Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1920: The Best Foods to Build Muscle, Melt Fat & Fight Chronic Disease With Stan Efferding

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Stan Efferding about the mindset and diet for long-term fat loss and health. The importance of compliance, protein, and developing good behaviors in your pursuit to build muscle and lose body fat. (1:37) How do I manage my hunger levels? (21:54) Addressing the carnivore diet and its faults. (32:54) Taking the victim mentality out of the obesity epidemic conversation. (41:56) Strength is never weakness; weakness is never strength. (48:30) His take on the creatine boom. (50:26) When diets/studies become politized. (51:52) The value of having red meat in your diet. (1:02:40) How the best diet/exercise is the one you will follow. (1:05:03) Is the strength training revolution here? (1:08:33) How has his training evolved in his 50s? (1:21:22) Why he believes in providing as much free content as possible to his community. (1:28:28) How has training played a role in making millions of dollars for him? (1:31:24) Vertical Kids Power Hour. (1:35:38) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit SleepMe for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! October Promotion: MAPS Symmetry or MAPS Strong HALF OFF! **Promo code OCTOBER50 at checkout** Stan Efferding - Impact Theory RHINO'S RHANT - TEN TALKS: “What’s the Best Diet?” Semaglutide: uses, dosage, side effects, brands   90 Day Challenge | Stanefferding.com Walking after eating: How to reap the benefits FODMAP Diet: What You Need to Know Samoan obesity epidemic starts at birth | News from Brown Mind Pump #1592: The 30 Day Diet Experiment That Launched An Empire With Melissa Urban Rhinos Rhants #16 - The REAL POISON that's killing us The heretical Minnesota heart study: When science stops asking questions Association of Grip Strength With Risk of All-Cause Mortality, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Cancer in Community-Dwelling Populations: A Meta-analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies Vertical Diet | By Stan Efferding Vertical Kids Power Hour Stronger Kids | United States | KidStrong Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest/People Mentioned Stan “Rhino” Efferding (@stanefferding) Instagram Tom Bilyeu (@tombilyeu) Instagram Matt Walker (@drmattwalker) Instagram IFBB LEGEND FLEX WHEELER (officialflexwheeler) Instagram Mark Bell (@marksmellybell) Instagram Peter Attia (@peterattiamd) Instagram Shawn Baker MD (@shawnbaker1967) Instagram Melissa Urban | Whole30 (@melissau) Instagram Dr. Pat Davidson Layne Norton, Ph.D. (@biolayne) Instagram Jon Jones (@jonnybones) Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? We brought them back by popular demand, Stan Effarding today on our show talking about the best foods for building muscle, longevity, burning body fat, power, strength, all those things. This guy's amazing. Last time he was on was a long time ago. One of our most listened two episodes, we brought

him back. He's one of the strongest guys I've ever met in my entire life. He's also like 50-something years old, doesn't make any sense. Anyway, due to his smartest heck, we know you're going to love this episode. By the way, you can find him on Instagram. Just look him up, stand efforting, okay? The white rhino, great guy. Anyway, this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors. Sleep me. So, Sleep me makes products that go on your bed.

So, it's like a pad that goes on your bed underneath your sheets that cools or warms your bed and is controlled. It controls the temperature to maximize your sleep quality. This is a game changer. You gotta check their products out. Go to sleep.me-pump-30. And you can save 25% off the purchase

of any new doc probe, cube, or uler sleep system. This is only for my pump listeners. Also, we gotta sail going on right now. Maps symmetry is 50% off, and maps strong is 50% off. Both great workout programs. Go check them out. Go to maps fitness products.com and use the code October 50 for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes the show. Stay on welcome back to the show, man. Always great to have you on. We love what you do. I want to start out by talking about just something real basic, like the best, let's start with some of the best foods.

Somebody could eat for muscle, maintain a lean, healthy physique, for longevity, generally speaking, what are some of those foods? Boy, sounds basic, but it's gonna take me a minute to get there. Okay. Because you kind of got to meet the client where they're at, right? So I said, what's the best diet the one you'll follow? And I kind of have to start there because there is no best food.

There's dietary patterns that I think are more important. There's calories, obviously, if your client's got metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, you know, high lipids, then you're considering weight loss, first and foremost, out of the gate, as a triage, right? You got a guy that comes into the emergency room and he's got a bullet wound, you're not down there clipping his toenails, okay?. I just got lambasted from my Tom Billiou conversation about the McDonald's diet and Merrick posted, reposted it. It had over 3 million views and thousands of comments and people were just ripping it

apart because I said that 95% of health benefits are realized simply from weight loss itself, your respective of diet. The weight loss is really the primary goal. So if you're asking me for general health, for somebody with some presenting with some sort of metabolic syndrome, as mentioned, then weight loss is the first goal. Now there's obviously we have to be in a calorie deficit

to achieve a weight loss. And there's a number of ways to do that through calorie restriction increased workload or combination of the two. And we see that calorie restriction is probably the preferable choice because more exercises and equal more weight loss because of the compensation problem

where people go out and crush themselves on workouts and then they start sitting more and eating more. But generally speaking, we'll start with, you know, as far as dietary patterns go, it's cholesterol or it's Calories. Yeah, let me pause you for a second because I want to back you up because the data is very clear on this. When you look at diets across the board, if the calories are low enough and of course and you know, correct me if you or if you think a you know, you disagree, but of course there's there's

nutrient Essentials that need to be met, right? There's essential nutrients, but aside from that, that's a different conversation. That's a second conversation. Right, so but if calories are low, what you see is you see health benefits. This is why you see studies on keto diet, carnivore diet, vegan diet, mediterranean diet.

I mean, any diet, if you get someone to lose weight, you do see health benefits. Now there's more to it. I think we're oversimplifying, right? Because, of course, it influence how you feel and behaviors and stuff. But what you're saying is 100% true. And I know that pisses people off. But there's been professors and people who have actually shown this and said, hey, all

eat fast food. And I'll show you that I can improve all my markers. Yeah. Well, and that's absolutely true. And that's why I talked about the respect to McDonald's diet. We have the Twinkies diet. And there's a whole host of 7-11 diet and the potato diets. And as long as they can achieve a calorie deficit, actually when you do the research, we look at the research suggests that the most effective diet for

the shortest term reversal or regression of type 2 diabetes is a 800 calorie liquid diet. None of us would, and this is what I said five years ago in my obesity rant, when I did the rhinos rant on YouTube about the fact that it's population in the world. I was referencing my family in Samoa, my wife's family, and I said that the calorie deficit was the critical factor, but I said I would never recommend a McDonald's diet. That's the part that gets cut off. Yeah, you know, doesn't make the full internet clip. Right. Everybody watches that 60 second clip and then that part gets cut off.

Right. For a host of reasons, but the fact still remains that the deficit itself results in the reversal of just about everything. And people say, well, what about their cholesterol? Well, we see this even with keto diets, high saturated fat keto diets. If there's weight loss, we'll see an initial reduction in LDL. Now, long-term, you don't want high saturated fat in your diets, and that's where, you know, those considerations can be made. But at least initially, if you want to lower your blood pressure and you want to

lower your cholesterol and you want to, you know, improve your blood sugars, weight loss for those people who have those issues, metabolic syndrome, which is north of 70% of the population, has some degree of overweight or obesity that's resulting in insulin resistance. So again, for the vast majority of folks, I'm looking at calories or king, I want to lose weight, and then I'm start to make other considerations. So those other considerations are adherence would be second. Very important, right? Because one of the biggest challenges with just cutting calories. So someone might listen to a clip of you talking about, oh, the data says, I just got to cut

my calories. But if it's a diet that makes you feel like crap or you don't like it, it's not going to work for you. And you said that earlier, the diet that you'll follow is the best diet. 100%. Yeah, I said that 800 calorie liquid diets within seven to 10 days is going to work for you. And you said that earlier, the diet that you'll follow is the best diet. 100 percent? Yeah. I said that 800 calorie liquid diets within seven to 10 days is going to see a significant reduction in your type 2 diabetes risk.

And so you'll have improved your health. Can you maintain it? What are your energy levels like? What's your satiety like? That becomes the problem. And then you're talking about things like potentially lean muscle mass loss, which would require you to start talking about macros and exercise. Now you've got to have sufficient protein in the diet and probably some sort of resistance training.

I don't know why it always has to be kind of a dichotomous choice, an either-or diet or exercise. It's always both. And that's why we try and comprehensively put together a package of lifestyle changes for folks that would result in the most optimal change. Certainly a little bit of weight loss, some more exercise, some resistance training, optimizing the micronutrient value of the foods, long term, that's going to give them a better weight loss maintenance result. So after we talk about calories and the menu, we jump in there and talk about, certainly compliance is right up there.

And we're talking about protein. Are you getting sufficient proteins? You're not losing lean muscle mass. And obviously, we're, you know, if you want to shoot for a macro amount, then we're going to, you know, we're talking about probably a gram per pound of lean weight or goal weight, you know, point eight per current weight. And that's going to vary depending on the amount of obesity that individual has. We don't want to match, you know, point eight to somebody who's 40 BMI.

So he's a lean body mass subtracted body or he said, or goal weight. I mean, you got somebody who's 300 pounds, they normally want to be down to 200 or 250. Yeah. So 200 grams of protein. Yeah. You know, I hate being so vague. You kind of got to be, if you want to be accurate, because it doesn't apply the same to everybody across the board. At the same time, I want listeners who are trying to lose weight to have a pretty easy to

navigate higher key of most, at least, important things to concern themselves with. We said that, you know, try and get into calorie deficit. So you do your little BMR calculator on the internet and plug in your weight and your workload and it gives you a number. And that's an estimate to start at. And the next thing you wanna shoot for after you have that kind of daily calorie number

is to try and fix your protein first. And I'll fix that. Let's just say a gram per pound of goal weight. It's a pretty reasonable number. I'd assume that would be pretty near your lean weight, which your goal would be. And that, you know, there's a whole host of things. Obviously, it lends itself better to preserving lean muscle tissue, although the weight lifting stimulus, as we're seeing from Stuphillips research that he's referenced recently, is probably as are more important than the amount of protein

because he's had some pretty limited proteins. They may be 0.5 grams protein per pound of lean mass. Still be able to retain their lean mass if they were training hard enough. I'd rather eat a little more and train at a sufficient level that's sustainable because as mentioned earlier you start crushing people on workouts. Not only is it such a huge departure from the regular daily schedule or habits, but it's not very likely to become a long-term lifestyle. Not only that, but then you're also theoretically you're hoping that if and when the time comes when you do overeat a little bit that some of those

extra calories get partitioned to building muscle, right? They go to work absolutely. Yeah, I mean that would be the goal long-term is to have sufficient muscles so that you You're insulin sensitive and you can and you include some carbohydrates in your diet and not feel Grappie or be subject to that. You know, let me let's back up for just a second See slow going isn't it? No, you wanted great. You wanted some foods, we have to do a new one. No, no, that's not true. I mean, we actually answering it. I mean, I love telling the audience

because we're so transparent in our show that when we first started this conversation, we're always guided by the people who run our channels and like, hey, these topics, this is what we get people to click on it. And so of course, it's gonna start off with that. But then if you really know your shit, it's gonna be nuanced every answer should be there and hold it for one more second We'll get there because my clients demand of me stand just tell me what to do of course

Here on this show amongst this broad audience. I want to make sure we get there I'm gonna tell you what I think you should eat But I want you to understand that that's not the only way to do it And there's the the criterion of the priorities that you should consider it but I want you to understand that that's not the only way to do it. And there's the criterion of the priorities that you should consider it when you get to that. There's no order operation there. Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, oh, so do you notice patterns of diets

that people tend to have the hardest time sticking to? I do. Yeah, and what do those patterns tend to look like? Yeah, and I should say, a lot of folks talk about dieting. I've been a professional dieter on my life you know I've gained and lost well over a thousand pounds throughout my career bulking up to 300 bills to to power lift and dieting down to single digit body fat to to to compete in bodybuilding and I've trained people on my life I was a trainer in in college to to you know to get by and studied exercise science, worked in gyms, was a coach.

I own a gym now, I've own multiple gyms over the years, I train people now. And we just started a 90 day fit challenge that over 200 people entered and they're all, dad, bods, and soccer moms, Gen Pop people, these aren't athletes. I know I always get the accolades from training the famous athletes

and people associate me with that. But the fact that there is a vast majority of people I train or are weight loss people. So rephrase the question or ask the question again, because I just got lost as to it. Yeah, no, it's patterns that you notice. Okay. It's so important to be able to stick to and hear to something. Do you notice patterns and diets where you're like, okay, yes, the calorie difference is going to be there.

But these types of patterns tend to lead to people falling off. Yeah, two big of changes right out of the gate, as I mentioned with training, when you try and completely change somebody's diet and you throw them into that guru, bodybuilder, bikini girl diet with egg whites and tilapia and chicken breast and broccoli and a scoop of peanut butter, which becomes a shovelful of peanut butter

by the end of the diet. That is a pretty good recipe for failure. And so I usually ask my clients, I send them a detailed questionnaire and ask them what they like to eat. I give them some scores as to a whole list of foods, what do you prefer, what do you not enjoy. I wouldn't want to include dietary items

in diet recommendations that were things that they absolutely despised or couldn't stomach. And so I asked them what they want to eat first. And then I try and, again, as part of this slow transfer from where they're at to where they want to be, it's not zero to 100, zero to one, one to two. You know, if they're sitting on a couch all day watching TV, if you just get up and take a walk or two, if they're drinking sugar, sweetened beverages, if you can just get them to a diet soda,

that's a significant change. And you can see some weight loss. Probably the, as mentioned, we talked about calories in general. The next thing I'm really looking at beyond compliance as kind of a global metric is protein. And what I find is, particularly with women, they vastly under consume protein, particularly for breakfast, which now we're seeing all the research.

Blood sugar and insulin all of a sudden. Yeah, remember everything was intermittent fasting, skipping breakfast. Now it's early time restricted feeding all of a sudden. I think it was some five years ago when I did that Iceland seminar. I said, eat like a king for breakfast, a prince for lunch, and a popper for dinner. Was it jackalwing that said that first? Yeah, I think so, yes. That's another thing that's important is that we see these trends come and go and none

of this is new. Even with the vertical diet, I've said a lot of this stuff was around in the 60s with Arnold and Vince Garanda, who was talking about the kind of protein sources and that that they should be eating. I never claim to invent things. From my personal experience and that of my clients and then from the literature that I think is most widely accepted and understanding there's a study to support, you know, just about any opinion in this industry. But that doesn't mean they're all equivalent in terms of whether or not, you know, the vast majority of the industry or I think the academics that we've got a consensus on these things. So I chase protein and I chase a big protein breakfast right out of the gate would be the best. And now we're seeing that's important for chrono nutrition. We're seeing that's important for blood sugar control and appetite control

and subsequent meals throughout the day, not just the breakfast for lean mass retention out the day, not just the breakfast for lean mass retention and stopping the catabolism from the extended overnight absence of eating. So, breakfast seems to be the big meal. And so I'll tell most of the ladies that I talked to in particular, guys tend to eat more and they tend to trend towards higher protein foods generally, so it's not as big an issue. But if you tell them that you want them to get 30 plus and maybe 40 grams of protein for breakfast, they're a long ways off, because generally they're eating like one bag in a bagel. You know, and some like, yeah, you're right.

I'm like, that's six grams. Yeah. Where do we get the other 25 to 35 from? So I have to show them a host of different options and ways to make that happen. I need this many ounces of a meat source, whether it's chicken or fish or eggs or even yogurt. And once they see the size of that,

and I guess initially the impression would be that that's a lot of food. But the calorie density of a lean protein is very minimal as compared to even one of those muffins at Starbucks might be 700 or 800 calories. But 40 grams of protein is 160 calories. And so if I can get them to that 40 grams with a lean source, maybe a fat-free Greek yogurt, maybe a 96-4B for a top-servoying steak or some chicken brass or blending an egg white combo, but just so they understand the quantity

for that. So they were finally starting to slowly get to the original question that was asked as what kind of foods I recommend. And it would be low calorie density, high protein. I usually kind of shoot for two to one protein to fat ratio, generally speaking, if they want to quickly look at a label or, you know, check a menu on a restaurant. That's kind of where I start at. And then, I guess, secondarily, I'm looking at satiety, which protein lends itself well to that. Because the number one people fail on diets is hunger. I mean, that's really it. And we see that in spades now with the new diet medication that's largely promoted, the

semiglutide. That's true. Yeah. You can mean that's what it does. That's all it does. Yeah. It's not a fat runner. No.

It makes you eat less. It makes you eat less. Period. And so if we can use the tools available to us without the need of medication and not suggesting some of the gluteitis into a viable option for those people who need it, but at $1,000 a month, there's certainly a very good entry there. I would suggest that we would use every tool available for satiety. And then I have this satiety list.

And when in my 90-day challenge, that was one of the first things I sent out. I said, here's a list of tools you have in your toolbox. They're going to help you to become satiated. And here's some things that might actually add to your hunger. And we want to try and curb those things. And so I kind of go down the list of things for satiation. And eating a high protein breakfast, getting a significant sleep is kind of even before the breakfast. People who sleep less tend to have higher grown hormone release and

are just hungry during the day. Plus I also think just being up 18 plus hours a day gives you more opportunity to get hungry and have another meal, especially as it gets into the evening. So the longer you sleep, the less hours you're awake, the more likely it is you'll be able to satiate yourself with that three meals that your most people probably trend towards. And then those are high protein meals, and now we've got satiety. Protein, obviously, the high-thermic effect of food, the satiety benefit. Fiber is, you know, throwing plenty of fiber, eat more oats. There's a couple of vegetables fruits.

There's a couple of foods that are on this high-satiety index, which is an index that has measured how people respond to certain foods from how long they stay hungry. And that's like potatoes, boiled potatoes and oranges. They're like at the highest of the index. If I throw boiled potatoes in with a high lean protein source and maybe a salad and a couple of pieces of fruit, people tend to be satiated longer.

We see this in research on, say, women with PCOS. They just tend to be, have leptin resistance. They have more visceral fat, and that central adiposity results in interruption in leptin and hunger signals. So they're hungry more often. And we used to think that they had a lower basal metabolic rate, or metabolism was slower, but in fact, they do just eat more. And it's not, and you hate blaming the victim,

it's not a matter, this isn't a discipline issue, it's isn't a willpower issue, that's not a good strategy. They've got all the hunger drivers. 100%. I couldn't, I've dieted for bodybuilding shows as we've all dieted. You get down to single-digit body fat and that's all you think about this food.

Yeah, yeah. I can remember times going to bed at night and I body fat and that's all you think about this food. Yeah, yeah. I can remember times going to bed at night and I'm just dreaming, I could see my pizza being me. Oh, that's so funny. I'll have to, I have dreams. I didn't dream about food until I competed. Yeah, it was never a thing for my entire life. I never dreamt about food until I competed

and then became a regular teacher. Yeah, and your wife's just pissed because she'll be next to you but naked and you're like, no, I'm hungry. I'm thinking about food. That just becomes not even a consideration. Some of that might be the lower testosterone from the calorie restriction, etc. But I used to work in a pizza place when I was a teenager. I could actually visually see the pizza going through the conveyor and the pepperoni curling

and browning on the edges. And the cheese bubbling, you know. And those are the dreams I'd have. I remember one time I put all my friends in the car and I drove up to Seattle and got a brick oven pizza up there and watched them all eat it. Yeah, just so I could eat and have that. Yeah, I didn't have any because I was on a diet.

You know, I had my little chicken breast and what I had. I'd take a bite and then breathe on me. And they were described. They were just astounded that they were like, sure, you know what, I'm like, yeah, I do. But the point is that we have to be empathetic, sympathetic to the fact that this isn't a willpower issue.

These aren't undisciplined people. They just have hunger cues that a lot of us who claim to be more disciplined simply don't have, probably because we tend to eat more protein, tend to eat more whole foods. You know, I think that's, by the way, what you're saying, I think it's very good to talk about

because then people can go to the next step, which is, okay, I have the strong hunger drivers. Well, what can I do that'll lower versus, it's just willpower. And now I don't change it. I get to where the impetus, where the desire lessons. Right? How it's just, it's manageable hunger, it's not hanger.

And that's what we'd like to do is get them there. And as I mentioned, if you've got visceral out of posity and you've got poor sleep and sleep apnea, I mean, you've got to go all in on that first. If you've got, you know, insufficient lean body mass, you've got to go all in on those things first. You got to get a CPAP, get your sleep fix. You've got to obviously lose as much visceral fat as you can, as quickly as you can to get yourself in a position where you're even have a fighting chance. And then use these tools, the higher protein to go deeper on that stand,

because that's something that it took me a long time to actually connect these dots and I vividly remember what house when it happened, and like finally making this connection. And that was some of the most challenging times that I ever had with fighting off cravings was when I was in a diet and when I had poor sleep, like just a rough night that night and then the next day,

I mean, I could have been so, I was consistent on the diet, dial workouts, everything's perfect, not even really thinking that bad about other foods, I'm happy with my content with my healthy choices, then also I had a rough night and then the next day, all I'm thinking about is bad. That's what we talked about with the hormones signaling. Your body releases growling.

And that's, and you just become voraciously hungry. It's even worse than that. You guys have heard me say before, if you're waking up at 4 a.m. to do fasted cardio after five hours of sleep, you're stepping over a hundred dollar bills to pick up nickels because. Well, good analogy.

Very good point. Waking up after a short sleep and then training is counterproductive because you lose more muscle than fat. Your body becomes stingy with the fat and will burn the muscle preferentially as part of its defense mechanisms. It's Dr. Matthew Walker's research that he's spoken about many times.

And so I'm really cautious. I would much rather you get the sleep. And that's why I don't assign, and this is kind of an aside, I don't assign cardio to my clients, including competitive clients. I don't assign like a 40 minute cardio session, not terribly effective, not terribly enjoyable,

certainly not sustainable. You don't see anybody, you know, too many barriers to entry. I gotta get changed, I gotta get my car, I gotta go to the gym, I gotta put 40 minutes in this treadmill. With a career and families and other obligations, that's the first thing that goes by the wayside. I agree, can I get that stimulus

and far more effectively and more sustainably from somewhere else and hence there, you know, it's the 10 minute walks, which everybody's heard me talk about ad nauseam, but it replaces that 40 minutes of cardio. The timing of it post meal lends itself better to insulin control, the post-prandial glycemia elevations, digestion. It's more convenient. It's something that you can do in a busy day, whether it's walking the kids to school or, you know, at night before bed, just taking a brisk 10 minute

walk. If you set, again, setting taking a brisk, 10 minute walk. If you set, again, setting yourself up for failure, if the proposal is that you're going to do a 30 or 40 minute cardio session a day, where does that fit in and how sustainable is it? You're also attaching it to a behavior and habit that you already have, which all the research is very clear on the success rate of that, which I think is the magical part of the 10 minute walk. You know, it took me a long, so training clients, you know, a long it took me to figure that out,

to figure out that like, no, instead of doing 30 minutes and 40 minutes of cardio, I just walked 10 minutes after. Now, how long did it take you to figure that? Because I'm assuming in your 20s, maybe 30s, you were like, oh yeah, get on the treadmill twice a day, 30 minutes. How long did it take you to piece that together?

Well, remember I was powerlifting. So the concept back then was, don't run if you can walk, don't stand if you can sit and don't stay awake if you can sleep. I just shut it down. I've got to check out the power. There's many calories that you can and it didn't matter what kind of calories you were. Both of those things were dead wrong. I obviously don't recommend any of that. I think we all at one point lived by that.

Yeah, the dirty bulking, not just the excess calories leading to excess body fat, but the amount of saturated fat I would consume with ice cream and fatty meats and all that kind of stuff. But, and with bodybuilding, I found that the excessive cardio for me had a bit of an interference effect, form follows function, my body on a treadmill, my legs would start to shrink.

effect, you know, form follows function, my body on a treadmill, my legs would start to shrink. And I would lose muscle mass going into a bodybuilding show. And again, it just wasn't terribly sustainable. So in 2009, when I was trained with Flex Wheeler, he didn't remember to do any cardio, zero. One year prior, I did a ton of cardio and I did chicken breast and egg whites. And that's when I had the pizza dreams. And I weighed in it to 23 and won the Emerald Cup in Seattle in 2008. The train with Flex Wheeler, and this was about six months of the whole six or seven months of the whole process. The last three I spent with him in here in San Jose. Matter of fact, I stayed at the same hotel last night. It's kind of nostalgic. Right across from the 24-hour fitness that I trained out every day for three months and lived there that, I forget what it was

called at the time. Its name has changed, but it had a full kitchen and two bedrooms and me and Keith Williams trained with flex. One of the things I remember from that time is when you're dieting for a show and he would have a stop in at Carl's Jr. Because he wasn't dieting and get him a breakfast and he would get those crisp cut fries. Oh God. Those are so good. Those things smell amazing and he's sitting there in the car eating these on our way to the gym and Keith and I are just like White knuckle and like this, you know, but we were eating a lot.

He had to eat almost four pounds of top-sirtling steak a day. Wow. About six meals a day, ten ounces a meal, cooked on a foreman grill. You know how tough that stuff is? It's like eating leather. And two years of my life was on the foreman grill. Yeah. So where did I go off?

Where did I lose track here? I was doing it. Well, just when you piece together, the walks instead of doing it. So he had me do no cardio and I weighed in, this I was doing it. Well, just when you piece together, that's just the walks instead of doing it. So he had me do no cardio, and I weighed in, this is one year later, I was 223 on the Emerald Cup stage, and I won the overall the Emerald Cup. One year later, it massed from the Ashles,

I weighed in at 252, in really similar condition. 30 more pounds, and just damn near as a lean body mass. Yeah, but it wasn't a story of how much muscle I gained. It was a story of how much fat or her much muscle I didn't lose. Yeah, and that's the key, by the way. So anybody listening right now who has no, they just don't care about being a body builder or being that big or whatever,

the lesson here is you can get lean and lose less muscle. And you don't wanna lose muscle. That's your fast learning machinery. 100%. I was 270 before both of those perhaps. Wow. So the other one you lost all you went all the way down to 223 and this one just down. Very common. I can't remember the name of the gentleman. It was a long time ago who was I mean he would bulk up to 300 plus like Lee Priest season and Lee Priest you

that to 36 and just wouldn't look very good. It was just, you know, you lose a lot of muscle in the process. So you're right. You don't want to gain too much fat in your gain phases and you don't want to lose muscle in your loss phases. You just have to be a little more patient, a little more gradual about it. So to keep this story going, I learned that in the absence of cardio, I was still able to get really lean

and the workouts, I mean, we were working out twice a day with high volume and short rest periods Plenty sufficient for me to have a significant, you know cardiovascular health from that I mean it was extraordinary the amount of volume flex put us through with 20 reps sets of two minute rest squatting down between Sets, I mean the it was challenging. We were in deep water a lot So I went in a train with Mark Bell And we started squatting heavy, you know, initially of course from dining down, I wasn't that strong, but within just matter

a few weeks, especially from eating and getting my weight back up, you know, I was able to start getting stronger. And we were squatting some weeks over 800 pounds, a pretty consistently week after week. And I wasn't recovering because I stopped the movement. I was just resting. I was applying my 90s mentality, and I would just go home and just sit and lay there. And I would have dorms for three or four days. And so I got a recumbent bike,

and I put it in my hotel room. It was up in Sacramento, where I was trained with Mark. And I started immediately, Sunday after we would train, that evening, I would ride the recumbent bike for 10 minutes. And why the recumbent bike overwalking was just

because it was a great, a range of motion, less impact on my knees. It was real low impact, all concentric. And I could do little hit session. I could bike against modest tension for 50 seconds reasonably fast and then rest for 10 or 15. And do 10 of those. And I started doing them three times a day.

I wake up the next morning and do that, next afternoon and do that, and evening and do that. And I found that my dorms would go away within easily 48 hours. Yes, that was to accelerate recovery. A hundred percent. Yep. And my appetite was better, which was important. Meaning in that instance, which is kind of a dual benefit to the 10 minute walks

or bikes, is that it helped me digest my food faster, but also we see that people who get their six to 10,000 steps a day have a better satiety effect for people who are doing weight loss. As opposed to overtraining and having that compensatory, get hungry and sit more effect. It's kind of a, that's just that walking somewhere around, I don't know what the measurement is, five, six thousand steps

kind of lends itself well as one of the tools in the toolbox for satiety is to take those walks. So I think that the so much value that the average person can learn from bodybuilding, that they don't pay attention to because they look at a bodybuilding, they see an extreme body, right? They look at the highest level of building muscle and getting shredded and they say,

okay, I don't want to look anything like that or that's just unachievable for me. And so I'm not going to listen to anything, but what bodybuilders have done have mastered the art of maintaining muscle and keeping a fast metabolism. Bodybuilders. Which is ironic because that's what the pursuit of every client comes to you.

They say I want to be in better shape and you could say, hey, would you like a faster metabolism, look better, feel better? And of course they would all say, yes. And I chuckle a little because that gets people to thinking, I don't want to look like that. I'm like, look. You don't wake up one morning. Oh my God, I'm Ronnie Coleman.

What happened? You know, I swore us too hard yesterday. It is, I've tried, and it doesn't happen. My first bodybuilding show in 1986, I was 158 pounds, soaking wet in the novice lightweight class. It took me a long, long time, and it's years and years and years of force feeding and crushing what it has.

I mean, the idea that somehow you're going to wake up when morning will be like, oh, I went too far. It just doesn't happen. Yeah, but the lessons are great because for the average person, what they can learn from bodybuilding pursuits is how to do less work, get leaner and have a faster metabolism, which you know, if you think of the context of modern life, you know, if you go 10,000 years ago, you don't have a faster metabolism, which, you know, if you think of the context of modern life, you know, if you go 10,000 years ago, you don't want a fast metabolism, right? You want a slow metabolism so you can be efficient.

Right. But now, if you want to maintain your health, we'll buffer it, or one of the best buffers you can have is to have muscle and be able to burn it off just sitting there. What you just said has started to crest now amongst all of the longevity people. Well, there's a couple of holdouts, Dr. Bartlett-Balter Longo and David Sinclair, neither of which could fight themselves out of a wet paper bag, or 120 pounds of whispy noodle. And they're the only ones still saying, you know, restrict protein because M-torn, because mice, but everyone else, you know, even Dr. Peter Tew was, you know, was fully invested

in ultra-indurance athletics and the keto intermittent fast, multiple day fast, called an obsession at this point, which she's that kind of guy, genius brilliant guy. And I talked briefly before we came on, and I said, look, I've been doing this for well over 30 years. I don't, I don't, you know, claim to be any smarter than any of these people,

but I've been there before, you know, I've seen it, I've done it, I've had hundreds of not thousands of clients now that we've witnessed. I'm just patient, you know, I just see these things come around over and over again. Somebody's pissing on keto sticks for three years straight and showing you the results. I just wait. Patiently wait and sure enough, they all come around eventually. You know, I went on They all come around eventually. You know, I went on Paul Saladino's podcast and told him about the great benefits of carbohydrates and how, yes, I eat fruit and even white rice because I want to crush fantastic workouts and have pumps and build muscle and be strong.

And he was fully keto, carnivore, intermittent fast at the time. And now look, he's eating carbs, particularly around workouts. Yeah, fruit, nutty. My muscles podcast. I love Mike, brilliant guy, smarter than me, but I sat there on his podcast some years ago when he was keto and intermittent fast and I said, look, you can get to the top of the Empire State Building using the stairs. I'm taking the elevator. And if you want to get the most out of your workouts, anaerobicobic lifting, you're gonna wanna consume some carbs. So now, Mike consumes carbs around workouts.

They all do now. The only holdout is, who is it? Sinclair? No, why is it named, Carnivore.com. Oh, I know, yeah, I don't remember his name. Oh, oh, doc, oh, I feel, I remember his name. Oh, oh, Doc. I feel terrible.

I know. We've had him on here. Yeah, I'm on broadcast. Why am I losing it? Big, big guy too. What's the, I cannot. He makes the row. I cannot think he was the right now.

Is he held up still completely? He's only been still steak still rib eyes every day. You know, I'll tell you what though. I think Sean Baker. Sean Baker. Thank you. Yeah, love Sean. What a freak. Yeah, I tell you, I'll tell you what though. I think Sean Baker. Yeah. Yeah. Love Sean. What a freak. Yeah. Well, you know, I tell you, I think they're definitely are, and I do want to say this, I think they're definitely are outliers in the sense that, you know, it

carnivore diet is the ultimate elimination diet. If you have, you know, autoimmune reactions to foods, and you can't identify what the hell is going on and you eat foods and you get reactions You get inflammation and you feel terrible like going down to the most fundamental food, which would be meat right? It's one of the most nutrient dense foods. You're gonna feel a lot better So I think there are definitely individuals that follow that category, but it's way less Yeah, they would have you believe that I would always make the case to that way less. And what they would have you believe. Well, not only that, I would always make the case too that, you know, there's something

in there that they obviously eliminated that makes them feel so much better, but was it every single car. Right. Right. And would you do better with, you know, some blueberries and raspberries? And compared to what? Did you just get off the standard American diet? Yeah, that's true.

Almost any of those interventions, you know, hopefully get you away from the standard American diet. Yeah. No question. But as I mentioned, I think it might be over restrictive for most people long term in terms of compliance. And you could certainly, there's a certain, it's for sure. It's for sure. And there's compelling evidence now that the, you know, that microbiome is, is pretty important for a lot of things, you know, for immune system and for cholesterol control, particularly, you know, LDL. It can very limited when you cut your diet that way.

It really does. So even beyond the performance benefits of the carbs, there's also, you know, and that's why I've always had fruits and vegetables in the diet, but I've addressed those people with IBS and who need a elimination diet to kind of start with the FODMAP diet, which is much more diverse over 100 food items in there than that. That to me was more inclusive than what was going on as far back as when I've been training women for shows since the late 80s, early 90s doing that old guru diet with egg whites and protein powder broccoli.

The FODMAPate bites far more inclusive. And also keeping red meat in, keeping the egg yolk in, keeping dairy in, keeping fruit in, all the things that provide all those other nutrition benefits. So now we're talking about more foods, which was the original question, what kind of foods would I recommend? And we got through calories and protein. In 40 minutes later. That's what I'm saying. And then kind of just got off on all of this compliance

and satiety and those are probably more important than the foods themselves. Which is why we start 100% agree. If I come right out of the gate, like don't eat this and don't eat that. I've since avoided saying don't eat this, don't eat that. You get crucified by the academics in the industry for fear that that doesn't apply to everyone you know and I've always said that even with

the elimination diets it's individualistic it's dose dependent how the foods are prepared matters it's cumulative in nature I mean the whole host of things that you can you can go through to set up those criteria and I think Alan Ar Argon does probably the best job of this with his flexible diet, which is kind of an improved, if it fits your macros, which was bastardized into pop tarts and protein powder. By just talking about the fact that if we would eat more whole foods and less ultra-processed foods, and not necessarily because the ultra-process foods are poison, but because all the research suggests that you'll eat more calories to the result.

Just all the stuff we've been talking about in terms of satiety. And even in that post that I did on Merrick's site, that was run on Merrick's site, most of the people who responded were like, oh, that's stuff's poison, you're going to get cancer and you've got chemicals. But you know, you ask for a reference, what kind of chemicals are you speaking of poison, you're going to get cancer and you've got chemicals. But you ask for a reference, what kind of chemicals are you speaking of specifically? It's bread, meat, pickles, tomatoes. And nobody can really name a specific chemical or a dose with respect to these even processed foods.

It's just the lack of satiety and the over consumption of those foods that results in the behaviors, the out of posse. It's the behaviors that they come with it. This is why, in my opinion, I'd love your input on this. This is why we have old data, which you can counter very strongly, but you have old data that shows that high sodium, heart you know, heart disease and cancers or high fat. High fat.

High fat, increase in blood pressure. Okay, right. High sodium, with and associated increase in blood. Right, but I'm going to go further, right? Then there was, there was, uh, was high fat. Oh, it was high fat. That's causing, and then it was, oh no, it's the carbs and the sugars. High fat, with high saturated fat for those individuals who don't have adequate clearance,

can increase LDL and be on the... And I'll take it a step further, right? Look at the three main ingredients that make foods hyper-palatable, salt, fat, and sugar. And so if you don't control for the, how much people are eating, you're gonna essentially find people

that eat a lot of salt, a lot of fat, and a lot of sugar are gonna have all these problems, but it's mainly because they're probably eating foods that make them overeat. Those are the most delicious foods. That's right. And so if you look at the consumption of ultra-process foods, and it's...

Which are engineered to be the best at all those things. Yes. And how much of our diets are made up of ultra-process foods, if you line those charts up, you'll see obesity matches it quite nicely. So it's not the sugar as a fact. And the salt, it's the fact that more of our diet now, I think some like 65 to 70% of the average person's diet in America is ultra processed.

You're right. Seven north of 70% and the data is very clear. They have great studies. I mean, they have crossover studies. We put people in like control. How often do we have controlled diet studies, right? 500 calories a day and over on average. Yeah. And without people counting or anything, just that just makes them want to eat more. So when the reason why those things are connected to all these poor outcomes is because they're just eating more food.

That's really the main thing. Now we have to be careful not to be arrogant or classist about these recommendations because not everybody can afford the whole foods or has the time or resources or the cooking capabilities to make these healthy meals or healthier meals or lower calorie meals. We see that in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods that are just covered with fast food places, as a matter of convenience and cost and certainly certainly taste, that is a bigger issue.

And so I've since started backing away from general recommendations about the obesity epidemic because it isn't just about the food. It's about the socioeconomic conditions that are involved as well. And I have once said that I didn't think government involvement was a good path because people should have the opportunity to make those choices for themselves.

And some people like a snack here or there, and it doesn't adversely affect their health in the whole 80-20 scheme of things with the flexible dining. But in fact, it appears that if you want to make any significant inroads on the population as a whole, it probably will take some sort of intervention to prevent folks from having. I'm not a fan of that argument. And I hate it. I'm not a fan of that argument. I just don't know more effective solutions.

Yeah, but I hear where you're coming from and I know that you've probably been attacked many times for not, you know, saying it that way to be more politically correct, but I just think that's such a thing. I think it's a bullshit issue. Do I think that there's some people? Absolutely. And my heart breaks for that. But we can find a way to marginalize almost.

And everything that you grew up that way. Yeah. So, and that wasn't the reason, right? Like if anything, it's actually the lack of education and understanding, I hear you. And that's what Brown University said with respect to the Samoans and they actually sent people in to educate them about their dietary choices.

Yes. And I don't know if we are doing them a service by giving them that out, that, oh, because you're lower middle class or you're poor. And so you get the excuse to eat these processed food and stuff. Well, what's your name? Melissa.

Yeah. And I remember we didn't say anything about that when she said that on the show. I'm just like, man, this is that woke message that's coming right now that we're always going to be so careful about. No, we are not helping people by not educating them and not explaining to them. By letting them be, take the victim role out,

are you think we're helping? Well, I don't. I don't. I don't. I'll tell you what, it's, I think it's education mainly because you can be very inexpensive with foods that have high shelf life like rice, beans, potatoes, potatoes, fruits and vegetables.

You can find by frozen vegetables, which have, they last a long time, very easy to prepare. I think, now availability, but that's a consumer-driven thing, right? So what the consumers buy is what you tend to get more of. I think it has a lot to do with education. I mean, listen, we lived on food stamps. We had churches that gave us food.

And when I looked at the stuff, if you actually broke down, if you did it mathematically, the dollars that, and we had plenty of coke and sodas and ice creams that we would get, and you did the math on all that, and then you went and you bought all those foods, and you ate that. We won, we wouldn't starve, and too, we would be much healthier, and you could make it happen. So I just hate that, and I know why you're doing it, and you're saying it, and I totally understand it. You know what I don't talk about. You know, B.C.D. Epidemic. Boy, you're fucking annoying and you're saying it and I totally understand you know what I don't talk about

B.C.D. Epidemic Boy fucking annoying. It annoys the shit out of me. We had a guest on our show not that long ago. We didn't say nothing about it when it came up and I just not gonna let it slide And also I don't think we're if you really care if you really care Which I want to believe everybody in this room really does a care about trying to solve that issue the answer is not You know being concerned

about marginalizing those people or not talking about the victim. We already have a problem with victimhood in this country. So that's not solved. And I did say this. I said that we all want to play pin the tail on the donkey and find an enemy to blame for this. And I said the enemy is also the victim.

You're at war with yourself. The source of the problem is also the only solution. And I think that kind of navigates us to where, hey, yeah, there's a lot of reasons why, but ultimately, you're the only person that's gonna be able to make the change. And I don't think these people are not knowledgeable about the fact that they're overeating and undermoving.

I don't think it's that they don't know that. When we talk about education, maybe they just don't have the strategies potentially in place, or they're just exposed to a greater degree. And again, have all those preconditions of visceral out of posity, obesity, and the hunger signaling, and all of their stuffitions of visceral out of posity, obesity and the hunger signaling and all

other stuff. So they're more driven to be hungry as we've felt. Well, I'll take it, I'll even take it a step further. OK, you have subsidies that make certain foods less expensive when in reality shouldn't be. You can buy sodas, sometimes cheaper than you can buy a water because the corn syrup is subsidized through taxpayer. So now I'm going to go buy a Coke. And it's a two liter Coke is cheaper than you can buy water because the corn syrup is subsidized through taxpayer. So now I'm going to go buy a Coke and it's a two liter Coke is cheaper than buying water.

So let's just drink some Coke with our meal. So that's one big problem. And then the education that a lot of people do get comes through government. This is why I hate government involvement. How do you follow any of the government's guidelines for diet? It'd be very unhealthy. Even till this day, there's some of their guidelines, and they're so far behind, it's incredible.

I mean, their exercise guidelines are far behind. We finally have studies showing that strength is an important metric to measure for longevity. You know, long it's taken them. I know. To admit that strength training or strength is important. It's been just now we're starting to see that. I mean, not just important, it's the primary driver. And I would even suggest,

and Pat Davidson mentioned this at his seminar, Dr. Pat Davidson, and I went down to Florida, and attended his seminar. We were talking about, you know, VO2 max and cardiovascular fitness, but that's dependent upon lean mass. That's what utilizes the oxygen. So you can have, you know, people, elderly people with sarcopenia, with poor cardiovascular fitness, primarily is the result of the fact that they have muscle wasting. And so that would kind of, I would suggest that the muscle building and the strength is the primary driver. Muscle mass for things like overcoming serious illness or injury, and then strength, of course, has been shown to be kind of the leading indicator of all-cause mortality, which I use this as an opportunity every time I can to, you know, I love Mark Bell, and I just

like to dig out of every chance. And I say two things. I say one that I've lived by Mark's philosophy on my life. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Anything that made me weaker, I was very quick to take that out of my program. And I have a list of things that make you weak. I talked about metformin and antibiotics and even icing and things like antistrogens and had a whole list of things that I don't want my clients doing because I think it makes you weaker.

These are for strength, strength athletes. I'm not going to talk about metformin in terms of its potential benefits for people of type 2 diabetics, but I'm just saying generally speaking it compromises metabolic function and impedes the antabolic response from training. Both cardiovascular and musketeerly. That's why I mentioned it, but I want to get too far down the road on that. Mark has always said that weakness is never a strength, and I use that as kind of a measurement. As you know, and as you just said, that we use grip strength as a proxy to measure someone's strength and comparison to other people in the group, and then look at the mortality rates, and we see that those with the best grip strength

have the longest life spans and health spans associated with that. And of course, then everybody ran out and started doing dead hangs. Yeah. He missed the point. Yeah, he missed the point. But again, just a proxy, you could have done a leg extension

or a calf press or a vice-girl It, you know, but whatever measurements it was everybody would run out and do that thing But it's overall strength and then of course, you know my You know if I wanted to optimize that I would get them to do the most Beneficial strengthening exercises which would almost always incorporate in the largest muscle groups, legs and back in the ticketer. How do you feel about, because years ago when we first saw the podcast, I would talk about how I thought that

Crating would become, because it's always been popular, or it's been popular for a long time in strength training and bodybuilding. But I talked about how I thought it was gonna be the next wellness supplement. And I think that they're gonna recommend it to older people and the kids.

Well, now with the cognitive benefits it is. You're almost going to put it in the water. You're seeing all these different things. Do you think it's going to become this like the supplement now that we just give to most people? Yeah, I certainly recommend it across the board. Men and women both who are trying to strengthen train and there's no reason not to. Obviously, I have a higher red meat intake and so I kind of don't respond as well. Plus, performance and dancing drugs is a whole different world, and so you've got to kind of take it out of that realm, and you know, create and offer as a measurable benefit for natural athletes.

And there's certainly no reason not to. It's one of the most studied and most, I think, beneficial supplements as supplements go. That would be the one I would suggest. I don't even necessarily consider protein powder as supplement. You know, it's food you can. That's all it is. It's just convenient and taste good. But as supplements go, you know, if you're going to look at creatin and beta-alanine and

you know, those kinds of supplements, creatin is probably the one that works for most people. Pretty consistently, assuming some people have to be a little cautious about how much they consume in any one bolus because it can cause some gastrointestinal effects. Now going back to the to process food consumption, we're seeing now, and this is the first time in my career that I've seen diets become politicized. Diet's have always been kind of an issue where it's an religion. Yeah, right? But we're starting to see it now become politicized where people are now told you shouldn't eat meat because it's bad for the environment.

You shouldn't eat meat because it's also bad for your health and we're going to shame or fear people into avoiding meat, which in my opinion is just going to drive them to eat more processed foods. Because if you look at, like we said earlier, the average American's diet, 70% processed foods, the 30% that's left over is usually meat, milk, and eggs, and you cut that.

So how do you feel about that? I mean, we see that in vegan diets too. You know, they're just improperly applied. Same would be true with meat eating meat. It's generally, most of that stuff is confounded by the healthy user bias and the dietary pattern overall for people who consume the most meat. Smoke more, drink more exercise less,

way more, you know, intend to eat bacon double cheeseburgers with soda as a hot dogs and a lot of processed meats. But if you're looking at a top sirloin steak, you know, it's five grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, and it's got a 2-to-1 protein to fat ratio. So let's just look at it and it means to get too far into the math on it. But if your recommendations already eat 30-35% protein as a percentage of total calories, and I hate using percentage because some lighter women probably need more protein

to reach. As a percentage? Yeah, I would just say total grams of protein, 150 pound women, I might want her to have 130 grams of protein and that might push North to 40% of total calories if she's dieting. So I'm kind of cautious. And so now my recommendation at least is that you need a sufficient amount of fats for general health. you know, every membrane and cell membrane in the body is a lipid bilayer and you need to move AD and K around. And I put that number in at about 30 percent. It's a pretty healthy range. You get under 20 percent.

You probably start to see some compromise in hormone function, testosterone in particular. And so if 30 percent of your diet is fat, as a percentage of total calories, and 30% of those fats is saturated fat, such as in a top-sirtloin steak or an egg, it gets even lower if you're looking at a fat-free Greek yogurt, dairy doesn't seem to have an adverse cardiovascular impact, although I still recommend maybe a 2% or 1% because of that milk fat globule membrane that's somewhat protective of its effect and any adverse effect on LDLs. So as you can see, I'm diluting as we go here, 30% fat as a percentage of total calories, 30% saturated fat as a percentage of total fats already puts you at 9%.

That's below the AHA's recommendation of 10% saturated fat in a percentage of total fats, already puts you at 9%, that's below the AHA's recommendation of 10% saturated fat in the diet. And that's just if you ate red meat, a lean red meat, as your only protein source, to reach those macros. And I've just discussed that when you throw in an egg egg white blend and you throw in some fat free Greek yogurt,

you either want a piece of salmon, and those kinds of things, obviously, now you're in pretty good space. Again, we're back to dietary pattern rather than picking out a particular food and trying to demonize that food individually. Look, I've been, what would you say, I've been all over the place talking about how I thought seed oils were terrible for five years and different seed oils of course

Because I was allergic to them and I said look I'm biased. This is in my video on seed oils They are poison to me. I give me gastric distress. So I don't include them 70% plus of the seed oils that we consume are in ultra-process foods and we consume over 70% ultra-process foods in our diet You know, but even in ultra-process foods and we consume over 70% ultra-process foods in our diet. But even that, I've had to revise my opinion on whether or not that's bad for you. Is it more of it depends now? It's more of what's the context. If you replace saturated fats with it, it seems to have a health benefit. But that would be like butter, palm oil, coconut oil. The things that are super, super high

and saturated fats, assuming they get you north of 10, 12 percent, certainly up to 18 percent saturated fat as a percentage of total calories, once you get north of that, you start to see LDL. If you're susceptible to that, and only a percentage of the population has difficulty with LDL clearance. But if you can keep the total saturated fat down, obviously I don't include them because I'm allergic to them, which doesn't give me the right, like if somebody's allergic to dairy, they can't say that not everybody should have dairy. Same with the thing with two of eggs of eggs or shellfish or peanuts. I always made that distinction, that it's individualistic and dose dependent.

So I've had to be cautious about how, and in my book, I updated from where I originally came out five years ago. That was largely from West and A. Price's recommendation, Chris Masterjohn. I couldn't get any of them to defend their position. Really? Yeah, I repeatedly reached out to them. I couldn't get them to defend their position.

The one person who defended the position was Tucker Goodrich. Actually went on Mark Bell's show. Mark asked me, this is funny, Alan Flanaganagan from Alineon Nutrition, is just in the last couple of years has really kind of put himself into a leadership position where he sees such a bright, brilliant guy in terms of just his knowledge about nutrition, his PhD in nutrition. But he's the one who came out with the article and he's kind of the thought leader now. I see everybody else. I follow everybody's accounts on social media. You name them. I'm following them. I'm subscribing to their, I'm reading, I'm watching. I sit over

here quietly. As you've seen today in my reference of all these folks and their evolution, including mine, and they've all evolved. The folks from Barbara Medicine commonly recognize things that they used to think that they've changed their opinion on. Lay Norton's the same way. He used to promote saturated fat as being healthy and put forth some research on that effect. The guy's from Examine.com has recently his last year. They have 14 PhDs over there. I'm just a meat neck power lifter. And

they were promoting that saturated fat was not deleterious to cardiovascular disease. Well, the dose makes the poison with that one, right? The dose makes the poison. And they've since updated that to recognize that, you know. And so I don't feel too bad if I'm, if I, if it took me a little longer than most on, on some of these topics. but Tucker Goodrich went on to Mark Bell's show and had a debate with Alan Flanagan about this very topic. And he was the only one, to his credit, although I think Alan Flanagan's research and the evidence as a whole supports that position that can all oil can in replacing saturated fats provide an improved LDL

and then therefore cardiovascular disease outcome. You know, I've seen studies though that show that although that may happen, all cause mortality actually gets a little worse in some of those studies. Are you familiar with those? Yeah. Are those like iffy or?

They are very iffy. I think one was the, was it Michigan and one was in Australia. Yeah. Alan addressed those and I could pull them up here. I've got all the information, but they were very iffy. They were the, I think that there was trans fats involved in that study. Right. It was one of the problems

Which we know are pretty much we know are any dose. Yeah, that was that was a huge problem I think that was called the Minnesota coronary trial. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah I've since moved on from that topic. I like I said I reached out to all the people who would who had most fervently opposed and they wouldn't challenge that. So I've since moved on. Stan, when did you say one of the challenges with studies on nutrition is that we have

very little or very few, I should say, long term controlled dietary. They're just so expensive. There's no funding. So a lot of this is like observational for the most part. And when you look at observational studies, it's like, I mean, there's cultures that eat diets that look radically different from other cultures. And you see the health is very similar,

which points back to what you said at the beginning, which is like 95% of the benefits come from eating a reduced calorie diet. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, I'll self an exercise. I mean, we see this even in like, I hate talking about the blue zones because it's, there's so much confounding there as well. That's true. It's so cherry-picked. And a lot of those zones, the birth certificate information is hard to validate. Oh, that's funny.

So some of those guys aren't 100. They're 80. You know why, by the way? Because in some of these countries, they would lie on the birth certificate so they could get pensions from their parents. And many of them. 100%. Yeah. So they acted older or they pretended to be older. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm happy to provide a resource and reference to that to that review as well. But I guess the point of that whole conversation is that yes, either they're very cherry-picked. But me, you look at who are the groups in California, Loma Linda? Oh, the seventh day I have interest.

The seventh day admittance, but right up the street, you've got the Mormons who have equivalent health outcomes with meat in their diet. And somehow they're just magically, you know, not in the Blue Zones. And remember, Blue Zones is not a study. It's a book. Right. You know, that was, that was, I think, highly biased and cherry-picked. But the point being is, is the dietary pattern of the Mormons or the lifestyle pattern of the Mormons? Oh, okay. It's important. So, when I talk about dietary patterns as opposed to individual foods, and I talked about the healthy user bias, that the Mormons don't smoke. They don't drink. They exercise regularly. They maintain a lower BMI and waste measurement.

They generally exercise more. They have better social environments. So all of those things seem to take a priority over whether or not you're having some red meat. I will say this though, I will say that sufficient fiber does seem to show a decrease in cancer risk, and Lane has referred to a number of some research suggests. If you get adequate fiber with your median take, and again, as a portion of a dietary pattern, it's fine. The only reason I keep harping on it is because specifically with women, I find and I was just this summer I was up in Arizona and I was working with a high school softball team and

a couple of parents told me that the girls had had a decline in performance recently and that's very common I was working with the University of Oregon track team back in the early 90s and one of the things that we saw most was shin splints and we saw that with the Nike coach It was highly popular, Hoply-Rized or that a couple of his athletes had significant health issues Comes from the female triad and that's you know a Calorie restriction resulting in anemia a menoria

osteophenia And so sure enough that's the first question I asked is she had a blood test and they went and got her blood test, sure enough she was anemic. And I see that women who are in severe calorie restriction who trend towards carbs and insufficient protein, and they avoid dairy and red meat, they have a higher incidence of those problems. And so that's kind of why I keep pounding on having red meat in the diet, not exclusively, but certainly don't exclude it, don't demonize it, or dairy for the calcium benefits. And so within probably a week or 10 days, she was feeling amazing. And we just, the resolution for low iron would be to use a hemeyern source and non-hemeyern

source with vitamin C and avoid calcium in that meal. So you did you had a meat? So we designed a diet for that included steak, spinach, and peppers or oranges. So that was heme, non-heme, vitamin C. And we avoided dairy in that specific meal because it can inhibit absorption in that meal. And then her next meal would say be eggs with yogurt. And so two times a day, she would have the high iron. And within, I mean, it was probably a week.

She's phenomenal. Well, was she following a particular diet before that? No, that's the problem a lot. He's high school athletes. She's just trying to stay lean, so she was eating low calorie. They avoid the trigger foods that they see that, I'm not gonna eat red meat, I'm not gonna eat dairy,

I'm not gonna eat fruit. And then they end up just on bagels, and occasional egg white or something like that. So insufficient pro teams, probably the primary driver, chronic calorie restriction, and then those other items red meat in the dairy. Do you think a big problem with just health and wellness is that people, they just want that silver bullet answer.

They just want, like, just tell me like the best exercise or just tell me the best food and really the data is becoming so clear that there is no specific, I mean, unless you're talking to a specific individual and you're breaking that, then now like you said, with this young lady, with her, the worst specific foods, but it's impossible. Well, we already said it, the best exercises the one you'll do, the best diets, the one you'll follow. I mean, and those are truthful, but not useful. The individual has to be provided. So I say, my clients say, stand, just tell me exactly what to eat. And I base that on all the things that we've discussed this far, and then try and cater that to their personal preferences so that they can comply with it. More whole foods, more protein, you know, better sleep.

But the vertical diet isn't just diet, it's diet, sleep, exercise. I don't think humans are partial to, I don't think that it's just extras. I think it's everything. Everything. I think we, yeah, I hate the diaconda. Again, I hate that we have to, yeah, it's better than the other. But I mean, that's how the human brain works, right?

That we want, we want to, we first want to use the quick monkey brain. Just give me the direction, tell me the three things really fast. It's a switch over to the second phase Right of the brain you have to process you have to think you have to sit down It's a slow like nobody wants to do that You know, I think it's less about exercise. It's more about human behavior

100% and the way we process all of it. It's about compliance. It's about creating Well if it's a diet then what's the least restrictive to you? How are you the least hungry? That's why people say well I started doing intermittent fasting and it worked and and they're again, they're adamant about it. They're religious about it It worked for you because you didn't feel you weren't hungry on it. Same thing with keto, you know Keto works for me and that's great. I think that's fine for those reasons. You mentioned a little earlier, what things do I watch out for? Yeah.

And those are some of the things I'm cautious of is that people get themselves into an over restrictive environment that's not necessarily sustainable long-term. I do see some issues with keto diets, and again, they can work. I think it's a good initial intervention for somebody with type two diabetes in particular,

as long as they can get a calorie deficit, lose weight, because they don't obviously assimilate carbohydrates sufficiently. But I get about four to six weeks in on most keto diets and it's not like I haven't done keto diets multiple times. I mean, I worked with Dave Belumbo 10 years ago. Oh, he's the keto king. Yeah, he's the keto king.

I've done keto many times throughout my career in preparing for a show. I always got weaker, I always got more tired, I always lost more muscle. And that's kind of what I see. Now we can try and mitigate some of that, obviously, with the training and the protein intake and sufficient electrolytes. That's kind of the first thing that happens with the water loss from the carbohydrate depletions that we see. You know, they lose 5, 6, 7 pounds of water, and then they lose all the sodium associated

with that water, and then they start to get tired as a result. So we can mitigate some of that. And then I have to also, you know, I like to get the blood test. Let's see your LDLs. You want to go keto, cautious, you know, what the fatty, what kind of fats that are in there, you know, maybe more salmon, more avocado, more nuts, you know, in a case like that, as opposed to these fat bombs and the butter in your coffee because, you know, the LDL is a consideration. Yeah, do you, so I want to change gears a little bit and move into exercise.

I want to ask you this, because you're a smart guy, you've been doing this for a long time, so you have a lot of experience and I would say wisdom. And so you've been doing this long enough to now see some of these trends. I'm now reading mainstream articles that are saying things like strength training, maybe the key to longevity. We talked earlier about the strength metric, right? Squeezing a grip test is actually in terms of single metrics is one of the best predictors of all-cause mortality.

We're seeing now that they're advocating for strength training to fight dementia to manage type 2 diabetes, is strength training starting to have its time? Is the time started finally here where we're going to finally start talking about this to the average person? Yeah, and I think we were kind of touching on that a moment ago before I got sidetracked, is that the longevity people, Dr. Peter T. is one, is kind of one of the leaders in the industry that I think has come a long way in terms of the caliber of people that

he's been bringing to his show, obviously, you know, they know it most recently. And that's what the consensus seems to be now amongst the academic professionals. Obviously, you know, the meat knurds, we've always hoped that that would be the case. We want validation for the succession that we've had all our life. And I'm not suggesting everybody should be a competitive powerlifter or bodybuilder, but they should certainly lift. And here's the important distinction. I was just talking to Michael Herne last week or week before about this. We're talking about cardio and strength training.

And I'm not sure if I was kind of the first time this topic had really come up. And I'm not sure if I had had very well, I think articulated the position. But what we do see is it's the health benefits, the lifespan and health span benefits are dependent upon the results more than the activity. And by that I mean that people who just exercise more don't realize the same longevity benefits as those who have better metrics of having exercise, such as VO2 max, and like you said, strength and lean mass.

So it's not just working out, it's, are you getting results? Are you a dad? Are you building muscle? Of course, of course. And that's important. And then look, again, what's the best exercise when you'll do, you know, at some point

if you're training a client and they're not getting stronger or gaining the muscle mass or improving their VO2 max, then again, exercise is great. But they're not getting all the benefits that they may be intending to get just from doing the work itself, that should be measurable and progressable. I agree, and in fact, I'll take it even a step further. If you're exercising a law and you're not noticing improvements in your physical performance muscle, maybe fat loss, blood lipids, in fact, you may actually be causing detrimental effects because it's now just a stress.

Because the exercise is a stressor that causes the adaptation, it's the adaptation you get the benefits from, not the stressor itself. The stressor by itself is just a stressor. And we know that as coaches of athletes. Yes. The overtrainings of big issue, right? 100%.

Yeah, fatigue management, like you said, especially athletes who aren't bodybuilders or power lifters, the last thing you want to do is influence or adversely impact their ability to perform whatever sport or whatever practice for that sport that they have to engage in. I worked with John Jones recently, and that was one of the biggest things we did. It was funny because we would do, you know,

was that like, by the way, working with him? Oh, it was great. He's a phenomenal athlete. He's got a really good strength and muscle building genes, which I didn't even realize, because he always looks kind of long and lengthy. It's incredible. The hard part was, you know, we just got him up over 250 pounds, was the goal, and 255 pounds.

Holy cow, the hard part with him was the eating, and we can just briefly, I'll say, that John kind of likes to eat what he wants to eat when he wants to eat, which is like a lot of my clients. So, you know, I would send him meals, but he, you know, he wouldn't necessarily enjoy them consistently and getting him just to eat breakfast. So those were some of the hard challenges with John. And so that's the first question I asked. What do you like to eat? Where do you like to eat? So we started going to the restaurants that he liked to eat at. And I said this many times before that sometimes clients who don't have opportunity to make their food and have to eat out, I'll just Google the restaurant menu and pick a few things on there that I think are optimal.

I do this with high school kids. I did this for the softball team because they are a traveling team. And I said, look, you can go to any of these different places, whether it's Carl's Jr. or McDonald's, because that's what you're going to do anyhow. Let's make the optimal choice. And for me, I just look for a 2-to-1 protein to fat ratio. Generally, that's a chicken source because most of the meats at those places are 75, 25 beef. And you have a really hard time meeting those requirements.

But a subway sandwich, you get a meatball sandwich, which is not as much protein in a lot of fat, but if you get the steak or the grilled chicken breast, throw a little bit of cheese on there. Double meat. Double meat, yeah, 100%. And that's kind of how I do that. But aside from that, I can remember we posted a video

of John doing some, it's like pin squats or chain squats where you go down, you know, you let the eccentric kind of crash into the weights and you just do the concentric portion. And you don't necessarily do a full range of motion with a six foot five guy with you know wing span like him Because that is just going to create a lot more damage and in terms of sports performance. I only need you know That's right. I don't need the full range of motion for sports performance because I've always said that if if if he's at full range of motion

He's losing the fight You know, I just wanted to be explosive So I posted that and of course that went on to ESPN, fight news or whatever else on Instagram and all the fucking internet experts, you know, are in there like do a full squad and, you know, he's gonna hurt himself and it's like, so we design programs for athletes

that might not look like a bodybuilder's program or a power lifters program because we're trying to eliminate a lot of the fatigue in the eccentric loading. Since you brought up John Jones, I want to hear your prediction, because right away when you said the challenges with the diet and adherence and stuff like that,

I actually have found this very common with many athletes, especially training high level athletes, because they have been able to burn up whatever they consume, and they are great at their sport. And so they don't want to disrupt that. So when you see this, and especially when you get a chance to coach them, and you're trying to get them to add here, and you see them struggle, if you had to predict the things that John Jones is going to be challenged with in 20, 25 years when he's no longer fighting, playing in sports and moving and burning as many calories, what would you predict and see what happened? Well, I think the same thing everybody has happened.

You burn fewer calories and you eat more is what happens. People think their metabolic rate slows, but we've seen now from the research between age 20 and probably 60. We don't see a significant decline in metabolic rate. We see people move less and they eat more. And that's the folly of a lot of athletes, particularly football players. You see them post football, man. They're used to eating a lot of food

because they were doing daily doubles for four hours a day of training. I think that that's a lot of the reason why their lifespan is so low is because I know like we wanna connect it to the hard hitting and the stress of the body, which I'm sure that's not helping the case whatsoever. But I would make the case that a lot of it is,

they have built these eating behaviors around a body that is burn in six, 7,000 calories every day. But now we gotta say, look, people's metabolisms are different. We kinda had this conversation a little bit about some people who have a harder time losing weight than others. We see in overfeeding studies, generally speaking, people will gain weight, but if you look at the inter-individual responses

to overfeeding studies, you'll see that one person might gain 20 pounds, one person might lose four. And they both had an equivalent calorie surplus throughout that study. I'm that guy, I'll lose weight. I have to do everything I can to maintain my weight. And so if you ask me where I'm gonna be in 20 years, I'm gonna be lighter.

John's kinda the same way. I'm the same way as you are. Like if I don't stay on top of my protein intake, especially in calories, I'll lose weight on the scale. And it heals and looks like muscle. It looks like to Dallas or Wichita Falls, Mark Gripato is over the weekend to do a seminar. Oh, right.

Gathering of all his starting strength people, he's doing phenomenal. I mean, he's got like 30 gyms open nationwide. Wow. The starting strength group. And I love Mark and their method. I think it's fantastic. They're doing a great job for the very kind of people that we're talking about just to increase strength. And that's been his foundation. And I know he's gruff. And, you know, but that's his goal. He just wants people to get stronger. Five pounds a week, you know, and he's been

clear about that for 20 years. but I left on a Friday afternoon I came back on a Sunday morning and I took all my meals with me and I lost four pounds Just from the travel and I know a lot of people will hate on that because like my wife's the moment She looks grass always green on the side. That's what I tell them but then for my sport, you know trying to gain weight That was and that's kind of one of the challenges I deal with was say like a half-thorough Bjornson or a That was, and that's kind of one of the challenges I deal with was say like a huffthorburentz and a Lane Johnson from Philadelphia Eagles. It's harder to eat enough to maintain that mass and that workload and that you know, I think Lane was 312 pounds and you needed to be 330 when I started working with him. He had a

registered dietitian to a diet forum. And this is not an indictment on registered dieticians. My co-author for the vertical diet is Dr. Damon McEun, who's a PhD already and was director of dietetics for UNLV. That dietician recommended chicken breast and quinoa, like five cups of quinoa a day. And I mean, is anybody ever eaten five cups of quinoa a day? And so, and and and something that kind of gets me off into this thought that I individual, or at least tried to eat in a surplus.

Then be cautious about your confidence in that prescription because Lane couldn't eat it, and he was having all the time problems obviously. So, if you're not going to be able to eat in a certain way, then you're going to be able to eat in a certain way, and you're going to be able to eat in a surplus. Then be cautious about your confidence in that prescription because Lane couldn't eat it and he was having all times of problems obviously. So that was one of the things.

I was able to get him up to 330 pounds just using obviously easier to digest foods. What you have to do is a huge consideration when eating that much food. It's can you digest it well? 100%. Yeah, and that's why people are like, white rice.

It's like, nobody in a calorie deficit on the vertical diet eats white rice because you're utilizing fruits and vegetables and high potassium foods as the foundation. It's only the people who have a significant workload or lots of lean body mass who need 4,000 plus calories and can't consume a ton of pasta and oats or bread in that quantity because it blotes them and makes it hard for them to consume all the food.

So the same thing with Brian Shaw and I worked with him like a week into the diet. He's like, Stan, I'm hungry. I haven't been hungry in years. Oh wow. You know, and that's because we used the monster bash, more easy, mechanically speaking foods, you could shovel down and greater quantities faster, would digest quicker, you'd be hungry again sooner, and then you could eat again.

So this is, it's very similar to what we talked about earlier with weight loss. When you're looking at weight loss, your considerations are satiety, is it gonna be something sustainable? It's the same thing with, people trying to gain is, can we manage satiety?

It's just in the opposite direction, right? Can we give you foods that don't stuff you and keep you so full because you got a, you know, 5,000 calories? And for those people, I know this is a small percentage. It's so funny when I do these seminars, I've got a broad spectrum of people, you know, weight loss, weight gain, people with medical conditions,

et cetera. And I start talking about weight gain. And I know I've turned off about 90% of the women in the room. Or, you know, they see me work with Brian Shaw and an off-thorough Burenston and they're like, they don't want to be there. And so I got to start throwing up the, the Nadiya Wyatt's, you know, at 114 pounds or the, I've got a girl, BJ that competes at like 114 each, 2600 calories a day.

Yeah, she's a machine, but when I met her three years ago, she was on 1200 calories. Yeah. You know, that was a long, slow process of getting her body, getting her to build muscle and improve her metabolism. Yeah, Stan, how old are you if you don't mind me asking? Be 55 next month. Holy cow.

So let me ask you this because you've been doing this for so long. Personally, how has your training changed or do you have different considerations now that you're in your mid-50s? 100%. 100%. Mostly, obviously your recovery starts to take longer from high fatigue movements. So a lot of the workouts you see me do recently, just, this is funny because I haven't competed in over 10 years.

And for a few years after I stopped competing, I thought about one more. And so I was going in there and I was doing the heavy squats and the heavy dead lifts, more frequently with too many north of 90% efforts. And I was just tired all the time. My shoulders, elbows, knees were still wrecked. And I talked about this on my videos for keys to pain-free knees and I broke my back. Those were my rants, so I spoke about how you resolve those issues. But how I train differently now is as I do fewer of those top-end sets and I try and do lower fatigue movements. And I do a lot

more volume as kind of Luis Simmons thing and probably what really got me through my career as both bodybuilding and powerlifting is that the bodybuilding, I did a ton more volume, more sets, more reps, shorter rest periods. And so my cardiovascular fitness was really good. And it kind of carried me through those those powerlifting preps, was able to maintain my health to the best of my ability is I gained and lost the weight. So I puridized my big athletes weight first thing I did with Hofthorbenz and was taken from 440 down to in the 390s to resolve some fatty liver and insulin resistance that we saw in the blood test.

So I puridized their weight with their competitions throughout the year. I don't let them stay heavy while they're not competing heavy. Mass moves mass, so I do get them back up and wait. But I'm kind of the same way. I just now I try and minimize fatigue. So my training now CT Fletcher reached out to me last month and he said, Hey, are you still deadlifting? And I wasn't really and certainly not heavy. You know, I'm like 600 pounds as a heavy deadlift for me a month or two ago. Oh, that's so light.

Three months ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For I mean, for him and his, right? I know, I know. It's embarrassing for me to talk about. Nowadays, I talk about, you know, I'm a member of the AARP now, because I'm so old.

So I talk about my AARP PRs. No, this is my post retirement PRs, my PR PRs. And he said, hey, would you come down and deadlift it my meat in January? And you know, it's CT Fletcher, you don't say no to CT. He's legend. And so I said, sure, I'll come down. And then I'd hung up the phone and I realized, shit,

I can't deadlift anything. I'm gonna go embarrass myself down there. So I wanted to start deadlifting heavy. So I couldn't just go deadlift heavy. So I use accessories. And the two that I'm been doing a lot now, you see me do recently in the last month or two, is box squats.

That tends to give you less fatigue. Plus it eliminates that portion of the lift, as I mentioned with John Jones, where you're reversing the weight that eliminates some of the eccentric at that muscle length that's going to give you a lot of muscle soreness. And so, plus it also dissipates that stretch reflex, which is, you know, what a deadlift is. You don't have it. You don't have it.

You got to create tension there. So, I love the box squat for that reason. Plus, it's low fatigue. The next day, I don't feel crushed. I can do 600 pound box squats, and I don't feel crushed, you know, with the, using the kabuki bar right now. And then I'll do, good morning,

so as another accessory for deadlifts, but on to chains, as I mentioned earlier, same thing I did with John. I mean, with athletes, I try to eliminate some of the eccentric load and just do the concentric portion crash. Bring it down. You can see all this on the Instagram. I've posted a lot of, and people are like, oh my God, doesn't that hurt? And I'm like, actually, it hurts less than doing a true good morning or a true squat,

particularly the next day. But I do need to build, obviously, I need to progress those loads over time so I can, that could translate to a deadlift. Just a smart strategy. Yeah, I'll work up and just do a couple of top sets of the box squats or a few top sets of the, and then once a month, I'll try and test my deadlift to see if these are, I said it has to be measurable, progressable, but it also has to be transferable.

Something is very important when you're talking about athletes. If they're not getting faster, jumping higher, or throwing further, then you're wasting their time. It's exercise not training. So for me, I use the deadlift as a test. So once a month, I try and see, did I get stronger, and you can either move the same weight faster, or you can add some more weight and test that for yourself. There's a, and then I also add a ton of volume to that.

I have to keep those 50, 60% loads in and just move a lot. I do the four bikes a day still on the incumbent bike as I mentioned for 10 minutes. So you do 10 minutes four times a day? 10 minutes four times a day? 10 minutes four times a day. This morning at the hotel, walked around, and then I try and get a lot of volume in. So sometimes I'll split my workouts, we'll come in in the morning, I'll do the box squatting,

and then maybe do a bunch of belt squats, walking lunges, things like that, just to keep moving, sled drags, I just keep moving. And then come to find out all these many years later, I had never met Luis Simmons out at Westside until just a couple of years ago. But Mark Bells, obviously, a Luis Simmons Westside style training. So I utilized those methods with him. But one of the things I found out through my buddy Matt Whitimer out at Beat Training who competed for Louis

for over 10 years. And he was a student of Buddy Morris. He coached, he did strength and conditioning coaching in the NFL for Buddy Morris, who's those people who know in the NFL. He's just a legend for strength and conditioning. Come to find out that that was behind the scenes, I don't think people appreciate that that was Louis philosophy, whether or not all of his athletes achieved that, was that they had to have a pretty high level of fitness. They had to do a decent amount of volume outside of their heavy stuff, whether it was the sled drags or just repeating maybe on 90 second intervals, repeating sets of five at 50, 60% or some band tension, but it develops a, I think, a really good GPP, so they call it general physical preparedness, so that I'm able to do more

and recover from it better if I have that foundation. So lower intensity, but more volume or maybe more frequency? Yeah, fewer 90 plus percent. And even with those, I try and de-load the highest fatigue portion of the movement, testing once a month, and then lots of volume, if that's some right. I'm finding the same thing. I'm training most of my body almost every day, but the total volume per workout is less, but the total volume per week is actually quite high.

And I feel better. And I'll split some of those, because I can't train for an hour and a half straight. I just dig two deep a hole. I say we're not digging ditches, we're building mountains. And so I try and get in out of the gym in less than an hour if I can. So if you're gonna have a long,

if you're gonna do two, an hour and a half and work out, you'll do half. And then half. Yeah, great. Come back at night and do another 30 And then half. Yeah, great. Come back at night and do another 30, 35 minutes. Great, great. All right, one last thing.

How's your business going? How's everything going? Oh, it's fantastic. Everything's been going good. I've been blessed. I've had a fantastic following. You know, when I was just watching some more videos today, people who say that the more information they put out there,

I think we might have talked about this many, many years ago. Same thing you've got, same philosophy you had and still have, is that we just give people as much content, much information. And it comes back to you, 10-fold, a very loyal group, I mentioned that my business partner and my meal prep company passed away recently.

He struggled with obesity and alcoholism. And he ultimately had kidney failure and he passed away in his 50s, who was sad. I had to find a new provider and it took about four months. I was completely down. I didn't have any, it wasn't able to serve any meals. Oh wow. We had been very successful for over four years.

I had a very loyal clientele with a vertical diet meal prep that would order meals for me every week. It was fantastic. I was very grateful. I had to send them all an email and let them know, hey, we're down. And I'm working hard, I'll try and get back up as soon as I can.

Of course, that always takes longer and costs more than you ever anticipate. But in fact, we're back up as of three weeks ago and I'm 60% of my clientele's already come back. Just three weeks. Oh, great. Yeah, and I'm just so grateful to have that group. It's folks who, I've said before that I've probably,

I've been in 14 countries in all 50 states in the last five years doing seminars, over 200 seminars, and two summers ago, I did that 60 cities and 60 days tour. There's a seminar every night, and I did all 48 states plus DC, that it's 60 seminars and 60 days drove over 16,000 miles in an RV doing a seminar every night

all over the country. I had mapped out a little path. And I met thousands of people over that trip. As I've met thousands and thousands more throughout the course of my career. But I've also received probably over 100,000 DMs in the last five years as you guys get them all the time as well. And I do my best to try and respond to the vast majority of them with a specific answer,

maybe a link, a copy paste of an article that's relevant to the topic that they've asked about. And that kind of thing, not hiding that behind a paywall, which I may still do some days, so I should be careful. Get out in front of myself here. But I don't have a paytri on or a paywall or anything like that And I've just put everything I know into my vertical diet ebook and now on volume 3.0 and a 4.0 is coming out next month I've been saying that for a year And it really is it's just a living document that is I just compile almost everything everybody asks me if it's not in my ebook I add it and so that's how it continues to expand and grow to now over 225 pages and more than 500 references

to peer-reviewed articles and videos and research. People ask me those questions, and I want to have answers for them. I try and provide them the best information possible and provide them references and resources to where they can get closer to their resolution. Stan, since he brought up the business thing, I do want you to touch on something that I thought was really interesting. I heard you and Bill, you kind of,

and you guys just lightly went over this. So I'd like you to go maybe a little bit deeper, but how has strength training and training in general played a role in making millions of dollars for you? Yeah, well, I've said ever since the, I'm pretty OCD, obsessive compulsive. I've always been kind of a routine sky. And that, you know, bodybuilding,

when I got to college was probably the best thing for me. You know, I was diagnosed as a kid and they wanted to put me on medication, but I was no go for that. But when I got into bodybuilding, everything seemed to work for me because there's so much routine and regimen and consists everything is mapped out for your entire day.

You're eating every two or three hours depending on what era you're in. It used to be two now, it can now it's three. And it's a particular type of meal with this, that, and the other, and you're training and you're cardio or whatever it is. You have this schedule and this routine that's so consistent. It bowed well for me. And there was always some sort of progression involved.

You know, you always, whether it was bodybuilding or powerlifting, you were trying to achieve a particular goal. And you would keep repeating those behaviors that worked. And you would, you know, from trial and error education, you would start to discard those things that didn't work. Same thing came true for business. I said this in the video years ago that if people would spend the body, any bodybuilder, the power lift, your successful athlete would apply the same level of discipline, consistency,

and time management into any income-producing venture, they'd be a millionaire in five years. And that's just because of repeating successful behaviors and having such a rigid, consistent schedule, I think most people just kind of get to see. I think paired with patients also, right? I think that's something that bodybuilding teaches you. Like you don't get to just overnight look like you. It takes, it doesn't take weeks, doesn't take months, it takes years and years of consistency.

And I think we have that same kind of attitude a lot of times when we say we wanna be rich or I wanna have the biggest podcasts in the world, or you just say a statement like that, but you don't realize all the steps that you have to take. And how long you need to be consistent at those. And as you start to look at those things.

And that's the huge part. Because we see the Mark Bell. I mean, I've told a story before when I met Mark back in 2009. And I was training with him. He was in a little 800 square foot alcove off the side of the CrossFit box. And they were going to raise his rent $400 a month. And he came to me and said, look, I'm going

to have to shut the gym down. It's like, I can't afford it. He was driving his beat up old car with a hubcaps missing, and he was driving 30 minutes each way, so he could be in a neighborhood, he could afford to live in outside of Sacramento. And he just started putting up content, and he just kept doing it.

He was relentless about it every single day from, you know, before YouTube was popular, and certainly before Instagram, or Dick Talk ever existed. And he was just so consistent about it, and look what he's built in the process. Plus, he's real. That's another thing. When I first started doing my rhinos, Rans,

I thought, well, what's my character gonna be? And I'm not CT Fletcher, and I'm not Mark Bell. I don't have that WWE thing. I don't have the F-bomb thing. It's just not my thing. And I'm pretty boring. I'm pretty cool I'm pretty boring. You know, I'm pretty cool, I'm a little bit taller at heart. I'm kind of a nerd on this stuff.

And I thought, so I just decided, I just have to be me. And people took to it very well. I didn't have to pretend to be anything else. And you know, my Rhino's Rantz have been kind of my most successful, successfully viewed content that I've put out there other than the fact that I wore myself out to every podcast. Like, sure. Like, you guys are like, hey, Stagg, you come by right? And he said, what did he say?

It was a month ago, and he said, well, they have an availability at the end of September. I'm like, he'll like they're busy for a month, like they're booked out for a month. Can I go up tomorrow? Did you show your correspondence? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, up your time here. One thing I want to talk about that it's huge hugely important for parents and kids alike. I just recently started a kids power out or vertical kids power out at the Sin City iron. I recently invested in an unpart owner of Sin City iron in Las Vegas and I started this kids power out primarily because I wanted my kids to lift weights and so I set it up, you know, so that I'd be there. And now we've got 25 kids from ages, I say kindergarten to college, and sure enough, a bunch of 7, 8, 9, 10 year olds, 11 year olds, there's this one 12 year old kid that's like, his dad's like 6, 7, 3, 80, and this kid's already like 6 foot, 260, at 12 years old, the kid's huge. Yeah, he's just a monster.

But there's also a little five-year-old girl that comes in and she'll, I have her pick up a little pink kettlebell and do five reps of, of the point being is that the American Academy Pediatrics has a position statement that weightlifting for kids is essential. Brad Schoenfeld recently posted that even as early as five to seven years old, improves bone mineral density. Obviously, they're not going to build the muscle mass, but they get their

neural adaptation and hence therefore a strength adaptation from the training. All of these guys have been crushing the old myth that somehow weight lifting was bad for kids and might stunt their growth. And just the opposite is true. It actually limits injury in other sports. It's less injurious than other sports, certainly any contact sport. In fact, the number one injury, 65% of injuries that occur in the gym is simply dropping a weight on yourself.

So I set all those up ahead of time. So the kids don't have to touch any weights. But we bring them in, we teach them to squat bench and deadlift and we tell them the goal is progression over time. That's great. That's cool. And I just think the parents should know

that it's the foundation of any sport, if you wanna run fast or jump higher and throw further, building strength, lifting weights, like every high school and collegiate athlete does, can be started in junior high school or before, and it's perfectly healthy. And again, increasing bone mineral density

for girls in particular, should be started as early as possible because that becomes harder and harder to do as they age. It's interesting you bring that up. I literally, yesterday, I was actually just looking up this franchise that I'm really interested in right now. It's relatively new. It's called Kid Strong.

I heard of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fantastic. Yeah, it's fascinating to me. And I definitely think that there's an opportunity there, not only for a great business, but to help a ton of people. And there's not a there, not only for a great business, but to help a ton of people, and there's not a lot of people in that space, so it's pretty cool that you're

moving that direction. But yeah, just literally yesterday I was like diving through all their stuff because I was interested in potentially investing in something like that. It's the foundation. Yeah. 100%. Excellent. Well, I appreciate that last part.

Thanks for coming on, Stan. Thanks for having me, guys. If you're doing it. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPump Media dot com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad,s Performance and Maths Esthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically

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