UFC Fighter BOOSTED His Game on the Carnivore Diet | Kajan Johnson

carbs are able to be utilized right away and you got to wait like 20 to 40 minutes of your training before you're able to really utilize the the fat that is in you. Yeah. I mean, it's cute, you know, but it's not true, you know? I mean, think about it for yourself, you know? Like I mean, does it take you 40 minutes to start getting your energy? No. Like, I feel like I can go right away. Yeah, exactly. because you can you know the thing is is that you know um you know we talking about fat oxidization you know this is slightly different than utilizing ketone bodies for energy body can use ketones like that and so you know ketones are derived from your fat and from fat oxidization but the thing is you're you're always doing that you mean it doesn't take 40 I mean if if we're starting from you know from a vacuum and you're just your organism was just starting up you know maybe but even then no you're right now burning fat you're right now utilizing fat oxidization and ketone bodies for the energy. Every single tissue in your body predominantly will utilize ketones primarily before ketones even your muscles but only when ketones are available. So when you have the reason we're running on glucose all the time, we think that glucose is the bee's knees is because no one has ketones and so we're studying all these things in the context of people who eat a lot of carbs, you know, and so you know your brain people say, "Oh, you need 120 grams of glucose a day for your your brain." No, you don't. You need ketones. When you have ketones available, even if you have an abundance of glucose, your brain will only twothirds of your brain will only run on ketones even though there's an excess of glucose, right? So, no gluc just ketones, right? So, that means your brain prefers ketones. That's a clear preference. It's only when the ketones start going down that it starts filling the gap with glucose. That's it's a backup energy supply. Um, same goes for your heart, same goes for your intestine, same goes for all your organs, same goes for your muscles. So the and you know and besides Yes. So even if and even if that weren't true, even if you needed to run on glucose or glycogen, you make glucose and glycogen, gluconioenesis. You're making glucose and glycogen all the time. You you were both in ketosis. We both haven't had carbs in a while. I haven't had carbs in nearly a decade. My blood sugar is normal. My blood, Last time I checked, my blood blood sugar was 84. Right? Where'd that come from? Right? You don't need to eat carbs in order to burn carbs. You make carbs. Your predominantly all of your tissue will run on ketones if there are ketones available. And there are few other things that you use glucose and glycogen for and you make those in abundance. There's no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Meaning that there there are there is the amount of carbohydrates that you have to consume in order to not die throughout the entire course of your life is zero grams. That that is that is a well established fact. You know there are entire civilizations that have never eaten a carbohydrate in their entire life right like the Inuit people living in the you know people crossing the landbridge from Asia to North America during the last ice age in the Arctic Circle 1500 miles north of what is now Seattle when Seattle was under a mile high block of ice right what what what sort of you know tubers and honey and breakfast cereal were they having up there you know it was nothing they were eating a bunch of like you know mammoth and walrus and things like that, you know. So, um, one of the things that the reason they say this, so you can't have you can't have like a high intensity sport, you know, like like you know, super high athlete like like you said, okay, yeah, if you're sort of running a marathon, you're at a slower pace, then fine. But if you're really ramping it up really explosive, you know, then then you need carbohydrates. The reason he's saying that and I this is this is really the reason I know this is what he's talking about is because um or you know this is like the origins of the people he's talking about and why they're saying that is because it's it's been around for a while that when traditionally when you look at athletes who are carb fueled right they're eating carbohydrates when you get up to about 60% V2 max you know really working hard but not just like just killing yourself Right. Um, you're you're burning fat. This is what they talk about like that phase two cardio and things like that. You get your heart rate and just this area and yeah, you're burning fat and you go past that, then you're burning carbs. So that's where they talk about if you want to burn fat, you got to stay in this zone right there, right? And so, well, if you want to go more intense, well, then you need carbs. Obviously, you need carbs. If you want to be an intense athlete, right? So, that those studies are with carb fueled athletes. When they've done that with ketogenic athletes, they find that people are still running on ketones and fat oxidization over 90% V2 max. And so even then in those groups, there was a Mweeni, what was it? No, sorry, that was um that was that was another one I'll get to. uh the Vollex faster trial. Volic and and Finny published a study in 2016 called fast the faster trial and they looked at um Iron Man and ultramarathon runners who were like elite world class guys who had already been doing keto for a long time. And they took some other ones that had been, you know, again, world class that had been doing um, you know, just normal carbs, right? And they found that they looked at their V2 max and um, and they found that the keto that the carb group, yeah, certainly it drops down, you know, they're not oxidizing fat after 60%. You know, it's really that the peak is around, you know, sort of 50% 45 50% um, V2 max for peak fat oxidization, which is also a lower peak. And then in the keto group, the fat oxidization peak went way higher and way longer. And so it wasn't they didn't stop oxidizing fat till around 92% V2 max. And so you look at the total amount of energy that they used, 90% of it was from fat, right? And um and then what would what would what else would it be like at that point? Like, okay, so sorry to cut you off, but so you're aizing fat as a ketogenic athlete all the way up to 92% V2 max. What about that less 8%? Then you need the glycogen for that. Yeah, but you make it. That's all that's all glycogen that they make. Glycogen and carbs. Okay. Their blood sugar is still right here. And these are keto athletes. So they're not they're not sucking down gels and packets and things like that, you know, and sugar water. They're just going they're just running on their fat, right? You know, like you know that guy Alex McDonald that ran five marathons in 5 days completely fasted, right? Yeah. Yeah. Hey everyone, really happy to announce a new sponsor for the show and for everybody down in Australia, Stockman Steaks, who are delivering highquality grass-fed and finished pasture-raised beef and other meats flash frozen and vacuum sealed to your door. Something I've been enjoying a lot of myself recently as well. They also have a great range of specialty items such as highfat keto mints and carnivore beef and organs mints with liver, kidneys, and beef heart as well. So, use code chaffy today for free order of beef mints or another specialty gift along with your order at stockmanstakes.com.au and I'll see you over there. Thanks, guys. So, that's the thing, like you make blood sugar, you make glycogen, and and the really interesting thing about the faster trial is they basically they had them do this three-hour run, right? So, they're on the treadmill just booking out for 3 hours, right? But they did muscle biopsies. So, they did a muscle biopsy before the run, after the run, and then 3 hours after the recovery, which pretty wild. They did a muscle biopsy right before. So, they said that and then they had to run for three hours after they just like did a biopsy out of their leg. Yeah. So they said it was like it felt like someone was stabbing them in the leg with a pen every every step they took for three for three hours, right? And um so in the carb group and the keto group, they looked at their that their muscle glycogen levels. They were exactly the same at every stage, right? And the carb group was sucking down sugar water gels, you know, sugar gels, you know, carb packets and things like that. keto group was just letting their body do its thing. Didn't eat any carbohydrates. And so they had, you know, their muscle glycogen, they all started the same level, even though the keto group didn't carb load. And then after the run, it went down, but they both went down the same degree. In fact, the keto group was slightly above. And then 3 hours later, they both recovered to the same degree, except the keto group didn't use any of it. And the real interesting thing about these trials, and there's several other studies that that show very similar results, you know, at least no detriment to going keto, and the longer you're on keto, the better the performance. And so the keto group starts outperforming once you become keto adapted. Now, there is a transition period and your body doesn't get used to running on ketones for at least a few weeks. And then more and more as the months go by, it gets better and better and better. And so, you know, um, in those trials where they actually let them keto, adapt, and they had all these benefits, the keto group was a at least performing at the same level or better. And the carb groups, these are elite athletes, right? And then some of them were like weekend warriors. But in the ones with the elite athletes, all these guys are like pre-diabetic. Some of them are getting diabetic because the amount of carbs and sugar that they're taking in, it's just it's just killing their metab. Yeah, exactly. It's just destroying the metabolism. Okay. So, you're getting performance. Well, we know from randomized control crossover trials done by Professor Tim Nos in South Africa that you don't get any better results. You'll get the same results at most and you're getting diabetes and you're getting metabolically issu sick and your guts bubbling all the time. you feel like you, you know, you need to vomit or take a crap in the middle of a fight, which is not a good time to, you know, be like feeling like you need to go and um, you know, and you have all these all these other added problems and you're and you're not performing any better, you know, so it's not really any benefit. you know, the the things that he your your buddy's probably talking about are things like the Supernova trial, um, which was done looking at keto and carb athletes, and they found same thing that V2 max was way higher, burning a lot more fat further on, but they said, but the actual output, you know, wasn't as good, like like the energy utilization wasn't as good. They weren't able to perform as well. Okay. Well, let's examine. So they say, "Well, it doesn't matter what this, you know, metabolism was, they're not they're not getting the performance." Okay, but let's take a look. They put these guys on a ketogenic diet and then like tested them the next week. So there's no there's no adaptation. They also just said, "Yeah, have some salt." You know, when you're first adapting to ketogenic diets, your insulin starts coming down and you lose too much salt. So you can get dehydrated. You can get, you know, hyponetutriic. you can get, you know, well, it's hard to get fully hyponetriic, but your salt levels can go down and that will absolutely affect performance as a high level athlete, right? So, these guys weren't given enough salt. They weren't controlled um uh for electrolytes and uh they didn't have any time to fat adapt, right? Whereas and and so that's what they found. Wow, they didn't get the same performance. Whereas if you go to Tim No's trial um where he looked at um recreational athletes um who and it was a randomized crossover trial meaning that they randomized the pe the participants and one was a keto group, one was a carb group. They let them keto adapt for 6 weeks at least. And then they did all these trials and tried to just crush them and kill them with all these sorts of things to make sure they didn't just have some residual glycogen and things like that that they were actually running on fat and and uh and running at that level. And they did that. So they did a series of 800 meter runs and they just did 800 meter run after 800 meter run just again and again and again just trying to just trash these guys. And they just kept going, kept going, kept going. And so you're not having any drop, but you know, now you're tapped into your fat and your fat you have way more energy in your fat because your um your uh when you have let's say you have a 65 kilo individual, right? 6% body fat elite athlete, right? that that little dude can maximally stuff with maximum carb loading can stuff in in his liver and his muscles about 2400 kilo calories of energy. Okay, it's about a day's worth of energy. So, if you're doing really high level sort of exercise, you're you're going to you're going to burn through that, you know. But that same 65 kilo individual with only 6% body fat, super lean, that 6% body fat has over 35,000 kilo calories of energy. It's over 15 times the amount of energy because that is our is our main uh fuel source. That's that's that's our storage form of energy. It's the most efficient. And you can just see it right there. Maximal glycogen storage 2400 versus 15 times that in 6% body fat, right? And if you're bigger than that or you have more body fat than that, you've got more energy than that. And now you're tapped in. When you eat carbohydrates, it locks that off. You can only run on your glycogen now because if insulin is up, you cannot burn fat. Insulin blocks um lipolysis, which is the breakdown, degradation of fat for energy. Okay? So, you can't use that, right? So, these guys that they're doing the keto group in in Tim Noa's trial, like they're they're still performing at the same level. They're still able to put the same output, but they don't ever stop. They don't need to refuel. They don't need carbs. They don't need sugar. They don't need sports drinks, right? And they had no drop in performance. And then they flipped them. So, it's a crossover trial. So, the keto group became the carb group. And the carb group went keto and gave them like a twoe wash out period. Eat whatever you want. And then they went and uh went again six weeks keto and again no drop in the performance, right? So with at least six weeks, we know there's no drop in performance. Supernova didn't even didn't give them two weeks, you know, and so you know, you're just not fat adapted at that point and the electrolytes and the dehydration and all these other sorts of things. There's a lot of lot of flaws with that study. Then you get specifically for explosive, you want to go to the McWeeny trial in 2018 where they had a group of again elite worldass athletes, you know, iron man ultramarathoners. They self- selected into a keto or carb group. So they they chose which ones they went into, which one they wanted to do. And um they gave them three months to adapt. So 12 weeks to adapt, right? So so a good long period of time. And um and they did three trials. They did a 100 mile run, so big ass run. Um a 6-second sprint and then a critical power test of of um of uh like a sort of, you know, really high intensity um uh anorobic sort of highly sustained anorobic, you know, heavy like weights, all that sort of stuff, right? So that sort of thing. and um and the keto group outperformed the carb group in all three. The last two came to statistical significance. The 100 mile run didn't come to statistical significance, but the trend was they all they all beat them, right? Um but just with statistics, you know, it's just you call it statistically sign. It could have been a fluke sort of thing. The other two were statistically significant. So wild the explosive ones. The explosive ones. So for the critical power test, the anorobic sustained anorobic test and the sprint, the six-cond sprint, the keto group, you know, beat the other other side. That's statistically significant. So specifically for explosive sports, we know that this is better. Now, how good is any study? They all have flaws. You know, this one had, you know, 20 or so participants. Would we have gotten different results with 500? Well, maybe. That's what statistical significance is about. When you say something statistical statistically significant, it's it's less likely to be a fluke, right? And so if we did this with 500 people, we should see the same results. That's what statistically significant means. So you need to have enough people to to make that work. And they did. But yeah, so specifically the the explosive power um came to statistical significance. You know, I mean, I understand where he's coming from because that's that's the old teaching and that's just that's just the traditional teaching, but it's but it's being upended. You know, Tim No is one of the top exercise physiologists and sports medicine doctors in the world. You know, he wrote books about this about, you know, high highintensity training, working with national teams and, you know, world class athletes. He was, you know, he was a top uh marathon runner himself. And all of a sudden, he woke up one day and he's like super fit, writing books on how to be a badass. and he's diabetic and he's a doctor and he's an athlete and it's like, whoa, what the hell's going on? He realized that he'd been wrong this whole time. And so now he's basically spending his retirement years undoing his entire legacy about how you need carbs as an elite athlete. And he's saying, "No, you don't." He's saying like, "I feel like I've been lying to people for the last 30 years because it's just wrong." And so now this this this research is coming out. You know, the pre before they just it just got regurgitated and repeated. And so that well that was just what it was. That was the dogma. Everyone's doing that. All the top athletes are eating carbs. So obviously you have to eat carbs. No, it's just they were told to eat carbs and so they eat carbs, but they're all having gut issues. They're all having chronic disease issues. They're all getting freaking diabetic, you know, and so that's that's not actually helping. Um you know, but you get, you know, some and and people say the total opposite other times. They'll say, um, well, sure, like in sprinting or rugby, you know, because I, you know, I played, you know, professional rugby for 10 years before medical school. Five of those years were a ketogenic carnivore, and I've never felt better in my entire life. I mean, it's hands down. It was just night and day. And so, they'll say, well, yeah, sure, but, you know, so maybe for for rugby or like sprinting or something like that, for the endurance thing, you have to have carbs. You have to have carbs. You have to be taking down gels. And, you know, no one's no one's in the tour of France that's on keto. like, well, actually, there's a guy named Chris Froom who actually won the tour to France four times and and uh he's keto. That's funny, you know, and u like well, you know, the the highintensity sort of fighting, it never never work. I was like, really? Because there's there's like there's uh there's UFC fighters right now that are not only keto, but full carnivore. There's a Wilton Ziggler and a female fighter named um Marina Marose. They're they're both carnivore. They're both openly carnivore, you know, and then they're both UFC fighters, right? Um and um well, and I don't know about Wilton. I think he's in the UFC, but anyway, he's he's a pro MMA fighter. And um you know, so I mean, you know, there's I did a whole whole laundry list of of top athletes that are all carnivore. And when you get back into it, too, we'll add you to the list as well. Yes. Yes. That will be very shortly. Probably this summer. Probably this summer. And one of the things that I really wanted to leverage um with this diet uh is the ability to compete uh to compete more often. Um now I wanted to bring up the the TBI and hopefully you're able to to to shed some light on on on how this kind of a diet will help you to absorb damage more, right? like decreasing inflammation and helping in recovery. Like I feel that in my last two fights, right? Like I fought Islamic and then I fought Rustam Kabalof, both from team eagle, same team as Kabib, both trained by Kabib's dad. I fought them five weeks apart. And my early career, all my fights were very close together. Like I fought like nine times in my first year. Um, but as the as I went on, I would have big layoffs and most times you want to really make sure that you're prepped for each camp individually. So, I wouldn't put fights back to back and I would be like a lot of times like four months or six months out of the cage before my next fight. Um, and then going back to back in that in that last fight and they went back to back five weeks out, which isn't even really that close, but it's a lot closer than it normally was. Uh, and I felt so comfortable in the cage, you know, I felt like it was very, very normal, right? Like it was just another day, like I was just here and just it didn't feel like big and grandiose and it was able to lock in a lot better. And so I'm I'm figuring like if I'm able to to get into competition shape and go compete, like as long as I'm not savagely injured from the competition, like I'm just going to book another one and like fight it in a couple of weeks and then book another one and fight it another couple weeks. Um, and I I think that I'll actually be able to do it because of this diet. Like this diet is going to really help me to be back in the cage quickly. Yeah. No, it definitely can. I mean, obviously you get like little bumps and bruises and like injuries and things like that. Like you might need to a little more time to rehab it, but your muscles will will recover. Absolutely. You know, like that. Well, what about your brain? What about like, okay, I get punched in the head a bunch of times. Uh, take some time off. What's the difference in the brain? Hey guys, just want to take a second to thank our sponsor, 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 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 meatonly products, the more meatonly products there will be available in the mainstream. So, if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind, check it out using my discount code, Anthony, to get 10% off, which also applies to subscriptions, giving you 25% off total. All right. Thanks, guys. Yeah. Well, oh, I was also going to say, too, I also remembered, uh, you know, one of the Gracies are doing carnivore, too. Holland Gracie, he runs Gracie Jui in, um, in San Francisco. I had him on the podcast as well. He's been doing carnivore for for a few years now as well. He says it's game changer. He just feels absolutely amazing, you know, uh, doing that. So, you know, there are top fighters in the world that are doing this and they're specifically saying, explicitly saying that this has launched their game, that they feel much better. These are top level, worldclass athletes, and they're saying this made it a lot better, right? So, you know, um, yeah, you can you can put your your buddy's mind at ease. And also remember, just just wear his ass out and he'll know. you know, there's like doesn't matter doesn't matter what a book says, doesn't matter what the what the studies say or anything like that, you know, if you just go out there and just wear his ass out and it's like, well, okay, I mean, I can't I've seen this for myself. You're not you're not lacking any energy, you know. Um, but yeah, it's really important, you know, uh point with the the TBI and the injuries, you know, if you have, you know, there's certain rules like all the SCAT rules, they have new versions, you know, every few years. Um, but there the concussion rules, concussion rules for, you know, going back into into contact sport, certainly for combat sport. Um, you need to take a certain amount of time off if you have like a diagnosed concussion. And, you know, you you you could argue that unless you really just don't get hit, you and you win a really clean victory, you're probably going to have some form of concussion coming out of any fight, you know, and so you should probably, you know, think about that and, you know, at least take some time off. you know, if you have a back concussion where you're sort of wobbly on your feet and you're having, you know, um, you know, can't really sort of, you know, spell world backwards and remember, you know, three items that, you know, 3 minutes late or something like that, you know, you you're going to need like 23 days off from anything, you know, like no training, no running, no, you need to rest because your your brain needs to rest. And so, you want to get your blood pressure up. You don't even want to like think too hard. You want your brain to rest. you want to go to like a yoga retreat, just zen out for a few weeks, you know, and um and certainly not go back into into contact sports, but you really shouldn't be training either if you have a concussion like that. And that can be diagnosed with these SCAT criteria that that anybody can look up online. And um but the advantages of from a from a combat perspective and a and a concussion perspective is that when you get a concussion, you know, there's the initial damage, but then your brain actually continues to swell. Actually, you get neuroinflammation and your brain starts to swell and get more damaged because of that swelling. So now it's swelling. It's pushing on things and it's sort of crushing itself with its with its swelling. Not so much that you're going to die unless there's like a bleed, unless there's something like really wrong. So, you had like a very serious energy injury. Sometimes the brain can really really swell up. Um, and uh, but that's that's that's rare. But with like severe head injuries, sometimes you can get that and then you even have to do like a decompressive craniactomy where you actually take off side of the skull and let just swell out there for a while. I've had to do that surgery many a time at, you know, two in the morning. Brain. Wild. Well, I'm not a brain surgeon, but you know, um you know, looking to become one. And so, you know, but because you know, I've been there for a while and you I've done this, you know, I you know, you you operate independently uh for certain things and certainly the traumas uh like that is something that that I did quite frequently on my own. And um and so you have to do that. So, you know, be very unlikely to get that unless you got a real bad um knockout or something like that. But either way, you get these concussions and the concussion and the brain will smell swell to a certain degree and that can cause more damage with that swelling. And so for the next 48 hours, this thing is swelling up and swelling up and swelling up and you're getting more and more damage after the fact. Well, the thing is is that ketones are actually anti-inflammatory. They block something called the NLRP3 inflammosome. And so they go up into your brain and remember your brain optimally runs on ketones. So this is better fuel for your brain anyway. Now your brain's not struggling. You use some like crappy glucose. Now it's running on ketones, clean burning, and also that's suppressing inflammation. So it's actually bringing down that swelling. And so it's not enough to stop eating carbs once you've had a concussion. You need to be in ketosis at the time of concussion so that your ketones are already up so that you're you're suppressing that inflammation. And so, you know, it's still sort of in in preliminary days and we you know, this isn't this isn't like a you know, uh we don't have like necessarily hard data on this. It's still kind of mechanistic and we have some preliminary data on this that this can help with um concussion recovery and and not allowing the brain to get even more damaged postconussion because there's two injuries again, the concussion itself and then the swelling injury. So, you know, one thing that you can do and some some studies shown this like especially with animals that you're giving exogenous ketones that can sort of bring down that swelling, but you'd have to take exogenous ketones every two hours. And um and I I would do that if if I weren't in ketosis or if someone was, I'd say, "Oh, look, just take for every two hours while you're awake, you know, take this, you know, and then um you know, when you're sleeping, you know, you're going to get it's not it's the swelling is going to come up and then you get back on it. But um but that can help. But you need to be in ketosis at the time. You'll cut out a lot of your water weight and so you'll be pretty dry all the time. You know, I mean, you could drink less water and all that sort of stuff and actually get fully dehydrated, but you know, you won't be retaining water, you know. And so, you know, you you'll you'll notice that when you check your weight, it's much more consistent. It's much more cons.