Realfoodology - 23: The Argument for Two Meals a Day with Mark Sisson

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

Mark Sisson is the founding father of the ancestral health movement and creator of Primal Kitchen Foods. He is also a New York Times bestselling author of The Primal Blueprint, The Keto Reset Diet and so many more. His blog, Mark's Daily Apple, and Primal Blueprint lifestyle program have paved the way for people to challenge conventional wisdom's diet and exercise principles and take personal responsibility for their health and well-being. We discuss metabolic flexibility, what it is, how to achieve it, why you should strive for only two meals a day and so much more! Show Links: Two Meals a Day https://amzn.to/37r1uwG https://www.marksdailyapple.com/ The Primal Blueprint: https://amzn.to/3quntdS The Keto Reset Diet: https://amzn.to/2OPzXyH The Keto Reset Diet Cookbook: https://amzn.to/3u5239g https://www.primalkitchen.com/discount/REALFOODOLOGY?rfsn=5426894.12b1ee&utm_source=refersion&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=5426894.12b1ee - Code realfoodology saves you  10% at checkout!

on today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. What happens to a lot of people who, for instance, decide they're going to go on a two-day fast and they're coming off of a diet that's primarily the standard American diet, and they read about fasting and they go, wow, this sounds great. I'll repair my body if I don't eat for two days. It sounds wonderful. But what happens is if you haven't trained the body to burn fat in the absence of any incoming fuel, if you haven't trained the brain to use ketones to maintain its attitude and its mood and to prevent it from releasing stress hormones, then that two day fast is difficult and it's depressing and it turns people away. Hi guys, welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology podcast.

I am your host, Courtney Swan. I'm an integrative nutritionist and the creator of the blog and food Instagram, Real Foodology. You can find me on Instagram at realfoodology or at realfoodology.com. And while you're there, please sign up for my email list. Today, I interview Mark Sisson. He is the best-selling author of The Keto Reset Diet, The Keto Reset Cookbook, The Primal Blueprint, and so many other books. He's a fourth-place Hawaii Ironman triathlete and a two-hour and 18-minute marathoner. He's been featured in Good Morning America, The Dr. Oz Show, a guest of the Joe Rogan Podcast. He's been featured in good morning America, the Dr. Oz show, a guest of the Joe Rogan podcast. He's been in people health, men's health, and he's also the creator of primal kitchen, healthy condiments, which are amazing by the way, their dressings

are all I use in my house. They have every flavor you can possibly imagine, and they don't have any fillers or artificial ingredients. They're just made with real food ingredients that you recognize, which we love over here in the real foodology world. We talk all about the concept of metabolic flexibility, what it is, why we want it, how it's the key to longevity and just feeling really good in your body, how we can achieve metabolic flexibility, and really just about how much we love food and that eating healthy doesn't have to be boring and that we only eat foods that we enjoy and love because at the end of the day, the goal is just to feel good in your body and to love your life. And part of that means eating healthy foods that make your body feel good, but also foods that you love and enjoy.

Did you know that most cookware and appliances are made with forever chemicals? Yes, that means your nonstick pans, your air fryers, your waffle makers, your blender could possibly have PFAS, and yes, even our beloved crockpots and pressure cookers. I have actually been talking about this for so long. Back in 2006, my mom came to my dorm room and made me get rid of all my nonstick pans because she was concerned about me being exposed to something called Teflon. Teflon is a coating that is used on nonstick pans and a lot of these appliances that I just named. So I've avoided Teflon, nonstick, PFA coated appliances, pots and pans, you name it for a very long time. And the only option for

a very long time was just stainless steel pots and pans. So I was really excited when a company like our place came out because they started creating really beautiful cookware and appliances that are like pieces of art. Every appliance that I have from our place, I legit want to store it on the counter. And I'm the type of person that does not want anything on my counter. Cause I like it to look really just clean and minimal. But I'm so obsessed with all the Our Place products that I have so many of them displayed on my counter because they are legit pieces of art. Our Place is a mission-driven and female-founded brand that makes beautiful kitchen products that are healthy and sustainable. All their products are made without PFAS, which

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And let me tell you, you guys, they are changing the game with non-toxic appliances. They have a blender, they have an air fryer, they have a crock pot, not to mention their amazing always pan. They have a perfect pot pot which is just the perfect size for soups and they also just came out with a cast iron that I am loving as well and I more recently replaced all of the bowls and plates in my kitchen because I really needed an upgrade my other ones were so old so I got some from our place and they are so beautiful the ceramics are beautiful. The colors are amazing. Like I said, everything is like a piece of art. If you want to try any of the

products from our place, go to from our place.com and enter my code real foodology checkout to receive 10% off site-wide that's from our place.com code real foodology. Our place offers a 100 day trial with free shipping and returns. Do you want to hear the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging? Of course you do, because all of us are concerned about aging. There is a class of ingredients called senolytics that were discovered less than 10 years ago, and they are being called the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging and enhancing your physical prime. Now, when I'm talking about aging here, I'm not just talking about on a superficial level, wrinkles and saggy skin. I'm talking about energy, joint pain, your ability to show up for your life, cognitive function. I'm talking about the real effects of cellular aging

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to hear more about the product and more about these senescent cells that affect aging, go back to the episode that I did with Dr. Greg Kelly of neurohacker. So you can dive more into the details of all of it. But the formula that I'm talking about qualia senolytic is non GMO, it's vegan, it's gluten free, and the ingredients are meant to complement one another, factoring in the combined effect of all the ingredients together. If for some reason you don't like the product, you're not feeling the effects of it. It also has a 100 day money back guarantee. If you want to resist aging at the cellular level, try qualia senolytic, go to neurohacker.com slash real foodology for up to a hundred dollars off and make sure to use code real foodology at checkout for an additional 15% off that's neurohacker N E-E-U-R-O-H-A-C-K-E-R.com slash realfoodology for an extra 15%

off your purchase. Thanks to Neurohacker for sponsoring today's episode. I'm excited to announce a new segment that we're doing here on the podcast, Courtney's Favorites. Every week, I'm going to share with you at least one product, if not a few products that I use in my everyday life, whether it's in the kitchen or skincare, makeup, beauty products, you name it, anything that's non-toxic and just stuff that I use and love on a consistent basis. Today's is really fitting because I have Mark Sisson on the podcast and I wanted to share with you Primal Kitchen. They're a pretty big name, so you're probably already aware of them, but if you're not, they make healthy condiments. So whether it's mayo that you're looking for or ketchup or

dressings, they have a full line of healthy condiments. And what I love so much about them is that they are made with avocado oil instead of inflammatory, inflammatory oils like canola or soybean, which is what you usually find on the shelf at the grocery store. I was so excited when I found them a couple of years ago, because I had been making all my dressings from scratch because it's really hard to find a dressing that is made with real food ingredients. And that doesn't have additives, preservatives, or like I said, inflammatory oils. And so these dressings are like, as if you made them at home and they also shared, they gave me a code to share with you guys. So it will save you 10% off at checkout. The code is real foodology. And I highly, highly recommend getting their mayo.

The pesto mayo is like fire. It's so good. Also, their buffalo sauce is amazing. It's so good on chicken. And if you're more in the dressing route, I would say their cilantro lime is probably my favorite. It is so good on a taco salad or used as a marinade for chicken. And then last but not least, I also really love their ranch and

their barbecue ranch. So I highly recommend checking out those products. Also reach out to me on Instagram. If you want to ask me for more of my favorites from them, I honestly truly love everything they make, including other pasta sauce is really bomb too. So anyways, the code is a real foodology. It saves you 10% off at primalkitchen.com. And with that, let's get to a question. Before I get to the question, I just have a little disclaimer. As always, these answers and this podcast are just for educational and informational purposes only. I am an integrative nutritionist, but I'm not a doctor.

And I don't know you personally. I don't know what's going on in your body. So just know that this information on this podcast is not a sub for individual medical or mental health advice, and it doesn't constitute a provider-patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor first. Today's question comes from John, and it's a really simple question, but I'm excited to answer it. He said, are french fries really that bad for me? I'm really excited to answer this question right now because I have really good news for you. No, French fries are not inherently bad for us.

It's what has been done to them and what oils specifically that they are cooked in. So I always tell people, if you're going to have French fries, just make sure that you're cooking them in either ghee, avocado oil, or olive oil. But I would avoid olive oil unless if that's all you have, because olive oil has a lower smoke point and you don't want to cook olive oil past around like 350 degrees. Also, if you hear the kitty in the background, it's my producer's cat. He's having a moment. Um, but yeah, so as long as you were eating French fries that are cooked in a good heart, healthy oil, you were totally fine.

So I recommend making them at home because look, here's the thing, potatoes are not bad for us. But what I do worry about is eating French fries out because a lot of these restaurants are using frozen potatoes and there's nothing wrong with frozen potatoes, but they often throw artificial ingredients in there to preserve them. So a lot of preservatives, a lot, a lot of fillers, and then they're frying them in canola oil, which that is very concerning because canola oil wreaks havoc on the cardiovascular system and we want to avoid it at all costs. But in the same breath, I will tell you this, does that mean that I never eat French fries out? No, but I'm very conscious of the times that I do have French fries out. And normally when I buy French fries, I go for places that I know are cooking them in good oils. So like avocado oil

or ghee, or make them at home in my air fryer. You can get them just as crispy in the air fryer. I also have a recipe for making french fries the crispiest that you will ever get in an oven. And I will link the recipe for that. And yeah, so just just know that potatoes are not bad for you. It's what we've done to them. And with that, let's get to the episode. Mark, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Such a pleasure to be here, Courtney. Yeah, I'm so happy to have you. So I wanted to just dive right in. I wanted to start talking about metabolic flexibility because I've been hearing about

this a lot lately. And I had a woman on my podcast recently, Dr. Tina Moore, who was saying that it's really the key to getting through this virus healthy and okay. So can we talk about what exactly metabolic flexibility is? Sure. I guess the main points of it are that most of humans derive their energy from a number of different sources.

We can get energy from glucose in our bloodstream, glycogen in our muscles. We can get energy from stored body fat bloodstream, glycogen in our muscles. We can get energy from stored body fat or the fat on a plate of food. We can get energy from sometimes combusting amino acids, protein, or by making ketones. And ketones are sort of an elegant fourth fuel that the body makes in the absence of glucose. And the body loves to use it to run the brain and to run cardiac muscle and certain skeletal muscles. So we have all these what we call energy substrates that we can make. We're all genetically programmed to burn these substrates, and a lot of the usage of the substrates depends on two factors, one of which is the amount of energy that we're being called upon to expend,

whether that means we're walking slowly for long distances, which is primarily a fat-combusting exercise, or whether we're doing glycolytic work in the gym or lifting heavy weights, and that's anaerobic and uses a lot of what we call the phosphagen system, which is also tied into the glycogen system. So we have all these different energy substrates. The problem is over time, and because of the way our diets are orchestrated now, because of access to way too much food and way too much processed food, we, starting at a very early age, lose the ability to tap into all these different energy substrates. And what happens is we wind up depending a lot on the carbohydrate as a source of glucose to fuel our bodies. And this has become a huge issue throughout the U.S., for sure.

That's why so many of us are metabolically dysfunctional, obese, overweight, type 2 diabetes. It's because we become carbohydrate dependent. We haven't trained our bodies to use these wonderful fuels like the stored body fat, like the ketones that our liver can produce. So what metabolic flexibility describes is the ability of the human body to extract energy from whenever these substrates, whatever of these substrates is available, whenever it's called upon. And to do so, to switch between fat burning and glycogen burning and glucose burning and ketone burning effortlessly without having to think about it for sure and definitely without feeling it, without noticing it. What happens to a lot of people who, for instance, decide they're going to go on a two-day fast and they're coming off of a diet that's primarily the standard American diet and they read about fasting and they go, wow, this sounds great. Like I'll repair my body if I don't eat for two days and it sounds

wonderful. But what happens is if you haven't trained the body to burn fat in the absence of any incoming fuel, if you haven't trained the brain to use ketones to maintain its attitude and its mood and to prevent it from releasing stress hormones, then that two-day fast is difficult and it's depressing and it turns people away. But if you're metabolically flexible, if you've done the work, if you've built the metabolic machinery to access your own stored body fat in the absence of any other food, if you've built the metabolic machinery to allow your brain to thrive

on the presence of a minimal amount of ketones in the absence of glucose, then you are metabolically flexible. Then you can switch back and forth among and between these substrates and experience, you know, this sort of massively empowered part of life, which allows you to go through the day without being tethered to mealtime. Like, oh, I missed breakfast. I feel terrible. I'm going to have to have a donut when I get to work. Or, you know, I can't have that meeting at 1130 or 12 because that's lunchtime. And if I don't eat lunch, I'll get hangry. All of these things disappear when you develop metabolic flexibility. I love that. So for anyone listening, does that mean that you have to go

keto in order to achieve metabolic flexibility or what does that entail? So it doesn't require that, but it's a whole lot easier if you utilize the tool of keto. In other words, ketogenic eating, this sort of very low carb way of eating is probably the easiest and fastest way to prompt your body into making the adjustments to become metabolically flexible. When you withhold carbohydrates, so when you cut back on sugars and you cut back on starchy carbs and you limit your carbohydrate intake to some vegetables, not much in the way of fruit, healthy fats and protein, that is what we sort of use as a description of a keto diet. The body is kind of prompted to increase the number of mitochondria in the cells.

And mitochondria are the part of the cells where the fat gets burned to create energy. So creating more mitochondria is a good thing. The body is prompted to make more ketones and to offset the need of the brain, which otherwise has become very dependent on glucose for its energy source, to now become more reliant on ketones. And a ketogenic way of eating is a great tool, a great strategy to kind of push your body gently, ease it into greater metabolic flexibility. Now, you don't have to go keto. You can simply choose to cut back on, I mean, look, as long as you understand that we really have to develop this metabolic flexibility, we have to get rid of the big three,

right? The big three are sugars, added sugars, and all of that, you know, sweetened beverages and all the stuff that we pretty much know that we shouldn't be eating. You want to get rid of processed grains and processed carbohydrate, stuff that gets way too easily digested in your gut and becomes converted into glucose so quickly that your body doesn't know the difference between these processed grains and a bowl of Skittles. Yes. Can we give some examples of what processed grains would look like for people listening? Bread, pasta, cereal. I mean, all of these things, muffins, cookies, crackers. It's, you know, it's,

it's unfortunately for some people, it's a large part of what they might eat in a day. But the elimination of, so we go back to eliminating the sugars, the processed grains, and then ultimately what we call the industrial seed oil. So soybean oil, canola oil, corn oil, safflower. These are very highly processed oils that are deleterious to our health may be involved in insulin resistance, which is another major block for getting to this metabolic flexibility. Yes, and we're seeing more and more cases of it now too. It's huge.

It's just absolutely huge. So the first step in achieving metabolic flexibility, whether you go keto or not, is to eliminate those big three. And if you do, you come down to a fairly, you know, enticing list of beef, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey, fish, all the vegetables that you can conjure up in your head, which probably won't exceed 17 on a bet. And, you know, maybe a little bit of fruit once in a while, and maybe some starchy tubers once in a while. So you're not really keto, but you've cleaned up your diet enough that you're prompting your body to become more readily accepting of the idea that you'll be burning more fat and less carbohydrate as time goes on. As you clean that up and as you become more adept at burning fat, we call it fat adapted, the next phase is seeing how long you can go without eating, provided it doesn't cause issues with you. So what we want to do is we want to develop a pattern where we eat when we're hungry,

for sure, but we don't necessarily eat when we're not hungry. And with that simple little piece of advice, we find that people over a period of time generally find that three meals a day is just too damn much food. That if you really think about it, if you don't tether yourself to a mealtime and instead you wake up in the morning, you have a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, a cup of water, whatever it is, and start your day without eating any food and see how long you can go before you start to get hungry or you start to get, you know, feel a lack of energy. the longer you can go, the better it is for your body. And the longer you can go, the more your body is now starting to build that metabolic machinery. It's starting to create those, we call it mitochondrial

biogenesis. It's starting to increase the number of mitochondria. It's starting to improve the efficiency of the mitochondria that you already have. It's increasing enzymes that take fat out of storage so they become readily accessible. It reduces the amount of insulin that you produce. And insulin, while it's a wonderful hormone that, you know, sort of regulates how nutrients get into the cells, if there's too much insulin, we can't take fat out of storage and we can't burn it. And so we have this ironic sort of situation where we have all this fat on our bodies. Many of us who are obese have all this fat and we can't even get access to it because of the hormonal dysregulation that's happened as a result of the way we've chosen to eat. Again, we've chosen to eat sugars and processed grains and industrial seed oils. And then we've chosen to eat. Again, we've chosen to eat sugars and processed grains and industrial

seed oils. And then we've chosen to eat so often throughout the day that the body really never has a chance to go, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, I got all this fuel stored on me. I would love to start burning it off. That's what I'm designed to do. And yet you keep loading the fuel tank up with more, right? So that's the issue. You know, it's so interesting because I started doing this a couple years ago, what I call flexible fasting, where I basically, kind of similar to what you said, was I wake up in the morning and I'll have my coffee, and then I won't eat until I find myself hungry. And for years, I mean, all growing up,

I was that person that literally the second that I woke up, I was so starving that I had to eat something almost immediately. I couldn't even fathom the idea of waking up and not eating within 20 minutes of first waking up. And when I started learning about fasting and how incredible it was for our brains and our health and everything, I started to just slowly, I would just every day, I would go until I was hungry. And it was not about starving myself. It's still not about starving myself. I mean, this morning I woke up and I was hungry by 10 30, which is not normal for me. I normally eat around like noon one is my first meal. But as you start to train your body to do that, it adapts. And now I, I only eat two meals a day and I feel great. But years ago,

hearing that someone talk about this conversation, I would have been like, there's no way that I could go, you know, that long. Well, and you know, we're also at the effect of advertising, which suggests that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And that was followed up with over decades of so-called nutritional science that sort of indicated that you had to eat three small meals a day and there always had to be protein and a little bit of you know carbohydrate and a little bit of vegetables at every meal and and even snacking in between was was okay provided it was a healthy snack because humans are grazers and you know this is how we're supposed to eat and in fact it turns out nothing could be further from the truth we're actually fractal eaters. And we typically, you know, encountered throughout our evolution periods of time where there was no food for days, and then there was a lot of food. And so

we had to, like, you came across, you know, the carcass of some animal that something else had killed, or, you know, you came across a trove of fruits or, you know, some trees with low-hanging fruit. And that was not the time to start portion control, right? So we developed these systems through evolution that allowed us to survive as a species to today, which is kind of a twofold system. We have one system that takes excess calories and elegantly converts it into stored body fat. And it deposits that stored body fat elegantly and precisely in the most appropriate areas to allow us to carry it with us for long periods of walking. So it deposits it on our waist, our hips, our butt, our thighs. And so that's why we have these sort of,

you know, overweight storage, you know, facilities. And people go, well, why is it that I store all the weight on my belly and my thighs and my butt? Well, because that's what you're designed to do because it is the perfect center of gravity. It's like if you were had, if you had to, if you're a skinny person and you're going, you know, on a long hike and you've got 50 pounds that you want to carry with it, the ideal place to literally carry it is around the waist, not on the shoulders or on a backpack, but literally as a, you know, distributed across the midsection. So it's like a fat fanny pack. Yeah, the classic fanny pack with a bunch of stuff in it. So it's kind of interesting that we all seem to have tapped into that ability, right? We all seem to be able to store fat

pretty easily and for obvious reasons. But what we've lost, conversely, is the ability to take it out of storage and combust it, which is also part of the design. So our ancestors would go days without eating. And you think they, you know, curled up in a fetal position and felt sorry for themselves and victimized. And oh, if I don't eat another, I'm going to get hangry and I'm going to yell at my partner. No, they just went about their business because it was so good at burning stored body fat and so good at having the brain utilize ketones, which were produced by fat in the absence of any other food. So it's an elegant system. And what I do is I just try to teach people how to tap into that with ease and grace. This is really exciting. Organifi now

has kids stuff. They just released two kid products. One is called Easy Greens, and it's a refreshing green apple juice where kids will never know that it's packed with veggies. And the other one is called Protect. It's a delicious wild berry punch like the Kool-Aid that we used to have as a kid, but without any sugar. This is really exciting. And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that I'm a huge fan of Organifi and most specifically because every single product that they make is glyphosate residue free. So you know that you're going to be able to give these powders to your kids and know that they will be able to consume them safely without any glyphosate in it. So let's break down each one. The Easy Greens is a nourishing and delicious blend of superfoods and veggies that provides essential nutrients, probiotics, and digestive

enzymes to bring balance to kids' growing bodies without fillers, additives, or junk. It helps to fill in nutritional gaps, aids in growth and development, supports digestive health, has a rich micronutrient profile, and includes digestive enzymes. This would be a great way to sneak in greens for your little one without them actually knowing that it's healthy for them. And the second one, which is the wild berry punch similar to Kool-Aid, is called Protect, and it is to support your child's daily immune health with food-derived nutrients that work to strengthen their body's first line of defense. I know just through girlfriends of mine that have children that when your kids are going to school, going to daycare, they're coming home sick a lot more often just because they're getting exposed to different kids

and different viruses when they're out in the world playing with kids. So this would be a great way to help to support your little one's immune health. It's organic and it's also made with real whole food ingredients. It has a delicious berry taste and it's low sugar and it's gentle enough for kids to take every single day. And I really love the ingredients in this one. It's orange and acerol cherry, which is a powerful source of vitamin C and antioxidants. Astragalus, elderberry and propolis. These are all really great for overall immune health. If you want to try the products that I talked about today or any of the Organifi products, go to Organifi.com slash realfoodology and use code realfoodology for 20% off. Again, that's Organifi. It's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I

dot com slash realfoodology. Imagine having a metabolic coach in your pocket that you could access at any point, any time in the day, whenever you want. That's what Lumen is. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workout, sleep, and even stress management. I have so many podcast episodes about metabolic flexibility and why it is so incredibly important for your overall health and longevity. And now thanks to Lumen, you can actually see in real time, your body's ability to efficiently switch between using different fuel sources like carbs and fats. There's preferred times to use each and

how well you can switch places between burning carbs versus burning fats will tell you a lot about what is going on in your metabolism and where you are in the metabolic flexibility spectrum. All you have to do is breathe into your lumen first thing in the morning, and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism, whether you're burning mostly fats or carbs, then lumen gives you a personalized nutrition plan for that day. Based on your measurements. You can also breathe into it before and after workouts and meals. So you know exactly what's going on in your body in real time. And lumen will give you tips to keep you on top of your health game. Why is this so important?

Your metabolism is your body's engine. It's how your body turns the food you eat into the fuel that keeps you going. Because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does, optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, and more. Now, this is a really cool feature too. It can actually track your cycle as well as the onset of menopause and adjust your recommendations to keep your metabolism healthy through hormonal shifts. So if you want to take the next step in improving your health, go to lumen.me and use

Real Foodology to get $100 off your Lumen. That is L-U-M-E-N dot M-E and use Real Foodology at checkout for $100 off. Thank you so much to Lumen for sponsoring this episode. Okay. So then I'm curious, cause I'm sure a lot of people have this question too. I've heard a lot of people worry about the keto diet specifically because they say, since glucose is our body's preferred source of energy, or so what we've been told that this, that ketosis is considered more of like a backup plan right for when you're really starving and you haven't you don't have access to food for a couple days what would you say to to that um well there are a couple

points to make here um the first one is that glucose is not the body's preferred form of fuel and okay you have to look no further than to understand that in the context of what I just said about going long periods of time without eating, which was most of human history and was largely the human experience. Why would evolution design a system wherein the amount of glucose in your entire bloodstream is the equivalent of a teaspoon of sugar, where the amount of glucose that you can store in the muscles as glycogen is about 420 grams, of which only 300 grams are accessible. And the liver can store maybe 100 grams of glycogen, full stop. Meanwhile, we can store 100,000 calories of body fat on us very easily. That's

really, that's 30 pounds of excess body fat is 100,000 calories worth of fuel. That's enough to walk 1,000 miles. So when people say that glucose is the preferred fuel, I just shudder because it's not. Fat is the preferred fuel. Glucose is certainly a fuel that muscles like to use. The brain will use it if there's a lot of it present. But muscles don't have to use glucose. You can train muscles to derive 95% of their energy requirements

at 90% of the muscle output from fat if you do the training right. And if you sort of live in the context of that ancient paradigm that says, you know, we are largely designed to be storing excess calories as fat and then burning off the excess calories as fat. Now, with regard to keto as a backup system, well, it's absolutely a backup system, but it's there all the time. It's not like you waste it every time you use it. It's not like, I mean, it's literally a fourth fuel. And anybody who, of any way of eating, say you're what we call a sugar burner and you're carbohydrate dependent your whole life and you can't make this transition to metabolic flexibility.

If you wake up in the morning and you don't eat breakfast and this might have happened to you you would be producing ketones your body's producing ketones it's already it's it's a normal function of skipping meals no matter what your way of eating no matter how much you've trained the issue is that when your body's producing ketones and you haven't built the metabolic machinery and you haven't trained the brain to use those ketones efficiently and effectively, then what happens is the liver overproduces ketones and it spills them out into the bloodstream, which then, you know, if the brain doesn't use them and the muscles haven't learned how to use them, you pee them out, you know, or the brain doesn't use them and the muscles haven't learned how to use them,

you pee them out, you know, or you breathe them out in your breath, and that's where you get the keto breath. And so, ironically, the term ketosis describes an excess of ketones in the bloodstream. You're not in ketosis until you've tested at 0.5 or higher millimolar on a blood ketone meter, for instance. So ketosis isn't even a good thing. It's like I'm keto, I eat keto, but I don't like to be in ketosis because when I'm in ketosis, I'm spilling out the excess ketones. I'm wasting fuel in the form of, you know, peeing them out. So as you become more and more metabolically flexible, and as you realize that you don't have to be in

ketosis all the time, that once you've built this flexibility, and once you've cut out those big three, the sugar, the processed grains, and the industrial seed seed oils and you eat real food the body does a great job of producing just enough ketones to make the brain happy now this is an interesting an interesting um think thing to think about so because because so many people who start in ketosis and start on the keto diet are like they're buying the meters and they're buying the strips and they're peeing purple and it's like like i win my my strip was you know my my urine strips more purple than yours well you don't win you're actually not there yet you're you know the guys who have been in ketosis for 10 years or keto for 10 years are not in ketosis they've been they're keto but they're

not in ketosis they might have less than 30 grams of carbs a day, and yet they're not in ketosis in the way that we describe ketosis, which is an excess of ketones in the bloodstream. Because they become so adapted, it's so good at making just enough ketones to keep the brain happy. Now, why do I say that? Because, first of all, the liver does have the ability to make 750 calories worth of ketones a day. That is a ton, ton of energy. It has the capacity, but it doesn't typically do it. Because once you get trained, the brain realizes that, or the liver sort of realizes, the brain has a steady state requirement for energy throughout the day.

So it doesn't have to give these big, huge swings in ketones because you decided to do, you know, a heavy leg day or play a game of, you know, fast game of pickup basketball. You know, when you go in the gym and you do a heavy leg day, the leg muscles, the glutes, the vastus, the hamstrings, these are all using 50 times as much energy in that work that you're doing, right? They're consuming 50 times the caloric energy to get the work done. And yet the brain, which is running this whole thing, is still going along. It's a steady state. The brain isn't requiring 50 times as much energy to exert the force that the legs are required to do. So when you, and if you

get well trained enough in this concept, you realize that the legs are not using ketones. They're using fat and carbohydrate, but mostly carbohydrate in this work, mostly glycogen, mostly actually the phosphagen system, which uses a recycling system with glycogen. But the legs are doing a lot of work, requiring a lot of energy. The brain is just saying, you know, I got this. So throughout the day, the brain really doesn't require that much in the way of energy, maybe, I don't know, 500 calories, something like that per day. But if you break it down by hour, it's like 20 calories per hour. So it's a very minimal amount of steady state drip that is required to make the brain very happy and to run on ketones and to thrive without being even in ketosis. Does that make sense?

Yes, I think so. So you can still eat a keto diet and not fully be in ketosis all the time and still have the benefits, right, of what we're looking for. Good point. Yes. Yeah. You don't have to eat. Once you've, again, once you've built the metabolic machinery, once you've done the work, and the work includes, again, cleaning up the diet, going keto for a while, just to be sure that you've that you that you're really um cutting back on carbs um uh expanding your eating window from three meals a day and not going more than eight or twelve hours without eating to to only eating in say a six or eight hour window each day and then the rest of the time you're not eating and that's when all the good stuff happens that's when the body starts doing its housekeeping its house cleaning cleaning, it repairs DNA. It certainly upregulates mitochondrial biogenesis. It's burning fat. So it's burning off your excess stored body fat. It's doing all these wonderful things. The best things happen to the human body when we're not eating. And people have

to sort of kind of, you know come come to grips with that so using keto as a strategy as a tool to get there is as i said from the beginning it's the best way it's not the only way there are other ways um but but even those guys who claim to be eating a keto diet uh yeah if they have a day where they have zero carbs or 20 grams of carbs, that's a fully keto day. And yet if you look at their keto strips, they might barely register as being even in ketosis because they become so adept and adapted to burning fat when it's appropriate, burning the glycogen that they always store in their muscles.

I mean, make no mistake, if you're keto, you are still producing glycogen and storing it in muscles and liver. And then obviously using the ketones as a, you know, as a fuel for the brain. I've heard, I've heard a lot of mixed messaging around this. And I'm curious what your take is on keto for women, because I've read, and I will say it's a little bit anecdotal for me personally. Um, I've read that it can mess with our hormone and cause hormonal imbalances. When I went keto, I didn't particularly have a great time. Now I will say there's a caveat. Like I feel like I just didn't have enough energy. And once I finally stopped focusing so much on being keto and I just was, I eat a little bit lower carb now.

So I guess I would still kind of be closer on, you know, the spectrum of being keto, but I don't specifically go keto because for me, I didn't have any energy. Um, so what, what's your take on keto for women and like hormones and all that? Yeah. I mean, that's an issue. And there are some women who absolutely thrive on keto and just think it's the greatest thing. And, and, and you know they get right in and they have all the benefits they're seeking this is particularly true in the carnivore community women who've gone on the carnivore diet and that may have something to do with a choice of of macro nutrients in addition to the micronutrients that are in that are in meat. Having said that, you know, there are women who,

well, let me backtrack and say, at the end of the day, all I really want is to feel good. So I don't care how I get there, right? I want to look good. I want to feel good. I want to perform well. But, you know, at the top of the list is I want to feel good. And so all of

the measuring and all the devices and all the ways of eating and all of the macro tracking and all of the apps and all of the, you know, wearable devices, they're meaningless if you don't feel good. And if you do feel good, they're still meaningless because you feel good. So, so it's, it's a bizarre kind of world that I find myself in trying to, to, you know, downplay these wearable devices, because I say at the end of the day, all that matters is how you feel. So if you're a woman, and if in your case, you didn't have that much energy trying to go keto uh and you you you added back some of the carbs that were missing as long as they were clean carbs you know as long as it wasn't sugar and sodas and and sweetened beverages and pies cakes candies cookies and all that other stuff

then if you felt good you win full stop that's it done. Done. There's nowhere to take this. It's not like I have the right way. I certainly don't have the only way. I have a way. Actually, I have several ways. But all of my several ways are contemplated to get you to intuitively understand what works best for you through trial and error, through Experimental One and so that's the the keto template which as we as we overlay that on men most men find the keto template works very well a lot of women find the keto template works very well some women whether it may be from years of a combination of metabolic dysfunction, just eating poorly. And that

could go back to not just overweight, but underweight, like anorexia. Anorexia can mess with somebody for a lifetime or bulimia. So eating disorders or orthorexia in the wrong direction or hormonal issues as a result of choices. For instance, we found over the years that gluten has a huge impact on certain women's hormones. So sometimes this metabolic damage takes a long time to undo. And you really do have to stair-step your way into this, starting with the elimination of the big three, and then sort of understanding what hunger really is for you. Am I hungry because it's noon, or am I hungry because I'm hungry? And am I destined to finish what's on my plate because

that's what they told me is a serving size? Or am I okay stopping eating after four bites of fish and three bites of vegetables and go, you know what, that was great, and I don't feel compelled to eat anymore until the next meal. There are a lot of little nuances here that are at play, and I think it comes down almost entirely at the end of the day to how do I feel and how do I feel about how I feel. In other words, I'm noticing my hunger, my appetite, my cravings. What is it? Am I craving something or am I just a little bit hungry? Do I have an appetite because I'm hungry or because it's the time of day that I normally would eat and all of a sudden it's that time and I'm not eating. That's so much of, this is like,

how we eat is like how we do life, right? It's, it's, there's a way, it's like a metaphor here of, of, you know, how you view how the brain looks at what's, what's going on in your life and assessing whether there's something to be done about it right now. That's what I find most fascinating about this whole thing, is that I could give you a template, but you still have to be, you know, willing to do some elimination, to add some back in, to notice what happens, to take responsibility for, you know, falling off the experimental track for a minute. Yeah, I'm sorry if I'm rambling here, but it's kind of... No, this is great. No, I love it. Well, and you touched on something that I wanted to talk about, because I remember when I was in college, getting my master's in nutrition, we read these studies that showed that people who ate less food actually age better

and they live longer. And I remember initially myself and all my classmates were like, wow, this is so fascinating. But we were like, okay, one, that sounds a little disordered. And two, like sometimes I'd rather just, you know, live shorter and enjoy my food. And I think that I want to talk about this because I feel like there's this misconception about how much food we actually need to be eating. And also I think there's a misconception that healthy eating is synergistic with eating like really bland, boring food that you just force down. You know? I know. I mean, for the longest time, you know, I came of age with boneless, skinless chicken breast as sort of the ideal, you know, form of protein and anemic steamed vegetables with no butter or no fat on them. No salt. No salt.

Yeah. No, and this was, but this was what conventional wisdom suggested was the healthiest way to eat. Yeah. And the good news about the last 15 years with the advent of ancestral eating, which included paleo and then my primal blueprint, and then certainly keto as the next level. level now carnivore is that there are now, I don't know, what, 2,000 cookbooks that look at keto, carnivore, ancestral, paleoprimal. And anyone from 30 years ago would have picked these cookbooks up and said, well, that's way too much fat. And, you know, there's too much meat. And now it's like, oh my God, look at all the fat I get to eat. Look at all the meat I get to eat. This is amazing. This can't be healthy. So there's that aspect, which is if you are willing to entertain the notion that fat is our friend and we're

designed to burn fat as a preferred fuel, that cholesterol and fat are not the proximate cause of heart disease. It's oxidation and inflammation. And if you are willing to entertain the notion that you cannot exercise away a bad diet, and so you don't have to think about losing weight simply by burning calories, you come to this amazing realization that, God, I can enjoy life. I don't have to work out that much. I can eat literally very satisfying foods, healthy foods that are not just healthy but satisfying like they satiate me like like when i say sometimes i have to push a plate away because it's it's too it's too not too good because i wouldn't do that but it's too filling it's too satiating it's too like okay i had i got that experience i don't want to overeat because it's so it's it you know it did

the trick it filled me up and now i feel because again if we go back to you know the old uh paradigm of the 80s and 90s that chicken breast and the rice white rice with nothing on it it's like okay you're hungry you're definitely hungry you know an hour later or two later so um there's there's so many good things about where we're at with dietary science right now that it does not require suffering and struggling and sacrifice and all this other stuff. And to your point about what's the ideal number of calories, well, one thing we – when I said at the beginning of the show, one thing you realize when you become metabolically flexible and metabolically efficient is we eat too damn much food. And so some of us, myself included, I could get away with eating a lot of food. I wouldn't gain weight, but that doesn't mean it wasn't having a negative metabolic impact on me. So as a runner, you know, I weighed 30 pounds less than I do now. And now I'm like,

you know, 167 pounds. I'm 8% body fat. Um, you know, same body fat when I was a runner, I just weighed 30 pounds more now and it's all muscle. So I ate 7,000 calories a day in those days. And probably a lot of carbohydrates too. A lot of carbs. And if I didn't burn it off running, then I burned it off in increased body heat, which is not a good thing, by the way. They call it the thermic effect of eating or the thermic effect of food. So the body always finds ways to dissipate that energy. I didn't store it as fat. And that may have been a bad thing for my health.

I was horribly inflamed. I had arthritis. I had tendonitis. I had GERD. I had irritable bowel syndrome, largely as a result of the gluten I was eating. But 7,000 calories a day, I could get away with it. So people would say, hey, Mark, you're the picture of health. I was on the cover of Runner's World magazine three times. Look, you're the picture of health. Meanwhile, I was not healthy. So then I cut to today, even five years ago when I would probably, I could have consumed, you know, 30, 200 calories in a day and thought nothing of it. And now one of the realizations I had a long time ago, was that most humans who have access to food tend to live their lives with

what can I get away with? How much food can I eat and not gain weight? How much food can I eat and not feel guilty? How much of this cheesecake can I have and not be considered, you know, a glutton? How much, in other words, it's what's, where can I go up to the edge, adjust to the edge, and not have it be, you know, come crashing down on me. And so we tend to see what we can get away with. And we do that work too. Like how little work can I do and still get paid or, you know, whatever. So it's across the board. That's human nature.

It's not just diet but then i thought you know as a thought experiment what's the converse of that what's the least amount of food i can eat and maintain muscle mass or still put on muscle have all the energy i want never get sick and most importantly not get hungry because hunger ruins everything hunger would destroy everything so so what's the least amount of food I can eat and fulfill, check off all those boxes? And it turns out it's a lot less than I used to think. It's a lot less. If you do the math, it's like, you know, what's the, you know, how much protein do people need in a day? Well, 100 grams a day is a very generous amount of protein. But let's say 125. Like even some of the biggest guys

don't need more than 125 grams of protein a day, right? That's 500 calories. Okay, check off the 500 box. And what about, you know, 110 grams of fat? That would have been horrible in the old days, right? 110 grams of fat. Jesus, that's like, well, let's just say it's 110 grams of healthy fat. There's a thousand calories. So now it covers protein, well, let's just say it's 110 grams of healthy fat. There's 1,000 calories. So now it covers protein and fat, and we're only up to 1,500 calories, right? And if we start talking in terms of carbs and we're not eating much in the way of carbs, let's just say we're eating copious amounts of vegetables, like a giant salad for lunch with protein on it. And, you know, maybe some triple serving of steamed vegetables with butter in the evening. And the butter counts as part of the fat.

Even that's not 100 grams, but call it 100 grams of carbs there. We're basically at 100 grams of carbs is 400 uh calories we're still under 2 000 calories a day and that would be like enough to maintain any anybody who's doing appreciable amounts of work for a long period of time right so i'm not saying that i've just created a you know a template for how you should orchestrate your diet but i'm just saying if you if you break it down into those component parts if if you've covered all those bases, you don't need that much food to thrive. So now we have to decide the difference between what's the least amount of food I can eat and maintain all these things that I've said. And what's, you know, and what's then,

you know, a comfortable enough amount where Courtney gets to have the pleasure, the hedonistic pleasure of a couple of extra spoonfuls of the dessert or, you know, an extra piece of that nice, wonderful, yeasty bread with butter on it. And that's where we talk about the enjoyment of life. And just, look, I want every bite of food I ever put in my mouth to taste fabulous. So. Yeah, who wouldn't? Yeah. When you tell me that, you know, kale is the healthiest thing you can eat, Mark, and a kale salad with lemon juice and a little bit of vinegar is, I'm like, no, that ain't happening. Sorry.

So even if it's the healthiest thing I could eat, if it doesn't taste great, if it doesn't please me, I'm not interested and I'm not going to sacrifice my chewing muscles for that. This is really important for people to hear, I think, because we have to take that back and remind people that eating healthy, you can still eat food that you love and that tastes good. So while we're on that subject, what is a day in the life of eating look like for you? So, um, I mean, I'll just tell you today. So today I got up at, uh, 7 15, um, had a big cup of coffee. I put heavy cream in the coffee, um, and a tiny bit of sugar uh and that's my interesting you use sugar yeah it's just you know i want the coffee to have you know that

particular taste uh for me so fruit there you go um and we used you know we with our primal kitchen products we use a lot of monk fruit and stevia. Which are great, by the way. But a little bit of sugar, I know, isn't going to derail my efforts. And I think combined with the cream, the fat in the cream, and the caffeine in the coffee. Anyway, that's what I start my day off with. I did a workout at 11 o'clock. COVID has put windows on what two-hour segments you can or cannot go to the gym. So I did my workout at 11 o'clock. COVID has put windows on what two-hour segments you can or cannot go to the gym. So I did my workout at 11 o'clock. I had lunch at 1.30.

And I had a ahi tuna sort of seared in sesame and some vegetables on the side. A little salad with that little seaweed. It was a Japanese-y kind of dish, a little salad with that little seaweed. It was a Japanese-y kind of dish, a little seaweed thing. That's all I needed for lunch. And then for dinner, I'll have probably a nice one-pound ribeye with some steamed broccoli or something slathered in butter, some red wine. And that's it. Every once in a while I have dessert.

Although I'm a person who's, I've learned that as much as I like dessert, the discomfort I experience in trying to sleep that night is not worth the two minutes of gustatory pleasure in eating the dessert. So those are some of the things that you learn through trial and error. And you go, you know what, if I keep doing this to myself, you know, and then hating myself in the morning because I made bad choices the night before, you know, there's something more going on in my head than just, than just my way of eating. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I found that once I started really tuning into my body and the goal was to feel good in my body, I started gravitating less towards desserts and stuff like that. And that's not to say that I

don't eat them at all and I don't still enjoy them. But when I find myself feeling really crappy after a meal, I don't want to eat that again, I find myself feeling really crappy after a meal, I don't want to eat that again. And so I gravitate towards the foods that make me feel good in my body. And I think that's also an important thing for people to hear. Again, it's just it really comes down to – well, first of all, it comes down to educating yourself and having a base of knowledge from which to make some decisions.

But also it then comes down to paying attention and noticing how you feel and, you know, thinking about not just mindlessly eating, but, you know, if you do decide to have that cheesecake or that chocolate mousse, you know, at what point after the first or second or third bite are you willing to say you know what that first bite was fabulous that was a 10 and the second bite that was a 9 and by the time i get to the third or fourth bite you know it's down to a six a six or a five and at what point am i now just making a bet with myself that i can polish this off you you know, without feeling horrible. So just the ability to understand that a couple of bites of a dessert, A, won't kill you, and B, should be enough to satisfy all of

those little, you know, receptor sites that are craving dessert. Yeah. I love that. Okay, so for someone listening who may feel like this is all a little daunting to start, where would you suggest that they start so that their bodies become more metabolically flexible? Well, I have a new book out called Two Meals a Day, and it's on Amazon. It is, and everywhere else that books are sold. And it really is a primer that covers the science of what we've just talked about, about developing metabolic flexibility. Certainly talks about how to orchestrate and do a, you know, a transition with grace and ease into metabolic flexibility. And then it also covers a lot of the other lifestyle complementary aspects of this that we haven't talked about but are but are fairly important

like getting enough sleep like you know finding finding uh that that perfect sleep setting where you get uh you know seven half eight eight and a half hours every night of regular sleep of deep sleep of good sleep and you know ironically or not a good diet helps you sleep better so and then a good night of sleep makes your diet work more efficiently and effectively. You don't secrete as much cortisol. We deal with exercise protocols and how to maximize the training effect with the least amount of input. We call it the minimum effective dose of exercise. And that was a big thing for me. And I spent my whole life as an endurance athlete overtraining every day, running 100 miles a week for seven years,

and then training for triathlons after that, Ironman events. So I was training 25, 30 hours a week some weeks. Way too much. And I would, you know, I don't know what was, what flipped in my brain that even allowed me to do that every day for 25 years. But I came back to, once again, not what's the most amount of work I could do and not get injured, but what's the least amount of work I can do and maintain muscle mass and get stronger and get faster and improve. And so it becomes an exercise in efficiency.

So we talk a lot about that in the book, in two meals a day. And then there's play, sun exposure, some advanced techniques like cold water therapy and things like that, if you really want to get into this and do a deep dive. But it's a fun book. I love it.

I was actually looking at it on Amazon before we chatted. And I'm curious, what's your favorite recipe from the book or do you have one? Um, so here's the problem. Um, I, uh, I've written now eight cookbooks. Uh, I should put it this way. I have eight cookbooks with my name on them as author or co-author. And they're great, by the way. Yeah. Thank you. I love to eat. I love to eat. So my favorite meals have to do with red meat, typically. Or if it's fish, a fish with a really awesome sauce. Not awesome sauce, but an awesome sauce on it. And I really have a tough time picking out a favorite food i i think one of my in the back of my brain one of the things i want to kind of get away from is um is reducing uh my choice of meals to you know four different things uh and then rotating

the through i mean i've said i'm on record as saying that lamb chops are my favorite type of food. Like people have said, if you had one food to eat for the rest of your life, what would it be? And it would be lamb chops and Cherry Garcia ice cream. Oh, yum. Ben and Jerry's. They're the best. But I haven't, I literally haven't had that for, I'm going to say, at least 10 years. And the last time I had was probably, you know, three bites. I just, you know, I know what it does to me. Yeah. Yeah. Same. And that's important to take note of. Yeah. So before we wrap this up, I wanted to take this just a little bit of

a different direction with my final question. And because I listened to you somewhere kind of recently where you talked about the idea of flexibility as going beyond just our metabolism and how it's like the important key to longevity. I think you said something along the lines of like the aspect of life, aspects of life require flexibility when we become rigid is when we break. And I just thought that that was so interesting. And I want you to talk about that for a second, because I think it's really important for people to hear right now more than ever. Yeah. Well, you know, I talked earlier about the concept of metabolic flexibility and the way of eating as being sort of a metaphor for the rest of your life. Like this is how you eat is how you live your life. So this metabolic flexibility certainly gives you access to more energy. Then we can talk about physical flexibility and the fact that the, you know, a quality life, in my estimation, is defined by basically two things.

Mobility, which is flexibility. Mobility, the ability to get around this world, you know, without being bedridden or in a wheelchair or, you know, sitting in a sofa. And access to cognition. So not getting Alzheimer's, right? So if you get, if I get to be 85 or 90 years old, I want to be mobile and I want to have access to memories and the ability to process thinking in real time as well. So there's a flexibility there. In order to develop both of those, you have to be flexible. You have to be willing to, you know, not just go to the gym and lift weights,

but you have to be willing to do some form of flow, movement, tai chi, yoga, whatever it is, to develop flexibility there. In terms of the mental aspect, you know, we talk about a growth mindset, be willing to learn all the time and picking up new things. So during COVID, I bought a drum set. I'm teaching myself how to play drums. It's something I always wanted to do, and now I finally had an excuse to do that. In business, and I talk a lot about this in business, it's the concept of pivoting, which is flexibility. It's

understanding that your business plan might be a great idea and might be certainly an awesome goal for today, but to have the flexibility to be able to recognize when that plan might not be working as written and what other opportunities might present themselves that might at the end of the day be an even better have an even better outcome for you that pivoting that ability to pivot and to be flexible and to to understand um that uh you know your brain wants to hold on to uh something and maybe the best thing is to let go of it and allow a new thought to enter. You know, Einstein, I guess, one who said, you know, you can't fix a problem with the same mentality that created the problem in the first place, right? Yeah. So one example of this

flexibility was, you know, Mark's Daily Apple, my blog, which I started in 2006 as a, largely as a platform to disseminate information on health and fitness, but also as a means of selling some supplements that I created. And so for the first 10 years of that platform, you know, I talked a lot about health and fitness and diet and exercise and I sold supplements. But as my notoriety grew and as the readership grew on Mark's Daily Apple, my business didn't grow that much. And I realized, wow, I'm just, I keep thinking, what do I need to do to sell more supplements? And in fact, it turns out that that was the wrong approach, that I needed to pivot. And I recognized that I was writing so much about food and how you can achieve good health through the types of food you choose to eat. And the sauces, dressings, toppings, methods of preparation, herbs and spices, the ways you prepare that food are what give those otherwise healthy foods variety and sustainability and make you want to eat them for the rest of your lives. It's why there are 2,000 cookbooks on the ancestral paleoprimal keto, and those 2,000 cookbooks still use just beef, pork, lamb, fish, chicken, turkey, 17 vegetables, and some root,

right? But there's infinite ways to prepare these. Well, what I recognized was that there were nobody, nobody was making sauces and condiments and salad dressings that you could use with reckless abandon, that you could put as much on as you wanted. And they not only made the, that vegetable or that meat taste better, but they actually imparted some functionality and made it better for you. And so that was my aha moment when I said, actually, I should be the one to create this line of products that people would willingly put more of on their food, not less of. You know, they really want to feel better about it. And so that became Primal Kitchen.

And again, that was just a result of being flexible enough to deviate from my business plan of just wanting to sell more supplements. And it became, you know, uh, a business that was, uh, you know, 40, 40 or 50 times bigger than my, um, than my supplement business. Yeah. That's amazing. I actually originally found you through your blog, Mark's Daily Apple, um, years and years ago when I was in school for nutrition. And then I remember when you came out with Primal Kitchen dressings, I was like, I mean, I was so ecstatic because this was a time in my life when I was making all my dressings from scratch at home. I barely had

time because I was working full time plus a student, you know, in school also full time. And so it was, I mean, yeah, just really. And at that time, I still feel like there's not that many on the market that are as clean as yours are. Well, thank you. I mean, yeah, just really – and at that time, I still feel like there's not that many on the market that are as clean as yours are. Well, thank you. I mean, we wanted – from the beginning, we wanted to be demonstrably the best in every category that we entered. And by demonstrably, I mean you go through the list of ingredients and there are no bad ingredients. There are only good ingredients. It tastes great.

There were a number of criteria that we had to check off. But I do feel good about the fact that there are people competing with us right now doing a good job because it means that the world is starting to understand that the importance of, well, food tasting great by putting condiments and sauces and dressings on it that are actually good for you. Yeah. Yeah. It's so amazing. I love that so much. Well, and with that, why don't you tell everyone when your book is out, where they can find it, where they can find you? So I'm sure you could pre-order Two Meals a Day on Amazon right now, Two Meals a Day. And Mark's Daily Apple is my blog. And if you're interested in the food products

that we just talked about, Primal Kitchen, just Google Primal Kitchen. It's everywhere. You can get it on Amazon. You can get it on Thrive Market. You can get it in virtually every store in the country. Yeah. But Mark's Daily Apple is a good place to start. And if you want to kind of find out more about, like, how I got started, my original book is called The Primal Blueprint. And that was sort of the beginning point of all that led up to this two

meals a day. That's great. Thank you so much for coming on today, Mark. Thanks for having me. This is a Resonant Media production produced by Drake Peterson and mixed by Chris McCone. The song is by Georgie. As always, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really helps me in this show a lot. See you next week. It makes me down, down, but I try So why is it that you like me? At least I know I am for them My time won't be wasted anymore You are standing twice above me My only feeling

I want to be alone, alone, alone every day So take my hand, take my hand Take my hand, take my hand So take my hand, take my hand I know.