Weights and Plates Podcast - #109 - Nuttrition Debate: Quantity vs Quality

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

In this episode of the Weights and Plates podcast, host Robert Santana shifts the focus to the "plate" side of health by diving into the ongoing debates around diet. He discusses the difference between diet quality and diet quantity, highlighting how people often justify their eating habits based on new health guidelines or personal beliefs. Robert reflects on the latest dietary recommendations and how they align with the choices many people make, emphasizing the importance of understanding what truly matters when it comes to nutrition. The episode encourages listeners to think critically about the reasons behind their dietary decisions and to distinguish between the quality and quantity of the foods they consume.

Welcome to the weights and plates podcast. I am Robert Santana and I am your host. Today's topic is going to be diet. We're going to be on the plate side. I haven't done that in a while. And a lot's been on my mind. I get into debates with people all the time or just listen to people tell me why they eat a certain way. And I think the important distinction here is what we're talking about. You could talk about diet quality or you can talk about diet quantity. That's what I'm choosing to talk about today. So with the new health guidelines that have come out, I have not looked at them. I got the general gist of them and they fit what a lot of people I interact with are following. You know, for a long time, low carb has been dominating, high fat has been dominating, full fat milk, raw milk, steak, eggs, all these things have been very popular for probably the last 10 years.

and I honestly have no problem with it. I'm a steak eater myself. I would only eat red meat if it didn't make my iron stores get high. You know, when I'd get my blood work done, my ferretin levels are high, it's unclear whether that's a bad thing. There are correlations between high iron stores and certain types of cancer. I believe it was colon cancer last time I read up on that. But it's not something that I'm too concerned about, but I do try to, basically limit my red meat. I eat it every day. I just can't eat a pound a day like I used to

to try and keep that level normal. It may not even fucking matter. That's the funny part. But you know, you see an abnormal lab, even someone like me that's pretty well read on this. It gets in your head. But yeah, I'm very pro red meat. I'm very pro egg. And I'm very pro all that stuff. I have no problem with butter. I have no problem with saturated fats taken in moderation. I don't think it's something that necessarily needs to be chomped down all day every day. But I don't think it's as harmful as the research from the 80s used to say. And a lot of that's been debunked since, especially in the last 10 years. So on the academic side, we've seen some retractions. On the academic side, we've seen some retractions when it comes to the anti-full-fat dairy,

anti-ag information that we got, you know, what, almost 40 years ago. And the truth is, you know, when taking moderation, when you're looking at population-wide samples, it's not that big of a deal. When you're looking at it at the individual level, it's also not that big of a deal. It's a matter of quantity, right? And it's a matter of what question you're answering. So you have questions pertaining to health. I have friends that follow certain diets to operate.

optimize their health, but don't necessarily train hard. Then I have other friends that want to train hard, improve their performance, and reach the next level, basically push their body to a limit, adapt, and set a new limit. And they have to eat a different way, right? And then there are, then there are the masses. Most people want to essentially look good naked and most people that go into a gym essentially want to look good naked. There's this aesthetic goal that people have. So, you know, I'd like to start there because that one is the most straightforward to address. When your goal is to either gain weight or gain muscle mass or lose weight or lose body fat,

then a certain approach needs to be taken. Number one, you have to train hard and your training has to be smart. You can't do silly bullshit and expect to get a trained body out of it. exercise your way to a trained body. I've hammered this to hell on other shows with other coaches. I say it to my clients. I will tell anybody who's willing to listen. You cannot exercise your way to a trained body. And those that do it had better parents than you or are taking anabolic steroids. The rest of us normies who have to work our asses off to get strong have to train intelligently, have to train in such a way and perform movements in such a way where we don't get

hurt and we can keep beating the logbook, lifting heavier weights. I'm sorry. I know it's not sexy. And what's even less sexy is you have to do this for years because after the first year, it gets slower and slower and slower and slower and slower and you are scraping for pennies, man. So this idea that you are going to gain 50 to 100 pounds of muscle mass following your favorite bodybuilder or internet grifter's program is mythology. It's complete, fucking mythology, just like the young ladies listening, or just like the ladies who are listening, if you starve yourself and train like a marathon runner, you're not going to look like the model on the cover of that magazine.

It's unlikely, unless you already look like her, in which case, we're probably not having this conversation. You know, we get fed different lines of bullshit depending on our sex, because we all have different goals, right? So let's talk about diet. So assuming that you have woken up and seen the light and you're training hard now. Now we've got to think about some things. Priority number one, protein.

You have to eat enough protein because when you're training hard, you're breaking your muscles down. Muscles are getting broken down and being rebuilt. This means that you have to eat more protein than somebody who's not lifting waistwood. Now, a little tidbit I got from these new guidelines is they emphasize a higher protein diet, which I am 100,000% on board with. And so are most people in my industry, because we've known this for a while. The academics have found this over the last 20 to 30 years.

It's been written about an academic literature. For the past 20 to 30 years, it's been written about an academic literature. And all the gym bros are promoting it. And it's just one of those things that just clearly passes the smell test. not saying a gym bro is an authority figure, but they figure out a few things. Arms and chest every day does work.

You know, they say you train like a body, you train upper body like a bodybuilder, lower body like a power lifter. So these gym bros doing curls and benches all the time, you know, there's a nugget of truth in that. So, you know, you can't discard it completely, but, you know, the ways in which they're doing it, that's where you can kind of get to debates. So yes, you have to have a high protein diet. The quality of that protein matters, not all.

protein is created equal. You have first world proteins, which are your animal products. I had a colleague once that said, if it has a face, eat it, right? The vegans that may be listening, I think I've filtered most of them out by now. I've been on the air for almost six years. I don't think they like me very much, but the vegans who essentially have an eating disorder, they may not like this, but plant proteins are third world proteins. Sure, you're going to be able to mix and match and get the amino acids missing in one from another, complementary proteins, as they call them. But here's the thing.

A lot of vegans don't want to be fat either. So when you start trying to maximize amino acid consumption by mixing all these vegans proteins, these plant-based proteins together, you end up getting more carbohydrate, more fat, and more calories, which kind of ties into the broader theme here. If your goal is to maintain a certain body composition or achieve a certain body composition, then you must be mindful of the amount of calories you're eating. You also must be mindful of the amount of protein that you are eating.

Think about that for a second. The calories are for reducing the body fat or preventing more fat gain or too much fat gain if you're intentionally gaining weight. The protein is to hold on to or build new muscle mass, whether you're losing weight or building muscle. That leaves you with your energy macros, your carbohydrate and your fat. Well, we're training hard. We're training intensely. It is well documented that the harder you train, whether it's endurance or strength,

the more you rely on non-fat fuel sources, ATP, phosphocreatic. and wait for it, carbohydrate. High carbohydrate diet also releases more insulin. Insulin is the most anabolic hormone in the human body. That's why people are afraid of it because it can get you fat if you're sitting on your ass eating a bunch of carbs. Eating a bunch of refined sugar on the couch

is going to give you an insulin dump and all those growth factors are going to cause fat to be gained. Of course, we know this. We're not debating this. But if you are a lifter and you are training and you are breaking down muscle mass. And you eat a bunch of carbs that insulin can help with building more muscle.

Remember, it is a growth factor. It's the most anabolic hormone in the human body. So context matters here. This is where I tend to lean on the low carb, high protein guys, when it comes to somebody who is sedentary, lightly active, or barely moderately active. Once you get into highly active, you're lifting heavy weights, you're running miles and miles and miles at a very fast speed, or you're sprinting. You're doing something explosive.

That low carb shit just doesn't work. And anybody who has tried it will tell you that. And I'm not talking about the outliers. You know, there are guys on the right side of the bell curve that can eat nothing and still perform. Whether they'd perform better with more, as we don't know, because they don't take in more. But you are not them. you are going to be sore, stiff, injured, and crabby if you follow a low-carb diet and try to lift something heavy. And by heavy, I mean five reps or less to failure.

You know, 10 to 15 reps to failure is not heavy. It's difficult. It's not heavy. But even then, you know, you get stiff and that's hard to do. You know, going to failure is difficult to do on a low-carb diet that is also well documented. And we have plenty of anecdotes that line up with the literature. So you have to make a choice. If you are trying to build muscle or keep fat off of you and maintain where you're at,

maintain your muscle mass, maintain your body fat, nobody really maintains, but let's say you're just hanging out for a while, right, but you're still training hard. Then you want to keep your protein high, keep your carbs as high as you can keep them while maintaining a calorie deficit, which means you have to watch fat. So things like rib eyes and whole eggs and butter don't really fit a diet that is designed to maintain, let's say, 15% body fat for a man, you know, 20 to 25% body fat for a woman. You just end up getting too many calories. It's not that these foods are inherently bad.

They can be. So can refine sugar. So can a lot of fiber can be bad for certain people. So it just really depends. So I'm not, I don't like to put food in a good, bad category. I like to think of it as too much, too little, or just for. right. When you're eating full fat animal products, it eats too much into your caloric budget. If you are concerned about body composition and you are trying to maintain a certain level of

leanness, and this applies to men and women alike. If being lean is important, if being lean and looking like you train is important to you, you have to watch fat. There's just, there's no way around it. You just have to watch fat. If you're gaining weight and you're trying to build muscle and you don't care how fat you get in the process. You know, there's people that do that. It's a time-tested strategy. It's not for everybody, but people do it. Then you can eat whatever the fuck you want and get fat as long as the protein's high and you're training hard and sleeping. You're going to get stronger. You're going to gain more muscle and you're going to get pretty damn chubby or maybe legitimately fucking fat. And that's something people do knowingly.

You know, I've done it. I've taken the wrist. I've gotten pretty chubby. You know, there's people that have gotten fatter than me. So I would consider myself chubby when I do. did it. Some people might say I'm fat, but there's people that have gotten even heavier than me. I was 5-9, 215, probably 25% body fat, but I know guys will have went up to 255 that are shorter than me and are probably 28, 30, 35% body fat. I'm not suggesting any one person do this or not. I'm just acknowledging the reality that there is a performance advantage in strength sports. The change in leverage is undeniable. It just really depends on what you're doing. I think most people, aren't interested in doing that. I'm not interested in doing that. I never got up to

242. Would I perform better? Most likely. But I just have never done it. I'm over 40 now. Fuck that. I don't want to talk about my age. I've never done it. I'm getting older now. It's not in my best interest to get that heavy again. And I've lifted enough weight for me. I'm satisfied. I didn't go into barbell training to become a competitive. competitive power lifter. My life would look very different now if that's what I was after. That's not what I was after. I was trying to use barbell movements to make my body look better. And I succeeded in that. I think I look fine. I may not satisfy bodybuilders or crossfitters or any of these other fucked up people that examine the finer details of the human body or have a higher baseline expectation of the size of a man. or a woman. I don't give a fuck about those people. You know, just walking around the street, being a normal person in the crowd, I think I look fine. I look like I train. I can eat a decent amount of food. I can go out to eat. I can have alcohol if I want it. And food and training don't

stress my life out. I do a handful of lifts and I can pretty much eat whatever I want while moderating the amount. So if your concern is aesthetic, then quantity matters far more than quality. Take that in for a second to an extent. Protein quality matters. I have yet to put a vegine through this who's going to get enough protein to see a performance benefit. They all end up struggling because if a non-vegin has to eat 150 grams of protein, a vegine might need to eat 300 to get the same amount of amino acid. And then they're going to get a lot of other calories and they get full and they It's extremely impractical.

I'm not entirely sure it works, but I'm sure there's literature suggesting that it does if you can make the math work. The math becomes impractical. So yes, protein quality works. When I say quality, I mean, well, okay, you're going to have margarine instead of butter. Probably not going to stop you from keeping fat off your body if your calories are controlled. Or I'm going to have skim milk instead of whole milk. I'm going to have regular steak instead of grass-fed steak. You know, all these little finer things that people believe make you healthy, and some of them do.

You know, grass-fed meat has higher in omega-3s. And it's undeniable that omega-3s are anti-inflammatory. So there's too long of a list to do an entire episode on each one of these things that are non-macronutrient that supposedly make a food healthier. But I am a big believer that you should try to eat it. You know, I think I've seen a few of my colleagues comment on these guidelines and say that a lot of it's things people have been saying, and then very little of it is misleading, but some of it is. I don't have a position yet. I haven't deconstructed it. I think I'm going to make a series of reels once I start reading it.

But in general, I don't think that if you're eating, let's say, grain, right? And a lot of grain today has more sugar in it than it did hundreds of years ago. So I take issue with grain products because I can't stop fucking eating them. So other than oats, I don't really eat. I don't keep bread products in my house because for me it's like, for me it sets me off. If I have a loaf of bread in the house, I'm going to eat all of it. But I can have chocolate in the house all day. I can have alcohol in the house all day.

There's very few things that get me going, but bread and cereal get me going. I don't want to stop. So I just don't keep that in the house unless I have every intention of crushing that or crushing it with another person. But if I eat grain, I'm still going to get stronger. If I eat grain, I can still be lean. But is it necessarily healthy to eat that way? You know, it's up for debate. I tend to lean on the side of, you're probably better off without it.

But you're not totally fucked with it either. I think people blow a lot of these things out of proportion. Like your diet shouldn't be a chemistry project. You shouldn't have to think about what you're putting in your mouth. Like it's a science project that has to be perfect because if one variable is off, then you can answer the question you're trying to answer the whole experiment is done. This is life, you know, like pies taste good, ice cream tastes good, hamburgers taste good, french fries taste good, so do potato chips.

If you don't think so, go fuck yourself, you know, in a nutshell. I don't know what to tell you. But there's a reason these foods sell. Oreos sell quite well, and they have a million varieties of them because people like them. Now, why do we have so much of this shit? That's a very complex issue. You know, I'm just going to choose my boogeyman on it. I think the farm bill is amoral, and I think the farm bill is responsible for a lot of this shit.

And for those of you who haven't dug into the history of the farm bill, and you're nerdy enough to care, I suggest you do that. You know, during the Great Depression, the government decided to control the price of agriculture to protect the American farmer. And it spiraled into this deal where we have certain crops that are both subsidized and have their price supported by the government. It's called a price support. The government gives them money to support a price level that they deem to be the appropriate price level, which is just price controls. But we're not an economics podcast. but I think you could kind of deduce where I'm going with this. If the government is giving these big agricultural entities all of this money to grow a certain amount of crop,

they're going to do that, and then that needs to get used. Now they have all this shit that has been dictated by a central planner in D.C. that they have to get rid of. Well, let's back up to what some of these crops are. soy, wheat, dairy, sugar. And I'm missing one. Soy, wheat, dairy, sugar, and... Fuck, it's on the tip of my damn tongue.

Maybe it's... Well, those are the four... There are four... Erase all that. There are four key crops that come to mind that the government subsidizes. Soy, wheat, sugar, and dairy. I feel like there's one more.

It's just not coming out to me. And there may be more than that. Those are the ones that jump out of me. When you look at a lot of junk food, those often tend to be the ingredients at the top of the ingredient list. And the way the ingredient list is written on foods, for those of you who don't know, the ingredients are listed in the amount or sorry, the ingredients are listed in the order of which ingredient is in the food product and the highest amount. So it's from greatest to least. So if the food is, for example, mostly, if sugar is in, for example, if the ingredient, why am I having trouble wording this?

Hold on. So for example, if sugar is in the food product in the highest amount compared to the other items in the ingredient list, then sugar gets listed first. So it's in the order of what's in there the most to what's in there the least in late terms. So if you look at a lot of labels and junk food and processed food, you'll see a lot of soybean oil, soy, wheat, sugar. And then sometimes they use some dairy products. So these subsidies have basically determined, the subsidies and price supports have determined how much. So, sorry. So these subsidies and price supports have determined how much these big agricultural companies need to produce to then sell.

So then you end up having a ton of options for food because they have to stretch that shit and make use of it. Make economic use of it. They can make money off of it. So that is what they never talk about on the news or with these guidelines or when they're talking about public health and what's making people unhealthy. Obviously, it's a complex issue. I'm not blaming one thing. But it is an important variable in the equation. The government needs to get the fuck out of agriculture. They did it in New Zealand in the 80s. And they don't, I believe they don't have the number of options that we have here last time I researched it. So go down that rabbit hole. New Zealand got rid of all their agricultural subsidies in the 80s. The U.S. has had agricultural subsidies and price supports since the 1930s. And I do think that it's interesting that the crops that are subsidized and supported produce ingredients that are found in high amounts and a lot of processed food. So do what you may with that. Is it making us unhealthy?

I mean, you can't really measure cause and effect because you can't randomly sample human beings and then intentionally fuck one group up and not the other group to see if one of these ingredients is harmful and follow. them for 30 or 40 years. I mean, it's a question you can't really answer in an academic lab, but you can look at population-wide correlations. The thing we do know is that, you know, we've gotten pretty fat over the last 40 to 50 years, and the amount of food available is much larger than it was, and a lot of that has to do with agricultural technology advancing. I think the subsidies play a role in that, too. When I was in my dietetic internship, I had to sit through a propaganda film that tried to blame President Ronald Reagan for Americans getting fat and for large portion sizes. It was the silliest fucking thing that I've ever watched.

Yeah, it was one of the silliest fucking things I've ever watched. Yeah, I'll stand behind that. And they were just talking about how he deregulated agriculture. That's not necessarily what happened. The U.S. Congress passed a farm bill. that increased the price supports on some of these crops and increase the subsidies on these crops. If you go back and look, President Reagan actually opposed this, but for those of you that are into politics, you know how that works. They agree to one thing to get another thing.

They're dishonest sacks of shit. I'm not a political pundant or a political show, but I had to sit through that film that was very political and trying to tell a young aspiring dietician that, a U.S. president got us fat by deregulating agriculture when the by deregulating agriculture when that's not in fact what happened.

I mean there were some deregulation that happened under Carter or under Reagan what happened was the agricultural subsidies were increased and the price supports were increased which meant that these companies were producing more to get that money and then therefore

selling more and the way they tried to spin it in that film was that in order to sell more, they sold bigger portions because the people buying it had to buy more and therefore sell more to the consumer. I don't know how true any of that shit is, but I can see some logic there. If you're incentivized to grow more crop, then you have to sell more crop. And the person who buys that crop in quantity also has to sell it. So it will translate into incentives to buy more food. And, you know, I could get on board with that. sure but um in a nutshell get the fucking government out of agriculture and i think the types of foods that are available will probably look different and you can look at new zealand and as as you know a

light example different country obviously but they did have subsidies up until the 80s they got rid of them but we also they also didn't have the food tech that we have today so it's kind of hard to even use that as an example. But if the incentives to grow corn, corn, that's the one. I knew I was missing one. Corn, wheat, soy, dairy, and sugar. That was five. I knew I was missing one. But if the incentive to grow large quantities of corn is removed, or if the incentives are just simply changed, then are we going to have the same demand for corn? Are we going to use corn in as many things? Right. You know, there's an argument to be made that junk food could become more expensive if you remove those price supports and agricultural subsidies. I don't know. I'm not an economist, but I think I have some semblance of common sense here.

So as a dietitian and somebody in the food industry to an extent, because I talk to people about food, I don't sell food or manufacture it, but I spent a great deal of time talking about it. So I am part of the food industry as well as the fitness and health industries. And as somebody is part of that, I will officially say, fuck the farm bill. So yeah, there's that. Anyhow, are all those foods unhealthy? There's arguments to be made that they are. There's arguments to be made that they aren't. I don't know that you're going to answer that question in an academic lab, because as I've said on this show, time and time and time again, you cannot control for lifestyle when you're

looking at the human diet. And even if you could, Let's say you put somebody in a lab, 24-hour surveillance, you're providing them with food, you're analyzing the macronutrients and every single morsel of food that they eat. You're bombing the food to get the calorie number. You're doing all the things, right? Well, now you can get actual intake because you have the person under such tight controls, but you're not getting habitual intake. So habitual intake is what they eat when they're home and they're not in a lab, right?

So you're not going to answer a lot of these questions. with scientific research. You know, you can look at correlations, but they're not causation, even though when it suits certain people, they will say it is. So that's my two cents on that. You're not going to really answer these questions in a lab, but you can use common sense. You can use common sense. I personally don't like the idea of eating processed food.

Sometimes I have to. I'm in a pinch. There's the practicality of daily life in 2026. You go out. you're doing a road trip for business you don't have a lot of time you're not going to have access to a kitchen for whatever reason you stop at the gas station you get a quest bar quest chips you know your food snob friend might make funny for it but you needed the protein what was the option to not eat you know you're kind of there's tradeoffs we're always operating in tradeoffs what are the best

tradeoffs for a given situation that's how i evaluate my decisions around food if i'm at a gas station and I'm doing a six-hour drive, obviously I'm not getting to a kitchen. And if I woke up at four in the morning, I'm not meal prepping either. And I'm probably not meal prepping the day before because I've got to pack a bunch of other shit. It's just, it becomes impractical to try and check off all these boxes to make something that's correct on paper. Like, you know, let's say you want to go seed oil free, GMO free, a whole fresh food that's grown and organic and grass-fed if it's meat. Like, okay, I try to move in that direction day-to-day.

You know, like I buy grass-fed meat. I like it better. I like the taste better. Most people like the taste of corn-fed meat better. I think that tends to taste better on most palates. I do like the grass-fed. I try to buy as much organic stuff as I can. But then sometimes life gets fucking busy.

I don't have access to that shit. And I'm getting the bag of Quest chips or a Quest bar. Or I'm getting an inorganic Greek yogurt because I'm at Trader Joe's and they don't sell organic, right? Or I'm at the gas station and I get string cheese. That's not organic. Or I'll get the eggs, you know, the little two pack of eggs that they have at the gas station. You know, it just depends on the situation. You know, if I can eat fresh, whole organic foods all the time, I would. But most of us can't do that all the time. We have lives. We have jobs. We have people entertain. We have places to go. People to see. Remember that phrase? So when it comes to that stuff, yeah, I'd rather choose

butter over margarine, you know. I'd rather move in the direction of natural versus not natural. Some natural things are bad for you, though. You know, cocaine is natural. You know, coca leaf grows naturally, but it's not necessarily good for you, you know. Tobacco is natural. That's not good for you. So, you know, what's natural? I mean, I think what we're really talking about is things that have, things that people have consumed for centuries that are not processed, like butter, eggs, you know, milk, various meats, vegetables, fruits. You know, maybe natural is not the best word. Maybe whole food is not the best word.

But I think we all know what we're talking about here. So yes, of course, when I'm educating somebody on diet, I try to push them in that direction. But then you have to consider lifestyle, you know, the demands of their lifestyle. What is realistic? What do you really think they're going to be able to accomplish? So you have that, right?

That's your food quality thing. So we talked about quantity. If body composition is a concern, you're watching fat because you have to train hard to maximize the lean mass side of the body composition equation. And you have to keep calories at a certain level to maximize the body or to minimize the body fat component of the equation. And when you do that, that means you're on a high protein, higher carb diet. and then the rest of the calories are going to come from fat. And depending on your individual genetics, you may not be able to eat a lot of fat.

Some people can. Some people can't. So rib-eyes, for the guy who burned 6,000 calories, no big deal. The guy who's burned in 2,000 calories, probably can't have a rib-eye twice a day every day. It's not practical. You're going to go over your calories and not get enough carbs. Your training is going to go to shit. There's a lot of things that can go wrong there.

So you have a budget, and it doesn't fit the budget. So when it comes to body composition, it's all about calories. It really, truly is all about calories and protein. When it comes to calories, protein, and carbs. Because calories to keep the fat down, protein to keep the muscle either growing or maintained, and carbs to allow you to perform to keep that muscle either growing or maintained. So then whatever you have left, sure, fill it with fat. But are those foods bad?

No, not necessarily. It just depends on your goal. Now, if you're just a person who just casually lifts weights or maybe you don't even lift at all, you're lightly active, you're a typical American who is pretty sedentary, maybe goes for walks, then sure, you can do a high fat low. The carbs are not that important. You're not pushing your body to its limit. The closer you push your body to its limit, the more important the carbohydrates become.

And if you don't care about getting fatter, then sure, you can do both. No big deal. You can do both. You can do both. No big deal. Keep going, get fat, get strong, right? That's a minority of the population that is interested in a goal like that. If you're trying to get strong and look good, then yes, you have to kind of keep a close eye on the total number of calories you're getting,

the total fat grams you're getting while keeping protein high enough so that you're rebuilding muscle or holding out of the muscle you have and fat low enough to control the calorie level. So I think I've kind of beat this topic to hell, and I hope you learned something here today because I ranted about several things. The takeaway message here is, if you want to look good, you have to watch fat. Sorry, guys. Or if you want to look your best, I should say, because maybe some of you already look good. Maybe some of you are taking steroids because that will make you look good. You don't have to do anything too complicated. You won't win bodybuilding, obviously.

That's a whole different story, but you'll look better than you did with you. without it. That's not me endorsing the use of steroids. I don't take them. And I generally recommend people work hard because you develop so much more from that from working hard in the weight room. But it's undeniable that steroids change your body composition independent of whether you lift weights or not. But assuming you're a natural lifter who lifts and tries to manipulate their diet to get the most out of lifting, yes, you have to watch fat. Sorry, unless you're a metabolic furnace that burns 6,000 calories and maintains visible abs, abs. In which case, you're not listening to me.

You already know what to do. If you want to be a strength athlete and you don't give a fuck about how you look and then eat all of it and make sure the protein stays high, you know, and see how far you can go. And within the realm of how comfortable you are. But at that point, you're an athlete. Health doesn't take a complete backseat, but it's lower on the priority scale. You're trying to win. You're putting your body at risk and you're taking more and more risk to win.

Different story there. and you know if you're a normie that somehow ended up on this show listening to me talk about this shit you need to get under a barbell if you're not already you need to really get under a barbell but if you are listening listening to this show and you haven't gotten under a barbell and you're not going to listen to me and get under one then you know the low carb high fat thing is probably good you know i'm not saying keto i think keto's impractical too but you know just watching your grains and sugars and You know, keeping your protein in fat high in a mountain and also in quality is good. You know, keeping protein high when you don't train is good.

It digest slower helps manage your glycemic control, so your blood sugars aren't all over the place. You know, insulin sensitivity benefits there as well for the same reason. So, you know, keeping the protein high as an untrained person is good. And then keeping the carbs low, so you're also not getting blood sugar swings. It's probably a good thing. You know, it's not a bad thing to be on a lower carb. diet. I don't think a sedentary person needs 250, 350, 300 carbohydrates like the labels used to say. In many cases, you know, again, there are metabolic furnaces out there that burn 5,000 calories and don't do a damn thing.

They exist. You know, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the normie who has a hard time building muscle and can get fat if he wants to, you know. So that's that, right? Those are your three categories. You got your aesthetically focused. person, your performance focus person, and you're a normie who does nothing. The low carb, high fat thing, it's not a bad way to advise a large mass of the population because most people aren't active. In case you forgot, the majority of people in the United States don't work out. And when you start breaking it down by activity, even fewer train with a loaded barbell and even fewer try to make that loaded barbell heavy. So we're in a bubble, people. Those of you are already doing this. We're in a fucking bubble. Remember that. Our goal is to try and get people doing this shit,

but let's not pretend that we're not in a country where people barely do this. We're not, we're not the majority. We're not the most popular thing in the world. You know, you can clearly see that. We'd like to be. I want more people lifting. So if you are listening and you're not lifting, get your ass in the weight room and lift. And if you need to know why, listen to old episodes, and there will be more new ones where I sell it, because I'm a firm believer that strength is the most fundamental physical attribute that everything else builds upon.

So you need to get strong because it's also the thing that you lose that prevents you from doing other shit when you're an old fucker. So with that, I leave you on that note, and I will sign off. Thank you for tuning in to the weights and plates podcast. You can find me at weights and plates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Sanhanna. If you are local to Metro Phoenix, I still have a gym down south of the airport, Sky Harbor Airport, between 32nd and 40th Street and Broadway. It's called Waits and Plates Gym.

You can find it on Google. Come by, get a training session. We still sell private training. We have a few spots for memberships if you live close by. And, you know, I train canines too. Maybe I need to make a show about that. but if you're local and you have any dogs that need train, ironwood dog training, look it up.

Thank you, everyone. I'll see you next time.