Dr. Anthony Chaffee addresses common concerns about combining carnivore diet with athletic performance, drawing from his experience as a former professional rugby player and medical expertise. He explains how fatty meat consumption optimizes muscle building and recovery while debunking myths about carbohydrate requirements for athletes, referencing golden era bodybuilders like Vince Gironda and Serge Nubret who built impressive physiques on primarily meat-based diets.
The episode covers practical applications for various sports including weightlifting, combat sports, and rugby, with specific guidance on meal timing around training and competition. Dr. Anthony Chaffee also discusses successfully helping patients discontinue testosterone replacement therapy after adopting carnivore, explaining the physiological mechanisms behind improved hormone production and recovery on this nutritional approach.
Key Takeaways
- Eat fatty meat until it stops tasting good twice daily when weightlifting, and avoid eating before training - eat only after workouts for better performance and faster recovery without muscle soreness
- Athletes can maintain glycogen stores and perform optimally without carbohydrates, as even lean athletes with 5% body fat store 100,000 calories in body fat for sustained energy during training
- Play sports completely fasted for enhanced performance and mental edge - avoid eating on game day and consider fasting 24+ hours before competition while drinking 2 gallons of water daily leading up to events
- Carnivore diet can restore natural testosterone production enough to discontinue TRT - test testosterone fasting in the morning with no exercise or stress 48 hours prior, and either taper off slowly or stop cold turkey depending on individual response
- Building Muscle on Carnivore Diet vs High-Carb Bulking
- Fat Adaptation and Athletic Performance Without Carbs
- Combat Sports and Professional Fighters on Carnivore
- Professional Arm Wrestling Success on Carnivore Diet
- Getting Off Testosterone Replacement Therapy with Carnivore
- Rugby Game Day Nutrition and Fasting for Performance
This is an auto-generated transcript from YouTube and may contain errors or inaccuracies.
[Music] can you explain more about weightlifting and muscle gain Pro progress on Carnivore my trainer is really on me that this uh about this diet so I'm using your answers to fight him uh well you know the thing is is that you just just results speak better than anything so you eat fatty meat until it stops tasting good you do that twice a day when you're when you're lifting weights and working hard train your off work really hard eat a lot of meat don't eat before you train eat after you train you'll feel much better and you'll get better workouts and you and you'll recover much better and you won't get sore and so you'll be able to work out more have more uh workouts during the week if that's something that you want to do there are different camps on that some people say that you know you want more sets and and and and a higher load and that helps you uh build muscle and and build strength and others say no you don't want to do that you want to have big intense workout and then let your body rest for few days and all that sort of stuff U even before you do the next muscle group so there there there are different schools of thought so you do what's right for you but it's from a diet standpoint you're you're going to be able to put on lean body mass more easily on a carnivore diet than any anything else you can put on more mass more weight by eating a whole bunch of carbs but that's fat glycogen and water weight because because when you're eating a lot of excess carbs this is bad for your body this is not this is not contentious this is what kills diabetics is high blood sugar and so your body tries to get this stuff stuffed away stores it in glycogen in your muscles and liver uh glycogen pulls in two water molecules for every one uh molecule of glycogen so you get water logged muscles in liver and then you also deposit intramuscular fat and intrahepatic fat and intra organal fat and it's called myosteatosis when it's in your muscles and this is a pathological sign that we see on MRI very commonly it's actually uncommon to see it these days um at least in um in in the MRIs that I've seen so sure you can gain more bulk by eating a whole bunch of crappy carbs and sugar and nonsense like that but that's not muscle and so when you go into a cutting phase you're going to lose all that and so oh yeah well that you you you can't put on muscle unless you put on fat at the same time who told you that you know that all these these obese Lions you know walking around until they get into their cutting phase you know like this is stupid um it's you know the the golden ear bodybuilders Vince Gonda Serge nuub these sorts of guys they were Stak and egg steak and egg steak and egg Serge Nu would eat four to six pounds of horse meat a day there French the French eat more horse than other people do and and nothing wrong with it though uh as far as nutrition is concerned and absolute monsters absolute monsters and this was before the the steroid Heyday so it's um it's absolutely uh in your best interest to do a carnivore diet when you're when you're lifting weight so so just do that you know just uh you know just just eat a whole bunch of meat you know point out the you know Vince G and and serge new bra you one thing with G is he thought that once a week you had to you had to load up on cars because he thought that was the only way to store up your liver glycogen that's not actually true uh you you do store liver glycogen and muscle glycogen whether or not you eat carbohydrates but at the time that was our understanding of biochemistry and then uh actually speaking with Professor Tim noes who's one of the foremost Sports Medicine doctors and scientists and sports physiologists in the world he has over 750 published um papers studies and books on the subject and I mean the man's prolific and he's he's just an absolute pillar in the field and he is very clear that you you do not I you do not need nor want carbohydrates in your training as a top tier athlete because you get the exact same performance and in fact I would argue that you eventually once you're fully keto fat adapter you get better performance that was certainly my EXP experience um you have unlimited nearly energy potential because even in an athlete who has 5% body fat someone very lean they are storing in their body fat 100,000 calories of energy in their body fat right so you don't need to car load you know a thousand calories of pasta or 2,000 calories of pasta you've got a 100,000 calories in fat stored in body at 5% body fat for the average sized person so this is not um you know this is not hard like you get you get way better um access to energy you're not going to run out of energy and crash and all these sorts of things and he was very clear that glycogen is not actually um the the muscle's primary source in fact your body uses that up to then get to the fat and once you get to the fat you you're oxidizing fat you know up to your maximum V2 Max you know they they used to say after 85% V2 Max you can only burn carbs No in fact it's you only burn carbs if you have excess carbs to burn and once you get through those and you're in a ketogenic State you're just you're just um you're just burning fat after that and he's shown that in clinical trials with athletes right and they've been done in in recreational athletes there's also been done in in uh high performance Elite worldclass athletes and like ultramarathoners and things like that so you know that I would watch I would look at at at Prof notes and things like that so you don't you first of all there was a there was the what is it the faster study by volik 2016 where he talked about um well basically showed these these ultramarathoners and I had 20 of them they've been doing keto for over six months so they're very adapted and they had you know brilliant performances and they found that their glycogen actually was better and recovered faster in the keto group so the ketogenic um uh marathoners recovered their they did muscle biopsies they recovered their they had similar muscle glycogen before exercise and they had more glycogen directly after exercise and they recovered their gly their muscle glycogen uh faster as as well after they exercised and three hours afterwards they had similar amounts of of um muscle glycogen between the keto fueled athletes that were not refeeding or eating anything else and the carb fueled athletes who were just sucking down sugar water and things like that so no long story short um you can definitely put on a lot of muscle um but you won't put on the fat the glycogen and the water weight and so it may look oh you could be getting bigger fast bigger is not the point more muscular is the point more lean body mass is the point and that's what you're going to get with a carnivore diet it's not going to be you know just putting on a bunch of fat and glycogen and water weight so uh yeah uh that's what you tell them your thoughts on cornivore diet and extreme Combat Sports like Muay Thai is it possible yeah absolutely I I know a number of um uh Fighters professional fighters there's um oh God who is I'll try to remember but there's the there's is a UFC fighter right now that's um carnivore and how do I know this because he's uh carnivore bar sponsors him and he and he says he's carnivore so um and then there's a lot of top athletes um there's a more there's a boxer here in Perth that's giving it a try um there's uh Holland Gracie you know one of the Gracie family he's um head of Gracie jiujitsu in San Francisco I've had him on my podcast he does a carnivore diet and he says his his performance and training has just gone through the roof and um and numbers and numbers of athletes so yeah absolutely I mean I did I did mu Tha and pancre so you know MMA uh for quite some time before I I switched over to rugby fulltime and it um I wasn't I I I went fulltime into rugby and then went carnivore but I did dip back in and have trainings you know in in you know MMA and fighting things like that felt just like a like a different person now it's hard to say because you know I I transitioned to rugby full-time when I was 18 you know and so you know I go back at 2021 and I'm already you know uh uh an accomplished rugby player obviously my you know that training and years of maturity physically and mentally are going to help when you go back into any sport you're going to look at things you know very differently and and um you're going to be better at it so you know it's hard to say but um it's uh I definitely noticed it a hell of a lot easier uh to train in any sport um Wilton Ziggler was the guy's name he's a he's an MMA fighter I'm pretty sure he fights in in uh in um the UFC so yeah you definitely do that any support any Endeavor any health issue uh this can help op it's optimal nutrition you're giving your body the exact fuel that it needs to be optimal and if you're optimizing your health you're also going to be optimizing your athletic performance um you know there you know there are things like like different drugs and amphetamines and steroids that may give you a a shortterm boost to your athletic performance but do hurt you overall from a health standpoint but if for just talking about nutrition what's optimal nutrition for you as a person should also optimize your health in general which will make you a better athlete right those two things should go together and so yes you can definitely do Muay Thai on this hey everyone really happy to announce a new sponsor for the show and for everybody down in Australia Stockman Stakes who are delivering highquality grass-fed and finished pasture raised beef and other meats flash Frozen and vacuum sealed to your door something that I've been enjoying a lot of myself recently as well they also have a great range of specialty items such as high fat keto mints and carnivore beef and organs mints with liver kidneys and beef heart as well so use code chaffy today for free order of beef mints or another specialty gift along with your order at Stockman steaks.com and I'll see you over there thanks guys 39-year-old male I'm a professional arm wrestler as you would as you would imagine from the name and ever since I went carnivore one and a half years ago I've been outlasting every opponent on the table and won six different championships since then best I've ever felt for strength to awesome that's really badass good for you man um that's that's certainly what I experience it's certainly what a lot of professional athletes are experiencing that your your strength your athleticism improves but your recovery improves so much more quickly and so that you can just keep going keep going keep going keep going and you know and uh and other people just they just fade off they fade away you know when you know we're playing rugby tournaments either for 15s or for sevens it's uh you it's a long day and uh you're playing these games and you're really wearing yourself out you're putting everything out there every minute of the game or you should be anyway and um certainly at the higher levels you are or else you're not not getting invited to play and um it's uh you know then you're playing game after game after game by by the end of the game I mean just everybody's just ruined you know you're just sore and creaking like oh God and you're just trying to warm up and and get your body moving again uh but for me it was just you know the last game I felt better than the first game because I was warmed up I was primed I was ready to go I was just had tons of energy and so I I was a um I was uh I was a you know just I had a big advantage um in just the games in general but in tournaments in particular um it was just I was just you know was just a that was just a weapon you know that you could use because you were just you just felt so much better and you recovered so much more quickly so that's great that you're experiencing that as well and I'm glad that that um that you gave it a try and that's awesome that uh that you're kicking so much ass so well done man that's really great heard you got men off testosterone replacement therapy 46 that's yes that's true I've gotten a lot of people off testosterone uh replacement therapy by going carnivore 46-year-old 12 months carnivore want to get off trt after 3 years concerned about side effects and loss of muscle mass cold turkey or taper uh what works in your experience it it just depends so I have um I've done both for patients um some patients just say look I'm feeling great I'm coming up to the end of my prescription what do you think like well it's fine yeah your your testosterone level is you know at a good level it's not like 25y old level with the with the test with trt uh but it's at a good level especially for the for this person's age he was in his 40s and um and but he felt great and he said look I I don't I don't think I need this stuff anymore I feel really good so okay well why don't you just stop it we'll check your your testosterone levels again in two three months and see what it is and um two three months later he said yeah I felt fine the whole time didn't didn't feel a drop off when I when I stopped the trt because he'd been carnivore for six months at that point you're actually longer than him so you know I think you'd be fine you're about the same age too and his trt or his sorry his pre-testosterone these are Australian numbers these are different than American numbers American numbers because it's a different scale slightly higher um but so in Australian numbers uh like a 25y old you like a healthy 25 year old uh you you expect to see between 600 and 900 and uh this guy was 450 so you know closer to it right but then he came off trt and two months later his testosterone was 650 so it was up in that 25 year old range right so it actually went up coming off trt because the thing that people don't realize is that when you go on trt it actually rests your gonat so you're you're this is an endocrine hormone an end endocrine organ and so yes there's a bit of a dip in your body starts to to make these uh you know uh between when you stop taking it and when your body starts making this again but you can actually find that people can start making more testosterone because they've actually rested their um their uh their organs right and so you've allowed this to rest and uh and and you know it hasn't had to produce and work as hard to make testosterone and now it's just primed and ready to go and now you're eating properly you're giving your body what it needs to uh to work properly and then it and it comes back so there's a lot of people that just come right off and then other people um you know they might be on uh testosterone and then we just see check their testosterone and they're taking the same dose and then all of a sudden they're you know they started out at like 150 for like someone in their 40s I have a patient in his 40s is is like 150 170 so that's actually very low very low especially for his age um or even for his age um that's what that's that's I I've had 70-year-old patients that had higher testosterone than that and then tripled it going on a on a carnivore no trt that was a guy 72 he had it's like 220 250 was his testosterone and then um yeah like four or five months on a carnivore diet no trt never started trt 750 right so he tripled his testosterone so this gentleman had even lower than that it was in the 100s 150 170 something like that he got put on on trt by um uh another doctor at my practice and I inherited him after he retired and uh I don't put people on trt I put them on Carnivore and that that does the same or better as trt and but I've inherited a lot of patients on trt and I get most of them off of it and so this guy was was one of them and so you know he had you know sort of 450 500 testosterone with the trt so that's good that's better than it was and he felt better certainly and but then it started going up and it was and he taking DHE as well which is over the counter hormone in America but it's prescription in Australia and um and all of a sudden his his taking the same dose of DHEA is just going up and going up and going up and going up and that was actually too high for a 25-year-old so said okay well come off the DHEA and it maintained at that 25-year old level great and then his testosterone kept coming up and kept coming up and all of a sudden it's 600 and 700 and 900 and 1100 he's taking the exact same amount right so he said okay why don't you just come off and um and so he was yeah and then so yeah we took took him off that and we checked his um testosterone again a few months later hadn't taken um any of his testosterone and it Main around 900 just over 900 so it's like well there you go you know you don't need to do that and so other people will be like maybe they'll be on an injection form and they'll be on a cream form and um so they might go up too high so okay so stop taking the injection that was one actually um with him we sort of did it uh in that in that manner because uh we tested his testosterone again and it was like a month or so after he had taken his last injection but he was still taking the cream and and it was like 960 a month after he he didn't take it okay so obviously you don't need the injection so you know stop the injection because that would just go up from 950 and obviously 900 is actually the upper border of where you think would be optimal for a 25y old in Australian numbers and um and then since then it's just continued to sort of go up so we're just reducing that down so you know for him um he was able to come off all of that stuff eventually but it was a bit you know of a stepwise progression but you know we could have just just come off completely as well I I I have no doubt um so it just depends you know if you if you want to just taper it that's that's perfectly reasonable you know you can just you know slowly sort of take it down you know sort of a half dose for a couple weeks and then a quarter dose for a couple weeks and more and more uh talk to your doctor you know it's it's it's not something that's um that's a uh you know huge problem you know the thing is if if you're just feeling rotten coming off of it you know okay taper it you know or or taper it more slowly um and then that can sort of ease your body back into making testosterone so it's really up to you um you know you can talk to your doctor and say Hey I want to come off testosterone can you help me with that too so you know it's always a good idea to to talk to the you know to the prescribing doctor to see about coming off of it but I see that all the time and I see people come off cold turkey and they just say yeah I didn't even feel a let down because they'd been carore for so long their body just sort of got right back onto it um and others you know taper and I I think both are fine and um uh you know you you are less likely to have side effects U by tapering so if that's what you want to do then then do that but yeah you can definitely come off and I would I would expect that you know after 3 to six months of being off of it your testosterone levels will be great and you'll feel great as well so and again test it in the morning fasting no exercise sexual activity or stress within 48 Hours of taking that uh test and you get it first thing in the morning fasting from the night before fasting in the morning just a couple glasses of water nothing else no medications uh supplements anything it's very important testosterone is a is a to test if you don't if you don't test it in that way because you just get you just get all random numbers it's just not reliable you can't trust them you just have to test it again because you're like okay you didn't do it right do it again and then you see but uh you'll see It'll you'll be fine and you'll feel fine and that's the main thing hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want a nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnivore bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just pure meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products there will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10% off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25% off total all right thanks guys doc I'm a rugby player I play as a prop and I'm on Carnivore how can I eat the night before game day and on game day does staying hungry during a game mean not eat on the game day or eat something small you get if you're going to eat eatat something very small and like minimum five hours before you game for me nothing I ate nothing I even felt better I I I typically didn't even eat a big dinner or any dinner uh the day before like I would be fasting 24 Hours by the time I get them sometimes more um I always felt better I always told uh you know my teammates and and players always always play hungry um because it just it just gives you a bit of an edge you know if you're just s satisfied and all satiated oh everything's fine you you don't have that that Killer Instinct and Edge you know your body wants that bit of a like hey you need to go kill something like go do it you know here's energy here's aggression here's testosterone go do it go kill a mammoth you know you guys like yeah it's go time you know and and I just sort of the way I thought about it um but uh whether or not that's true or not who knows but that's what I experienced and so um I and a lot of other people experience the same thing I know a lot of professional rugby players that never eat the day of the game even if it's like a whole tournament the whole day and you're going till 7 8 o'clock at night just will not eat the entire day and I I don't either and I've always always always felt better like any time I had anything to eat I always regretted it always regretted it uh so yeah so the night before you just eat eat meat right so you just eat you know fatty steak fatty meat um and then don't eat a thing on the game day I wouldn't even e anything if it was like a 700 p.m. game you know if you you could make an argument for that you know having having a light sort of breakfast you know uh like like not much of it you know have just a smaller steak and a couple eggs or something like that and then getting on with your day or whatever you know with nighttime games it's a bit it's a bit weird but um I typically didn't even do that and so um I would uh uh yeah that's what I was suggesting give to try especially if it's like an afternoon game late morning afternoon game definitely don't don't eat anything before the game have dinner tonight before see how you feel maybe even have a late lunch and leave it at that and don't eat all that much at night I I always feel better like if I was getting to the point where like late um I I wouldn't I wouldn't eat dinner it was just like no it's too late I'm just going to go to sleep and get ready for the game I don't want to eat this late um so that was me but play with it I definitely wouldn't eat the day of the game and see how um how you feel eating the day before I typically would feel better eating like a late lunch in afternoon and then nothing um late at night so but but give it a try see there you go and this is a super chat from from the same gentleman um who sort of asking similar thing I'm a rugby union player plays Prop how can I stay hydrated on Carnivore when eating on a night before on a game day so I would drink a lot of water I would drink a lot of water leading up to it like a lot of water um I mean I would I would typically drink like you know two gallons of water a day leading up to a game and then I I would be drinking a lot of water on the game deck now there are people who argue that you're doing like a marathon or you're doing these sorts of things is actually counterproductive to drink water for me I felt better drinking water so maybe just you know drink a lot of water leading up to it and then you do some self experiments and see if you do better with more water on game day or less water on game day for me I did better with more water on game day um but that was just me so um but uh yeah but the food side of thing definitely play hungry range because I don't think that is a normal range I think that's just what we've arbitrarily assigned it and I don't think that that aligns with uh proper health so me personally I'm not too worried about it in fact I'm I'm happy for my LDL to be exactly where it wants to be because that's busy ological that's what my body's telling it to do so I'm happy with that