 Boom! Stan Efferding is in the studio. One of the strongest humans to ever walk the earth at one point was known as the strongest bodybuilder in the IFBB. This dude is a beast. He's also super smart. The guy's helped so many people nutrition, professional athletes, of course professional bodybuilders, top MMA fighters. He's a wealth of knowledge. Stan Efferding, the white rhino. By the way, he's like in his 50s and the guy can still lift about three times as much as Justin and about 15 times as much as Adam. It's insane how strong this guy is. It's crazy. Anyway, we know you're gonna love this episode. Also, by the way, we have a channel called Mind Pump Clips. If you just want short, smart, fitness tips and fun stuff, go to Mind Pump Clips, sign up, subscribe and turn on those notifications. All right, here we go. Stan, welcome back to the show, man. Always great to have you on. We love what you do. I want to start out by talking about just something real basic like the best, let's start with some of the best foods somebody could eat for muscle, maintain a lean, healthy physique for longevity. Generally speaking, what are some of those foods? Boy, sounds basic but we can't, it's gonna take me a minute to get there. Okay. Because you kind of got to meet the client where they're at, right? So I said, what's the best diet, the one you'll follow? And I kind of have to start there because there is no best food. There's dietary patterns that I think are more important. There's calories, obviously, if your client's got metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, you know, high lipids, then you're considering weight loss, first and foremost, out of the gate as a triage, right? Got a guy that comes into the emergency room and he's got a bullet wound, you're not down there clipping his toenails, okay? And I just got lambasted from my Tom Billu conversation about the McDonald's diet. And Merrick posted it, reposted it. And it had over 3 million views and thousands of comments and people were just ripping it apart because I said that, you know, 95% of health benefits are realized simply from weight loss itself, you're respective of diet. And that the weight loss is really the primary goal. So if you're asking me for general health, for somebody presenting with some sort of metabolic syndrome, as mentioned, then weight loss is the first goal. Now there's, you know, obviously we have to be in a calorie deficit to achieve a weight loss and there's a number of ways to do that through calorie restriction, increased workload or a combination of the two. And we see that calorie restriction is probably the preferable choice because more exercise doesn't equal more weight loss because of the compensation problem where people go out and crush themselves on workouts and then they start sitting more and eating more. But generally speaking, we'll start with, you know, as far as dietary patterns go, it's cholesterol or it's calories. Let me pause you for a second because I want to back you up because the data is very clear on this. When you look at diets across the board, if the calories are low enough and of course, and you know, correct me if you or if you think you disagree, but of course there's nutrient essentials that need to be met, right? There's essential nutrients. But aside from that. That's a different conversation. That's a second conversation. Right. So but if calories are low, what you see is you see health benefits. This is why you see studies on keto diet, carnivore diet, vegan diet, Mediterranean. I mean, any diet, if it gets someone to lose weight, you do see health benefits. Now there's more to it. And I think we're kind of oversimplifying, right? Because, you know, influence how you feel and behaviors and stuff. But what you're saying is 100% true. And I know that pisses people off, but there's been professors and people who've actually shown this and said, hey, I'll eat, you know, fast food. And I'll show you that I can improve all my markers. Yeah. Well, and that's absolutely true. And that's what I talked about with respect to the McDonald's diet. We have the Twinkies diet and there's a whole host of 7-Eleven diet and the Potato diet. And as long as they can achieve a calorie deficit. Actually, when you do the research, we look at the research that suggests that the most effective diet for the shortest term reversal or regression of type 2 diabetes is an 800 calorie liquid diet. You know, none of us. And this is what I said five years ago in my obesity rant when I did the rhinos rant on YouTube about the fattest population in the world. I was referencing, you know, my family in Samoa, my wife's family. And I said that the calorie deficit was the critical factor. But I said I would never recommend a McDonald's diet. That's the part that gets cut off. Yeah. Doesn't make the full internet clip. Right. Everybody watches that 60-second clip and then that part gets cut off for a host of reasons. But the fact still remains that the deficit itself would, you know, results in the reversal of just about everything. And people say, well, what about their cholesterol? Well, we see this even with keto diets, high saturated fat keto diets. If there's weight loss, you'll see an initial reduction in LDL. Now, long term, you don't want high saturated fat in your diets. And that's where, you know, those considerations can be made. But at least initially, if you want to lower your blood pressure and you want to lower your cholesterol and you want to, you know, improve your blood sugars, weight loss for those people who have those issues, metabolic syndrome, which is north of 70% of the population, has some degree of overweight or obesity that resulted in insulin resistance. Right. So again, for the vast majority of folks, I'm looking at calories are king. I want to lose weight. And then I'm starting to make other considerations. Those other considerations are adherence would be second. Very important, right? Because one of the biggest challenges with just cutting calories, so someone might listen to a clip of you talking about, oh, the data says, I just got to cut my calories. But if it's a diet that makes you feel like crap or you don't like it, it's not going to work for you. And you said that earlier, the diet that you'll follow is the best diet. 100%. Yeah. I said that 800 calorie liquid diets within seven to 10 days is going to see a significant reduction in your type 2 diabetes risk. And so you'll have improved your health. Can you maintain it? What are your energy levels like? What's your satiety like? That becomes the problem. And then you're talking about things like potentially lean muscle mass loss, which would require you to start talking about macros and exercise. Now you've got to have sufficient protein in the diet and probably some sort of resistance training. I don't know why it always has to be kind of a dichotomous choice on either or diet or exercise. It's always both. And that's why we try and comprehensively put together a package of lifestyle changes for folks that would result in the most optimal change. Certainly a little bit of weight loss, some more exercise, some resistance training, optimizing the micronutrient value of the foods. Long term, that's going to give them a better weight loss maintenance result. So after we talk about calories, maybe we jump in there and talk about certainly compliance is right up there. And then we're talking about protein. Are you getting sufficient proteins? You're not losing lean muscle mass. And obviously, if you want to shoot for a macro amount, then we're talking about probably a gram per pound of lean weight or goal weight, 0.8 per current weight. And that's going to vary depending on the amount of obesity that an individual has. We don't want to match 0.8 to somebody who's a 40 BMI. Or he said goal weight. Somebody who's 300 pounds, they normally want to be down to 200 or 250. 200 grams of protein. I hate being so vague. You kind of got to be if you want to be accurate because it doesn't apply the same to everybody across the board. But at the same time, I want listeners who are trying to lose weight to have a pretty easy to navigate hierarchy of most at least important things to concern themselves with. So we said that you don't try and get into a calorie deficit. So you do your little BMR calculator on the internet and plug in your weight and your workload, and it gives you a number. And that's an estimate to start at. And the next thing you want to shoot for after you have that kind of daily calorie number is to try and fix your protein first. And I'll fix that. Let's just say a gram per pound of goal weight. It's a pretty reasonable number. I'd assume that would be pretty near your lean weight, which is what your goal would be. And that, you know, there's a whole host of things. Obviously it lends itself better to preserving lean muscle tissue, although the weightlifting stimulus as we're seeing from Stu Phillips research that he's referenced recently is probably as or more important than the amount of protein because he's had some pretty limited proteins. They may be 0.5 grams protein per pound of lean mass. Still be able to retain their lean mass if they were training hard enough. I'd rather eat a little more and train at a sufficient level that's sustainable. Because as mentioned earlier, you start crushing people on workouts. Not only is it such a huge departure from the regular daily, you know, schedule or habits, but it's not very likely to become, you know, a long-term lifestyle. Not only that, but then you're also, I mean, theoretically you're hoping that if and when the time comes when you do overeat a little bit that some of those extra calories get partitioned to building muscle, right? They go to work. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, that would be the goal long-term is to have sufficient muscle so that you're insulin sensitive and you can include some carbohydrates in your diet and not feel crappy or be subject to that. Let's back up for just a second. See, this is a slow going, isn't it? No, this is great. You wanted some foods. No, no, no, that's not true. I mean, I love telling the audience, because we're so transparent in our show that when we first started this conversation, we were always guided by the people who run our channels that like, hey, these topics, this is what would get people to click on it. And so, of course, it's going to start off with that, but then if you really know your shit, it's going to be nuanced. Every answer should be nuanced. And we'll get there. And hold the question for one more second. We'll get there because my clients demand of me stand. Just tell me what to eat. Of course. Here on this show, amongst this broad audience, I want to make sure we get there. I'm going to tell you what I think you should eat, but I want you to understand that that's not the only way but it ensures the criteria or the priorities that you should consider when you get to that. There's no order operation there. Yeah, yeah. So go ahead. So do you notice patterns of diets that people tend to have the hardest time sticking to? I do. Yeah. And what do those patterns tend to look like? Yeah. And I should say, a lot of folks talk about dieting. I've been a professional dieter all my life. I've gained and lost well over 1,000 pounds throughout my career, bulking up to 300 bills to power lift and dieting down to single digit body fat to compete in bodybuilding. And I've trained people all my life. I was a trainer in college to get by and studied exercise science, worked in gyms, was a coach. I own a gym now. I've owned multiple gyms over the years. I train people now. And we just started a 90-day fit challenge that over 200 people entered and they're all dad bods and soccer moms, gen pop people, these aren't athletes. I know I always get the accolades from training the famous athletes and people associate me with that. But the fact better is the vast majority of people I train are weight loss people. That you want free access to mass power lift. If we like your comments, we got to like it though. Also, we got a sale going on this month. Maps, symmetry and map strong, both 50% off, only happening this month. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below to get signed up. All right, here comes the show. Patterns that you notice, because it's so important to be able to stick to and hear to something. Do you notice patterns in diets where you're like, okay, yes, the calorie deficit's going to be there, but these types of patterns tend to lead to people falling off. Yeah. Two big changes right out of the gate, as I mentioned with training, when you're trying to completely change somebody's diet and you throw them into that guru, bodybuilder, bikini girl diet with egg whites and tilapia and chicken breast and broccoli and a scoop of peanut butter, which becomes a shovel full of peanut butter by the end of the diet. That is a pretty good recipe for failure. And so I usually ask my clients, I send them a detailed questionnaire and ask them what they like to eat. And, you know, some scores as to, and a whole list of foods is what do you prefer? What do you not enjoy? I wouldn't want to include, you know, dietary items and diet recommendations that were things that they absolutely despised or, you know, couldn't stomach. And so I asked them what they want to eat first. And then I try and, you know, again, as part of this slow transfer from where they're at to where they want to be, it's not zero to 100, zero to one, one to two, you know, if they're sitting on the couch all day watching TV, if you just get up and take a walk or two, if they're drinking, you know, sugar sweetened beverages, if you can just get them to a diet soda, that's a significant change. And you can see some weight loss. Probably the, as mentioned, we talked about calories in general. The next thing I'm really looking at beyond compliance as kind of a global metric is protein. And what I find is, particularly with women, it's not only under consumed protein, particularly for breakfast, which now we're seeing all the research. With blood sugar and insulin, awesome. Yeah, remember everything was intermittent fasting, skipping breakfast. Now it's early time restricted feeding all of a sudden. You know, I think it was some five years ago when I did that Iceland seminar, I said, eat like a king for breakfast, a prince for lunch and a popper for dinner. Was it Jacqueline that said that first? Yeah, I think so, yes. That's another thing that's important to know and none of this is new. Yeah. Even with the vertical diet, a lot of this stuff was around in the 60s with Arnold and Vince Garanda was talking about the kind of protein sources and that that they should be eating. So, I never claimed to invent things. From my personal experience and that of my clients and then from the literature that I think is most widely accepted understanding a study to support just about any opinion in this industry but that doesn't mean they're all equivalent in terms of whether or not the vast majority of the industry or I think the academics that we got a consensus on these things. So, I chase protein and I chase a big protein breakfast right out of the gate would be the best and now we're seeing that's important for chronic nutrition, it's important for blood sugar control and appetite control and subsequent meals throughout the day not just the breakfast for lean mass retention and stopping the catabolism from the extended overnight absence of eating. So, breakfast seems to be the big meal and so I'll tell most of the ladies that I talked to in particular guys tend to eat more and they tend to towards higher protein foods generally so it's not as big an issue but if you tell them that you want them to get 30 plus and maybe 40 grams of protein for breakfast, they're a long ways off because generally they're eating one egg in a bagel. You know, yeah, you're right. I'm like, that's six grams. Where do we get the other 25 to 35 from? So, I have to show them a host of different options and ways to make that happen. I need this many ounces of a meat source, whether it's chicken or fish or eggs or even yogurt and once they see the size of that and I guess initially the the impression would be that that's a lot of food but the calorie density of a lean protein is very minimal as compared to even one of those muffins at Starbucks might be seven or eight hundred calories but 40 grams of protein is 160 calories and so if I can get them to that 40 grams with a lean source maybe a fat-free Greek yogurt maybe a 96 4B for a top sirloin steak or some chicken breast or blending an egg-egg-egg-white combo but just so they understand the quantity of that. So they were finally starting to slowly get to the original question that was asked what kind of foods do I recommend and it would be low calorie density, high protein I usually kind of shoot for two to one protein to fat ratio generally speaking if they want to quickly look at a label or check a menu at a restaurant that's kind of where I start at and then I guess secondarily I'm looking at satiety which protein lends itself well to that because the number one people fail on diets is hunger I mean that's really it and we see that in spades now with the new diet medication that's largely promoted the semi-glutide that's it yeah I mean because mainly that's what it does yeah it's not a fat burner it just makes you eat less period and so if we can use the tools available to us without the need of medication and not suggesting the semi-glutide isn't a viable option for those people who need it but at $1000 a month there's certainly a barrier to entry there I would suggest that we would use every tool available for satiety and then I have this satiety list and in my 90-day challenge that was one of the first things I sent out I said here's a list of tools you have in your toolbox that are going to help you to become satiated and here's some things that might actually add to your your hunger and we want to try and curb those things and so I kind of go down the list of things for satiation eating a high protein breakfast getting a significant sleep is kind of even before the breakfast people who sleep less tend to have higher colon hormone release and are just hungrier during the day plus I also think just being up 18 plus hours a day gives you more opportunity to get hungry and have another meal especially as it gets into the evening so the longer you sleep the less hours you're awake the more likely it is you'll be able to satiate yourself with that three meals that most people probably trend towards and then those are high protein meals and now we've got satiety protein obviously the high thermic effect of food the satiety benefit fiber is it you know throw in plenty of fiber eat more oats there's a couple of vegetables, fruits there's a couple of foods that are on this high satiety index which is an index that has measured how people respond to certain foods from how long they stay hungry and that's like potatoes boiled potatoes and oranges the highest of the index if I throw boiled potatoes in with a high lean protein source and maybe a salad and a couple pieces of fruit people tend to be satiated longer we see this in research on say women with PCOS they just tend to have leptin resistance they have more visceral fat and that's central adiposity results in interruption in leptin and hunger signals so they're hungry more often and we used to think that they had a lower basal metabolic rate or metabolism was slower but in fact they do just eat more and it's not and you hate blaming the victim this isn't a discipline issue this isn't a willpower issue they've got all the hunger drivers 100% I've dieted for bodybuilding shows as we've all dieted body fat and that's all you think about is food I can remember times going to bed at night and just dreaming I could see my pizza being made oh that's so funny I have dreams I didn't dream about food until I competed I was never a thing for my entire life I never dreamt about food until I competed and then became a regular dream and your wife's just pissed because she'll be next to you butt naked and you're like nah I'm hungry I'm thinking about food that just becomes not even a consideration some of that might be the lowered testosterone from the calorie restriction etc but I used to work in a pizza place when I was a teenager and I could actually visually see the pizza going through the conveyor and the pepperoni curling and browning on the edges and the cheese bubbling those are the dreams I'd have I remember one time I put all my friends in the car and I drove up to Seattle and got a brick oven pizza up there and watched them all eat it just so I could I didn't have any because I was on a diet I had my little chicken breast take a bite and then breathe on me and they were just astounded that they were like sure you don't want one I'm like yeah I do but the point is that we have to be empathetic sympathetic to the fact that this isn't a willpower issue these aren't undisciplined people they just have hunger cues that a lot of us who claim to be more disciplined simply don't have probably because we tend to eat more protein tend to eat more whole foods I think it's by the way what you're saying I think it's very good to talk about because then people can go to the next step which is okay I have these strong hunger drivers well what can I do that will lower versus it's just willpower and now I don't change it how do I get to where the desire lessens how it's just it's manageable hunger it's not hunger and that's what we'd like to do is get them there and as I mentioned if you've got visceral out of posity you've got poor sleep and sleep apnea you've got to go all in on that first if you've got insufficient lean body mass you've got to go all in on those things first you've got to get a CPAP get your sleep fixed you've got to obviously lose as much visceral fat as you can quickly as you can to get yourself in a position where you even have a fighting chance and then use these tools go a little deeper on that Stan because that's something that it took me a long time to actually connect these dots and vividly remember what house, when it happened and finally making this connection and that was some of the most challenging times that I ever had with fighting off cravings was when I was in a diet and when I had poor sleep I had a rough night that night and then the next day I mean I could have been so I was consistent on the diet dial workouts everything's perfect not even really thinking that bad about other foods I'm happy with my content with my healthy choices then all of a sudden I had a rough night and then the next day all I'm thinking about is bad we talked about the hormone signaling your body releases ghrelin and you just become voraciously hungry it's even worse than that you guys have heard me say before you're stepping over $100 bills to pick up nickels because good analogy waking up after a short sleep and then training is counterproductive because you lose more muscle than fat your body becomes stingy with the fat and will burn the muscle preferentially as a part of its defense mechanism this is Dr. Matthew Walker's research he's spoken about many times and so I'm really cautious I would much rather you get the sleep and you know that's why I don't assign and this is kind of an aside I don't assign cardio to my clients including competitive clients I don't assign like a 40 minute cardio session not terribly effective not terribly enjoyable certainly not sustainable you don't see anybody you know too many barriers to entry I gotta get changed I gotta get my car I gotta go to the gym I gotta put 40 minutes in this treadmill with a career and families and other obligations that's the first thing that goes by the wayside can I get that stimulus in far more effectively and more sustainably from somewhere else and hence there you know it's the 10 minute walks which everybody's heard me talk about ad nauseam but it replaces that 40 minutes of cardio the timing of it post meal lends itself better to insulin control the post-prandial glycemia elevations digestion it's more convenient it's something that you can do in a busy day whether it's walking the kids to school you know at night before bed just taking a brisk 10 minute walk if you again setting yourself up for failure if the proposal is that you're going to do a 30 or 40 minute cardio session a day where does that fit in and how sustainable is you're also attaching it to a behavior and habit that you already have which all the research is very clear on the success rate of that which I think is the magical part of the 10 minute walk you know it took me a long training clients you know how long it took me to figure that out to figure out that like no instead of doing 40 minutes of cardio why don't you just walk 10 minutes after now how long did it take you to figure that because I'm assuming in your 20s maybe 30s you were like oh yeah I get on the treadmill twice a day 30 minutes how long did it take you to piece that together well remember I was power lifting so the concept back then was don't run if you can walk don't stand if you can sit and don't stay awake if you can sleep just shut it down 100 pounds as many calories as you can and it didn't matter what kind of calories both of those things were dead wrong obviously don't recommend any of that I think we all at one point lived by that the dirty bulking not just the excess calories leading to excess body fat but the amount of saturated fat I would consume with you know ice cream and fatty meats and all that kind of stuff but and with body building I found that the excessive cardio for me had a bit of an interference effect you know form follows function my body on a treadmill my legs would start to shrink and I would lose muscle mass going into a bodybuilding show and again it just wasn't terribly sustainable so in 2009 when I was trained with Flex Wheeler he didn't have to do any cardio zero one year prior I did a ton of cardio and I did chicken breast and egg whites and that's when I had the pizza dreams and I weighed in at 223 and won the emerald cup up in Seattle in 2008 trained with Flex Wheeler and this was about six months of of the whole six or seven months of the whole process the last three I spent with him in here in San Jose matter of fact I stayed at the same hotel last night it was kind of nostalgic right across from the 24 hour fitness that I trained at every day for three months and lived there that I forget what it was called at the time its name has changed but it had a full kitchen and two bedrooms and me and Keith Williams trained with Flex and one of the things I remember from that time is when you're dieting for a show and he would have a stop in at Carl's Jr. because he wasn't dieting and get him a breakfast and he would get those criss-cut fries those things smell amazing and he's sitting there in the car eating these on our way to the gym and Keith and I are just like white knuckling like this you know but we were eating a lot he was eating almost four pounds of top sirloin steak a day about six meals a day and we were all cooked on a foreman grill you know how tough that stuff is just like eating leather the two years of my life was on the foreman grill yeah so where did I go off where did I lose track here I was going to well just when you piece together the walks instead of doing so he had me do no cardio and I weighed in this is one year later I was 223 on the Emerald Cup stage and I won the overall Emerald Cup one year later at Masterson Nationals in really similar condition 30 more pounds and just damn near as lean body mass but it wasn't a story of how much muscle I gained it was a story of how much fat or how much muscle I didn't lose and that's the key by the way so anybody listening right now who has no they just don't care about being a bodybuilder or being that big or whatever the lesson here is you can get lean and lose less muscle and you don't want to lose muscle that's your fat-running machinery I was 270 before both of those preps wow so the other one you lost you went all the way down to 223 and this one just down very common I can't remember the name of the gentleman it was a long time ago who was I mean he would bulk up to 300 plus like Lee Priest he used to do that 236 and just wouldn't look very good it was just you know you'd lose a lot of muscle in the process so you're right you don't want to gain too much fat in your gain phases and you don't want to lose muscle in your lost phases you just had to be a little more patient a little more gradual about it so to keep this story going I learned that in the absence of cardio I was still able to get really lean and the workouts I mean we were working out twice a day with high volume and short rest periods plenty sufficient for me to have a significant you know cardiovascular health from that I mean it was extraordinary the amount of volume Flex put us through with 20 rep sets of 2 minute rest squatting down between sets I mean it was challenging but I did keep water a lot so then I went on a train with Mark Bell and we started squatting heavy you know initially of course from nighting down I wasn't that strong but within just a matter of few weeks especially from eating and getting my weight back up you know I was able to start getting stronger and we were squatting some weeks over 800 pounds pretty consistently week after week and I wasn't recovering because I stopped the movement I was just resting I was applying my D's mentality and I would just go home and just sit and lay there and I would have dorms for 3 or 4 days and so I got a recumbent bike and I put it in my hotel room it was up in Sacramento when I was training with Mark and I started immediately Sunday after we would train that evening I would ride the recumbent bike for 10 minutes and why the recumbent bike over walking was just because it was a greater range of motion less impact on my knees it was real low impact all concentric a little hit session I could bike against modest tension for 50 seconds reasonably fast and then rest for 10 or 15 and do 10 of those I started doing them 3 times a day I wake up the next morning and do that next afternoon and do that next evening and do that and I found that my dorms would go away within easily 48 hours accelerate recovery 100% kind of a dual benefit to the 10 minute walks or bikes is that it helped me digest my food faster but also we see that people who get their 6 to 10,000 steps a day have a better satiety effect for people who are doing weight loss as opposed to overtraining and having that compensatory you know get hungry and sit more effect it's kind of a that's just that walking somewhere around I don't know what the measurement is 5000, 6000 steps it lends itself well as one of the tools in the toolbox for satiety is to take those walks I think that there's so much value that the average person can learn from bodybuilding that they don't pay attention to because they look at a bodybuilder and they see an extreme body they look at the highest level of building muscle and getting shredded and they say okay I don't want to look anything like that or that's just unachievable for me and so I'm not going to listen to anything but what bodybuilders have done have mastered the art of muscle and keeping a fast metabolism which is ironic because that's what the pursuit of every client when a client comes to you and they say I want to be in better shape and you could say hey would you like a faster metabolism look better, feel better and of course they would all say yes and I chuckle a little because that gets people thinking I don't want to look like that you won't wake up one morning and be like oh my god I'm Ronnie Coleman what happened I swatted too hard yesterday I've tried and it doesn't happen my first bodybuilding show in 1986 I was 158 pounds soaking wet in the novice lightweight class it took me a long long time and it's years and years and years of force feeding and crushing workouts I mean the idea that somehow you're going to wake up one morning and be like oh I went too far it just doesn't happen but the lessons are great because for the average person what they can learn from bodybuilding pursuits is how to do less work get leaner and have a faster metabolism which if you think of the context of modern life if you go 10,000 years ago you don't want a fast metabolism you want a slow metabolism so you can be efficient but now if you want to maintain your health what will buffer it or one of the best buffers you can have is to have muscle and be able to burn it off just sitting there what you just said has crested now amongst all of the longevity people well there's a couple of holdouts Dr. Walter Longo and David Sinclair neither of which could fight themselves out of a wet paper bag 120 pounds of wispy noodle and they're the only ones still saying you know restrict protein because mTOR because mice but everyone else you know even Dr. Peter Atia who was you know was fully invested in ultra endurance athletics and the keto intermittent fast multiple day fast called an obsession at this point which she's that kind of guy genius brilliant guy and I talked briefly before we came on and I said look I've been doing this for well over 30 years I don't claim to be any smarter than any of these people but I've been there before you know I've seen it I've done it I've had hundreds if not thousands of clients now that we've witnessed I'm just patient I just see these things come around over and over again and somebody's pissing on keto sticks for three years straight and showing you the results I just wait patiently wait and sure enough they all come around eventually I went on Paul Saladino's podcast and told him about the the great benefits of carbohydrates you know yes I eat fruit and even white rice because I want to crush fantastic workouts and have pumps and build muscle and be strong and he was fully keto carnivore intermittent fast at the time and now look he's eating carbs particularly around workouts my muscles podcast I love Mike brilliant guy smarter than me but I sat there on his podcast some years ago when he was keto and intermittent fast and I said look you can get to the top of the Empire State Building the stairs I'm taking the elevator and if you want to get the most out of your workouts anaerobic lifting you're going to want to consume some carbs so now Mike consumes carbs around workouts they all do now the only hold out is who is it no why is his name carnivore doc oh I remember his name the I feel terrible we've had him on here why am I losing it big guy too I cannot think of his name right now is he held up still completely he's only been still steak I'll tell you what though Sean Baker what a freak I tell you I think there definitely are outliers in the sense that carnivore diet is the ultimate elimination diet if you have autoimmune reactions to foods and you can't identify what the hell is going on and you eat foods and you get reactions you get inflammation and you feel terrible like going down to the most fundamental food which would be meat it's one of the most nutrient dense foods you're going to feel a lot better so I think there are definitely individuals that fall in that category but it's way less than what they would have you believe well not only that, I would always make the case too that there's something in there that they obviously eliminated that makes them feel so much better but was it every single carnivore and would you do better with some blueberries and raspberries compared to what did you just get off the standard American diet that's true almost any of those interventions hopefully get you away from the standard American diet no question but as I mentioned you're restricted for most people long term in terms of compliance it's for sure there's compelling evidence now that got microbiome is pretty important for a lot of things for immune system for cholesterol control particularly LDL it gets very limited when you cut your diet that way it really does so even beyond the performance benefits of the carbs there's also fruits and vegetables in the diet but I've addressed those people with IBS and who need elimination diet to kind of start with the FODMAP diet which is much more diverse over 100 food items in there and that to me was more inclusive than what was going on as far back as when I've been training women for shows since the late 80s early 90s doing that old guru diet with the egg whites and protein powder broccoli FODMAP diet is far more inclusive and also keeping red meat in keeping the egg yolk in keeping dairy in keeping fruit in all the things that provide all those other nutrition benefits so now we're talking about more foods which was the original question what kind of foods would I recommend and we got through calories and protein 40 minutes later and then kind of just got off on all this compliance satiety I agree if I come right out of the gate like don't eat this and don't eat that I've since avoided saying don't eat this don't eat that you get crucified by the academics in the industry for fear that that doesn't apply to everyone and I've always said that even with the elimination diets it's individualistic it's dose dependent how the foods are prepared matters it's cumulative in nature there's a whole host of things that you can go through that opposed criterion I think Alan Oregon does probably the best job of this with his flexible diet which is kind of an improved if it fits your macros which was bastardized into pop tarts and protein powder by just talking about the fact that if we would eat more whole foods and less ultra-processed foods and not necessarily because the ultra-processed foods are poisoned but because all the research suggests that you'll eat more calories as a result all the stuff we've been talking about in terms of satiety and even in that post that I did on Merrick's site that was run on Merrick's site most of the people who responded were like oh that stuff's poison you're going to get cancer and you've got chemicals but you know you ask for a reference what kind of chemicals are you speaking of specifically you know it's bread meat pickles, tomatoes and nobody can really name a specific chemical or a dose with respect to these even processed foods it's just the lack of satiety and the overconsumption of those foods that results in the behaviors the adiposity and the illness this is why in my opinion I'd love your input on this this is why we have old data which you can counter very strongly but you have old data that shows that high sodium cause heart disease and cancers or high fat with an associated increase in blood pressure high sodium with an associated increase in blood pressure right but I'm going to go further right then there was high fat oh no it's the carbs and the sugars high fat with high saturated fat for those individuals who don't have adequate clearance can increase LDL and be unhappy and I'll take it a step further right look at the three main ingredients that make foods hyper palatable salt, fat and sugar and so if you don't control for how much people are eating you're going to essentially find people that eat a lot of salt, a lot of fat and a lot of sugar are going to have all these problems but it's mainly because they're probably eating foods that make them overeat those are the most delicious foods that's right and so if you look at the consumption of ultra processed foods and it's which are engineered to be the best at all those things and how much of our diets are made up of ultra processed foods you'll see obesity matches it quite nicely so it's not the sugars of fats and the salt it's the fact that more of our diet now I think something like 65 to 70% of the average person's diet in America is ultra processed you're right north of 70% and the data is very clear they have great studies I mean they have crossover studies we put people in like control how often do we have controlled diet studies right 500 calories a day on average and without people counting or anything that just makes them want to eat more so the reason why those things are connected to all these poor outcomes is because they're just eating more food that's really the main thing now we have to be careful not to be arrogant or classist about these recommendations because not everybody can afford the whole foods or has the time or resources or the cooking capabilities to make these healthy meals or healthier meals or lower calorie meals we see that in lower socio-economic neighborhoods that are just covered with fast food places as a matter of convenience and cost and certainly taste that is a bigger issue and so I've since started backing away from general recommendations about the obesity epidemic because it isn't just about the food it's about the socio-economic conditions that are involved as well and I have once said that I didn't think government involvement was a good path because people should have the opportunity to make those choices for themselves and some people like a snack here or there and it doesn't adversely affect their health in the whole 80-20 scheme of things with the flexible dieting but in fact if you it appears that if you want to make any significant inroads on the population as a whole it probably will take some sort of intervention to prevent folks from having and I hate it I just don't know a more effective solution I hear where you're coming from and I know that you've probably been attacked many times for not saying it that way to be more politically correct but I just think that's such a... I think it's a bullshit issue do I think that there's some people? Absolutely and my heart breaks for that but we can find a way to marginalize almost everything you do and Adam you grew up that way that wasn't the reason if anything it's actually the lack of education and understanding to me and that's what Brown University said with respect to the Samoans and they actually sent people in to educate them about their dietary choices and I don't know if we are doing them a service by giving them that out that oh because you're lower middle class or you're poor and so you get the excuse to eat these processed foods and this bad shit because you don't have access to it what's her name? Melissa and I remember we didn't say anything about that when she said that on the show and I'm just like man this is that that woke message that's coming right now that we always got to be so careful about we are not helping people by not educating them and not explaining to them by letting them take the victim role out are you think we're helping? I don't I'll tell you what I think it's education mainly because you can be very inexpensive with foods that have high shelf life like rice beans potatoes potatoes fruits and vegetables you can buy frozen vegetables which have they last a long time very easy to prepare now availability but that's a consumer driven thing right so what the consumers buys what you tend to get more of I think it has a lot to do with education we lived on food stamps we had churches that gave us food and when I looked at the stuff if you actually broke down we had dollars and we had plenty of coke and sodas and ice creams that what we would get and you did the math and then you went and you bought all those foods and you ate that we wouldn't starve and we would be much healthier and you could make it happen I just hate that and I know why you're doing it and you're saying it and I totally understand now you know why I don't talk about it obesity we had a guest on our show not that long ago we didn't say nothing about it when it came up and I'm just not going to let it slide I don't think we're if you really care which I want to believe everybody in this room really does care about trying to solve that issue the answer is not you know being concerned about marginalizing those people or you know not talking about the victim we already have a problem with victimhood in this country I did say this I said that I want to play pin the tail on the donkey and find an enemy to blame for this the enemy is also the victim you're at war with yourself the source of the problem is also the only solution and I think that kind of navigates us to where hey yeah there's a lot of reasons why but ultimately you're the only person that's going to be able to make the change and I don't think these people are not knowledgeable about the fact that they're over-eating and under-moving I don't think it's that they don't know that when we talk about education maybe they just don't have these strategies potentially in place or they're just exposed to a greater degree and again have all those preconditions of you know visceral out-of-posity obesity and the hunger signal and all other stuff so they're more driven to be hungry as we've felt in diets I'll even take it a step further you have subsidies that make these things less expensive when in reality they shouldn't be you can buy sodas, sometimes cheaper then you can buy water because the corn syrup is subsidized through taxpayers so now I'm going to go buy a coke and it's a two liter coke is cheaper than buying water so let's just drink some coke with our meal so that's one big problem and then the education that a lot of people do get comes through government and this is why I hate government involvement had you followed any of the government's guidelines for diet you'd be very unhealthy some of their guidelines and they're so far behind it's incredible exercise guidelines are far behind we finally have studies showing that strength is an important metric to measure for longevity you know how long it's taken them to admit that strength training or strength is important it's been just now we're starting to see that not just important it's the primary driver and I would even suggest and Pat Davidson mentioned this at his seminar Dr. Pat Davidson I went down to Florida and attended his seminar we were talking about you know VO2 max and cardiovascular fitness but that's dependent upon lean mass that's what utilizes the oxygen so you can have elderly people with sarcopenia with poor cardiovascular fitness primarily as a result of the fact that they have muscle wasting I would suggest that the muscle building and the strength is the primary driver muscle mass for things like overcoming serious illness or injury and then strength of course has been shown to be kind of the leading indicator of all cause mortality which I use this as an opportunity every time I can to you know how I love Mark Bell and I just like to dig at him every chance and I say two things I say one that I've lived by Mark's philosophy all my life you know strength is never weakness is never strength anything that made me weaker I was very quick to take that out of my program and I have a list of things that make you weak I talked about metformin and antibiotics and even icing and things like anti-estrogens and had a whole list of things that I don't want my clients doing because I think it makes you weaker these are for strength strength athletes I'm not going to talk about metformin in terms of its potential benefits for people of type 2 diabetics but I'm just saying I think I'm definitely speaking it compromises metabolic function it impedes the anabolic response from training both cardiovascular and musculary so that's why I mentioned it but I'm going to get too far down the road on that but Mark has always said that weakness is never strength and I use that as kind of a measurement and as you know and as you just said that we use grip strength as a proxy to measure someone's strength in comparison Other people in the group and then look at the mortality rates and we see that those with the best grip strength Have the longest lifespans and health spans associated with that and of course then everybody ran out and started doing dead hanks Yeah, I missed the point but again just a proxy you could have done a leg extension or a calf press or a bicep curl It you know, but whatever measurement it was everybody would run out and do that thing But it's overall strength and then of course, you know my You know if I wanted to optimize that I would get them to do the most Beneficial strengthening exercises, which would almost always incorporate in the largest muscle groups, you know legs and back in particular How do you feel about it because years ago when we first saw the podcast? I would talk about how I thought that Crating would be become because it was it's always been popular. It's been popular for a long time in strength training and body building But I talked about how I thought it was gonna be the next wellness supplement And I think if they're gonna recommend it to older people and the kids well now with the cognitive benefits It is they almost want to put it in the water. You're seeing you're seeing all these different things Do you think it's gonna become this like the supplement now that we just give to most people? Yeah, I certainly recommended across the board men and women both who are trying to strength train And there's no reason not to obviously I have a higher red meat intake And so I kind of don't respond as well Plus performance and anti drugs is a whole different world And so you got to kind of take it out of that realm and you know creatin offers a Unmeasurable benefit for natural athletes and there's certainly no reason not to it's one of the most studied and most I think beneficial supplements as supplements go that would be the one I would suggest I don't even necessarily consider protein powder a supplement, you know, it's food We can that's all it is just convenient and taste good But as supplements go, you know, if you're gonna look at creatin and beta alanine and you know those kinds of Supplements creatin is probably the one that works for most people pretty consistently is assuming Some people have to be a little cautious about how much they consume in any one Bolas because it can cause some gastrointestinal The facts now going back to the to process food consumption We're seeing now and this is the first time in my career that I've seen diets become politicized Diets have always yeah, it's always been kind of an issue where it's a religion. Yeah, right But I'm we're starting to see it now become politicized where people are now told You shouldn't eat meat because it's bad for the environment You shouldn't eat meat because it's also bad for your health and we're gonna shame or fear people into avoiding meat Which in my opinion is just gonna drive them to eat more Process foods because if you look at like we said earlier the average Americans diet 70% process foods the 30% That's leftovers usually meat milk and eggs and you cut that so how do you feel about that? You know, we see that in vegan diets, too. They you know, they they're just improperly Applied same would be true with meat eating meat. It's generally most of that stuff is confounded by the healthy user bias And the dietary pattern overall for people who consume the most meat Smoke more drink more exercise less way more You know and tend to eat bacon double cheeseburgers with soda as a pair of hot dogs and a lot of processed meats But if you're looking at a top sirloin steak, you know, it's It's five grams of fat 1.5 grams of saturated fat and it's got a two-to-one protein to fat ratio So let's just look at it and I don't mean to get too far into the math on it But if if your recommendations are to eat 30 to 35 percent protein as a total as a percentage of total calories I hate using percentage because some lighter women probably need more protein to reach a percentage Yeah, I would just say total grams of protein 150 pound woman I might want her to have 130 grams of protein and that might push north to 40 percent of total calories if she's dieting So I'm kind of cautious And so now my recommendation at least is that you need a sufficient amount of fats for general health, you know Every membrane and cell membrane in the body is a lipid bilayer and you need to move 80 and K around And I put that number in at about 30 percent is a pretty healthy range You get under 20 percent you probably start to see some compromise in in hormone function testosterone in particular and So if 30 percent of your diet is fat as a percentage of total calories and 30 percent of those fats is saturated fat such as in a top sirloin steak or an egg You know, it gets even lower if you're looking at a fat-free Greek yogurt Dairy doesn't seem to have a an adverse cardiovascular impact, although we still recommend maybe a 2% or 1% Because of that milk fat globule membrane that's somewhat protective of of its effect And any adverse effect on LDL's So as you can see I'm deluding As we go here, I'm 30% fat as a percentage of total calories 30% saturated fat as a percentage of total fats Already puts you at 9% that's below the AHA's recommendation of 10% saturated fat in the diet and that's just if you ate red meat a lean red meat as your only protein source To reach those macros and I've just discussed that when you throw in an egg egg white blend And you throw in some fat-free Greek yogurt you throw in a piece of salmon and those kinds of things obviously Now you're you're in pretty good space So again, we're back to dietary pattern rather than picking out a particular food and trying to demonize that food individually and and look I've I've I've been a What would you say I've I've been all over the place talking about how I thought seed oils were terrible for five years and different seed oils of course Because I was allergic to them and I said look I'm biased This is in my video on seed oils. They are poison to me. I give me gastric distress. So I don't include them 70% plus of the seed oils that we consume are in ultra-processed foods and we consume over 70% ultra-processed foods in our diet You know, but even that I've had to revise my You know my opinion on whether or not that's bad for you Is it more of it depends now? It's more of what's the context as a person if you replace saturated fats with it It seems to have a health benefit But That would be such like butter palm oil coconut oil the things that are super super high in saturated fats Assuming they get you north of 10-12 percent, you know, certainly up to 18 percent saturated fat as a percentage of total calories Once you get north of that you start to see LDL If you're susceptible to that and only a percentage of the population has difficulty with LDL clearance But if you can keep this that total saturated fat down You know, obviously, I don't include them because I'm allergic to them Which doesn't give me the right to like if somebody's allergic to dairy They can't say that no not everybody should have dairy same with thing would be two of eggs or shellfish or peanuts You know, I always made that distinction that it's individualistic and dose dependent So I've had to be cautious about how and in my book I updated from, you know Where I originally came out five years ago, you know And that was that was largely from, you know, Weston a prices recommendation and Chris master John And I couldn't get any of them to defend their position. Really. Yeah, I repeatedly reached out to them I couldn't get them to defend their position. The one person who defended the position was Tucker Goodrich Actually went on Mark Bell's show mark asked me this is funny and you know Alan Flanagan from a linear nutrition is Just in the last couple of years has really kind of put himself into a leadership position where, you know, he's such a Bright brilliant guy in terms of just his knowledge about nutrition as a PhD in nutrition But he's the one who came out with the article and he's kind of the thought leader now I see everybody else. I follow everybody's accounts on social media. You know, I've you name them I'm following them. I'm subscribing to their I reading I'm watching, you know, I'm I just I sit over here quietly As you as you've seen today in my reference of all these folks and kind of their their evolution including mine And they've all evolved, you know, the folks from Barbara medicine commonly Recognize things that they used to think that they've changed their opinion on Lane Norton's the same way, you know, he's he used to promote saturated fat as being healthy and Demonstin put forth some research on that effect the guys from examin.com as recently as last year They have 14 PhDs over there, you know, I'm just a meat neck powerlifter And they were promoting that saturated fat was not Deleterious to cardiovascular disease Well, the dose makes the poison with that one dose makes the poison and they've since updated that to recognize that, you know And so I don't feel too bad if I'm if I if it took me a little longer than most on some of these topics but Tucker Goodrich went on to Mark Bell's show and and had a debate with Alan Flanagan about this very topic and He was the only one, you know, to his credit, although I think Alan Flanagan's research and the evidence as a whole supports that position that that can all oil can in in in replacing saturated fats provide an improved LDL and then therefore Cardiovascular disease outcome, you know, I've seen studies though that show that although that may happen All-cause mortality actually gets a little worse in some of those studies. Are you familiar with those? Yeah, are those like iffy or they are very iffy I think one was the was it the mission was it Michigan and one was in Australia? Yeah Alan addressed those and I could pull them up here. I've got all the information but They were very iffy they were the I think that There was trans fats involved in that study, right? It was one of the problems Which we know or pretty much which we know or any dose. Yeah, that was that was a huge problem I think that was called the Minnesota Coronary Trial. Yeah. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah I've since moved on from that topic I like I said, I reached out to all the people who had who had most fervently Opposed and they wouldn't they wouldn't challenge that so I've since moved on you know, Stan wouldn't you say one of the challenges with studies on nutrition is that it's it's we have very little Or very few I should say long-term controlled Dietaries there's just so expensive. There's no funding. So a lot of this is like observational For the most part and when you look at observational studies, there's like I mean, there's cultures that eat diets that looks radically different from other cultures and you see health The health is very similar Which points back to what you said in the beginning, which is like 95 of the benefits come from Eating a reduced calorie diet self and exercise. Yeah We see this even in like I hate talking about the blue zones because it's it's there's so much confounding there as well It's so cherry picked And a lot of those zones the birth certificate information is hard to validate So some of those guys aren't 180 You know, why by the way because in some of these countries, they would lie on the birth certificate So they could get pensions from their parents 100% yeah, they acted older or they pretended to be older Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, and I'm happy to provide a resource and reference to that to that review as well But I guess the point of that whole conversation is is that yes a they're they're very cherry-picked, but b you look at Who are the groups in california loma linda? Oh the seventh day advent is the seventh day admittance, but right up the street You've got the Mormons. Yeah Who have equivalent health outcomes with meat in their diet and somehow they're just magically, you know, not in The blue zones and remember the blue zone is not a study. It's a book Right, uh, you know, that was that was uh, I think highly biased and cherry-picked But the point being is is the dietary pattern of the Mormons or the lifestyle pattern of the Mormons is more important So when I talk about dietary patterns as opposed to individual foods And I talked about the healthy user bias that the Mormons don't smoke They don't drink they exercise regular they maintain a You know a lower bmi and then waste measurement. They Generally exercise more they have better social Environments so all of those things seem to you know, take a priority over whether or not you're having Some red meat. I will say this though. I will say that sufficient fiber does seem to show a decrease in cancer risk And lane is referred to a number of Some research suggests if you get adequate fiber with your meat intake and again as a portion of Of a dietary pattern that it's it's fine The only reason I keep harping on it is because specifically with women I find and I was just this summer. I was up in in arizona. I was working with a high school softball team And a couple of parents told me that the girls had had a decline in performance recently And that's very common. I was working with the university of Oregon track team back in the early 90s And one of the things that we saw most was shin splints And we saw that with the the nike coach. It was highly popular popularized or that A couple of his athletes had significant health issues Comes from the female triad and that's uh, you know A calorie restriction Resulting in anemia amenorrhea osteopenia And so sure enough, that's the first question I asked is she had a blood test and In they went and got her blood test sure enough. She was anemic And I see that that women who are in severe calorie restriction Who trend towards carbs and insufficient protein and they avoid dairy and red beet They have a higher incidence of those problems. And so that's kind of why I keep hounding on Having red meat in the diet not exclusively, but but certainly don't exclude it Don't demonize it or dairy for the calcium benefits And so within probably a week or 10 days, she was feeling amazing We just the resolution for low iron would be to use a heme iron source and non heme iron source with vitamin c And avoid calcium in that meal. So you did you do you had her meat? So we designed a diet for that included steak spinach And peppers or oranges for that was heme non heme vitamin c And we avoided dairy in that specific meal because it can inhibit absorption in that meal And then her next meal would say be eggs with yogurt And so two times a day she would have the the high iron and within I mean, it was probably a week She's phenomenal. What was she did was she following a particular diet before that? No, that's the problem with a lot of high school athletes. They they she just try she was just trying to stay lean So she was eating low calorie. They avoid the trigger foods that they see that you know I'm not going to eat red meat. I'm not going to eat dairy. I'm not going to eat fruit And then they end up just on bagels, you know and an occasional, you know egg white or something like that So insufficient protein is probably the primary driver chronic calorie restriction And then those other items red meat in the dairy. Do you do you think a big problem? With just health and wellness is that people they just want that silver bullet answer They just want like just tell me like the best exercise or just tell me the best Food and and really the data is becoming so clear that there is no Specific I mean unless you're talking to a specific individual and you're breaking that them now Like you said with this young lady with her the worst specific foods But it's impossible. Well, we already said it the best exercise is the one you'll do the best exercise Or the best diets the one you'll follow. I mean and those are truthful but not useful You know the the individual has to be provided So I say my clients say stand just tell me exactly what to eat And I base that on all the things that we've discussed this far And then try and cater that to their personal preferences so that they can comply with it More whole foods more protein, you know better sleep by the vertical diet isn't just Diet it's diet sleep exercise. I don't think humans are partial I don't think that it's just extras. I think it's everything everything I think we yeah, I hate the dichotomy again. I hate that we have to yeah What's better than the other and but I mean that's how that's how the human brain works, right? That we want we want to you first want to use the the quick monkey brain Just give me the direction. Tell me the three things really fast It's switch over to the second phase, right of the brain. You have to process you have to think you have to sit down It's a slow like nobody wants to do that. So, you know, I think it's less about exercise It's more about human behavior And the way we process all information. It's about compliance. It's about creating Well, if it's a diet, then what's the least restrictive to you? How are you the least hungry? That's why people say well I started doing intermittent fasting and it worked You know and and they're again, they're adamant about it. They're religious about it It worked for you because you didn't feel you weren't hungry on it. Same thing with keto, you know Keto works for me and that's great. I think that's fine for those reasons You mentioned a little earlier. What things do I watch out for? Yeah? And Those are some of the things I'm cautious of is that people get themselves into an over restrictive environment That's not necessarily sustainable long term I do see some issues with uh With keto diets and again, they can work I think it's a good initial intervention for somebody with type 2 diabetes in particulars as long as they can get a calorie deficit lose weight Um, because they don't obviously assimilate carbohydrates sufficiently But I get about four to six weeks in on most keto diets And it's not like I haven't done keto diets multiple times. I mean I worked with Dave Palumbo 10 years Yeah, he's the keto king Uh, I've done keto many times throughout my career and preparing for a show. I always got weaker. I always got more tired I always lost more muscle and that's kind of what I see now We can try and mitigate some of that obviously with the training and the protein intake and sufficient electrolytes That's kind of the first thing that happens with the water loss from the carbohydrate depletions that we see You know, they lose five six seven pounds of water And then they lose all the sodium associated with that water and then they start to get tired as a result So we can mitigate some of that and then I have to also You know, I like to get the blood test. Let's see your LDLs. You want to go keto cautious You know what the fatty What kind of fats that are in there, you know, maybe more salmon's more avocado more nuts More, you know in in a case like that as opposed to these fat bombs and the butter in your Coffee because you know, the LDL is a consideration Yeah, do you so I want to change gears a little bit and move into exercise Because I wanted to ask you this because you're a smart guy. You've been doing this for a long time So you have a lot of experience and I would say wisdom Um, and so you've been doing this long enough to now see some of these trends I'm now reading mainstream articles that are saying things like strength training Maybe the key to longevity. Uh, we talked earlier about the strength metric, right squeezing a grip test is actually a In terms of single metrics is one of the best predictors of all cause mortality We're seeing now that they're advocating for strength training to fight dementia To manage type two diabetes Is strength training starting to have it's it's time is is the time started finally here Where we're going to finally start start talking about this to the average person Yeah, and I think I we were kind of touching on that a moment ago before I got sidetracked Is that that the longevity people Dr. Peter is is one it's kind of one of the the leaders in the industry that I think has come a long way in terms of of the The caliber of people that he's he's been bringing to his show Uh, obviously, you know laying Norton most recently. Um, and Uh, and that's what the consensus seems to be now amongst the academic professionals. Obviously, you know The the meet and act nerds we we've always hoped that that would be the case We want validation for you know, this this obsession that we've had all our life And I'm not suggesting everybody should be a competitive powerlifter bodybuilder, but um, you know, they should certainly lift and and here's the important distinction I was just talking to um Michael hern last week or week before about this we're talking about cardio and strength training and I'm not sure if If I uh, it was kind of the first time this this topic had really come up and I'm not sure if I had had very uh very well I think articulated the position But what we do see is it's it's The health benefits the the Uh lifespan and health span benefits Are dependent upon the results more than the activity And by that I mean that that people who just exercise more Uh Don't realize the same longevity benefits as those who have better metrics of having exercise such as vo2 max And like you said strength and lean mass. So it's not just working out. It's uh, are you getting results? Are you adapting? Are you building building muscle? Of course, and and that's important and then look again What's the best exercise the one you'll do? You know at some point If you are training a client and they're not getting stronger or gaining lean muscle mass or improving their vo2 max then Again exercise is great but They're not getting all the benefits that they may be intending to get just from Move doing the the work itself You want it that should be measurable and progressable agree and in fact I'll take it even a step further if you're exercising a law and you're not Noticing improvements in your physical performance muscle Maybe fat loss blood lipids and in fact you may actually be causing detrimental effects because it's now just a stress Is the exercise is a stressor that causes the adaptation? It's the adaptation you get the benefits from not this not the stressor itself The stressor by itself is just a stressor and we know that as coaches of athletes. Yes The overtraining is a big issue right a percent. Yeah fatigue management Like you said, especially athletes who aren't bodybuilders or powerlifters The last thing you want to do is influence or impact adversely impact their ability to perform Whatever sport or whatever practice for that sport that they have to engage in Uh, I worked with john jones recently. Uh, and that was one of the biggest things we did It was funny because we would do um, you know, is that like by the way working with him? Oh, it was great He's he's a phenomenal athlete. He's got really good like strength and muscle building genes Which I didn't even realize because he always looks kind of long and lanky. It's incredible. Yeah The hard part was you know, we just got him up over 250 pounds was the goal and 255 pounds Holy cow. I don't know the hard part with him was the eating uh, and and we can Just briefly i'll say that that john kind of likes to eat what he wants to eat when he wants to eat Which like a lot of my clients And so, you know, I would send him meals, but he you know, he wouldn't necessarily enjoy them consistently And and getting him just to eat breakfast. So those were some of the hard challenges with john Um, and so that's the first question I asked. What do you like to eat? Where do you like to eat? So we started going to the restaurants that he liked to eat at and I've said this many times before that sometimes clients who don't have an opportunity to make their food And have to eat out I'll just google the restaurant menu and and pick a few things on there that I think are optimal I do this with high school kids. I did this for the softball team because they are a traveling team And I said look you can go to any of these different places whether it's carls jr Or mcdonald's and you know because that's what you're gonna do anyhow Let's make the optimal choice and for me that's just I just look for a two-to-one protein to fat ratio Generally, that's a chicken source because most of the meats at those places are 75 25 beef And you have a really hard time meeting those those Requirements but a subway sandwich you get a meatball sandwich is not as much protein and a lot of fat But if you get the steak or the grilled chicken breast, you know throw a little bit of Cheese on there double meat double meat. Yeah 100% and that's kind of how I do that But aside from that I can remember we posted a video of john doing some It's like pin squats or chain squats where you go down You know you kind of you let the the eccentric kind of crash into the weights and you just do the concentric portion And you don't necessarily do a full range of motion with a six foot five Guy with you know wingspan like him Because that is just going to create a lot more damage and and in terms of sports performance. I only need You know, that's right I don't need the full range of motion for sports performance because I've always said that if if if he's at full range of motion He's losing the fight. That's right You know, I just wanted to be explosive So I posted that and of course that went on to espn fight news or whatever else on instagram and all the fucking internet Experts, you know or in there like do a full squad and you know, he's gonna hurt himself and that's like So we design programs For athletes that might not look like a bodybuilders program Or a powerlifter's program because we're trying to eliminate a lot of the fatigue in the eccentric loading Since you brought up john jones, I want I want to hear your prediction because right away when you said the the challenges With the diet and adherence and stuff like that um I actually have found this very common with many athletes, especially training high high level athletes because uh, they have been able to burn Up whatever they consume and they are great at their sport. And so They don't want to disrupt that so when you see this and especially when you get a chance to coach them And you're trying to get them to out here and you see them struggle If you had to predict uh the things that john jones is going to be challenged with in 20 25 years when he's no longer fighting Playing of sports and moving and burning as many calories. What would you predict and see what happened? Boy, I think the same thing everybody has to happen You burn fewer calories and you eat more is is what happens people think their metabolic rate slows But we've seen now from the research between age 20 and probably 60 We don't see a significant decline. No metabolic rate. We see people move less and they eat more and that's uh, I think You know, and that's the folly of a lot of athletes particularly football players You see them post football man They just they're used to eating a lot of food because they were doing daily doubles So, you know four hours a day of training. I I think that that's a lot of the reason why their their lifespan is so low is is because I know like we want to connect it Uh to the hard hitting and the stress on the body, which I'm sure that's not helping the case whatsoever No, but I would make the case that a lot of it is they they had had they've built these eating behaviors around You know a body that is burning six seven thousand calories every day day, but now we got to say look People's metabolisms are different We kind of had this conversation a little bit about some people who have a harder time losing weight than others We see in overfeeding studies, uh, you know, generally speaking people will gain weight But if you look at the inter individual responses to overfeeding studies You'll see that one person might gain 20 pounds one person might lose four. Yeah, and they both had an equivalent Calorie surplus throughout that study. I'm that guy. I I'll lose weight I have to do everything I can to maintain my weight. And so if you ask me where I'm going to be in 20 years I'm going to be lighter John's kind of the same way I'm the same way as you are like if I if I don't Stay on top of my protein intake, especially in calories I'll lose weight on the scale and it feels and looks like muscle It went down to to Dallas or Wichita falls to mark ripetos over the weekend to do a seminar Gathering of all his starting strength people. He's doing phenomenal. I mean, he's got like 30 gyms open nationwide The starting strength group and I I love mark and and their method. I think it's fantastic They're doing a great job for the very kind of people that we're talking about just to increase strength And that's that's been his foundation and I know he's gruff and you know, but that's that's his goal He just wants people to get stronger five pounds a week, you know, and he's he's been clear about that for 20 years But I left on a friday afternoon. I came back on a sunday morning and I took all my meals with me and I lost four pounds Just from the travel and I know a lot of people will hate on that because like my wife's Samoan She cracks always green on the other side. That's what I tell them But then for my sport, you know trying to gain weight that was and that's kind of one of the challenges I deal with was say like a Hofthor Bjornsson or a Lane Johnson from Philadelphia Eagles It's harder to eat enough to maintain that mass and that workload and that you know I think lane was 312 pounds and he needed to be 330 when I started working with him He had a registered dietitian do a diet for him And this is not an indictment on registered dietitians my co-author for the vertical diet is uh, Dr. Damon McEwen who's a phd rdn was director of dietetics for unov Uh, that dietitian recommended uh chicken breast and quinoa like five cups of quinoa a day And I mean is anybody ever eaten five cups of quinoa a day and so And and and some that kind of gets me off into this thought that I mean if you haven't done it Why are you prescribing it for somebody? You know If you haven't eaten 6,000 calories a day Uh of the foods that you're recommending for this individual or at least tried, you know to eat in a surplus Then you know be cautious about your confidence in that in that prescription because uh lane couldn't eat it And he was having all kinds of problems obviously so You know that was one of the things I was able to get him up to 330 pounds just using obviously Easier to digest foods what you have to be a huge consideration when you're eating that much food Is can you digest it well 100% yeah, and that's why you know people are like white rice it's like Nobody in a calorie deficit on the vertical diet eats white rice because You're utilizing fruits and vegetables and high potassium foods as the foundation It's only the people who have a significant workload or lots of lean body mass who need 4000 plus calories And can't consume a ton of pasta And oats or bread in that quantity because it it bloats them and makes it hard for them to consume all the food So the same thing with brian shaw and I worked with him like a week into the diet. He's like stan i'm i'm hungry I haven't been hungry in years You know and that's because we used you know the monster bash more easy Mechanically speaking foods you could shovel down and you know in greater quantities faster Would digest quicker you'd be hungry again sooner and then you could eat again So this is it's very similar to what we talked about earlier with weight loss when you when you're looking at weight loss Your considerations are satiety Is it going to be something sustainable? It's the same thing with same people trying to gain is can we Manage satiety. It's just in the opposite direction, right? Can we give you foods that don't stuff you and keep you so full because you got to you know 5000 calories and for those people and I know this is a small percentage It's so funny when I do these seminars. I've got a broad Spectrum of people, you know weight loss weight gain people with medical conditions, etc Uh, and I start talking about weight gain. I know I've turned off about 90 percent Most of the women in the room or you know They they see me work with a brian shaw and in a in a hofthor Bjornsson and they're like they don't want to be there And so I got to start throwing up the the naughty of diets, you know at 114 pounds or the I've got a girl bj that It competes at like 114 each 2,600 calories a day. Wow. Yeah, she's a machine But when I met her three years ago, she was on 1200 calories. Yeah, you know, that was a long slow process of getting her body Getting her to build muscle and then improve her metabolism Stan, how old are you if you don't mind me asking be 55 next month? Holy cow So let me ask you this because you've been doing this for so long personally How has your training changed or do you have different considerations now that you're in your mid 50s? What does that look like? Mostly obviously your recovery starts to to take longer from high fatigue movements So a lot of the workouts you see me done do recently just This is funny because I haven't competed in over 10 years and so and and for a few years after I stopped competing I I thought about one more and so I was going in there and I was doing the heavy squats and the heavy deadlifts more frequently with with too many North of 90 efforts And I was just tired all the time my shoulders and elbows and knees were still wrecked and I talked about this on my videos for Keys to pain free knees and I broke my back. Those are my rants. So I spoke about How you resolve those issues but How I train differently now is is I do fewer of those top-end sets and I try and do lower fatigue movements And I do a lot more Volume has kind of louis simons thing and probably what really got me through my career as both bodybuilding and powerlifting is that The bodybuilding I did a ton more volume More sets more reps shorter rest periods And so my cardiovascular fitness was really good and it kind of carried me through those Those powerlifting preps And I was able to maintain my health To the to the best of my ability is I gained and lost the weight It's why I periodize my big athletes weight And the first thing I did with hoffville berenson was take him from 440 down to in the 390s To resolve some fatty liver and insulin resistance that we saw in the blood test So I periodize their weight with their competitions throughout the year I don't let them stay heavy while they're not competing heavy Mass moves mass, so I do get them back up and weight, but I'm kind of the same way I just now I try and minimize fatigue. So my training now Uh ct. Fletcher reached out to me last month and he said, hey, are you still deadlifting? And I wasn't really certainly not heavy, you know, I'm like 600 pounds was a heavy deadlift for me a month or two ago Oh, that's so that's so light three months ago. Yeah I mean for him it is right It's embarrassing for me to talk about nowadays. I talk about, you know, I'm a member of the aarp now because I'm so old So I talk about my aarp prs This is my post retirement prs my pr prs And he said, hey, would you come down and deadlift at my meet in january? And you know, it's ct. Fletcher. You don't say no to ct. You know, he's legend And so I said sure I'll come down and then I hung up the phone and I realized shit I can't deadlift anything. I'm gonna go embarrass myself down there So I wanted to start deadlifting heavy. So I couldn't just go deadlift heavy So I used accessories and the two that I've been doing a lot now You see me do recently in the last month or two Is box squats that tends to give you less fatigue Plus it it eliminates that that that portion of the lift as I mentioned with john jones where you're reversing the weight That eliminates some of the eccentric at that muscle length. That's going to give you a lot of muscle soreness and so Plus it also dissipates that stretch reflex, which is you know, what a deadlift is you don't have that You don't have it. You got to create tension there. So I love the box squat for that reason Plus it's low fatigue the next day. I don't feel crushed. I can do 600 pound box squats And I don't feel crushed, you know with the Using the kabuki bar right now And then I'll do uh, good mornings as another accessory for deadlifts But on to chains as I mentioned earlier same thing I did with john jones Me with athletes is is I try to eliminate some of the eccentric load and just do the concentric portion crash Bring it down. You can see all this on the instagram I've posted a lot of and people like oh my god, doesn't that hurt and I'm like actually it hurts less Then doing a true. Good morning or a true squat particularly the next day But I do need to build Obviously I need to progress those loads over time so I can that could translate to a deadlift Um, it's a smart strategy. Yeah, I'll work up and just do a couple of top sets of Of the box squats or a few top sets of the and then once a month I'll try and test my deadlift to see if these are or I said it has to be measurable Progressible, but also has to be transferable. This is something that's very important when you're talking about athletes If they're not getting faster or jumping higher or throwing further than You're wasting their time. It's exercise not training. And so for me. I use the deadlift as a test So once a month I try and see did I get stronger and you can either move the same weight faster or you can add some more weight And test that for yourself There's a and then I also add a ton of volume to that. I have to keep those 50 60 percent Loads in and just move a lot I do the four bikes a day still on the recumbent bike as I mentioned for 10 minutes So you do 10 minutes four times a day 10 minutes four times a day This morning at the hotel walked around Um, and then I try and get a lot of volume in so sometimes I'll split my workouts where I'll come in in the morning I'll do the box squatting and then maybe do a bunch of belt squats Walking lunges things like that just just to keep moving sled drags I just keep moving and then come to find out all these many years later. I had never met Louis Simmons out at out at west side Until just a couple years ago, but mark bell's Obviously, uh, Louis Simmons west side style training. So I utilized those methods with him But one of the things I found out through my buddy matt wittomer out at beat training Who who competed for louis for over 10 years and he was a He was a student of buddy morris. He he coached He did strength and conditioning coaching and the nfl for buddy morris who's a those people who know in the nfl He's just a legend for strength and conditioning Come to find out that that was behind the scenes I don't think people appreciate that that was louis philosophy whether or not all of his athletes Achieved that was that they had to have a pretty high level of fitness They had to do a decent amount of volume outside of their heavy stuff And whether it was the sled drags or just repeating maybe on 90 second intervals repeating sets of five at 50 60 percent or some band tension But it develops a I think a really good Gpp so they call it general physical preparedness so that I'm able to do more and recover from it better If I have that foundation so let lower intensity but more volume or maybe more frequency Fewer 90 plus percent. Yeah, and even with those I try and deload the highest fatigue portion of the movement Testing once a month and then lots of volume if that's summarized. I'm finding the same thing You know I'm I'm training most of my body almost every day But the total volume per workout is less but the total volume per week is actually quite high Yeah, and I feel better and I'll split some of those because I I can't train for an hour and a half straight I just did I dig too deep a hole. I said we're not digging ditches. We're building mountains And so I try and get in out of the gym in less than an hour if I can So if you're gonna have a long, you know, if you're gonna do two, you know An hour and a half a workout you'll do half and then half Yeah, yeah, we'll come back at night and do another 30 35 minutes. Great. Great. All right one last thing How's how's your business going? How's everything going? Oh, it's fantastic. Everything's been going good. I've been blessed I've had a a fantastic following You know and I was just watching some more videos today People who say that the more information they put out there I think we might have talked about this many many years ago Same thing you got the same philosophy you had and still have Is that we just give people as much content Much information and it comes back to you tenfold a very loyal group I mentioned that my business partner in my meal prep company had passed away recently. He was He struggled with obesity and alcoholism And he ultimately had kidney failure and he passed away in his 50s. It was it was sad, but And so I had to find a new provider and it took about four months. I was completely down I didn't have any it wasn't able to serve any meals. Oh, we had been very successful for over four years I had a very loyal clientele With a vertical diet meal prep that would order meals for me every week And it was fantastic. I was very grateful and I had to send them all an email and let them know Hey, we're down and I'm working hard. I'll try and get back up as soon as I can Of course, that always takes longer and costs more than you ever anticipate But in fact, we're back up as of three weeks ago and I was 60 of my clientele has already come back Just three weeks. Yeah, and I'm just so grateful To have that group. It's a you know, it's folks who I've said before that that I've probably you know I've been in 14 countries in all 50 states in the last five years doing seminars over 200 seminars And two summers ago. I did that 60 cities in 60 days tour There's a seminar every night and I did all 48 states plus dc I did 60 seminars and 60 days drove over 16,000 miles in an RV Doing a seminar every night all over the country. I mapped out a little Path And I met thousands of people over that trip as I've met thousands and thousands more Throughout the course of my career But I've also received probably over a hundred thousand dms In the last five years as you guys get them all the time as well And I'd do my best to try and respond to the vast majority of them with You know a specific answer maybe a link a copy paste of an article that's relevant to the topic that they've asked about And that kind of thing, you know, not hiding that behind a paywall, which I may still do someday So I should be careful get out get out in front of myself here But you know, I don't have a patreon or a paywall or anything like that and I've just put everything I know into my vertical diet e-book and it's now in volume 3.0 and a 4.0 is coming out next month I've been saying that for a year And it really is it's just a living document that is I just compile almost everything everybody asks me if it's not in my e-book I add it And so that's how it continues to expand and grow to now over 225 pages and more than 500 references to peer reviewed articles and videos and research is Just because people ask me those questions and I want to have answers for them and I'm I try and provide them, you know, the best information possible and provide them references and Resources to where they can get closer to their resolution Well stand since he brought up the business thing I do want you to touch on something that I thought was really interesting I heard you and bill you kind of and you guys just lightly went over this So I'd like you to go maybe in a little bit deeper but How has Strength training and training in general Played a role in making millions of dollars for you Yeah, well, I've said ever since the I'm I'm pretty OCD obsessive compulsive. I've always been kind of a routines guy and that You know bodybuilding when I got to college was probably the best thing for me Uh, you know, I was diagnosed as a kid and they wanted to put me on medication But I was no go for that Uh, but when I got into bodybuilding everything seemed to to to work for me because there's so much Routine and regimen and consistency It's just everything is mapped out for your entire day You're eating every two or three hours depending on what era you're in. It used to be two now it now it's three You know, it's a particular type of meal with this that and the other and your your training and your your cardio or whatever it is You have this schedule in this routine. That's that's so consistent It bode well for me and there was always some sort of progression involved, you know You always whether it was bodybuilding or powerlifting you were trying to achieve a particular goal And you would keep repeating those behaviors that worked and you would You know from trial and error or education you would start to discard those things that didn't work Same thing came true for business. I said this in the video years ago that if people would spend the body any bodybuilder powerlifter successful Uh athlete would apply the same level of discipline consistency and time management Into any income producing venture. They'd be a millionaire in five years And that's just because of repeating successful behaviors and having such a rigid consistent schedule I think most people just kind of get I think paired with uh Patience also, right? I think that's something that bodybuilding teaches you like you don't get to just overnight look like you It takes it doesn't take weeks doesn't take months. It takes years and years of consistency And I think we we have that same kind of attitude a lot of times when we we say we want to be rich I want to have the biggest podcast in the world. You just say a statement like that Um, but you don't you don't realize all the steps that you have to take and how long you need to be consistent At those before you actually start consistency is is huge because we see the mark bell I mean I've told this story before when I met mark back in 2009 and I was training with him He was in a little 800 square foot alcove off the side of the crossfit box And they were going to raise his rent $400 a month and he came to me and said look I'm gonna have to shut the gym down as I can't afford it He was driving his beat-up old car with the hubcaps missing and he was driving 30 minutes each way So he could be in a neighborhood he could afford to live in outside of Sacramento Uh, and he just started putting up content and he just kept doing it He was relentless about it every single day from you know before youtube was popular and certainly before instagram or or tiktok ever existed Uh, and and he was just so consistent about it and look what he's he's built in the process Plus he's real. That's another thing when I first started doing my rhinos rants I thought well, what's my character gonna be and I'm not ct fletcher, you know, and I'm not mark bell I don't have that wwe thing. I don't have the the the f-bomb thing It's just not my thing and I I'm like I'm pretty boring, you know I'm pretty blue collar at heart. I'm you know, kind of a nerd on this stuff and and I thought so and I just decided I just I just have to be me and People took to it very well. I didn't have to pretend to be anything else and and uh, you know My rhinos rants have been kind of my most successful successfully viewed Uh content that I've put out there other than the fact that I wore myself out to every podcast Make sure You guys like hey stag you come on right And she said what did she say it was a month ago and she says like well They have an availability at the end of uh, uh end of uh, September. I'm like, yeah, like they're busy for a month Like they're booked out for a month Can I cook tomorrow? Did she show you our correspondence? Oh my god Well good deal man, hey, you know, sorry to keep soaking up your time here one thing I want to talk about that that it's huge hugely important for parents and kids alike I just recently started a Kids power out or vertical kids power hour at the sin city iron I I recently invested in an unpart owner of Sin City iron in las vegas and I I started this kids power hour primarily because I wanted my kids to lift weights And so I set it up, you know, so that that I'd be there Uh, and now we've got 25 kids from ages. Uh, I said kindergarten to college And sure enough a bunch of seven eight nine ten year olds 11 year olds There's this one 12 year old kid that's like his dad's like six seven three 80 and this kid's already like six foot 260 12 years old the kid's huge. Yeah, he's just a monster um But there's also a little five-year-old girl that comes in and she'll I have her pick up a little pink kettlebell and do five reps of of The point being is is that the american academy pediatrics has a position statement that weightlifting for kids is essential brad schoenfeld recently posted that even as early as five to seven years old Improves bone mineral density. Obviously, uh, they're not going to build the muscle mass But they get their neural adaptation and hence therefore a strength adaptation from the training Uh, he's all of these guys have been crushing the old myth that uh, somehow weightlifting was bad for kids and might stunt their growth and uh, just the opposite is true It actually uh limits Injury in other sports. It's least less injurious than other sports certainly any contact sport Um, in fact the number one injury 65 of injuries that occur in the gym is simply dropping a weight on yourself So I set all those up ahead of time So the kids don't have to touch any weights But we bring them in and we we teach them to squat bench and deadlift and we tell them the goal is progression over time That's great. That's cool. And I just think the parents should know that uh, that it's the foundation of any sport if you want to be if you want to run faster jump higher and throw further Building strength lifting weights like every high school and collegiate athlete does Can be started in junior high school or before And it's perfectly healthy and again increasing bone mineral density for girls in particular should be started as early as possible because that Uh becomes harder and harder to do as they age. It's interesting. You bring that up. I would literally yesterday I was actually just looking up this uh franchise that i'm really interested in right now. It's relatively new It's called kid strong heard of it. Yeah, yeah for fantastic. Yeah It was it's fascinating to me and I and I definitely think that there's there's an opportunity there Not only for a great business, but to help a ton of people Uh, and there's not a lot of people in that space. So it's pretty cool that you're you're moving that direction But yeah, just literally yesterday I was like diving through all their stuff because I was interested in potentially investing in something like that It's the foundation. Yeah 100% excellent. Well, I appreciate that last part. Thanks. Yeah, thanks for coming on stand. Thanks for having me guys Always great This one's really important and that is to phase your training if somebody trains for a full year doing a bench press And they're always aiming for five reps if you compared that person to a person who did bench press where they did Three or four weeks of five reps But then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps and then three or four weeks of let's say 15 to 20 reps and then they'll throw on some supersets At the end of that year, you're going to see more consistent progress From the person who's moving in and out and less injury. That's another thing. You'll see less injury as well