The Carnivore Diet: A Game Changer for All-American Decathlete Ryan Talbot

welcome to the plantree MD podcast with Dr Anthony chaffy 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 hello everyone this is Dr Anthony chap again here with another episode of the plant-free MD and today I have a very special return guest uh Mr Ryan talbet who's an NCAA uh division one track athlete from Michigan State and was um just finished up with the big 10 championships and is here to tell us about how all that went Ryan thank you so much for coming down yeah thanks for having me back on yeah not a problem man how have you been doing good like really good seriously yeah it's awesome and body has been feeling great recently right and so you've been I I think spoke to you maybe even nearly was it a year ago or maybe like eight months ago something well it was quite some time ago anyway and I think it was just after your last big 10 championship last year so it might have been actually about a year um and so you've been carnivore now I think close to 18 months now um over a year now and so so have you feeling with that how have you noticed that that's affected your training and your and your performance yeah I like I feel great and obviously I think there was definitely a period where I was getting used to the carnivore diet and like within those first like six months like my body was going through a lot of changes MH um now I feel like I'm starting to even out on those like changes and just like I'm at a really good level of functioning where I like kind of can understand what my body needs for competition and recovery and what I can do to improve that stuff and I can also listen to my body more when I'm like man I slept really bad last night like why did I sleep bad oh okay it's probably because I tried to eat a piece of cheese and like I just slept weird and I'm just going to cut that out you know and so yeah it's i' I've really found that just staying strict to carnivore and just meat and salt and water just like it's the perfect combination for me awesome and so obviously you're not you're not taking any cars but you're you're a decathlete and so this is one of the more rigorous uh sporting events that that there is and you're one of the top athletes um and so how how is that training without carbal hydrates how have you felt um or or did you feel a difference or you just feel as good or better or or what what did you notice yeah on your face and just die without carbs yeah I I definitely feel better and it's I think one of the biggest things is like not having to constantly refuel throughout the day either at practice or competition you know like before carnivore at practice it would be like all right I got to get my protein bar in before I work out and then after my workout I got to get some like applesauce in or another protein bar and then go lift and then after lift I got to drink this like fake protein shake in a bottle and all this stuff and now it's just like I'll wake up and like all right am I practicing in the morning I guess I just won't eat until after practice or practicing in the afternoon I'll eat a little something before then practice come home eat a big meal and I just find that I have like I'm not eating as much in quantity now and I'm getting like way better results and and then also now that my body's metabolism is like working a lot better with burning fats my energy just lasts for days nice yeah and have you noticed that your your your performance in like your speed and your you know in the different sorts of events are are your times getting better on these sorts of uh things as well yeah yeah for sure I I know that like right now my body is just getting so strong it it feels like so much easier for me to build strength than it ever has before um like I'm a tall guy and I've always been pretty skinny as a kid and like I I bulked up a little bit but it was kind of like a fake bulk it was kind of like that carbohydrate filling your muscles bulk that you get and then after I switched to carnivore I leaned out and started adding like lean muscle mass and so like I got stronger and I lost weight and so my strength to weight ratio was just like through the roof now I'm sprinting better and I'm jumping higher because of it and it's it's so helpful nice hey guys just want to take a 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 out using my discount code Anthony to get 10% off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25% off total all right thanks guys so uh how' you do at the at the Big 10 uh Championship this year yeah this year I came in second place which was like a huge achievement I'm super happy to come back two years in a row placing in the top three yeah that's awesome and you won it last year didn't you yeah I did that's so badass man and like was the thing too um um you I think you started carnivore was that pretty much midseason uh was it or or when did you start it was it was going from indoor season to outdoor season last year so how did you how did you notice that transition did you notice a lag in your performance uh periodically and that came back or did you notice um you know that you just started getting better right away yeah I like people talk about the keto flu and stuff like that and I felt I I definitely felt that for the two weeks of where your body aches in weird spots and you're just getting rid of all those like excess carb stores that you have and um I like I feel like I felt bad but it didn't affect my performance at all okay and I I was able to still perform very well and then as soon as I got through like the keto flu everything was just like through the roof and like I was just running faster and I was getting a lot less lactic when we would run our workouts M and I I would say that's just because my body was able to recycle the lactate a lot faster and also it was just dealing with a lot less toxins and crap in the first place so I just didn't have as much to process um so yeah my endurance went through the roof I was sprinting much better I got way stronger in the gym and like yeah my energy would just last for so long nights and um so you you didn't notice that your energy tank some people would notice that maybe they um you know the energy they wouldn't have quite the same amount of energy when they're sort of Keto adapting yeah yeah I like maybe but I didn't I didn't really stop working out because I would feel tired and I think that's probably because like before going carnivore I would get that feeling of like man I'm just I'm tired I'm run down you know your insulin jacks up and you go very like parasympathetic and you're super tired and lethargic and like that's kind of like how it would end up feeling a lot of times I practice cuz I would just boost my blood sugar up before I'd go practice and then I wouldn't feel as good you know and so now that my like I'm not jacking on my blood sugar and I'm practicing and like I just feel great and so like it wasn't a big change for me yeah awesome and so so what are you eating uh now at the moment yeah so um now I eat about I'll say six eggs in the morning with bacon or some ground beef and then I'll have a lunch and that'll usually be like a pound of ground beef with a little bit of collagen because I just love the benefits of getting collagen in there um and then steak and eggs six eggs again for dinner and that's pretty much it and also like like I said like I don't I don't need to eat all the time and so sometimes like if I wake up in the morning skip breakfast I'm fine skip lunch I'm fine you know it's like I usually I'm always eating a steak in eggs at the end of the day though nice yeah and um so have anyone anyone on your team or your your teammates and anyone around you have they started taking up uh some of your advice on the diet sort of thing um I think a few people have been maybe eating a little bit more meat but it's it's hard to try and change an athletes perspective you know especially when they're they think that they're doing good they think that they feel good they think they're healthy you know and they're not going to want to completely throw everything out the window and I also think a lot of people are have a sweet tooth you know and they telling them oh you can't drink Gatorade anymore it's like w i don't I don't want to not do that you know I don't want to live in that world you know yeah and people look at me and they're like oh like you got to loosen up man like it just is like it seems like a disordered eating you know you're not doing any of this and I'm like dude like I just I feel so amazing right now that like I have no desire to change anything about this yeah yeah cows have disordered eating too they're so they're so particular about what they eat like they need to Branch out and E some Skittles or something like that that that's what's healthy you know I mean that's funny how how people think about these things they don't actually even realize what they're saying yeah yeah um so you were saying too that you had um a bit of an issue at one point because you you didn't get your you're like you were eating a lot more protein and and weren't eating as much fat um yeah how what what did you notice that that did to you and and how did you fix that yeah so I think I got to a point where I was eating just a lot of ground beef and the ground beef that I had we usually will like rotate and get um like a cow here and there and it was a grass-fed cow so it was pretty lean ground beef and for some reason the the butcher like didn't put as much fat in as we wanted and so it was probably like a 9010 ground beef oh wow yeah and I was just eating a lot of that ground beef and I got to a point where I started to kind of feel like not as much energy I was feeling a little lethargic almost similar to like just like a high insulin response you know and maybe a little bit I don't know I just I didn't feel like I had as much energy I was definitely getting very lean as well um and it was just getting hard to kind of like practice yeah um luckily I was always learning and researching about the diet you know and I found a video talking about like it's all about the fat you know carnivore diet is great but it's it's all about the fat the fat is what gives you energy you know you see all animals are going to go for the fattiest Cuts first they're not going to go for the lean Cuts that's where all the like the energy is and so I just increased my fat I started using a lot more butter in my eggs and I'll go through almost like a stick of butter a day just by cooking eggs in it um getting like the fattiest cuts of rib eyes and just increasing the fat in my ground beef just all that stuff and also adding bacon is huge um all all that just increased my fat intake and I started feeling amazing again and it just got it just got so much easier nice so you know since then your energy levels went back up you're able to train harder and it was really just increasing the amount of fat yeah yeah yeah and like you can you can get away with eating like high protein low fat only for a little bit you know like your body's going to create what it needs from the protein through like gluconeogenesis but it's it's a hard process and it's not going to want to do that forever yeah so I I was able to survive but it wasn't like I was thriving again yeah and you you weren't obviously you know as a high performance athlete like you need to be at your best you're pushing yourself to extraordinary degrees and and you notice when there's just you know a little [ __ ] in the armor yeah I think the carnivore diet has definitely helped me become like very in tune with my body where I can feel those changes very quickly yeah you know as I as I try to remind people fat is not just a calorie Source it's it's an essential nutrient you have to have it and you have to have enough of it and uh you need enough fat you need enough protein you need enough lean you need enough fatty um you do need both and so you know you can you can do away with one or the other for a certain amount of time but yeah you're right you know especially if if you're at the at the upper echelons of of of pushing yourself mentally and physically you know you do need to you do need to optimize this and just get it as perfect as possible and so finding that right that right amount uh for you is really important yeah and I don't know any carnivores who struggle to get enough protein in the day you know yeah and that's like that's why I bring it up is because I think a lot of people hear carnivore diet and just eat meat and like it's like well carnivore diet is like meat and fat you know the fat is key like you said and there's so many fat soluble nutrients that are just so vital for us humans you know yeah and yeah and some people ask me was like well you you take protein supplements you like you really don't need to you know if you look at you know just the amount of of meat that you're talking about there the amount of eggs I mean you're talking you know at least a couple hundred grams of protein if not more you know there's totally bioavailable and so you know you're getting you're getting more than enough and probably you know probably you know you know 300 or plus grams of protein and so yeah so it's not um it's really not not a problem getting enough protein yeah and I think too like I I know because it's the the type of athlete that I am I'm going to try to do everything that I can give my body everything that it needs to be successful and so like I I remember earlier in the year I was like supplementing and like I was taking a little bit of vitamin C just because I know like oh yeah vitamin C is good for Recovery that's what you hear you know and then like a few weeks later I got this like huge headache and I was just so so thirsty I was like what's going on and I was like also like man I have this weird Tangy taste in my mouth like like what is this and and then I started doing some research and I was like oh okay like I'm just like offing so much vitamin C from my body right now like it's like seeping out of my like saliva glands and I was like you just like I got rid of it I stopped taking it and like started feeling way better and like it's just you don't need the supplement as on the carnivore diet no definitely not and and that's one of the things too is that excess vitamin C can actually get converted into oxalates and oxalic acid and you can actually you know cause harm to yourself by doing that and uh you know and the the anti-inflammatory and or um antioxidant effects I should say of vitamin C actually largely been taken over by Ura which is a breakdown product of uh protein amino acids and so when you're eating a high protein diet high car you know and and a lot of people uh sort of stickler when I when I say that you know and it's they say carnivore is a high fat diet moderate protein but I mean high fat as in higher or sorry high protein is in higher protein than anyone else is eating because it is it is higher relatively it's a high protein diet but it's not proportionately in in the in your calories high protein di but it's more protein than most people are are eating and so if you're eating you know two three times the amount of protein than than other people are eating your Ura is going to be higher than theirs as well and that's not a sign that your kidneys aren't working because your creatinine can be low and that's that's a sign of your of your kidne is not flushing these things out properly but your Ura is up your creatinine is low well that means your body's just has it high for whatever reason and that actually works as a really good antioxidant and it's a it's a better mechanism of do of uh of filling that role than vitamin C which is why we don't need as much vitamin C yeah exactly and it's nice to with the carnivore is like now I really trust my body to do what it needs to do you know and so if I have like this high blood marker my body is doing that for a reason and I don't need to worry about having like my liver failing or something because I know that I'm giving it all the nutrients that it needs and I'm doing all the healthy things nutritionally that is going to be best for it yeah absolutely um so one of the things that that everyone loves to go on about they're like okay well it looks like you're doing well now but obviously you know your blood are going to be horrible and you're going to die so I believe you just had some blood work done and you compared it to your Bloods from last year did you mind telling us about that yeah so um I guess it was right like the summer before I started the carnivore diet I was feeling awful and that's kind of like part of the part that led me into the carnivore diet but um I got my blood work done to make sure like everything was all right and they looked at all my blood markers then and they were like yeah like you look healthy everything's fine um and one interesting thing too is like my testosterone back then was at like 740 which is like a pretty decent number for what they consider to be the general norm and um so yeah they were like you're fine like we don't know what's wrong with you and I was like well something's wrong with me but oh well finally carnivore diet figured out oh yeah your stomach was just messed up and you felt like crap so whole year of carnivore and I'm like all right time to retest and see how my blood markers are because we can really get a good look at my health through my blood markers and like everything looked amazing I know the doctor was like really trying to find something he was like like maybe maybe this is going to be bad maybe this is going to be bad you know like we expect to see some things here you know and everything everything was Stellar you know and one of my favorite markers that improved was my testosterone marker and it went from 740 in the previous to now it's like 1,160 so it increased by like 400 and like somebody who I I already thought like oh yeah my testosterone's good and like as an athlete having high testosterone is super important and so that was just awesome to see that it actually improved um and now the funny story is my the doctor saw that and he's like oh okay well like this is good but like we're worried that you could fail a drug test or whatever and so I got randomly selected to do a drug test the next week and um I he like he called me later and he was like yeah you passed 100% like there was like you weren't even close to like failing the mark because they were just measuring ratios and he's like you're 100% good yeah yeah so I was like wow like that just I mean you're naturally increasing your testosterone by like 400 like you just don't really hear about that yeah it's also it's also nice too it's like oh oh by the way yeah you pass you're really good oh oh really I'm not I'm not taking steroids yeah I didn't know that thanks for telling me you know I told you that dick um what what other sorts of uh tests did they do do they test um like vitamins minerals other hormones things like that yeah yeah they um like a CMP a CBC um I got my C reactive protein measured as well which was another one of my favorite markers that they measured because the like the low range is like 0.1 and most people are sitting in between like 0.1 to3 and I was at 0.2 nice so it was almost non-existent yeah so yeah and and that's and that's you know so much for people who say that red meat causes inflammation it clearly clearly does not yeah and um yeah but like literally all my blood markers were good and a lot of athletes struggle with getting enough like fairy and having like high iron in their blood mine was great and it and like that's another thing people say is oh your iron's going to be like too high because you're eating too much red meat it wasn't it was in perfect range and my body was doing what it needs to do you know yeah absolutely you know and it is great you were talking about you know how testosterone is is so important for athletes um and just just for health in general you know we have obviously as we age our testosterone levels go down I think like testosterone levels in are down by like 50 55% since the 1970s so you know that's what people are saying is just like you're not half the man that your grandfather was and and that's what they're talking about that like you know our grandparents had a much more robust and healthy hormonal profile both men and women and uh you know we're not we're not really seeing that now and fertility rates are down by 55% as well which I don't think is is a is a coincidence I think those are tightly related um and uh so we see this as well as we go older excuse me as we grow older obviously our hormonal Health changes and it starts starts dampening down and so you know men don't feel as good and they go on you know testosterone replacement therapy and things like that but you know I have a number of patients quite a lot of them um you know who are interested in that sort of thing and I would say like why don't you try this first and see how you go because you may not even need it um by the time you you get a few months in and just see how you feel and I think without fail they've all increased their testosterone by I mean these people in their 60s and 70s some of these guys increased their testosterone by 30 40% in in in three months on a carnivore diet some of these more some of these guys have like doubled their testosterone and one guy was like in his late 60s he like early 70s good he was very good young 70s very healthy guy was um you know concerned about his his uh his health and didn't really drink or smoke or anything like that but he was like 70 and he increased his testosterone up just massively like overd doubled it and he was just like teeming with like like this is amazing and so that guy like did not need any sort of testosterone replacement and he's just like just want to go to the gym and just work out you know I feel like a teenager again and like his testosterone was that of of a teenager um well certainly a teenager now and um yeah and so like just it just makes a huge difference and this is this is one of the biggest advantages in athletics that no one is using you know that like you can you can naturally and legally and safely physiologically increase your testosterone by 400 points you know and uh and why aren't you doing it like this is and it helps your body in so many other ways as well there's so many other advantages but just that one I mean people risk their careers and their health by you know injecting steroids or taking these supplements sometimes dangerous supplements because who knows where they're coming from um if they're getting it sort of on the black market and they're you know and and just just to sort of get their testosterone up artificially all you have to do is eat meat and not eat all the other crap and then you get your your testosterone up by huge amounts I I don't know why more people are not jumping all over this and I just think it's terrible that we're starting to like normalize older men doing trt and getting on testosterone in their a well as they age because they think oh oh as you age your testosterone decreases yeah maybe like 100 points not 500 like 800 points it's not going to it's not going to drop that much you know something's wrong if it's dropping that much yeah and you know and now they're talking you like kids like younger kids and young adults like their testosterone is so low they're talking about oh we need to give them testosterone replacement or yeah yeah yeah but just like why wouldn't you be thinking about what the hell is going on you know that that's causing that right but the problem is when you have a product at the end of the line that's that's usually what you see you see you see the light at the end of the tunnel is is uh this product that you're selling as opposed to you know what's the train passing through this tunnel okay at this this is this is your metabolic health and this is something that's that's causing harm and so you're just distracted on the end goal and you're just and you're not focusing on anything else and this is you know statins and other drugs and things like that I mean this is just is what drives the research and the and the recommendations is just you have a product um also you know I guess you know not a lot of doctors understand that you just even just putting people on a ketogenic diet uh they're going to improve their hormonal Health both men and women and certainly eating a lot more meat and fatty meat you're definitely going to improve your hormonal Health quite significantly um and so maybe people just don't know that and they're like well I don't know but kid's not producing a lot of testosterone so I guess we should give them seven testosterone and I think that's that's a really bad way of doing things I think that you you really have to you have to investigate like why the hell is this happening and you what are we doing that is causing this to be a a growing Trend in just lower and lower and lower testosterone levels in in young men and I think like eating the meat and the fat is just so good for building all your hormones but also when you avoid all the toxins you avoid the seed oils you avoid all the estrogen inducing chemicals and stuff and and you're avoiding the plants like all that is going to help your body not get rid of all your testosterone and destroy you and like create all this extra estrogen that's going to lower L your testosterone yeah yeah absolutely and you know we're just eating things I mean the plants are trying to disrupt your body in a number of ways and part of that is with uh disrupting your hormones and making so you can't breed and if you can't breed then you're not going to you're not going to raise little kids that go and eat that plant you know and you're gonna teach them eat this [ __ ] plant you know it's good sorry for swearing you know but but that's the thing you know if they if they stop you from reproducing then that is a you know a a a sort of a lateral move where they they stop you from uh stop more animals from eating them and if you're just not getting as much nutrients out of them if you're not getting as much nutrition out of them as another animal would from another food source then you're not going to be as competitive in surv in the game of survival as another animal is and so you might die out your line may not be as successful and that other line that's eating other things is going to be more successful and so that's in the in the plants advantage to to sort of steer steer things off and steer uh you know the The evolutionary path down a different angle just say stay away from me just go over there and the ones that do go over there are the ones that survive more and so you know that's that's benefiting the plant it does not benefit us yeah yeah and also like huge studies are out there showing like as testosterone decreases like mental health problems increase and like people are suffering with depression and anxiety at like they're it's huge nowadays and you got to think that's definitely a problem you know yeah it's just it's just it's just showing up everywhere and especially like for athletes like the mental side of sport is super important for performance and like if you can't mentally have that confidence in yourself to perform like it's just going to be so much harder yeah and and even lower CL lower LDL cholesterol is strongly associated with depression and anxiety you know and and that was actually another thing there was a study that came out I think it was last year maybe last year the year before and and actually showed that that dietary cholesterol was um an independent factor in in muscle growth so you know the more dietary cholesterol people were getting in um the the easier was for them to to put on muscle as well and you know that could be hormonally it could be because you're getting things along with something you know other things that are going to help that out but U but either way you know they they found that higher dietary intake of of cholesterol actually associated with with better muscle growth in a in athletes yeah yeah as you found that I I remember talking to you and you were umh you were saying that it was actually you were it you were finding it it was too easy to build muscle and that was actually like counterproductive it was like you were having a hard time not putting on so much muscle because you didn't want to be as big as that yeah earlier ear funny was was a I think probably a good problem to have the opposite but like I as a track athlete I love to be strong and fast but if you're too heavy like you're going to slow down a little bit you're not going to jump as high and all that running and pounding on your body you know imagine putting on a 5B weighted vest a 10 pound weighted vest and going and jogging a mile it's not going to feel as good you know and so I like had easily bulked up to like 215 during the year and I was like man I need to like lean out a little bit for competition because like imagine taking off 10 pounds and then running you know it's it's going to feel so good you're going to run so much faster you know but I'm not trying to do it in any unhealthy way like forcing myself to like eat food or restricting calories or anything like that like I all I simply did was instead of lifting heavy weight slowly I just started lifting lightweight quickly and all the running that I do my body easily shed the weight and kept the strength as well which is really nice and so I was able to get back down to like 208 207 like very very easily and I didn't even change how much food I was eating nice yeah and um I remember talking about like different um you know because obviously you know your your strength to weight ratio that's that tells you how fast you are you know if you are this strong and you you two people that are the exact same strength and one ways more than the other person that person will be slower um you know if taking into consideration technique and things like that in sprinting um but you know if if you're both track athletes obviously you're probably going to have decent decent technique so after that then you're going to it's just going to come down to strength to weight ratios um I think we were talking about like the the hex bar deadlift like the trap bar deadlift as well did you you sort of look into that because there was a guy there was a trainer for um you know as I was telling you for people that don't know there's a there's a trainer uh he trains all the does all like the combines so he basically takes like the top eight sort of prospects for the NFL Combines and he only only trains with those top guys and it's like something like you know 20 grand or more or something like that for like an 8we course that he does with them he just just trains with them and and he gets them like like these guys get get taken up and like there was one guy who was a quarterback and he dropped his 40 Time by 05 seconds dropped him down from like a 0 to a to a 45 as a quarterback you know and um and so he was doing that and like his main state was the hexar deadlift um but just doing just just lifting up and then dropping and what that was doing is that increased the strength but it didn't tear down the muscles and and cause it to rebuild and hypertrophy so you stayed the same you stayed the same weight but you got stronger so you're your your forced to weight ratio improved yeah definitely and that's something that I've really been focusing on too recently is um as a decathlete you're just training all the time there's not as much rest as you would like it to be and trying to make sure that I'm not destroying myself in the gym to where I can't perform well on the track is really important for me and so like you said just trying to do more of those um concentric lifting where it's just really activating your nerves and getting your muscle fibers to contract but you're not damaging them and so you're able to recover much quicker and it's just all about that neural recruitment is super benef icial and it's helped me also to where my muscles are getting stronger and I'm not getting heavier and so I can run faster nice so you have noticed an improvement with that yeah for sure and we do we do something like similar to this um the hex bar but we'll do it with a squat where it'll be like on the rack and you just get under it and then you just pop up and then let it drop back down and that's it's it's super huge for just you feel so bouncy afterwards yeah yeah I think that um they were saying that like just doing that actually as as a as a warmup people performed objectively better in plyometric uh sort of exercises and then in in the 40 you know they did that they sort of tuned it up and their AC and fibers were sort of more locked in so more of the muscles fibering fibers were firing at one time or higher percentage of the muscle fibers if people don't it's it's technical but if you look at if you look at a a you know sarir like which is um you know just like a a muscle fiber under a microscope um it it has these little teeth that sort of lock up all the way down and so if you have just a few of those teeth locked up here you contract it contracts like right there but if you have most of those things sort of bound up then it's going to have a harder contraction and so by doing a few of those um you're going to bind those up and they're going to be just more ready to go and they're going to give a harder fire whereas if you when you do the the eent where you sort of go down where the the muscle is locked but now you're you're lengthening the muscle against resistance while you're you're trying to resist it those active fibers are still stuck there and they don't actually release and come down and and and catch down they stay there and you're basically just ripping them apart and so that's why there's actual breakdown at a at a molecular level microscopic level um and then that has to rebuild and repair and things like that um you're not doing that you just you're just sort of bang hit that big contraction then you drop it and then it stays up there it stays like totally locked up and bound up and and this is also why a lot of people don't stretch a lot of like know top like athletes and I think like the the Netherlands uh national soccer team they they just don't stretch you know after especially after they work out they don't stretch and they're they're one of the top teams uh you know in the world um but yeah so that just having that those those linkages more bound up up and tight before you go and do a competition uh has apparently met with objective improvements in outcome have you have you done that as as a warm-up and then gone out and and run usually like we'll do it a few days before and you like the theory is that like if you do like a really big output like a few days before then kind of like that neural activation will stay with you for at least like a few days and so hope leads into that competition but I've heard of like I think the guy who has the high jump world record did like a huge squat the day of his like high jump competition and and he has the world record it still stands today and he's like got it in the 80s or something nice and so yeah like it it definitely works yeah well maybe try that you know just in your training you if you're going to go out and do some some runs or something like that just do you know I think I think what they were saying well this guy was saying was just like sort of like six to8 rep range or something like that or 5 to six or something like that of just the concentric just lifting up and dropping and just do like you know a few sets of that and then and then you get out there and just you can take off because you're not breaking down the muscle and you know especially as a carnivore you're going to recover you're going to be fine and so you know um and and he's noticing this benefits and just just people that are eating whatever they're eating and whereas I think would be doing even better yeah yeah that recovery aspect is huge yeah well you could even you can even try it you know just in your own training just see how you're running and see what your time is Bounce out a couple sets of the the concentric hex bar and run it again you know and see how you do you know like especially with the Sprints I mean it's hard to fake a Sprint you're just running flat out you know or you're and that's it yeah and it's it's one of the best measures of like muscle output too yeah yeah absolutely um and so you know just going back a bit like to your your test you're saying as well you got like a DEA scan like body composition scan um did you get that did you get like a number like be able to compare them or is just the the first one you got yeah so um I only got one and it was interesting is because I'm in um my major is kinesiology here at Michigan State and so I was taking an exercise physiology class pass and they were like all right we're going to use a dexa machine who wants to get scanned and I was like oh of course obviously I want that um and so I got my decks are red sadly I don't know how accurate it is because I kind of didn't fit on the table you know I'm six6 I'm two meters tall and I don't know the table is just not built for guys my size either way it only cut off like a tiny bit of my forehead um and the dexa Had Me At A 12% body fat which is like I guess some people would be like oh that's like kind of high you know for what we would expect to see you as like we think oh you're like a lean athlete whatever um and I'm pretty sure that just the dexa goes over the whole body and definitely like it incorporates your head into the calculation and we already know your brain is like 70% fat or whatever it's just so much cholesterol which is you know whole another thing about why cholesterol is good for your brain but um so yeah I got that done and then in the same day we were like trying to compare like all the different measurements of body fat and so I did the B pod which is where you sit in an air compressed tank and then they measure your displacement of the air and the body fat percentage for that said that I was around 5 to 7% so it was much lower and then the last one I did was the electrical impedance where you just hold on to two electrical sticks and it sends a circuit through your body to measure kind of like how much the current is impeded and the faster it goes through you the less fat you have and then it calculated my fat to be like I think it was like yeah it was like 4% body fat with that so all very good measurements I guess yeah and uh and you know my like you before we got on here sort of held that up um and you were saying it's like if it's if it's yellow like that's bits of fat and like we were looking at this like we cannot find any yellow on this thing me to grab that yeah yeah see this thing this was the yeah yeah this is the thing and this is the scale down here you can see the yellow is the flat and yeah so this this is saying that like you know if there's yellow on it then that's then that's fat and and they're saying that like 12% of that picture is supposed to be yellow but I didn't see any yellow yeah so like I don't know maybe it was just maybe it was just a bit um a bit wonky that day or you didn't fit on it quite right didn't know what the hell to do with it so that's that's kind of funny I would uh yeah maybe see if get another test because you know there's other there's other tests you know the those other tests um I've seen uh you know different people uh that have done that and they've found it matched up quite quite well with the dexa skan and like quite consistently it was they were quite similar so that having that big disparity you have to sort of Wonder uh what's going on yeah because you know the other two were quite similar and it was just the dexa scan that was actually the the outlier whereas normally they all sort of syn up pretty pretty well yeah yeah yeah so like what a DEX SC would see uh as well you know I mean that's the thing too because they would all account for visceral fat you know and an intramuscular fat so it's it's it's quite funny and I didn't I didn't see any fat around my viscera so no no and so well either way you know still very good very good numbers and still very healthy so that that's good um you know did your did your doctor uh bark at you about anything did he did he find something to get mad at you about your blood I mean he's he's pretty good I had um like there was two liver markers or maybe they're kidney markers but one was Alp which I'm pretty sure is a enzyme or something that your liver produces to help you break down protein and mine was high but also it was high compared to the general population who is malnourished so protein yeah so I I didn't think it was a bad thing I was like oh that's great it means I can digest protein better yeah um and then the other one was my creatinin levels which is just the byproduct of creatine that was a little bit high but also again related to protein and I don't think it's a bad thing I know a lot of athletes will have high creatinin levels just because we're processing and burning and going through so much creatine so it's just it's naturally occurring yeah and and you know at the end of the day it's generally the solution for that is just drinking more water sometimes that can be the early sign of dehydration it's just your your your uh kidneys are having to you know concentrate your urine you know more and more and more to to hold on to the water and uh and then it sort of reaches that capacity where it's like you know to hold on to enough water um you know you're going to have to sort of retain you're not going to just cycle these things through and get get as much of this stuff out as your body may want to and so just by increasing the amount of water you eat that just that just flushes out and and especially for athletes like yourself that are just you know working really hard all the time you're going to have higher breakdown of of uh of these different sort of products you people can get rabdom myisis which is like you know they run a marathon and and um and they don't stay on top of the the hydration things like that they can actually build up their creatinine so so high they can actually get a kidney damage and um and so you know that but the solution for that is just loading them with water and just putting them on IV drips and just water water water water water and you just sort of flush this stuff out and your body heals so you know either way it's not it's not a big deal you know just drink a little more water maybe yeah yeah and it could also easily be affected the morning of the test you know oh did I wake up and how much water did I have in the morning you know so it wasn't it wasn't enough to scare the doctor and he was honestly like oh yeah like this is a lot better than I thought it was going to be like all your markers were really good and he even offered he was like yeah we can retest in a few like months from now too and see if anything changes so I might have to take him up on that yeah well you know it's it's it's not a bad idea to sort of keep track of these things you know but for I think it's more for curiosity sake than anything else I never really just interested I I never really T text tested my my Bloods because I'm like well I I just understand what's going on physiologically this is the optimal way for me to be eating and so whatever my Bloods are doing that's what they're supposed to do that's the best they're going to do and so I don't really see the point in doing this but for for other people I'm like all right I'll check it and it you know they were all great and um but for me I'm not like okay I need to keep an eye on these things I don't you know I don't think that you you do need to do that necessarily unless there's a problem really exactly unless you're just curious no for sure and I think it's I think it's funny how like kind of going into the test I was a little like cautious of like oh like what am I going to see um because there's kind of like this weird false narrative going around the fitness world where it's like people on or people on Carnivore like had like lowered their testosterone yeah and I don't know where that came from I know that there was like a somebody was like oh like it happened to Paul saladine or whatever and I'm like gu is not really carnivore but oh well and um and so like I was kind of going in like wondering what my testosterone was going to be and I was just like so surprised to see it just increase by 400 and it was just awesome well you but that but that's that's what I see you know I mean I didn't test my testosterone beforehand but when I tested it it was it was in a great range and like I'm not I'm not in my early 20s you know and and my testosterone was still good um and um and that's what I see in patients I see their testosterone going up I see you know women their hormones uh optimizing as well and in athletes especially I see a testostrone go way up so there was um uh there was a few rugby players that I know that have gone mostly mostly carnivore maybe they're still having like a bit of carbs because they just still can't just quite get over you know like not eating carbs but you know a lot of them have and are just eating meat and those are the ones I've never felt stronger I've never felt better I've never you know been able to to to feel like that and feel that good and you and you know test their their testosterone the same thing they they jump up one guy jumped from uh like 500 and something up to like 1100 so it like like doubled you know and and so and that's the thing and then you you have to sort of ask and I'm sure a lot of people are asking oh they probably on steroids these are athletes that's what athletes do they take bunch of steroids but like in your case you got tested and and there's there's no dodging that you know NCAA is uh it's quite strict with that you know the Olympic Committee is extraordinarily strict with that and they have taken over USA Rugby um years ago so when I was when I was still playing before I went to medical school they had taken over uh and so you know the rugby players were under the same restrictions as Olympic athletes and so you go to these tournaments that none of the other other teams are restricted to but like the US teams weren't allowed to drink like monster and Red Bull right because that was against the the Olympic guidelines of performance-enhancing substances and all the other teams are just crushing like three cans of monster and Rockstar before they go out on the field and we're like okay this is a clear disadvantage and you know and the and the testing is is no joke you know we were talking about you had some some people you were talking about that you know that that sort of missed their testing dates and they're like thought thought that was unfair but it was probably because they were dodging these sorts of uh these things because they probably wouldn't have gotten a good result um it's very hard to dodge these things it's very hard like in the NFL um at least historically there were workarounds on how you could sort of you know work around that certainly in rugby uh when I was in the UK there were just days the coach just said hey you know those who you know you know are going to do well on like a random drug test probably don't show up on Tuesday and so like up and there's just like seven of us there everyone else is just you know just sick that day you know and that was when the the random testing would come in so you know this is there there are you know that is a thing in in athletics but you know in in in your case and in uh you know with the Olympic uh committee sort of things like they come to your house and they will come in and they will say like you're taking a test is taking it right now can't take it any other time or else you know that's it you're you have a like sometimes like if you say no if you like refuse like you can't compete for like a year or something like that yeah and um and they they take you into the bathroom and they watch the urine leave your body and go into the cup and it's like they have to have eyes on it the whole time and like it's super super super invasive and um intrusive I should say and and that's like and that's it so there it's not really there's not not much getting around that and you know so that's what people are going up against and they're and they're not and they're testing negative and they're coming through just like you but their their testosterone levels are jacking up as if they were taking these exogenous uh hormones and you're getting more results because it's happening physiologically and healthfully and in proportion in relation to the rest of the hormones and systems in your body and so you know this is this is better than steroids there I said it carnivore for I definitely agree and um I think it's funny too because I've heard the the rumor of like if you eat too much meat that has like hormones added hormones for the cow they add hormones for the cow if you eat too much of that meat you're going to test positive on a drug test that's not the case I eat way more meat than any of these athletes who have claimed to test positive because of meat and I did not test positive at all you know it's not it's not going to happen and it's nothing anybody needs to worry about yeah you know I would definitely suggest like all athletes who are like upand coming and young athletes you know if you're trying to do everything you can to be successful and you want to raise your testosterone like don't turn towards the Dark Side of sports and start looking into steroids you know do natural way first and like going carnivore can increase your testosterone on a steroid level you know yeah and and it increases so many other things your your physiological benefits are oh yeah 100% yeah so much more even just the not eating carbs I mean you know you were saying yourself you just have Boundless Energy you can just keep going and keep going and keep going because you're not eating carbs you don't have to keep refueling and refeeding and keep sort of feeding the Beast and throwing in you know more fuel on the fire you just go you know you have reactor as opposed to you know just firewood that you have to sort of keep keep chucking on kindling you know uhhuh 100% yeah so that's a massive Advantage for any any athlete you know a high endurance or or sprinters or uh you know more more uh you know well like the sprinters or lifters or that sort of intense intense sort of things like or or the the track or the distance Runners like it's going to help everyone yeah I'm just baffled that not more distance Runners are doing like a keto or carnivore diet because like it like it's just known everyone always is out here telling you like oh yeah distance Runners they burn fat that's why they're so skinny and you know well like hey if I burn fat why not just eat fat you know why would I eat carbs like that's just so much work for my body to turn that into fat you know and I I just know like if you're eating all fat and your body's burning fat it's just going to be so much easier on your body and you're not going to have all that excess carbohydrate crap that your body has to try and process and deal with and you're just G to have so much more energy yeah well you know at some point you're not going to be able to run a marathon on uh on your glycogen it doesn't matter how much you carbo load and So eventually you're going to run out of those carbs you're going to run out of that glycogen in your muscles in your liver and So eventually you're going to hit the wall and you're going to get to a point where you can't replenish that and you're going to feel like crap you're going to feel like garbage and you're either going to quit there or you're going to push and struggle and fight and vomit and then you're going to break through the wall you're going to start making uh you know blood sugar and ketones again and so you're going to start running on your fat you're going to feel great you go into the runner's high and second win why wouldn't you just start with that why would you just skip the carbs in the first place start out past the wall and and and be keto and fat adapted so that you're producing a lot of ketones and and you're very well a to utilize them and make a sufficient amount of of carbs for your for your endurance meat I I think that just conceptually makes so much more sense yeah and I it just baffles me that like people are still trying to do carbo loading when like the guy who invented it literally came back and he was like guys it doesn't work I was wrong and I think he's like keto now anyways yeah yeah yeah Professor Tim noes Yeah Yeah Tim noes he's like going against against everything he was saying about carbo loading all this and it just makes so much sense to me and I'm I'm thinking in my head too like if you if you try to caral load and then like I know a lot of these like athletes are warming up for like an hour an hour and a half before their event how are you not just like burning through all your carbs during that hour and then you come to the line with pretty much the same amount as like you would have if you just ate normally you know like I just I just it doesn't work and it's proven that it doesn't work yeah and and in clinical trials randomized control trials with athletes you know keto adapted or eating carbohydrates like they don't you're not losing anything you're still able to to push yourself uh and just make all your own your own carbs and energy and then they switch the groups and so the people that were eating carbs then went keto and vice versa and sure enough they found they're like yeah [ __ ] no like even then once they get keto adapted you know they're able to put push U push themselves to the same extent as when they were eating carbohydrates you don't need the carbohydrates and the added benefit being that you never run out of carbohydrates that you're always going to continually replenish your blood sugar and glycogen and that that is a major major major uh point that that people are seriously missing in this on the other side of this conversation yeah yeah and that's like one of the biggest things is during the decathlon as I see so many a athletes are like you have you have five events each day and so athletes will be replenishing their glycogen because they're they're not keto adapted right and so they'll just we'll like run the 100 meter and then during long jump they're already like you know like a cliff bar or like scooping down peanut butter and like all this stuff and I'm like oh my gosh like are you does that not just like feel like crap you know like I feel like if you're boosting your insulin it's just going to be way more inflammatory and it's going to be a lot harder to be an athlete if you're inflamed you're going to be way more injury-prone and then also if you're eating food it's boosting your insulin you're getting parasympathetic you're going to be more relaxed you're going to be more lethargic it's just so much harder to try and get yourself hyped up to compete again you know and that's this is like only the second event and you got a five six hour day ahead of you you know and then you got to go to sleep and recover as much as you can to come back the next day and I'm just finding so much benefit with like I'm not going to eat anything you know I don't need to eat anything during the competition and my body's going to create all the energy it needs and also all of the benefits of not eating through like being a little bit fasted or even getting the benefits of like having ketones in my blood is very anti-inflammatory and I'm going to actually recover better that night and come back back fresher the next day yeah and um you know also like I mean even even like all the different sorts of um ways that this can sort of slow you down you just eating you're going to divert blood to your digestive tract yeah that blood is now not available to your muscles straight forward you know so you know you want all of that blood available to your your brain and your and your muscle so that you can just go and um you know that's why I always noticed that I never felt I always felt much better when I didn't eat on the day of a performance so I was I would i' never eat before and every time I had like breakfast or something like that even if it was like like a night game it was like 7 o'clock at night and I would always thinking oh maybe I should eat down earlier and this down the other every time I ate I regretted it every single time I ate I regretted it and yeah it just it just it was never the same it never had the same energy never never felt as as explosive as I as I did otherwise uh which sort of you brings you the point you're getting ready for Nationals now for the for the D1 Nationals um what what is your game plan or maybe you know what did you do at the Big 10 and during competitions do you eat during the day what is your what is your routine as far as as what you're eating on comp during competitions yeah so um like usually before competitions depending on how when the competition is like I like to if I can have like 4 hours before the competition I'll eat something but usually it's a lot more fatty and I like getting a lot of fat in there obviously there's going to be protein with the fat um but I won't like stuff myself full you know and like eggs are super easy and especially like when we're traveling getting in a hotel I'll just buy a carton of eggs and just crack like some RS and drink drink it down you know nice and it's super easy and then like for the rest of the day I'm just going to listen to my body and if my body's like dude we're starving we need to eat then I have pkin um and I can eat that and be satiated a little bit with it but usually I don't ever really feel like I need to eat and like this past competition like both days I was just kind of like I was like talking to my dad and I was like you think I should eat and I was like I don't really I'm not hungry like and he's like yeah you have enough energy to like continue competing for the next like three days so like you're fine and I'm like I'm like yeah that's true that's true so like I'm I'm good and it's it's nice too because I got my dad on the carnivore diet and so now like when I'm at track meets and stuff he'll like bring me a steak after I'm done competing aw either yeah like either either way like I don't I don't eat anything during competition really and I I just feel great and I don't feel hungry and I don't feel like I need to eat and then right after competing I'll just eat a massive meal and you get all that food in your system and then go to sleep wake up the next day and keep going you know yeah yeah awesome yeah that's and that's what I I always did too um yeah just big stakes and things like that and then and you sleep and you're just nothing you so even tournaments like seven tournaments where you'd be playing like the whole day um some of these things and sometimes there two-day tournaments sometimes one day tournaments but like you know sometimes if you're you're playing like you might you might play six games in a day for sevens it's shorter it's like 14 minute games but like it's ATT track me like it's just a dead Sprint the whole time and so it's a lot of running it's a lot of it's a lot of uh conditioning and things like that and so you play six games in a day most people are just just done in whereas like you know I would just feel still feel great you know and at the end of that and um you know and it's uh it's it's a huge advantage to be able to to to maintain your level of athleticism uh towards the end of the day when everyone else is is crapping out and that's and that's the thing especially you know and and the decathlon is is going to be the same thing it's it's you have to like you can do really well in the first couple events but it's not about the first couple events it's about all 10 you know so you know you have to be doing well on the the last you know two events of the day you know when you're tired and run down and it's been hours and you're just like out there in the sun and the hot you're just like Jesus you know that's when perform yeah like the Pall is the seventh event and that that event is notorious for having people like no height and so like if you know how if you don't clear any pvt bars you're going to get zero points for that event you're pretty much out of the competition you know and if you like if you feel like crap by then like you got to pull something out you know and um also it's like another thing is you have to make it to the end of the decathlon a lot of the times it's just a war of attrition and you can expect at least two or three guys each deaon to either stop competing because of injuries or like they know height or something and they just get burnt out and they have to stop yeah and so like the carnivore that has definitely helped me just be able to keep going yeah awesome so how how do you feel at the end of of the cathlon this year like um once you get to the end of the competition how's your body feeling yeah I mean like obviously if you put everything out there on the field you're going to feel like pretty destroyed but um like in in the reality of things it's like okay well like if I needed to keep going I probably could I could probably keep going and then and honestly like if I if I sleep that night and I wake up in the morning I usually feel like pretty decent and um it's funny because like after this pass to kathon I was like I want to experiment with like giving myself a little bit longer recovery than normal you know usually it'll be like two like it'll be like three or four days of recovery and this time I was like I'm just going to take it easy for like five to seven days and like uh yesterday I lifted in the gym for like it was like one of the first days back and I felt like way too good like I was like man I could just do so much damage right now yeah and so it's like it's like crazy how how much the body will recover and like I feel like I can recover really good in like two to three days if I give myself like a full taper of like four to seven days I'm just like all cylinders are firing like everything is great and another great thing too is a lot lot of people are worried about they feel like they always need to train and they feel like they always need to like be hitting it hard in the gym every single day I guarantee you like I could sit on the couch for like three four weeks of no training but as long as I'm eating a carnivore diet my body's going to stay in shape and I'm not going to lose the muscle mass I'm not going to lose like my like all the training that I have and I could probably go like pop off a really great deaon after like sitting for a few days and like I think that's the thing is like it's just your body's going to stay in such better shape if you're not in constant inflammation and also if you're giving it so much protein it's just going to it's going to keep the muscle it's not going to shed it off so quickly yeah and um yeah I I always noticed that yeah the recovery is so much easier it's so much better you can do so much more but yeah you're right if you do give your body like a while to recover like you just feel so much better because you can definitely over train you can definitely wear yourself down and that's not what you want to do it's harder on a carnivore diet but even then you know giving yourself an adequate chance to to recover like you're just yeah you're then you're just fully built up and just ready to crush it but I I have to like force myself because like after deaon two days after deaon I'm like all right let's get back to it let's start training you know but like I have to I have to look long term and say all right I got Nationals and weeks maybe we just take a few more days off and then I can feel really good to train this next week and then get ready for Nationals you know yeah and so it's like I just like I I can push myself way too quickly because I just feel so good yeah yeah and I'm just trying to like milk it and get it to be like Optimal like I feel amazing you know that's how I always want to feel yeah well hopefully you get get a good enough time to go into Nationals like that and just going to Nationals just feeling feeling like a superhero for sure yeah um so yeah so sort of tag on to that like you know after after the you know cathol obviously you put everything out there but like on the last event how do you feel on the last event like you you know like that you have to like put everything out there it's the last one how do you how are you feeling now as opposed to previously before you doing carnivore yeah and oh man the last the last event is always crazy because you have to run a 1500 as the last which is like just short of a mile yeah and um like to be fair I never I never ran the decathlon until like I I was carnivore for my first decathlon but I had done heptathlon before which are like the same same concept seven events you know but it's indoors and you're still running far you're running th000 met and if anything people will argue that the 1,00 is harder than the 15 because you're running at a faster Pace um and so running that 1,000 like the last event after two days of competition while like not doing carnivore oh my gosh like I just would hit a wall you know if I wasn't careful I would really have to pace myself because I'm like if I'm running too hard right now I'm just going to hit a wall and I cannot just I can't run through that wall I'm just going to be dead and like before that before that 1,00 you're like all right I got to eat like this sugary stuff so I can like increase my blood sugar and myself energy for the race and all this stuff and you know you're running and you kind of like your arms are starting to cramp up and like it's just it's not a good feeling you know um but like now that I'm on Carnivore and even like this past year running the 1,000 indoors like just feels so much easier feels so much better and it's just a huge confidence booster walking up to the line and knowing that like I don't feel like crap these guys probably feel like crap and like I know that I'm putting all the good stuff in my body to help me succeed right now yeah so it's it's it's definitely a game Cher just feeling good for that last event yeah so um how how did you do on this last last last round on the on the 1500 this oh yeah this last 1500 I had a a personal best oh nice there you go yeah I ran I think it was a 4 minute 43 seconds so it's pretty good I mean nothing compared to the guys who are training the 1500 every single day yeah you know um we'll train that about like once a week but still pretty tough and that would probably uh be pretty close to I know I I that would be probably a sub five minute mile if I continued for that next hundred meters yeah yeah definitely well that's awesome man well it's great that you can actually set PRS you know as at the last event you know as well you know as opposed to like in training where you're like you're set and ready and rested to go and just you know you're going pushing it out there that's awesome that you can do that at at the a competition yeah and it's it's great too because the event before that the ninth event or yeah the nth event the javelin I ended up throwing a PR as well so nice yeah that's really good man that's good well hopefully that that just continues and rolls into into Nationals and get enough uh rest for that um you talking about that as well you know just like the the clear Advantage this has on athletes and like why more people aren't doing I guess it's good for you you know because it's just like all right well don't don't take the the super Juice like I I'm not sto do that and um you but some people you know like in especially in like um austral Aussie rules or or Australian rugby in rugby league there's a number of guys that are revitalizing their careers by going on a carnivore diet and they're they're these guys who were these top top performers top athletes but they're just sort of in their 30s now now and they're their their bodies are slowing down and breaking down and they've just got you know years of of wear and tear and they're just like H they're just not they're not able to do as much as they were when they're in their in their 20s and then they go on Carnivore and all of a sudden bam they're out performing you know all their compet their younger competition and feeling amazing and I I certainly felt the same way you know in my late 30s now in my 40s I feel amazing I don't I don't have I have no like down I me I I just have you know Broken Wheel so I have my my knee swells up anytime I try to Sprint so I had to get surgery um hopefully trying to rehab that but like my body feels amazing like muscular um you know my musculature and and it's just like my spr I was playing a season here and I was dead Sprint like running back I was I felt great you know I was one of the fitter guys on the team and and you know you know still had had a lot of speed and I was like yeah this is great I'm just going to go people and this stupid KNE started swelling up so you know but there are a lot of people that are revitalizing you know their careers and um you know as as we were saying before this like you're going to start seeing you know the ages of professional athletes who do this getting older and older and older and extending their careers so this can not only give you a career in the first instance by helping your body work optimally so you have a clear advantage or at least your body's working as well as it possibly can so you putting in the hard work is then going to uh do a lot more for you and then you're going to have much more longevity you know you know barring any sorts of you know weird injuries you know you're going less likely to get injured also um but you know if your you know if your body works to this extent like you're just going to keep going and going and going you're in your your 30s and you're in your 40s and got 30 years of experience you know 20 years of professional experience you get into your 40s and 50s you have 30 years of professional experience no one's messing with you you know espec like these these skill things you Tom Brady actually did carnivore the dude would probably still be playing he wouldn't have had to retire but he went 23 Seasons you knowbly was getting better and better and better because he's just more and more experienced you as he went but you know he just gets sort of sick of it after a while he's just been doing that his whole life but you know he's um you know he'd easily be able to keep going another 20 years if he was on car I'd say it would always like bother me like as a younger athlete like coming up and like I would see like older athletes and like they weren't really that old they were like 24 25 talking about how oh I'm so old like it takes me a little bit longer to warm up like body's breaking down I'm like dude you're only like 25 like I don't want to be like that when I'm 25 you know yeah and like training two years in college not being carnivore I like started to see kind of like oh like yeah wow my body is kind of like not feeling good and this is a lot of training I can't handle you know switching on to carnivore now and like training two more years on Carnivore now I'm like man I feel like I can go forever like I can be I can continue training each year and each year and each year and more and more and more you know and like it like it makes me see like all these athletes who are going through their careers and just eating a high carb diet and pumping their body full of all this inflammatory stuff and then they can get away with it because they're like that top 1% athlete who has like they have good metabolism they're working out all the time like they get away with it but then as soon as they stop exercising everything starts to hit them and like these athletes just become un healthy because of these bad habits they picked up being an athlete that they thought were healthy and good for them you know and like but that by that being said it's never too late to turn it around like you said there's the rugby guys in their 30s like coming carnivore and then completely becoming different athletes and like even for me like my dad he's athletic and he loves working out but he was starting to struggle with all these weird issues and he's like kind of stopped working out out as much you know and then I was like Dad get on the carnivore diet do this do this now he's eating meat and he's just killing the game he's deadlifting like heavy heavy weight and it's just it's so awesome to see him doing that but like it's just it's just like athletes need to start to realize that your career doesn't need to end when you're in your 30s you know you can go in your 40s you can maybe even go into your 50s and 60s depending on the sport or whatever you know it's just there's such an opportunity for longevity in the sport when you're doing the healthy things nutritionally in eating carnivore yeah absolutely and like you know we're designed for it you know we were talking about you know before this you Alexander the Great's army a lot of these guys were in their 60s you know they ranged from you know in their 20s to in their 60s and they were on the front line holding a 13 foot steel spear you know just Lancing people fighting these massive armies and and they had a 50 to1 kill ratio right just nuts and these guys are just demolishing people and uh one of his generals that like LED one of his wings of his Cavalry you know not just out in the in the tents you know drawing up plans or anything like that but out there at the front of the cavalry charge this guy was in his late 70s I think he was like 76 or 78 he was in his late 70s anyway he was at the front of the line you know with a lance and a sword just hacking at people you know in his late 70s like you can't do do that you know unless you're in extraordinarily good shape but that guy had you know 65 years of military experience you know and so he was probably a stone cold badass and you know you don't you don't last six Decades of Warfare without getting killed if you're not a badass and you're Lu there's just arrows flying all over the place and things like that you know and you just just chaos but like there a survive that long I mean you know you're you're doing something seriously good and you now people are just decrepit by the time they're in yeah it is terrible and you don't want to see how many how many 76 year olds do you know who could ride a horse at full Gallop into a charging Battlefield like it's just not full armor with wielding a sword you know like it's not gonna happen you know and you know most most people in their 70s well not most but a lot of people in their 70s it's abnormal to have people in their 70s doing like water aerobics and like in a in a in a pool and just sort of moving their arms around because that's the most they can do you know or they walk they're mall mall Walkers and they walk around the mall because it's you know sort of warm and you know safe environment and they just they walk and that's what they can do they can walk and some can't even do that you know and it's just like it's it's very sad to see because you know your body's breaking down prematurely and you're and you're losing out on Decades of vital life Vitality right you know if we're designed to live 120 years which is what it appears we are genetically you know we should be that you know 70 year years old is Middle AG you know I was interviewed that lady uh you know Maggie a Rancher up in Canada she's an amazing lady she's 82 years old she's been a carnivore for nearly 70 years and a Rancher and she's only been eating meat she hated vegetables as a kid and like she like she just fought against her parents and she just only eat the meat and eventually her parents just gave up and like look she's healthy she's doing well she just wants to eat meat just just let her do it she's like it's just more trouble than it's worth and you know then she you know she was in vetenary school and she decided she didn't want to be a vet she wanted to have her own animals and have her own ranch and so she went out and worked as a ranch hand in the middle of nowhere and the only only thing you ate was what you grow grow or raise and so she was like well I'm not going to like work to grow vegetables like screw that I don't want to eat them anyway and so she just you know would just eat meat and so that was it that she did for for the rest of her time she had 10 kids and as a carnivore the whole time and all the kids were raised just on meat as well and she's 82 years old she's still a working Rancher and uh you know so she's out I was talking to her around Christmas is when we were setting up an interview was around that time and and she was saying that she was on Christmas day it was a blizzard was -40 and you know and she was like you know chipping out ice from the cow so you know don't die out in in the exposure so she's working 14-hour days on Christmas uh you know over Christmas andish sort of conditions 82 years old and that's that's just like you know I'm most 20-year-olds aren't going to be able to do that you know let alone and you know someone in their in their 80s she has blonde hair that is her natural hair she doesn't dye her hair that's just her hair you know agree it's dude she's 82 that's crazy and and she looks like she's like in her 50s she looks like someone in who like eating sort of normal and you know going out to brunches you know with the girls and having the pros and things like that and whatever you know someone someone like that like in their 50s like that that's what she looks like she looks better than that and it's like it's it's absolutely shocking uh you know how how youthful and and vital she is but that's how humans are supposed to be and that's how we're designed to be and that's how you can be if you just give your body what it needs to just do its thing you just give it what it needs and just leave it alone it'll take care of itself yeah and that's the thing just just trust the body you know it knows what to do the body doesn't want to self-sacrifice it doesn't want to have all these diseases it wants to survive you know and so just let the body survive yeah yeah absolutely and you know and especially you know as as a as someone working in those conditions or someone who's like a top athlete you you need to give your body exactly what it what it needs or you're not you're not going to make it you're not gonna be a brancher at 82 in a blizzard you know unless unless like everything's firing uh you know just right and you're not going to you know uh you know get on the podium at Big 10 and go to Nationals if not doing the same thing so you know that's just like a testament to what you're doing man and so that's great to see yeah and yeah it's it's just crazy to see some of these athletes out here who are very successful while they're eating High carbohydrate diets and that's great but like I don't know like what what could they be achieving without carbs like what could they be achieving going carnivore like maybe maybe even better athletes and um like you see a lot of like people in sports are like maybe like they're oh yeah your genetic anomaly because you got a longer arm so you're better at swimming or your Achilles is this shape so you're better at running you know and yeah like maybe those genetic anomalies are a thing but there's also people who are genetic anomalies because of their metabolism and they just happen to lock out and be able to handle carbohydrates better than other people and like in this world where we push the agenda that you need carbs to be a successful athlete of course the people who are going to work better being on a keto diet are not going to be good athletes and they're going to get washed out of the sport and so we're not really going to see as many people able to be successful you know on those high carb diets so I think it's important for people to know like if you're not a successful athlete just because and you're like you don't understand why like maybe go to carnivore try that out and see if you can fix your metabolism if you can fix your energy and you might all of a sudden start kicking ass yeah absolutely and you know and even you know even uh you know even even if you're you're not one of those genetic anomalies it's still going to improve you you're still going to have an advantage it's going to improve your your hormones it's going to get rid of this stuff strip this stuff out of your body that is just harmful to you is causing direct harm to your body increasing inflammation and damage and oxidative stress and and slowing you down and curtailing your performance and it's going to bolster your hormones and make you healthier and it's going to give you a better nutritional energy source so that you're able to run constantly on a better fuel source so you know even if you are you know is worth you know not as as good of an athlete for a number of different reasons this is going to give you a massive health benefit it's going to give you massive performance benefit and then you're going to be able to push yourself harder you're going to instantly be better or when you get keto adapted you will be better but the important thing you'll be able to push yourself more and you'll be able to push yourself harder for longer recover better and get more out of what you did and so if you keep pushing it and keep pushing it you will continue to become a better athlete and and more uh physically uh uh dominant um yeah and so you just just remember that and switch your diet start eating optimally and then just push yourself because you will be able to push yourself a lot harder than you've ever been able to push yourself before I'm sure you've noticed this um that like your just ability of like okay well let's really just floor this and just see see what I can do and just go at top Pace I'm not going to Pace myself I'm just going to absolutely just just you know pedals of the metal the whole way and you finally like holy [ __ ] I'm I'm not ble to wear myself out nearly as as easily as I did before I certainly noticed that and especially once I got into you know Season you know good in season shape like I I just I just really couldn't I really couldn't find my limit I was just I just I the harder I pushed the more my body gave me and you're going to be able to train so much longer too whereas like for me at least like I'm a I'm a great de cathete but there there are guys my age who are amazing like World level they've been they've been doing it for 10 years already I've only been doing it for like four you know and so if I want to last until 10 years from now like I got to do everything I can you know and so maybe maybe I'm not a World level de athlete right now but see me again in five years from now when I'm still healthy and I'm not broken down because I'm like too old to keep training at yeah and and yeah then we'll see where I'm at you know yeah yeah no kidding and and you have those years of experience and athleticism behind you yeah I don't I don't doubt you're well you know the thing is too you're you're you're still putting up big numbers and like you know if you're if you're you know getting on the podium in NCAA you know D1 competitions you know I mean that's where the best track athletes are right now yeah and so you know like you you know you have to be world class to get on there so I I wouldn't sell yourself short but you know but also but to your point you know you you know as long as your will and determination are still there your body's going to be able to do it and you're going to just keep getting better you're keep going to get fitter you're keep getting stronger you're going to keep getting more skilled and um you know and so you're only going to get better and I don't think I think it's just a matter of time you know uh before you know you you see yourself you know like you know going to Olympics if that's what you want to do yeah for sure yeah is is that the end goal is that what you're gonna uh looking to do I don't know I just want to keep training I'm having fun with it you know it's just you gotta fall in love with the sport and wherever it takes you it takes you you know and um but yeah so I am qualified for Collegiate Nationals I'm also qualified for USA Nationals nice um which after which that'll be a big meet and there's possibly a few other meets that I'll be qualified for um but we'll see what happens with that but either way that's another thing is like this season is turning into a really long season you know most people only do two or three decathlon a year like I have opportunity to do like four or five deons a year this year you know and so like you got to make sure your body can last through that too and it's very important yeah um so yeah just another thing that I feel like is really helpful being carnivore is like if my season gets extended and I want that opportunity to compete at a higher level like I can take that opportunity yeah absolutely well that's awesome man and um so when when is nationals um so Collegiate Nationals is uh like June 7th or something like that okay and then um the USA Nationals is around early July okay cool all right well I will do my best to get this out before then so people can can watch that and then uh and then try to uh support you on your on your um your journey to at Nationals and and competing there so um awesome Ryan great to see you again man it's been yeah no you're very welcome man thank you very much coming on really glad to see that you're you're still doing so well it's always great to see that um I was really happy to talk to you last year and see how well you were doing and then just you know seeing you again just thriving even more just getting you now you got a full year year and a half of carnivore under your belt and like and like I was I was telling you before you know it's just like you're really going to start seeing like really big improvements in your athleticism this year I I predicted and and it sounds like that's that's what you've been seeing so that's awesome yeah yeah well awesome thank you worries man so um you have uh social media or anything like that where people can follow you and follow your progress you know at Nationals yeah I'm pretty much just on Instagram justor rore tore and um yeah that's about it for now maybe I'll start making YouTube videos in the future and I feel like that would be fun to kind of document some of this journey because I feel like it's it's a little bit of a case study at this point seeing an athlete go carnivore and there's only a very few number of us out there so it's kind of a fun Journey yeah yeah well especially at your level and uh you know maybe maybe just one one question uh to finish off if if someone were you know an athlete did want to come to this you know um and and said okay well I'm gonna I want to try this for my own um you know my own benefit my own athletic performance what would you recommend they do so some people say they're worried because you know seasons are long and so you you generally catch this in the middle of a season you say okay well I want to do carnivore but I'm nervous about doing this in season what would you recommend to someone who's sort of in in the middle of the season and playing playing like a professional sport or or you know as a top you know Collegiate athlete would you recommend that they just they just go for it or would you recommend they sort of slot it in an offseason or if they have a couple weeks off yeah um I think the best way is to like just go for it you know because it's never going to be a good time for you you know you're always going to have a reason to not do it and so I think you should just go for it but as for like getting into it don't like I wouldn't cut cold turkey right away I would just slowly ease into it you know and there's a lot of great um sources out there of people giving suggestions on this and like slowly cutting your carbs down day by day until you're like 10 carbs a day then five carbs and then no carb you know um obviously increasing the meat increasing the fat intake and just understand that yeah maybe you're going to go through um a little adaptation period but it shouldn't affect you like crazy and like if you are a high caliber athlete you're usually going to adapt a lot faster than um somebody who's just not working out and so I would say just go for it and reap the benefits as early as you can you know because it's just going to keep compounding yeah awesome well perfect man well thank you for that and uh hopefully people will uh you know be able to use that to their advantage and hopefully you know they can get um they can get their names up uh on the on the scoreboard as well and and you know get into college on a on an athletes athletic scholarship and and uh you know be the next round of uh athletes at so Ryan thank you so much really appreciate you coming on awesome yeah thank you see you hey guys thank you very much for taking the time out to listen to what I had to say if you like it then please like And subscribe to my YouTube channel and podcast and if you're on YouTube then please hit that little bell and subscribe and that'll let you know anytime I have a new video out which should be every week if not more and if you can share this with your friends that would help me get the word out and let me know that you like what I'm doing thanks again guys [Music]