our team is the most successful in weight management in combat sports. We've never had an athlete miss weight ever in the history of our organization. And no one else can say that, right? So a lot of the academics have come in, a lot of the big brands and entities have come in and they tried to do what we have done and they've been unsuccessful. I think the reason is because we take this whole foods approach, right? We focus on the quality of nutrition before we get to the quantity. We do not prescribe in the calorie counting as the first step moving forward. We want to focus on education. We want to teach people how to feed their body for the rest of their lives, knowing that a healthy human can then perform athletically. So it's like, let's treat the human organism before we worry about all the performance parts.

So it's kind of like just a simple entryway into what we do. But I consider myself to be a longevity advocate that has a high level of proficiency inside the short-term sports performance world. And I think that's where we really did make our mark. But now we're just focused on helping regular folks live better longer. We really did make our mark, but now we're just focused on helping regular folks live better longer. Even for yourself, you seem to have, especially just on your Instagram, some really just, I think, real basic level things that people could do that just make a lot of sense to me. Some stuff that you share, I've heard you kind of talk about like this four by four idea and expressing to people like they can have a lot of variety in their diet. Yeah.

They can be eating beans, they could be eating rice and people are like, no, what about lectins? And, you know, people tend to freak out about all these different things. But, and you're, you, you, you, you personally, I think, eat like oatmeal and things like that. And I think Paul Saladino said it's for the poor folks or something like that. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's be fair here. Paul Saladino was a vegan and failed. And then he went keto and failed. And then he went carnivore and failed.

And now he's selling an animal-based program with his business partner, the Liver King. So, I mean, Paul's word is not very credible because, I mean, he's a multiple-time nutrition failure, and now he's had a new widget to sell. So, I have to question Paul's ethics. And he's business partners with the Liver King, who in November of last year, two years ago, Paul came out and said he would never work with liver king again but they're still in business together because liver king got outed as being a fraud so i mean his business partners are fraud paul has been proven to like well be a failure and i would say rather incompetent with regards to nutrition i don't know if you guys are friends with him but i'm'm just saying, man, the guy was wrong four times, big time. And you think

he's wrong about oatmeal? I know he's wrong about oatmeal. Because, well, let's just say... I'm sweating. Let me take this. To be clear. Show the gains, baby. Let's go. Hey, it's different when you're

not only a nutritionist, but you're someone with a background like you have in wrestling and stuff. It's like. I work with the world's greatest athletes. Every one of those world-class performance, they were eating oatmeal. Their blood work is fucking way better than Paul Saladino's. My blood work is way better than Paul Saladino's. This is a dude who had a 500 LDL, right? I mean, let's be honest here and like, forget about taking your

shirt off in a Whole Foods. I mean, how fucking cringe is that? Right? Like my wife and my daughter shop in Whole Foods and you got some sweaty, smelly fucking dude with his shirt off trying to fucking grandstand for clicks that from an integral. Now you look good. I mean, look, we can all take our shirts off and walk around a supermarket. But as a man, that's fucking weird. Like, I don't need the clicks. Like, I don't have such a fragile ego that I have to go out and do those things and kind of beg people for attention. Like, you look in the background.

There are people shopping with their families. And you got this dude trying to fucking get clicks so you can then buy his powdered testicle pills i mean how and we're listening to this guy is this too much am i am i going too too hard too soon he's got some good info i won't say the oatmeal's for poor people i mean i don't need oatmeal but it's not for poor people but i mean he he's i mean okay overall i won't say that he failed on carnivore. He just added in fruits. Well, after selling a book on carnivore. Remember when he was the carnivore MD?

Yeah. Right? He was the carnivore MD. That is a failed business model. I remember. Right? The Dolce diet is exactly the way it was since 1997. Now, we've only evolved in what food is currently available. I've never

jumped the shark. I could have gone keto and sold it and we could have made seven, eight figures, right? We're all in business here. I'm a professional. Never did that. Never sold anything that was off brand simply because it was popular. And what guys like Paul, and let's kind of get away from him, what a lot of these people do is, it's so weird how their new profound discovery is perfectly timed with what's trending on social media. It's so weird how Paul came out with all this brilliant stuff as it was trending.

I want to buy his testicle pills. I didn't know he sold those. Now I want to purchase them. Maybe your testicle will go up, you know? It's funny. Let's get back on Paul for a second. He takes credit for George St. Pierre. As if George St. Pierre, one of the greatest welterweight in UFC history,

I'm a big fan of George athletically. But at the same time, Paul tries to pretend that George St. Pierre is following his meal plan. Well, if you look at George's Instagram, you see him drinking wine. You see him eating poutine and ice cream, which is great. And he should because he can. That's his choice. But Paul even conflates that to make it seem like these people are actually doing what Paul says when in fact they're not. So there's quite a bit of fraud here, in my opinion. And then we look at his business partner, who we know to be fraudulent. So it's like, you have to understand, you have to consider the ethics of the people who put the information out there. Why would you, or a guy like Lane Norton,

why would I follow a guy like Lane Norton from an ethical perspective when we know Lane is not an ethical person? When we just peel back one layer of Lane's life, we see what a dumpster fire it is. So why then? What do you mean? What do you mean? Well, look at his adultery issues. Okay. Well, as much as I understand what you're saying, as much as I understand what you're saying, when it comes to information, I think sometimes it is necessary to, and it's hard to do, but it is necessary to try to separate the information that someone's put forward from the morality of how they live their backdoor.

Because we don't know what Jordan Peterson's done in his past. I'm not a fan of Jordan either. I know, but a lot of people are. A lot of people are. I like Jordan Peterson too, don't get me wrong. But the thing is we could find something out about Jordan from fucking 1980-something, right? That's like debaucherous. But does that take away all the great things that he's done for young people and the information he's put out?

So, I mean, what I'm getting at here is I get what you're getting at with the Lane thing. It's a credibility issue. It's a credibility issue in one aspect of life. He's an arbiter of truth. A man who is not truthful in his own personal life. We've all, but I mean, we've all done shit. But he positions himself as the arbiter of truth. Do you?

Huh? You don't. I don't put, like, no. I'm like, so. I'm saying'm saying a guy like him and let me i'm searching for truth we're all searching for truth so someone like lane will go so far as to position what he says is the end all and be all and he'll do even science bro right so he's another clickbait dude now lane will go out of his way to call people he calls me out all the time with what with what exactly only because i'm more successful than he is

right lane i mean let's be clear here that's why i was on his radar when i had never done anything or said anything wrong lane has been coming after me since i don't know 2010 12 14 when i blew up in the ufc Lane's little ego couldn't allow for someone else to have a little bit of success in the world. Like something about calories? No, it was just, I don't know what I'm talking about. Ad hominem attacks. Lane used to attack Joe Rogan because Joe was a bro

because Joe wouldn't have Lane on his show. We have all the tweets, right? Someone can go in and use a Twitter time machine. They can pull this stuff up. Point is, there are people like Lane, like Paul, like many others out there who people will look at because they're charismatic and they have good production value, right? And it's fun to watch. But at the same time, does it make it accurate?

And is it actually helping people at home? Why should we listen to these people? Is it because they actually care about helping the the person who's listening or is it because they're trying to monetize their audience welcome to the power projects everybody i'm glad we're back welcome welcome from being canceled for a little second there um i'd like to uh move on a little bit to the actual like carnivore diet and just kind of get your thoughts on the carnivore diet, like good, bad. What are your thoughts? Um, as compared to what?

And I think that's the perspective we have to have. Anytime we talk about something, well, it's as compared to what is the carnivore diet, a good diet as compared to the traditional American diet. Oh yeah. good diet as compared to the traditional American diet? Oh yeah. I'd say for sure. Is the carnivore diet a good diet as compared to a multi-meal omnivorous meal plan? Absolutely not. Not even close. Now it's a guy like Sean Baker who I like Sean. I don't know if he likes me. Like if Sean Baker and I, if we lived on the same street, we'd hang out a lot. We'd work out a lot. I think we would. But he doesn't like me so much on social media because I called him out and said, hey, Sean, if carnivore is so good and plants are so

bad, explain to me why I can't have a blueberry. Why can't I have a blueberry? If carnivore, because carnivore is eating only animal. You cannot eat anything other than animal. If that, now we have to take it on that merit. You can't do carnivore, but have a little bit of animal or a little bit of animal, or a plant, plant. You can't, because that's not carnivore, that's omnivore. And I'm very clear, because labels matter, right? And people are eating, they're getting stuck into these dogmatic boxes, and they're following their favorite guru here. So someone like Sean, he makes this point that carnivore is the only way to go. And I said, well, why can't I eat blueberries?

And he actually answered, and his answer was ridiculous. His answer was, well, there's a small segment of the population that for very brief periods in their life, they might sometimes experience a little bit of tummy upset. And because of that, they will avoid blueberries i can't picture sean baker using the word tummy i'm paraphrasing i'm not gonna call you out on that he was more eloquent in what he said but the point was it can blueberries can cause a little digestive upset in a very small segment of the population for very small periods of time, maybe. I said, okay, well, what about the high association to gout? For some people, a small segment, but bigger than the blueberry population. So some people can experience a high uric acid issue,

which then, and I have a client, i won't name his name who actually has this very issue so i actually have personal experience with someone who just eats a lit and i've seen the blood and i speak with their doctors and i see what happens he eats a little bit of meat and boy his toes blow up he's got the whole thing so that's a bigger segment of the population so we should if we cared about the people, we should say, you know what? Carnivore is probably not the way to go. We should probably avoid some of that, but that's kind of not the way Sean had spun it. So as I say that there's a little bit of grandstanding that goes with that. Again, if I lived on the same street with Sean, we would hang out. We work out together. We'd go to each other's barbecues. I'd make fun of him for

not eating a sweet potato or blueberries at my Julyuly 4th parties yeah and you're always welcome to show if you want to come but still i don't believe carnivore it's a good maybe transition for someone who has a lack of discipline same thing with intermittent fasting most of these these exclusionary restrictive fed dietary programs are good transitionally and i think rob wolf had said that years ago about the paleo diet, it's good as a transition into a more well-rounded, whole food, omnivorous meal plan. And that's why I speak the way that I do and why I kind of like put this information out there. That's what we're trying to get people back to. Single ingredient, whole food, omnivorous, multi-meal plan. That is what has sustained all of human life since the dawn of time, relative to region and cultural and famine and what was happening.

Why do you think it's the way to go? What does it do for somebody? That is the greatest long-term health effect and performance effect. If you look at the world's greatest athletes, what do they do? They eat multi-meals, an omnivorous multi-meal plan, as close to whole food as possible, right? If you look at the longest living humans on the planet, devoid of chronic disease and illness, what do they eat? They eat a multi-meal omnivorous meal plan. So we have the healthiest humans and the highest performing athletes all eat very similar to each other. Why are we doing something different then?

I mean, I work with elite athletes. Why are we doing something different then? I mean, I work with elite athletes. I consult with elite athletes in almost every major sport from around the world with very influential people, rich people, billionaires, right? They can hire and talk to anyone, and many times they have. So I have this other petri dish of scientific research, if you will, inside my own practice, and I'm a data whore. inside my own practice. And I am a data whore. I compile, I have just reams of data that we look at and my team pours through.

And like, what are the correlations here? Who are the healthiest people? Who perform the best? Who have the best long-term outcomes? Well, it's the multi-meal omnivorous sect of people who do. Right? So do you want to get bigger? I mean, you had done a bodybuilding competition and before that you were going ultra low carb and you were having problems training.

I remember kind of reading as problems training and you weren't getting as lean as you could. You started putting some carbs back in and holy shit, your training went up. You got leaner. Like that doesn't make sense to the carnivore community. It makes perfect sense to me. That's the way the human body is meant to work. Now, I could just like keep talking and ranting, so I'll kind of slow down and kind of shut up a little bit. But I have yet to see any meal plan, any lifestyle program that excels to a level greater than a multi-meal omnivorous program, regardless of your goal. Very few people will become an elite athlete. Every human should aspire to be athletic. We say the everyday athlete. We should all have

full athletic expression. I don't care how old you are. From one to 101 years old, that should always be the goal. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to help people do that. You're not going to do that by following these exclusionary restrictive dietary protocols that are short-lived. Like if keto worked, why is nobody doing keto anymore, right? Why is nobody really doing carnivore anymore? Why did carnivore go from carnivore to now all of a sudden the carbs are coming back in, back in 2017?

And I'll blame Mark Sisson. I blame Mark Sisson for all this, by the way. Sisson, who I like, I don't know him very well. I like him well enough for someone I don't know. But Sisson was on Rogan's show. And Sisson really accidentally created the keto movement because he was talking about metabolic flexibility and lowering carbohydrates.

And that, like, if you look at the timeline, boom. I mean, because of Joe's platform and what Mark had said, that exploded the ketogenic thing. That fucking pissed me off because people were moving back towards a little bit more like moderate meal plan. And then they went extreme low, low carbohydrate again to their own deficit. And then you got guys like Dr. Peter Atiyah, or dr john berardi same thing dr ronda patrick like here's some credible doctors right well known in the nutrition space who now have all been like oops yeah we were wrong um all the stuff that we told you guys to do that we were doing ourselves, yeah, it didn't work. What, they were doing hardcore keto?

They were doing keto, then intermittent fasting. And they all had like, Brody was very much intermittent fasting, Rhonda very much intermittent fasting. Peter was doing, I believe, keto and a version of intermittent fasting. So they were following these exclusionary, restricted-fed dietary practices. And during that time, I have a much smaller platform. And I was screaming like, guys, that doesn't work. We know it doesn't work. All the data shows it doesn't work. The last 20 years of experience shows it doesn't work. Like, why are you doing that same stuff? I mean, you remember Dan Duchesne and body opus and Dr. Mauro DiPasquale and the metabolic diet,

the anabolic diet, right? I remember all all that stuff nobody remembers this stuff that doesn't work either like atkins like why are people trying to recreate this thing that doesn't work again so those credible doctors i guess we got to define like work you know because it's a it's a it's an interesting word you know you've got to we need like definitions around sustainable things and then even sustainable it's like that would be something that we have to define a bit because i've had success with a keto diet i've had success with a paleo diet and somebody might say well why don't you still do them it's just because it's been a progression for me over a long period of time i used to weigh 330 pounds and the first diet that really helped me a lot was

the paleo solution as you're talking about. And partially, again, we have to kind of bring this back to you're getting rid of a macronutrient. You're getting rid of a lot of carbohydrates, a lot of just junk food. And a paleo diet is omnivorous, correct? Yeah, it gets you into that field. And then I also utilized a keto diet is omnivorous, correct? Paleo is omnivorous, correct. Yeah, it gets you into that field. And then I also utilize the ketogenic diet to lose more weight. And I've kind of gone on and off of these different diets, but I'm never off plan completely. I usually go from like one thing to another, shifting from one thing to another to kind of get certain benefits from one thing.

shifting from one thing to another to kind of get certain benefits from one thing. And I don't know, just switch things up. Like even just in the wintertime, I just don't really care that much about carbohydrates. I don't really eat that much in terms of carbohydrates when the wintertime comes around. It's just like a preference for me. So I'll kind of shift and move things around a little bit. So I personally think that all diets work if someone could adhere to it. And that's where we run into problems because a lot of people will try a keto diet. And then as we were talking in the gym, they'll end up binging. I think a lot

of people, if they could follow a diet plan and not binge, then that might be the definition of the diet working correctly because what you prescribe to seems to have the freedom for somebody if they wanted to, you know, eat a chocolate cake or have dessert or something like that, they can do some of these things freely, but they won't really feel the need or urge to because you are a fan of the quality of foods and you're also a fan of somebody not getting themselves so hungry that they make poor decisions. Does some of that sound fairly accurate? It is. And I wouldn't suggest somebody eat the chocolate cake, right? So that's one thing we do avoid is we avoid the hyperpalatable, highly processed synthetic toxic ingredients

that are polluting the food supply, right? We want to push all of that out. We want to get back to single ingredient whole foods in a omnivorous meal plan, which is animals and plants in whatever ratio you want, right? Whatever carb limit you want, you know, and that should be individualized based upon your activity level. What are you trying to do? What are you trying to accomplish? What's your level of health? What are your blood markers accomplish? What's your level of health? What are your blood markers look like, right? What we say is we want to eat until satisfied, not until full, based upon activity.

We want to be eating every two to four hours. So we speak very much in terms of principles, allowing the human to hear that. Number one is eat earth-grown nutrients. Number two is eat every two to four hours. Number three is eat based upon activity. That is a very simple quote template for someone to follow, right? Then you can really make it fit your lifestyle.

The notion that a lot of people have problems sticking to a meal plan is oftentimes it doesn't have as much to do with the meal plan. It has more to do with their level of, I want to say entitlement, but I won't. It is their lack of accountability. And unfortunately, most people suffer an accountability issue in all forms of life. This manifests most notably through their nutrition choices, because nutrition for many people is an escape. It's an escape from their current life. It's escape from their feelings. It's escape from their emotions. It's escape from their finances.

It's an escape from their relationship. So then they use food as a proxy to regain control over their life. And it's hard to challenge a nutrition program based upon lack of compliance by a person who's dealing with emotional issues that are undiscovered. They have not done the internal work yet. And I think this is a big issue right now with a lot of people. A lot of people are dealing with certain emotions in their own life that they have not come to terms with and that are responsible for these impulsive decisions,

whether it's, you know, we can talk about porn addiction, we can talk about, you know, improper financial stewardship, we can talk about just, you know, lack of apathy in their regular life, we can talk about, you know, doom scrolling social media and polarized, you know, political affiliations. So we can have a lot of these conversations that are all rooted in, I think, the same issue. And I like to say, and maybe this is helpful, it is most of what we do is because of hugs. It is the hug that we got when we did not deserve it, or it is the hug we did not get when we did deserve it. And it is simply in a very, you know, very general way. Many of the things we do today is based upon one of those two hug situations back in childhood. And if we can take the time and we can really go

back and we can really understand what had happened get some context around that and then we can look at our life today and say okay that happened now what am i going to do then we now become more accountable to our daily decisions but i will never agree that someone who puts a beer in their mouth and a slice of pizza in their face after they walked out of the cardiologist office who said, hey, you got high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and your dad had a heart attack. You're on that path right now. I will never say the person who is intentionally choosing that known outcome is a victim. They are the perpetrator in this story. So it's like we have to take accountability and responsibility. And then the nutrition is, I mean, honestly, nutrition is easy.

Like this is the easiest. It's something we do more often than anything else is we eat, right? So we have so much practice in doing it. We have so much autonomy to do it. It becomes the decision, will I sip this or not? Will I purchase this or not? It comes down to self-control. Food does not magically jump into your mouth where people pretend that it does. And that is something that I will not allow people to pretend in front of me. Like it is a choice. Now we have to understand why we're making the choices and what are some of those emotional catalysts that we're dealing with.

And I have space for that and time to walk the journey with that person. But I will not allow them to be a victim to their food choices. And most people want to walk around as a victim, which is why in the beginning I said, I want to say entitled, like I'm entitled to, you know, it's Friday night, I worked so hard,

I deserved this, a piece, it's Friday night. I work so hard. I deserved this piece of cake on my birthday. It's like, man, your HBA1C is through the fucking roof. You don't deserve that. Like you've lost your privilege. Now I could, you could, I'm gonna have a piece of cake and I'm going to feel when my body's going to get super hot and we get this crazy energy and I'm going to crash afterwards because I'm going to be so in tune. But I'm going to be okay on Monday morning. Like, right, my endocrinologist isn't going to freak out at me right afterwards. Right?

Now, will I do that? No. So I'll stop ranting. Pat Project family, we love beef on this podcast. We talk about it a lot. All right? We love our meat. But sometimes eating the same meat all the time can get a little bit boring.

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You can enter code POWERPROJECT and save up to 25%. Links are in the description box below as well as the podcast show notes. Let me ask this, and I want to kind of play a character here. Why are you demonizing certain foods? Like, why can't someone have some pieces of chocolate cake? Aren't we supposed to be able to allow ourselves to eat these foods if we can make them fit into our calories? Great question. Don't eat the cookie.

Why? Because it's never just one cookie. It's a pattern of behavior. I swear, coach, I'm just going to have, I'm just going to nibble on one. It's just the tip, right? Just the tip, baby. We all know that it doesn't work, right? It doesn't work. It's never just one. It's never just one. And's never just one. And once you can make that mental association and once you can get in control of that, if you can control what you eat, you can control all other aspects of your life. This is very empowering. Like I tell this story, a Kit Kat story. I'll fast forward through it.

Years ago, I'm doing training camp in Liverpool, England with Quentin Rampage Jackson. He's getting ready for a big fight. I have a fight coming up. I'm going through hell in this training camp. Itentin Rampage Jackson. He's getting ready for a big fight. I have a fight coming up. I'm going through hell in this training camp. It's 11 weeks over there. It's cold. It's wet. It's freezing.

Training camp is a mess. And I'm the only real training partner dedicated to helping this athlete win, right? So it's lots of big hurdles to go through. And then I have my own fight. And I just wanted a fucking Kit Kat bar, which is a little boy I love. And I just wanted that little feel-good moment so I could have control in boy I love. And I just wanted that little feel good moment so I could have control in my life, right? I just wanted that. And I was in charge of the groceries and nobody knew. So I went to the grocery store and I bought a Kit Kat bar and I put it in my

pocket and I put all the good groceries home. And I said, I'm going to fucking eat this tonight. And I go up to my room and I have that Kit Kat bar and I look at it and I'm like, I could eat you right now, Kit Kat bar, but I choose not to. And I put it on my bedside table tomorrow morning, 6am. I got to wake up. I got to wake Quentin up. We got to go for a three mile run through the foggy, cold, early morning of Liverpool, England, all by ourselves. Our manager is going to be sitting in his Mercedes, smoking cigarettes, yelling at us, you know, out the window. And I got to come home, make breakfast.

I said, but when that run is over, I'm going to eat the fucking cake. That's with a cup of black coffee. That's going to be my payoff. Come back home. Everything's done. Kit Kat bar. I can eat you right now, Kit Kat bar,

but I choose not to. And then so on and so forth. I walked in and out of my room and I kept it on my bedside table. I saw it a hundred times a day. Every time in my room, out of my room, every time I closed my eyes, opened my eyes, there was the Kit Kat bar, right? My temptress laying there next to me, seducing me at all times. And I'm fighting this internal battle. I can eat you right now, Kit Kat bar, but I choose not to. And I said, you know what? I'm going to, I got to fight nourish your core main event, Boston, big event, a couple thousand people are going to be there. Tough guy. It's like scary fight for me, right? This kid's legit big fight. I'm going to weigh in, weigh in that

perfect night. I'm going to weigh in. So boom, get through training camp, get my ass kicked all training camp. I'm ready to go. Get out there. Boston weigh in. Nuri's just shit talking to me as team. I thought we're going to fight at weigh-ins. I like me and my little tiny boxing coach, Mark Shrimpton. It's just the two of us, like this big gang, like 10 dudes, right? So we get out of there. I go upstairs. Nerves are high, Kit Kat bar. I could eat you right now, but I choose not to. I'm gonna go fuck this dude up tomorrow night or I'm gonna get fucked up.

Fingers crossed, you know, hoping for the former. And that will be the perfect celebration. Go out there, get into this fight and fucking, he rocks me hard. Boom, I'm seeing triple of them literally. And I'm pretending like I'm not hurt. I get through that somehow. I wind up knocking him out. Rampage is there cornering me, got blood all coming down my face. Thousands of people. It was like awesome experience. And I'm thinking, I'm going to fucking eat that Kit Kat bar.

Like that was the payoff. And I felt because I had the mental fortitude to not eat that Kit Kat bar during the entire training camp. I had built this internal fortitude where I was able to get through some really tough moments during training camp, but also during that fight itself where mentally I never fucking broke. I never broke and ate the Kit Kat bar. I never caved in. This is all happening in real time in my head. Finally go up to the room and this and that and the Kit Kat bar right there. I had the Kit Kat bar in my hand. I looked at it and I said, I could eat you right now, Kit Kat bar. I choose not to. And I threw it in the fucking garbage can. And I've never had a Kit Kat bar again and I've never needed to. So why do I tell this fucking story? Because it is based upon personal accountability and choice. Can I eat a Kit

Kat bar? Yes. Will anybody know? No. Can I eat a cookie? Yes, I can. Will anybody know? No, but I choose not to. I choose not to because it makes me a better person. It makes me more durable. It allows me to now be in charge of my life. Now, I can, you can, you can. 77% of the population who's listening to this right now,

they cannot because they're already suffering from overweight issues, from obesity issues. Obesity is the highest rate in recorded history. Diabetes is the highest rate in recorded history. Atherosclerosis, cardiovascular disease, highest rate in recorded history. So we are dying at rates faster than we ever have. We are sicker than we have ever been. So for me to sit here and say, go ahead and have a fucking cookie is wrong. I will never say that. I want people to say, I can eat a cookie. I choose not to because I choose something that is bigger. And there are better things than cookies. If I ate a cookie right now, I'd fucking throw up.

It would totally destroy my stomach because it is so hyper-processed. Now we make cookies in my house. I have a bag of cookies. I'll show them to you in my backpack that my wife makes. They're all natural. They're delicious. They are way better. I could sell them for $3 a cookie, I'm sure, for whatever it could be, right? So it's not that I don't enjoy the nice things. You want to come to my house, we're eating grass-fed steaks. We're eating wild-caught salmon and tuna. Like it is a $30 plate of food sitting in front of you at a restaurant that you're eating at my house all day, every day. So the point of this is I want people to understand that they have autonomy and they have choice. And eating a cookie, drinking a beer is capitulation. If you are not already past the finish line, you cannot stop on the way. That's me. Like you might not agree with it and that is fine.

Like you're allowed to be wrong. Like I'm not mad at that. But at the same time, until you're where you want to be, why are you going to stop and take a break? And I've never seen anyone eat cookies on their way to becoming someone that they would aspire to be and actually achieve it. I want to say, uh, to kind of add on to something you mentioned quite a bit earlier, but I'd like to maybe have you talk about it a little further, but you mentioned some of these diets and getting somebody into like a particular named diet, carnivore diet, keto diet. I've said this myself to me those diets are easier that's why i actually chose them intermittent fasting is another one there's like no meal prep i don't

have to think about it as much it's like okay i'm just like not eating carbs and when it comes to intermittent fasting even easier okay i'm not even i'm just not eating until i get back home from work yeah um what are some of your thoughts on that like in terms of those diets maybe being easier and maybe it is not a bad idea for somebody to maybe look at one of those diet options that they think would fit them just to kind of get them to a better spot because people are just they're just in rough, they're in a rough spot at the moment. And maybe them having too many choices and maybe they don't have the discipline to know when to stop. Yeah. And I would say, and I understand and I appreciate that, but instead of putting them into an exclusionary restrictive fad dietary program, which I classify almost every one of the program,

the popular programs out there. I would say simply stop eating hyperpalatable, highly processed synthetic toxic chemicals in your food. Just eat single ingredient whole foods as much as you want, as often as you want. How many people eat three apples in a single sitting? It's hard. It's hard. How many people eat three cookies, three donuts, three slices of pizza? Child's play. Right? Easily. So then- Just getting started, right? So this is, and this is what we do with our clients. So our private clients, first four

weeks, I don't care what you want to do. Health and habit phase. Here's basic meal structure. Here's the meals that I want you to be eating. You want to make substitutions? Not a problem. You need to eat more? Not a problem. You want to, if I say you're eating six ounces of wild caught salmon, you want to eat 10

or 10, you want to eat eight or 10 or 12? Enjoy. No problem. You want to eat two baked potatoes instead of one? No problem. Health and habit phase. we are creating healthy habits. Once people are eating healthful whole foods, their body self-regulates intake. You are not overeating wild-caught salmon habitually, right? You are not overeating baked potatoes, that starts, right? If you're adding all of the goop that people put on, the synthetic toxic chemicals, that's where the hyperpalatable triad really takes hold and people now are not making decisions for themselves. The chemical interactions start

making decisions, which is why we say instead of the, again, and I use these terms very specifically, the exclusionary restrictive fed dietary programs. We push those aside and we simply stop eating synthetic toxic chemicals. Eat as many of the whole foods as you would like. We prefer you to eat in multiple, have multiple meals in even spacing. And there's a lot of data for that. Muscle protein synthesis is just one.

Regulating blood sugar is another one. We've seen zero issues with insulin sensitivity when people are eating whole foods, right? We work with a lot of people who are pre-diabetic, PCOS, and have type 1 diabetes that have absolutely zero issues, and many actually start to, and I won't say we reverse it, but many people have had a reversal in their issues, and most of the doctors will nod their head and agree, yep, that's pretty much what happens. So it's not that intermittent fasting or zero low carb is the key. It's not. That's better than maybe the traditional American diet or the SAD diet. But it's the elimination of the synthetic toxic chemicals. Remember, we are biological organisms. That is what a human is. So everything that you see right here,

these bodies, this is a facade. If we start to really zoom in, like get some really good, maybe Andrew can like, you know, get some really, really good graphics here and zoom in, zoom in, zoom in, zoom in, we are going to see an entire universe of cells that are living and dying and going through these amazing life cycles that is nothing like you see right here. We understand this. And what we want to do is we want to feed those cells. We want to cultivate the right environment for those cells to go through their life cycles as optimally as possible and give birth to new cells that will then, as we pull back out, create this machine, this, you know, organism that we see here that hopefully looks and acts and performs in the way that we want to.

So again, I'm not a big fan of the, oh, it's easier for me to just go keto than it was for what I was doing before because many people on keto, they're eating garbage food. they're eating garbage food they're just dropping carbohydrates but they're eating these like high saturated hyper palatable food like substances and they're pretending like they're somehow healthy it's like the the pound of bacon the stick of butter and the the the burger patties you know with no bun like we've seen this with many diets. There's a, you know, a gluten-free diet, you know, and someone has a gluten-free donut. It's like that's not the point of getting rid of gluten. Yeah.

No, and I think that's where so many people fall into that hole. And we said, well, look at the data. Let's pull back. Why are people bigger than they've ever been? Why are they less healthy than they've ever been? Well, we know about calorie counting. We know about keto has been around forever. Well, keto has been around since the 1920s or so, right?

So it's been over 100 years, and it comes and goes, comes and goes in these kind of fad cycles, as we had mentioned before. Most of these exclusionary restrictive dietary programs, they come and go, come and go, come and go. And I said they fail. And what I said earlier is they don't work. And you had made a good point. It's like, well, what do we mean by work? Well, I mean about sustainability. We're actually changing the overall health outcomes of the individual. Yeah. Some people lose 20, 30, 40 pounds. A lot of times they gain it back and not only gain it back, sometimes they gain it back and then some. So they never learned how to live without that type of short-term pit stop. And that's what we aspire to do is we aspire to educate people. And then we aspire to put a

framework through that health and habit concept, a framework of these are the foods that make you feel your best. These are the foods that satiate your hunger. These are the foods that make you feel your best. These are the foods that satiate your hunger. These are the foods that digest most optimally, yielding the highest nutrient return for the calories ingested. These are the foods that get you where you want to be. These are the foods that will help you live better longer. Now, if you want to be an athlete or climb a mountain or, I don't know, power lift or run a marathon, like you can do all that doing this. You don't have to make any sort of true change. It's like the last, what we said earlier in the gym, it's like 90% of the people don't ever have to worry about counting calories or overly managing

macros if they're focused on the quality of the food that they consume and they're not being a dickhead. That's pretty much it. Like if you're eating single ingredient, whole foods in even intervals, evenly spaced, right? That's pretty simple. It's a plate of food. Get a piece of protein, get a little carbohydrate in there, get some, you know, some, some veggies on the plate, a good even plate. Everyone who, everyone knows exactly what I'm saying. A good looking plate, that's all you need. Eat four of those a day, evenly spread out. Are you losing weight? Good. You don't want to lose weight? Well, let's eat a little bit more. And I would say, well, let's protein leverage. Let's increase protein first. So we typically increase protein first. We want to maximize the amount of protein we consume. Fat, we want to keep that relatively static for the average person,

whether you're gaining weight or losing weight, we keep fat relatively static. We spoke about that earlier in hormones. And then carbohydrates will kind of zigzag a little bit, you know, carb cycle, depending again on what you're trying to do. But again, the average person, I'm slightly off topic, a simplified meal plan and find food you love. You hate fish, don't eat fish. Eat steak, but leaner cuts of steak, right? Don't eat the fatty stuff because that will drag you down. It's the high saturated fats that become issues long term, right? So eat the leaner cuts of steak.

Get some good fat, but not too much. Like get your protein. You can easily overeat when you start eating tons of fat. If you're having eggs and bacon and ribeye steaks and stuff like that, unless you're super active, you're most likely going to overeat. Well, way, way over calories. And then that shows up in the blood work. Like we see the blood work, right?

A lot of the people coming off the keto and the carnivore craze, their blood work's a mess, right? They're raving about maybe they're, you know, fasted glucose or HbA1c, maybe they are. But then we're looking at their, you know, their LDL, their ApoB, their LpA, and we're seeing like, Jesus Christ, their total triglycerides, total cholesterol. And if we have the ability to seep at six months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months to track, we can actually say like, well, this is where you were. Now look at you've gotten leaner, but less healthier overall. What does this mean long-term? Well, that's pretty

easy to understand. We know exactly where they're tracking, but to your point, if they were able to eat more meat, but not the fatty cuts of meat, which is weird why a lot of the meatheads, fatty cuts of meat, which is weird why a lot of the meatheads, pardon the pun, they push for the fatty cuts of meat. And that's the fatty, okay, you push for the fatty cuts of meat. I personally like fatty cuts of meat. Because it tastes delicious? Because I don't eat an excessive amount of carbohydrates. Okay. I don't need an excessive amount of carbohydrates. There are some days that I'll eat more

carbohydrates if I know that I'm going to be much more active and if I know I'm going to be doing a lot more stuff that's glycolytical in the gym. But if I'm grappling, I don't tend to need as many carbohydrates on that specific day if it's a grappling day. So you're talking about intraday nutrition not as an overall paradigm that you follow. So you're not eating fatty cuts of steak seven days a week with no carbs. You're eating carbs throughout your day. Some days. Yeah with no carbs. You're eating carbs throughout your day. Some days. Yeah, some days. But this is actually something that I wanted to ask you

because we've had a lot of people that have talked about different diets on this podcast. We've utilized different diets. I've done fasting and there are still days that I'll use fasting through the week, but it's not every single day. I ate breakfast this morning. And the way that we kind of look at these things

aren't as fads. We look at them as tools. Because one thing that fasting was super helpful for me with, I think it's been helpful for you too in that way, but it helped me get control of my reactions to hunger. Because in the past, following a bodybuilding diet, I did a lot of natural bodybuilding shows. I had a lot of high meal frequency and I was very used to eating every few hours. And even when I was bulking and cutting, I just was like always hungry and I could always eat that food. But I was never, it was annoying to me that like, I could never just like go a while without eating. So when I started fasting, I started in like 2015, 2016, I think. And it was just mainly for the focus benefits I heard people talking about, right? Well, I did notice some of those benefits,

but the main thing I noticed long-term was my reaction to feeling a little bit hungry is not, I must reach for food. It's like, I'm not actually truly hungry right now. I'm just used to eating really often. Like I can wait a few hours, right? So nowadays, fasting isn't something I do every single day. It's something I'll pull out multiple times during the week when I need it. But it's, I don't think it's a fad. And that's something I'll pull out multiple times during the week when I need it. But I don't think it's a fad. And that's what I was kind of curious to you, like what you're saying, like why are you calling these things necessarily fads? Because I understand some people get on them and then they quit. But the way that we look at these things is they're tools. Like I mentioned to you, some days I'll eat more carbs, especially if I know I'm going to do a hard

bodybuilding workout. Those carbs are going to help fuel that. But the days I know I'm not going to do something like that, it's going to be way less carbs. It's going to be like a hundred or less because I know that's going to be good for my performance. So they're just, we just look at them as tools and levers to pull from rather than like the specific diet you have to follow 24 seven every single day of the week. So you actually just define the principle that we speak about and that we teach is we eat based upon activity, right? So you say, hey, I got a glycolytic activity later on in the day. I'm going to eat more carbohydrates because of that activity. Tomorrow, you do not have that activity. Therefore,

you pull the carbohydrates. This is the exact educational process that we teach. We do not put you into a template program. Now you say, and I think it's a matter of terminology and verbiage here. So, hey, I fast. I wouldn't say what you do is fast. You just don't eat breakfast. Some days, like some days I will have one meal. It's not most days though. Most days I'll have two meals. That's, that's my average. And maybe the first meal is going to be around. If I do jujitsu in the evening, it'll, it'll be later. But most times the first meal is going to be around like four. Right. But this morning I ate breakfast because I felt like I needed to, I want to breakfast this morning, you know? But again, it's just, they're lovers. So, I mean, I know what you

mean. I don't want to cut you off. I wouldn't call this the true intermittent fast, like 18 hours, whatever. You know what I mean? I don't do much of that anymore, but we're going a good amount of time without eating food. Yeah. But again, I think what you're doing, and this is where a lot of people get confused because they're like, well, look, look at him. He fasts. I need to fast because I'm going to look like you. No, you've already put in the 90% of the time in the work. You are in that last 10%. I'd say you're in that 3%, right? So what you do is not what the average person needs to do, right? What you do is now very specific and unique to you after decades of being on this very specific journey. Remember, there's 77% of the population that's overweight or obese.

They cannot do what you do until they have done what you have done to get to this point, right? So I think that's very important. Now, again, I would not say what you do is, quote, fasting. So you skip a meal, you're eating based upon your activity, that is perfect, but you're a multi-meal eater, you're eating a couple meals per day, right? Two meals on the average day, maybe a little bit more. How would you define fasting? Fasting is going for long periods of time consistently without eating, and the averagema is in excess of of 14 to 16 hours of fasting now some people like if you're following three weeks of shredded you're usually eating

somewhere around during an 11 hour feeding window it's the way the meals lay out where you're eating five to six meals like you know five meals in a shake right that's oh that's eating you know smaller meals more often during that period of time. Now people say, well, that's fasting protocol because you're fasting for 13 hours. It's not going to happen. You're eating five, six times a day.

This is not fasting. And this is a problem a lot of the people at home have. It's so damn confusing because a lot of the terminology is conflated by people usually with something to sell. And that's it. And then it gets so darn confusing again, because like, what do I do? Do I skip breakfast?

Do I skip dinner? Now, we understand if we're truly fasting, and this is how it's almost like keto. People say, oh, I'm on a ketogenic diet. Well, you're eating 5% protein, 95% fat. Well, that's a ketogenic diet. Oh, no, you're not. So you're not on a ketogenic diet. Oh, and you're not in ketosis? So a ketogenic diet. Oh, no, you're not. So you're not on a ketogenic diet. Oh, and you're not in ketosis?

So a ketogenic diet had nothing to do with your weight loss. The same thing with fasting. Fasting protocols, we understand that the early morning feeding session is, again, I would say more for monetary gain. And it's a it's a convenience for people to pretend like and this is not you. It's the average person. They pretend like they're doing something good. and they pretend like they're doing something good. I skip breakfast, I skip lunch, and I come home and I fucking crush. And people come home and they crush. They eat pizza and like, I'm allowed to because I didn't eat anything all day.

And now I'm absolutely starving and the beast is out of the cage and I can eat whatever I want for an hour or two or three or four hours during that feeding window. And we know people who do that. That's what most people do with fasting. And most people watching right now are like, yeah, that's what I did when I fasted.

You starve all day and then you just pound whatever calories you can get in. Not the nutritious calories. So then I would say, well, it has nothing to do with health. You don't try to be healthy. You're just making – it's like the Acorns app, which is a good one. Dave Ramsey talks about this. Acorns app, it makes you feel like you're doing something. But big picture, it's an investment app. It's like you're rounding up your change. It makes you feel like you're investing. At the end of your working life, you're going to

have like 13 cents waiting for you. So you feel like you're doing something, but big picture, you're not. You're not pulling the big levers. You're just doing a little bit. So it's like a little bit of busy work. That's why, again, why I speak the way I do. It's a fad. It's this. Don't eat the cookie. Because I want people to remember that. So when they're faced with a decision, they're like, it's not going to be just one cookie.

Improving your sleep quality is as easy as shipping your mouth. And what I mean by that is putting some tape on, breathing through your nose will increase your sleep quality. It's no longer just something that only the bros do. It's now been researched and people understand that if you can breathe through your nose while you're asleep, you'll have better sleep quality and you will wake up more rested. Hasha tape is also really awesome because I know what I used to do. I used to use a little bit of a cheaper tape and every time I'd wake up in the morning, the tape would be somewhere else on the bed or on my face, but it wouldn't be on my mouth anymore. But hostage tape, if you have a beard or if you don't,

will stay comfortably on your mouth all through the night. And if you're someone who has a problem breathing through your nose, hostage also has no strips. So you can place those on your nose while you're asleep or if you want to be like one of those Hermosi guys, you can wear it during the day. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at HostageTape.com slash PowerProject where you guys will receive an entire year supply of mouth tape and the nose strips for less than a dollar a night. Again, that's over at HostageTape.com slash PowerProject. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Do you think in some way you almost want to insult people because you want to kind of challenge their beliefs?

Yes, and I use – I'm a nice guy. Like I don't know how I come off on this show, but I'm a nice guy. I'm like, you guys don't believe him. He is a nice guy. But I understand I'm also playing a role. And today what my role has to be now more than ever is to get under people's skin. And I need to plant an emotional anchor in people's lives so they cannot unhear what I have said. They cannot unknow what I have said.

Three weeks from now, your voice is going to go off in their head and they're going to be like, fuck, man, maybe he was right. They pass by the Kit Kats. That's exactly why I do it. Man, he had a good point, I think. Damn it. I mean, I hate that guy. And then they say, thank you. Right.

And that's like most of my career is people that were exposed to me. They didn't like what I said because it pushes back on their own internal bias. And then two, three, four years later later then they become our biggest advocate because they went through the exclusionary restrictive dietary practices that all failed them and then they come to us and they were like you were right what you said the simplistic view that you take that's the most correct that's what works i mean if that didn't work, why am I here? Because if you go back, I've been doing this since the analog days, since I was writing for magazines. I'm saying the same thing today, and my business is bigger than it's ever been.

It's because it resonates. We sold 300,000 books as an independent publisher. Think about that. Not because we had zero marketing because it fucking worked because it worked luke barnett comes to me luke barnett i meet him in 2012 former ufc fighter it's on the i think season 20 the ultimate fighter brief story he's like mike dulce i'm like hey luke he's big slow he's like six foot six is this middleweight he's a massive guy and he's like my middleweight middleweight i know big he moved up to 205 luke barnett big slow he's i love the guy one of my favorite fighters and favorite humans

by the way he's like my mom loves you it's like what he's from he's from london he's like a banker from london he's like my mom loves it what he goes i found out about you from my mom i was like wait you're a ufc dude you're on the. How do you, what, what are you talking about? He's like, my mom comes to me one day with your book, copy of three weeks to shred it. He said, all the ladies in the office were using it. And she said, do you know this guy? And he's like, ah, then I looked you up. He's like, oh, I see you work with rampage. You work at jail. You work with all these people. Like I didn't do that. That was the word of mouth that grew from the effectiveness of this program that I wrote in my loft with my wife over the course of a season, right? So it was like, and it's all basic. Like you look at three weeks to shredded, it's all the stuff I'm saying right now for the

most part, dialed in for an athlete that's trying to lose weight. And then we kind of built that for a broader business model for the average person who doesn't have to get into the octagon. So we pulled out some of the water depletion and, you know, we can help with that too at the very end, but it's not about that. So the point is, is that we have this very simplistic version of nutrition that works for the greatest athletes on the planet, but also 60 some odd year old ladies working in an office who all are just feeling better, looking better, loving better, like dropping weight, like fitting in smaller dress sizes, all through this very same type of protocol. And there's a universality to that, if that's even a word. Luke Bordet, there he is. Yeah, couldn't find a bigger picture, so I'm working on it. But yeah, it's shocking that

he's that tall. I mean you know i work with luke i mean helping him this guy i think he'd get up to like 230 helping him get down to 185 right that's a pretty herculean task right there yeah and if you're if if what you're doing if what you're doing didn't work i mean this certainly you certainly wouldn't have ufc guys continue continue to work with you i mean they just they can't afford that they can afford to have a program that's not working no and it's their their whole career is on the line right and millions millions millions of dollars are on if the athlete misses weight by 0.01 pounds they lose 30 of their purse now these athletes are making six and seven figures that is a costly

mistake but furthermore why did the ufc dana white. But furthermore, why did the UFC, Dana White, Lorenzo Fertitta, why did they choose me to become the creator, the writer, the author, the figurehead behind their UFC fit program? It's the only diet and exercise program ever endorsed by the UFC. And like Lorenzo Fertitta put his stamp on that. And that guy knows business and he knows fitness as well as he knows knows business they chose me to be that guy because they saw what i would do with their athletes now when i'm working with a vitor belfort or ronda rousey at chael sonnen i'm not just working with the athlete i'm actually bringing a 10 20 30 40 60 80 million dollar commodity to their stage all the media that's

behind this all the pay-per-view purchase that go into this. And I was so good and so successful that they would start bringing me into work with the worst of the best, the athletes with the worst weight cutting issues that were their most viable blue chip commodities. They would task me to help these athletes get on weight on time. And then we did it every single time. So like there is a massive proof of concept here that a lot of people, they blow by. And a lot of individuals that might have market share, they don't have the actual real world resume that I have in working with humans, right? Not in working with humans, right? Not just regular folks, right? But working with the most elite athletes. And everything I'm telling you guys is exactly what I did with them. There's no gimmick, right? There's no little trick. There's no little fancy. I'm not worried about macros.

We didn't start any of their programs counting calories. Like we end up at the calories and we become aware of those, but it more becomes like portion size and nutrient allotment. And how are you fueled? What's your digestion like? Are you getting good sleep? It's all performance-based. Like, oh yeah, and by the way, how many calories am I eating? I'm like, I don't know. Like, I don't know. We can figure it out. Like, I don't care. Like, do you care? What does it matter? How do you feel? I feel great. How are you performing? I'm crushing everybody. Awesome. How do you look? Man, the leanest I've ever been. care. Like, do you care? What does that matter? How do you feel? I feel great. How are you performing? I'm crushing everybody. Awesome. How do you look?

Man, the leanest I've ever been. Cool. Like, the calories then don't care. Like, don't matter per se. Like, we get to the calories eventually, right? We get there. We end up there. But we never, ever start there. So I had kind of a cyclical.

What did you think of Dana White's journey in his transformation? you think of Dana White's journey and his transformation? You know, I'm really happy for Dana that he was able to take back control of his health at a time that it seemed to be slipping away from him. He was at that very precarious age of, I think, early 50s. And that's where what we do in our 30s catches up to us in our 50s, right? And I think what Dana had done running and gunning, building this massive multi-billion dollar organization, he did not put his health first during that period of time. And it started to catch up with him. And then taking back control and responsibility,

I think is huge. And that is the lesson to be learned. Now, what he's doing, I don't think is ideal or optimal. And I don't believe it's even beneficial, especially for the 77% of the population that is watching it and now trying to emulate these 72-hour fasts. And, you know, I'm not being critical of Dana, but I want to say, like, they showed a photo of Dana,

like, after a 72-hour fast. And I was like, I took a photo of myself and I was like, I just ate six meals. I'm a year round leaner than that. Like you right now, I mean, you guys are already there. I mean, yeah, like dude, he looks awesome. Like it looks great, like full credit, but you don't have to 72 hour fast you don't have to do all the stuff you just need to be more simplistic with your meal intake and you need to be consistent you know don't eat the cookie well i want to drink the beer what i think is good about bringing up a photo like this is is that it's a real you know it's a real photo i believe that i don't i don't

think they tried to like doctor anything um i believe he did a 72-hour fast. But it's just deceiving to people that are in a rough spot, that need to lose weight, and they're thinking to themselves like I'm going to do a 72-hour fast because that's what he did. And he had great results and look how happy he is and he's all lean in the other picture. But again, it's just – it's definitely not a place to start. Maybe it's not even a place to mess around with hardly at all. But it's definitely not a place to start for somebody. No, and that's, it's untenable, right? I guess it's unnecessary.

We could say that for sure. A few years ago, I had done a, it was almost an 80-hour fast. Not because I believed in it, but because I was speaking on it. And I wanted to personally experience it. And I've done some of these experiments with myself, my own body, in spite of my better judgment, right? But there's a lot – back when intermittent fasting was much more popular, Dr. Jason Fung was doing the rounds and he was talking about it. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to speak on this because I have the data.

Let me do it so I can actually speak on it. You know, what I found about that was, I mean, I felt terrible. I couldn't train, right? I couldn't train up to my level, of course. I like my social interaction was dramatically diminished. I became a less present father, right? I did not have the same patience nor energy to play with my kids, right? So this was making me a worse person, less capable person. And then when my fast was over, what I found was I had manifested an eating disorder in that I didn't want to eat food. I had an aversion to actually eating food, and I was aware of it. And I thought I'm knowing what I know, doing what I do, having my experience. I'm actually having this mental challenge, psychological challenge in reintegrating

healthy foods back into my life. What does this do to the average person who just jumped in and they don't have the experience? They don't have the knowledge. They don't have the support team, right? I got a team of registered dieteticians on staff and certain strength coaches. So I have a team that's like, "'Coach, what are you doing? Fucking eat the bone broth." You know? Because I went from 72 hours

and then all of a sudden I'm at 80 hours. I'm like, I wonder if I can go another day. And they're like- Did you at least have water and stuff, right? It wasn't a dry fast, right? It wasn't a dry, no. No, it was water. It was some electrolytes.

Mostly water, salt, some electrolytes. You know, I'd done it properly to a degree. I mean, as good as you can. But at the same time, it's like, son of a gun. And that became, thank God I did it because that became my biggest talking point is what I actually was manifesting in eating disorder because I was disordered in my eating habits. Like, that did me no good. It only did me harm and had i just continued eating my normal you know four by four single ingredient healthy whole foods like i would just continue being a healthy

great father you know present present father i should say active individual athletic um a few weeks ago or so but you know the ability to just live my normal life. So I realized like that. So that to me is more of like, when people talk about fasting, they're picturing the Dana's in the 72 hours, maybe they're picturing kind of the OMAD, the one meal a day, but they're not picturing like, so I skip breakfast on certain days of the week. That's, that's just not what, when people say fasting, they don't picture that like you do. Cause you're so meticulous, like you're on point. The average person, which is again, why I speak again, the colorful manner to piss people off and get under their skin. So they'll,

they'll remember what the idiot said, right? That guy that pissed him off, but they'll remember. And then it'll start to, it'll have context. And then I want them, everything I say, I want people to pressure test. Like research everything I say. Please do. Like do not take anything I say at face value. Please go out and research every single, single thing I say. But also research everyone I talk about too. Like go and make sure you're following credible sources here and wonder if there's any ulterior motives behind the information that they put out.

Because at the end of the day, like I don't care. I want everyone to be successful. Like, I want everyone to be successful, have great lives, feed their family, have just millions of dollars and like live a life of abundance. I'm that guy, no matter who it is. I have no ill will towards anyone. But I don't want people to get hurt because they're following the wrong information. There's so much bad information out there. So it's like trying to push back. And it's funny because it's counterculture now to speak about eating healthful whole foods, right? Eating multi-meal, omnivorous program. That's counterculture.

Like I'm on the fridge. I'm the weirdo. How about this? I'm the most successful weight management coach in the history of combat sports. And I'm treated like I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know anyone with my resume and actually producing real world results. Not to say they don't exist, but I don't know who they are. But I'm the weirdo. And then all these people without the resume, they pull bullet points of the weaponization of science. They pull these bullet points from other people's studies and

they create this narrative around that. And then they push it out through their charisma and through their production channels. And that then takes takes hold and that becomes the new narrative at the expense of the common person. What you got going on over there, Andrew? Mike, every single time that we talk to you, every time I see you on Instagram or whatever, I'm like, damn it, this guy's – you strike a chord every single time. I'm like, damn it, this guy's, you strike a chord every single time. And so for today, what I want to ask you, and maybe you can help convince me to eat more meals, because I don't necessarily fast. But what I do is I crush a big breakfast that I look forward to eating every day. It's eight to ten eggs and three slices of sourdough bread.

That's like the staple. And I look forward to that and I crush it and I love it and it's so good. And this is after jujitsu. I come, I eat that. I come here to work all day, go home at about, I don't know, like four or five o'clock, have dinner at five. That's going to be like a big steak, rice, sometimes a salad. If my mom or my mom, if my wife makes it for me, I'm never going to ask for a salad because I just don't enjoy them. But that's my main two meals that I eat. I might have a protein bar or a protein shake in the middle of the day if it's around and if I'm hungry. If it's not that, it's some grapes or some strawberries, blueberries, whatever it may be. I try to make the healthiest choice, which is usually just fruit. Outside of that, I don't really eat anything else. Everything's been working really

good for a little bit over a year now. And again, I've been leaning more towards that whole food approach partially because of you. The other part is just trying it like, holy shit, guys, try it and you might feel something. I started feeling better. I went away from like making my homemade recipes of like super low fat, high protein, high carb meals that were just full of artificial everything. And it's like, oh, but my macros are good, but I'm farting all day long and my stomach hurts. Started going to Whole Foods because of you and a couple of other people and recommendations. Started feeling better. But again, I'm just curious, am I leaving a lot on the table if I'm still feeling pretty good. Energy levels, I would totally admit and

say that I want them higher. But again, everything's good. I've never been in this good of shape. I'm leaner. I mean, everything's working. Again, it's been a little bit over a year, but I'm curious, what are your thoughts on something like that where it's working, but it's just two really big meals a day? What are your goals? Okay. So that first one is I would like to have more sustained energy throughout the day, and I want to perform better on the mats. Those are my main two goals right now. And what's your approximate height, weight, age?

So we'll just go six feet tall, 180 pounds, 38 years old. Body fat percentage? Below 15, so it's going to be somewhere. I know, but it's because— 12 to 13 15. So it's going to be somewhere. 12. I know, but it's, it's because. 12 to 13. Okay. I'm 12 to 13% body fat. And you want to stay at 12 to 13? I wouldn't mind building more muscle. That's for sure. I also wouldn't mind getting leaner, but like as of right now, I, again, I feel, I feel good. And so I'm like, I'm happy with what I see in the mirror for the first time ever. Without trying is what I'm really getting at. What's your digestion like?

It's been a process, and it's come from, I'll just say, 27 years. I'm 38, so zero to 27. It's like a rough summary, but of eating like shit. Processed foods, come home from school, eat like frozen burritos, sodas, or like juices. And then when dinner came around, I would have like all these palatable foods I ate all day long. So when real food was presented, I would nibble on it here and there. So I grew up very, very skinny, but with like a big belly. So like very, not much muscle, but a lot of body fat. Yeah.

And digestion, how often you having bowel movements? Uh, yeah, that's, oh, sorry. That's what you were asking. Um, so, uh, yes, that needs a lot of work as well. So like in the morning, it's, uh, it's kind of like a sprint to the bathroom, basically. Like I wake up, I drink electrolytes and it's like, oh my gosh, I'm hopefully no one's in the bathroom right now. Cause like my son's asleep in the other room with the other bathroom. If somebody beats me, it's like going to my gosh, hopefully no one's in the bathroom right now because like my son's asleep in the other room with the other bathroom.

If somebody beats me, it's like gonna be an emergency. And then throughout the day, I'm good. And then potentially again after dinner, it's like sometimes it hits me and it's like, oh, we gotta run to the bathroom. Yeah, I would say speaking to the digestive issue that there's something going on that we wanna improve. I would say that you're eating eight whole eggs in the morning. I would cut that down dramatically

from the whole eggs. I would love the protein content of that, but at the same time, I'd probably only eat two whole eggs max and fill in the rest with egg whites, maybe add a little bit of meat to that meal, which is fine. I would also add a greater blend of vegetables to that, maybe peppers, mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, more of like a Mediterranean style omelet. The sourdough is fine, but I wouldn't go crazy with the sourdough because that still is processed and I'd be wary of that. Maybe have a piece of fruit with that also. I'd pull some of the sourdough and I maybe put in sprouted grain instead of the sourdough on certain days, add a little bit fruit. I would most certainly add a meal and a bridge. So you have that meal one breakfast. I would add a meal

two, which would probably be something more of like a fish if you can, like a wild caught salmon or a chicken, that's fine, with some sort of clean veg and then a little bit of a carb on the side, which is kind of choice. We say lean, green, clean, lean proteins, green vegetables, clean burning carbohydrates. And when we say green vegetables, it means green plus multicolor, but you know, you say green cause it sounds better. I would definitely build that bridge. The second meal, I mean that third meal, you say you sometimes have a snack, so you're eating two to three meals per day. It's not quite two meals per day. Do you add any sort of calories to your coffee, to your tea, you know, to anything else? Yeah, sorry. Yeah. So for breakfast with my

eight eggs and bread, I will have coffee with a steak shake, so the protein shake. So it adds another, I think like 20 grams of protein. Outside of that, a little bit of cashew milk. I couldn't give you exact measurements. And some artificial sweeteners. Yeah, 100% get rid of the artificial sweeteners. We have zero doubt that they disrupt digestion. So that being said, whether they cause cancer or not, hey, man, like we can – that debate wages on and on. You think all sweeteners or mainly artificial sweeteners?

Artificial sweeteners or mainly artificial artificial sweeteners like i would much if you need a sweetener i'd rather you do like a local raw honey as a sweetener or an organic maple syrup even let's say which is better monk fruit stevia not great i avoid it now if you're going to do stevia you use the actual leaf itself you're like that's gross and so well there you go if wait monk fruits artificial sweetener i don't know that no monk no monk fruit like monk fruit is like in maybe like a powder product like like a protein, maybe a monk fruit, but like for general life use, but like a stevia, like use the leaf. I don't want to use the leaf. Well, that's what stevia actually tastes like. You don't like that. And it's like, so we go to like the local raw honey. You can't beat that from a sweetener perspective. It should taste good. It's awesome. Right. So like get as close as you can to the most natural form.

And I think that might be kind of some of the, not knowing I'd want to do a full intake with you, to better understand what's happening digestively. You shouldn't be running to the bathroom like that first thing in the morning. Like, a little bit of imbalance. It could be maybe just the way you're wired. It could be just, like, mood and anxiety. Like, there's a lot of things that affect digestion. But artificial sweeteners are definitely one of those. Yeah, I would say, obviously, there's so many things to uncover. things that affect digestion, but artificial sweeteners are definitely one of those.

Yeah. I would say, obviously, there's so many things to uncover, but one of those things is I still will wake up and also have coffee or something, and that definitely is going to flush things out. Do you hydrate first? Yeah, I do. I do. And I try my hardest to push it off, but some days I'm just like, whatever, let's just get sober because I got I got to, you know, hit the gym. So there's that. And then also, yeah, there's just a lot of stuff to uncover still. So it's not fair to, like, do this back and forth right now without giving, like, the whole context. I would strongly suggest you break into a four-meal feeding program, that you evenly space that and give it a week and just let me know if it feels any different okay the highest quality food sources right no i would stay away from the

processing right just give your body some time to clear out so you can then control the variables a lot of problems people have is they don't control variables say what did you eat today well you know i had this or i didn't have this and i had that and I didn't have that. What's wrong with me? It's like, fuck, man, I don't know. But we got to clear out the variables first, which is why I like a very simple meal plan in the beginning. So it's like lock your breakfast and eat the same breakfast for the next three to 10 days in a row. Same lunch, three to 10 days, same brunch, three to 10 days, same dinner, three to 10 days. So you can really determine, man, how do I actually feel after that? Because you'll have really good data to pull from, from that point. Did your energy go up? Did it go down? Did your

digestion improve or did it regress? Is your sleep better? Like, how do you look in the mirror and start taking some photos? Does your weight change? What's your performance like in the gym? What are your interpersonal relationship like? Are you more patient at home? Are you a funnier father and husband? Like, are you more engaged with when your wife is talking to you or you're just thinking about everything else in the world? Like, these are the data points I care most about. So I'd want to pay attention to those. But I will say, if you're eating single ingredient whole foods, all of those start to improve. I've yet to see a single case where someone starts adding more processed foods to their life and that stuff gets better.

Right? So we just swing the pendulum the other way. But I would say you would probably feel a lot better with the four meals than just the two to three. Right? And then just like take your time and like slowly bridge into it. And again, there's other things involved. But like if I do too many egg whites, and this is how I ended up with so many eggs, whole eggs, is because i would do egg whites and then i would start cramping up a lot but again it could be because i was having artificial sweeteners and then you know everything kind of snowballing into it and so what i found that just felt best on my stomach in the morning was the whole eggs yeah but maybe if i just split

that in half and then you know again have another later on. Yeah, I typically do one to two whole eggs and then like 10, like, you know, 10 whites. So I'm trying to get about 50 grams of protein per meal, 50 to 60 grams of protein per meal spread evenly. So kind of like getting for you would be somewhere around like 30 to 40 grams per meal spread because you're 180 pounds, right? So getting you a consistent 180 grams of

protein per day is like your start point. And then the more active you are with your training and the leaner you get, the more we want to start to leverage that to 200, 220, 240 and slowly start to build up. Ideally, if you're cranking, you're probably going to be eating, you know, 250 grams of protein per day locked in, you know, spread over, you know, four meals. So like 60 grams, 50, 60 grams a meal, four meals per day with just, you know, spread over, you know, four meals, so like 60 grams, 50, 60 grams a meal, four meals per day with just, you know, when we talk about carbohydrates, we typically talk in serving size more so than calories or grams. Like you have a cup of carb. What does that mean? Like half a cup of white rice, half a cup of fruit, half a cup of potato, like just eat a half a cup.

And then how do you feel from there? Is it, you feel great, you energize, what's the weight doing, what's your performance like? Well, then you can go a third or a quarter cup, or you can go two thirds or three quarters of a cup. You can make really small adjustments because we've eliminated the variability. Like that's a big part of it. And then I would say, find the more efficiently digesting food. I love white rice because it digests so efficiently. Like white rice, white potato white potato white chicken egg whites like all of that is you know the white food for whatever reason digests a lot easier for most people most of the time right just kind of build from there and then you were talking about like the the people that love fasting because they're like oh i'm gonna go crush it uh you just kind of

described all three of us if we're being honest uh because we do like to fast and we do like to eat a lot but granted we eat better foods better foods than what the typical person might be assuming that fasting can allow them to do. But what I wanted to ask you is you said, don't eat like a dick. Stop when you're satisfied, not full. How do you teach somebody the difference between being satisfied versus full? Have you ever been full? Yeah. Well, you know how that feels. Yeah.

This morning I was very full. So if you balance your plate, you eat that first plate, oh man, I'm still hungry. Possibly. Give yourself 15 minutes. If you're still hungry after 15 minutes, eat 50% of what you just ate. If you're still hungry after that, your first meal was not big enough. Your first plate size was not big enough. So if you're eating the same foods again, you're reducing variability within the first three days, you'll understand that. I need to just bump my food up just a little bit. And we always say we want to bump protein first,

right? Yeah, just a little bit more protein to that first meal and kind of gauge from there. But for the most part, people, they eat emotionally again, right? So they want to overeat food. Usually, just now I'm speaking like total anecdote from experience, but I think it's valid. They're trying to repress a lot of their feelings, a lot of their anxieties. They're hiding away into their food. It's like, you know, what you had just said is like, man, we starve all day and then we fucking crush it later on at night. It's like this exuberance. We just want to get out there and want to attack. And we have to be careful in that because if you take that to another phase of life, and how does that principle work out? Like, how does it work out when you're on the training floor? All of a sudden, you're adding an extra plate on that bar.

Well, man, how are your hips feeling? You're not kind of warmed and ready, or maybe you're treating your family like that, or you're in a social situation where now you're kind of like that, you know, person whose energy does not match what the room actually matches. So we want to, I like to look at evergreen principles. Like, is that,

does that concept, does that work in other facets of life? Does that principle then hold? No, it doesn't. So I would pull that back a little bit. And again, I like structure. I like order. I like measuring variables. Like I like to be determining what the outcomes are going to be. So it's like, if I say, hey man, I'm going to be intermittent fasting, but when I do, here's the exact six plates of foods I'm going to be eating. And those are the foods that I eat. I'll be okay with that, more okay than not. But if it's like, six o'clock, I get to eat, where are we going? Like, man, what's open? What's close? Like, you know, what are you craving? What are you craving? It's like the Louis CK, the bang bang, right? It's almost like it becomes that where you're just kind of eating until you want to puke or until that window closes.

I know a guy, a friend of mine, he had done that. And it's just like he had lost weight. And then he wound up gaining more weight than he was when he started simply because he trained his body to eat more and more and more. And he was just pushing more food into it. So, again, that becomes the disordered version of the exclusionary restrictive disordered dietary practice how does uh dairy fit into this whole scenario because i think some people might overdo dairy like if you have whole milk and things like that it might be easy to over consume yeah minimally like um we'll be open to certain white cheeses like a fresh mozzarella or like maybe a

little feta a little bit of blue cheese maybe um some people if they they tolerate like a cow's milk like all right a little bit here and there we're not gonna crush someone for that like we will do more of a greek yogurt kind of helps protein leverage also it's it's good to like add to potatoes it's like a faux sour cream. So it really adds a lot of that palatability that people seek, right? But by and large, we don't prescribe dairy in most of our meal plans. We kind of, we have most of our recipes don't include that outside of maybe a little feta or a blue cheese onto a salad or something. But most people post-puberty have a bit of a dairy aversion, causes a little bit of digestive discomfort, and it's atypical in when that creeps up, right? So sometimes people

are fine, and sometimes just they eat something and they're just jacked up for a little bit of time. So what that tells us is most of the time there's an intolerance right most of us have a dairy intolerance post puberty some of us have actual allergies an allergy is an immune response right few of us have the actual allergy most of us have the intolerance same thing with gluten most people don't have celiac disease they just have an intolerance right so it's kind of understanding and they say well if you have an intolerance to it let's avoid it right it's kind of understanding. And they say, well, if you have an intolerance to it, let's avoid it. It's like the artificial sweetener concept in the whole Coca-Cola and the aspartame. And a lot of these scientists, they stack up 50 cans of Coca-Cola and they're like, oh, this is ridiculous. I have to drink all 50 cans in order to get cancer. It's like, so you're agreeing that it causes cancer and you're going to ingest

it anyway. Well, how do we know specifically you and your physiology isn't more prone to that? How do we know all those little genetic landmines inside your DNA aren't just so happy and they're going to react atypically to the quote 50 can analogy so you're intentionally consuming a cancer-causing you know chemical but worse you're telling people it's okay and that's that's an issue like you're telling people it's okay but then i say it's like the batman with michael keaton and jack nicholson is the j Joker where Jack Nicholson was – the Joker was poisoning Gotham City. And they couldn't figure out how because he put a chemical in a lipstick that was by itself harmless. But if you use the shampoo, then it was the totality of the chemical load is what would kill people.

So when you talk about – it's 50 cans of Coca-Cola. use the shampoo, then it was the totality of the chemical load is what would kill people, right? So when you talk about that, it's 50 cans of Coca-Cola, but if you open up their pantry and you follow them through the day, how many other milligrams have they been consuming in the totality of their day? How many have they consumed in the totality of their life? in the totality of their life. Like, this is the insanity of it. So why are people saying that it's okay to drink and consume and ingest? And why are they telling other people to go ingest it? Like, so again, which is why someone like me,

like I'm a whole food advocate. Man, single ingredient, whole foods, stay away from all the synthetics. You don't have to worry about it. Oh, but I just want a can of Coca-Cola. It's like, grow the fuck up, right? Be an adult, grow the fuck up and move on or accept your death.

Like if shit goes bad, Hey man, hope the soda was good. Right. And people would, Oh, but Dolce, what about cars?

That means nobody can drive cars because of the exhaust. It's like, so they build these straw man arguments because they're children. So they can allow themselves to have their little treat right their little snack pack and their little baggie that their mom made them and again it goes back to the hugs right because their mom never gave it to or that she did give it to either way it goes back to that little boy who's just having a little temper tantrum so he can drink his little soda out of his sippy cup as a fucking 46 year old

right so that is the the idiocy of it and again i will get more mad and point my finger at the gurus who tell people it's okay and then they weaponize science for their own material gain whether that's again ego glorification or if it's monetization and that is that's where it gets dangerous but something like an analogy like this that's dangerous right someone is saying hey go ahead and do it like how do you know it's okay for people to do that how do you know what their genetic susceptibility might be how do you know what they're eating in the rest of their day well that's not my responsibility no fucking is it actually it is i'm cursing a lot in this show so i don't know if it's all good.

Get you guys banned again. But they always point to the studies and the science like you just said. They're like research shows this is totally healthy. And research does not show that. Only the research that they are cherry picking because there are reams of data that show quite the opposite if we're actually looking for it. Just from digestive health. I'll just talk about digestive health. We understand artificial sweeteners disrupt the microbiome. We understand it inhibits digestion. Okay, so why are we consuming it?

I would just say, hey, scientist, hey, guru, well, you're a nutrition expert, so you actually care about the nutrients being retained, right, by your client, by the organism. Why are you also telling them on the other side of their mouth it's okay for them to consume things that compete with their ability to absorb the nutrients you're telling them to consume? So you're actually cultivating deficiencies at best, at best. So now they have to eat more total calories in order to yield those small little nutrients, which is then being competitive with their overall goals, which is just healthy weight management, let's say. So it's this weird cyclical argument that's happening out there that it freaking freaks me out.

Like I sit there and I watch it. I'm like, how are these people so stupid? Like how, not the people at home. I'm not mad at them. It's like, I'm yelling to champion for them, right? To like help protect them, to like build the wall in front of them from those who will creep in through the Trojan horse of social media and

will launch these attacks of influence that will knock people farther away from what they should be doing, what is best for them to do in the first place. They need to be protecting their health, They need to be protecting their health, not sacrificing it for a can of sugar-free brown bubbly water. Like that's what people are clamoring for these days. Like it's insanity. Pepper Watch Family on the podcast, we talk all the time about feeling good, good habits to make sure that your health is in check. And one of the things that's super important is getting your blood work done because you could be getting great sleep. You could be having great nutrition, but under the hood, there could be things going on that you don't realize. So it's always good to get your blood work checked so you can totally understand what's going on. Now, the thing is also

when you get your blood work checked, there's so many different things in so many different numbers that it's hard to tell what's good, what's bad, and how do I optimize things? And that's where Merrick Health comes in because they have patient care coordinators on staff that can help you interpret your blood work and then give you the necessary recommendations as far as supplementation, nutrition, and if you need it, hormone optimization that'll start moving you in the right direction. Andrew, how can they get their hands on it? Yes, that's over at merrickhealth.com slash powerproject. That's M-A-R-R-E-K health.com slash powerproject. At checkout, enter promo code powerproject to save 10% off the Power Project panel, the Power Project checkup panel, or any individual lab you select. Again, that's at merrickhealth.com slash powerproject.

Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Let me ask you a question, Mike, because we talked about the processed food thing and we talked about constructing one's food environment. Like I don't keep, there are certain things that I'll keep in my house that I know I won't really overeat, but there are certain foods, like I don't keep Oreos around.

I can go, like I could have four, but I'll probably have like 12. You'll eat to sleep. Yeah, I'll eat to sleep, Doug. Yeah, of course. So the interesting thing is I'm wondering how is it that you, you have two daughters, right? Yes.

How do you teach them about this in the long run? Because there are quite a few people in the comments who are saying, oh, you have a binge eating disorder because of this. I'm like, dog, I just choose not to keep that shit in my house. Yeah. But there's one woman who left actually a very thoughtful comment. And she said on the flip side, this restriction as a child, meaning not having any of these foods as a child, and she probably ate healthy foods as a kid, led to a binge eating disorder and absolutely no self-discipline as an adult. As an adult, I keep

all the bad foods in my house now. After an adjustment period, I now keep the ice cream, the fun food, blah, blah, blah. And in essence, she taught herself how to eat small amount these foods so that she feels in control of it because there was so much restriction as a child. And it makes me wonder, I don't have kids yet, but adults they're like i have freedom now i can do what i want how do you how do you go about that i'll answer it in two ways the first way is who's married here okay how many women do you guys married men do you guys sleep with so you don't cheat on your wife uh this is a trick question i know how many hookers sleep in your guest bedroom not that not as many as there used to be any okay so we can see the evergreen flaw in the argument right out of the gate now oh you sleep with enough women that you just realized there's no more,

there's no reason to sleep with more women. Well, so you didn't have junk food. So you realize don't need to eat more junk food. Wait until you get married. So now, and I think that's very true. Right.

And like for you, you don't have it in the house. And that's something we've said for years. Like don't keep it in your house. If you feel a compulsion to get in your car at 11 o'clock at night to go eat a sleeve of cookies, fucking go. You got something else going on. I'm not going to be mad at you for that. Just tell me as your coach.

Tell me and we'll work on it. What was happening? What were you feeling? What was going on? Tell me about your day. It's like because you're eating the cookies not because those cookies are so good. You're eating the cookies because something else was out of control. And that's where a good coach, that's where we're going to talk about. Like this young lady, there's something else going on. She immediately went back to her childhood

trauma, right? So that immediately tells me, hey, something happened. Mom was probably overbearing. Something's going on inside that household. And this is her way to reclaim autonomy over her mom. This is her way to get back at her mom. Like this is her way to be connected with her, whatever it is, good or the bad. It's kind of easy to understand. So how do we teach our children? When our children were born, we brought them to the grocery stores with us and we let them go through the produce section. And we would give them raw vegetables, raw broccoli, raw potatoes. When we came home, we would sit them on our counter and we would have them play with the food as we were actually preparing the food. When we would start to cook

the food, we would give them jobs to help us. So all my children have known is the value of whole food, right? And having their fingers in it and using it and peeling potatoes and helping having their fingers in it and using it and peeling potatoes and helping prepare meals for the family. So now our children are vested in feeding our family sustainable nourishing food, right? The exposure, like Halloween just passed. Okay. My kids go trick-or-treating. We do it big. Like we get, we wear the costumes.

My kids, they tell me whatever I'm going to wear, like I'm that guy so i was like sully from the right which is a great costume it's awesome um so we do the thing my kids go trick-or-treating and they're also because they're competitive right they're competitive when they come home my wife and i we buy it off them and they we negotiate now i'm teaching my children how to negotiate as entrepreneurs how to set how to like make deals here i want them to try and break the bank. How can they like, I'm like, that's only, I'll give you a penny for that. A penny, like that's a Twix bar. Like that's 50 cents right there. Like, so they're negotiating. I'm teaching them entrepreneurship. I'm using this as a life lesson because then they take that money and then we can immediately buy them. Then they can choose

to purchase something, a toy that they want, a game that they want. So they're actually seeing this as now it's being transactional. They're like, they don't want this candy. They want something way cooler than that crappy little candy, right? So we're using this. Easter, like my kids' Easter baskets are legendary. There's not a piece of candy inside their Easter baskets. Their plush bunnies, their books, their arts and crafts, or like all their favorite little Pokemon toys or Barbies. So like their baskets, they're so excited for Easter. I don't poison my children because it's a holiday. Oh.

Yes. Right? Holy shit. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And now thank you. If I were to poison my children on holiday, what precedent am I setting? We celebrate by doing self-harm. We celebrate by poisoning ourselves because when my children are normalized in poisoning themselves with synthetic toxic chemicals, processed sugar now, that then becomes what? It becomes alcohol, it becomes drugs, it becomes sex, it becomes some other way of self-harm

as a means to celebrate. Now, hey man, it's your birthday, we're getting fucked up. We're gonna go commit self-harm, right? So that's been normalized though. It's culturally normalized. So it's not in my household. It is very self-love, self-gratifying inside our household. Like food to us is a loving nourishing. We're making food for each other. We love each other enough to feed us the best possible food. Like my kids ask for fruit as snacks. That's what they know. Have they had a

slice of cake? Yeah. They don't want it. And their palate doesn't like it. They hates it. It makes them feel sick because of it. They're, they're allowed to. And Peter said, oh, your kids, when they grow up, they're going to be fucking crazy. Like, no, like not my kids. Like my kids are being taught. This is, there's a cause and effect. My kids are being educated. My daughters will become self-autonomous young women in their life and they will make decisions for themselves based upon the modeling and the mentorship of my wife and I. That is the job as a parent.

My job as a parent is not to destroy my children's hopes and dreams because fucking Nabisco has a cool commercial or there's some fancy ad or my, you know, loser peer does it to their kids. What's your response to the parent that says, well, I have this stuff in the house because of the kids? Because in that post, dude, there's so many people that were commenting, well, you know, I have some of this in my house because, you know, my kids like it. And I don't have kids. So I'm not going to comment back and tell that parent, wait, why is your kid eating junk food? But a lot of people, a lot of parents, they say it's because they're kids. And that is a, for the first time people hearing this, I'm not mad at them. For the first time people hearing this i'm not mad at them for the second time shame on you because now you are poisoning your children out of convenience you don't love your children

you don't love your children if you are poisoning them with food you yourself can't even eat i'm five times the size of my daughters right if i can't eat a food because it's going to jack me up, how the hell can I feed it to them? Like, you're not going to feed your kid alcohol and why wouldn't you? No, or a cigarette. And that's poisonous. It's poisonous. Yeah. A hundred percent. And that is the, the analogy is, oh, they can just have a little bit. Number one, they don't have just a little bit. And number two, if that evergreen principle were accurate, why don't you give them a drag of cigarette? Why don't you give them a little shot of whiskey?

Oh, that's bad. What's the difference? They're all synthetic toxic chemicals. They are known to be harmful. So why are you allowing it? Why are you, oh, because it's easier. Because it's convenient. Because you yourself eat it too.

And you pretend like it's only, most people say, oh, it's only for my kids. Shit. Like I'm looking at you. Right? No, it's not. You don't look like that because you're eating chicken and quinoa, motherfucker. Right?

You're eating chicken nuggets and whatever little pop tart dishes. So again, it's like, don't poison your kids. That will piss people off. I actually said that in UFC International Fight Week, 3,000 people in the audience. I'm delivering this big speech, right, big fitness event. And I'm talking about whatever stuff I'm talking about. And a guy comes walking in with his little kid. The kid's holding their like happy meals.

They're walking in my health and fitness talk with McDonald's. And I go into this rant kind of like, this is like timely, this rant about shame on you for poisoning your children. And it goes into what are we teaching our children? If little Johnny hits a home run or little Jill gets an A+, what do you do? You go and poison them. Go out for ice cream. To celebrate, right? That becomes the reward mechanism, and that then becomes normalized. Therefore, that's what the child starts to do. Look at all these kids. That's what they do. Party is poison, right? So is there any confusion as to why adult obesity is the highest rate it's ever been? Adult diabetes is the highest

rate it's ever been? Adult stroke, adult cancer, adult heart disease? How about now? Is it any wonder that childhood obesity is the highest rate in recorded history right now, and every year it gets worse? Childhood diabetes is the highest rate in recorded history and it grows every year. What do children eat? What their parents allow them to eat. That's why I get passionate about this. Yeah, kids don't have a different menu. You know, you go to a restaurant and they have a kid's menu, but the kid doesn't, they don't require different food. They might require like a certain amount of nutrients or something when they're growing or whatever you can argue some of that but they should be eating the same foods we're eating our my kids eat the same foods we eat we go to a restaurant we just

get the adult food or we try and get a children's size of the chicken the steak the fish the potato the rice like when we make dinner at home our kids would eat what we eat. My kids will never eat that. It's your fault. They will if they don't eat for three days, right? If you don't have the crappy food in their house, I mean, try and make it, make a little smiley face with the turkey bacon and a little egg. Like you can do the thing that dances up, but something for parents is empower your children to help prepare the foods for the family because then they want you to love it then they're going to eat it with vigor because now they're vested in it they're not just sitting their face stuck in their ipad while mom's slaving away in the kitchen right now i don't want to eat

that you're eating this like or you're not eating like it's up to you you know it's kind of that becomes the household and a lot of parents they act like they're trapped by their children you think about that weakness like it is my job to be the leader inside my household to lead my family right and i must do that through modeling the behavior that i aspire for my family to replicate. So I can't pretend like I'm a healthy guy. Like I can't be sitting on the couch, drinking beer, eating pizza, be like, yeah, eat your vegetables. I mean, how many households are like that? Right. There's too many. So I think that's the aversion, you know, and that's what that woman was probably pointing out. Like,

I don't know her experience per se, but I think a lot of people's experience are, it's like one of two things probably. One is like neglect, like it's just not ever taught. No one ever really talks about nutrition. And when your kid's eight years old, yeah, just help yourself. Grab whatever you can from the pantry, and a pantry is something that probably shouldn't even really exist because it doesn't really have any real food in it in the first place.

It's another topic probably for another day. But the other experience that kids will have is that mom and dad are on a diet. They're on this diet, and mom's eating this way, and then dad's eating this way, and then the kids are eating a completely different way. It's all very separate, and it's like everyone's sort of confused. Mom's always trying to lose weight she doesn't seem successful dad's always trying this and that and he's trying to kick the alcohol here and there but he kind of doesn't you know it's like uh they're seeing all this i mean that kids are absorbing all this and your kids will tell you things where you're like holy fuck man

they listen and pay attention to every detail, to everything that we do. They're almost like little pieces of recording equipment. Well, did you teach your children English? No. So if we understand that, it's something Jordan Peterson had spoken about. More is caught than taught.

You don't teach your children anything before the age of seven. It's all modeling, which is why it was so important for me to leave the UFC and raise my children for that first seven years of their life to be a present father, because I understood that and I studied that and I wanted to do my best in that realm. But everything, the way I treat my wife, my children understand that. I never taught that to them. Like I never taught my children English, how to conjugate verbs. I never taught them sentence structure. I couldn't, right? I couldn't. But they speak perfect English and they speak at adult level, right? Because they're used to speaking community. We homeschool our kids. They speak with adults and whatnot. It's just kind of, you know,

the way that we do things. But the way I eat my food and we prepare the food and we grocery shop, the way that we handle money, we teach finances to our children in our household. We teach entrepreneurship. Like we do the whole thing. Like I don't want to raise W2 employees in my house. Like I want to raise business owners. I say my daughters, man, if they love coffee and they want to be a barista, fucking high five. You're going to own that cafe. Like if you're going to be slanging drinks, damn straight. Like, all right, here's what it is to be an owner, to run a business.

And like that. So that's kind of what we teach when it it comes to the nutrition side, we teach, and it's because I live that way, right? But we live, we model the healthy lifestyle, right? We model, this is just what we do. That's all they know. It's just what people do. And then when they're faced with that,

and they do, because they have friends, of course, and they see like, oh my God, like you see what they're drinking? Like you see what they're eating? Like my kids will ask for water. Like when they go out, because the juice makes them feel sick. Like, so. And that should honestly kind of be a normal response. Like when I remember when I was, when I got a little bit older, when I started eating less, more whole food, I realized that eating really sugary stuff was did not agree with me in the same way as it did when i had a higher volume of that food so people who are kind of fighting for junk foods

need to realize that that food isn't necessarily food it's not normal it's made in a lab yeah it's a synthetic toxic chemical yeah and so if that was just outside of its artificial form where it looks like a cake or a piece of candy, if that was just a bunch of gelatinous powder on a table, would you let your kid touch that? You'd be like, oh, don't touch that. Yeah. Don't like don't touch that, like clean that up. But somehow they're allowed to just ingest that. Right. Because it looks differently. It's just it's culturally normalized. That's a problem. But the awareness of people, once they hear that, and hopefully the poison your children statement, hopefully that will shake people a little bit. Because every time you allow your child to eat some of this processed food, you are poisoning them. And you must say, I am intentionally poisoning my child and I am okay with that. I don't care what your peer group says and what culture says and what the marketing says. This is the fact. your peer group says and what culture says and what the marketing says. This is the fact. Like if you understand the ingredients, you understand that this is the fact and now it is your choice. So you're choosing to poison your children. Like have fun, have fun wrestling with

that conversation when you lay down at night about to go to sleep. Like what did you feed your kid today? What was your upbringing like? And were you ever taught about nutrition in your household no i was i grew up super poor my only association with nutrition was there's no food right so my father had a massive stroke when i was eight years old he was put in hospice he had a heart attack died um our home was just became a shell right he was the only wager my mom was stay at home mom at that point this is back in the in the 80s i'll you know briefly kind of you know touch on this and the home fell into extreme disrepair she was cleaning houses odd jobs and then the lights got shut off the heat got shut off there's

no running water windows would be broken they wouldn't get fixed for years on the east coast where it's cold and shitty weather and so on yeah yeah we had uh you know we could scrape together so we all wound up living in one bedroom in this four bedroom house, kind of older house that we bought from our, my grandparents back when I was, you know, two years old or so. So then the home fell into disrepair, you know, wintertime, we're living in just one bedroom with this little like kerosene heater. I mean, you want to talk about like against code, right? It's carried, I mean, Jesus Christ. And just to like stay warm, you know? So I started working at eight years old, legitimately.

I was what's called a dock rat. I had a buddy who lived down the street who was 10 years older than me. He was a mate on a fishing boat, lived in a little fishing town. So I'd go and I'd clean the boats at eight years old, nine years old, 10 years old. And I'd work for two, three hours.

They'd pay me two bucks. Well, $2 in your pocket at eight years old, rich, right? Rich. I mean, I could buy food. And that was it for me. And because my mom was always, money was such an issue, like, because there never was enough of it. That became just a focal point for me. And then we're going to like these doctor visits. I'm just sitting in these hospitals, these hospice offices. My dad just like hooked up to tubes. So it's like this kind of like very bleak, you know, early start. As we move forward, I kind of became enamored with muscle, right? I'm standing in a 7-Eleven. My mom's trying to like scrape together change to buy a loaf of the old school Wonder Bread with like that little circle, red, white, and blue circles on it and a gallon of milk and like bologna, like very like, you know,

stereotypical poor people food at a 7-eleven so of course she's overpaying for it but it's the only thing that's open right at that hour and there's this this flex magazine and it's arnold schwarzenegger black and white on the cover and i was just like probably like all of us just like enamored with it and that became the father now i look back it's like the father figure i didn't have that i was like longing for and i just like switched all in So I was making this little bit of money. I used to start buying these magazines. And then I was like, I knew when the new mags would come out.

And I was like, just got this stack of magazines. And like my uncle gave me this little, like little crappy weight bench. We had this old school house with these window weights. I'm like doing all these, these full exercises. So then as we kind of like fast forward, I fall into wrestling and wrestling was my way out. You know, um, it was my way out.

Cause now I'm, I'm high school at this point going into high school. I could wrestle. I wasn't whole. I wasn't big. I got a question for you for a second. When you wrestled, were you a little tougher than some,

a lot of the other kids right off the bat, just because of the background? Yeah. That's, I was, I was work ethic and everything's are like some of it's already there. Cause you're already working and making money and stuff like that. That was the only thing I had.

I was just tougher. I had grit. And it was my way out. I knew at that time it was my way out. I had no other way out. There's no college. There's no education. There's like I can do this and get out.

And I was a very good student. I was an honors math student. I was an honors science student. And that came very naturally to me in spite of, you know, I remember I used to do my homework on my front porch because there was a street light. So I could like do my homework like out there and like get my stuff done. So to like fast forward, I was taught nothing in my house about nutrition other than eat to survive, right? I would, the most nutrition I would get was really from school. So I'd get a school lunch and man, that was awesome. Never

breakfast. Like school lunch was like the big thing. Sometimes dinner. Dinner was oftentimes just like a bag of like $1 cheeseburgers from like McDonald's. You know, maybe it was a pizza that we would all kind of share. And then like, as I became more, like I never didn't work from like eight years on, I've never not worked. I've never not brought home a paycheck and I've always had multiple jobs, just kind of like framing houses and just like all this blue collar stuff and I made on a tuna boat. And then like went through the whole wrestling thing. And I was a good wrestler. I was acclaimed inside my school, but it wasn't a great school. So I don't, you know, pretend to be an amazing wrestler,

but I did get a scholarship out of it, a scholarship offer. I wound up tearing my shoulder and I, you know, was losing the scholarship as a result of that. Maybe could have got a red shirt year, but I wasn't like so good. They were like throwing the money at me and they're going to fix it. They're like, well, you know, we've got some other guys, you know, maybe take a year. And I had a job offer where I can make $25,000 a year to be a property inspector, right? Because I had a framing background, new job sites, right? And my buddy was going to a school and he was going to pay $25,000 a year. And I was working in a GNC at this point. And I was like, I'm going to take the job, make the money. I'm going to be a hundred grand up. He's going to be a hundred grand down. I'm going to have real world experience. He's going to take the job, make the money. I'm going to be a hundred grand up. He's going to be a hundred grand down.

I'm going to have real world experience. He's going to get out of school with a degree, but I'm going to have four years in the job market ahead of him. I'm going to have cash behind me. And that's kind of the way I went from there. And then I opened my training business. This business now I opened in 1993

as a junior in high school. And I was training, I was, you know, four year varsity captain. I'd said that earlier. So I kind of had this leadership role. I was really training. I was a four-year varsity captain. I said that earlier. So I kind of had this leadership role. I was really good. I was always the best-shaped guy, biggest guy in my school and all that stuff

and well-known for that. And I became pretty popular in my local area as a personal trainer, right? And the biggest pop I had was I trained the bank teller, Carol. She's long deceased. She's older. She's in her 60s. I trained her. But this is back in the day where people would actually get your paycheck. You

would go to the bank and you deposit your cash. So I start training her and she has amazing results. And then every Friday people would come in, they're like, you look amazing. What are you doing? you look amazing what are you doing and she's like little mike dolce and then like i made up these little business cards that like kinkos or whatever it was you know like physical enterprises was the name of the business at the time right i know right silly um and she started giving out those business cards and people would call and then then like, so from, from 1993 on, like I've been profitable inside this field, working with people and, you know, it kind of, now I'm here, right. I'm on the power project, talking to you guys and kind of doing this thing, but it all starts in that house and with the very bleak future. And I would say, if I didn't have that experience, I'm probably not here doing what I'm doing today, right?

I'm not so focused on health and fitness and nutrition. I'm probably not trying to really eradicate the pain and suffering most families go through. Yeah, if the situation with your dad didn't happen, you might not have become the nutritionist that you are. I would, in looking back, Mark, I'd say absolutely not. not i mean you don't know how life is going to turn out but i know in a very real way now and maybe you know you guys and the fans will will excuse me for my passion my exuberance because in a very real way i take this personally and i'm trying to help save people's

lives like i'm trying to save that little boy who lost his father and my siblings who just were like, you know, in their own mess and my mom who had to struggle and even my dad. I'm trying to save him from his lifestyle-related decisions that led him 100% led him into stroke and heart failure. He was living the typical American lifestyles, working too hard, not eating well enough, having a couple or four beers every night when he would come home, eating, you know, off the grease truck and the pork roll, egg and cheese sandwiches and the slices of pizza, which are amazing in New Jersey. You know, the crappy cereals and the bread products and just not taking care of himself. Right. So that's kind of like now I've gone on this crazy journey where I think that's kind of that's what the focus is right now. And whatever little impact I can have in someone's life, that's what it's about. Like, I'm not trying to build massive audiences and do the social media thing in a very real way. And you can tell if you look at my accounts, right, I'm not trying to play the games. I'm trying to just be honest and transparent. And maybe I should play the games a little bit more to reach more people, but I just don't know how to do that.

So I'm just going to keep speaking the way I do and try and be honest and help people. And, you know, hopefully we can change some lives. All right, Project Family, it's time to step up your barefoot shoe game. Now we talk about foot health all the time on the podcast, but the winter months are coming and Vivo's come out with some slick boots.

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again, for all barefoot type shoes, Vivo is your one-stop shop for pretty much all the classics that you know. They also have shoes for running and running on their website. So again, for all barefoot type shoes, Vivo is your one-stop shop for pretty much all the types of kicks you need. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, you guys got to head over to vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject. There you guys will see a code at the top. Make sure you guys enter that code and you'll save 15% off your order. Again, vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes uh just to jump back to that the carnivore-ness and stuff yeah that was fun

um a lot of people will go to that like very uh very strict elimination diet because they want to cure some like auto autoimmune issues and stuff and they've had tons of success with it uh how is that different as far as success rates with like the dolce diet and your style of eating you know in a way let's briefly let's let's use jordan peterson and michaela in a respectful but honest way that they had pushed forth Michaela's lion diet, which is a hybrid of the carnivore diet, which became popular at the same exact time that carnivore was trending. Okay. And Jordan and Michaela, they claim it solved and cured all their autoimmune issues. autoimmune issues. But Jordan's also spoke very openly about his severe pharmacological or pharmaceutical addiction and problems. And she's also been very open and honest about her own.

And knowing the data and knowing the science, I would say that it wasn't the lion diet or the carnivore diet that solved any of their issues. It was their ability to kick the dependency and get their body off of all those harmful drugs. And I think that they used this exclusionary diet as a proxy to highlight their transformation. And of course, it's monetized. It's very well monetized. And Jordan, I think, fans that flame a little bit too much, which is not fair. But then we take that into the whole carnivore realm. And the data does not support that the carnivore diet is any better than a single-ingredient whole food omnivorous diet, better than a single ingredient whole food omnivorous diet as far as reducing any sort of autoimmune issues it is simply removing the triggers of the autoimmune issues now by burning

the entire city down right you might get rid of the one crack house but we don't have to burn down the entire city that's great enough and that's what the carnivore diet and these exclusionary restrictive diets do and people are very passionate and they'll yell at me on this topic yeah it's an elimination diet and so you eliminated a lot of things and so most likely the processed foods and so on are probably part of the equation but maybe for a chad mendez or maybe for some other people that have had psoriasis or some other things, maybe there's other influences in the diet as well as could be beans or whatever that they have an aversion to that's causing an issue. And so therefore,

it looks like the carnivore diet came in to save the day, but potentially they could not only eat meat, they might be able to eat a couple of other things and be fine. Who knows? Exactly. And that's what the data supports. So, again, it's like the conflation of data that people use to build business models around instead of saying, hey, we need to find what the trigger is. Right? So oftentimes what we'll follow, you know, we'll advocate a form of an elimination diet for some people. And that will be more of the white food diet where white rice, white potato, white chicken, maybe egg whites.

So now it's more of a well-rounded meal. We'll have some melon typically in there. We'll try and get some berries, all things depending, maybe some banana, right? So we try and cover the majority of the food groups. And then we see like, well, hey, how's this working? Like all of a sudden everything goes away. So we've never seen the carnivore diet work exclusively. And we've had great success, very similar success with a much less invasive restriction of food. And most of the time, again, it's the synthetic toxic chemicals in the food

supply, right? Most people don't have inflammation because they're eating cantaloupe, right? It's not that. And that's the thing. And that's kind of why I needle Sean Baker a little bit. And I think he's got a better sense of humor about it. and maybe I make the point that people, they just need to stop with the dogma and get out of the cult for a second, and just really analyze the data in front of them, and then pressure test what people are saying. And some people are like, well, it's just easy for me. I don't have to think about it. All right. That mentality doesn't work very well in life,. Right. So like, how do you, who handles your taxes? Right. I don't want to think about that. Like these are some adult skills that we all have to develop. We need some accountability in our life, you know? And I think a part of our practice is, is really, you know, we say we walk the journey. We will, we want to

walk the journey with our clients and that's, you know, people we can reach just, you know, through microphones or people one-on-one we work with. And nothing is in a vacuum, not nutrition. So it's the way you live your life impacts everything. So it's like you're not going to change your nutrition plan, but you're a horrible husband or a horrible father or a horrible business person and think you're going to have a good life. Like you kind of have to use those same principles principles and you really need to do the self-work so you can be great in all aspects of life, right? It's like, I don't care about abs, people having abs.

Like if you want abs, like, hey, that's cool, but not at the expense of your family or your job or like your, you know, self-happiness, right? Because some people do that. It's like abs becomes the only thing that matters, let that it's like abs becomes the only thing that matters let's say or money becomes the only thing that matters and they burn everything else down as a result of so you know kind of a little long-winded but a great one though uh david goggins training tony ferguson i've seen you had some objections to that yeah and you know i feel like i've been

just such a critical um curmudgeon like the whole show, but let me, let me, let me give Goggins a little heat here. A lot of people build Goggins up as this, you know, amazing person and Goggins has done some amazing things. And he's very inspirational and who doesn't love watching David Goggins running down the street, shouting at the camera video. But at the same time, David Goggins needs to understand his limitations. David Goggins is not an MMA coach. David Goggins does not have experience training MMA athletes. And David Goggins, in part, is personally responsible

for Tony Ferguson's poor performance fighting Patti Pimlet in the UFC. That is a fight Tony could have and should have won if Tony was trained properly. What Goggins' style of training did not know. And I don't say Goggins didn't do it on purpose, but also there's an ego to this that I hope David hears this and takes a beat and appreciates is that the hammer is not always the tool for the job. And David has a hammer and that's it. And David used that hammer on Tony Ferguson and David broke Tony Ferguson. He broke him mentally and he broke him physically. They were performing this style of hell week five weeks before Tony stepped into the UFC octagon and fought for 15 minutes against an up-and-coming stud, right?

At the tail end of Tony's career, in the midst of a career-defining losing streak, right? Tony had a lot of weight on his back. lot of weight on his back. And what David did, David actually used his hammer and beat Tony into a hole so deep his recovery system could not get him out of. And you understand overreaching. Was Tony overtrained? Possibly. He has a tendency to overtrain. Now, whether it's classic overtraining syndrome, I don't know. I haven't been with them. Is it overreaching? A hundred percent, I as a coach could say. Now, I have the experience of working with athletes like Tony Ferguson. I do not have experience training Navy SEALs. Just as David Goggins needs to admit that he does not have the experience, the knowledge, the skills to

train an athlete like Tony Ferguson, I will admit I'm not going to walk on to a SEAL team and assume I'm going to teach these men what they need in order to go and perform to their level without having spent a large portion of my life understanding this. David, I think, falls into that same category where he trained Tony to be slow, right? Everything he did is slow. And when we look at MMA, MMA is fast. MMA is explosive. MMA is violent.

Everything we see what Tony did with David was slow and grueling and grinding and long. And just from an energy system perspective, David was training all of the wrong energy systems a month out. The prime part of the training peaking program is weeks six, five, and four. And then we start to lighten volume three, two, one, and peak out. Because all the inputs should already be there. Done. So what David did, he stepped in at the most important time, the most pivotal time peek out like because all the inputs should already be there done yeah so what david did

he stepped in at the most important time the most pivotal time of tony's training program and he completely ruined tony's training now this is i know i wasn't there right i'm not going to pretend like i was there but i've been in this game since the 90s working with combat athletes and i'm at the highest level i'm the most acc acclaimed MMA trainer in the sport with the awards to prove it. Right. So what I say, and this is not taking a shot at David, but also it's the same time he was applauded for training with Tony. And that's a shame because I would say David Goggins should apologize to Tony Ferguson publicly and take some of the heat off of Tony because now everyone in the world wants Tony Ferguson to retire and says he's washed up. And for a very large – to a very large degree, that's because of this slow training, grueling, monotonous training he had done with david i did love what you said

that you said um you think that it may uh play out to be uh something that is huge in toady ferguson's future working with david goggins i think that makes a lot of sense like just being around someone like david goggins is going to improve probably aspects of your life that maybe somebody might not grasp or understand in the intermediate. So maybe not the greatest for MMA, but maybe it'll be helpful later in life. Yeah. And that's a great point. And I did give David credit for that in that 10 years from now, Tony will look back at the time he trained with David Goggins and he survived hell week with David Goggins. And that will give him, I believe, a mental strength to persevere through other challenges in his life. But that was not

beneficial to Tony for a 15-minute glycotic activity, such as mixed martial arts combat. That was the exact opposite of what Tony should be doing at that very specific period of time. And it's unfortunate because I'm, I'm a fan of Tony. I like Tony. Um, and I, uh, I didn't know, you know, you never know who's going to win, but you just wanted to see him go out there and perform and Tony didn't't and he could have and take away this hell week in this style of training tony ferguson comes in you know i'll just 30 better sit easily easily what would have happened in that fight i don't know patty got tired at the end now tony's never been tired in a fight so what he did with goggins did not make him in better

shape tony's never been tired in a fight right maybe without this immune system or nervous system repression maybe tony's able to go out there and squeak it out in the very end of the fight who knows but we'll never know who's the freakiest athlete that you've ever worked with like seeing like recovery and just because sometimes don't make any sense you know and you're like i don't i don't even understand what's going on here Sometimes shit don't make any sense, you know, and you're like, I don't even understand what's going on here. I'll name two, and they're polar opposites. Quentin Rampage Jackson and Chael Sauna. Really?

Right. But these are the two freakiest athletes, natural-born athletes I've ever worked with. And I've worked with – Both great at talking trash, too. I mean, they're like – they're so similar, and they hate each other, right? I don't know about hate. But, so similar and they hate each other, right? I don't know about hate, but, you know, they were very competitive, right? So I know Chell doesn't hate anybody. I don't know about, you know, Quentin. He might hate Chell.

But they're so damn talented. I've seen them do things that no human can do, no human should be able to do. I've seen them fight in a way where they shouldn't be able to, to train in a manner that they shouldn't be able to, to perform against all odds that most people don't have the ability to do so. For like, from a physicality, I mean, Quentin is one of the strongest athletes I've ever worked with. and his power is just absolutely incredible his ability to just go pick people up slam on their head you know like you talked about that like uh you know farm boy strength like he has that he's not very talented in lifting weights but he's still one of the strongest humans i've ever been around right very heavy-handed with his

punches he puts his hands on you you are like this is not good right there's problems here you're gonna have some serious issues chael is also extremely strong he doesn't he might not look it a very he's got that greco-roman type of wrestling strength that you don't really understand until, like, he's got you. And Chael's level of athleticism is he's one of the fastest humans I've ever seen run, right? Put it that way. Like, just very— We got to pull some Chael. Yeah, I'm working on it.

Talented. I've seen Chael, like, back in a little, you know, secret, back in the the old team quest days you don't kiss and tell so back if i was hired as a head strength coach at team quest north in 2004 right and i was there until 2009 and that was the greatest room in the world during that era randy gator matt linlin chael son and um dan henderson evan tanner um you know and n, Nate Corey was just coming up. And I'm just like Chris Lieben and, you know, just like BJ Penn would come and Tim Silva would come and Jeremy Horn would come. Just like all these like legends like would come through. Chael Sonnen would beat them all with like a little wink in his eye.

Like he would like because he'd be there and like i i'm i'm very close with chael and i would watch him beating these guys and he'd just look over sometimes and he'd like wink like dude you're fighting randy couture man like you're fighting like these monsters and he would just he would destroy people in a way that made them look like they didn't know what they were doing right man that was so crazy the fight with uh anderson silva i mean he was so dominant in that fight it was that was a wild fight that that's when anderson was the best in the world and you saw i mean you got to see a glimmer of what i saw chael every day he dominated anderson like anderson didn't know how to fight right that's how good chael is every

single day all but the the final three seconds of that fight what's a big separator for you know we were talking about rampage and chael and these are both guys that i think um bones jones defeated yeah what do you think separates out someone like Bones Jones from everybody else? John, his limbs make him, now John's great. Like John's in that level. I never trained with John, so I can't say that, you know.

I understand. But he's at that level and I wish I could be in the room. I used to work with Carlos Condit, so I was in the room when John was training a little bit, but out of respect, I would always not watch John because I worked with competitors of him. And it's just courtesy.

But I was in the room and I would say we'd joke around and be friends and whatnot. But what makes John so challenging is his range. He's deceptively long. And he's very strong. He's, what, a 500, 600 hundred pound deadlifter at just over 200 pounds back in those days right this is before he was trained with stan he was still deadlifting five six plus right as a kind of gangly right light heavyweight right um also john has a level of confidence that is you he has a level of confidence you only find in undefeated athletes.

Because once an athlete takes that first loss, that confidence typically starts to fade away. And they become a little bit more protective. You become a little more reactive than proactive. And hopefully John still has that. Now, age sometimes takes that away too. But I think John was so successful for so long because he never tasted a loss. So he has no unit of comparison, right? So he would go out there and let it all hang out. And there's a level of unpredictability to that where when guys take a loss, all of a sudden you're like, oh, fuck, last time I threw that, it got me.

Fuck me up. I can only imagine. Right? So it kind of like mentally, I think at that level, there's a mentality. And the last piece of this, physically, they're all the same. Like every athlete you see in the UFC, like in the top five, top 10, they're the same. Some are a little taller, some a little stronger, some a little faster. But like if you put them on a video game board, like they'd all be a nine out of 10.

Well-rounded everywhere. They're just slightly different. It is their mentality that makes them excel. And also I would say the great ones, there is a level of compliance in their personal life that is all consuming, that propels them to be so successful. i use magneto's glasses as the analogy in that they have this crazy superpower right and that superpower is what makes them so damn great in there and that's that's not magneto um cyclops's glasses thank you and cyclops he can actually use his laser eyes and he can defeat Magneto and he can kill all the bad guys and he can, he can win the battle. But at the very same time, if he were to sneeze,

he can burn down a fucking orphanage. And these athletes have that same superpower that is also their greatest weakness. And they have to balance that, right? And the best of them can keep those glasses on and directed for the longer period of time. But usually they wind up burning down the orphanage at some point. And that's typically where you see it becomes a very dramatic fall. I mean, that's almost every sport, right? You see that. And, you know, very much so with these athletes. Amazing having you on the show today. Really appreciate it. So I guess all in all, you don't think the vegetables and plants are trying to kill us? No, people are trying to make money off of the unsuspecting good natured humans out there who just want to live better lives. And they're being abused by charismatic marketers.

live better lives and they're being abused by charismatic marketers. And that's, and I, that's the unfortunate thing to all this. Why? That's why I get so passionate. Like I want everyone to make money and live great lives, right? I don't care who you are. Everyone deserves, you know, happiness and abundance, but I want to protect the people at home that might not understand yet. They don't have the ability yet. And they just want to, because in my practice, so many people reach out to us and they're suffering. And like, I don't care about the abs. They are suffering because their life is not what they wanted it to be. They don't have the energy to get through their day. They're falling into a sexless marriage that they don't know how to recapture the intimacy that they once had. They're becoming, you know, a meme of their ancestors who pretty much died kind of horrible, early, untimely deaths. They're battling with debt and financial worries. Their children are more associated with, you know, tablets and other,

you know, pop culture icons than with what's happening inside their home. So these people kind of reach out struggling and it's the totality of the picture and they need some help and they're so confused, right? And I think nutrition again, because that's what I do. It's like my main focus is like the nutrition, the lifestyle intervention. It's like if we can then reclaim control over our food, well, then now we're getting that win, right? You start to feel a little bit better. You start to gain a little bit of confidence. All of a sudden, you've lost a few pounds.

Like you start walking with a little swagger. Maybe your pecker starts working a little bit better, right? You kind of give off this extra vibe. Maybe your wife is kind of starting to notice a little bit better, right? You know, you kind of give off this extra vibe. Maybe your wife is kind of starting to, you know, notice a little bit, right? You're doing the things you say. Your kids start to like look up to you maybe a little bit more.

You're now more in control. So it's this long-term approach to people reclaiming their life. And I believe it all starts with nutrition because that's what we do all day, every day, right? You're feeding yourself, you're stuffing your face and you're either, and let's go very binary. You're either manifesting health or disease. You're either getting better or worse. So then if you could simply look at it like that, every decision you make is a step closer or farther, especially in the very beginning. If you simply look at it like

that, it becomes very easy to just make better decisions. No decision will ever be perfect. No day will ever be perfect. Nothing will ever be perfect. But we can always make progress. Before we do the outro, I have to ask you this question because you mentioned it,

and then Dan Garner also mentioned it yesterday. Dan Garner worked with Sugar Sean, and he mentioned that he doesn't, like he tries to get on top of his athletes to not watch porn. You mentioned porn, and this is interesting because like you're another coach and you're someone who takes this seriously.

What did you mean? What is it? Why is it something that people should be careful with? Well, porn is a vice and it's very insidious, especially with young men. And, you know, we can go down a few different tracks on this. Like one of which is for the average man looking at porn right now, he is creating a disaffected association with interpersonal relationships. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. This is now harming his future prospects in developing a strong bond with a woman that he can then have a committed relationship, get married, have children, build a family, move the species forward. So I'm pretty concerned with that, right? Because my children have to grow up in this world. The more people focus on porn, usually it's escape. It's like food. So it's an escapism. That's true. Right? People will resort to porn because they're anxious, they're scared, they're lonely, they're frustrated, they feel unloved, they feel neglected. So they'll go and swipe porn or like softcore porn or Only fans, right, as a means of maybe connection, but also to hide away from what the bigger issue is. And that's what needs to be addressed. So by

escaping into porn or food or something else, right, you're avoiding what the real issue is. Now, you know, what, I don't know the context of what Dan was saying to Sean, but at the same time, I say, it's not just for athletes, it's for all humans. Like the power of porn is, is real. And we all understand that, like that type of reptilian response to even like a billboard with an attractive, you know, lady on it, let's say, or like something that I try to do is like, if I see like a good looking woman that I'm attracted to, like I, just like the Kit Kat story, I force myself to not look right. You know, we've been in the coffee shop where the little cute barista, she has to go and like pick up, you know, the cups behind the counter. And a lot of guys, they're going to like try and position themselves

so they can get that fleeting look. Well, I also say like as you get a little older, you're just like, this ain't a good look. You know, I'm 47 years old and that girl's 20. So I'm just, she's cute. She's hot. I ain't going to look. I ain't going to look.

I'm not going to do it. And in that, there's a level of self-control and it is a, a, a, a form of tempering. And I teach this men's group and we talk about this as a means to temper ourself against the true distractions and challenges in life. Like if I can't not open my phone when I'm standing in line at the cafe, like, do you honestly think I have the wherewithal to resist other temptations in my life? How many times you walk into a cafe and people are just on their phone? It's a 30 second line. There's nothing like you can't even open your phone fast enough, right? So it's catching ourself. And I like to say, so it's a micro action that we can start to like temper our soul against these type of default actions that weaken us.

So porn falls into that. And I'm most concerned with the interpersonal relationship, the destruction of that, where most guys, they can't just walk up to a pretty girl and say, hey, what's your name? My name's Mike. Nice to meet you. Whatever, because I grew up, and you too, Mark, we're in the last part of the generation

that we actually had to talk to women. This country's only hope. Right? We are. I'm kidding. It's not just sending a DM saying, hey, what's up? What's up?

Here's my dick, right? What do you think, baby? Right? We are. I'm kidding. It's not just sending a DM saying, hey, what's up? What's up? Here's my dick. Right? What do you think, baby? Right? But it's like, and there's something that more is needed. So I think on that, it's self-control. More than anything else, it's self-control. Yeah.

Gotcha. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.