The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - The Missing Ingredient To Losing Weight & Building Lean Muscle Ft. Kion Founder Angelo Keely

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

#507: On today's episode we are joined by Angelo Keely, the founder and CEO of Kion. Kion is a wellness and supplement brand focused on human peformace. Today Angelo joins the show to discuss the importance of essential amino acids to build muscle, lose weight, and maintain bodily function. We also discuss how to move past trauma and perform to the highest levels of human potential.  This episode is brought to you by KION Visit www.getkion.com/skinny to receive an exclusive offer and receive 20% off your order of Aminos.  Produce by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. This episode is brought to you by Kion. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness.

Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her. Aha! Welcome to the Skinny Conf, whoa, life is fragile. Everything you do has an impact in your life. It was an immersive rite of passage. And so from that point on, I embraced a health journey that has made me who I am today. Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. Throwing a little curveball this week on the little Wednesday episode. A little Not so expected from us, but here we are. We're full of surprises. That clip is from our guest of the show today, Angelo Keely. And today we're talking all about proteins, amino acids, essential building blocks for the body. This is a really interesting episode that I'm sure

you guys are going to find very compelling. He also tells his story, which is so wild. He talks about being stabbed, almost killed, bus accident. It's a wild journey. And I have to tell you the reason that I am in love with aminos is because of this episode. I've been taking two scoops of the mango after or during my workout, and I really, really like it. I think one of the biggest takeaways here is so many of us are working so hard to optimize our health, our body, our minds, and we may all be doing it at a deficit, especially if you're not getting the aminos. So on this episode, we dive into how essential the amino acids are for the body, where to get them, what they can do. And honestly, it's a game changer because it is going to supercharge the results you're getting both in

body, mind, results in the gym, performance-wise, and it's honestly very simple and easy to do. You should also know they have a code for you. All you have to do is go to getkeon.com slash skinny. You can use the code. Like I said, I recommend the Mango Aminos and their coffee. Their coffee is legit. It's no mold, no pesticides. We'll get into it in this episode. On that note, let's welcome Angelo, the founder of Keion, to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. Okay, I am shaking up some aminos on air for you guys. Michael, I'll let you kick it off

because I feel like you have a little bit of a story with this situation. While you're shaking the things, I got to understand. We have the team help us with these briefs. And we always figure out, where are we going to get to go with this guy? What kind of story are we going to tell? It says here, nearly stabbed and beaten to death at 16. I can't imagine what your pickup line for her was. You went deep right away.

It took 10 years, but we're here. You go right at the most hardcore content right off the bat. Well, because this is not something we see in all of our briefs, as you can imagine. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't met another person that's had that experience. What is the background here? How does this happen? I think what's actually helpful maybe is give the context of my family, because it kind of fits into this whole story then, which is I was raised in a family here in Austin. I was actually born in Wimberley at home. Anyone in the Austin, Texas

area knows that, that town. And my parents had a natural health food store and a natural health food restaurant. And my dad had been like in the supplement business. So we were very crunchy, like very hippie alternative health nut type family. So I mean, I never went to a doctor until I was like seven. And I was like, I'm on vitamins from a young age and amino acids, which I'm sure we'll talk about today. Probably like one of the first things I remember my mom giving to me as like a, like a vitamin supplement. Well, early. So she knew early. Yeah. I mean, I'm like three, like she was a master swimmer and a health nut. So we would take aminos at the gym. And she'd be like, Angie, can't you feel it? So it was early on.

I think like most people, you're raised in a family with certain types of values and beliefs. And it's just like you almost can't tell what is your belief versus what's your family's belief because it's just like who you are, right? I'm grateful for that context I was raised in. There were also business people and entrepreneurs, which has been a big part of my life, obviously. Naturally, as I got into middle school, I started to push back. I started to like want to explore everything on my own, try everything.

I was very social, as most entrepreneurial type people are. I got into drugs and to partying. Yeah. I mean, I just did a lot of drugs and partying and experimentation. Would you consider yourself like borderline addict at that? Or was it just like you're experimenting like, like most young kids? You know, I think that's a tough, I think that's a tough thing to talk about with young people, like whether you're an addict or not, because the, the brain is in a very unique stage from 12 to 26. People think that adolescence just lasts like 12 to 18. No, your brain starts changing at age 12 and it lasts all the way to 26. And it's dramatically different from the rest of before that and later in your life. And inherently during

that time period, you are in a way programmed to be hyper literal. So take all these things like hyper literally to take tons of risks naturally because you're trying to push away from your family to like be safe and be able to get away from them. And it encourages really bizarre behavior, like extremely risky behavior. You're trying to refine your social group. It's all this stuff that like doesn't mix very well with drugs. And so, I mean, I would say I wouldn't put myself in an addict box at that time in my life I think I was like yeah I was like a wild I was a wild kid in Austin yeah maybe that's not the best way to frame it I hear what you're saying I think more what I was asking was this like

something you were doing every day or was this like would you go out I mean I was I was like I mean I was like maintaining what I had to maintain in school but I was like very plugged into like the party culture at my school and but I was like very plugged into like the party culture at my school and having fun. I mean, I wasn't like the kids skipping school just to do drugs. I mean, it was very oriented around partying, social girls. Yeah. I mean like friends, you know, it was like, that was, that's what it was all about. I had taken psychedelics before and I was also like really into music. Like music was like one of my main passions. I played a ton of music. And I think that almost opened me up more to psychedelics. I think that if you have an

artistic inclination, then the psychedelic realm can seem really exciting and intriguing. And if you're 15, 16 years old, it can seem really intriguing. So I think I liked that. I thought it was really cool. But one time I took way too much and I was actually at a- Too much what? LSD. Okay. Yeah. So I think I took like a hit and then my friend was like, do you want more? And I was

like, all right. I mean, we'd actually been playing music and however I remember it, he gave me a lot more. And I actually don't know how much more. It was like a vial thing. So it was a lot more. And I just lost my mind. I more. It was like a vile thing. So it was a lot more. And I just lost my mind. I think people today talk about ego death or whatever is in the popular culture around plant medicine. I mean, I had a psychotic break. I lost my mind. I was really scared. I thought I was dying. I felt like I was melting. And how long is this lasting? I don't know the exact time period, but it's probably like a couple hours. And I'm like melting, you know, and I'm trying to look for help. And I'm in a neighborhood that is not like the best neighborhood. It's not that bad of a neighborhood.

It's not too far from here, but this is 22 years ago. So it's like Austin's not quite as developed and nice. And I'm looking for help. And I accidentally provoke a fight with these other younger guys who are a little bit older than me, but they're clearly a lot more hardcore than me. And they stabbed me twice in the back and they stabbed me in the knee and they beat me, they beat the crap out of me. And basically I wind up found in this kind of like little drainage ditch area kind of thing. And I remember this guy, I mean, I don't really remember the whole experience that well.

And this is all while you're on LSD too. Yeah, this is not just like on LSD having a good trip. Like I'm already like melting. Having a bad trip and then you're getting stabbed and beaten. This is like everyone's worst nightmare with this kind of medicine. But keep going. Yeah, this is the worst nightmare. This is the worst trip.

This is the worst trip. Yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to like claim it, but. Yeah, no, I mean, listen. People talk again about like ego deaths and all these journeys and stuff. And I'm like, man, I get it. I remember this guy. I must've been at some like man who found me.

I don't know if it's like he was with the police or the ambulance or something. And he was this guy like in a cowboy hat. And I remember him. He's like, you okay, man? And like, I remember that. And then I basically remember like I knew I was in the care of the emergency people and I just kind of like let go. And I remember just like falling like I felt like I was like I had released, like I had surrendered because I was in such panic before then. And then I woke up a few days later and I was in a hospital bed. And because I had been, you know, on drugs and I had been provoking these things, I was in a hospital bed and because I had been you know on drugs and I had been

provoking these things I was handcuffed to my bed and with police officer next to me and I was just completely black and blue and I had you know emergency abdominal surgeries that cut all the way down my abdomen holy and my spleen was barely nicked and why did they have to do that emergency surgery because you're bleeding so much or? I mean, I think they assume if you get stabbed with a huge knife twice in your back, like you could be, they have to just cut you open and look and see what's happening. Wow.

And I was very lucky. The only thing that happened was my spleen was barely nicked, but my patella tendon was severed entirely. So they had to actually pull my patella tendon back up to my knee and reattach. I still have a cord in my knee. Wow. Yeah, so that's the story.

What did your parents think? I just had a son, and I'm like thinking, oh my God, what if this happened to my son? I would be fucking losing it. What was your mom and dad saying during this? And this is a whole new perspective for me now. You just met my seven-year-old daughters here. I have a nine-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter. And even doing interviews like this or a conversation where if I'm willing to share this openly,

right, and they're going to listen to this one day, like how do they, just in the whole context of being part of a family, being part of generations and people that love you and that care about you and you love them and you care about them and like this kind of bizarreness occurring. You know, I think it was that bizarre for my parents. I think that they were really scared and they obviously loved me. And I had always been someone that would push limits, but I was always someone who was thoughtful, interest worthy and cared. Like I wasn't like, I wasn't like the dude that was like messing with people. I was like pushing my own limits consistently. So it wasn't some crazy off brand for some crazy thing to happen to me. I have more, unfortunately, I have like a couple more, almost as crazy stories as these

that happened later in my life. So I think for them, it's like, just so grateful that their kid's alive and that he didn't die because lots of other people die in these kinds of situations. And, you know, I'm sure questioning what could we have done to protect him? Is there anything we could have done? But it's tough, man. I was pretty, like I said earlier about like the brain development of adolescents, like they're in a pretty different place. They can be a pretty different place. They can be pushing away pretty hard. And if they're intelligent or if they think they're intelligent

or they like to be adventurous, just it pushes you that much more. So I don't know what else they could have done. And I don't think that they thought more than, I think they just felt grateful I was alive. Have you ever done psychedelic sense? Yeah. And was the

experience anything like that? Let's hope not. It was never, it's never been anything like that. And I think my whole, I mean, that was when I was 16. Right. So you've evolved. I have evolved, but you know, there were periods when that happened, it was the beginning of tying back to what I was saying earlier about like my childhood. It was the beginning of my health journey. Like it wasn't like, it was the beginning of my adulthood, right? It was a very fast, hard transition right of passage to like, whoa, life is fragile. Everything you do has an impact in your life. If you don't do something, it does something. If you do do something, it does something. The thoughts you have in your mind you know create your life like it was it was an immersive rite of passage and so

from that point on i embraced a health journey that has like made me who i am today and that included at first not taking any substances it was like i wanted to be really not sober for the sake of being sober, but I want to be clear of mind. I wanted to just sort out what was going on inside of me. But then there's been other parts of that journey that have been different than that. My ex-boyfriend got hit in the face with a baseball bat and all of his teeth fell out and he had to get all new teeth, dentures. His entire face was broken, fucked up. And he woke up in that hospital bed and had an epiphany in high school about the same age as you. When you woke up, was there an epiphany

like he had? Do you have some kind of epiphany of like, oh, my God, I know you started your health journey, but did you wake up and just look around and be like, what is going on? I woke up and it was like a dream. That's what he said too. It was like disassociative. Yeah, it's weird now. I've only found the language in the last couple of years, but I have this language, like my life is my dream is my life is my dream, which is kind of a weird psychedelic loopy poem thing.

But I really do find that like, what just like real life is and what dream life is, is like more similar than we think and maybe there's some element of like because we talk about in like spiritual language there's waking up or being born again or all these types of things and there was there was definitely a sense of like whoa like but it was almost like I was waking up into a dream the luck makes the luck I mean I don't know know how else you go through that and survive and call it anything other than luck.

To your point, I think about my childhood and being young and reckless and doing things. You just don't realize what you don't know back then. You don't realize how quick things can change and how dangerous the world can be. And you just go through and it's difficult. It's not like somebody can come in, at least in my case, and be like, hey, quit doing that because this will happen. You're like, no, it won't happen to me might happen to other people and it's like i think a lot of young people go through this and unfortunately sometimes it doesn't

always end up the way that it ended up with you like people lose their lives being reckless and doing things that just because they don't have enough experience in life to kind of deal with the dangers that can arise from these sort of things. It's scary because you think about all the lost potential and like someone like yourself, like I guess in a roundabout way, my question is, is when you have that life altering near death experience, it, it must be such an immediate perspective shift. Does that like immediately launch you into like, okay, I've just like, I'm now matured by 10 years. I'm going, I'm moving forward. Like I I've left kind of adolescence behind and I'm now matured by 10 years. I'm moving forward. I've left kind of adolescence behind and I now have to be a man. I do think there's an element of a really big dose of time,

which is a weird thing to say, but it's similar. And I think that's one of the things that some experiences, some drugs can give you. They give you a lot of time, like a lot of experience really fast which is can be the benefit of them can also really be the danger sure because like can you metabolize that much experience all at once so i wouldn't say that like so like that happened and then suddenly i was like wow i'm like i'm as wise as a 26 year old you know but it it did dose me with amount of time and experience that changed the whole trajectory of my life like yeah i mean that i ended up so it was happened when i was 16 and a

half and it inspired me to move out when i was 17. so i became emancipated when i was 17 started supporting myself and really started trying to develop my not really career then but like yeah just supporting myself and learning how to do that. Yeah, I mean, it's changed. I am a person who ever since then has tried to, I think Thoreau said it, suck the marrow out of life. That's a great saying. I love it. Isn't that good? I love that one. Yeah. Well, because you need a tattoo of a bone marrow on your arm. No, but it's like when you see young kids that go through an immense trauma

and it like makes them grow up so much faster and almost rob them in a way of their childhood, you know, you know, like we know these kids that maybe they come from a broken family or they lose a parent or, you know, something happens to them and it like forces them to grow up so much faster than they would if they just went at the normal pace of adolescence. So that's why I'm wondering, wondering in your experience if you felt the same way. I think that did happen. Although it's tricky to say. I think if it had happened to me younger, you think about it, whatever stage of development that you're at, when a significant life event or trauma happens, it's going to have a certain type of impact. I also think it separates you from the people who are your age.

All of a sudden, you feel separate. Let's say something happens to you at 18. You don't feel 18 anymore. That did happen to me. It broke me apart from my age group, and it put me in a context then where when I went to college, I wasn't drinking. I didn't do drugs. I didn't do any of that stuff. I was focused on learning and education and growth and focused on like, I mean, I was 17 and I was barefoot running around the hike and bike trail and doing cold exposure and heat treatment and measuring everything I ate and reading Susie Fallon and doing all this stuff that was like- Who's Susie Fallon?

Ancestral diet type stuff. And then you go to the Himalayas, the foothills of the Himalayas, and you get involved in a deadly bus accident at 21. Yeah. I'm sure when I called my dad and told him this one, it's like, it was scary. But he was like, well, I guess if he got through getting stabbed on acid, you know, at 16.

And there's no drugs involved in this one. There's no drugs involved in this one. No, this, yeah. So actually what I ended up doing, so this journey that kicked off when I was 16, I would say kind of kicked off this experience, set me apart from other people, personal development journey. I ended up going to school, college actually, and studying religion and philosophy primarily, really because I was just trying to figure out life. And it was very much not like theology, but like history of religions,

just trying to understand cultures and meaning and place. I'd also gotten really into yoga when I was in high school, like 17, trying to just heal myself and figure stuff out. By the time I was 21, I really wanted to go to India. I wanted to go to India. And so I arranged a trip to go do service work at an orphanage in the South for about a month, and then to do this advanced program at an ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas. Really cool, like right on the Ganges, like literally on the Ganges. And I was towards the end of this yoga commitment I had made at the ashram. I'm a pretty talkative guy and get to know people, etc.

And so I got invited by this guy I had met there to go visit his village for a couple of days. And so I was riding a bus up in the foothills. And anyone who's been to India before or has not been there before, they drive in such a way that you constantly are going into oncoming traffic. You're just going into oncoming traffic to get around people. Like it's almost, it's terrifying if you come from a more like rules-based.

But they know how to do it. They somehow do it. Somehow. Somehow, but not, maybe not all the time. So I'm, you know, I'm up in the foothills. And actually this is a case where the buses aren't really like going into each other's oncoming traffic,

but just a two lane, you know, one bus is going up, one bus is coming down thing. And it's always like by this time I've been there a couple of months. So I've kind of, I'm not like, like panicking every time I'm in traffic, which is funny. I ended up moving to India five or seven years after that and live there for like lived and worked there for a year and a half and drove the whole time. So I clearly can metabolize trauma as we'll see. It just happened to be that my bus and another bus, the backs of our buses, it's like right on a curve, right at the wrong time we're passing each other.

And my bus and the other bus just barely collide and their bus just tips off the cliff. And I remember looking out and I could like see the people's eyes, like this one woman's eyes, and they just and just tumble. I mean, hundreds of meters. Holy shit. And there's no like emergency services up there. There's nothing. Nobody's coming.

No, no one's coming. And so like after a while, there's a couple other young guys. And in the North, they don't really speak English that much. Like in Southern, South India, they speak English more. So I can't really communicate with people. But I'm like, yeah, let's go. So just spend basically the whole day,

you know, six hours, try to get down there. And then, yeah, it's just a lot of gore, you know, dead people. But there were few that were living. And so we kind of built these makeshift stretchers

and just spent the whole time trying to carry them up this cliff and eventually brought them to the top of the cliff. And then there was kind of, there was time I ended up going back down and just helping to get the last guy. There was one guy actually inside the bus. You can imagine the bus is just clobbered. There's one guy inside the bus and just kind of ripped it apart piece by

piece till we could finally get him out. I mean, after hours of this, I kind of go back to the top of the hill and I just like hitchhike back to the little town and call my dad and tell him what happened. One of the most interesting things about this though, I said, I wasn't thinking of it when I said I can map metabolized trauma, but I never knew this before. But when I went back to my room at the ashram, I just laid down and I actually, I listened to John Coltrane, Blue Train, which is this album from like my childhood. I love this like jazz album. i just shook like violently shook and only after years later 10 years after that i ended up working in behavioral health care and learned that that is

what people do like animals do in a healthy trauma response after you have some type of physical trauma you'll actually shake it out like your nervous system will release it the work of like and what happens if you don't shake it out it it gets stored within your system where ptsd might come from yeah so i mean i'm not obviously an expert in this in this field but yeah exactly that so actually the ability to shake it out after a physical trauma dramatically improves your later experience of how you remember and process that when you see dogs like something happens and they do that and they shake yes so it's been studied actually a lot so yeah so i just did that and i was

like am i crazy but i did it intuitively and i i do think that i was able to process that one i don't know better or something can you actually make your body shake after a trauma yourself or does it have to be your body doing it involuntary that's a good question i think it's about reaching a level of being relaxed or of kind of like release and then your body will do it. So maybe like people that can't do it, they're like just they they're pent up so much and they're burying it so deep that they just like it stays in them. It's almost like the cold plunge, the parasympathetic. Yes, it is exactly that. Huh? Yeah. I mean, it's playing on the same framework of like the

parasympathetic nervous system. That makes sense. You spend years working in Europe and India in your 20s. At this point, are you still really into health and wellness? Are you even thinking about the company that you're going to start? Is that even a seed of an idea? I think the seed, there's not a seed of an idea. I think there's the seed of like who I am is always there. You know, I always go back and it's like, gosh, if I were going to start a company for three-year-old Angelo that like make his mom happy, it would be like an aminos and coffee company. You know, it would be like, that'd be the company for my mom and my dad, you know, to be proud of me. So I don't think it was, it wasn't some intentional thing. I was like scoping out and perfecting in those years, but it's always been in me. So I don't think it was, it wasn't some intentional thing. I was like scoping out and

perfecting in those years, but it's always been in me. But in that time, no, in that time, I think it was more. So if there was a, if there was a psychological impact from that whole bus experience thing, I think I actually became less health oriented and more success and performance oriented. And I always have that thread. Like the big threads inside me are kind of like fun is always number one, like having fun and playing is always number one. But then it's like trying to be like healthy and balanced or like win. And suddenly the desire to win and to be successful took over, which maybe was some form of like a defense mechanism. I don't know. So, you know, my focus at that time was like, I want to live overseas. I want to get really good at other languages. I want to be this international

businessman. And like, it was, it was a younger kind of like 20 something male, like I want to win, crush the world thing. So it was fun though. I mean, I did, I learned a bunch of languages. I mean, I got to really like getting to live in France in a few years for a few years and become fluent in French and just like experience this whole other side of me that I had never, I didn't know foreign languages as a kid. So learning a foreign language as an adult, you see a whole nother side of yourself, like how you might express yourself like in these other, this whole other frame. And it was an awesome adventure too so i met my now wife at barton springs in 2006 but then we didn't really start dating until 2007 and then i invited her to go to france with me and she quit her job and she moved to france with me so we live we got to live overseas for several years together it's a pretty awesome adventure

then basically i should have done something like that well Yeah, well, you didn't take me to France to live overseas. I took you to San Diego, Lord. So all that basically, what really clicked was she was like, yo, I want to have babies now. Let's go. And I was like, you can do it in India. She's like, no, I can't do it in India. She honestly just really wanted to be in Boulder. That's where she wanted to be, even though we had met and been from Austin. So I actually went on a, I mean, I got very into meditation all these years. Like I've done so many 10 day meditation retreats and so much meditation.

Just quiet meditation. Like you don't say anything for 10 days. Yeah, my favorite retreats are 10 days. Okay. No reading, no writing, no talking, no eye contact. What do you do? You do 10 hours a day of meditation. And then if not, no talking, no eye contact. What do you do? You do 10 hours a day of meditation. And then if not, you're like sleeping or walking.

That probably helped you heal. It did. I bet you because you're introspective and you can really sit with your feelings and figure out why you're feeling a certain way, I bet. Totally. Do you have to work your way up to a practice like that? Or can you just straight up go into a 10-day can straight up go into a 10 day and as you can imagine i think this goes back to the dose of time conversation we had earlier that's a very high dose of that

kind of stillness and meditation that will have you know psychological repercussions on you that i think then you have to be prepared to kind of like work through after, but you can totally do it. I mean, people go through all kinds, people go through worst, people go through terrible trauma. So you can totally do that. And it will, it will feel, you know, like you just took a lot of meditation. But also for me, like if I did that, I know I would come out into the real world and it would be sensory overload. Like I feel like these lights would bother, I know I would come out into the real world and it would be sensory overload. Like I feel like these lights would bother me.

His voice would bother me. Like, no, I just mean like it would be like you're going to turbo because already when I meditate in the morning and he comes at me, like it's you become like quiet with yourself. So I can't even imagine 10 days was the world like the traffic and the horns and the ambulance. It's like intense. Well, I guess what I'm asking is maybe in a different vein, it was like, it must take some kind of discipline to go somewhere like that and then just not say or do anything besides meditate and walk and sleep.

I mean, it definitely takes discipline. That's what I'm saying. It's not the easiest thing to just go and not do anything for 10, I mean, you're doing something, but you know what I mean? For 10 days straight. I would just say though, a lot of people do it. You too could absolutely do it. I'm sure the listeners, this audience could do it. You just don't know you can do it yet. Think about all the things in your life that you thought you never could do or never would do.

And it does help if you sign up for a program or something that's offered, because then like someone else, it's like working out. Sure. Like every, you guys and everyone here can work out dedicated every single day for an hour and a half doing the perfect workouts. Yep. Will you? I mean, it's, it's hard.

It's harder than like hiring a personal trainer and then making you do it right. Or going to a class. So similarly, if you go to a retreat like this, someone else is facilitating it, right? They're holding the space for you. They're holding you accountable. So in that place, you have to quit, right? You have to be obnoxious and you have to create a scene or you have to quit versus just like, I'm going to adhere. I'm going to show up. This person's in charge. I'm just going to do whatever they tell me to do. So it's hard, but it's not as hard as, it's not like i

self facilitate i've never done this by myself i might have to get some information on some of these retreats up just as you've done so many of them like which if you can be quiet for 10 days i will i don't know no way you're so goddamn chatty when i wake up in the morning it's the questions my little sister's staying with us right now. She goes, Lauren, I cannot believe what he talks to you about in the morning. It's like the most aggressive, intense shit. The second my eyes open. What is it? Just things you want to know about or interested in?

He'll be asking me like plans for our future in 10 years. Our bank accounts, QuickBooks, checks, balances, business. Now you're exaggerating. You're making it up. I get into like random things. What was i interested in the other day i get like i read like something in the newspaper i'll read like some kind of book yeah yeah yeah i was like into the blue wizards or whatever the hell i was into it's intense yeah obviously i've built a career chatting and then i've built a business that does more chatting and then like now you know i'm gonna send you

away i'm gonna get him a gift card for his birthday. The reason I think I'm drawn to this part of the conversation so much is I think that someone like myself would benefit immensely from going somewhere and being quiet and disconnecting for X period of days and just not having this or this or that. Or me. Yeah. And I just think it'd be an interesting experiment for me personally. I think you're right. I think that what you would discover if you committed to that kind of experience

is how much you're influenced by things outside of you that you actually don't want to be influenced by. You think you do because my senses, and this is like most successful business people or successful people, people who are successful socially, is that you're really good at responding to people. Right. And that's what I found, too. Like I'm good at like someone throws a problem my way, like I can respond to it or I can, you know, do witty conversation. I can do all these responsive kind of reactive things well, which is great in a social situation. And like that's how you become more successful.

And my sense is if you've built the kind of thing that you guys have built here, you also have a lot of vision and you have a lot of things that you guys really care about and that you really want. And when you take more time to slow down and take out all these other stimuli that are constantly coming at you

and you clear them out, which is, this actually brings it right back to where the story started was, I was at a retreat in India, one of these in India, they're all over the world, but I was at one of these in India and I was kind of processing through like all my business career stuff and Carrie, who's my wife, like what she wants to do. And by the end of the 10 days, all the other bullshit had just burned away because I didn't have anything to latch onto. I couldn't like write all about my business ideas, right? All it was, was like Carrie stuff and business stuff and all these things.

And by the end, it all just burned away. And it was like, Carrie, I'm going to, we're going to get married now. We're going to have babies now. We're going to go wherever she wants to go now. Okay. Here's a life hack, ladies. Send your husbands or send your boyfriends to a 10 day retreat and make sure they come out of that retreat

saying your name. But what you're saying is it quieted all the kind of BS and stuff that didn't really necessarily matter or that you shouldn't have necessarily been focused on at the time. And it made you focus on the stuff. It got me clarity in that moment. And I would say I've done other retreats. And the end of the retreat was not Carrie. So sorry, not to scare you ladies.

But at that time of my life, at the end, it was like, that's what's important. And literally, I quit my job the next day and moved from India two days later. I was like, clear, convinced. But I'm kind of like that too. Like I get clarity on something and boom, I move for it. I go for the next thing. And I would not have gotten there if I had not just taken the time to turn off all the other people talking to me. And even my own, because this is the thing that's, I think, confusing sometimes. I think it's just other people talking to me that are, I mean, I'm not trying to make it sound bad, other people, but like other people's needs or ideas or me trying to be validated by them or

be successful in their eyes. Or to-do lists. Or to-do lists, yeah. But what happens is I actually have internalized them and I think it's me now. I think all these things that I think I want to do them, but really it's like if I do them, then these other people will like me or maybe I can make money or whatever these things are. Do I actually want to do them? And you just have to like go inside for a while

and listen to your own mind and see what it's saying to get clear about what is actually like, what do I actually want? What do I actually care about? What do I think is most important as this next step right now? And I'm not going to blame anyone else for it. It's no one else's responsibility. It's like just getting clarity for myself and then making a choice and taking responsibility and going for it. So I think we should sign you up right now. Let's get online and we're going to enroll you in the program. Honestly, I could use 10 days to myself. This sounds like a good idea. Let's send you off. You're not going to do anything but sit there in silence and I'll be over here. Is it a beautiful setting? It's got to be a pretty setting.

What is your, just like a really quick side tangent before we get into aminos? What is your meditation in the morning every single day now based off what you've done? That is such a good question. I have made this shift in the last year and a half to walking. Walking meditation. Naval Ravikant does that. Yeah, I used to be really into sitting meditation. And now I go on like I basically walk from my house to this lake that's near my house

and walk around the lake and walk back. And you don't bring your phone. You don't have any like stimuli. You just walk. It depends. Sometimes I bring my phone. So it's not like I'm not saying right now I do the super pure walking meditation. So I'm in no way saying like, I'm this guy that does pure form meditation every

day. But my sense of how I get my needs met for that clarity is basically getting outside and going on this walk every single morning. And sometimes I have my phone, I pick it up and I kind of like follow up on something, right? So that's at odds with all the other stuff I just talked about, but that's what works for me now. The other thing I do is I love my Shakti mat. You guys know those? It's like an acupressure mat. Yeah, we have that, Michael. Yeah. So like the acupressure mat, I really, sometimes I do that. I'm going to dust the old acupuncture or acupressure mat off. I got it nude to match the house. We have one. I'm going to put that on my neck. That sounds amazing. They're pretty intense. I mean, it's like.

I love. It sounds like everyone at this table likes intense though. You know, I'm just going to go ahead and say you like intense. Pull out the old bed of nails. I mean, honestly, if they had a bed of nails and actual nails, I feel like we would have that. I could make you one. No problem. Quick question too.

How long is the walk? Is it 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour? It's about an hour to an hour 15. And that's your meditation for the day? Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's the thing. Again, that's the thing that I find that if I do that,

the whole rest of my day is different. And I feel more grounded in myself. And the only other, I guess, selling point I put out there for walking, and not saying as instead of sitting meditation or whatever else you do is going back to like trauma related stuff, left right brain hemisphere, like interaction and the ability to basically synchronize them when they discovered EMDR. You guys know what EMDR is? Yes, I do. My sister's done that. Okay. Yeah. So EMDR was actually just the clinician who discovered that it was like through walking because they realized,

she realized through walking that there's a left-right brain hemisphere thing that happens. So I think that for myself too, maybe because I have like this intensely analytical side of me. And then also this like, it's funny, I'm even doing my right hand for this intensely analytical side of me and this like way more free-flowing, creative of visionary out there dreamy side of me i think they find they're kind of in conflict sometimes and i actually think through walking i i harmonize them sounds like you you gotta try walking meditation man yeah i've struggled i'm working on it but i've struggled with sitting but the walking thing sounds like i would like it a lot you just go for a walk i'm not like i'm not like sussing out and funneling meditation right now i'm experimenting with

i'm trying to find like kind of my thing that works like she was into joe dispensa for a long time and i i love i really admire what he's done but it's a little bit too like in my i don't want to hear him talking to me yeah and i admire what he's done yeah say that but just i have that same experience that like the way my mind is i don't do well i i don't thrive being facilitated yes in meditation in yoga in a workout class those things like i just need to get in my own flow like i just need to get into myself i don't know you guys there's nothing better when this morning i woke up and did joe dispensa for 26 minutes and then i did wim hof breath after and I am like buzzed I believe I believe together it's like it's like a cocktail I do I do think though that different people are potentially wired differently or have different needs there's also maybe different phases like maybe we're in this situation for the next 20 years or something and

then then suddenly we're like in our 50s or 60s and it's like, we're like, oh, I really like being led by- Maybe I'll change. Yeah. The phase that I'm in right now, and going back to chat, it's like, obviously we do a lot of this. We're having a lot of like intense conversations. And then, you know, this is my side,

that the day thing is like, there's 70 people that work in this business that, you know, need some kind of attention from me every day. Two young kids and a three-year-old, a lot of, you know, wife. So it's like, it's a lot of noise. And so for me, I'm like, I need less noise when I'm going to do that. I want to be quiet and I want to sit with just myself. And so having somebody facilitate to me, I'm like, oh my God, it's just another person in my brain. This is really, really weird, but I taught my four-month-old to meditate, like actually taught him to meditate with me.

And how, I know that sounds crazy. It doesn't sound crazy. Cause my mom used to actually take me out to this bluff when I was little, but I wasn't that little. I was like two or three and she would just meditate. And I would just like sit there and do my own thing, which is not normal at that age. Yeah. But how, what does it look like in a four month old? I think he's just asleep. No, he's not. No, he's not. So he meditated every day when I was pregnant. And then now, this morning, we meditated for 30 minutes together. I held his hand and he laid there. His eyes were open and he lays there. And he knows the prompt of the meditation from when I was pregnant. Without fail, she meditated every day of her pregnancy while he was in the womb.

The voice of Joe Dispenza. And he literally will lay there with his eyes open and just meditate. I know that sounds crazy. I believe that. I'm doing it every single day. I even like then I did my breath work and I laid him on me and did the breath with him. He doesn't cry. He just sits there and meditates. I swear.

Like Joe, Joe, is that you? Is he my dad, Joe? I actually have a similar story. So we're not of this religious affiliation, but there's this thing called the Gayatri mantra in India. That is one of the most oldest, famous mantras. And I just love it. And so my wife and I used to sing it and chant it.

It's just kind of a calming thing to do. And when she was pregnant with both of our kids, I chanted it like at the womb, like at the womb, not the womb, at her belly. It was good, like a megaphone right at her crotch. Go over her vagina. No, at her belly, I would sing it. And then when both of them were born, we played it.

Like we just have this recording of it that we loved or whatever, and we played it. And like still to this day, my kids, they'll be like, you have this recording of it that we loved or whatever and we played it and like still to this day my kids they'll be like you know will you sing that and if I sing that

they just like go into like like it's not like they go to sleep but they just go into like calm it's crazy it's like frequencies if you put on the frequencies

at night they like take it down I mean it's so true I think I believe in exactly what you're saying I totally agree with you if I ever get pregnant again, you can chant at my vagina.

Okay. Perfect. Perfect. Joe Dispens. You just need to memorize the Joe Dispens meditation and then chant it at her vagina. Maybe I can get Joe to come and yell at your vagina. Do breath work on my clit. So you go through all of these experiences yeah and then in a weird kind of roundabout way after you've fought for years to kind of like go off and be your own person which you did obviously you kind of come back to your roots that you were brought up and you decide okay i'm gonna lean heavy into wellness and aminos and things it was that Did you think that out or was it just like felt familiar?

Like why? I didn't think it out. I think it's more like having a set of values and watching how those values manifest in your life as you continue to iterate. That's what I'd say it looks like. So when I came to Boulder, I ended up working and leading a behavioral healthcare company

that was really focused on, I would say a much more, it was cash pay, so private. And we could do awesome behavioral healthcare, like the coolest stuff insurance won't pay for. And super holistic with health and nutrition and integrative psychiatry and all this really cool stuff. And I didn't think, oh, I want to get in that industry. But I just kind of wound up there just showing up, talking to people, you know, being me. And that made so much sense for who I was. Like almost if you trace it backwards, like that is the 16 year old, like the 16 to 20 year old me needed that. And this actually was a program for like young adults, basically for troubled young adults, just like I was. And so, you know, I somehow ended up there and I don't know if it's like, it almost feels

like I traced it backwards then. And so then, then once I healed that thing or worked through that and I'm, you know, trying to figure out what's going to be next in my career and what I want to do and what I care about. I think I was always in a context in my family too, where it was like weird to have a job. Like my parents, I don't never know my parents having like jobs or working for anyone else. So it was always like, I always thought I would be a business person. Yeah. Then when it's like, I have a young family and it's like, what's kind of next? And what do I care most about? What am I really passionate? What's something that's like, I love, you know, what do I love? And I really have always loved

nutrition and fitness. And I would say more than anything, this nutrition side of it, it's the thing that I think can, it's the foundation. It's the foundation that if you don't do that right, if you don't do that well, all the other efforts that you make, they're going to be like half of what they could be. I mean, you can have the best mindfulness and the best fitness, but if you don't take care of what you're putting in your body, it really doesn't matter. Yeah. If you eat a bunch of really junky food, if you change the macros that you eat, or you change the micronutrients that you eat, it directly impacts every single other thing that you do. And that's not to like, I don't know, like downgrade what the meaning of like physical

activity is or of, you know, mindset or things like that. And you could maybe make the argument, well, if you don't have the right mindset, then you won't choose the right foods. But I was raised in an environment where it's like we ate, we really thought about what we ate. But you can make the argument that it would be almost impossible

to get the right mindset if you're treating what you're putting in your body like shit, right? If you're putting terrible things that are going to affect your hormones or your inflammation levels or your brain or whatever, like it's very hard to get the mind right then. That's where I came from. And so maybe this

is the most important point. Rather than me coming and telling other people, like in the conversation we were having earlier about the meditation thing, right? Like, is Lauren's thing right or is Michael's thing right? I was raised and I have a belief system that what I put in my body and what nutrition is, is the like one of the most, if not the most fundamental thing I need to focus on. So if I'm going to keep growing a career and trying to have integrity with the world and give my children something to be proud of in terms of what I work on and just like have meaning in life, focusing on doing something like making a functional food company and a supplement company is where I can find the most meaning in life, where I can do like this

greatest good because it's what I believe in. It's where I'm coming from. It's where, it's how my parents raised me. It's what all my experiences led me to. And again, that doesn't, I think there's other people that maybe find a calling to like be Joe Dispenza. So now it's going to be, and I don't, I don't know enough about Joe, but like, you know, to like, to lead people in this whole mindset meditation approach, and that's going to be the most important thing. Or someone else who's going to be totally focused on activity or, or a pastor thinks they're going to, you know, help people through bringing them to some experience of God through that. Like there's all these different things that people feel callings to. Like maybe, I think the think the simplest thing is this is my calling and I

experience it that way. It doesn't mean that it's the most important thing, but I think it is. It really is, though, the hammer in the toolbox. I changed my eating drastically this pregnancy compared to my first one. In my first one, I had horrible postpartum depression and anxiety. And this one, I've implemented aminos. I've been eating tons of grass-fed meat. The weight is falling off quicker. I feel better. I feel clearer. And I'm eating a lot of vegetables, a lot of water. I'm just like really focused on that. Whereas before it was like more carb heavy. And I noticed a big difference. Who needs aminos? That's a good question. I almost think we have to back out. So I'm going to give you maybe an answer that's more ambiguous than you like. Perfect. Everyone needs aminos. And the reason why everyone needs aminos,

and I'm not saying like everyone needs Keon aminos or some other dietary supplement is that aminos is short for amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks. So they're like the bricks that make up protein and protein as everyone knows, or not everyone knows, but I think people are generally familiar when we talk about protein, typically we're thinking protein is one of the three macro nutrients. You've got protein, carbohydrates, and fat. But it is very different from the other two macronutrients. The primary role of fat and carbs for us, outside of essential fatty acids that support brain function, etc., is to give you energy. You actually convert the fat or you convert the glucose into ATP that then your body burns to move. Proteins can be used for that, and the component amino acids that make up the proteins can be used

for that. But the primary role is to replace the essential amino acids in your body that fuel you as a life form. So if anyone's familiar with thinking back back to like your basic biology, right? Like even DNA is made up of proteins and it's the same types of proteins. Like these are different. These are different conglomerations of these proteins and how they're put together and how they're built and what they form in your body. But literally, so half over a little over half your body is water of the solid stuff that makes up your body. Over half of it is proteins and thus over half of it is amino acids.

But one of the main things people don't realize about proteins and amino acids in your body is that they're in a constant state of turnover. So the proteins in your body, let's make it simple and just talk about your muscle. But really, we're talking about your liver, your heart, your kidneys, your skin, enzymes. People talk about enzymes. Those are proteins. You're neurotransmitters. So the chemicals in your brain that make you feel and think and have emotions, the precursors of

those are amino acids or they themselves are amino acids. So like your whole experience of being, maybe not the fuel that you burn to move, but like your whole rest of your experience of living, those proteins are in a constant state of turnover. They're breaking down and then they're rebuilding themselves. So you get rid of the older proteins and you create new ones. It also is the case that sometimes you need to be transferring around different amino acids to create different proteins in the body. Like suddenly now you need to be like, if you have an injury, you're going to suddenly need to have more support in that area. So you're moving around the amino acids in your body.

That's why the proteins are constantly breaking down and then being rebuilt. The thing is, when you break them down, every time they break down, you lose some. They get excreted as urea. Yeah, I mean, you lose them. They go out through your pee. And you must eat more. But you don't have to eat all amino acids. You must eat the essential ones. There are 20 amino

acids that make up the proteins in your body, like your muscle tissue, and that make up the proteins that we would eat in plants or other animals. Of those, nine are essential. And those nine are essential because your body cannot synthesize them. If you eat those nine, then your body can actually synthesize the other 11. It will make them. Your liver will cook them up and make the other 11 for you to use to help build other tissues, et cetera.

Now, there's benefits of eating those 11 directly because then your body doesn't have to make them all, but it must have those nine. Also, those nine, and this is what many people don't know when you get in the debate around plant or animal protein or what's a complete protein. We typically talk about a complete protein has all nine and that's what makes it complete

because it has all those nine essential. But the other really big thing people don't realize is that those nine are the active component of protein that stimulates muscle protein synthesis. So the thing that helps you rebuild the protein, you do not have to have the other 11, not just because like you don't have to have them because your body can synthesize them and make them. Like it will incorporate them when it builds your muscle. Like it'll use them as like a material,

but they don't have to be present to kick off muscle protein synthesis. But the others do. All nine must be present at the same time. So literally, if you are a human being, you need amino acids every single day. Okay. So if someone is not getting all nine amino acids, what are the symptoms that they're experiencing? Are they tired? Are they hyper energy? What's their vibe if they're not getting them? A lot of different things because fundamentally,

amino acids are going to control all these things I just said, your organ, functional, enzymes, mood, et cetera. So for sure, if you are not getting enough of certain amino acids, you will have experiences of dysregulated mood. It's hard to say exactly what you're going to experience because overall, the brain is a very complex chemistry of many different neurotransmitters because you don't have the complete protein but but yeah but it is utilizing the essential amino acids to create the proper amount of the neurotransmitters to support healthy brain function can i give this to my two year old official language you should check with your doctor i give it to my kids wink twice if i should give it to my two year old let me ask you this I give it to my kids. Wink twice if I should give it to my children. So let me ask you this.

And I give it to my kids. That said- Instead of like juice, I feel like if I just give her like a half a scoop, right? Well, so I think it's a good question. Like instead of juice, like these, again, like amino acids and proteins and glucose and fats play different roles. So I wouldn't say it's a direct replacement for juice. Like I think that your, your child should get carbs. Okay. I would definitely recommend giving your child carbs and fats and proteins. And if your child, if you have a hard time getting your child enough proteins, which I have that more of an experience with like older kids, like a seven-year-old who I just took the lunch and she only wants to eat pasta. I know I was going to offer her skinny

confidential cookie dough. And I'm like, that's a horrible influence. Oh no, she would eat it. She loves sugar. But with her, I am trying to get her to take essential amino acids as a supplement because she's not getting the protein that she needs. She's not getting those essential amino acids. I want to talk about that for not just for kids, but for the general population. Why do we need to supplement now? We evolved obviously getting these proteins before these supplements. So what's going on in our either food supply or whatever supply that we're needing to supplement now more? So I think this goes back to a question of what we're ultimately trying to achieve, which is kind of similar to what I was

saying about Lauren. Like, well, I don't know that I would just replace it with the sugar water. If your kid's not getting any other carbs or glucose, then give them that. But overall, in the history of the world, we've gone through different stages of different diets. And the stage that we're in today gives us the opportunity with modern science to see what makes the human body perform optimally. And perform optimally can mean all different kinds of things. It's like, oh, I want to be an athlete, or I want to be thinner and more muscular looking, or I want to live a long time, be able to be active for a long time. So from that context, and naturally, you know, like people do live longer now than they used to live. Or it's like, I think it was like half of children before five years

old died before like 1800. So clearly like health, health is an evolving frame. But in today's world, if one's goal is to be vibrant and healthy, so get to be really active. That's like, I can go running or I can lift weights or I can play sports with friends or all the different ways in which you might like to be active. I want to climb. I want to do paddle boarding on the lake, et cetera. And I want to be easy and I want to have fun. You need a certain amount of protein and the essential amino acids that are within them. And we'll get into this in a second, like how much that is. Similarly, if you are in a situation in which you feel like you're overweight and you want to lose weight, consuming more protein and the inherent essential amino acids or the essential amino acids that are in them are going to directly support that.

And I can kind of break down each one of these. I want to stay on that for a second because I do feel that people have been led astray as of recent on cutting more proteins to lose weight, right? And listen, we've talked about plant-based diets or veganism or whatever, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think that if you're going to take that approach, it's very important to get the right proteins and the right aminos. Because to your point, I think people have been given advice that you can maybe hit some of these fitness goals or weight goals without some of these things. And I just don't believe that to be true.

You can cut a ton of calories and cut a bunch of protein and lose weight on the scale. Like literally you will lose weight on the scale. But the deal that people don't realize is that when you cut calories, like let's just say I have a daily consumption of 2,000 calories and it has a certain split of protein, carbs, and fat, and I cut that in half and I cut down my protein intake. By reducing the protein intake, I am inherently not just cutting down on the amount of fat that I'm going to lose, I'm going to lose muscle. Yeah, yeah. And you have these frail looks.

That's what that's... Sorry, I should have written that better. And it will make you... It will create a long term it'll make it that much harder to lose weight in the future and you'll get a skinny fat composition so if like people are trying to like when it's most people want to look tone right yes well i think from a health perspective though i think you're seeing a lot of people have a lot of health issues because they lose that muscle tone and as they age it's hard to get it back and then when you don't have it back you need your muscle to support your structure and that's why you see

all these people getting hurt later in life or having complications because they've lost that muscle structure by not thinking about these things ahead of time. I'd say we get into longevity in a second, but just to say muscle, I would argue is the most important asset to take into your basically 50s and beyond because it becomes that much harder even after that to ensure that you not only have the most vibrant active life and that you don't like fall and get hurt and can't recover from it, but also to help support cardiovascular health, metabolic health, et cetera. It's the asset to invest in. But in terms of weight loss, so I think what many people don't realize is they jump between starving themselves or trying

to exercise a bunch or do a bunch of cardio. And if you just kind of like slow down and really look at like how it all fits together, you have a basal metabolic rate. That is like when you're just lying down in your bed, you burn a certain amount of calories just to like be right. And so if you don't do any additional exercise and you consume less calories than what that basal metabolic rate is, you are going to lose weight. Like you will absolutely lose weight. You'll lose some fat and you'll lose some muscle. Unfortunately, muscle is actually even easier to lose. It's like 700 calorie deficit makes you lose a pound of muscle versus 3,500 calorie deficit makes you lose a pound of fat. So it's easier to lose muscle if you start

cutting those amino acids, the protein that you need. Just whatever your basal metabolic rate is, like, you need to just think about how much I'm going to eat relative to that. Then people think, oh, if I exercise, it'll help me lose weight. But if you actually look at how many extra calories you burn from like going and like running for half an hour or for an hour, it's not as many calories as you think, especially if you're eating like more processed foods. So then fundamentally the question is, well, then how can I eat foods in a, in a more thoughtful way to help increase my metabolism overall? And proteins and amino acids are the most obvious solution for that. And that is because as you increase the amount of muscle that you have in your body, and I'm not talking about like, like for women, it's not like you're getting

like jacked or anything. It's just like, if you have like a little bit of fat underneath your arm, just imagine that becomes more toned muscle. Instead, you increase your basal metabolic rate, literally the amount of calories that you burn, just doing nothing go up. On top of that, whenever you consume protein or amino acids, there's something called diet-induced thermogenesis. This isn't like a fat booster thing. It's like jacking up your metabolism or making you all hot. It's not like a stimulant type thing. But literally, by eating protein or eating amino acids, you stimulate this muscle protein synthesis.

And that process alone, the process of having to create the new muscle and create the new proteins increases your metabolism. So it helps you burn more fat, helps you burn more fat while you're being, while you're even, the calorie of a protein or the calorie of an amino acid, amino acid is even interesting because basically we can get to it, but amino acids are essentially amino acids are three times more effective than a whole food protein gram for gram at stimulating muscle protein synthesis. So it's like a third of that is equal to one gram of protein. So you could also be someone that's like, you know, maybe you're going to the gym and you're slamming all these protein shakes and drinking about eating a bunch of steaks or meat, but

you're doing yourself a disservice where you could have some aminos and get a much better effect. I mean, in addition to those, right? I think it's thinking about like, which tools you're going to use. So overall, if you, let's keep the focus more like on the weight loss thing. We can get into strength. We can get into performance and deflets. Let's keep it on weight loss. I got to lose 20 pounds. Okay. So I mean, really what you want to be trying to do is to consume at least, you know, figure out what your basal metabolic rate is. Like this is how many calories I just burned doing nothing. Don't even think about I'm going to exercise or do all these other things. You need to get below that. And however many calories you have below that, like that's basically how much fat you're going

to lose if you ensure that you're eating a much larger amount of protein. So I would aim for at least a gram. And we'll explain then how essential amino acids can make this even easier and more efficient. For the target weight that you have, you want to eat a gram of protein per pound of that body weight. Okay. That's what I'm doing right now. Okay. And I'm doing my aminos, my Keon aminos. Awesome.

I like the mango flavor the best. Me too. That's my favorite. Although it's divided, but that's my favorite. What flavor are we having now? Mixedberry's amazing, but I just love the mango flavor. And I'm doing them after my favorite. Although it's divided, but that's my favorite. What flavor are we having now? Mixed berries are amazing, but I just love the mango flavor. And I'm doing them after my workout. Great.

I was only doing them after my workout four days a week, but after this podcast, I'll be doing them seven days a week. And I'm doing weightlifting. Awesome. Okay. Can you do it during the workout? That's how I do it. I put it in the water and I just kind of do it.

You can take aminos. You can take Keon aminos before workout, during workout and after workout how do you take it they all have unique benefits i like to take them before during and after because so actually you get the benefits are we can explain this and how it relates to protein are linear meaning they get better and better all the way up to three servings at once. So you can take three servings at once and you will get improved benefit. But naturally, I mean, you're like... I was only doing one. Yeah.

So like, and if you're, you know, a dude who's training, etc., like you can totally take three servings at once. You'll get even... What you'll get is you'll get that much more muscle protein synthesis. Okay. So you'll get more diet-induced thermogenesis. You'll get the creation of the support and creation of more muscle. So you'll have more diet-induced thermogenesis. You'll get the support and creation of more muscle.

So you'll have those positive benefits. For somebody that has a plant-based or vegan diet and they want to get the proper protein intake and aminos, what do you recommend if they're not getting meat from an animal source? Plant-based diet is totally doable to get the protein intake that you need. It takes more time, energy, and commitment to make sure that you're doing it right. And this goes back to, I'll compare plant proteins, animal proteins, essential amino acids. At the very top, you have how digestible is the protein. Unfortunately, plant proteins are not as digestible inherently to where your body can actually break them down

into the component amino acids. Animal proteins are more digestible. Essential amino acids are immediately digestible. They immediately get into your blood, basically. Then the next question is, what is the profile of that protein or that food or supplement source? So plant proteins typically do not, they're not considered a complete protein on their own. Some like buckwheat, soy, quinoa have a better profile than others because even though you can, however it goes through the digestion, when you actually get the essential amino acids that are in it, things like beef and whey protein concentrate or whey protein isolate or eggs have a much better profile of those essential amino acids to support

your body and stimulating the muscle protein synthesis. It's not just like any amount. It's like, what are the proportions of them? So the proportions and plant proteins are not as good. You need to, you need to like basically eat different plant sources together. And I am not a vegan dietician. So it's hard for me to tell you, like always can, you know, combine these ones in that way. It's like, you really need to look into it for yourself and find things that are like sustainable and that work for you. Then with animal proteins, you don't really have to worry about it. They're all pretty good in terms of the essential amino acid profile. When you get to these, these are perfected. So these basically have gone through, you know, this is not our proprietary research. All this is published research. But the last 30 years, they've been studying this.

They've been studying it with even things like NASA astronauts. They tried to figure out, hey, if astronauts are going to go to space and they can't do any resistance exercise, how do we ensure that they don't lose muscle mass? They put people on 28-day bedrests, pooping and peeing in their bed, but with three servings six times a day of essential amino acids in this similar type of profile, they had net muscle gain after 28 days. So besides energy, muscle building, recovery, and weight loss, are there other things that you'll notice from them? I mean, those are amazing things.

But quickly, just to stay on this one. So say you're somebody that does all this work in the gym and you build all this muscle. And then we all know you put all these results and all of a sudden you lose it real quick. Maybe if you have a period of, maybe you go on vacation for a week and then you deplete a little bit.

If you supplement with aminos more, you'll be able to keep some of that muscle gain or some of that muscle mass. Absolutely. It will absolutely support that. I mean, so yeah, I mean, I think overall really whatever your daily protein intake is, let's just say I'm trying to get 150 grams of protein a day. Ideally you divide that by about five. So you have about like five 30 gram protein. You take, you take 30 grams of protein five times a day the tricky thing is for most people like i don't want to eat that many times or i like fasting what's an example of like an easy 30 grams of protein like a scoop and a half of a whey protein isolate uh how many eggs like five or six yeah it's like five or six yeah five four and a typical

like filet or ribeye is what? I think that's like, can't remember exactly how many ounces it is. Okay. Yeah, it's difficult too because in those cases, depending on how fatty the meat is, there'll be more or less protein in it thus. So that's the other than main benefit of this

when you're comparing plant proteins, animal proteins, essential amino acids is plant proteins are, people think they're gonna be less caloric, but they're actually very caloric for the amount of essential amino acids you get because they have lots of carbs in them. Like if you, to get as much protein, essential amino acids that you really need from rice and beans compared to chicken, you're going to eat a lot more rice and beans and consume a lot more calories because there's all these carbs. I also noticed too with protein, like the more protein I eat, the more it crowds out the carbs. I'm not as hungry. And also I, this is really weird. I'm sure you've heard this, but Todd came on dry farm wines. I don't like, I don't

really want to drink like I used to, like I, like I don't want wine as much. Like it's not it, the protein like crowds things out. It's very satiating. So specifically, the essential amino acids in the protein are very satiating. And thus, I mean, the way that I think about using essential amino acids, maybe going back to the big question around all this is to support myself in stimulating muscle protein synthesis every few hours. Because anytime you don't, that's the weird thing. People are really into fasting now. But when you go to these extended periods of fasting, more than three hours without consuming amino acids,

you go into net muscle loss. So it's because your body's trying to sustain levels of amino acids in your blood, and your organs need them. And when your organs can't get them, it starts breaking down your muscles, because your muscles are the reservoir of amino acids for your body that's why they're so important so it takes it from the muscle it breaks down your muscle to feed all the other needs of amino acids in your body so interesting in terms of like first thing in the morning snack periods like still eat good

healthy whole food proteins whether it's a plant-based diet or you know it's animal-based but i think trying to fill in the hole so like first thing in the morning if you're fasting definitely take it every three to four hours if you want a snack you know or you want like some kind of what's awesome about these so this is not it's like this doesn't break a fast it does not break a fast in terms of the impact on digestion and in terms of the impact of like you're trying to contain how many hours during a day that you're going to eat okay yeah interesting i mean i did not and if you're gonna to contain how many hours during a day that you're going to eat. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. I did not know that. And if you're gonna do a fasted workout, this is like definitely ideal because when you-

Damn it, I just did one today. Well, that's what I- You should be consuming it. We work out in the morning and I don't like to- I always did it after. I like to eat after. So like I always do a fasted- So I should take the aminos before I'm fasting. I would take one to three scoops before you work out.

Okay. And or like before and then during your workout. Do not go and steal my aminos. Look, this is what he does. This is what he does. He's going to go in. You're going to have to send me way more. Lauren, we're co-hosts here.

This is what he does. He comes and I get him a health tip and then he starts sneaking around. She gets all the good stuff and hides it from me in the house. I can't track it down. She puts in these jars and doesn't lay with the jars. I don't want him in my stuff. So I asked you earlier, besides energy, muscle building, weight loss, athletic recovery, are there other benefits that you're going to see? Because I know as I've eaten more meat, my hair has gotten so much thicker. Are there things like that? That's a great question too. So people typically take

collagen because they think it's going to make their hair or their skin or their joints or those types of things look better or feel improved. Fundamentally, all of those things, collagen itself is made up of amino acids. It has some of these unique non-essential amino acids that support that kind of directly. But by taking in more essential amino acids, you overall are giving your body more of the core nutrients that it needs to then produce those specific non-essential amino acids that support hair, support skin, support joints, et cetera. If Michael grows any more hair, he's going to look like it from the Addams Family. So essentially, you're giving your system all of the essential building blocks to be

able to activate all of these systems in your body. Yes. All of these things are driven by amino acids. It's what they're driven by. TikTok, everyone talks about BCAAs. What is the difference between your brand and BCAAs? So BCAAs are three of the nine essential amino acids. Ah, there's not the nine, guys. There's not the nine. You got to get the nine essential amino acids. Ah, there's not the nine, guys. There's not the nine. You got to get the nine.

You got to get the other six. And it's honestly kind of sad because this is one of those things where science and research about 30, 40 years ago discovered some things about BCAAs that basically leucine, isoleucine, and valine, the three branched chain amino acids,

were really important for muscle protein synthesis. And so the whole business, marketing, supplement industry is like, boom, capitalize on this. And it creates a whole trend and people become familiar with it and they keep selling it and doing it like mini health trends. But the research is like,

and this is all published research, very widely available. These are people who got grants to do things for NASA, for sports endeavors, for elderly, et cetera, that show that branched chain amino acids on their own do not support muscle protein synthesis. You have to have all nine. If you go out and you buy one of these other brands that only has the three, it is a waste of your money if you're taking them on their own.

Wait, so it's funny because we were talking off there before when I was younger and take all these supplements and they pushed BCAAs so hard, all these supplement companies did, and all the fitness companies. I mean, everybody used to work out with their own BCAAs, and it was probably pointless. Well, and again, I like to be a little nuanced in this. If you take them in combination with certain other proteins, they can enhance the impact of that protein. Because basically, if you're eating kind of like really deficient proteins that don't have good amino acid profiles, and then at the same time, you enhance them with these

other amino acids, it can have a beneficial effect. But understanding all that science, any of your gym bros, they don't know. We were taking no-explode cytogainer and BCAAs. At the same time. When Michael and I first like remet again after we like went to high school together and then i saw him at this bar after college and he was wearing overalls with no shirt on and this well this motherfucker on no explode had these huge arms like remember stretch armstrong that we had when we were little like he had these stretch armstrong arms and i was

like what is happening? Listen, it was the glory days. But I feel like the overalls should come back out after these amino acids. You can throw them on. Your muscles are going to be so big. No, I think like, I mean, who knows what I mean, the stuff we were. I mean, it's funny because I took all that stuff in college and was young. And then a few years went by and I tried to take it again, like five or six years later with one of my gym bros from college.

And immediately when I adjusted stuff, I started vomiting. Like my, my system was like, oh fuck no, not this again. It was like, get this stuff out. And that's probably just like all the chemicals, preservatives, which again, our, our, everything in our brand, all of our products. Clean. Hyper clean. I mean, I drink your coffee too.

Yeah. My body was like, not this again, not again. But you know, one, one important point, because I want to make sure like, particularly your female audience doesn't get scared that they're going to end up looking like Michael and his overalls back in the day. I wasn't taking any of this stuff. I was taking the worst stuff. This stuff does like, Keanu Minos do not make you get jacked.

It's literally just going to support the process of when you are trying to maintain a healthy tone physique, that of all the different decisions that you make for your diet, it's an easy way that you're emphasizing muscle maintenance and fat burning. Think about it that way. It's like I'm ensuring that I'm maintaining my muscle during this period. And even if I'm cutting calories in some other ways, it's supporting me in my protein goals and ensuring that I'm maintaining a lean more tone

physique it's not going to make the only way you're going to get jacked is if you're spending two three hours in the gym you know i think yeah but if someone does want to lose weight have you seen weight loss stories with aminos and eating more protein many times yes many times it's a very it's like one of the most common stories of people doing that specifically. Again, I think it's a really good combination where you think about, well, I think it's multiple pieces. So it's not pure like you're just going to take aminos and you're going to lose a bunch of weight. Anything that works like that would probably be like a drug or something. What it does do is that fundamentally, like we were saying earlier, if you want to lose weight

and really you want to lose weight and really you want to lose weight and you want to keep it off, because that's the biggest issue. People go on yo-yo diets. They starve themselves. They cut all these calories. They lose all this fat and they lose all this muscle. Then they pick up the poor behaviors again and they put back on the weight. But you don't put back on muscle. Muscle is like harder to put back on and you have to eat enough amino acids and protein in order to do that. So you end up in this vicious cycle where you just kind of go back and forth and back and forth. And after 20, 30 years of that, you're like in your fifties and you're just fat. Like you don't have the muscle anymore. And it's that much harder to put the muscle back on. I lose muscle way faster now

in my thirties, almost like almost approaching like low forties than I did before. It's harder to keep it on for sure. And unfortunately, it gets harder and harder as you get older. So like now's the time to focus on it. But it's not some complicated thing. It's like, hey, try to get, you know, this gram of protein per pound of body weight. If you can't quite get there,

use aminos to help you get there. You can take a third of the amount to create the equal amount of proteins. For example, if I take one scoop, which has five grams of active amino acids in it, it's equal to 15 grams of protein for muscle protein synthesis. Now you wouldn't want to replace your entire diet with it because you want to be eating whole foods, et cetera, but it's a really easy way to get there. And it's, you know, you're not dealing with all the digestion

and the food and the calories, et cetera, that are involved with like the whole food protein. So in that case, it's just a, it's a great way. I think what works so well for people is it's like, hey, I'm ensuring I'm getting my daily protein. I'm not overeating like crazy. I'm putting aminos in these other targeted ways. If I'm fasting for snacks before, during, or after workouts, and that way I'm stimulating that much more muscle protein synthesis, It's that much easier to just be burning calories all the time without taking some kind of stimulant or like starving myself or feeling hungry all the time. And then like obvious exercise, like honestly, like I walk and lift weights, man. I've been doing more kickboxing and stuff like that lately, but like you don't have to push yourself to some kind of extremes.

This, I think why people like it so much is it's an E it's easy. It's easy. It tastes good. It's like a fruity flavor. It's natural. It's clean. This is what I do. You said you use a shaker, but have you tried using a frother? So what I do is I take my Yeti. Yeah. I put my heart ice cubes in it. I fill it with mountain Valley spring water and then I put the aminos in and then I froth it and it's delicious. If you haven't tried to frother. So I've done the frother. I feel like maybe my frother is not powerful enough, but because there's further processing you can do of amino acids to make them like these micro nanotized things. I forget what it's called right now. We don't go for that extra degree of processing because it's just to,

to make them more pure. Basically we don't, we want to keep them more pure. And thus I find that when I try to froth it, it doesn't like blend up perfectly. Like sometimes I get like a little bit of like little particles, but if I shake it, there's none.

So I would just say that to listeners, if anyone tries it. Frother though too. Can we get like a Ke high-powered frother? He just said the frother doesn't work. I've tried. I mean, I want to see your video of you doing it. I'm going to do it.

We should survey the audience. Anyone who listens to this ends up trying. Can they get it to work with the frother? If they can get it to work with the frother, and you show me the manufacturer of that frother, I will make a Kion frother. We will make a Kion frother. We'll make a Kion Aminos frother.

Make sure it says at K on on it for Instagram. No, I personally don't have good froth control. Every time I use that thing, the water sprays everywhere. The move with the frother, you put it at the bottom of the cup

and then you froth and then you turn it off and take it out. I have a great frother. I'm going to show you. It always gets wonky with me and shit goes flying all over. Before we go,

I want to do a giveaway, but I have one more question. Okay. Vegan, non-GMO, gluten-free. This is the purest one that we can get on the market. Is that correct? I believe so. This is the purest one you can get on the market.

And that is through searching the absolute, like just being so driven in the supply chain to find the best raw ingredients we can get. And then working tirelessly to make sure that like we can actually make something this delicious with the flavors that taste like this that are all natural flavors and that don't have a bunch of like weird artificial sweeteners in it and that is just pure and clean and good from a little hippie kid from Wimberley, Texas. I'm telling you like I'm I wouldn't put junk in my body. I have one more question for you. It's actually kind of a, not a question, but it's more of like a routine. How one, how close can you take this to bed without it affecting your sleep or will it affect your sleep?

Many people will take this before bed. So when we talk about energy, it's not like it's going to give you an energy boost like caffeine. So when we talk about energy and maybe I don't mean to go too off here, but like when you talk about energy, there's different forms of energy. There's energy that supports the actual energy that fuels your body. There's energy that facilitates like muscle contractions, et cetera, and facilitates the mitochondrial health at the, at the, at the level of the muscle. And thus, when you take this amino

acid supplement, it gives your body what it needs so that fundamentally your muscles will function properly when you're doing an activity, when you're doing an activity and that you have proper amino acids for your brain and for mood etc because another thing that happens when you do activities it burns more of one specific amino acid leucine and tryptophan actually shares the same pathway as leucine which then increases fhtp in your brain which increases serotonin which makes you tired and that's why people get tired after extended exercise. So when you're taking aminos, it ensures you don't get tired from that. So overall, it's going to give you acutely, like it's going to give you energy today. If you're exercising,

allow you to like keep moving, going longer, not getting fatigued. And it will give you energy for like overall mood, but it's not going to keep you up. It's not caffeine, which is actually an adenosine blocker. It basically like blocks signals in your brain. So that's why when you take this before and during a workout, you feel like you have a more effective workout. At least I do, because you feel like you have more energy to participate in that workout. Yeah, you will have less muscle fatigue, and thus you feel like you have more motivation. And on top of that, you prevent the muscle breakdown. So yeah, and honestly, performance-wise, there's nothing better than combining essential amino acids and exercise

together to maximize the benefits of your exercise. I will never do a workout. Okay. So you're taking it mostly centered around like before you're going to work out during and then after, but you're not really like, oh, I'm going to bed now and I'm going to take your, that's, you're mostly having your three servings. Yeah. Before, if I was, if I was in a stage right now where I was trying to be a highly like

competitive athlete, or I was someone that really like, really just wakes up in the middle of the night hungry, I would consider taking it at night. Because what it's going to do is it's going to kick off one more stage of muscle protein synthesis before you go to bed. It's going to keep you from getting hungry. It's like a very performance-oriented kind of thing to think about taking it before bed if you're an athlete or if you're afraid of getting hungry. It's great.

We've covered a lot of ground here today. All right. So we're going to give away. Can we give away a bunch of amino acids? Let's do it. Okay. Let's do like a whole packet for one of you guys. And all you have to do is follow at Kion K-I-O-N on Instagram and tell us your favorite takeaway from this podcast on my latest Instagram at Lauren Bostic. We also have a code for you. I personally am going to recommend starting with the mango. That's my favorite. Also, I'm just saying I do drink your coffee too every single day because it's organic and there's no fucking shit added to it. So maybe get the coffee at the same time. Just get it. Definitely though, the mango aminos. What is the code for everyone? Go to getkeon.com. That's G-E-T-K-I-O-N.com slash skinny. And there'll be a custom page just there for you guys. You need to come back on.

You're a very interesting multifaceted guy. Once I go on my retreat and come back, I'll have to send him off for his birthday. I'm going to get him a gift card to go away for 10 days. I love it. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thanks for having me, guys. Be sure to use the link getkeon.com slash skinny so you get the discount and check out the mango aminos and their pesticide-free coffee. I had some this morning. It's so delicious and clean. This episode was brought to you by Keon. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.