Intense Training on Carnivore | Coach Bronson Dant | PFMD Ep 88

with Dr Anthony chafee where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically 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 nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnival 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 that 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 hello everyone this is Dr Anthony Chaffee with another episode of the plant free MD and with me today is a very special guest and a friend of mine Bronson dance who goes by coach Bronson uh Bronson how you doing man I'm doing fantastic how are you today very very well thank you um great so uh for people who don't uh know you can you just give us a brief uh rundown and um who you are and what you do yeah yeah so I've been carnivore for a little over four years I'm just turned 50 this year uh I've been in health and fitness for about 12 years and coaching for most of the time uh from the nutrition perspective since I've been Carnival I was doing some stuff I owned a gym while I turned you know during that transition time so I was doing Health and Fitness and Nutrition there which obviously once I went carnivore completely changed everything that I was doing nutrition wise totally flipped on its head but uh yeah so I mean I've been doing this for a while and um the changes in the positive the positive improvements I've seen in my life is kind of what got me to go from just being a gym owner and being a coach with people in a gym to kind of saying hey look I need to get the word out there to as many people as I possibly can and let people know that there's something out there that is natural like we just talked about is normal it's the way things should be but nobody knows about it yeah that's kind of where I'm at get the word out awesome yeah and so bronzo and I met uh first that uh well we we sort of met online we're you know chatting uh through Instagram then actually met in person ketocon which is great I I really liked that I had a great experience there just because like you're meeting people face to face you're actually getting you know uh getting the the chance to actually interact with people um because like online is is fine but like it's it's you know just just actually talking to people face to face is it's so much better like absolutely every time I go I mean I've been doing and it's it's it doesn't matter what the like genre or Community is whenever you go to a gathering of people who are like-minded you always come back energize refreshed motivated and realizing which is there's a security in knowing that you're not the only person out there doing this there's other people that are seeing progress having the results and the same challenges the same struggles the same questions and going through the same things as you are so it lets you know that it's bigger than just you and it kind of makes the issues and the things that you're faced with day to day seem not quite so big because it's a much bigger thing going on here you're part of something huge yeah and and hopefully just getting bigger I mean that was that was a cool thing with keto Comics obviously keto's been around for a long time you know I mean even like just you know Atkins has been around since you know the 70s at least and uh and actually carnivore was was actually alive and well well before that uh images with Salisbury you know I mean like I remember I was reading like an article um a while ago like last year or something like that and it said you know salisbury's you know meat-only diet the first fad diet and it's like um more or you know it was um right you know it was the first um it wasn't he is the first diet book that was actually considered like the first diet book was uh elementation implementation disease right that was his book was there yeah yeah yeah the relation between ailmentation and disease yeah which I think is is just still you know like the Cardinal book it says every I mean you know I'm I'm writing my book and I had that sort of that sort of aha moment that that realization probably three years ago three four years ago um when I first got to Australia and I was just looking at this I was like yeah you know it really helps with this it helps with this helps with this and all of a sudden I like had that switch and I was just like okay like all right like these diseases they're not actually diseases this is we're being poisoned these are toxicities and it was like oh my God like that changes everything and so that that's what I was trying to address in in my book that is taking me forever to finish but like but it just means you're getting really you're getting really good detail in there man that's good don't worry about it you would you would hope but no I just don't have time to write the film but um you know but like he's big he's already written that thing you know 150 years ago you know or you know thereabouts and so which is amazing you know he was arguing then that it's just like hey you eat these things you get these problems you know you don't need you don't get these problems the very the relationship between alignmentation and disease what you eat causes these diseases here's the relationship and now we have a lot more you know scientific backing for that but like that that you know that dude was was astute like mean he he figured that out right away and that's evidence that's about as evidence-based as you can get right he's it's clear he essentially wrote a book if for people who aren't aware Dr Salisbury 1860s is that what it was something like that yes yeah yeah he he basically wrote a book that was like a clinical today we would kind of call it like a clinical clinical report it was like here's what's been going on in my practice for the past 10 years and how I've been healing people and these are the symptoms these are the problems and here's how I'm doing it and the solution in most of the cases was eat stewed beef yeah yeah that was it it's like okay yeah yeah and don't eat anything else and like yeah and that's what the the Salisbury steak is from I always thought that that was um like a place name you know like Salisbury England right yeah yeah I know it was named after him and the reason it was special it wasn't just ground it's like you know Salisbury steak now is just like a hamburger pad a whole different thing right yeah and they actually well there's some stuff during World War II that they actually rebranded Salisbury steak because they didn't want it to be Hamburger because that was a German thing and there was a whole bunch of stuff oh right yeah that makes sense yeah and but the original Salisbury steak the the what made it different from just ground beef or mints was that they grounded in a specific way that you could you could um filter out like all the gristle and that just made it that just made it so you would absorb like 100 of it and because he was dealing with people with like Crohn's almost colitis we had no medications for back then so these these people were in trouble and they were having horrible horrible horrible times and he was saying they're like no this is really important to do it this way you need to get all the gristle out so that they can absorb absolutely everything in their small intestine and they have like no waste you know so these people will work just like creating no waste and and they could actually let their their bowels rest and heal which is very very important and that's what we do now in medicine you know when you have to when you have like you know surgery on your on your bowels or you have um you know an infection diverticulitis uh even appendicitis we treat these conservatively sometimes uh with medications you put them on a low residue diet where it's just exactly the same thing just low residue meaning not much is coming out as waste yeah so it's like basically no fiber whatsoever ever you know the idea that fiber is good for you is I mean it's completely Contra contradicted by that that you know at any time you're having a problem we just go like oh God no no geez no no no fiber just stay away and then as soon as it's done oh you better get that fiber in you you know like where were you you know yesterday you know when you were saying that like fiber is like super bad for you that was one of the the things about carnivore when I first got started that the the contradictions in the current message just blew me like I just didn't understand stuff like fiber was one of them it's like if you're having problems with your the bowels give yourself something that's going to give you more problems with your bowels like what this doesn't make any sense to me and I think you had a post you might have those saying um if your body doesn't process it and it has to get rid of it why do we have to eat it to help our body process something it's like like the the logic just doesn't make freaking sense no it will that go in carnivores answered All Those Questions wrong yeah well I mean especially with the fiber thing you know I mean the I remember this as a kid in the 80s you know they they said explicitly you know multiple times you know like you should eat fiber for a couple reasons one because you can't digest it you can't get any nutrition from it but it will it's bulky and so it will stretch out your stretch receptors and make your brain think that you're that you're full so you'll trick your body into thinking that you've eaten something I'm like your body's not that dumb it's certainly not as dumb as you are and so you know or the second one was that well you know because everyone's getting constipated after they stopped eating enough fat and they're like what was going on like no one ever had this problem before I'm sure they did have a problem but on the numbers and then all of a sudden everyone's getting constipated they're like well you know what you should do fiber fiber is a good idea and then that can and there was all this theory about you know peristalsis and things like that but that was never a thing you know before like the 1980s and so these were just these were just sort of thrown out there but the the whole point was you can't break it down you can't digest it you can't get an energy or nutrition from it for you that means it's good that means well exactly that's it that's what I want that's those are properties I want all my food you know right absolutely yeah so it's just like well why don't you just eat a plastic bag there you know might as well you know as well you might as well you know and like you know you can't you can't you get exactly the same properties apply and principles apply you know it's just like this you shouldn't need a plastic bag you know you shouldn't eat fiber for the same reason you shouldn't eat a plastic bag you can't break it down you can't get nutrition from it and it causes harm you know and it causes direct harm and that that's not a that's not a guess and that's not a accusation and a basis at all you know just one of that studies just showing that that shows it causes diverticular disease among others and just looking even without the specific diseases or conditions if you just look at the increase in all things that are chronic illnesses illnesses chronic symptoms let's call them chronic symptoms right look at all that stuff since the 70s and 80s as the prevalence of seed oil is a prevalence of fiber the prevalence of low fat the privilege of all of these things has increased right in correlation as all of the other issues and health problems that we've had over the years so I mean it's anyhow anybody can look at what's going on and say that we're doing what we need to do to get people healthy by following these guidelines is it's it's delusion at this point yeah well I mean and then that is the problem you know because you know you know a friend of mine you know sent me something it was like um or something I want to one of the you know those horrible documentaries about how you just if you if you you know have a you know a sandwich with meat in it you're just gonna destroy the world and um and and you know she was saying it's just like oh look at this this is this is the same exact opposite of what you're saying I'm like oh yeah no kidding that's what but but you know they've been saying that for the last 50 years and everyone's been getting fatter sicker the environments you know things the environment are getting worse you know we're losing 27 billion tons of topsoil a year because of farming practices you know it's just like yeah I I've heard it you know I was not impressed and it's not helping and that message isn't helping because exactly not it's the opposite of what we need to be doing yeah well that's it you know you keep doing the same thing and you keep getting the bad results and you're saying no no but but we just have to do it harder that's like every bad political idea you know that comes in it's just like it's just like well hey you know you know that we shouldn't do that policy because we're going to have you know problem home X and then they do it and problem X arises and the solution is like was because we just didn't we didn't fund it enough we didn't do it hard enough right yeah exactly and so which is the same argument you know when when people go vegan and they have problems they have horrible health issues and they go back to eating meat well they just weren't doing vegan right they should have done even harder you know and they should have just had you know one piece of tofu a day and that's it and you know the you know and then like the you know the answer for that is always more of the same thing that caused the same problem and you get more of you know outcome X and and and there are people that just get caught in that and they just they just keep doing it and keep doing it keep doing it just because they're they're just you know they can't think outside of the box they're like well I have to do this is what I have to do I have to do and like it's attributed to Einstein I don't know if it actually came from him but he said like the definition of insanity is trying to save is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result I don't know if that's insanity or just stupid but it is something and it's not it's not working anyway no it's not working and that goes to the industry to the messaging that we get that people listen to to every people in their day-to-day lives get stuck in the same thing I've been doing the same thing over and over and over and it's not working I think Dr side is the one I think this is attributed to him and he said um people that are obese are experts at dieting yeah because they've tried everything and it doesn't work it works a little bit then they get it back it works for a little bit then they get it back and and dieting and doing all of these things doesn't work because the focus of what they're trying to do where they're trying to go with it is they're focusing on symptoms they're not focusing on glucose problems and that I think carnivore helps people wrap their head around the root cause problem that kind of deals with a bunch of other issues yeah and that's the same in medicine you know and that's and that's a big problem because we we just focus on symptoms now you know and then when we look at some mechanisms as well but we're not looking at what's causing that mechanism to transpire yeah exactly we're just saying hey this is happening you know can I figure out a drug that will just screw with this but you know complex biochemical process in some way and just sort of sort of kick it back in the direction you know that we want just a little bit you know it's um it's it's very imprecise navigation you know where you just point in this direction you just sort of smack something in the head and just hope it bounces in the right direction yeah it's a transitory goal it's not a substantial change it's it's again you're addressing a symptom of something so it's like it's like you have a bathtub that's overflowing what many people are doing in their lives their their health is the bathroom the bathtubs are flowing they're mopping things up they're they're trying to get the buckets they're using sponges or they haven't figured out a way to stop the water if you turn it on yeah that's what you got to do forget about the mess in the bathroom right now they'll fix the plumbing so the tub's not overflowing and then you can clean up afterwards and people are just spinning their wheels spending all this time on all these things you know I I see I work with people all the time who come to me and ask questions about so and so said this and so and so said that and this study said this and this guy said this study said that and all these things I'm like uh why are you even worried about that who cares if you want like you said the mechanism that understanding the mechanism of things is great and it can be information that is helpful but it doesn't matter if you're focused on the wrong thing yeah so don't let all this information that's out there get you all focused and we're trying to fix how your body functions and then everything else will kind of go from in there yeah well it's all about prioritization right I mean just like you say you know you're dealing with the visible problem that will you know will cause problem you have a leaky bathtub you're going to get water damage oh my goodness you have to clean it up you do but the main thing is you got to stop that leak first exactly and um you know when I was in medical school uh so the first first uh our first sort of term um the our head of anatomy and physiology uh it was a great guy one of the best professors I've had uh Professor um Thomas Farrell and he was awesome and and one thing that he said that really stuck with me was you know he we were talking about different sort of situations they said okay let's say you're in the emergency department and someone comes in with a gunshot one they have a bullet hole in the chest what's that called and like it's like everyone was like just in medical school so everyone was like trying to like you know just be like you know pretend they're like just smarter than they are like more knowledgeable yeah they're trying to think yeah there's something like that yeah that actually that's that's a better one than like most of these people came up with but like but they were like trying to find some sort of like latin-esque sounding word to like call it and they're like oh well and and everyone's sort of trying floundering but the point the point was to sort of do that and and then he said no it's called a distraction because while you're staring at that bullet hole and you're trying to figure that out that guy could be choking to death you know his Airway could be collapsed and you didn't notice it and that will kill him long before he ever bleeds out so you need to you know you have to you can't get distracted by something even if it looks horrible you know you have to you have to keep your eyes on the prize you have to view things clinically and and correctly or else or else the whole system shuts down you know and so you go through ABC's Airway breathing circulation there's a reason Airway is always first and it even like changes sometimes it's ACB depending on your your um you know what you're doing this whole bunch of different algorithms for that Airway is always first always always always always you know well not always always but almost always and uh and uh but you know but that's the thing you know there are prioritizations and like right now we have we have really lost that of our our priorities and you know it's it's really shocking and this is the challenge we get into the discussion of the messaging and people falling into the brainwashing and indoctrination of media and the industry is I think people have what they think is the right Focus it's just not the right Focus they're focusing on the things they've been told on move more eat less that's the answer to everything even though after 40 years it's not working maybe we need to rethink it but a lot of people think they're doing the right thing and they don't understand why they're not seeing progress so that's why what we're doing is important because I think this is what helps people get that knowledge and realize hey wait there's something else yeah absolutely um so how did you come come about carnivore in the first place what what uh you know where did you figure that one out yeah so it was actually recommended to me um as a way to maybe hit you know see if like an Elimination Diet to kind of see if my uh IBS urgent bowels and that kind of stuff will get healed uh or if it would help with that so um I was it was 2018 I was a gym I owned a CrossFit gym uh and uh the interview that Dr Baker did with Joe Rogan that wonderful piece of artwork um was introduced to me I watched that and I was like okay this is crazy this is kind of cool I don't I don't really care for eating veggies anyways I only do it because I didn't want to have to uh and I decided you know I did some research I looked I looked for three or four days tried to find as much information as I could on what wherever it was how to do it um if there were other people out there that were doing at the time it wasn't nearly nearly as big as it is now um we found a couple groups on uh Facebook uh Dr Mabry uh Esme LaFleur there's a couple people that are like old school carnivores that have been blogging about it and talking about it for a while and um just decided May 1st 2018 I said all right I'm just gonna eat meat so whatever meat I had in the fridge I just ate that until it was gone then went out and got some more and it's been ever since like that I literally haven't gone back since so it's been a fantastic ride and I don't see myself ever running back yeah and how'd that how'd that work for your IBS and and uh and your athletic performance beautifully beautifully so on the IBS side of things you know without getting too graphic my life was controlled by my access to a bathroom or knowing where a bathroom was because I never knew what it was going to hit um but within I tell people it was like two phases the the actual healing and reduction of the symptoms probably took maybe three weeks maybe four weeks um but it wasn't until about two and a half three months in that I realized they were gone because I had had a routine and a habit and things that I did every day or if I was going somewhere things that I did I just did out of I just been doing them for so long just to make sure that everything was going to be okay um go to the bathroom before we get in the car when we get to the airport go to the bathroom when you get on the plane go to the bathroom when you land off the plane go to the bathroom like it was just things like that so couldn't get in a car if I knew I was gonna be in a car for more than 20 30 minutes I would go to the bathroom before just in case so those types of habits and things um it took me about three months to realize that need to do that at all and since then I mean it's been four years and I still don't have yeah it is it's crazy as a 50 year old man to be proud of the fact that if I feel the urge to go take a dump I don't have to do it right now I can actually wait it's just a weird like it's but it's true because for years I couldn't yeah if I felt the urge that means it was coming right then and I have to get like there was no holding it or wait yeah so yeah it's an emergency at all times yeah at all times stress level up here 100 of the time yeah now that's awful uh well that's awesome man and um yeah and and that you know that that's one of the things that you know the gut issues are a big a big you know one of one of the you know great benefits and that Salisbury saw that that you know as well um and uh that's really great that um you know they were able to do that and then in your in your just your athletic life and your and your coaching life so how is that how's that affect you did your workouts I mean obviously like I didn't I didn't actually realize you were close to 50. like dude you're jacked man that's like you know that's uh uh you know that's very impressive yeah so you know they they tanked a person this is what everybody says you can't do high intensity work you can't do endurance you can't do anything if you're if you're you know Carnival or keto um and it's just uh they just you got to give it time guys you got to give it time so I like to talk about three levels of adaptation and most of the time when we talk about keto adaptation or adapting to being fat adapted people talk about two levels with you know being fat adapted then keto adapted where your your the process of being ketogenic becomes an efficient process and from an athletic perspective I talk about the third level which I call keto optimized which is actually improving the efficiency of gluconeogenesis so that your glycogen production is actually better and replenishes better and faster and more so that's where for me it took about three months and most of the people I work with if they stick with it it don't introduce carbs for the first three months their performance tanks while they're getting adapted and then about two and a half three months in they are like a whole new person strength is better energy through workouts is better recovery is better it can increase their volume less injuries like all the things that happen to me I'll just give you I'll use myself as an example you know I started Carnival when I was 45 years old uh I was I owned across the gym I could I was doing on average three workouts a week and feeling like I got run over by a truck all the time all the time and I was paleo Whole30 so I wasn't eating processed foods at the time I had already stopped drinking alcohol so it was lit I was just doing meat and plants um felt like I got rid of my truck all the time three days a week I was dealing with foreign labrum torn meniscus uh in my left knee the labels and both of my shoulders if you want to have herniated disc with my neck and at the time I had a current growing pole I was recovering from a hamstring pool and I had previously in the past year and a half to want to build my cats so it was a mess it was a mess everything hurt all the time within three four six months of doing this three months is where I really started seeing my performance come back after initially dipping down my metabolic conditioning went up I started feeling better in my workouts feeling like after workout hey maybe I could do more uh then my strength PR's my strength numbers started climbing I was doing more lifting more and then the really cool thing is all those aches and pains that I had started going away the things that I had been limited on being able to do because of my knee my shoulders and my neck all went away um I started doing things in the gym that I never thought I would be able to do uh then after that then it was the increase in volume so I went from three days a week to five or six days a week and I didn't feel like I got run over by truck so the recovery was better my ability to perform was better like literally every single thing that I could think of that I was complaining about in my life about my physical moments completely wonderful yeah and you were already fit that's the thing you you you were already doing you owned the CrossFit Gyms you were already in good going into it well so here's the thing yes and no and this is the crazy part about it this is where the nutrition piece really kicks in because the other reason that I wanted to do carnivore was because I was sick and tired of having to get fat to get strong and having to get skin need to get together having to get weak to get lean that's right anytime I wanted to cut like I want to get I want to get ripped okay well I just gotta let my head know and all my all my numbers are going down won't be as strong it won't be as fast enough everything's going down and that okay I want to work on getting strong again I gotta bulk up okay well guess what just get it in your head you're gonna look like a slob you know and it's just I just I got so sick of that whole process and then at the point where I started this I was actually at one of those times in your life where you see yourself and you're like I was embarrassed that the the fat that I had on my body how I looked I'm like I own a CrossFit gym I should not look like this something is not right this is not how it should be I could perform pretty well compared to the average person who's 45 years old but not at all what I felt like I should be able to do as setting an example of being a head coach and a gym owner that was a whole different level you know and so doing this that everything turned around I got got ripped I got strong everything looked you know it was a whole different world from there on yeah awesome and um and what have you seen that have you have obviously your Carnival coach as well you're you're and presumably you know trying to get the people that come to your gym on board with the whole diet side of things what have you seen in their performance yeah so while I only so I sold the gym right before Cody um but I did do I had about a year and a half yeah kind of a year about a year and a half of working with people in the gym trying to kind of evangelize the carnivore at least if anything to animal-based Lifestyle um most people just freaked out when they hear you don't have to eat veggies but getting people just to understand that it's okay to eat more animal meat it's okay you don't have to avoid fat that type of stuff was really my message then um and again every everybody that I worked with at the gym that tried it um you know I ran some challenges specifically you know eight week ten week 12-week challenges with some people just to get the the experience of working with people through this process and without fail every single one of them at the end of it they're like oh my God this is crazy we never thought we would see this kind of response and they didn't have to we didn't do calorie restriction we didn't do anything other than just change what you're eating to include more meat and and work out that was it and then they saw tremendous tremendous results yeah you know it's funny no sorry and I see that I see that now continually with my stuff so everything I do now is online so I have an app that people can subscribe to to get their Fitness programming and do coaching I do group coaching I do challenges I do a bunch of other things um and actually I can send you the link if you want to post it with this video yeah but earlier this year I did a an eight-week study with women from 45 to 50 years old very uh Perry and post menopausal uh we did eight weeks of Keto eight weeks of functional fitness training all together and then we collected all their body composition data all this their their Fitness and athletic performance data and I put it into a study that I got published last month oh wow got a case study published in research you know in a research Journal last month um well actually I guess technically it's this one it's still September right so it was earlier this month it got published so I can send you the link to that but you know eight weeks women over 40 35 who were Perry and Postman Apostle who saw improvements in body composition improvements in all the factors of quality of life improvements in strength improvements in speed endurance flexibility like all of the things that we look at from the quality of life perspective everything got better when they focused on protein and animal meat and moved their body consistently yeah well that's awesome I know that definitely do some of those links we'll put those up in the descriptions people can take a look at um yeah it's interesting that you guys are it took me a while to um uh sort of get adapted and get your performance up you know for me like when I do this both times you went back and you know when I was 20 and then 38 37 38 is banked second I did it it was just like my body really oh thank God yeah exactly you know my performance went up my list went up the obviously my um you know my my uh soreness never had any sorenesses instantly uh worth in a few days and and yeah my recovery just just went through the roof and uh but yeah it was it was right away uh for me which is great yeah which is good yeah I'm jealous well it's um you know but it's it's good just good for people to know that that some people you know you know will get that and that's better results but it will come eventually you know it will come eventually and here's a question though did you already know much lights at the time because that's so I didn't at the time so if I had known about the importance of sodium the importance of electrolyte supplementation through the transition it probably would have been faster because I was still I was still at the time I was still like drink water and drinking just regular water by itself all the time so I was having three four five liters of regular water a day without extra electrolytes it wasn't until maybe a year a year and a half two years in that I that I learned about the importance of sodium and electrolytes and all that kind of stuff so yeah no no actually for me now I just salted The Taste and that was it and so and I just drink a bunch of water but um you know I do know you know there are people that can certainly have uh issues with their electrolytes especially early on that that transition phase it just you know it takes a bit a bit of time for your body to uh to sort of balance everything and uh but for me yeah I know it was it was it was fine from that standpoint as well and certainly when I was you know did this 23 23 22 almost 23 years ago now um I really didn't know all I knew was that plants were trying to kill me yeah like there's just like these things are poison they're toxic I'm not going to touch them and uh and that's all I knew about it and so I was just eating yeah just eating I mean I wasn't even eating fatty meat I wasn't I was definitely not getting enough fat at the time or or just enough food in general for a lot of that because I just I didn't know I was hungry mostly I feel I feel lucky at the same time I feel kind of disappointed that I learned about the two things that changed my life like after my 35th birthday I learned about CrossFit when I was almost 40 I learned about carnivore at 45 like it's like I could have just known about these two things when I was 18 my God where could I be right now you know but it's better to late than never I guess right yeah or if my mom knew about it two years before she I was conceived oh my gosh you know I've been like you know six inches tall or another 50 pounds muscle and Brawn you know like right yeah amazing but uh yeah you know I mean that's the thing I I when I again came came over to carnivore and I and it was the same thing it was with uh Dr Baker um because I you know I knew about this 22 years ago just because plants were toxic but and so I did it inadvertently for like five years but then slipped off it because I didn't realize how significant what I was doing was and then but I was always very very meat focused I always just ate a lot of meat and then every now and then I chucked in a salad because I'm like I guess we're supposed to have salad and um but that was really it and so I was you know I would mostly be keto even though I wasn't doing keto I just didn't get carbs and I just never ate sugar and then every now and then I had some some gummy bears or something like that or gummy worms which I you know still remember fondly but like you know like not fondly enough to actually change anything in my life right right and um you know so I was always I was just eating a lot of meat and but mostly lean meat and then it came you know started looking you know when I was in medicine it was medical school I started being able to see these literature the literature and it was like oh actually Sugar that's that seems to be a major major problem here that wasn't what we thought it was like oh my God like actually it wasn't at all like all these things that was a complete con and uh and all these sorts of things started all you know coming in and coalescing and like learning all these different things and then um I think it was just you know the right time you know when uh Baker went on Rogan and my brother was just like just like amazed and he I never I never didn't watch um as much Joe Rogan stuff my brother really really liked him so he would watch every episode and uh if he could and and he came across this and he's just like he's like dude he's just like I just saw this episode with uh Joe Rogan is this guy he's a doctor he's a professional rugby player he says you can get all your nutrition from meat you don't need to eat anything else and um you know which was interesting he always obviously you know I played rugby for years and uh you know was I was a new doctor now obviously he was he was um uh well established in his career but uh you know very you know there's some similarities there and they said and you you could only eat meat you get all the nutrition from meat and my first response was just like how can that be you know that that must there must be something wrong here but then you know my secondary thought was like well wait a minute I basically did that for five years you know because I didn't eat any plants all I was eating was eggs and milk or eggs and and um eggs meat and milk and for five years and I was just like and I remember at the time when I was doing it thinking in my head I'm like you know do I need to eat a banana or something you know do I need some vitamins like a multivitamin or something yeah yeah you know because I was just like you know am I getting everything I need you know because I didn't know I didn't know like I didn't want to think about like humans are carnivores is the kind of animal we are we're like wolves we're like you know a felines like this is the only thing we should be eating and you know but I was just like well you know I feel good and my gums aren't bleeding so I'm just gonna ride this out and see how it's hard to defeat that programming that we've got even today it's been four plus years that I've been doing it and I still think about it sometimes and I'm just like it's crazy this is really like and then it's like yeah it is I'm good like it's just like there's that Split Second of that the 40 50 years of of programming that becomes rushing back sometimes and I've got to be like no I'm good we're good to go I look at you know my numbers and where I'm doing and stuff and then I'll look at all the other people that have and the number of people this is where going to conventions is good this is where joining communities online the number of people if people people that already like that are just getting into this now four five six years ago if they knew how little Community there was around this topic compared to what there is now they would be blown away absolutely Blown Away there was nothing there was nothing when I started you know what I mean so now to come out and go to YouTube and type Carnival diet and it's just like boom list after list after a list of people on YouTube or do a hashtag Carnival diet on social media and all this stuff comes up it's like this is awesome yeah so I love it I love it yeah and and even even you know stuff about saying this is a bad idea don't do it you know like that'll come up but you know you know that that you're starting to to uh be have a presence when the you know the powers that be have to detract you know from what you're doing you know because you know because they're they're saying it's like oh well oh you got a better watch out for this dangerous thing this is this can be bad or whatever if it weren't that if it weren't many people doing if it weren't a threat they won't even mention it you know you're giving it publicity by talking about it you know or when the the powers that be or people that are part of the powers we start duplicating it so Weight Watchers now has a keto thing yeah slim fast now has a keto thing so all of these companies that are now the old school are just trying to use the terms to try to pull people in because they know that's what people are looking for because it works well you know it's it's it's about damn time because like it it you know that that's a sort of seem to me that they almost wanted people to fail they're like oh if you do that that's exactly fat all these sorts of things and you'll sort of grumb along you'll get sort of moderate you know you'll get sort of middling results that'll just keep you going but you have to do it for years and years and years and years and years and you know like I don't even know what it was but it was just like saying it was just like you know if you're losing like two pounds a month like that's a really good rate of like healthy yeah like weight loss like really I lost 23 pounds in the first 10 days that I stopped eating salad right like I wasn't eating carbs I wasn't eating sugar you know I was eating like lean beef chicken breasts and not much of them and then like big salads and when I stopped eating salad and started eating big massive fatty rib eyes I dropped 23 pounds in 10 days wow yeah it was it was just it's all inflammation and water weight and you know and it's just like you know I didn't even have like the glycogenio intramuscular glycogen into muscular fact because I wasn't eating carbs you know and so other people can have even even better results but I was eating a lot of veggies and they were causing wow there's a lot of inflammation I can't even imagine I can't even imagine eating that many that's crazy no it's terrible and like I didn't want to it's horrible you know it tastes horrible and you should listen to that you know I was like something you shouldn't taste bad at least at the very least now you know tasting good that's that can be relative sweets you know that's obviously going to be a positive but that's in you know I think that's more of an outlier because that's a that's a drug recognizes a quick hit of energy that we can use and then you know survive in in tough situations but can cause long-term harm however if it tastes bad it is bad you know 100 and so we have taste splits for a reason and I think people totally forget the whole concept and not knowing and then also not knowing that unfortunately because we have taste buds a lot of companies have learned how to hijack hijack that process and what that means and the triggers in our hormones and all the other kinds of things that those systems cause so much of the food that we eat is hyper palatable it's designed specifically to make us eat more than we need it's low in nutrition it's high in calories it's just all the things that we don't need so that's a whole other discussion I guess we can yeah well and then highly addictive you know to just don't care they absolutely know that this stuff is addictive that's not that's not a secret to these guys and you know and that's why it's in everything and that's why there's sodium and salt in sodas and different sorts of things because because in people have studied you know culinary Sciences like salty salty flavor offsets sweet flavor and vice versa so if something's like way too salty you can add sugar to it so it brings that down so you don't recognize it as too salty right and and same truth is too sweet you add a bit of salt to it it'll it'll Tamp that down so this is why Coca-Cola has a buttload of salt in it so it can put a buttload of sugar a butt load of sugar in it yeah exactly and a new Coke came out in the in like the 80s and what was the difference same stuff but coincidentally way more salt and way more sugar they know what they're doing they know exactly what they're doing they're trying to get you addicted they have already succeeded if that and once you're addicted you keep feeding that this is this is you know this is the new you know opium uh you know opium uh trafficking you know it's just like it's it's legal and you're just just getting this and no one even realizes how bad it is and people are getting really really hurt by it it's it's just getting worse and worse and worse I sometimes I wonder if you know if if there's a conflux or a crisscross of when the numbers are starting to get better based on when we're getting bigger in the community you know like at what point we need to keep going and you know anybody that's listening share this video share every possible video you possibly can because the number of people that are getting sick out there isn't going down right now right now it's going up yeah we've got a lot of work ahead of us we've got a lot of working on this yeah I mean just just simply with with like diabetes you know nine just look at it yeah just like that all around the world diabetes is increasing massively and even though you know like places like India and China um they don't have the same obesity rates as as Western countries their diabetes rates are going way up and actually surpassing that in the west because they eat a lot of sugar they're malnourished they've got a lot of starvation issues but they only they but they have a lot of sugar so they're very they're even more malnourished because a lot of their calories are coming from carbs crap and sugar yeah well they're skinny and that's that's the thing about obesity rates is it's not it doesn't take into account lean mass it doesn't take into account body composition it's just size yeah so they're hot they're they're the the population there is probably just as high in body fat percentage yeah even though they're not as big right it's a skinny fat country versus an over fat country that's both over fat there's just one's big ones skinny well and also yeah but it totally doesn't take into account body composition as well that's something that's always bugged the crap out of me like when I was in in high school I even noticed this so I'm I well I was in well I mean I went to University when I was like 16 but I would come back to the high school for sports and so you know when I was there I was like I was like wrestling um 215. and um I was six foot you know six foot two and a half six foot three something like that yeah and um and I looked for for my height for and they they the BMI it used to be just this is it this is your BMI um this is your ratio and this is too much and this is this is whatever yes and then they said obviously well what about people that doesn't take into account people that are are athletic and muscular and have a large frame like I have right and and then say okay well so then they they modified it and so it was just like you know lean build average build heavy bill right so for a heavy build at my height the maximum weight that you could be was 192. I was a wrestler cutting weights 215. yeah yeah exactly but I was over I'm obese yeah well that's right now yeah and I'm like yeah and like you know for much of my you know professional sports career I was morbidly obese you know because like I'm supposed to be 190 and my my Lean Like slimmed down fit ready to kill you playing weight was about 245. and like and like outside of that I could go up to you know 260 265 pretty normally and um and then I sort of trimmed down a bit the largest I was ever at was like 275. but like very but very muscular still had six-packs showing you know what I mean and like actually I kind of like scared myself I was at the gym and I didn't realize how much I had put on because it was just it was just I had a month off for Christmas and and so I was just it was just in the gym every day and I was still eating the same and just like I just figured that you know my body was like because I I you know trained so hard during the season that I just I could not keep on weight it was very difficult for me to keep on weight sometimes I dip down to like 200 I've I've gone I've gone under 200 before which is crazy you know starting up from like 240 250 and then going down to like 195 because I with legs that big but like you know like but like I couldn't I just knew so hard for me to keep on weight unless I was really careful and I got better at it you know as I went on but there was a couple Seasons that I got I got way too skinny and um and so then when I you know in the in the sort of break for Christmas you know I'd just be you know just eating normally and lifting weights a lot and now my body's just like oh thank God I could actually just start you know like rebuilding everything and so I just I just tank up I put on like 30 pounds in in that month uh not all of a good weight obviously but you know it would it would get on there and um I remember I was going through the gym and I just caught out of the corner of my eye there's like a mirror there and there's just like this I didn't realize it was a mirror all of a sudden it's just like this massive just Monster walking oh Jesus and it was my reflection I'm like oh my god I didn't even recognize myself I was like I I was I was I was much bigger than I uh normally was but um obviously that's you know you know a 270 265 270. you know I was 70 75 pounds over what they consider you know healthy and uh I was very healthy you know I was in very very very good athletic shape and cardiovascular shape and every everything else and certainly when I was 245 and still in this way too way too heavy weight you know I was I was a machine and um you know I don't think anybody who wrote those uh those guidelines recommendations and uh and and criteria was it would have ever been in that that good of a shape in there in the course of their entire lives and yeah they get to dictate that so yeah that is something you know especially in the U.S and and other Western countries there are bigger people and and um and we do have more muscular people so that's yeah that the BMI sucks is the logging short of that but yeah the BMI is just something yeah and we're finding that based on what you're doing if you're as Dr Berry says if you're eating the proper human diet then so do most of the health markers that we currently have a lot of them don't really apply the way that we're they're being applied either you look at cholesterol look at HBO and C look at kidney like you look at all these different things and it's like well that's great but if you're doing this let's throw all those out and do something different you know yeah absolutely so it's it's kind of crazy and it I can I totally understand why people are confused about what to listen to and where to go and what's right and what's wrong and everything like that so yeah I like to look uh are you have you done anything with Marty Kendall no I haven't come across he's in Australia you need to get you and Marty need to hook up you guys are in the same freaking country um look up Marty Kendall nutrient optimizer okay so Marty does a ton of great work he's doing some fantastic stuff he actually has a partnership with chronometer where people can sign up for his program they he collects all the data from people that say he's got thousands of people's entries and he's done tons of analysis on nutrient optimizing what the optimal nutrients are for satiety for the weight loss for this for that for all the different types of diets and like he's got so much freaking data your guy is ridiculous you got to get him on your thing on your show um but he talks about and this is really where I started understanding more what I what I now call my pillars of nutrition and that is focusing on nutrient density and understanding the importance of nutrients and how our body will literally in many ways our body determines how hungry we are based on how much nutrition we're actually getting in our food so if we focus on nutrient density if we focus on bioavailability availability and then we focus on foods that are as satiating as possible we're going to solve all the problems so regardless of what the label on your nutrition lifestyle is if you focus on those three things you will be in a better place that's the way I kind of simplify it absolutely yeah and I'll look them up for sure yeah and um so you mentioned to me before you were saying that um you know we focus on like macro ratios and percentages and things like that that that doesn't actually necessarily get you where you want to go it doesn't necessarily get you like nutrition density you want so like like you're saying there you really need to focus on the nutrition density side of things first can you can you talk a bit about that yeah this is actually something that has been going around lately that I'm hearing a lot of people I mean it's been since I started you hear people talking about what's the best ratio one to one 60 40 70 30 80 20 whatever all this kind of stuff and it's really started hitting me in the last couple weeks where I realized you know none of this makes sense so last year I started talking about helping people understand the difference between and this is this is an offshoot a lot of the stuff I've got I get from other people so I kind of take stuff I hear from other people and kind of play around with it and come out with my own thing but um Dr Ted Naaman in the PE diet and understanding the difference between protein and Fuel and there's a separation and how our body uses those things so taking that concept I kind of came up with we have functional calories and we have fuel calories and I look at them differently so when I work with clients I separate fat and protein I don't tie the two together I don't care your body doesn't know that you're tying your fat to your protein percentage it doesn't know that all it knows is I'm either getting enough fat or I'm not or I'm getting enough protein or I'm not so why are we at the top level macro going down why are we tying the two together it doesn't make any sense it's like I use the analogy of going to the mechanic taking your car's a mechanic and saying hey I need to give you a tune-up could you give me 80 gas and 20 oil yeah he's gonna look at you like what are you talking about he's like no your car needs this much oil your car needs this much gas and that's how we need to be looking at what we're putting into a body we need to stop tying the two together and then when you look at it at the next level where does that even come from where does this whole percentages and ratios and stuff come from and they think well we're talking about percentages of what or ratios of what we're talking about ratios and percentages of total calories what I thought total calories didn't matter I thought it wasn't about total calories so then if it's not about total calories why is everything that we're doing in the space right now about percentages of soil calories there's just a there's a dissonance there that I think people aren't aware of so we need to separate that's my message we need to separate the fuel and what we're doing to provide our body with the energy and the things that it needs to function from that perspective as from the the things that drive metabolic ocean and that's protein which fills in the mass and muscle we all know muscle is the driver metabolic function so I think the two of those things um we need to stop you just figure out what you need for each one and whatever whatever number that ends up being it ends up being if it's it's not about being in a deficit it's not about being in a surplus it's about giving your body what it means to function we need to get rid of all the other talk it needs certain things and you're trying to give it these nutrients and You Know It uh it it just works on its own uh we don't need to you know use an equation and a calculator and all these sorts of things like you those don't those didn't exist even 100 years ago you know certainly didn't exist 100 000 years ago you know no koala is out there trying to figure out okay what's my percentage of this thing 100 yep just like this tastes good I'll eat it you know and uh and and gets me high in in the case yeah yeah and the other thing for to think about too is if you're doing that if you're tying the two together and you're saying I need this percentage and that percentage then by definition one or both of them is going to be less than you need or more than you need yeah just that it has to be that way yeah so in many cases because people under eat anyways in many cases it means both of them are less than you need yeah so that's that's even worse because now you're completely undernourished and that's a whole other discussion so how do you approach that then how do you Pro how do you how you tell people just practically you know this is how you eat to get uh everything you need yeah it depends on where people are at if they're working with me I like to have people track um initially because I think tracking is a great way to build Awareness on what you're actually doing and what you're putting it around a lot of people are not mindful of how they eat so tracking what you're eating is a great way to be mindful I don't think that we should or need to track for the rest of our lives for me I practice tracking things when I'm trying to make a change so if I'm just living my life I'm happy with the time I I've been doing it long enough I've been tracking long enough I can identify food and I have an idea if it fits into what I'm trying to do or maintain but if I'm at a point where I want to do an experiment or I want to change or cut or bulk or whatever the different terms you want to use are then I will specifically track so I know exactly what I'm modifying and what tweaks I need to make but in general I like to start people off at a one-to-one of lean body mass to protein grams and lean body massive fat grams so I start people off at technically a one-to-one ratio oh my God I just said nobody ratios well that's the starting point because what we do then is we look for thresholds so we have what I call a protein threshold which is a minimum how low can your protein intake go before you stop seeing the benefit of having protein and for most people it's usually they need to go up anyways so you know if you start it once one if you weigh 200 pounds you're 25 body fat I think your target is 150 grams of protein most people are not used to eating 150 grams of protein a day so just getting the people to that point is usually step number one and then for many people that's plenty that's a great spot for them to be they can maintain they can grow they can improve most of the time three months four months five months in they're at 1.25 they're at 170 160 grams or maybe because naturally as their body gets used to eating it it kind of wants more and they start eating more naturally that just happens I don't have to worry about that that's the starting point on protein on the fat side um I do the opposite so instead of finding the bottom or starting at the bottom with protein I start I find the top on the body fat or on the fat so the fat intake is basically finding what I call the maximum energy threshold and that is slowly increasing your your fat little weeks at a time until we find the amount of daily intake that adds to your body right so for me I'm 187 pounds my lean mass is 165. somewhere between 170 175 grams a day I start putting on body fat so as long as I stay under 170 I can maintain or lose body fat so I know that my healthy range the amount of fat my body can use for all of the things that it needs to use is 170 or less right if I go now I don't need to go to 135 to lose body fat I could be at 140 150 160 and still lose body fat so that's one mistake that a lot of people I think make is they go oh well if I drop my fat low I'll lose fat faster well yeah you might lose it faster but you're also removing fat from your body that it needs to do things like hormones and a bunch of other stuff so when I talk about prioritizing protein and managing fat I'm never recommending people to go super low on fat you just there's a line where you can find out okay what's too much and then stay under that line and that's pretty much how that looks yeah nice yeah I sort of have a similar sort of intuitive approaching aim for this marker and then sort of adjust I do it a bit a bit differently just because I'm going for well yeah I mean just sort of uh you know different sort of demographic often as well you just sort of shoot for around 70 80 calories from fat that'll and and then just eat until you're full and if you're doing that then you and you know you should be as long as meat's tasting good your body's saying hey you know get more of this stuff in me yeah and a lot of times that can that that can do it and um and then sort of shooting for that range and then I you know I'm sort of just of the physiological mindset that you know your body you know wants a certain amount of fat and uh and then makes makes bile for that right and um you know the bottle that you make uh I think corresponds to how much your body wants in fat because you really that's very difficult for your body to absorb fat without bile so that makes sense to me it could be completely wrong it's you know it's just based on just the fact that our bodies are pretty damn efficient at everything else they do and so I just don't see why we would be inefficient at that and just make an arbitrary amount of bile uh that that doesn't correspond with what our body wants and um I think that our bodies are pretty switched on and for the most part they are and um so I sort of like giving that and I go by like the stools and things like that you know if you're constipated hard then you're you're not getting enough your body's just absorbing every ounce of that you you do want a bit of an excess and after that excess you can absorb some fat you absolutely can but um it's it's a small percentage um after that and so I usually try to shoot for that um I found that that you know I've um I've actually had uh patients that have gone too lean and have much higher protein rates and they actually stacked on weight there's a lady that just emailed me actually um and she was she was asking for some advice and she was saying that she went sort of high protein low fat and she and she put on 40 pounds over the course of like nine months and she's just like well screw that you know like now I'm gonna go the other way and go high fat low protein have you noticed things like that where people get things really off and they start having like a weird time with carnivore yeah um yes and no usually there's something that has to do with uh inactivity where they're not doing strength training as well so they're maybe eating protein that's got nothing right has got nothing to do with it um there's you there's often some electrolyte stuff going on and then again low fat too many people go to the extremes like you just said she's going to go from a high protein low fat she's going to flip it and now go high fat low protein what about the middle ground yeah where's the middle around there right so I think we need to find I think more people need to live in the middle and I think too often people are going to the extremes so I don't think high protein is the is the key I don't think high fat is the key I think adequate protein and adequate fat is yeah I think that's a that's a very good way of putting it you know it was it is and it's all semantics at the end of the day as well but I think I think the way you're describing it there is much better and you want you want sufficient adequate appropriate amounts of protein and fat as opposed to you're getting high fat low protein because I made that point a while ago and I got I got a bit um uh of a talking too because the other thing too is just because you up your protein doesn't mean you have to lower your fat and vice versa yeah it doesn't mean you have to lower your protein like why are we tying the two together it doesn't make any sense yeah I remember I was in um when I was first sort of in like the little carnivore Facebook uh groups and I was quite active in things like zeroing in on health and zero carb health I really I really like those guys I really like those groups I think they do I think they do a very very good job and so for anyone uh you know starting out with carnivore that um he was looking for in community things like I always recommend those two first you know and even though you know I was involved in other other carnivore groups which I think are amazing you know like the carnivore fix and things like that I think that's a very very good Community um I I always recommend those two first and foremost because I think they're they're run by very very uh intelligent switched on knowledgeable people and and the community is very good and they kept it very strict you know it's not like these other uh some other ones I think you know World carnivore tribe that's just the zoo that's just a watch it is amazing you know and you go in there and like you say things I remember I would go in there and I sort of say things and be like Basin is like and here's this study and this is this and this and that people like what the hell are you talking about this one's like Jesus Christ and the things that they were saying were based on nothing it was just like they're just their own biases and things like that and they're just they're just bouncing off and it was just it wasn't um it wasn't as uh conducive for like an intelligent con all right everyone so we had a bit of a technical issue there my computer about it and um so we had to sort of reconvene at a later time but just just to pick up uh where we left off I was trying to tell um just a story about uh just the semantics behind talking about uh you know low protein high protein high fat low Pro whatever and um the the reason that there was a sort of a bit of an issue was um you know years ago I was talking about how a carnivore diet was that was actually you know high protein diet in comparison to to a sad diet that's what I was talking about you're eating twice three times the amount of protein which is great but obviously as a proportion of of your total calories um it may not be the majority and so um that was something you know I was saying you know because this is you know high high protein diet and blah blah blah blah you know or you're getting more protein as a high protein because it is it is a high protein diet you know in that sense in comparison that's the thing yeah exactly everything's compared to what you know so like an economics is always compared to what so in compare us into what everyone else is eating this is this is a high protein diet and so but it's not the higher macro as far as calories are concerned certainly that would be mostly fat and so you know people were saying it's like whoa whoa actually this is this is sort of a you know a high fat moderate you know protein diet you know and it's really important to make that distinction and um and I was saying well you know all I was talking to was was comparing it to like a standard diet like you know we're getting more protein than other people and and their point was like hey what was that that like when people come in and they're new to this and and they're saying oh like high protein this and the other they're thinking just eat predominantly protein and things like that maybe that can sort of mess them up so you understand that but it but at the end of the day it is semantics and and I think that the way you worded it was you're getting adequate or ample protein adequate ample fat is probably the best better way of doing that and whether wherever that shakes out as a percentage is is fairly immaterial in that regard as long as you're getting enough of both exactly and and I was thinking about this since we had the break I was thinking about this uh while we were trying to figure out how to get back this to end this but the what we're doing right now the way that we think in nutrition and health about our macros and our food intake is we shop around and then we try it's like we're trying on clothes it's like we're trying on dresses we're like okay I'm gonna go try this dogmatic formula or methodology and see if it works with my body I'm gonna go try this one and that did work okay that didn't fit it's like trying on shoes so those shoes didn't fit those shoes didn't fit those shoes didn't fit I need to find shoes that fit well what if we stop trying to find shoes that fit and just walk around Barefoot for a while forgot what our feet actually need like we're working from the outside and trying to force our body into something instead of asking our body what kind of shoes do you want to wear what size are your shoes what are you using your feet for and going into it and actually trying to meet the need that you have and and I think we're doing it backwards yeah well that and that's certainly the case too and um you're trying to say it's like well I have to eat all this and I have to carbo load I have to do this in anticipation of you know work out tomorrow or something like that which of course oh you have plenty plenty plenty to get weeks without uh you know eating if you if you had to I wouldn't recommend doing that if you don't have to but you know what we do you know unless you're unless you're extremely emaciated you know you've got you've got ample energy for any workout that you plan to do and and that's for that's whether you eat or not I like how you said that because a lot of people think well you have to eat to work out or I need energy to go to the gym I need to eat before I go to the gym or I need to make sure I've eaten sometimes it's like no like you have enough stored fat and stored glycogen in your body for multiple workouts in a week before you even have to eat replenish any of that let's not let alone if you're already eating a regular a regular diet you know whatever ever it is to one or two or three times a day and then you're working out you're you're you will never run out of fuel we are so fuel abundant in this in the in society today we have no idea we have no idea yeah and um and and speaking of which so you know that that's the other other side of the coin is Just Fitness so you're obviously a fitness coach you you have a a CrossFit gym and this is something that's been a big part of your life you know how do you how do you rank Fitness and this whole thing as far as overall health and and your why is it uh so important yeah I think it's uh just as important as nutrition and that goes against the grain a lot of people oh it's all about 80 of what happens in the kitchen what you've eaten I said yeah if all you're worried about is weight loss and it sits back then all you need to worry about is nutrition if you're worried about being physically independent as long as possible and having a high level of quality of life in your 70s 80s and 90s then you absolutely have to have Fitness as part of the equation you can't do it without it metabolic function is driven by muscle mass reduce reduction of injury risk is driven by strength and muscle mass B uh recovery rate if something happens and you do have to go to the hospital is reduced by hormonal muscle mass sarcopenia is the sign of death in my opinion the less muscle mass you have the closer you are to the grade and that's not what we want we are great in society today at extending life but not extending quality because we assume that as you get older you're just going to lose muscle and get weak and have to use a walker and have to use a cane and have to be sitting in a chair eight hours a day because you can't get up and do anything and that's not how it has to be so implementing some level of Fitness to improve your physical freedom and that's what I like to say my tagline is Fitness is freedom because the limitations that you have on your life have nothing to do with what you're eating they have everything to do with what you can or cannot physically do and that's what we're trying to extend for people is the ability to have that Independence as long as possible yeah absolutely and then that's 100 true I mean we have a serious problem with with sarcopenia Stark being for people that don't know it's just it's just muscle wasting you're just you're getting too skinny and frail so these frail old uh older people that that are are you know fragile you know and they're at risk for everything their risk for everything goes higher I mean if you look at covid who was the who were the people that were the most risk right 60 and up is that they're the ones that have the least protection which is what muscle provides yeah yeah I think that in the in the older category sort of 85 and above they were you know 1 500 times more likely to die or or be hospitalized I should say uh from from the coronavirus then uh five to 17 year olds that was that was the the safest bracket was five to Seventeen and then and then you and then everything else was a multiple of that if they were one uh 85 Plus would be 8 500 you know so it was a very very big jump and and that's definitely part of it and you know why do they become sargopenic because there's being tea and toast and you know just some you know just oh here's a little candy and a treat because oh you know you just it's just trying to basically make them feel nice by giving them food because you know they can't really do much else and and and so it they're not getting nourishment they're not getting healthy and they get worse um there was I remember reading a study a number of years ago where it it showed a direct correlation between leg strength and likelihood of going to a nursing home you know it was just like the stronger your legs were the less like you were to go to a nursing home and that can have a lot of different reasons why that is but a very simple one is that when you get too frail at a certain point you can't get out of a chair on your own and that's pretty much it for you there's a handful of physical movements there's like four or five I forget what they call them like daily daily movement requirement tests or something like that where it's like can you bend over and touch your toes can you get out of a chair without your hands without needing to push off with your hands like there's a couple tests that they do as you get older to see can you live by yourself yeah and they all are directly correlated with your ability to move and actually have some strength in your body and control yourself yeah uh it's it's the the impact that the expectation we have as a society that you're going to get old and frail you see it everywhere you know you see scene I'm 50 years old I joined AARP in in the U.S you know uh because just because if you had a bunch of discounts as a senior said I'm a senior citizen guys this is crazy uh because you know I get a bunch of discounts and everything being a member of AARP but I now I get all the newsletters and the emails and the website of all the different things and it's ridiculous the expectation that they have of oh get in shape join silver sneakers it's like okay the big the most strenuous thing that you can do once you're over 50 is go for a walk yeah you know and then their workout programs are you know get up and sit out in a chair like and that's that's I'm not saying that's bad necessarily but when it's presented as this is what you should be doing because you're old and you need to take care of yourself That is bull crap that is the exact opposite just because you're 50 55 60 65 70 80. you still need to give your body an adequate level of stress and challenge in order for it to adapt to the lifestyle that you want to live if all you ever want to do is sit in a chair then yeah you got to do everything all you got to do is for your exercise to sit in a chair yeah if you actually want to get out and go high on Hikes and ride bikes and do things that are fun and be active as old as possible and you need to do those things and make your body adapt and change so that it can handle that yeah what also if you want to be able to sit in a chair but how do you get there from the bed you know you're going to need to be able to get up you're going to have to go as that and and bear your weight um you know when my father was unwell you know he had a number of hospitalizations and he was very unwell and he um you know was very sick for a long time and thankfully it was much better now but you know at the time when he was recovering who's so weak from this and he just started getting weaker and weaker and weaker and you know we didn't you know challenge him necessarily the way we should have we were trying to sort of take care of him uh but he was you know he was getting weaker and he was losing strength and was getting to the point that he was he was having difficulty getting up from a sitting position and he wasn't really addressing that he was just basically angry that that had happened and he just was sort of just refusing to just deal with it and I was just like listen dad you know you need to start doing squats you start you know just in and out of a chair something like that you know and and you need to rebuild these these leg muscles I I showed him that that study I mentioned with leg strength and you know he you know you you go into these stages of denial because you know he was he's a very he's a big guy he's you he's bigger than me in his in his prime and he uh was a very elite athlete in a lot of ways as well as you know Elite um academic and you know he's been very his body's always been there for him and now it's sort of failing and that's a really hard thing to deal with um but you know you can get it back and and so you know something I was like look Dad you can just you can sort of ignore this and you will you will get worse and you will get to the point that you cannot get out of a chair on your own and you will have to get those special chairs to sort of lift you out and then that won't even be enough and you'll have difficulty walking and you'll be a Falls risk and you'll be in a nursing home and that's your choice if that's what you want to do or you can do what I'm telling you right now and strengthen your legs and get going on it and just just understand what the issue is and then address it head on and then you'll be and then you'll be at home independent you know for decades and so you know however I said it at the time you know it wasn't wasn't verbatim it it you know was able to resonate with him and he and he started doing more exercises and started doing more exercises and and and so he averted that but it's really hard to get that back once you've lost it once you once you can't even get up stand up from sitting you are very very weak and it is very very hard to build that muscle because you can't even build your muscle by standing up you know so what do you do right you know like I mean how do you how do you want to hold your legs then you know prevent that as much as possible that's where I talk I talk a lot about the importance of both of these together and I like to split the two up and talk about how nutrition is a great tool to help um re alleviate remove uh internal stress and inflammation it's a great way to help us from the inside out and it can get us to what I what I call the Baseline of human health right when we were born we were healthy right but at the same time we were weak uncoordinated strong we couldn't walk there was a bunch of physical things that we couldn't do as a baby but nutrition can get us back to that same state we need the physical to help us manage external stress and be be resilient and survivable in any a physical world where we have no control over things that could happen there's a there's a vast majority of unknown things that could affect our lives so the physical aspect of it is what we need we don't want to be we don't want to be healthy babies at 80 years old we want to be healthy human adults who can do what what things that need to get done and whether it's age whether it's sickness uh I just had a client this morning um send me a text message someone I worked with in one of my challenges a couple months ago um she had to leave the challenge that she that she was doing with me because she was in chemotherapy and going through that process even with the the process of chemo she just texted me and said hey I finished my my chemo a couple weeks ago I just wanted to let you know that even through all of that with your challenges with everything that's been going on I've lost body fat I gave muscle mass I'm increasing my my strength in the p in the gym like all these things are happening in a positive because even through dealing with chemo and cancer and all the other kind of stuff she's dealing with she focused on building muscle and keeping her body as strong as possible so and she's she's over 40. so it's it's they're over 50. so she's doing all this stuff after menopause they all this stuff is supposedly you're old you've got menopause you've got cancer you're in chemo you can't do any of this stuff but when you focus on the right things Anything is Possible yeah absolutely well I think that's a that's a good um message to to leave on is just that you know look you get busy living you get busy dying you know and and so yeah you want if you want to be in this for the long haul you know you need to be active you need to be going you need to stimulate your body into uh realizing that it needs to maintain it body's very efficient you know if if you don't need a process if you don't need to to you know divert energy to certain muscle group it will it will take away resources from that it won't maintain those and uh because it's efficient it's trying to maintain and um uh you know homeostasis and it's not wasting energy because if you're wasting energy you're going to die you're gonna you may run out of resources and and you're going to you're going to be in trouble and so that that's that's how nature works is it's it's conservative and so it's um if you're not stimulating your body if you're not stimulating your brain if you're not stimulating your muscles you will you will begin to lose them and uh you know use it or lose it it was a real thing and so uh that's uh just you know but at the same time it's not too late for most people most people except when if they're very very debilitated even they can can improve greatly with hard work but sometimes it's a lot of hard work and sometimes they don't like that but you know I I have patients that you know are very very uh disabled after you know traumatic brain injury or a bleed or or cancer or brain tumor or something like that and some of these people are very unwell and you're looking at them and I'm like oh my God this person is never going to leave the hospital they're never gonna they may not survive and they probably won't leave a nursing home and they just slowly but surely just making a little bit of traction a little bit of Attraction a little bit of traction then nine months later they walk out of the rehab hospital those are great to see but they take a lot of work and so you know but you can do it I mean sometimes people have you know physical limitations where they have some sort of issue or medical issue that makes it so they can't really but you know uh but if you can if you're in that group that they can you should you know and you and you can improve your life you can maintain your Independence you can you know build a life it doesn't matter if you're 6 70 80 100 you know like my my grandparents and and their parents they lived at home until the day they died in their mid mid 90s or over a hundred you know and you know this this is this is something that we've sort of forgotten that that's possible anymore but um and even then you know they could have gone longer if they were you know on Carnivore and doing all these other things you know but um but that's the thing it's just that you know it's very very important to get both of those you get the nutrition right but you also need need to keep your body moving you need to keep your body healthy from that angle as well yeah yeah cool all right Bronson well how do we how do we get a hold of you how do people follow you and uh and find you um and uh get more of your your uh advice and coaching yeah yeah all over the place um if you pretty much go to Google and search ultimate ketogenic Fitness something of mine's gonna pop up either my website my YouTube my Facebook group something there so that's the kind of the brand that I'm going under I'm on Instagram as coach underscore Bronson underscore keto um and then I have a book if you go go to Amazon and look up my book it's ultimate ketogenic in this book um that's out and available it was actually just it I don't know if it matters as much in Australia but I just came out with a Spanish version of that as well so not so much in Australia now they barely speak English here so it's uh yeah just stick to that but uh it's joking and uh but yeah awesome well we'll put all those in in the show notes and encourage everyone to follow your stuff and uh hopefully see you again soon man awesome thanks for having me appreciate it no problem buddy we'll see you soon [Music]