The Nick Bare Podcast - 007: Thomas DeLauer - The Effects of Fasting on Fat Loss and Health

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

In this podcast episode, I enjoyed speaking with Thomas DeLauer, a nutrition researcher and expert in nutrition and performance. His personal transformation has inspired millions worldwide, and he continues to share his experience and insights with others to help them achieve their health goals. During our conversation, Thomas shared his wisdom on the science behind fasting and its powerful effects on fat loss and overall health. He discussed the different types of fasting and provided practical tips for getting started. We then discuss how you can balance strength training and running and why doing both is important for longevity. Topics: (00:00) - Intro (01:05) - Strong opinions, loosely held (04:41) - Weight loss transformation (11:54) - Building a brand in the fitness industry (17:03) - Beginning intermittent fasting (23:23) - Metabolically healthy vs. damaged individuals (29:49) - Fasting adaptations (33:28) - Fasting benefits (39:50) - Most beneficial way to gain muscle (44:00) - Dieting approach for eating disorders (53:48) - Damaged metabolisms (58:18) - Balance running and strength training (01:08:54) - Effects of carbohydrates on the body (01:12:16) - Changing your stance on dieting (01:17:16) - Final words Follow for more: IG: https://www.instagram.com/nickbarefitness/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbarefitness Keep up with Thomas here: IG: https://www.instagram.com/thomasdelauer/  YT: youtube.com/thomasdelauerofficial Supplements I Take: https://bit.ly/3Nviqpc

In a matter of a year and a half, I gained over 100 pounds and was close to 300 pounds at my heaviest. What triggered the initiative to start losing weight? Pull into a spot next to the drive-thru. And an acquaintance of mine drives by on the street right in front of me. And he looked at me and he kind of waved. And it was at that literal moment where I was just like, this dude doesn't even know me that well. And the way that he just waved at me was like he would expect me to be there. I am the person that is now expected to be a jack-in-the-box.

But then after that, I was like, this is it. Like, this isn't what I want to be anymore. How'd you come across fasting? These were doctors that were way on the cutting edge with metabolic health stuff. And fasting was still pretty fringe, but I was willing to give it a shot. What are the benefits of fasting? So the real reason I stick with it, do I need it anymore? Probably not.

I really genuinely like how I feel lighter. I feel fresher. My brain feels good. All that stuff is anecdotal, though. The stuff with circadian biology, even Huberman talks about timing our meals and taking breaks from food are tremendous form. You know, B-M-L-1, P-E-R-1, and the expression of these genes that have to do with our circadian biology. that helps us sleep restore better circadian cues, better cortisol spike at the right time, aligning everything that's been totally disrupted with our modern way of living.

Strong opinions loosely held. What does this mean to you, especially in regards to nutrition education and the evolving understanding of? It's good. A strong opinion, I think, is what's going to drive you forward with nutrition, personally. You have to be able to have conviction in what is working in that much. moment, but you have to also be able to be flexible, be able to change if things aren't working for you personally. I think we have to remember that with nutrition, there's a global way

that we can look at nutrition. And that's a way that we can say, hey, this works for everybody. That's total bullshit. That nothing works for everybody. So my opinion of nutrition is it should be held firmly with what works for you. Now, do you preach that as gospel to everyone else around you? that's your prerogative. But the bottom line is, what works for you, works for you. I think one of the reasons that I've resonated with a lot of content you produce and create. We had this conversation, went on a five-mile run downtown Austin this morning.

It's that I, in similar ways that you do, use our bodies and our experience is this self-experimentation to find what works. Right? Like we're constantly surrounded and exposed to a lot of information. And a lot of these are extremes. Some are not extremes. And we try these things. We see what works and what doesn't and what fits within our lifestyle and our beliefs and our practices and just preferences.

And then applying that and then spreading information. I've seen I've seen you do that yourself using your body and your experiences is self-experimentation. But the reason I really wanted to kick off with that. That phrase, which I love is strong opinions loosely held, is because I've seen you through interviews and podcasts and articles where you have a very strong opinion about certain things. But if there's evidence that comes out that conflicts what you have a strong opinion about, you are very open to understanding and learning about that literature

and then ultimately changing your mind, which I think is very powerful. And a lot of people don't have that perspective and approach is they get married to a certain idea or concept and they live and die on that hill, which is very dangerous. It's a very dangerous spot to be in in all aspects of life. Yeah, I totally agree.

It's, I wasn't always that way either. And it wasn't that anything was malicious or there was any malintent whatsoever. It's just, I think it just came with maturity of just understanding, you do things for so long and you stop getting the same result that you used to have and you start questioning things, be like, maybe this works for me then, maybe it doesn't work for me now.

But by always being able to be your own end of one, be your own experimentation, be willing to test on yourself, you can be open to change. I've tried all different kinds of diet types. I've tried all different kinds of training methodologies. And sometimes one works and sometimes another doesn't. And then two weeks later, the other one works and the other one doesn't. And it's that point when I realize, wait a minute, like things will work at different times. Things won't work at other times. And it's okay if we have multiple tools in our toolbox. And why do we need to subscribe to just one way of thinking all the time? I think the more that we can be open to change, the more that we can optimize ourselves. And I'm not just saying optimize in the sense of being the strongest, the fittest, the smartest.

I just mean in being able to find yourself and be the happiest that you can possibly be. What I really want to dive into is kind of your weight loss transformation. Because it's one thing, you know, say people come across your content online or they're seeing you right now and you're ripped, you're jacked, you got biceps, you got a great physique. And for someone to see someone with a great physique, kind of preaching and practicing these nutrition protocols, it's easy to say, oh, yeah, they're fit. Like maybe they're naturally fit. Maybe they were born that way. Maybe like genetically they are just a fit person. But you were 290 pounds at one point in your life.

What I'm curious is, you know, you weren't overweight growing up. You were an athlete and you got to 290 pounds. I want to know how you got there. And then what triggered the initiative to start losing weight? Okay, I'll take a step back and think about when you were doing your bulk a while back. Now imagine if you kept doing that bulk and you decided to stop working out. but you wanted to eat like that, and you wanted to be more sedentary to.

That's essentially what happened. Like, I ended up obese, literally because of a bulk gone wrong. I was an athlete when I was in high school. I was a runner. I ran my first marathon when I was 11. And from that point on, I loved working out. I mean, I hit the gym when I was, like,

I think 12 or 13 for the first time. So don't get me wrong. I had fundamentals, like, drilled into me at a young age of being in shape. Okay? but by the time like 18, 19 rolled around. I'm like, okay, I want to put some muscle on. So I started going that route for about a year, put some good muscle on,

and then I got into the corporate world. I got into a commission-only job, super stressed out all the time, sitting down for 14 hours a day. At my worst, I was drinking like eight, nine fully leaded monster energy drinks. I mean, it was like horrible, right? And I stopped training. I was training like maybe one day a week, and I convinced myself that I was more of a power lifter

and that I could just lift one day a week and be strong, and that was it. and I was still eating six, seven, eight thousand calories per day. So, you know, for the first couple of months, that was great. I was like, okay, cool, that kind of held on, and I could kind of keep some composure to my shape. And then it just all went to hell. So, you know, in a matter of a year and a half, two years, you know, I gained over 100 pounds and was close to 300 pounds at my heaviest.

And, I mean, along with that high blood pressure, I made myself diabetic in two years. I mean, it just goes to show that even someone that's athletic, if you completely go the other direction, and I think the biggest culprit was being very, very sedentary, you know, a lot can happen. So for me, the big turning point, I've talked about this before, it's kind of interesting. There wasn't any crazy call to action. Like, no one came to me and said, Thomas, you're going to die. You know, my doctors didn't say, oh, your blood pressure's too higher, you know, nothing like that. Okay, like I was perfectly content. I was making good money. I was focused on money. That was really it. It was the quintessential, like priorities were in the

wrong place kind of thing. So early 20s, it's all I cared about. It's like, oh, I got to get rich. I got to make money. Were you married at this time? Yes. My wife's been with, me from since high school. So skinny, fat, where I am now. Like, that was part of the issue was the fact that my wife loved me so unconditionally that I kind of wish that she had had just been like, dude, you're sloppy. Like, stop. But she like, she didn't breathe those kind of words. And now in retrospect, I look back and she did like plant little seeds here and there. She did try to kind of let me know, hey, this maybe isn't the best route. I don't think you should do doing this. Anyway, I was sitting at a talk or a jack-in-the-box. I went through a jack-in-the-box

drive-thru because every Thursday I would have meetings on the other side of town. Okay, so I would go on the other side of town, have my meetings, and because I'm like, okay, no one's going to know me over here. So I'd go to jack-in-the-box and pretend like people didn't realize that a 300-pound person like myself was eating jack-in-the-box. So I would consider it like sneaking around, kind of going through this drive-thru, getting my jack-in-the-box tacos, which I loved those little translucent grease-filled pockets, right? So I go through the drive-thru. I pull into a spot next. to the drive-thru, and I'm just eating my tacos like I usually do in my car, and an acquaintance

of mine drives by on the street right in front of me. And he's not even a close friend. He's just an acquaintance, someone that I know, but didn't know really, really well. And he looked at me, and he just sort of acknowledged my existence and kind of waved nonchalantly. And it was at that literal moment where I was just like, holy shit, I'm not hiding from anybody. Like, this dude doesn't even know me that well. And the way that he just waved at me was like he would expect me to be there. Like it wasn't like, oh my God, Thomas is eating a taco. Like, it was at that point where I realized, like, I'm a different person now. I am the person that is now expected to be a jack in the box. And that wasn't any anomaly in that guy's life to see Thomas Dallauer sitting at

Jack in the Box. And I finished my tacos, but then after that, I was like, this is it. Like, this isn't what I want to be anymore. And it was literally driven by shame. I mean, that's how kind of funny it is in a weird kind of way, but it was driven by shame. I was so shameful of the fact that this guy saw me and that I knew him. Had it been a close friend, it would have been totally different. But the fact that he was somewhat removed made all the difference in the world. And I've thought about it a lot, as you can tell. Did you still view yourself at that point in your life as this fit athlete, even though you were near 300 pounds?

The level of like pathological lying to myself was ridiculous. Yes. Yes, I would consider myself that I had body dysmorphia. I would tell myself it was body dysmorphia. I would tell myself, oh, Thomas, you're not fat. You're still in shape. You're just in just mess. Because I grew up in a really interesting way

where I had a lot of pressures on me from my mother and just to look a certain way. And so all these pressures, like, it made me think, oh, this is, maybe I just have a disordered way of looking at myself. But it really was, no, it really was bad. Especially it didn't take me until I started to have a change to where I actually realized that something was wrong. I mean, body dysmorphia is a, it's a,

real thing, man. Especially me coming right off of this bodybuilding prep that I just finished four days ago. You know, the deeper I got into prep and I was getting leaner, I thought I was getting fatter.

I thought I was gaining more weight, even though the scale and the Dexta and everything told me otherwise. And then post show, like day one, day two, day three, even this morning, it's like you start seeing yourself gaining fat post show being as lean as possible and your mind plays tricks on you.

So I can see it on the other side of the equation as as you start telling yourself, oh, I'm just an athlete, I'm just balking, I'm just balking, well, in reality, you're actually getting unhealthy and less fit and it becomes like this dangerous, slippery slope at some point until you have this awakening of, holy shit, like I'm actually doing some pretty steep damage to myself right now, physically, mentally, emotionally.

And I still struggle with that today, right? I mean, part of my brand is being very lean all the time. And not that I would really see myself much different than how I am now, but the pressure's there. It's like, okay, hold water for a day. I mean, yeah, you start almost freaking out and you have this distorted image of yourself. It's like you put on 1% body fat and you think you put on tent.

You know, everything is exacerbated immensely when you have this mindset. Do you find that having a personal brand that is so centered around nutrition and weight loss, specifically like fasting, fasting space, you have this immense amount of pressure to hold and maintain a certain physique. And if you don't, you lose credibility in the eyes of the viewers. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, every single minute of every day, that's on your mind, you know, and it's the mental piece, obviously, is there too. I mean, I'm known as being very articulate, being able to articulate complex biochemistry. And so, you know, a level of performance anxiety too.

Like, am I going to be able to articulate what I need to articulate properly? If I stutter over a word, you know, are people going to think that, like, I'm not as smart. You know, it's the pressures are pretty real. And you don't want to go out there playing the victim. You don't want to be out there saying like, hey, this is hard, this is hard because no one's going to take you seriously. Like no one's like, oh, you have money, you have fame, you have this, it doesn't matter. But the pressure is real.

I mean, and you face it, too. It's a very real thing. What do you do to combat or mitigate some of those stressors and pressures? You know, I'm sure there's things that are happening subconsciously, coping mechanisms, right? You don't always think about them. But, you know, for me, it's always refinding and rediscovering the passion for what it is I'm talking about. And for me, the performance and the competition is always with myself and no one else. you know, people make it about other people. That's how social media is. But for me, it's never

about the other people. I'm very competitive with myself. And I'm okay with being competitive with myself. But when it comes down to being able to find that intensity and that passion and that drive that really keeps me going forward, it's talking about things I want to talk about. And for a lot of time, I went there talking about things that other people wanted to hear or what trends were or what social media wanted to hear. And then when I stopped worrying about viewing, and I stopped worrying about engagement and getting validation that way, and I started worrying about talking about what I want to talk about, everything else fell into place.

And then if someone has something negative to say about it or something negative to say about my appearance or how I deliver, it doesn't really matter because at the end of the day, at least I delivered and I learned something new, and I'm excited about it. And that way I can at least lay my head down at night knowing that I did what feels good to my soul. Yeah, I mean, you can't fake passion.

And passion is very easily, identifiable. One of the things I've been saying this past year is that you have to show up as your true authentic self. You can tell instantly when someone stops showing up as their true authentic self because they don't have the passion behind what they're creating and what they're doing and it just becomes this kind of just this routine and rhythm you're in and you're just there. You're just there doing but you're not actively trying to progress and do better. Now I've fallen into the same the same problematic issues of creating based off of what other people want to see or what's going to perform and how it can help me and the business grow.

And whenever I create or do something that I'm truly passionate about and want to do and love to do, it is so obvious the difference in the outcome, but also the performance of what I'm working on. It always outperforms when I'm truly passionate about what I'm working on. on. Yeah, no, it makes a huge difference. And I feel like that's what's honestly lacking in social media a lot is everything is gamified so much. People can look at their analytics and they let their analytics dictate their consciousness. They let their analytics dictate their passions. They let their analytics dictate where they want to go with their personal brand. That is complete lunacy to me.

That makes zero sense. Why would you let, you know, whatever algorithm tailor who you are as a person. And I feel like what we have right now is a bunch of algorithmically driven robots running around the world. People that have developed an identity based upon what the algorithm wants their identity to be. And I say, fuck that. Like, I know who I am and I'm going to continue to be who I am. I don't care if people don't like it. I don't care if the algorithm doesn't like it. Because eventually people are going to pick up on my passion. And my passion is what's going to drive the real engagement. And the social media all implodes eventually in the future, which it won't, but if it ever did, at least I know that I'm staying true to my heart,

and at least I know the connection that I've made with people through that passion is going to actually last longer than like four days like it might with other content. People who are pioneers in a space or an industry or just in anything they're doing will always shine bright. And I love innovators. I love pioneers. It's why I love entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur and creator are not necessarily synonyms, as much as a lot of people want to believe and think, but creating can be part of entrepreneurship. So I want to dive into fasting. I believe fasting is how you first started losing weight. Is that correct? Yeah, it was actually fasting before keto. People always think

that I started keto. Now, fasting came first, keto was kind of a, I just kind of fell into it because it worked well with fasting. How'd you come across fasting? Fortunately, so I was in the private equity space in a very nicheed world of health care. So we were kind of in what are called what's called ancillary lab services. So we were providing ancillary, basically somewhat outpatient, like laboratory services that physicians could bring into their practices, MDDC campaigns and whatnot. So the bottom line is that I had a pretty good network of what are called fee-for-service physicians. Nowadays, it's kind of known as concierge medicine doctors that are working outside of,

of the typical insurance reimbursement continuum, they're working on a cash basis. Back in like the late 2000s, like early 2010s, that was much more rare. It was really only like wealthy individuals that were using concierge medicine. Bottom line is that these were doctors that really needed to provide good patient outcome if they wanted to get paid. Like nowadays, a physician can do whatever and they're still going to get paid by insurance. It could be a poor outcome. It could be a great outcome, it doesn't matter. They're still getting paid because they're getting reimbursement. In concierge medicine, I like it because it's somewhat performance-based medicine. The point is, is that a lot of the doctors that I became friends with were doctors that

thought outside the box. They were doctors that were like, I'm not just going to prescribe. That's not the world I want to go and I actually want to treat. So that's how I learned about intermittent fasting. Like in 2000, I guess it was like nine-ish. These were doctors that were like way on the cutting edge with metabolic health stuff. And fasting was still pretty fringe as far as the research is concerned, but I was willing to give it a shot, right? It was like one of these things where it just made sense, and it clicked with me. Like again, like you, I'm a very all or nothing personality. So I'm not going to stand here and say that fasting is magical, but I am going to say it works very well for people that have an on-off switch type mentality,

where for me, it was easy for me to lose weight because it was like, I flipped the switch, I'm not eating, it's that simple. I flip the switch, oh, I can eat again. Flip the switch, I'm not eating. I've always been able to be robotic like that if given the opportunity. I'm the same way. Yeah, it's just, it was easier for me to say, oh, I'm going to go 16, 18 hours without eating. No problem. The weight just fucking fell off. And I don't like to make it sound like that on my content because I don't want to undermine people that are really struggling. But for me, when I was aggressively fasting, the weight did fucking fall off. It was that simple. Were you doing a 16-8 fast? So 16-8 in the beginning, in the beginning, but then I kind of translated more into,

to like a 186, like four days per week, and that kind of became my norm. And that's 18 hours of fasting, not consuming any food, and then six hours of consuming food. Correct. And I don't do it that frequently now. Obviously, I'm so lean. If I did that four days per week, it'd probably be pretty aggressive. So I usually fast two days per week now. When you're not fasting, when's your first meal? So I usually eat in a 12-hour block. So I'll do 12 hours of fasting, 12-hour eating block. And that's usually moved in. anywhere around. I almost always train fasted. I train first thing in the morning. And for me, it started as a time thing. Like I'd get up in the morning. I would roll out of bed and pretty much

hit the gym within 30 minutes. So like for me to eat and actually have something to digest in time to work out was just not typically feasible for me. But then as my body adapted, like I don't really feel good if I do eat before I train. So nowadays, I just roll out of bed and train or it's run, then eat, then lift. So I'm always doing some form of fasted training. not because I think it's better than anything else. It's better for me. But I typically eat like first meals maybe 8 or 9 a.m. otherwise. So I'll maybe do like four, three or four square meals and then I'll shut it down by like 7 p.m. at the latest.

I'm very curious about fasting. I've personally never dove into fasting myself. But I've always been curious as an outsider. When you first started losing weight, when you introduced fasting, do you believe it's because naturally you were just consuming less calories during your time of feeding because your feeding window was tighter and smaller? Yes, yeah, without a doubt. I mean, I do think that that is the biggest piece of it. And I think that's where I differ from a lot of the fasting community. The fasting community comes under attack all the time because of this, right, this very thing.

And I think that a lot of that attack could be mitigated by just a thoughtful acknowledgement of thermodynamics. Like, yes, I was eating less. But I've done countless. self-experimentation on myself where I still eat the same amount of food and my results are typically better. However, I have confirmation bias, right? I am going to like where I sit in my camp more and I'm probably going to naturally create a placebo effect. So I can't say that that's 100% the way. But there is something to be said, especially for someone that is like a type 2 diabetic or someone that is insulin resistant, definitely something to be said about lowering baseline insulin levels, which for me, when I look back at me being overweight versus when I was starting to lose weight,

I mean, I was clinically a type 2 diabetic based upon what my fasting glucose was, and my HBA1C. So by me, like fasting and bringing my insulin levels really low, I'm sure I, of course, corrected some of that, and that played a big impact as to being able to lose weight. Because if insulin levels are high, then you're inhibiting lipolisus. You're inhibiting the release of fatty acids into the bloodstream if insulin's chronically high. So if I'm able to stabilize that and bring that down, then I'm allowing more fat to be liberated. That, in combination with caloric restriction, is a recipe for fat loss. And I don't think anyone will deny that.

Now, where that comes into question is if you take someone that's metabolically healthy and you have them intermittent fast, are they going to have a better outcome than someone that's just simply restricting calories? And with that, I think there is a world of different things that come into play. Epigenetics, their history, their training background, you know, all of that. So we can't say with certainty one is better than the other. But I can say that some people certainly respond better to fasting than others. Yeah, I listen to your podcast with Lane Norton, your interview with Lane Norton

in regards to calories in versus calories out. And I guess the argument of the hormonal response of insulin sensitivity. And this is where a lot of my questions come into play is because I know there's a lot of, there's a lot of questioning. and a lot of people have some pretty strong opinions on both sides of this conversation. I'm curious where you still stand in terms of, and maybe it's both, is calories in versus calories out the gold standard, or is the hormonal response of insulin sensitivity,

does that still play a significant role in weight loss? And I guess to counter that, does it make a big difference in healthy individuals as opposed to maybe metabolically damaged individuals. Yeah, that definitely has to be divided into two camps, metabolically damaged and healthy individuals. Because healthy individuals are going to be insulin sensitive. So are you really trying to just like squeak a little bit more insulin sensitivity out of yourself

for whatever reason, you know, for muscle protein synthesis or whatever? So let's put that one aside. For someone that is metabolically unhealthy, which is a large percentage of people. So, you know, although we may look at the fitness community and say, hey, yeah, there's definitely this discussion to be had. Let's look at the mainstream. And with that, I talk about how do you become metabolically unhealthy? So, I mean, I would define, you know, metabolic syndrome or syndrome X, you know, where you've got chronically high levels of glucose. You've got mitochondrial damage where you're basically, you're not able to manufacture energy well because glucose uptake is poor. You've got

lipotoxicity where you have high circulating triglycerides that are impeding insulin and impeding the ability for the body to utilize glucose. You've got, you know, high blood pressure, obviously excess adipose tissue, high levels of visceral fat, that's what I would really classify as metabolically deranged, right? And it all stems from a lot of that glucose regulation. And it also stems from what are called adipokines. So you've got basically inflammatory response that comes from excess adipose tissue. So they all kind of orchestrate this beautiful symphony of just dysbiosis and total dysfunction. Now, that is a lot of people, whether they're overweight or not. So with that, if I had to put it in a hierarchy, I would still put thermodynamics at the top of the list.

Whether that is going to be proven or disproven in the next 10 years, I don't know. I mean, that's physics. That's pretty simple math. But a lot of people have solid arguments that, hey, there's a lot more going on than just the energy balance. There's a lot of other, you know, there's mass, there's all these things that come into play. And that's, those are valid arguments. but I still think the biggest one based on the foundational research we have is that calories absolutely matter.

And if you restrict calories enough, whether you're fasting or not, you're going to attain a level of insulin sensitivity. You're going to improve insulin resistance. And a lot of it has to do with AMPK phosphorylation. It has to do with, like, as soon as you're in a deficit, is it a dimmer switch or is it a light switch, right? So if you go into a deficit, is it like, hey, I'm turning down calories and getting more benefit the more caloric restriction that I go? Or is it a light switch? Like as soon as you

officially cross that deficit line, are you getting all the benefits? That's where I feel like fasting has some advantages because I have heard countless very, very reputable scientific figures say it's a dimmer switch. In fact, I've never heard anyone say it's a light switch. And if that is the case, then perhaps aggressive stents of caloric restriction, i.e. fasting are going to turn that dimmer switch down more. And maybe they give people a chance to get into that caloric deficit in a deeper level easier than just restricting calories and counting calories all the time. Do I think counting calories is bad? Absolutely not. I still count calories. I still keep track. But I look at it over the course of a week rather than over the course of a day. Some days I eat 1,000 calories. Some days I eat 6,000.

Some days I eat 500. I really do vacillate my caloric restriction so I get different levels and different degrees of cellular impact and different degrees of AMPK phosphorylation and different varying improvements in insulin sensitivity, the lift goes on. That's interesting. I actually never I've never heard of someone utilizing that approach throughout a week. I'm very curious. How do you determine on what days you're consuming, say, 500 to 1,000 calories and what days you're consuming 6,000 calories? Is it the capacity of training that you're doing or is it just based off of hunger. So yeah, most of it's intuitive.

I really don't respond to exercise, or I don't answer exercise with food. Always. I do think there needs to be a compensatory response there, but does it need to happen the same day? That's where I have serious question. I don't know if it needs to happen that same day. Does the body know that it's been one day outside of our circadian cues?

Like, we don't reset at zero at midnight, every night. Like it's not like we just like up, it's a new day, start the clock over at zero with our calories. If I go out and I run 10 miles and then I lift for two hours and I'm like, shoot, my caloric demand is probably six or seven thousand calories today. That doesn't mean that I'm going to eat six or seven calories that day. I might do it the next day. Might do it the following day. I mean, I know from my own research and I know from a lot of bodies of research that protein synthesis stays elevated for 48 hours. So I can recover from that workout within a 48-hour time frame as far as protein is concerned. And protein is my biggest concern anyway. So calories,

I'm like, shoot, maybe I'll actually reap the benefits of being in a severe deficit today. I'm going to go out and run 10 miles. And you know what? I'm going to eat like a bird. And I'm going to get this huge extra benefit. And I'm going to stress my body by doing this. Because when you talk about going one more, right, I look at caloric deficits and being able to stress your body the right way under control as going one more. So for me, as long as I'm not burning up muscle and I'm keeping a good thoughtful watch on that, I don't mind like training my ass off in a serious deficit just to get that actual stressor in my body. And yeah, so I mean, it might be two days later. It might be the next day. It might be the same day. But I typically try

to just constantly keep it undulating. To paint a picture of what one of my days looks like right now and why I haven't introduced fasting historically is, I wake up at 5 a.m. I'm running by 6 a.m. I'll run for an hour. I'll run until 7 a.m. When I get back, I normally eat my breakfast regardless of I'm hungry or not. A lot of the times I eat a lot of my meals regardless if I'm hungry or not. I eat most of my meals actually when I'm not hungry just because I eat based off of time right now. So I eat right away.

If I were to do, say, a 16-8 fast, I probably won't eat until 11 a.m. and then we do family dinner around 6 or 7 p.m. So I'd have my last meal then. My greatest concern with that has always been, I'm running at 6 a.m. And I'm going for five hours till my first meal. And now it's going to affect recovery and performance. But I guess what you're saying is it won't necessarily do that.

I don't have to worry about consuming a meal immediately after running or lifting. Is that what you're saying? Yes. but I think that there is some serious nuance there. And if I can get kind of woo-woo, witch-do, weirdo for a second, I do kind of think that someone's frame of mind plays a big role in that too. Because I mean, we know placebo effect is a very real thing.

So if someone goes into it thinking that it's not going to work, like perhaps they actually kind of manifest this poor recovery from it and having faith in the system and stuff like that sometimes is good too. I know that sounds totally crazy because that's like there's no scientific rigor behind that whatsoever. But I do think that, like, sometimes a belief system in something actually warrants quite a bit. I agree with that. If we had no science, no social media whatsoever, and someone that was thought to be the most trusted person in the world told you, if you eat three dog turds a day, you're going to be super jacked. You might eat those dog turds

and magically get jacked. And you're going to think it's the dog turds, but you probably just wield those dog turds into making you jacked, right? It's kind of crazy how that stuff works. that being said, there is absolutely like a line, right? If your metabolic demand is so high, like you need food. There's no denying that. And that's what I've learned as I've gotten leaner and as I've increased the demand on my body. Like when I'm filming, if I'm filming for like six, seven hours and I'm running and I'm lifting all in the same day, like that is such a huge demand. If I fast during that day, I will have tremendous energy that day.

Because yes, I'm preserving energy for my brain, and I usually feel really good. But two days later, I'm wrecked. Like, I feel that, right? So you have to know your body, and there's a level of adaptation. And that happens legitimately cellularly. Okay, like you can adapt to fasting where your body is better and more efficient at utilizing fats. That doesn't mean you're magically going to burn fat. What that means is that you're going to preserve muscle.

You're going to preserve the carbohydrates, so you're going to start utilizing the fats for your more like regular baseline level of energy so that you're not tapping into your resources for higher energy intensity, higher intensity stuff. So basically, like as you fast more and more and more, you kind of increase that baseline at which your body can utilize fats just by upregulating like CPT1 and some of these other like fatty acid transfer systems, right? So with that, I can fast for quite a long time and recover just fine. If you've never fasted before and you did two 16-hour fasts in a row, you might very well feel fatigued. Like you would have to start yourself small. What are the benefits of fasting outside of assisting weight loss? I think number one,

that's I like how I feel. And I think that's the most important thing. Like, if you don't like how you feel when you're fasting, you shouldn't be fasting. That's, that's, you're not a candidate for it. So the real reason I stick with it, do I need it anymore? Probably not. I really genuinely like how I feel. Like I feel lighter. I feel fresher. My brain feels good. I feel like I'm kind of in this mild state of fighter flight where I can just react in a good way. I feel like I'm more grounded as a person. So all that stuff is anecdotal, though. Now when you start looking at like Sotchen Panda and like the stuff that he's doing in his lab, like the stuff with circadian biology, even Huberman talks about this. Like this is real stuff. Like the circadian biology stuff, timing our meals and taking

breaks from food are tremendous for like, you know, B-M-L-1, P-E-R-1, all of these, like, and the expression of these genes that have to do with our circadian biology. So that helps us sleep, helps us restore better circadian cues so that we can wake up at the right time, have better cortisol spike at the right time, basically aligning everything that's been totally disrupted with our modern way of living. So that stuff is pretty backed up in solid data. Now, even if you start looking at the early stage human trials that we're seeing, it's still pretty darn fascinating. A lot of this stuff is still early, though.

It's still rodent models. It's still a lot of in vitro stuff. That doesn't mean that we can't get excited about it. No one is hurting themselves by saying, oh, you know what? I'm in a time-restricted feed and stop eating at 6 p.m. to see how I feel. It's not like you're inflicting danger upon anybody

to get kind of excited about what we're seeing in pretty massive scale rodent model research, but no one's also saying that this is the only way it needs to be done. Now, cognitive benefits, you know, when you start fasting long enough and you have elevation of ketone bodies. Pretty strong demonstration that those are powerful, you know, staging off or saving off neurodegenerative conditions.

So, you know, Alzheimer's dementia, things like that, pretty interesting research there. So as far as being able to help the brain feel better, any other kind of chronic metabolic disease, you know, insulin resistance, again, the data is very strong there. Not to say that the data isn't strong with caloric restriction, but for someone to come at it and say, fasting doesn't work, fasting is totally bogus, that's BS too.

Like, no one is denying that caloric restriction doesn't work. We're also saying, hey, there's another player here too. Let's acknowledge that. Because when you look at the cognitive benefits, that's really, as far as like a mechanistic thing, that's probably why I still fast the most is because I have a lot of cognitive demand with what I do. And then I also find it's just really easy

to maintain a level of leanness with it. And I know you said outside of body composition, but it's such a big part of my life. Like, I can be pretty relaxed with my diet and just restrict calories aggressively with a couple fasts a week, and I feel pretty darn good. And it allows me to have quite a surplus on the other days, but I actually feel like I stimulate recovery really well. On these days where you do fast, like, what does a day look like for you? In terms of waking

up, eating, what you're consuming, when? Yeah. I mean, I typically wake up around 5 a.m. or so every day, usually in the gym or running by 5.30 or 6, usually one or the other and kind of flip-flop them, usually run and then lift a little bit later. But then, you know, I'll finish my workout. I'll usually drink green tea quite a bit, like, sip on it constantly until like 1 p.m. or so, and then I cut it out because I cut out the caffeine. Usually I'll have my first meal, if that's a fasting day, like around 2 p.m. or so. And around 2 p.m. I might have, like, like, way protein, like something just a really simple weight protein, or I'll have, like, better yet, like a lean chicken breast, like something really

lean protein. And that's like it, literally just lean protein. And then like 30 or 60 minutes later, then I have a larger meal. And I do that just because I want to kind of blunt that insulin response a little bit. So I want to have some protein first. Let my body assimilate that. That way I can have more flexibility with the next meal and not have my blood sugar go totally all over the place. So I'll have like a more moderate-sized meal around like 2.30, 3 p.m.

Then wait a few hours to have a larger meal like 6, 6.30. Maybe I'll have some like yogurt or cottage cheese around like 7.30. I mean, that's it's pretty simple. And then my training is usually just as intense on a fasting day, if not even more intense because I usually feel good and have more energy. What about gut benefits from fasting?

I don't know if it's just the thought process of giving your gut and digestive system a break during a longer fast. Does that actually benefit gut health, fasting? It definitely can help what's called gut motility, which I kind of liken it to,

it's almost like having an office building that has a janitorial crew that comes in at 6 p.m. at night every night. If employees are still in the building at 6 p.m. making a mess, that janitorial crew can't really do its job very well, right? But if everyone leaves, then the janitorial crew can actually do its job. That's just a good descriptor of like gut motility. Things being able to move, things actually being able to clean up, and actually consolidate and excrete. Does fasting improve that? At a small scale, probably. You know, at a larger scale. I don't know if it's anything extreme, but it's one of those things where it's kind of like death by a thousand cuts, or I guess the opposite of death. I mean, it's great by a thousand

cuts, right? You have all these little things that stack up. And then as far as the microbiome is concerned, I do think that just having breaks from food in general is good, whether it's a three-hour break, a five-hour break, a 12-hour break, or a 20-hour break. I think we are constantly consuming, and I don't think that's necessarily good for the gut. Because we also have to imagine that we have sort of this equilibrium that needs to be found, this homeostasis in our gut, good bacteria, bad bacteria, all various species that are competing and trying to survive. And they're selfish, right? They don't give two shits about what's happening in our body. Like, they care about their life, right? So if we're constantly feeding them and constantly, we're constantly nurturing certain species.

We're never giving a chance for the natural process to occur there, the natural fight that needs to occur to allow for that proper homeostasis. The gut is extremely complex, so I don't want to pretend that I really know what I'm talking about there. But as far as a gut benefit is concerned with that, I think any break from food longer than like three hours is beneficial for the gut. I look back to when I was balking earlier this year. And I mean, I was consuming 4,200 calories every day for seven months. towards the end of it. I mean, I cut the bulk short early just because I felt like crap.

I was eating every two and a half hours. I was overfeeding. I was never hungry for a meal. I'm assuming you never bulk in that sense, but I'm also curious, if you were to approach gaining weight, gaining muscle, knowing what will your approach be? Would it be just a 12-hour feed?

of just trying to get as many calories in as possible, would it be like one large meal with larger fasting periods in between? In your opinion, what's the most beneficial way to, quote unquote, bulk, or gain weight, gain size, gain muscle? That's a good question. So this is where I do think that intermittent fasting for me allows myself to go upon a bulk rather strategically. Because if I'm fasting, then I can allow myself a little bit of keeping myself in check so that I don't go overboard. work with a bulk, right? I can be in a pretty serious surplus most days and then have enough of an aggressive deficit on other days to where my net surplus at the end of the week is right

where I want it to be. So that same keeping track of calories over the course of a week applies, except rather than at the end of the week being in a specific deficit of, say, a thousand calories over the course of a week, maybe I want to be in a 500 or a thousand calorie surplus at the end of the week. So the same principles apply. I'm still just keeping track of calories, and I'm using my fasting days as days to maintain insulin sensitivity, which arguably goes down as someone is bulking, because you're probably gaining fat, you're gaining size, there's probably higher levels of inflammation. So all these changes occur that arguably diminish your insulin sensitivity a little bit, maybe not a ton. But if I continually fast now and then, maybe two days per week, maybe on like a Monday and a

Thursday. That's kind of allowing my body to maintain that level of insulin sensitivity. It's also maintaining myself from going too far overboard and bulking too much. So I also find that for me, like having that level of insulin sensitivity and feeling like my body is just being nourished by what I'm eating does something psychosomatically too. It's like I feel like after a fast, when I do consume a copious amounts of protein, it just feels like my body's utilizing it. It's like when you're talking about after your cut, you were in a deficit for so long, it's like you ate that shake shack right after your show, and it's like you felt like it just sucked in your body. And it probably was. And I feel that way with fasting,

and I don't have any way to describe it with biochemistry other than the fact that my body's hungry and it's sucking it up and it's utilizing it more so than an ordinarily would. So I don't suggest that people fast every day if they're trying to bulk. I think that's just too difficult to get your calories in, period. But I do think that using it as sort of guardrails to make sure you don't go overboard and using it as guardrails to maintain metabolic health, which is something that typically goes out the window when people are bulking. I think it's a great strategy. Did you create and discover this strategy on your own, or was this based off of research or guidance from someone else? So my tagline for a long time until people poke too many holes in it was, you know, pursue results

and reinforce with science, which I always liked that. I always like, was like, like, just go for the results and then figure out why it might have worked later. But then I realize that people will like poked holes in that because like, well, that sounds like you're just like cherry picking to whatever worked for you. I'm like in a way that kind of is, but it did work for me. So maybe I'm just trying to understand why it worked. So the short answer is it's something that I tested out and tried myself. That works really well for me. And then over the years, more and more data has come out as fasting research has grown. Like we've seen more low carb and fasting papers released over the last three years than we had in the last 10 years before. So we're seeing more and more data just pouring out,

which is why you're seeing a little less opposition because there's more data there and it's hard to refute. But the short answer is, no, there's stuff that I've tested myself and then it's kind of backed up. It seems like this weekly approach to, you know, calorie consumption is also able to be more flexible with a social lifestyle and a family.

I mean, that's something that I've really struggled with in terms of, you know, the last couple of years I've been training and eating per performance goals. So that's allowed me the flexibility to go out with friends and family and have family dinners and kind of just eat what I want and need to based off of that training goal because my energy expenditure was so high. But as I was tracking calories in this deficit for this bodybuilding show that I just completed this past weekend, the deeper I got into the cut, the less flexible my dial was able to be. And I eliminated essentially all so.

social activities and go on to dinner with my wife and date nights and all the stuff. And it became all consuming and just took over my life. But I would assume if you have this approach rather than on a daily basis, but a weekly basis, it allows you to be more flexible with this social lifestyle. Have you found that it's true? Oh, big time, big time. I mean, people think that I'm a robot based upon my body composition and things. Like, I'm a lot more relaxed with my diet than people think.

Like people, and I don't lead people astray to make them think. that. Like, yeah, I understand food. That doesn't mean that, like, I don't go out and enjoy food. I mean, I don't eat gluten. I typically don't have a bunch of refined sugar. But, you know, other than that, like, I'm going to have some flourless chocolate cake now and then. I'm going to go out and I'm going to enjoy some food with my family because life is short and I want to enjoy it. And I also know that I put in the work and deserve it. So with that, I found that a weekly approach to calories really does work well. It allows me the flexibility to say, you know what? I'm going to go to Hawaii with my family and I'm going to enjoy a bunch of fruit or I'm

and enjoy some shave ice with my family and have some fun. And I'm not going to say if it fits within your macros, it's totally good to go. But I definitely know that like, you know what, today's my day where I'm going to have 4,000 calories and tomorrow I'm going to run 10 miles and eat 500 probably. So I think I'll be fine. And people will say, well, what about the inflammation from sugar or what about the inflammation from this and that we have to look at this globally. Okay. If calories are reduced, inflammation is also reduced. Okay. Same kind of thing with fasting. caloric restriction, low levels of insulin, inflammation is typically reduced to. In some ways, you probably offset a lot of the negative attributes of seed oils, if you want to say

they're bad. I think juries out on that. You know, same with sugar, refined starches, which I avoid. I really do limit and avoid them as much as possible. But I do think that being in a severe deficit probably offsets the negative aspects of those. So on all counts, thermodynamics, calories, weight gain, body composition, metabolic health, brain health, inflammation. I think being able to have this weekly approach allows me to be flexible and then have some aggressive result to kind of counter it. But I do want to say one very important thing. It does not become a license to eat whatever you want, and it does not give you a license to have like this binge and purge type mentality because that is where I see people having problems

with fasting is they start to get into this pattern where, well, as long as I fast, it's fine. As long as I fast, I can eat this. As long as I fast, I can do that. And then it develops literally like a binge-like mentality where they just eat a bunch of garbage and then fast. And then you're fasting as a response, like in a Pavlovian way to eating bad. So every time you eat bad, you think you have to fast.

And that becomes a serious psychological problem. Do you think that that approach of the weekly kind of overview can facilitate unhealthy relationship with food if you aren't aware? Can it cause that? Perhaps not any more than just counting calories in general. I guess you're right. Because I think counting calories for someone that has an eating disorder,

it's like trying to put like a little hogwire fence around like a Siberian tiger. It's like it's going to work for a little while and it's like, and then finally it's bust at the seams and the tiger is going to just rush out and eat whatever it wants, right? So I feel like making someone like that that has that disordered way, of looking at their body and disordered eating. I think that's a deeper psychological thing that probably roots much more from, you know, traumas and triggers later on or earlier on in life

that are manifesting now in different ways. I find as someone that had an eating disorder myself too and someone that has always seen exercise as a way of like kind of my eating disorder. It was like how I was when I was young. I would eat and I would run, eat and then run. And part of it was just how I was raised and some of the kind of mindfuckery that happened as a kid.

And so I recognize that. And I find that having that flexibility of fasting has actually helped me because I realized that maybe I did have an unhealthy relationship with food. But being able to say goodbye to that unhealthy relationship with food, I think is an unrealistic thing for a lot of people that deal with disordered eating. I agree. As someone, again, that's dealt with it and you can relate. It never fully goes away.

But what happens is you become aware of it. And just like meditation and mindfulness, you're aware of it. And as long as you are strong and can preach. frontal cortex your way through certain things and be a that that gets you through a certain degree. But even when you actually change your subconscious a little bit to where you're not actively engaging in those disordered patterns, it's still there and you still recognize it. And you still fight temptation a little bit. So I found that with fasting, it's helped me with that because as someone that like I almost view me becoming overweight at a period of my life as a form of

self-sabotage that kind of happened because of my eating disorder past, right? It was like, it was a rebound almost like revolting against some of my past. And I've thought long and hard about that. And fasting has helped me. It's been what 12 years that I've been really applying these principles and I haven't had any kind of relapse of disordered eating and I feel very in control. I consider myself someone who has a healthy relationship with food now, but also as someone who had an eating disorder in the past, it's always there. You're always looking and thinking about food a little bit differently. I think it allows me to have this hyper-focused control, an ability to control.

You look back at, like, I just went through this diet and this cut. If I know my macros for the day, I'm hitting those macros spot on every day. Like, nothing's going to distract me from not hitting those macros and those calories to consume. And I can control these very specific, very variables. to achieve a certain outcome. That's why as soon as the cut was over, I stopped tracking. I'm still aware of what I'm consuming, very aware of what I'm consuming on a daily basis.

And I know in my head, the amount of proteins and carbohydrates and fats, but I'm trying to be more intuitive with my diet. Once you have a baseline of understanding where you're kind of macronutrients and your calories lie, then I think fasting can be done intuitively. I think it's very difficult for someone that doesn't have an idea of where they should be to fast intuitively because we have distorted signaling happening all over the place, right?

Like we don't look at food. We have hyper-palatable things that are sending all kinds of, you know, different neurotransmitter responses in our brains all the time. So we can't look at food the same way you and I might robotically even be able to look at food occasionally. So, you know, there's a lot of people that talk about intuitive fasting, but for someone that has 100 extra pounds of body fat that is sending all kinds of different adipokines and different chemical signals,

leptin disruption, everything, their signals to eat are completely distorted. So it's like if they were to eat intuitively, it might result in a complete, like, sabotaging style of eating. But if they were to say, hey, I'm going to take a period of time, track, apply intermittent fasting, and then once my body starts to correct, once my insulin levels are stable, once my HBA1C comes back in check, once my mitochondrial function is better, then you can start trusting your gut, so to speak. Yeah, I can see if you don't have the background,

knowledge, experience, awareness with nutrition and food, and you go for, I could say, a 16, eight fast. And like you said, that switch, as soon as switch turns on, it's okay, I have eight hours to consume as much shit as I want. If the switch turns off, stop eating. Yes, you're fasting,

but you just consumed like 2,000 extra calories on top of what you're normally consuming on a daily basis because you view it as a switch on and it switch off. Totally, man. And the other thing that happens is people lose weight really quick in the beginning with fasting so quickly that they don't adjust for the change in metabolic rate that occurred. Right. Like, let's say we have a 300 pound person.

And this 300 pound person starts intermittent fasting today. And in the first month, they lose like 20 pounds, which absolutely happens. Okay. Well, that happens so fast that they haven't had an adjustment. chance to adjust how they should manipulate their calories during their eating window. So here they are now at 280 pounds still eating like they were 300 pounds during their eating window. And the weight loss stops. And then the weight even starts to creep back on. And they say, oh, fasting doesn't work. Well, you haven't adjusted for the fact that you've lost weight.

Whereas ordinarily, people are losing weight so slow that they can adjust and they can have time to react. But sometimes people lose weight so aggressively fast, which is, you know, which can be good and bad. I mean, there's both sides of the equation there, but you still have to reduce your calories in accordance with your body mass. Otherwise, you're going to end back at square one. Do you think there's such a thing as a damaged metabolism or is it just a adapted metabolism? I think a damaged metabolism is someone that has metabolic syndrome. Can it be corrected? I believe so. If you look at just a basic mitochondrial level, the ability to utilize fuel and to be able to convert fuel into ATP at the very basic, basic level.

Like if that is disrupted, then you have a disrupted metabolism. Then you have a damaged metabolism. But what about we think metabolism as weight loss? Metabolism isn't just weight loss. Metabolism is simply creating fuel substrates from our food, right? So that can absolutely be damaged. Someone eats a jelly donut. If you're healthy, the body's going to react.

insulin's going to go up, blood sugar's going to go down, everything is going to kind of modulate the way that it should. An unhealthy person eats that jelly donut with a broken metabolism, glucose goes up, insulin tries to go up, but it can't match. Everything goes out of control. You have inflammation, you have glycation, all things, and then it just catapults into an even bigger disaster. So yes, absolutely metabolic damage is real, but it absolutely can be corrected too, especially when it's something like that that hasn't been happening for an entire lifetime. So there's a lot of nuance there for sure. I know a lot of people who are overweight, they're trying to lose weight, but they're crash dieting, essentially.

So say someone is trying to lose 100 pounds, they're trying to lose 100 pounds on 1,800 calories a day, and they're not losing weight anymore. Would you consider this a damaged metabolism? No, I wouldn't consider that damaged. I think there's something else going on there as far as. it goes beyond just energy balance because, I mean, if they're really restricting calories, they really are like there at 1,800 calories and they're a 200-pound person and they're still not losing weight, you could argue, yeah, something's broken there. I don't think the

metabolism is broken. I think there could be something with leptin signaling that's going on. There could be a number of different things. There could be a level of insulin resistance that's changing things. Calories in, calories out still matter, but you just no longer know where you stand. Like, does that person need 800 calories? It doesn't defy the fact that this mathematical equation of thermodynamics is still very important. You're just lost in the dark as to what calorie number you need to be at, which is the biggest problem, right? So with that, I don't think their metabolism is broken, but something is impeding them from getting to that healthy set point. Their body is trying to hold on to whatever's going on. So is it hormonal? I think hormones are

usually a canary in the coal mine. I think that, like, you know, testosterone, estrogen, all these things that end up cattywampus, I don't think those are the causes of issues. Those are usually a casualty, just like you saw with your cut, like your metabolism altered, was probably coming to a screeching halt. So yes, your hormones took a back seat as far as your body's prioritization, right? But it wasn't the low testosterone, the low sex or high sex hormone binding globulin, all this. That wasn't driving how you felt. How you felt was being driven simply by poor energy demand and balance there. So for someone that has this broken metabolism, Like a lot of times what they need is a significant diet break. They need to take a break. They need to take some time eating at maintenance calories, not back at where they were before, not at a surplus. They don't need to cheat. They need to eat at maintenance for where they are now for a couple of weeks. They need to add 5, 10% calories until they start to gain weight and then back it off from there. So I always kind of follow like for me personally and I tell people a lot, like, if you

you start, if you gain two or three pounds as you're increasing calories, then start reeling it back, right? You know, for me, it's like I'm lean, so I watch closely like a pound, right? If I start gaining a pound of fat, that's a 3,500 calorie surplus on my body, that's my cue to say, okay, cool, I'm probably at maintenance right now. Here's where I can stay, and then I'll reel it back from here. So people need to be comfortable finding that. It's easy when you're lean because you can look in the mirror and kind of see it, but if you're already overweight, that's difficult. And how do you know what's water, what's inflammation. You don't know, but at the same time, you kind of do know.

If you're increasing calories, if you're overweight and you add a thousand calories per day and you don't gain weight, that's a very good sign. That means, okay, let's keep this pace going for a little bit until you do start to gain weight and then reel it back again. I kind of want to shift the conversation a little bit to more so hybrid athlete training because, I mean, this morning we went for a five-mile run downtown Austin. We're going to be strength training later. You run and lift similar to the way that I do.

And when I launched my training series on YouTube earlier this year called the hybrid build, the whole concept behind it was I wanted to show people that I could keep running about 20 to 30 miles a week and put on weight through a caloric surplus, build strength, put on size through resistance training. And we hop on a call and we discuss this briefly about how endurance training and running specifically can actually aid in building and support building muscle. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah. I think that's one of the biggest sort of myths that's out there on social media right now. It's like there's this attack on cardio. It's crazy. Personally, I think it's an adaptation. I think it's that simple. I think if you and I are accustomed to training and running,

and we have this higher metabolic rate, our body has kicked in preservation mechanisms to adjust to that. So our bodies are accustomed to us going out for a run, and they know that they don't need to start breaking down tissue when we start doing that. Our bodies say, oh, this is what Nick does. This is what Thomas does. No big deal.

Nothing to look, nothing to see here, right? It's all normal. So then that's baseline. So then when we do lift, we're not borrowing from tomorrow for today, right? We're able to, we have the energy reserves to do that. So if you take someone that's never run before and you have them run and lift, there might be a gray area period of time while they maybe kind of find themselves and maybe have a little bit of catabolism, but by and large, in the long run,

they're going to build more muscle probably because you're having all these compensatory mechanisms that help you. You're having, you know, the ability to have that elevated baseline. So you go for a walk, your body doesn't start immediately tapping into muscle. It's used to it. It's able to handle it. You also have more capillary density, right? You have more tissue perfusion. You have more blood being able to get into the tissue. That's nutrient delivery. That's like arguably in oxygenation, like the most important things for energy, right? We need oxygen to create ATP. You know, We need it for oxidative phosphorylation. We need it.

Like, we also need nutrient delivery to build muscle and for protein synthesis. So I think people forget that when you do cardio, when you run, your body is forming new capillaries. It's finding a way to get blood to the tissue. That's exactly why when you're lifting a pump is so important. You're getting blood into the tissue. And we forget that. And being able to do that with cardio is super, super important.

And then you have more mitochondrial density. Okay, mitochondrial density is the number of mitochondria that you have in a given area, right? If you were to take a muscle cross-sectional area and you look at how many mitochondria are there, what does mitochondria do? Manufacture is ATP. So if running creates more mitochondrial density, then you have more mitochondria to manufacture ATP in the right training circumstances and you place that demand upon the muscle, you're going to have more ability to generate ATP.

So you could potentially become stronger. If more strength comes more mass and better hypertrophy, all this. I don't know if you listen to the six-part series of Huberman and Dr. Andy Galvin. Yeah, bits and pieces of it. Super interesting talking about the nine physical fitness adaptations being skill technique, speed, power, force and strength, muscle hypertrophy, muscular endurance, anaerobic capacity, maximal aerobic capacity and long duration training. which if you focus on these non-physical fitness adaptations,

you are ultimately building whole wellness and performance. And looking at this list, from my perspective, at least, that is what I consider hybrid athlete training. And like the hybrid athlete training model is nothing new. Even in this podcast, they were talking about, like, running and lifting was probably first introduced in the 20s. and then it was considered or was demonized before Arnold started promoting this strength training model in, say, the 70s. As you talked about the adaptations, I kept thinking back to when I first started running, like seriously running,

is when I got out in the Army in 2017, 2018, I started training for my first marathon. That was like a training block. 2000 and I take 20 is when I really started taking running serious and increasing running mileage. And I look back at photos from 2020 and I did see a slight decrease in muscle mass and a hypertrophy where I feel like I did get a little smaller. But then from 2020 to 2023 now, it's been easier to put muscle and strength on on top of running as I've increased running mileage. So I've seen my body adapt to that stimulus and that that force, that volume over time. And it's just become my, my norm. Like my body knows now that Nick is going to go run

X amount of miles each week. And that is baseline. And we're going to be used to that. And now we just build on top of that. I have, I have witnessed that personally firsthand over these last, you say, four years, which is wild. As you were saying that, I was visualizing, 2020 to 2020. I think that's the simplest way to put it for people. Is your body just adjust to this new level? And anything that's going to be new and extreme is going to be scary, both you mentally and you physically.

The same thing happens, even with a low-carb diet, people first start a low-carb diet, and they lose a little bit of performance because there's an adaptation that's occurring. All these adaptations that occur at an epigenetic level, gene expression, like things change. And that can be weird for a period of time. You're in this metabolic gray area.

We call it metabolic purgatory. It's like body doesn't know which is which. But eventually, the transition happens and all of a sudden things go smooth, right? So the same thing happens with people that are low carb. It's like then, you know, three months, six months later, they found their baseline at low carb and they're not pulling from their training reserves anymore.

Like things are good. And people also might find in the beginning stages, okay, if I increase my mileage, yes, you do not have infinite energy. Like, if you increase your training mileage, it might pull from your performance in the gym for a period of time. But the body is a miraculous machine. And one thing that I can say as a common denominator across the board is that as long as protein needs are met, you will typically be just fine.

And people forget that protein is needed after running to. It's a very important thing because people think, oh, running, it's good. cardio, whatever. It doesn't, no, that's huge, especially that e-centric. You know, you're constantly hitting and pounding. Huge muscle catabolism breakdown that happens there. Or I shouldn't say catabolism, but muscle protein breakdown is the more formal word. And as long as you get enough protein to have proper muscle protein stimulus and synthesis, you're going to be fine. Like, that balance is important. So if you're running and you're lifting, you probably need to increase your protein more than if you were just running or just lifting. Do you think there's a point of

diminishing returns with running in terms of time on feet or mileage? And can you counteract that point of diminishing return with diet? That is a very good question. I think that line of diminishing return absolutely exists, but I think it's very independent on the person. I can tell you right out the gate, 40 miles for me is that diminishing return. After 40 miles, my body starts thinking Thomas is a runner now. And that's okay because sometimes there's a place for that. And at that point, I do start to notice a little dip in my strength. But I don't ever really notice much of a change in my body composition unless I start going over 50 or 60. So 40, it's like the energy is focused much more on the run and that pulls away from my strength training, which matches with my head. Can to be

counteracted with nutrition? I don't think so unless there's just not enough hours in the day, right? a certain point, you have to pull from something. Otherwise, everyone would be bench pressing a thousand pounds and running 100 miles a week. I can get all the long duration aerobic capacity training with about 30 miles a week. And I feel really, really good. I can show up in the gym and train really hard.

And I can manipulate and change my body composition with diet. But once I go into, say, a marathon, prep or an ultra prep, that's where I start seeing, like I start seeing changes in my body composition, not as hard, feeling a little softer. Definitely in the gym, I'm feeling the effects of that higher mileage. But for me, like the sweet spot, 20 to 30 miles is like, it's right there. Above there, there's starting to be some diminishing returns. Yeah, it's the same with me too. It's funny because that's exactly what I noticed. Like if I run too much, I shouldn't say too much, but just run more.

Definitely a softer look. Like body fat doesn't change, but it's almost like the muscle density just kind of starts to go away. And I think it's, for me, I'm a relatively low-carb person anyway. I probably have, I don't know, 80 to 100 grams per day,

like even with a high training demand. So I don't know if it's glycogen depletion. I can't safely say that it's that. In fact, I don't think it is because I can increase training demand in the gym significantly, eat the same amount of carbs, arguably oxidize more carbs and not be soft.

So something's happening there. I don't know if it's inflammatory. I don't know what it is. But yeah, same with me. Like after 35, 40 miles, I start to notice that. And I'm in the same boat. I think 20 to 30 miles is a great, great spot to be. I think it's very attainable for a lot of people.

I think most people that train themselves, or at least runners, like recreational novice runners, can pull 20 miles a week. I think they can do five miles, four days a week or something like that. without much problem. With you being a leaner guy and being on a lower carb diet, when's the last time you've consumed, say, five to 600 grams in a day? Oh, gosh.

Dude, seven, eight years maybe? It's been a long time. What do you believe that would do to your muscle glycogen after digesting and assimilating? I'd probably have to delete my entire channel. You'd fill out. Yeah, no, I think it would look like a completely different person. I think it would, I don't disagree that by totally filling out on carbs,

I'm going to probably feel different. I'm probably going to look different. I'd probably gain like 10 pounds just in water, so it probably wouldn't feel too great running. My body's so adjusted to being where I'm at now. I'd say on like a high carb day, I'll get close to like 200, like really high carb if my training demand is high.

But yeah, man, I haven't been over 200 in like really a long time. It was super interesting self-experimentation for this bodybuilding show because my carbs were about 115 grams a day for weeks. and every week I was doing a refeed of about 350 grams of carbs. I get a small bump in muscle glycogen like 24 to 36 hours post refeed. But we did about two weeks of depletion at 115 grams of carbs on 1,800 calories for two weeks leading into the show. And then the two days prior to the show, I had 1,000 grams of carbs.

So Thursday I had 300 grams. And then Friday I had 700 grams. and seeing my body digest and assimilate those carbohydrates, and I also consumed like two gallons of water the day before, so the carbs pulled water in the muscle, completely different look. Like my body changed overnight, essentially, by just filling up with muscle glycogen, tighter, fuller, more vascular.

Then the day after the show, I spilled over, you know, with all that food plus a cheat mail post show. but it was such an amazing experiment. This bodybuilding prep and journey for me was such an amazing self-experiment to see how the body adjust and depletes and refills and how you can literally decide where you're putting carbs with a depletion and then a carboload, backload. Totally, man.

It's definitely an eye-opening experience. I think anyone, whether they compete or not, to put themselves through the rigors of getting that lean, you really see very clearly how much of a finely tuned mechanism our body is. It really does take everything so granular and it's just like 50 grams of extra carbs

could have made or break, how do I say that? Made or broken, I guess made or breaks I don't know, your entire show, right? So it's with that, you just have a new appreciation for, well, wait a minute, there's a lot more going on

than just calories, right? Like there's clearly this nuance here and kind of, as we're almost like the bro science kind of thing, as much as I am an evidence-based guy, like some of the most interesting stuff comes from the bro science. Like a lot of the bodybuilding prep stuff, it's a total random horseshit, like, but it works, right? I think a lot of it, though, is like it didn't have to be proven on rodents in a lab,

but it was like a bunch of dudes who love training, who just figured out something that worked, and then it became gospel for a long time until it was proven. Otherwise, I think some of the best stuff that still lives on has been just discovered by chance. And some has been reinforced through studies and then some has been completely broken through studies. But the whole bodybuilding space, since I got into it, you know, a little over 10 years ago, just the fitness bodybuilding space. It's been crazy to see it evolve and change and grow with the amount of research that's been kind of published and then shared and implemented. Dude, it's wild, right?

Like, even guys like Stan Efforting, like, guys are a brick shit house. He's giant, you know, and he still is just like, nah, man, you can eat three meals a day or six meals. Or, you know, it doesn't matter. Or you can, you don't have to eat your, you know, protein in this anabolic window. To hear a guy that's that big and is that like old school, right,

in the bodybuilding world, like to hear him say that is so huge. Because it's like, back when I was wanting to be a bodybuilder, back when I was a teenager, it was like, man, if you weren't eating six or seven meals per day, you were not going to check that box. I mean, that's why I started this conversation off with strong opinions, loosely held. Because, you know, in the next five, 10, 15, 20 years, the things that we're talking about now might be reinforced and proven, but they might not be. I think you do a really good job of this, like really good job at forming these strong opinions based off of self-expermentation, but the research is in front of you.

but if that research is shown to be wrong, I've seen you change your mind and come out and say, hey, I was wrong about this. Here's what it is. Lane, Norton's a really awesome other guy in this space who does that as well. He has a strong opinion, but if it's proven incorrect or wrong, he will change his mind. And that's really, it's really humbling.

It's a really humbling trait to have as an individual. Yeah. I mean, it pisses a lot of people off too because people want to get, tribal. They want to like subscribe to one way of thinking. And it's also difficult for them to think that there might be something different, right? Oh man, I just got the grasp on this, man. Like, you were telling me fasting is the way and this works. I was just getting grips on it and just getting results and now you're telling me I need to change it up. You don't necessarily need to, like do what works for you. But it's also my role, like as an authority in the space to have an

honest and integrity driven approach with this. And the fortunate thing for me is I don't have a PhD behind my name. People would say, why is that fortunate? and why is that good? Because I can be a regular guy. And I don't want to be a clinician. I want to be a regular guy. And with that, it allows me and warrants me the ability to look at research without having a university behind my name or next to my name that I have to worry about. So I can look at things in a little bit of a weird sense. I can look at that rodent model data and say, that's interesting. I kind of want to apply it to myself. And I'm not going to take it to the bank as the absolute truth, but I'm going to get curious about it. And I'm going to learn and I'm going to dive into it.

because if we only rooted ourselves in evidence-based, we'd be living five, ten years in the past all the time because that's how long it takes for evidence to come out. If you look at epidemiological data, that's all past data. Oh, we've been looking at this over the last ten years, and this is what we've seen. So that doesn't help me. What about what's around the corner?

What's on the cutting edge? I want to look at what's happening to that mouse because I'm curious about it. I'm curious what happened in that N of 8 study where those eight people got an interesting response, but we don't currently have the funding to run a 30,000 person study on it. I'm curious on that, and you have to be curious.

You have to be a curious individual to get results. No one became a successful entrepreneur by only reinventing what other people are doing. People innovate. You have to innovate, and the only people innovating in the space are the people that are willing to break out of the confines of conventional ways of thinking. I might get stones thrown at me a lot

because I'll take something and say, I'm going to try this, or maybe you should try this or this is interesting. And I understand why. I'm not an idiot. But I also understand that, hey, we need to balance that with evidence and find this nice balance where we can work forward. We can get the best optimal result for ourselves without preaching something as the truth and convincing ourselves that something is the truth, but also not living in the past.

If you found something that worked for you, but there were a million studies that said it doesn't, would you keep doing it? Yeah, because I mean, I want to see how it works for me. I mean, if it works for me, then if it works for other people, then more power to them too, right? It's like, studies are so interesting because you can get so much interesting data, but you can get so much conflict and so much weird, like, reverse causation and all kinds of crazy things that happen that don't necessarily prove or disprove the topic at hand. That's why in science, you never say something is proven or it's been settled.

it's always, it's somewhat demonstrated or we're seeing this because we know that things can change and if something is working for me, then maybe I'm a freak, maybe I'm a mutant, I don't know. Well, Thomas, this is a great conversation. Honestly, I've taken a lot away from this. I'd say the largest, most impactful thing

is just looking at your entire week in terms of chloric intake, whether in a surplus or deficit, definitely something I'm going to apply to my life moving forward because I've always been this person who if I'm eating 3,200 calories today, it's 3,200 calories today, regardless of I'm hunger or not. I'm putting this meal down regardless of hunger or not.

Now I'm post show right now, so I'm hungry for every meal, but it will get to a point where I'm not necessarily. So that was a massive key takeaway from me. But I appreciate all the information you shared today, you're amazing stuff in the space. I view you as an extremely credible individual and expert who is leading through innovation and research and kind of just a sounding board for for everything, training, fitness, nutrition. So I appreciate you. I appreciate that, man.

And the same goes to you. I mean, you're literally one of the few people that actually walks the walk in this industry. And when I say few, I mean like count on one hand in this entire industry, someone that I've always respected. And I've actually followed you for a very long time, even when my brand was really small, just because you've been someone that resonates with me on a personal level. And yeah, I just appreciate you the opportunity now. All right, thanks, man. That's the wrap.