Carnivore Dentist and Bodybuilder Dr Kevin Stock, DDS!

[Music] hey everyone this is uh dr anthony chafee i'm here with a very special guest dr kevin stock he's a dentist and a carnivore and uh ripped ass guy i've just seen a couple of his uh instagram posts uh where he's uh absolutely showing off which is good kevin thank you very much for coming on how are you sir doing good hey thanks for having me i was just actually before this listen to a podcast you were on and i saw you mention that like you weren't really working out for like the last several months but a couple of times and like i'm like what how does he stay so jack so i mean i mean i want to hear about those secrets well you know what i mean it's really like i mean obviously you've built it up over years and um but just with the carnivore diet you just maintain it you know and so i'm not as as muscular as i would be but you know it most of it gets uh gets preserved but uh yeah when i actually get to go in the gym it does make a big difference but um yeah uh hopefully uh hopefully i can get back in there yeah yeah i do find like the hard part hardest part is building it maintaining it tends to be a little bit easier uh but especially if you have the right diet yeah yeah well exactly and i mean you know i mean people you know don't don't really uh you know believe that a i'm not working out as much or you know b i'm not using like you know performance enhancing drugs or anything like that but you know what they don't realize is you know i'm 42 years old and i've been lifting weights regularly since i was i don't know 14 and so you know these things build up over time and and uh you know so it's it's not like this happened overnight or anything like that yeah i just on the on i was just on the instagram comments on those photos and of course some people are like oh what drugs are you taking and people that have been in the gym for a while i'm like i i'm actually like because i'm kind of similar to you where it's like i was a fat overweight kid and so i got into fitness in like junior high where i was like i'm tired of being this fat kid i'm gonna figure this out so i've been in the gym for over 20 years lifting weights every single day and i'm like if anything i'm actually kind of embarrassed by my physique today that it's not better having spent that much time in the gym uh so but i think people that just have not put that kind of time in think those results are impossible without some kind of performance-enhancing drugs or something like that that's it yeah and it just just does just come down to hard work because you know even even friends of mine that would have worked out for a similar length of time as i would like put the same hours of you know during the week in the gym you know they're not really working out the same as i was i remember i went uh i was lifting with a buddy of mine uh when we were you know early twenties and um it was good guys big dudes sort of my size and as we were lifting we were doing bench and see he's going and he just you know rips out 10 very easily i'm like yeah you're doing great man keep it going and then he goes to like just put it up on 10. i'm like no man you got you got more in the tank like and i started fighting with him to like do more more reps and he she's like pushing back and forcing it and like fighting me and i'm leaning my whole body weight on this and he's able to like push me up and re-rack the race i'm like if you have that much strength to push what you were lifting and my body weight up onto the rack you clearly had more in the tank and you know whereas you know i and i'm you know i'm sure you you work the muscle fatigue and you really go you really try to wear yourself out and you try to get absolutely the most out of your time at the gym that you can and that's i think that was what pays the dividends you know it's like i think of those if you're going for 10 but you could have done 12 you know you should you should do 12. i consider those last two the workout you know so right exactly big difference between going through the motions and like getting the benefits that that someone's after yeah yeah um muhammad ali had a good quote where they ask me how many reps of x y z do you do and he said i have no idea i don't you know i i don't i don't count just just reps i i work until i'm tired and then i start counting to see how far i can push myself yeah i think that's what arnold says too he's like i start counting once i have like once i'm ready to quit then i start counting the reps yeah yeah well it's good you know because you you are trying to burn yourself out um you know that's what like i've been looking up some of the these old bodybuilders like serge nubra who's like arnold schwarzenegger's like body idol that's who he like looked up to when he was first coming on dude ate six pounds of horse meat a day which is awesome and guys jack if people ever watched arnold's uh movie you know pumping iron right on his last last uh yeah it's classic on his last run for the mr olympia um sergeant came in second uh in that competition and i remember seeing that going like dude that guy is yolked you know i was like yeah i was like i think that guy probably should have won and i think serge was probably like something like 20 years older than arnold in that uh and it got absolutely just freakishly ripped and he does this thing where he he would do you know 12 sets of 12 but he would only have 30 seconds rest in between each set for upper body and then only 60 seconds for lower body and you just he's just because he just wants to wear himself out he just wants to completely wear out his muscles and i did that for legs i only did eight sets of 12. i was just like that was a that was a big workout i mean yeah eight sets of 12 is that's significant volume especially if you're having like deep like short rest in between like yeah yeah i'll be on the ground after that yeah well that was it that was the thing you know if i get enough rest i can just sort of keep doing sets um but this was with just that 60 seconds like i i was able to wear myself out which is actually very hard to do uh since being on carnivore what um what what sort of workout routine do you have going now what do what do you try to do i'll tell you what has changed dramatically from [Music] for like recently over the last 20 years so over the last i've just been in the gym like kind of like the typical gym gym wrap like bodybuilding kind of style i mean that's why i got into health and fitness in the first place it was really just the fitness part like i didn't want to be a fat kid and so i was like they're trying to figure out that so i did mostly focusing around bodybuilding stuff i did some strength kind of competition stuff in college i did physique competitions once i got into dental school and it wasn't until several years after that where i started to put the health into health and fitness sometimes those are like spoken in the same breath and that's kind of what you know reignited my passion into fitness like in the last seven years or so was for the first 20 years 15 20 years it was just all about fitness and whenever i got a great physique and all that or good enough i was pretty happy with it uh but i just didn't feel like i wanted to feel and i was like you know there's probably more to the equation so that's actually what got me like down the rabbit hole uh but yeah i did typical kind of like bodybuilding style workouts for most of my life but my gym closed down in 2020 and so for the first time i did these resistance band training workouts in my house and i'll tell you what like skeptical very skeptical that like these little you know these rubber bands are gonna not do anything for me really i was kind of hoping to be like they'll just preserve what i've built over time but i'll tell you what i have come to love the resistance bands like yes like really really do like them i mean they're they're so i've been using the x3 bar for the last couple of years now um and the variable resistance is kind of like the hype of it but i really do like the variable resistance that the bands provide super easy on the joints you know uh i'd say my workouts have not been like as like intense like i'd be in the gym for probably 10 hours a week most weeks over the last two plus decades but now i've been doing home workouts 30 to 45 minutes and even that i've been doing them kind of lazily yeah and it's been good so i know i get to listen to like your podcast while i was working out this afternoon so it's like it's still you know i'd you know multitask so i'm not as gung-ho as i was like in the past whereas like my life was fitness now it's uh something i still love doing in everyday part of my life but it's uh almost it's just not priority number one anymore yeah yeah like that's um that's sort of the same with me obviously like you just yeah you don't necessarily have have the time anymore um but uh i i would i would yeah i would do that as well i'd try to try to multitask and try to listen to things at the same time and uh you know like thomas soul is like you know my favorite uh author and uh and thinker and so i i listen to a lot of his stuff i get a lot of his books on tape or his talks on youtube and and um and i would just just listen to these things i figured that if i was i was listening to something like a book on tape or a lecture or a debate that i wanted to listen to anyway uh or i wanted a book i wanted to read anyway then i could justify working out for three or four hours you know i mean that is that is part of it so that i mean that is a lot like i like the workout but i'm taking i've been kind of lazy like i was saying but i you know i'm listening to various podcasts that i otherwise would not like i wouldn't have time to sit down and listen to like an hour podcast just randomly like it just doesn't fit in anywhere else in my life so i'm like hey this is the time to you know bookmark these podcasts i want to listen to and you know that's when i do it yeah so how are you finding like the the extra band like i mean as far as like your results are concerned um you know uh dr jakish uh i like him a lot i think like any kind of like marketing i think some some of the claims like you're gonna build three times as much muscle and like half the time or one tenth of the time i think maybe that's like overdoing it but when it comes to me like i think of it kind of like the principles we're just talking about like you want to take the muscle to a fatigue to give it a stimulus to have easy a reason to grow uh and with bands i think you can do that so uh whether it's better than the gym i think a gym has certain benefits uh that i don't have at home some of it's just like the uh other guys in the gym there's like you know kind of motivation hey that guy's like lifting a ton i need to step my game up or something like that yeah kind of get you out of comfort zone where it's like at home it's easy to get into like oh i do 10 reps and that's just what i do of this band so i think there's pros of being in the gym and there's pros to having uh you know the resistance bands i was saying like i was i've been looking forward to get back in back into it like a real gym uh but i'm not gonna stop doing the resistance bands like i like them that much there's certain exercises i really really like that i can do only on resistance bands like these single leg uh squats which i absolutely hate but like i know that's why like i need to do them yeah and it's it can't really replicate that in with regular weights i mean you can do lunges and stuff like that but the variable resistance with those i find you know particularly uh beneficial okay so just just the regular sort of front squats that you do with the the x3 but you just do it one leg so yeah long story short i've never been a good squatter that's like been my achilles heel for a number of reasons uh deadlifting i've been fine but so these are just single leg kind of like lunges it's uh you can do them in place of basically a squat yeah okay it's a single leg split squat is what it is instead of the double yeah normal squat okay yeah actually i actually got it um recently myself and i've been playing around with it and that's that's probably the the most exercise that i've had over you know actually i have a couple months it's like every now and then i'll just sort of hop on it and do that i'm trying to get myself into a routine of actually doing like a full workout with it but yeah i haven't really gotten there yet what i really like about it is for the that exact reason where in like if you follow his programming with the x3 it's like 10 minutes or something like that it's some ridiculously short amount of time where it's like okay look you if you're not working out you really don't have an excuse to use time as an excuse anymore if it only takes 10 minutes if someone's like you got to block out an hour for working out you gotta travel there you gotta warm up you gotta cool down you gotta go home it's like it's a could be a two-hour event where it's like hey is it x three ten minutes in your living room there's your excuses crumble like that's true everyone's got 10 minutes yeah yeah exactly yeah and i i feel like pretty wretched because like i sometimes i'll still not do it because i'm just like i'm just doing so many other things and but yeah i absolutely could i should can and will start doing that as well um all right so with that sort of um you know building you know you know that training arrangement regime have you noticed like a significant amount of muscle growth and muscle uh development with the with the bands or is it is it uh just more sort of in the same sort of you know level that you would you would get at the gym i would say it's hard because there's a lot of actual variables here which is probably might be educational for some people is you know most of my muscle growth came high school college and by the time i was like in dental school i saw gains but like most of the muscle gains happened and it's it's normal like you'll get like 80 of like i think that's pretty consistent with like what the research suggests like 80 of your overall kind of muscle potential you'll get if you like dedicate two years or so to actually working out which i find very like for like new people like very like exciting to be like look i can get to my muscle potential in just two years i don't do this for 20 years but then it's been like very much more incremental like some gains here and you know we can go into some of the like the dumb experiments i've done over the last 20 years but it's like i do experiments where i'm still working out hard by change do a diet experiment and like i lose a ton of muscle because i'm do something stupid uh and so i it's long story short to this is that i've not that i can't keep getting better i definitely can but the incremental improvements is so small that it's hard to notice i weigh roughly the same as i did you know when i was competing i stay leaner than i like ever have because it's it's hard to get fat if you're eating only meat or mostly meat like it's like it is like the traditional kind of like in dental school i did more of a traditional bulk before one of the shows and i'd so i did like i really bulked up so just for perspective i'm like roughly 170 pounds but i booked up to 220 and that's it and it wasn't good weight like it i was fat but uh but like literally i could not do that now eating like a pro a proper diet like you like you need to eat something besides meat to try to put on that kind of weight yeah well and that's the thing too like you said it you know it's it's unhealthy weight so you know when you got up to you know you know 225 um then what did you cut back down to to get to your lean sort of uh competition uh size at the end of that like how much did you lose basically to what i am now yeah i i've competed between like 160 170 pounds okay that's crazy and that's always what i think you know i think it's obviously you know there's you know uh you know just obvious fat and visceral fat but uh there's going to be intramuscular fat as well and that's what i think a lot of this is going to be you know just like a marbled steak or something wagyu you know it's all looks all big and bulky and puffy but you know a lot of that's going to be fat or at least the portion of it is and that and that and then this is going to go away when you're cutting off and then you know so it's just you're sort of yeah thinking that you have more than you then you actually do kind of spinning your wheels and it's actually like that's one of the mistakes that you know i learned a lot of mistakes the hard way and one is like okay you put on all this fat maybe you put on a couple pounds of muscle but now you have to lose all that fat and try not to lose that little bit of muscle you just put on and if any kind of anyone that's done like extended diets will know it's like not losing the muscle is like the most important part of that diet and so i spent you know 9 12 18 months fattening up to 220 maybe i put on a couple pounds of muscle and now i got to go lose 60 pounds of fat while holding on to that little bit of muscle that i put on during that time not a smart way to go about it no that doesn't sound fun at all so how long how long have you been carnivore now i started eating only meat in 2017 that's when really the fitness was taking a back seat to like feeling better and by feeling better mostly was related to like mental performance i was working a lot i had some different business ventures going on all at once i was like you know what like i need to like get my head around like this is number one brain performance is number one physical performance we'll take a back seat uh and so that's what got me into it back this was in 2017. yeah and then since then like with your you know with your working out and everything like that have you have you found that it's it's uh easy to put on muscle and and and do everything you need to do yeah so you know what i've done a lot of experiments and so in i guess for just a little bit of backstory would be in 2016 is what really what i want to get these business ventures are going on and this is an unpopular like thing i i tell people but firsthand experience so i can just tell what happened to me i was like i've done a ketogenic diet before but i'm going to really do a ketogenic diet this time for the mental performance i've read about it you know but i always in the previous times i've done ketogenic diets prior to that i would say i quote unquote cheated and by cheated i mean i always get my protein higher than any kind of like ketogenic diet would recommend because i'm like look i already know from even earlier prior experiments is where like i limited protein the negative consequences of that uh and so long story short in 2016 i was like look i'm gonna do a real ketogenic diet i'm gonna limit my protein to i think it was 0.7 grams per pound maybe per pound of lean body mass anyways i hadn't restricted protein that low in a long time like i was doing mct oil i was my fats were high and i even like because i was really going for the brain performance i'd like i'll do some intermittent fasting i didn't purposefully like restrict calories though but i just lost so much lean body mass and it was very clear like but the scale was dropping like fast be like oh you're losing fat but like i was already pretty lean yeah and so and i was i'm pretty uh like stubborn kind of self-experimenter so like i gave it like a good amount like six months and it's like holy cow i lost like a lot of muscle mass and so i was like okay this is this is not working out like i was willing to sacrifice some phys like physical performance for the mental performance but not just lose everything i'd built for over 20 years and i wasn't really getting the mental benefits that would have like even let me like it wasn't the cost benefit ratio there was not good yeah so it just led me down the rabbit hole i had done a lot of research and one of the researchers bruce ames i returned to his work and he's like there's all these plant toxins right like and so i knew that kind of ignored it because i was like okay but whatever yeah but i took them seriously i started removing like oxalates and lectins and i went down the rabbit hole where i was just eating meat in 2017 [Music] and the muscle mass i lost previously started to come back so i was like all right that's good but the most important thing to me was like i actually my brain felt like i was like all right i've been able to work 15 hours a day like i'm focused i'm not living on caffeine i'm getting good sleep like that that which was my top priority came to fruition and then the body composition stuff was a nice side effect uh to get my muscle mass back and stuff like that uh but after that that was like what 2017 uh i ate just beef and water for a long time i did experiments with like more of a nose-to-tail approach uh like throwing in organs and eggs and seafood and just various experiments within like meat only and i did experiment with like a carnivore only like bulking strategy as well as like a carnivore only cutting strategy so this is this went on for years so this takes us i don't know 2019 or something like that was like the first time in years where i introduced uh any single plant-based food in for it was like a long time and the main reason i did it was i uh i wrote a guide this is kind of like help people stay on track with this story uh in 2017 i started only eating meat and i was writing about why i had i started a website called muscle science back in dental school where i helped people on the side of dental school with physique stuff and so i had a little list and i was telling this email list say hey this is what i'm doing now why i'm doing it i wrote a 30-day guide i wrote like health danger which is now health dangers of plant-based diet ebook uh so other people started doing it i thought maybe five people would do it i wrote a 30-day guide to be like because there's people like well how do i do it so i was like this is my recommendations uh and at the end of 2017 i think it was uh baker was on dr sean baker was on rogan and this third day guy just like the the site i started as meat.health where i basically just had this stuff up uh that it had like 100 000 downloads of this guide and over the next couple years and i had my email address in this guide uh so i've got just thousands of emails like what about this what about this this is good this is bad so there's a big learning experiment there uh which is why i did some of these other experiments but that brings me to in 2019 one of the most common questions i got was like well what happens like if you bring back in carbohydrates like can you or will you be able to tolerate will you build the fiber foods ever again and like i was always able to give like a theoretical answer like i think this is like this is what makes sense to me but i didn't have firsthand personal experience so that was the first time i introduced any kind of carbohydrate back into the diet in a number of years and so then i uh did that experiment and so and since then the last couple years i've been full carnivore and then i'll experiment with something full carnival or experiment with something i'd say but mostly my diet's pretty boring meaning like i do like beef like i do 80 plus beef and then sprinkle and eggs here sometimes sprinkle and seafood sometimes sprinkle in uh you know chicken or pork here and there but it's like mostly just beef i just buy a cow eat the whole cow you know it's in the deep freeze once it's gone i'm getting another one yeah substitute yeah i'll supplement that and if i'm doing some weird experiment which seems to always be like a little something on the side that's when i'll throw in some try something nice yeah yeah i'm basically the same like i just i i've always just felt best on beef and i'll eat other animals as well you know chicken fish chicken rarely but you know like more pork and fish sometimes and you know shellfish whatever and [Music] you know that's that's always been good but but i always just feel the best on beef and so that that's just where i gravitate to yeah after you have beef for lunch because i remember like the bodybuilding years it's like chicken man like i ate just ridiculous amounts of chicken and now it's like oh my god how did i do that yeah seriously i think back on that sometimes too was it because it's the chicken breasts right because that's what you're supposed to get lean meat yeah and uh oh and um like yeah i just i still just think back to how many damn chicken breasts i ate um you know in college and uh and afterwards it's just it's insane and they i don't think i enjoyed any of them you know it goes back to like because i think what i talk about probably the most is like if you want to get like just body composition only yeah you can eat chicken breasts like i the formula for that's actually it's not very difficult but it's not going to give you fitness and health like you might just get like you might lose the body fat but you're going to feel terrible and the thing i love about carnivore or heavy meat based especially like red meat is like you can have it get the physique but you can also feel good and be healthy like you can have your have your steak and eat it too is like what i'd like to say yeah yeah that's true too well and that was the thing you know i you know i've mentioned before but every every day feels like my birthday i was talking to my dad when i first started doing this you know because like you on your birthday you get your special meal you know it's like this is like there's no guilt you just have what you want it's your day every time i would just pick some big you know massive steak with like a grenade sauce or something like that and and prawns or whatever with it and that's always what i wanted that's the only thing i wanted and now i have just one or two big ass steaks every day and like you know i know how to cook them very well now and so you know they're just amazing every time and so it's like every single day it feels like my birthday and you know people can attest to this was like i don't i do this on you know subconsciously where like i'll i'll just be eating eating a steak and i'll just just stay out of nowhere i'm like you know take my first bite and like damn that's good every day i do that and i don't even get old no and it's just like every day i'm like damn that's good and you know and this is and then i sort of hear myself i'm like well it is good it's amazing and yeah like yeah it's amazing it's like after you do that for a while everything else seems to stop seeming like food in a way it seems like fluff it's like it's like i look at them like i know that's not going to like satisfy me like in any way yeah yeah i i i seriously don't look at these things as food and you know technically i don't consider them food you know because they're you know food is species specific and our speed that is not food to our species you know and you know koala's not going to look at bamboo as if it's food and uh yeah and is not going to look at eucalyptus as if it's food because it's not it's not food to them and you know and these things aren't food to us i uh i remember i was living with my brother i think i was like 22 at the time and i was i was doing carnivore inadvertently um you know just because i learned that plants were horrible and trying to kill me and so i just stopped eating them and i remember i just stopped looking at these things as food and my brother i was in the kitchen my brother's on the couch he said hey can you you pass me that loaf of bread i was like surprised i had no idea we had bread i had not seen bread in weeks and i was like we have bread he's like yeah it's just right by the stove i'm looking by the stove okay there's nothing there i was like where by this though he's just like just like right there to the right of the stove can't find it it's directly to the right of the back burner of the stove on the right and i'm looking at it it's like one of those magic eyes and like the picture you like you can't look at it and all of a sudden pops up like a sailboat and you're just like oh jesus it was just this loaf of bread you know and uh and so i was like oh god i got into it i couldn't see it my brain did not recognize this thing as uh you know in my world and so yeah i you know people say is like oh don't don't you miss or don't you feel like you're missing out i'm like i really don't i mean i don't even i don't i just i just don't care i don't look at these things like that you know um the biggest thing that changed change for me was like i was always kind of had like this all or nothing personality and and i give this example a lot but it's like i like ice cream a lot but like if i had ice cream like i would crush like the entire pint like there's no like a small serving for me it just doesn't exist yeah but after a few years of meat only one of the first things i had was like some ice cream and it was like it seems like ridiculous to say but it's like i had a little bit and i was like yeah that's delicious but like i don't need to like just go kill a tub of ice cream like like i used to and there really is i i really do think like one of the most beneficial things for like pure carnivore is like healing a relationship with food like underlying get that healed and you know there's a lot more freedom in life after that like when you can walk through a grocery store and not be like oh man i need to go buy that whatever it is nothing calls out at you at me to like oh i need to go buy some sugar thing yeah well yeah because yeah people do have a very healthy relationship with food you know we treat it uh as uh as entertainment um which you obviously you should enjoy your food and that's that's part of it your body's rewarding you for giving it the nutrition nutrition that it wants that's why things taste good um sugar is a bit of an outlier there because it's just it's just a quick hit of energy that your body recognizes this is safe because we don't know of any plants that contain fructose that are acutely poisonous to us you know long-term fructose will obviously be a problem but you know we recognize this okay this won't kill me today and i can right away yeah exactly and so it's like we recognize that it's safe which is which is thought to be why we recognize fructose as the sweetest carbohydrate so you know but other things taste bitter and the reason they taste bitter is because your body's telling you that these are bad for you and then you know you want your body want certain nutrients it tastes good to you so you're you're naturally going to enjoy uh the meat that you eat uh if you're hungry but that's not the point of eating you know the point of eating is is getting nutrition and fueling your body and but we we treat it as you know like similar to how we use drugs and alcohol or cigarettes you know we we just we do this for the experience of it you know and that is i think that is quite detrimental um because you tend to think like oh it's not that big a deal it's nothing and people who drink don't think it's that big of a deal and people do drugs don't think it's necessarily don't think that's too big of a deal and they tell themselves oh it's not that big a deal it's not that big a deal and they're doing this stuff for years and yeah for you know you can get away with it for a while but it catches up and the same thing with food and then all of a sudden people wake up and they're quite overweight and they're quite unhealthy and they're sore and they hurt and they don't know how they got there and they don't know how the hell they get out of it yeah it's one of those i saw i made like just a rule to myself was like because i drank up through up until dental school through when i was in dental school i just quit drinking and one of the reasons why it's just in life today at least for me like an opportunity to drink comes up probably three times a week right like oh we're gonna go here and then you're gonna drink and go here so it's like if you don't have a rule that i just don't drink well then every single time i go out i have to decide am i drinking tonight am i not it's like sometimes just easier to be like look i like to have there's a rule like it doesn't take any willpower i just don't drink but it gets to what you're saying it's like things just get so habituated not a big deal all right i just drink you know whenever i go out on occasion with friends and that happens what twice a week so twice a week drinking over you know weeks and then years and you know it adds up yeah adds up it does yeah and like and and sometimes even more you know because it you either you either sort of make a decision uh to start cutting that out or you just let it go and you know some people can sort of maintain a balance but generally you you do one or the other people just start slowly start building up their habit uh whatever it is it starts building up and building up and building up and building up until they hit a point and go this is good this is getting a little too heavy i really need to do something about this um and then some people don't don't even think about it they just they just sort of keep going and um not everyone you know some people have a very stable relationship with these things but it's very easy to get into an unstable relationship and yeah and so um and the same with flute you know just like you say you know it i think it's the same thing i think it's addictive patterns and then you know relationships with uh illicit substances you're doing this because you enjoy it and people ask me that well don't well why wouldn't you just do this because you enjoy eating pizza or this other thing or whatever and like i was just that this is so bizarre to me now i'm so glad i'm on the outside of that looking in you know because so many people's lives are just wrapped up in like where are we going to go to eat we're going to go to lunch we're going to go to dinner what are we going to try and you talk to people and and they like saying you know you know like um you know before i met my my girlfriend you know you're like dating and things like that so you're like talking to people and you just gave small talk and you know you talked to me i was like you know so you know what are you into what do you do and like i don't know ninety percent of girls would just say oh i i like going out and trying new restaurants i'm like that's a hobby trying new restaurants that's what you do for fun like that's a that's a that's a part of your life that you know that that's an activity you know i just it just blew my mind i was like no no no that's not that's not that's not a thing like you know like what what are your hobbies you know what do you do with your life you know unless you are just that boring that you know like life outside of food it's like yeah yeah some people can't see past past yeah wait what do you mean what do you do outside of not yeah eating eating food they don't know and they don't know how to how to interact socially without this you know i you know when covet hit i talked to a lot of people they said they were just so surprised at themselves at just how much their lives revolved around restaurants not even bars and restaurants just restaurants specifically they they went out to to lunch or dinner or breakfast all the time and that was their social interaction and that was their their main pastime was going out to eat and um hopefully that was a bit of a wake-up call for some people i think it's like 50 of people's food budget is spent eating out that is a just an outrageous yeah like statistic absolutely yeah and that is the thing um there's you know there's entire generations now that that are sort of two gen people that are two generations away from anyone who ever knew how to cook you know like you know my mom my mom used to cook and she loved cooking and and so we would watch her and sort of picked it up from her and this was during the time of the instant meals and the and the tv dinners and everything that were coming in and that's what i think i got hit by yeah yeah i got hit by yeah yeah well well because it's it's you know for a while there they were making these ready-made meals that were actually cheaper than the constituent parts that if you if you went and bought the ingredients yourself it would cost more yeah and yeah and it takes longer and it costs more like why the hell would you do it right and then all of a sudden no one knows how to cook and then they're raising kids you know who just see you getting dinner out of a bag or going to dinner and that's what they do and you know i knew a girl who was basically in that situation and she made made you know very good money and uh you know young adult and but doing very well but we sort of figured it out and she was just broke all the time all the time and i just sort of was talking to her she ate out for every single meal she did not cook a single meal and she had a daughter and so she and her daughter would either order uber eats or go out to eat every single meal of the day eating three meals a day and sort of just did some you know rough sort of calculations i mean she was spending two-thirds of her after tax salary come on on just food wow you know what i mean like that's wild and that was a conservative estimate because like you know she would you know go to more expensive places you know and go drinking and things like that as well but yeah but i was like yeah that's that's why you're broke you're just blowing it on uh something you could have made yourself yeah and like you were saying like when like regarding your birthday like that's how i feel when i'm cooking at home because i can make the steak just how i want it and which is basically just a quick sear and it's like done where it's like what if you go to a restaurant if you ask for something like that they're very uncomfortable be like wait you just want a piece of meat that's quickly seared so basically it's hard to like if you're eating out all the time it's going to be hard to eat a good diet i mean i don't want to say it's impossible but it's it's tough i mean because the whole reason someone's going to charge you more at a restaurant is like because they're going to do something to that food that maybe you couldn't do yourself at home yeah right yeah and it's like if you if you're not really doing anything to it like i just want a plain steak i don't really want any seasoning and i actually want it rare yeah like okay that yeah yeah um and uh a lot a lot of people do struggle with just that that aspect of it where it's like well how what do i do in social settings what do i do when i go to restaurants um you do get used to it and but i just i just so so prefer to cook at home because i i can make it better and it's one-fifth the price and so yeah i get a lot more exactly it's a sacrifice to go out yeah it is and um you know i understand like where my dad was going i remember as a kid my dad hated going out to restaurants and um my mom would like it because you know it's a break from her cooking and we liked it because it was just where we would get to eat things that we normally wouldn't at home uh but he was just like this is such a damn waste of money you know it's like we just go home we have food at home and like you know we we've always had very very good dinners my mom was a very good cook and so uh you know food at home was was always fantastic uh it was just sort of like fun to go out and he was just like this is just a waste it's like the food isn't as good and it's like it's way more expensive like this is dumb and i totally get it now i guess that i don't know i guess that means i'm old or something like that but i was uh is your family in healthcare uh no not really just mostly in the sciences just just you yeah yeah you had a you have a brother you lived with and [Music] my yeah my yes i'm one of five uh siblings and um so i'm two brothers and two sisters my old brother has been in business and has you know started businesses and then worked in various aspects of you know the corporate world my younger brother did his phd in mathematics and he teaches and then my my oldest sister did her masters in neuropsychology and then but she for work she does like pr marketing for uh tech companies and then my my there's no psychology for that yeah no yeah and and then yeah my other sister was doing her phd in biostatistics and um did yeah did pharmaceutical research for a while but then uh you know decided she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and so just raising kids and they've got the full benefit of uh you know that woman's uh you know intelligence and drive you know all went into raising those kids and they have definitely benefited from that but smack in the middle uh middle boy yeah so i've got uh yeah the two two girls and then the three boys and i'm the middle and that one yeah and then uh yeah and then you know my dad was a physicist and a computer scientist and man so you got brains in the family yeah there you are yeah yeah they do all right and um but yeah you had some doctors in the family but sort of back up a bit like my dad's uncle was a doctor and he did these missions to africa where he just set up clinics in just the middle of nowhere just these little villages that just no one visited just because they they didn't have any access to medical care whatsoever and so he would go out to all these different clinics and just do a circuit and he just lived there for years and then my mom's grandfather was a was a doctor as well and and it was pretty cool he was like the second class at columbia med school taught sterile practice in the late 1800s and this is just when anesthesia came around just when uh as antiseptic techniques came around and so was the first time you could ethically open the abdomen and thorax without guaranteeing someone's going to die of a massive infection and so yeah he was on the ground floor figuring out what sort of surgeries you could do what you could fix and so the guy was a badass like he had a he had a foundry like you'd smelt iron and like work metal and he would he would think about different problems and he sort of like okay how do i get at this and like think about tools that uh you know that might help facilitate doing something he would figure out new surgeries and new tools to go with it and then he would go make it in his forge like a like a man that is impressive yeah and i still have some of his pieces that he made and used you know um which are cool and yeah you know they didn't have medtronic back then you know or stryker you know they just you know you had to sort of figure it out so yeah so i heard all these stories about these these guys growing up and i was like that is that's cool as hell and that really is yeah and especially to go forge your own tools like i know i i've suffered the pains of product development and it's i mean that's in modern technology uh where i have access to 3d printers like so yeah yeah and um yeah just cool as hell and so yeah it was um yeah always really interesting to listen to those stories and uh and hear you know all the different things that they did and and the ways that they you know they went to about dealing with it which i think is you know is really interesting and uh you know when i was in bangladesh you know uh working or volunteering in the refugee camps that was that was sort of a similar thing like you you went back to basics you just sort of had you had a problem you did not have any fancy tools you had to figure it out you just had to figure out what the hell you were going to do you know yep someone comes in you know clinically they've got a collapsed lung you don't have any imaging you can't go up you just got to go straight by clinical exam well no you don't have the right sort of equipment you just got to like just get some sort of needle that is about the right size just stab him in the chest first time i did that i was like oh my god i'm going to kill this guy and i was like when i was like all of a sudden it's gas released i'm like oh thank god you know yeah i was like you know like clinically i was just like this is what this guy has you know and but i was just like you know it was it was a bit uh nerve-wracking just to like use that wrong equipment to then you know sort of address this and um but uh i mean it's the right thing to do anyway you know if you have you have someone with like a like a pneumothorax like you you don't you don't wait until they get to the get back from x-ray you know because they could have died by them exactly so you just you just have to you have to just make the call but you know it's nice to have the right equipment as well but uh but yeah um you know i was gonna ask you actually um just sort of jumping back to the actually there's something i was curious about like because obviously um you know they say that you just you won one set right and um you just do one set but i i recover much better than i've ever recovered before and so you know i do a lot more sets just regularly and so i find myself doing like a couple of sets what do you find you do you are you just doing one set are you doing multiple sets of these so i think the one set this is my kind of thoughts around it i think in theory it makes sense like you do one set you take the muscle to fatigue you create the stimulus the muscle needs to grow kind of what we were talking about earlier is people think they're at failure when they're really not right and they really have more in the tank and kind of the way i think about it is i mean it's true for me too like i think i'm at failure but really i need a second a third a fourth set if i really want to elicit the stimulus for growth so i think for like a brand new trainer like someone that's brand new like probably one set like all right you just the muscle's never even done that movement before like you you elicited a response and i think they can get by with like this low volume high frequency whereas i think someone more advanced they tend to need more sets to elicit the response and so in theory i think the one the one set makes a lot of sense but i think in practice uh i i don't think it's ideal for most people okay yeah it makes sense and uh yeah i just often wondered that like i mean you you you sort of stand to reason that you know the more work you did the more benefit you get out of it obviously you know you get diminishing returns at a certain point you can obviously hurt yourself or injure yourself uh but you know barring that you know stopping before you do that uh i would yeah i would imagine that it would sort of uh you know just give you better results yeah like i like to think about it's like okay if you were gonna like work your chest out you could bench press all day long but how much more benefit are you gonna get from that versus doing or you just take it to the other extreme one set uh and there's probably a minimum effective dose which is i like to think a lot in terms of of like muscle building and progression but you want to find like the minimum effective dose that's going to give you the maximum stimulus like you don't want to be working out for 24 hours uh but one set might not be the minimum effective bills to get you kind of like the maximum results and i do think it's going to vary for you know people on wherever they are in their strength training journey uh like for example a brand new person could you know lean towards one set where someone's been training for you know decades like they might need four or five sets per exercise and then maybe they do three different exercises for a certain muscle group so they're hitting that muscle group with 15 different sets from three different kinds of biomechanical angles like different strength curves and that could be what they really need to like elicit continual growth so i do think it's a continuum uh though most people probably are further to the left of that continuum than i see a lot of like beginner people like all right you know i did 20 sets of bench press i'm like you probably didn't need to do that many yeah yeah yeah do you still compete now do you do competitions or is it just more for your own enjoyment no you know what i actually never had any desire to do competitions the reason i started doing it was in dental school i was created a couple programs like a fat loss program muscle building program and it's also kind of the reason why i stopped drinking too is i'm very much like someone that needs to practice what they preach like to be able to say with something and not do like if i'm out drinking on the weekend and i'm building like fitness courses i'm like there's like uh something that i just can't get behind there yeah uh and so but anyways i wasn't really interested in competing but i had this fat loss program and i was like well i at least want to like let me do it and then to show the results yeah uh so i did one in dental school i did one after dental school and it was really just i was in a gym where there was people that were interested in competing and i was like all right i mean i'll do it again just kind of for fun uh but i really don't have any interest in like competing but i do have like the personal interest of like always just trying to get better um so i mean that that's how i think i never really want to get on stage and be like let's but i am a competitive person so it is kind of the one thing i do like about it is when you have like a goal to strive for that's like sometimes like we're talking you can just go through the motions well well that will get if you're gonna sign up for a bodybuilding competition that'll get you out of just going through the motions like you're like all right i got i'm gonna be on stage in front of people like i i need to get in gear yeah that's a motivator yeah um yeah your your classmates in dental school must have just hated you you know yolked every day you know oh i don't know about that like i you know competing down for like getting really lean uh man you get tired it's not really fun towards the end of that i'm sure i'm probably wasn't that pleasant to even be around absolutely um i'm just going to say you know obviously coming from a dental perspective is this is this something that you you recommend to your uh patients as well is it something that you see a benefit in in the dental world so for a little bit of perspective i really focused my dental career in like two areas one is dental something called dental sleep medicine which is basically treating sleep disorder breathing so everything from snoring to obstructive sleep apnea like severe obstructive sleep apnea so that was like the one area of focus then my other focus was pediatric dentistry which is i do part-time so uh the long story short is i'm seeing these kids in certain settings most of the time their parents aren't there i talk about nutrition like don't eat so much sugar you know let's but that only goes so far uh with the kids it's like tell them don't eat so much sugar i think that goes through in one ear out the other yeah uh of course you're gonna say that you're a dentist you know but i do think that there's some good i can do where it's like hey we gotta take out a bunch of teeth no kid likes that uh so it's like hey i know this was not fun today so you don't want to do this in the future maybe we cut back on the sugar start brushing your teeth those kinds of things uh but like in as a whole like if humans are eating like from the time they're born like let's just include their mother in that because there can be some prenatal stuff uh but if there aren't like like you would say a species-appropriate diet uh man dentistry is out of business right so uh you don't yeah that i mean that's how i feel about it like literally there would be there first of all there wasn't dentist like i was i looked up the other day when was the first dental school in the united states i think it was like mid late 19th century like before that there was no dental school so it's like think about it like there was no dentist yeah uh and so before modern food like largely there was largely like anthropological records it's like there was no like tooth like our teeth weren't crowded like they came in straight we didn't have decay until really agriculture uh and then which really sped up with like the modern diet so uh yeah like dentistry like we're mostly eating meat there it would you know it collapsed which would be a good thing yeah well i mean that's how i feel about um you know medicine as well you know we used to treat very different things you know and there are some things that you're just not going to escape from like you know pregnancy and childbirth you know congenital and genetic uh disorders um you know infectious disease uh trauma and trauma that's what dentistry would be relegated to basically yeah you got a tooth knockout okay you need a dentist to yeah yeah it's like broken you have to like pull it or reconstruct it no and uh yeah exactly and and uh trauma was was a lot of what medicine was as well and uh and then poisoning you know getting you get stung by something or you ate something stupid or uh you know i'm bitten by a snake and that's and that was a major uh those are the major areas and you know now we have these chronic diseases and that's like 85 of what we do but you know i i but those didn't exist you know people said well you think they they were they were there but we just didn't notice it like not a chance in hell you know because you first of all anybody who's lived with any of these sorts of diseases like you know crohn's were also collided it's like you know about it you know and this is not something that you're just gonna be like like oh yeah i guess that's normal you know just not it's not gonna just come up uh you will go go to see a doctor about it when you're you know just just do copious bloody diarrhea at all times you know like that's going to raise some alarm bells and also you know people people made their names in medicine by describing new diseases you know they put their name on it that's why we have osler's nodes and trendelenburg gates and collies fractures you know like these are the guys who figured it out and just first described them and their names are are now you know benchmarks in history and and everyone wanted to do this and so no you know these things just these things weren't always around and then we just figured it out you know because you're just so stupid just everyone born before 1986 is an idiot and just you know you know that da vinci guy what an he was you know you couldn't see the door in front of his face you know i mean that guy was doing so many dissections and so many autopsies and so many um you know you know working with so many cadavers because the the catholic church had finally sort of you know taken down the the restriction on on uh cadaveric dissections for the artist so that they could really learn the hell out of the human body in order to augment their art which was you know thought to to uplift the church and so that was when we really first started getting into this and like you know you had absolutely like actual you know verifiable geniuses like da vinci and michelangelo doing this all the time are we saying that these guys are so stupid they just would they wouldn't have figured it out you know like you with your ipad are smarter who has not gone to medical school you know like why are you critiquing this stuff you know but yeah of course absolutely not you know i mean and think about think about the difference between the 1980s or 90s and the 1970s and 60s not much that much different you know and and a lot of these people are the same doctors who are now now seeing a higher rate of of these diseases that they treat you know one decade later their practice has changed you know like these guys just didn't notice it you know so yeah i mean when the obesity rate triples i mean you didn't just not notice that did you yeah i mean obesity is like the thing in clear sight like basically if you go 100 years ago it's like this rare kind of thing right and then it's now we're expecting 50 of adults to be obese like by the end of this decade like yeah i mean that's like something like someone has to explain that right yeah well too much fat obviously you know because you know you're eating less fat than ever and yet we're getting more fat but it must be the fact you know this is like this is why you need to teach logic in school you know like it's just i do feel like the common sense gets left out a lot because i know you like you like uh like like paleo anthropology which i'm fascinated by as well and a lot of people like uh you know theory but i'm like sometimes if you just like use like common sense and just think about things it's like things like kind of like open up like the analogy i like to give people is like imagine like you and your family and your closest friends and we just dumped you in an african safari like what would you eat like you're eating meat like look there's that's what you have like that's what's on the buffet for you yeah you're not you're not eating like grains or flours or vegetable oils or like you're not like those things don't exist yeah and so i mean i think when people think like that it makes them feel okay to eat meat when it's like obviously that's what we would have eaten like it's very obvious like it's undebatable that like humans were like like like you can't say we weren't heavy meat eaters maybe someone could make the argument like we ate some underground storage organs like that supplement in our diet but by no means like like we are here like because we ate meat like and to anthropologists like that that's not even an argument yeah yeah like it's clear in that science yeah absolutely and it hasn't really bridged other sciences yeah well that's the thing you know people haven't haven't gotten together and and spoken you know interdisciplinary interdisciplinarily um that's something that you know i was trying to do just like finding all these little pieces from all these different fields and just sort of you know bring it all together and um yeah there was one um i forget who said it but they said you know they when people talk about like oh we're supposed to eat plants we're supposed to eat vegetables and they had like a picture of you know like use yosemite or something like that you know those big forests and trees and this than the other he said point out the vegetables yeah it was just like oh you know it's just like you know you're not going to like you you don't know i mean most most plants on earth are inedible they will make you very very sick and you know that's something that people know intuitively you know you get lost in the woods you know you can't just eat any random plant most of them will kill you and yet we then go home and say oh but spinach is good for you why why would that why would that be different you know why would that hold different physical laws and look at the history of like your healthiest vegetables like broccoli right it's like go go eat some broccoli in the wild you see what that little that wild plant those of the cruciferous vegetables it looks like a little weed right so these vegetables did not exist until we like specially bred them yeah which is done in the last century yeah that's it like it'll blow people's mind like okay wait that food didn't even exist yeah and now it's like you must eat this to be healthy like bed does yeah that does not pass any logic like no the burden of proof is on them to tell me that that's healthy not the other way around absolutely yeah well yeah that's the thing you know they're saying it's like no no we evolved eating these things like these things didn't exist when we were evolving they just they're brand new you know yeah and yeah and um you know and then that's that's the thing too is that you know us being carnivores or at least heavy heavy meat eaters uh is is very well described in uh in anthropology and you know um and in the fossil record this is just something that's known in that discipline well it's something that's known in botany and horticulture that plants are poisonous they use poisons to stop animals from eating them and the plants that are not you know killing us right away are there that are less dangerous it's not because they're less poisonous it's because we have more defenses to the poisons in them you know and like you know oxalates will do a number on you but we at least have something we can you we can at least contend with oxalates we can at least contend with a certain amount of cyanide funny as that sounds um you know you get you get some you know north america was a north american hemlock water hemlock that will just kill you with like just a tiny little bit of that you within you know seconds to minutes you will go you will start having seizures you will not be able to stop having seizures and you will die yep period you know and you know that's that's the the legacy of plants like this is this is how they survive you know nature's wild is killer be killed for plants as well and so you know if they can't defend themselves they're gone but they're not gone so what does that tell you that means they've been through the gauntlet of evolution and they're scanning that's right that's right and i do think like this multi-disciplinary approach to nutrition is like what's needed to put the puzzle pieces together and i think that's what sounds like you and i kind of have like a similar like approach to that where it's like i came in from fitness i was like this is what worked to get my body in good shape and then i was like oh this is what has a good oral this what leads to good oral health uh this is what leads to me feeling good and having brain function oh let's throw some paleo anthropology in there some botany in there and it's like all right if you start putting the puzzle pieces together it's like yeah all right like it's like hey we can actually figure out this natural you know species appropriate diet which is like most animals can figure out on their own in the wild but like we have become too smart to figure out what we should eat uh but basically get back to like some kind of instinctual sense around food consumption which should be like the most natural sense we have yeah well that was that's the the saying right that humans are the only animals smart enough to figure out you know how to make their own food and dumb enough to eat it because you do you know like if if you think about this you know how are we going to create something that's more healthy than what we're biologically prepared for and designed for and i hear people trying to make arguments against that and that's like man that's you're i mean you got to start like with logic a little bit right yeah well and also maybe these inventions are better than what nature offers and i'm like yeah man yeah but but but is it you know like you know but and you know and what what evidence do you have you know you have something like oh well these scientists did that it was like well you know um you know were they right did they get it you know i mean i'm sorry but they're probably not smarter than uh you know millions of years of evolution or god who created us whatever whatever you want to go with we are designed a certain way and if you were smart as a scientist you'd figure out what that way is and try to emulate that and try to live that way because that's how we're perfectly adapted and designed to be it doesn't get any better than that you know and especially when you're when you're adding in things that uh are poisonous and cause poisoning you know and yeah i mean it it all comes back to the you know just the scaremongering over cholesterol you know that that just changed everything you know man that really did i mean to me that's like one of the most dangerous switches is like saturated fat bad start eating vegetable oils like that was pretty catastrophic big time yeah and and just specifically avoid meat don't eat meat exactly well i mean yeah and as a byproduct of don't eat saturated fats you know don't eat meat and man i'll tell you what as much as like i thought like it really is kind of you know humbling or naive or something but it's like i've been in the sciences since a kid basically um studied chemistry biology in college through dental school and even then i subconsciously thought like red meat's bad right like with like that was just ingrained in my consciousness and that's why you know i was ate lots of chicken breasts like red meat saturated fat was bad so it's still very much like even though like i believe if you look through the research like saturated fat is pretty much exonerated in my opinion like if you look at the evidence yeah absolutely like it has a long way to go to that to reach any kind of public consciousness like yeah even people i know that i've convinced that it's healthy still trim fat off their meat yeah and it's like well why are you trimming the fat off like this who almost everyone that eats red meat trims the fat off it yeah yeah yeah that's what you're supposed to do but like why like so it is ingrained in well i you know i talk to people and you know and talk to them about like how yeah it's actually you know sugar you know what was the problem and then you got you know the cholesterol was used as a scapegoat and all this stuff they're like oh yeah i know that totally makes sense and you know yeah i know that that's not bad yeah it's totally sugar and this that and the other and then they say yeah i want an egg white omelet and i want that this is all like low fat blah blah blah it's just like what did we just talk about you know the fat's good for you eat the damn fat um but uh uh kevin thank you so much um i i understand we've been going um for a bit of time i'm conscious of your time i don't want to take up your whole day um where can people find you and uh how they follow your stuff hey well it's been a pleasure thanks for having me on i feel like there's a lot of stuff we could dive into so i think we'll have to do this again because i know people have questions about dental stuff and i'm happy to talk about it even though i'm glad i think we talked about more of like sometimes the dental stuff is like hey let's that's majoring in the miners let's let's focus on like the big building blocks of like you know food and what you should be eating uh but you know the questions about fluoride and those are those come up constantly yeah but yeah thanks for having me on we should do it again i i just i run the site meet dot health which is all cut my there's a whole bunch of guides like 30 day guide to doing carnivore the health danger plant-based diet i'm finishing the next guide which has been years in the making as a macronutrient one because everyone's concerned about macros so dissecting macronutrients so hopefully that'll be done this year sometime uh but yeah and then i'm just on all the social media places awesome cool we'll put that all in the show notes and you know encourage everyone to check it out i've been on uh your email list uh for a while and it's always good like like a week newsletter every weekend yeah which is great and um yeah so uh yeah people should sign up for that and check it out uh kevin thanks so much absolutely definitely have to do this again uh i do want to talk to you about uh a lot of the the dental stuff as well actually for that's something that i don't know anything about but always comes up and uh what about florida i'm like i don't know you know i need to find that out too and uh so yeah so definitely uh we'll set up something else so uh yeah thank you so much ma'am perfect hey pleasure thanks buddy [Music]