UFC Fighter Goes Carnivore — Here’s What Happened | Kajan Johnson

[Music] Hello everyone. Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Plant-Free MD podcast. I'm your host Dr. Anthony Chaffy and today I have a very special guest, Mr. Kjan Johnson, who is a UFC fighter and trainer who is going to talk to us today about his experiences with a carnivore diet. Kan, nice to see you, buddy. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. Blessing to be here. Absolutely. So, uh, for people who haven't, uh, come across you, don't know who you are, I'm sure there's there's a lot of people who do, but for those who don't, can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? Yeah, so uh, I run a gym. I run a brick and mortar gym here in Bernabby, BC, 7759 Edmond Street. And, uh, yeah, we we do a lot of things. We work with kids. We work with the schools and stuff. bring them in. Like a lot of the the hyperactive kids and the kids that uh that have like problems in school and with teachers and stuff, we bring them in and we get them focused and we we get them training and usually helps them a lot. Um we also produce fighters. So, we produce recreational martial artists and we produce fighters. So, I've got a few pros. I've got a bunch of amateurs that are on the come up and then I've got a bunch of teenagers that are looking to be amateurs and pros in the future and eventually champions. Um for a long time uh I I was pro for uh like 18 years or something like that, something close to it. I turned pro in 2002. Yeah. Uh, so I started fighting in my grade 12 year of high school and I just kept fighting over and over and over for years and years. Um, eventually made it to the UFC. Uh, I fought some pretty notable guys there. I fought um, the current lightweight champ, Islamace. Um, I also fought the only dude to ever beat him and I knocked that dude out. I fought another one teammates, uh, Rustam Habalof. I fought him in Moscow like five weeks after I fought uh I fought Islam. Um so I I got to really live out the dream, you know. I got to like travel around the world. I went to Japan. I fought in Manila. I fought in London. I fought in Moscow. Um and I just like live like a video game character, you know, like traveling around the world fighting higher level bosses to get to the next guy and next boss and next boss. It was it was really awesome. And now I'm uh yeah, I'm running the gym and I'm building the next generation. And yeah, I'm actually toying with the uh idea of returning to fighting now. Oh, that I have um gone carnivore. And I I like to prove the things that I'm telling people, right? Like I've thought for a long time that there's some serious benefit to this diet. Um I have some questions about it still. Uh but my experience has been very good with it and I want to test it live. So I've been doing jiu-jitsu competitions already, but I think I'm going to come back and fight in all the different types of fighting and just try to smash everyone. all the sugar burners. Just smash them. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Um, so what what brought you to a carnivore diet in the first place? How did you find out about it? Good question. So, uh, my mom actually was the one that kind of discovered this. Uh well, I'm sure she wasn't the one that discovered it, but she stumbled across it in her own healing journey because uh after like 30 years of being a vegetarian, her body started freaking out and revoling and she was having to do this big elimination diet and just take everything out. And it ended up with her being carnivore. And I'm like really close to my mom. We're really tight. we always have been, you know, typical mama's boy. Um, and for a while there, I was getting really scared because she was getting really sick and like she she wasn't able to eat anything and she's getting skinny and she just like like she looked like she was just getting really old really fast and it was really scary for me. And so, um, once she started coming out of it, like she started on this, like I think first she went low carb and then she went ketogenic and then she went carnivore. And now like she's in her 60s. I don't remember exactly how old because she never tells me her actual age. She's in her 60s though and she looks like 15 years younger. like she looks younger than all my other friends parents and my most of my friends are younger than me cuz I'm in a young man's sport, right? And she's running every day. She's sprinting. She's weightlifting. Like her skin is like tightened up and it's glowing and she's gaining muscle, right? Where in your 60s most people are losing mus muscle. Most people are less mobile. She's like she's getting better like she's getting better at like this. And she was an athlete too, right, when she was growing up. So she like she was like national champion for gymnastics and she which is an incredibly hard sport. Um and when she was doing that, she actually decided to go vegetarian and then got incredibly injured incredibly quickly and was no longer able to compete in gymnastics. So it's Yeah, I've been it piqued my interest, right? Like, so I'm seeing this journey transform and I'm it's like, wow. And then she's telling me all this stuff about like, okay, there's all these like ultramarathon people and all these people that are are on this diet and they're doing well. And I'm like, what if it's a hack? Cuz I'm always looking for the hack, you know? I'm always looking for an edge on my opponent or even my team for an edge for them on their opponents, whatever, right? We want to win. We don't want to lose. Losing for us, it can it can hurt pretty bad, right? KO, broken face, it's not fun, right? So, any edge that we can get. And this seems like it could be a huge hack because if you're burning sugar, when the sugar is gone, your energy is gone. And with the fats, like there's it's almost unlimited. Like you're not going to get through it all. Like the the things that I'm hearing about people doing like five marathons in a row fasted in like a week. Like what? That doesn't make sense. Like you can do that. How can the human body do that and he's not in last place? Like you would expect that. Okay, maybe. But he's in last place, but he's not, right? Like that's wild. So if we're able to be more conditioned, if we're able to have more endurance than our opponent, like that's a massive benefit, right? So eventually I was able to transition off and I was like a sugar addict. Hey, like throughout my career I was like I really love sugar. I really love the combination of carbs and sugar, which is like that's it's sugar and sugar, right? We know that. But like like I like like cakes and cookies and like cornbread and anything that's like sweet and doughy. I just want to like shove it in my face. But that actually led to some problems in my career where I was getting sick more than I needed to, which was then limiting my training and probably didn't really help with concussions and all that type of stuff. So, yeah, I'm really excited to dig into all this stuff with you and try to get some some solid information. Yeah, definitely, man. And, you know, it's great to hear that your your mom did so well. It's a shame, you know, that she went plant-based at the time she did. And and you know, who who's to say what would have happened, uh, but she probably would have recovered from the injury a lot better. I can tell you that. Having some actual, you know, protein and nutrients. So, that's great that she she got you onto it, too, though. And, uh, well, that's great. So, since since you went on it, I mean, look, I mean, you you're one of those guys. You've been competing at at elite levels for the last two decades, and now you're training some of the some of the top uh competitors in the world as well. You're training with them every day. You're rolling with them. You're doing it. What have you seen in your training in your life? Uh the difference between um bunch of carbs and and now just meat with no carbs. Uh the biggest thing that I've noticed is my gut. like my gut feels a lot better. It feels solid. Like I'm I'm able to take body shots better. Uh but it definitely doesn't stop there. For me, one of the biggest problems that I would have is like, okay, I I eat a bunch of sugar at night and then I'm training in the morning and it's like conditioning in the morning and then a before I go to conditioning, I'll wake up like I'll I'll wake up like two hours before. So, I'm not eating immediately before my training session. You eat two hours before, but it would be like oatmeal or something like that. Oatmeal with some berries. And I always tried to eat really healthy except for when I would eat a lot of sugar at night. But overall, my diet was extremely healthy. I was always trying to weaponize my diet in order to make me a better fighter. Um, I was just never able to kick the cookies completely. But after I eat this oatmeal, I'd go back to bed and then I'd wake up and I'd go to training. But when I would be training, not all the time, but a lot of the time, like I would have like bubble guts, right? like I'm trying to do explosive sprints or or like some sort of like a power endurance circuit and I want to take I want to go take a crap, right? Like my guts are killing my gas tank and I would also experience a lot of flem. So when I was sparring, I would want to be I would always have to spit would get this fleg in my mouth and I would it it would mess up my breathing because I'm like trying to breathe and exhale and deal with this dude that's trying to whoop me in front of me and then I'm always having to time the times where I would swallow the spit and it was just it it really impacted me a lot. So, that was a thing. Um, I've noticed um I've noticed that I do recover very quickly uh from injury. Like the catalyst that allowed me to actually go on to carnivore cuz I was competing in jiu-jitsu. Um and I didn't have the time to fat adapt before a match, right? Like so I would always have a match on the horizon and I never wanted to like take it off the table just like okay I'm just going to go into this diet for a bit and give it a couple months and then go back to competition. Eventually some guy inverted under me and knee barred me and like bent my knee and tore my MCL. Super annoying. Super super annoying. I was testing a theory and theory wasn't right. So all good. my my knee goes and then that's actually the c that's the break that I needed in order to um to actually switch on to carnivore. And that injury healed pretty quickly. I think it healed quicker than it would have healed if I was on sugar. Obviously, we don't know, but it did heal very quickly, especially because I didn't do anything. I didn't ice it once, which I hear ice isn't even that good, but I didn't do any rehab. Like, I did zero rehab. I didn't do one thing. I did no mobility. I wasn't lifting. I did no lifting at all. There was I didn't go see anybody. I didn't go get imaging. Like every I did nothing, right? I just like, "Okay, I'm just going to stop training and I'm going to cut sugar." And that's all I did and my knee is fine. Like now it's great. It's just works just as good as the other one. I'm back to full training. All the different types of trainings. Um so those two things I noticed. I also noticed u clarity in my mind. So I've never been diagnosed, but I have a lot of symptoms that that could be uh could be ADHD derived derived from ADHD. And I notice that my mind is a lot more clear. It's easier for me to stay focused on things. Um and yeah, I get I get distracted a lot less. It seems like it's brought a clarity and slowed my mind a little bit. Like I don't get that thing where my mind is just like racing from one thought to the other and it's just like super busy. It's like kind of calmed down. It's still pretty crazy, but it's calmed down quite a bit. Quite a bit. So, I would say those are the three biggest things that I've noticed. Yeah. Hey everyone, really happy to announce a new sponsor for the show and for everybody down in Australia. It's 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 that I've been enjoying a lot of myself recently as well. They also have a great range of specialty items such as high-fat keto mints and carnivore beef and organs mints with liver, kidneys, and beef heart as well. So, use code chaffy today for a free order of beef mints or another specialty gift along with your order at stockmanstaks.com.au and I'll see you over there. Thanks, guys. Great. And so, you know, one one of the big, you know, complaints or concerns that people have or or people that just don't know any better, they say, "Wow, not possible." What about your energy levels? You know, how are you able to compete and train? You're not eating carbs. Obviously, you need to you need carbs to burn carbs, right? So, how's that work? How are your energy levels when you're training and competing? Uh, they're they're fantastic. Yeah, they're fantastic. I've So, I haven't competed yet as a carnivore. My first competition is actually this Saturday. So, um Yeah. Yeah. We'll probably post some of the some of it on the channel. Um so, people will be able to to see it there. But I don't get crazy tired. Like, I do get tired. It does happen. But even when I am tired, it seems like I'm able to push through it. Like I'm able to like I mean I'm able to like just keep going like a steamroller, you know? Um I I never noticed that I I like gas out quickly. Um I haven't noticed that I've lost any explosive power, which that's that's something I want to I want to ask you about because my team has some push back that I I want to address. Um, but yeah, I don't feel slower like at all. If anything, I feel faster. And that might not be physical, that might be mental. Like I feel like when I'm sparring, it's easier for me to lock in. It's easier for me to stay focused. And it's easier for me to make decisions quickly. So, where I would hesitate uh and question something before, I don't feel that any as as much anymore. and I'm able to pull the trigger quicker, which if my mind says go faster than it would before, just that alone would make me faster. Um, so yeah, I don't I don't notice that I'm lacking any energy really ever, except for if I don't get any sleep for a few nights in a row, because I have two toddlers, one and three, and they suck at sleep. They're just the worst sleepers ever. So, I'm up a lot during the night. Um, but even operating off a couple hours of sleep, I'll come in and my room is full of like like 25 to 30 year olds that are all out there and getting after it and like want to be champion of the world. And yeah, I'm I'm not getting dusted. I'm not getting ground out. I'm I'm not the guy that's like bent over huffing in the corner, you know? So, I think that's a good thing. Yeah, definitely a good sign. Yeah. And um what about like your recovery levels like recovery from training, getting sore? I mean I know you still have like a bit of coffee and things like that, but I mean pretty from the sounds of it pretty pretty clean. Um I certainly noticed that coffee will make me a little sore after like weightlifting for a couple of days, but nothing close to what it used to be. So how's your your recovery and the and the soreness side of things besides like you know getting bruised and things? Yeah, the punches and stuff. Even that like I don't feel like I bruised in the way that I used to bruise. Like I used to get black eyes pretty easily. I don't know when the last time I had a black eye was although I'm a lot better now than I was then. So, but um I don't really feel sore often. I just started lifting again because I decided to come out of retirement and actually start scrapping again. So, I'm like, "Okay, well, I need to really prep myself." So, I started lifting again. I still am not feeling crazy sore. Um, I started running like more long distance and I know like when there's like an eccentric load, this is and I might be getting this wrong, but where there's an eentric load to a movement that that will cause more soreness. And one of the run that I did uh not yesterday, but the day Yeah, yesterday actually the run that I did yesterday was like uh all the way up this massive hill and then all the way down. So, like the running downhill made my quads a little sore, but it's it seems to dissipate quite quickly. And just rolling just rolling just doing jiu-jitsu and sparring, I don't feel sore. Like I I don't sore from it like at all. Mhm. which I never really thought of that but yeah I I I haven't felt sore except for that like hill run and a little bit for which I'm doing like I'm doing Olympic lifting right so it's there's decent eccentric load in that in the catch right so you would imagine that that would make you pretty sore and so far it really hasn't nice yeah that's the thing like when you're when you get rid of all these like plant toxins like those are things causing the inflammation pain, stiffness, and soreness that you feel. And it's just it's a warning. It's like, "Hey, get away from me. Don't eat me. I'm going to hurt you." And um but because we've been eating this stuff our whole lives, we just we just think that that's normal. That being poisoned is normal. And that's the that feeling of being poisoned. No, that's just normal. That's just what happens after you work out. And I mean, I used to I used to gauge how good of a workout, you know, how hard I was working by how sore I was. And then all of a sudden, I was never getting sore. I'm like, "What the hell's going on?" and then sort of, you know, figure that out. But it's um yeah, it's I think that's probably one of the ones that that pisses off like gym bros the most. They're like, "Bullshit, you get sore." It's like, "Stop eating plants for two weeks. Find out for yourself, you know, like it's it's actually a thing, you know?" And um Yeah. Well, that's awesome, man. I Well, I think that's great that you're you're thinking about going back into fighting. I mean, you're you're still a young guy. Like, how old are you now? I'm 41. 41. plenty of time. You're like, think about it. Think about it. Two things. One is, you know, the direct and the indirect. So direct, Randy Coutur started fighting at 33. He retired at 47, right? And he was a badass, right? Yeah. Um, secondly, you look back at historically when people were eating properly, they were like the competitive athletes of that of their time for decades longer than we are now, right? M what's the what's the I mean this is all you know and and you know fighting being the closest thing to that all these sports these combat sports I mean there's just surrogates for war these are surrogates for fighting and and showing dominance and and and defeating an enemy right so let's go back to actual warriors you look at Alexander the great when he conquered the known world his warriors his foot soldiers that held a 14t spear with a 5 foot tall foot long blade blade. Um, and they just be holding that sucker, stabbing the hell out of people. His his uh foot soldiers, they ranged from in their 20s to in their 60s, right? So these guys were going around for 45 years just murdering people, right? With with big heavy equipment on them, right? Yeah. Like if your body's breaking out, not capable of doing that, you know, you're in trouble. And the thing was is these are the the most dangerous ones. They know how to survive. They know how to fight. They know how to, you know, they know how to get the job done, right? And that's you. You know, you've got, you've got, you know, 20 years of experience now, and now your body's working as good or better as when it when you were 20, right? Because you're you're feeding it properly, right? And then one of Alexander the Great's generals. Um, back then, the generals didn't just sit in a tent and just like direct the troops. They were out on the front lines. So, Alexander led his troops. He was at the front of every cavalry charge. one of his other other uh generals led one of his other wings of cavalry. He was 78. 78 leading the charge on a horse, full armor, just hacking the hell out of people, right? So, yeah, the body is the body's way more capable of that. And you're seeing that now. You're seeing that, you know, things sort of coming together. I mean, your mom's a you from the sounds of it, she's aging backwards. She's looking younger. she's getting healthier, you know, and our our bodies are so much more capable than that. We're designed by, you know, genetically we're designed to live 120 years on average. Meaning that if you just stay out of your own way and don't mess up, you should make it to 120 without doing anything special, right? And yet we're dying in our 60s and 70s and saying 80s, well, that's pretty good, right? 90, wow, they lived a long time. It's four decades early. Yeah. Right. And that means if you died three or four decades early, it's because you've been poisoning yourself and you've been sick for years leading up to that and your body's been breaking down. Doesn't have to do that. You know, Native Americans, they're out in the, you know, in the plains, you know, hunting buffalo and things like that. They were living to be 110, 120, sometimes longer than that. And and they didn't have old folks homes, you know, there weren't people going around with dementia. Where did you where did you hear that? Like where did you find that was in my genetics class. I learned that in genetics at the University of Washington 20 years ago that we know as geneticists based on the length of our tieumirs on our chromosomes that we should live to be 120 years on average. That's what humans are designed for biologically. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, thinking that like you and I are middle challenge. Let's go. Exactly. I'm going to live to 125. Yeah. Well, dear, I'm on I'm on a 130 year timeline. That's how I think about it. You know, like it and then, you know, and then we'll figure out, you know, we'll see if some of these longevity people, you know, they figure something out. And, you know, I mean, I don't I don't dabble in that at the moment because it's like everything's pretty preliminary. But, um, you know, again, I'm working on 130ear timeline. So, in the next 20, 30 years, something pans out to be great, yeah, sure, I'll start taking it after there's some like, you know, good hard evidence to go with it, you know. But um already I'm going to live, you know, decades longer than than I would otherwise. So, you know, I got time. But, you know, your body's going to work actually properly. You know, saying that we're middleag, you know, when you're you know, we're still in, you know, just come up to onethird of our natural life, right? When you get into your 40s, that's like that's just that's that's still prime adulthood, you know, literally prime of your life. And you'll see this when you start training um when the more you train on carnivore and the better you feel and the better your results get and you know lifting weights you're going to put on muscle easier than you ever have in your life and your energy is just going to be through the roof and you you know just to you know you know we can talk about the science and everything like that. I did a whole talk on ketogenic carnivore athletes talking about how it's much better as an explosive athlete to be on a carnivore ketogenic carnivore diet. But, you know, the only thing that needs to that you need to to show the guys on your team up is just beat their ass, you know, like Oh, yeah. I do. You know, but I that's the problem though is I'm I've been beating their ass before, right? I've been beating their ass regardless of the diet. So, what are they complaining about? Yeah. They say they're saying that you don't have like you may not have the explosive power or whatever, but did you lose any explosive power? you know, I mean, that that should be obvious to anyone that you haven't, you know, and it's like, all right, you just train up like a like a crazy ass workout. Just really just drive it home that like you're on another level than they are. Like, it was that was I was um I'm sure you know, you know, you know, Matt Hume, uh, who's a great MMA fighter and trainer. So, I trained with him since I was 14. I got lucky that that his gym Oh, cool. Yeah. AMC was a few miles from my house and he was the the high school wrestling coach and um and I started fighting or training um before I even went to high school and and was on the wrestling team and things like that. But I heard that you know that he was going to be the coach there too. And so I I went down there and I just like yeah I wanted to do that. So um I was training um there and I was just I absolutely loved it. So, it was just like every day I finished school, I'd come home, I'd take a nap on the couch, I'd get up and it was like four o'clock. I'd um either cycle or run down. Uh and then training started like, you know, 4:30, 4:30, 5:30, 6:30, and then 7:00. Um was fighters training and I trained from Yeah. was 7 to 10:00 every day. And so, I was there from like 4:00 to 10:00 every single day. And absolutely loved it. And um and I was in pretty good shape. I was I was definitely in better shape than than a lot of people in in my school just mean the amount of training I I I had. But then we did this one thing where Matt took us up and we ran up from AMC up to the high school uh up to the track up there and you know it was a few miles up and and so we didn't know what he wanted us to do. We didn't know what was going on, right? And so we just ran up there and it was like, you know, 3, four miles up there and I was at the front of the pack and and I was up there running with Matt and then sort of in the last like, you know, half mile or something like that. I just picked it up and I just ramped up and I just I I beat him and I and I beat Matt by, you know, 100 yards or so. And I was just there just like just crowing. Oh, look at me. You know, I'm the first one here. You know, I beat Matt and everything like that. And breaking out action. Oh, am I? Oh. Oh, shoot. How's the connection? Let me let me see what's going on here with the internet. Let me just see if maybe fix the internet here. Let me try one thing here. See if this is any better. Okay, we'll try that. Are you Are you able to hear me properly? I can hear you. It looks like you're sort of glitching a little bit as well. Um, yeah. [Music] All right. So, we're just having some technical difficulties there, but yeah. So, I was saying, um, you know, ran up to the, you know, the high school track, uh, with Matt Hume and all the rest of the the guys from the from the gym, and these are, you know, I'm get I'm a I'm a teenager, like I'm like a fairly young teenager, and these are all pro fighters. And and there's Matt Hume, um, you know, and he's still fighting at this point. this guy is, you know, super fit and I'm so I'm there. Look at me. You know, I came in I came first. I We had no idea what he had planned in store for us. That was that was that was just getting to the workout. That wasn't even the workout, right? He had us go to the track. He said, "Okay, so here's the thing. We're going to um sprint the straits and you can jog the outside. You can go as slow as you want around the outside. You can run. You can jog. You can walk. You can crawl. You have to keep moving. And then when you get to that line on the straight, it's 100 meter 100. Yeah. 100 meter sprint. It's just all out. And you'll try to line up where you're with somebody so you can like go against each other and try to race each other. So you really challenge each other. And um and uh you know, and we're just like, "Okay, how long we doing that? Is this like until I tell you to stop?" You know, and oh my god, dude. I don't know if this was like in his plan to like just like really like humble me in particular and us, you know, because I cuz you know, I was just like, "Oh, look at me. I came in first." He's just like, "You're going to know exactly like where you stand." He we were there. I swear to God, we were there for hours. Just hours. And like it was the point that like we're going and we hitting these sprites and and we got to the point where we could just we were just panting and sweating and just barely moving around the outside and then we go and we go hard as hell on those sprints, but oh, we were dying around the flats and we're just desperate to try to get to like racing to that line so we could rest. The faster we got there, the faster we could rest and and you know, walk slowly. He never slowed down. He didn't slow down at all. He was he lapped us like at least 10 times. I am not exaggerating. Like easily lapped us 10 times. He dude never slowed down. He just kept trucking and so and and he was going around the outside. He was he was running. He would he was like going at a fair clip and then he hit the straight. Whoa. And he would just take off and uh and then we had to run back and then we had to keep training. I've never been so exhausted and so dead in my life running back. I was it was I was struggling to get back and um and we were and then we had like this whole training. I'm like we're we're still going like Jesus. And he just man he ground us in the ground and it was just like there was just no I mean if I ever thought in my life I mean I didn't think for a second I was in better shape than him. I just thought it was kind of cool to to get in front of him, you know. Um, man, I paid for that. And like like that was that was definitely a humbling experience. He absolutely crushed us. But you know what? You know, then I was in um we actually I was in I was a sophomore. So I was right before I cuz I went to I started university at 16. So this was right before that. And um and we did like No, sorry. This was this was after that because I would go back I would come back for uh sports. So, I was already I was already at college, but I was um coming back for sports and um and so we did this like, you know, we had we had to run a mile and things like that just as like you had to have beat a certain time. And like my last time was like 7 minutes and like 20some seconds or something like that. And then like I ran it again and I was just like, "All right, I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to sprint the straights and run around the outside." And like I lapped the entire team. Like I just was booking and I finished four laps and the coach was like, "Hey, you're you're doing great. You're on a great pace. You know, keep going. Last lap." I'm like, "No, I'm done. That's four." He's like, "Wait, what? You're done?" He's like, "That was four." And um yeah, so I I absolutely just smoked it. And you know, I don't even know exactly what my time was. Um because he said it was like like 4 minutes and you know, 40ome seconds. But that was after like cajoling him for a while saying like, "No, I'm done. What is my time?" You know? So it was like this well sub fiveminute you know mile you know and um yeah but that just it just just cranks you to another level. So you know if they want proof that you know this that you know this diet you know gives you like the explosive energy you need show them you know let them know make them make them regret asking you that. Yeah. Yes. I love I love that language. I I shall I shall do exactly that. But one of the things that they've been they've been pointing out, right, because I've got this one student that is um uh that is taken like nutrition or something in school or something in school. I don't know. Um but he's like sending me screenshots of his textbook, right? And one of the things he's saying that uh that it's been proven it's been proven that uh you you you lose this explosive ability if you're burning if you're burning fat instead of burning sugar. Um that if you are trying to go for long distances and you're not needing to go at 100% um then it can be very beneficial for like distance runners and all that. But if you're an MMA fighter, if you rely on explosive power, if you're a sprinter, right? Like no sprinters are carnivore essentially. Um, so I was wondering if you could speak to that. Yeah. I mean there are I mean like you know I mean you may have seen but I had uh Ryan Talbot on uh twice. He was a pole vter and then he went carnivore and decided to switch to the the decathlon which has you know sprinting, running, you know, hurdles all that sort of stuff, high jump, pull, all that stuff. So a lot of sprinting, a lot of explosive moves, right? And um in his second decathlon ever, he won the NCAA Big 10 tournament, set a school record for Michigan State, and was an all-American. um in his third decathlon, he was the all-American and um and he was three-time all-American and either placed first or second in the Big 10 every every year in his last three years and he just missed out on the Olympics and he represented the US for the Panama Games and got bronze um just last year. He's been carnivore the entire time. You know, one of the things that he mentioned that his testosterone levels went from 760 up to,50. And you cannot tell me that a professional athlete would not benefit by nearly doubling their testosterone and how that's not going to that's not going to help with explosive power. Um, of course it is. You know, I mean, people are people are cheating, getting banned from their from their respective sports for taking steroids and things like that to jack up their testosterone and get, you know, get that amount of of an increase in their testosterone for the performance advantage. This just comes from eating meat and not eating all the all the carbs and getting your insulin down. Um, so the perform, you know, do you remember anything that he said on how they justified how they proved that explosive power you couldn't do this? Was it anything to do with V2 max? Do you remember any of that crap? I don't think they cited anything about V2 max. They were just he he had some chat GBT produced studies that uh like he he he coupled his knowledge with chat GBT, right? And so he's like, "Yeah, okay. So there's this study and there's that study that is that has shown that these athletes um had a huge reduction like 60% or 40% reduction in their explosive power compared to this other group that that was eating carbs all the time. Um it's uh I've also heard that it is an the fuel source is not as available. um that uh that you're not able to just start using it right away like you would carbohydrates that it takes some time. And he was saying something about oxygen. So he's saying that not he's saying but he's sending me screenshots from his textbook. Um and it's here's what it said here. It's um the problem is that fat can be broken down only as long as oxygen is available. Oxygen must be present for your body to burn fat for energy, but not to burn glycogen. In the initial stages of exercise, oxygen is not yet available. It can take from 20 to 40 minutes of exercise before fat is maximally available to the muscles as fuel, but the glucose in your blood and the glycogen in your muscles are pressed into into service first. So, it's just saying that like 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 are derived from your fat and from fat oxidization but the thing is you're you're always doing that you I 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 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 two-thirds 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. It's gluconioenesis. You're making glucose and glycogen all the time. You, you know, we're 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. reason he's saying that and I this is this is a 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 Okay. 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 mixweeny, 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 worldass 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 five days completely fasted, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 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 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, the muscle glycoction, 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 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 a 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 and 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 uh Tim Nox'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 M Sweeney 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. Yeah. 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 6second 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. So, 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 Nos 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 you know 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's just night and day. And so they'll say, "Well, yeah, sure." But, you know, so maybe for for rugby or like sprinter or something like that, but for the endurance things, 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 to 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 uh I was like, well, you know, the the highintensity sort of fighting, it never never work. I like really cuz there's there's like there's uh there's UFC fighters right now that are not only keto, but full carnivore is 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 Islam Akachev 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 another couple 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. 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 JuiSu 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, 2 in the morning. Brain surgery. 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 not struggling to 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. And then there there are a lot more studies than the concussion studies um looking at uh ketogenic diets improving TBI, traumatic brain injuries. And you know, this makes sense. You know, you're eating fat, which your brain is made out of cholesterol. Your brain is made out of cholesterol. You need ketones. That's the optimal fuel source. So you're just giving your brain what it needs to heal from injury and repair itself, right? And um and so and again reducing that inflammation. And so ketogenic diets u there's there's, you know, pretty good evidence showing that ketogenic diets are are are beneficial for neurological recovery post injury and post dam and a stroke is injury. You know, you're damaging tissue or you have a hemorrhagic stroke where it bleeds and actually rips a bunch of tissue apart. That's injury. You know, you're inj you're physically injuring the physical structures of the brain. And so ketogenic diets can help with that. And so, you know, as an athlete, you know, you're going to have all those benefits that we spoke about. You're going to have the mental clarity because again, your brain's running on ketones. You don't have all this brain fog. You're in the middle of a fight. You're fighting half on instincts, you know, and so you're there just going. If you're if you're sort of foggy, you're a step behind the whole time. And, you know, yeah, you know, the other guy's probably brain fog, too. But, uh, you know, but the thing is is like you need that edge. You know, you need your brain to be on the entire time. And, uh, and if it's not, you know, you could, you know, you could end up, you know, in a lot of trouble. And this is, you know, you take your life in your own hands when you step into the ring like that. It's, it's not a small thing. And so, you know, you need every every advantage that you can have. And so, your brain's on and you're just firing on all s cylinders. your body's working at least as good as it was before on carbs, but it really works better because you've been on this for a long time. And and if you do get banged up in a couple little knocks, you're going to have much less swelling postconussion as well. One thing that's good to know too, there's there's a preliminary study that came out as well on creatine. The brain really likes creatine. Now we take this for you know muscle building and things like that driving more energy into uh into the mitochondria and and helping with the um you know electron transport chain and things like that develop you know generating ATP once you have enough of that though you have enough you know it's like having even more gas in your tank going from 3/4 of a tank to full tank you know it's you know as long as it's getting to the engine at the same at the same rate that's all you need right um same with creatine but your brain really likes creatine and when you have an injury like a concussion or god forbid something more serious um it wants more creatine and more creatine can be helpful. So, there's something called postconussive syndrome where you have these symptoms of a concussion that that are protracted and they go on for a lot longer and there's um there's a study that I had that I had that Yeah. It sucks, right? I mean, I I had a bad concussion. It just lasted forever, you know. Right. Yeah. And um so you you know one of the things that that this you know preliminary study but um you know pretty interesting is they gave people 60 grams of creatine so three times the loading dose uh for a week and I can't remember if it was 5 or 7 days but in that range 5 to 7 days and and that helped that helped a lot with postconussive syndrome and it helped the brain start to recover and heal as well. So those are sort of the things you know you just need to give your brain what it needs. you need to reduce inflammation and and just put everything in place u for your your your brain to have a proper recovery. And one of those things is being in ketosis at the time of the concussion because it takes about two three days to get fully into ketosis. You've already missed your window at that point if you stop eating carbs then. That brings up another question I had um just for especially I'm I'm trying to influence more fighters to to use this kind of a diet. I think it's just a healthier way of being uh and a better way of fighting. It's going to give a lot of advantages we've been talking about, right? But a lot of people struggle with the discipline required in order to stay in ketosis. So say you like break and you you eat a cookie like or h how much carbohydrates, how much sugar can you eat and still remain in ketosis? And then um once you've been kicked out of ketosis, how long does it take to get back in again? Uh it depends on how long you've been in ketosis. Well, getting back into ketosis, you know, typically the textbook would say 24 hours. Your insulin will come down low enough that you'll start making blood sugar and glycogen. To get into, you know, full deep ketosis, possibly a couple of days. If you have one cookie, that may not actually kick you out of ketosis. If you've been in in deep ketosis for a long time and and you have and you have that, it's um it may transiently bump you out, but you'll get back in a lot quicker. Now, if you keep doing that and you have, you know, ass load of pasta and some bread and like you have a whole cheat day, yeah, then you're screwed. Then it's then it's like 72 hours, right? Um but um typically you can eat up up to 20 20 grams of carbs. 20 grams of carbs a day is about is is about as much as you can go um and and remain in ketosis. And um you know the thing is is that if you're 3 months down the road, 6 months down the road, a year down the road, 10 years down the road, you're you're you're getting more and more keto adapted, fat adapted. What I'll explain what that means for people who don't know keto adapted. What I mean by that is your your body is because we've just been force-fed carbs our entire life and then voluntarily fed carbs. Um we we're used to running on on glucose. You need different machinery and different different molecular um machines and and perceptors and transporters and things like that to use gly glucose predominantly versus uh ketones. And so this is why the supernova trial didn't have very very good results for the the keto group was because they didn't have all the all the pathways set up to actually utilize those ketones. They were making all the ketones in the world, but their body wasn't used to running on them. So they didn't have all these switches flipped, right? So after, you know, weeks of being on this, your body, well, as soon as you start that, your body starts saying, "Oh, great. Ketones are here again." And they have epigenetic effects, meaning that you're turning on different genes. And so your body actually you change your genetics. Your genes start changing in your body and you start turning on and off different things, right? And so you start turning on genes that make it so you can use ketones better and you can get that energy and utilize it better. Um, and as the weeks go on, that gets better and better and better. And after 3 months, like in mixweeni trial, now you're performing even better than the carb groups. As you go on years down the road, arguably you get even better and your mitochondria get better because mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell, right? And they make all this ATP, this energy, right? And studies have shown that after 3 months on a ketogenic diet, you have four times the number of mitochondria and they're four times as effective. So not only you becoming keto adapted, you're also just able to produce more energy anyway, right? So, you know, there's there's huge advantages uh for that. And um sorry, I always do this. I go on like tangents and I forget where the hell I started from. That's perfect. It was great. Great. You answered the question. It's got awesome. But what was it? What was the first thing? Because I had another point I was going to make. Yeah. So, I was asking and like I get lost too, but um I was asking um number one, how much does it take to keep out of ketosis and then how long does it take to get back? Yeah. So yeah, you as Yeah. So, you know, when you're when you're fat adapted for a long time, you know, that's a process that takes months and months and months and months and months, right? And your mitochondria are growing and growing and growing and things like that. So, eating eating some carbs, even having a cheat meal or a cheat week, you're not going to shut down all those processes. You'll start it'll start going in the other direction, right? But you won't it won't take five months to get, you know, to where you were. it'll it'll be quicker than that because you wouldn't have shut all of those processes down, right? So, you know, I wouldn't do it, you know. I mean, the thing is is that it's still going to it's still going to make you feel like rubbish and and you'll see you eat a bunch of carbs, you have some cookies, things like that. You will be sore for the next few days. Like, you will hurt. Your body will hurt and you'll be like, "Never again, not doing that [ __ ] you know?" Or have some like brain I don't do it. Yeah. I'm scared of my brain. I'm scared of my brain going back to how it was before. Yeah. So, just that just keeps me super strict. Like I I've cut pretty much everything. Like I was telling you earlier, I I do have a coffee, like a cup or two a day. Um I'll have some cream in the coffee, but I minimize that. Now, uh I got rid of eggs. I I just eat I just eat meat and salt. That that's I coffee and cream, meat, salt, water. Lots of lots of salt. Lots of water. Nice. Well, yeah. Just salt to taste. I'm going to smash everybody. Like all the things that you're telling me like it just gives me so much I'm so excited. Like I'm going to smash everyone. Like these guys are not going to be able to compete with me. They're really not going to be able to. Like already like technically they can't because I've just done this for way too long and I'm just my brain is too creative. They can't they can't they couldn't they couldn't compete me with me in 2018 really like most of them except for Islam. But now it's like a whole another level. I've just like made this whole like primal combat system. I created my own martial art. It's like really savage. But now stacked on top of this, like I feel like with the training that I'm that I'm I'm going to put in be before the fight happens, um I'm going to reach levels of conditioning that other people aren't able to to reach. Like I'm going to be able to maintain energy for far longer than other people are. And then I'm going to weaponize that and and and use a a Marshall system that that that accentuates that advantage. Um, and also is something that people just don't use cuz everybody's just so everybody in MMA is is very like this. It's like they they do these things. They like to do jab, cross, hook, low kick, double leg, sprawl, guillotine, armbar, triangle. That's like pretty much everybody's game, right? This it's all they do. It's all they focus on. And I'm just like I want to do everything but that. Right. So I just have all these different methods of fighting. And I I really can't wait to get in the cage and just smash these guys. It's going to be amazing. I'm really excited. I have I have one more question. Um because I don't know how to do this while being carnivore. And I just I don't know if you're working with anybody that has done it already and if you have any insight. Um weight cutting. So we manipulate carbohydrates and water for weight cutting essentially. And now Dan's carbohydrates. I was wondering if you had any insight on how to manipulate water in in a similar way or if you've worked with anybody that has. It's um well the thing is 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 consistent. So as long as you know you pee in the morning you hop on the scale it's going to be pretty damn similar. You're not going to have these big ups and downs and all that sort of stuff. it's going to be pretty pretty steady. Um, you'll you'll naturally shred down, right? And especially with the amount of training that you're doing, most people actually find the difficult part is keeping on the weight. And um, you know, I had Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's like that's just you got to eat more meat, you got to eat more meat. Okay. Well, what's the other side? Don't eat enough meat. You know, so if you don't eat enough meat, you're not going to be able to get the muscle hypertrophy. you're going to body's going to have to say, "Okay, well, we can't maintain this this this whole musculature, and you're going to slim down a bit, but you're going to get super damn lean." You're not going to catabolize your muscles until you actually run out of fat. But if you're not like necessarily using them as much, you won't um you they won't just need to be built up. You know, Ryan Talbot, he ran into that. He was losing too much weight. We, you know, figured out, okay, you just need to find more meals. You need to stick in more meals. Okay, you have a morning training, eat straight after that. You don't have a morning training, eat breakfast. Then you have 5 hour gap until your next training. That's you know 5 hours sort of a minimum on what you want as as far as a gap in meals and between training meal and training and then you know eat a lot after that. And you just got to get these meals in. You just got to get that food in because the amount that he was training he was just losing weight. Well then when he figured out how to get enough food in all of a sudden now he's got the opposite problem. He's putting on too much muscle you know which is usually not a problem. you know, that's that's usually a good problem to have, but he's the cath athlete. He's got to go fast. He's got to jump high. He's got to have a pull vault over like a big ass bar. So, he's actually got to stay, you know, a bit, you know, and he was already lean. He had no fat. He was just getting jacked, you know, he's just getting super ripped, right? And so, he actually had to stop lifting weights as much. He had to pull back on the weights because the more weights he lifted, more muscle he gained. It was just like, you know, it was a direct relationship. So, you know, that's the thing. You can you can pull back a bit on the on the weights. Focus more on the concentric versus the eccentric, right? Cuz like you were saying, you're doing more eccentric work when you're doing that. So, people don't know, concentric is when you're you're contracting the muscle. And then the eccentric is when you're sort of letting it down sort of slow. And these actin fibers and the sarcimeir is the muscle unit in your in the cells. They're sort of have these little hooks that sort of have these chemical bonding sort of stick and then they sort of go like this and they and they go like that and that's how they contract, right? If you stretch it actually pulls all those out and then there's not really many touching there. So when you contract it's a weaker contraction instead of up here and you have 80% of these contract. Boom. Is a huge contraction. But then when you're doing the eccentric they're still bound but you're elongating the muscle and actually starts tearing it and damaging it. That's why you get that muscle damage. You get more soreness. Except we don't. And um and but you also get more hypertrophy, right? So if you do the concentric, right, where you just do like um this is one this is one of the things this is one one of the top trainers trained some of the top uh NFL prospects and he worked with like at least back in the day he worked with eight the top eight NFL prospects. Yeah. Had to be a top prospect. He only worked with you know you know blue chip sort of guys, right? And um and uh he he did these things with strength to power ratio. Get your strength up, strength up, strength up, strength up. And keep your weight down, you go faster. That's all there is to it. And he was dropping guys 40 times by like half a second. It was like I I forget the quarterback's name, but there's a quarterback that had a five second flat 40. Dropped a quarterback down to 4.5 40 time. Just just balling ass, right? And um so one of the main things he did was a hexar deadlift that more mimic the natural explosive motion that you do when you're running sprinting and it was only the concentric. So you just lift it up and you drop it. Lift it up, drop it. So you wouldn't have that breakdown in the tissue. You could do it more often. You had less muscle damage, less less recovery time needed. You could do it more often during the week and you got stronger, but you didn't get bulkier, right? So you didn't put on more weight and your weight to and your strength to weight ratio got better and better and better. So you can do things like that. Like if you're lifting weights, you want you want to focus on the concentric. So bench press, you push it up, people sort of help you bring it down and then you're just pushing it up and then sort of lie down pushing it up sort of thing like that. Squat, same sort of thing. Um it's it's a bit of a pain in the ass. You can do it with weight with things. You can drop the weights. That's easy, you know. Yeah, you just drop them. Yeah, like the Olympic weights. Yeah, you lift them up, you drop them down, so you don't, you know, go down. So that's that's a way that you sort of a sneaky way to get the strength but not get the bulk and the weight. Um, you know, Yeah. And so there's um um I don't know if you know this guy, guy Tyson Pedro, he's in he was in UFC for a while. He was bigger dude, sort of like 200 lb sort of um and he played Yeah, that's all right. I watched it. I know techniques. I I look at people and I'm just looking at the technique that they're doing and the method and the strategy. I don't really like care who they are, you know. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. So, he did um he was a professional rugby player as well. He played rugby league league in Australia and he went and started um doing fighting MMA. Now, he just switched into boxing and he went and he went carnivore as well and was just getting absolutely shredded. And um and he was saying he's like, "Hey, how do I keep on weight?" Like, "Fuck, I'm losing too much weight." You know, and then it was like again, you're just adding in the eating time. But I was just like, you know, are you really worried about losing weight? Like I mean, just maybe just go down a couple weight classes and just right destroy people, you know, and um you know, and this may this may be a blessing in disguise, you know, if you just down, you know, strength is going to stay. So, you know, it's uh it depends on what you're doing, but you know, depending on how hard you're working, I mean, you're you're training so hard that if you if you don't eat enough, your body is going to just sort of stay a bit. you're going to sort of just cut lose a bit of weight. Um, and so you can adjust, you can just adjust that if you if you don't want to go too much like you need this energy for your body, you know, but you're going to shred up naturally. You're probably not going to have too much of a problem, you know, making weight because you're you're going to be lean as [ __ ] all the time. And honestly, I I'm crazy lean now. Like it's like people trip out now. like when I like have to change my shirt or something like that in the gym and I take my shirt off or like I'll go to fights and like I'm cornering one of my fighters or whatever and I I take my shirt off to put my other my my training gear on to like help warm them up or whatever and people are like what are you fighting? Like are you coming out of retirement? Like like you're more shredded than you were in in fight shape in fight camp like the day before your fight. Like it's it's wild, man. It's wild. And I'm I was lifting then when I was fighting and I'm I just started like like two weeks ago just started lifting again. So I'm really excited to see what happens now, right? Because I'm really low body fat. Like very low body fat already. I'm a I'm I'm I burn quite fast, right? Like I I'm I have a high metabolism. I always have had a high metabolism. It's never been really an issue for me to lose weight. Although I could always kind of gain weight as well if I would eat a lot or if I would work out really hard. Like I I can grow pretty fast, I can lose pretty fast. So, um yeah, I think it's I I I don't foresee it being a huge issue with cutting weight. Like I think that because now I have no carbohydrates, like the water is going to leave my system faster. So normally we do like the process is like okay you're eating your regular carbohydrates and then you're water loading right so you're you're drinking like eight 8 and 1/2 liters of water a day right for the last little you kind of work up to that but like the last like week or so you're eating like you're drinking like eight and a half liters of water a day and then all of a sudden you cut your carbs you cut your salt and then uh and then you like stop drinking water right and you start just peeing out everything. So, I I'm I'm going to try to do the same process. I'm just going to like I obviously there's no carbs. Um but I think it'll still act very similar. Like as long as I'm water loading heavily and teaching my body that there's always water to get rid of, then as soon as I stop drinking water, especially with having uh having no carbs to to hold it at all and my body just not being used to holding it, it's just gonna gone. And then because I'm a little bit smaller, like I've been thinking like maybe I can even fight at a lower weight class. It could be possible. Unfortunately, weight classes are like 10 lbs difference, right? Like mostly some are 15, but like I I've always fought at 155 pounds and now it would be like maybe I can make 45. Like there's a lot of guys that I see that are 45ers that are bigger than me. And if I can get to that weight, bro, people aren't going to touch me because I got real long arms. You're gonna be way over there, buddy. But yeah, I'm really I'm really interested to see uh to see how it works because that's one of the one of the things that that we just don't know yet as as MMA fighters, and I'm sure some do that are that are doing it. Like obviously they have to cut weight. Um but it's not anything that anybody's talking about on YouTube, like how do you cut weight on carnivore? the diet's going to change things a little bit. It's going to be interesting to see. Hopefully, we can film it and uh and show everybody what's going on. Yeah, definitely. And the thing is, too, is that you'll see you don't actually even need to sort of coers your body into losing water weight and things like that. You just won't retain it. And so, you you'll get down you'll get down to a weight and you could, you know, you just aim aim for that weight now. just do it like sort of a slow progression and just see where you want to get to and and you'll get there, you know, and um you know, do it like a like a bodybuilder does where it's just a slow progression, you know, over time, you know, they're just sort of, you know, they're just working towards a goal, you know, and because you're not going to be, you know, you're not eating carbs, you're not and plants and things like that. So, you're not going to be retaining water. I mean, just plants is vegetables and things like that. like I was retaining like I don't know 10 pounds 15 pounds of water weight just from just from eating you know spinach, broccoli and kale you know and my my water weight would fluctuate 5 10 pounds a day like and I was I was ketogenic. I wasn't eating any carbs not because I was I was doing keto but just because like I I noticed that anytime I have like bread or anything with carbs my back hurt like hurt. And so I was just like, "All right, well, I'm not doing that for like days." You know, it'd be like three, four days. My back would hurt and I'm like, "All right, well, I'm just not going to eat that crap anymore." Wow. And uh yeah, so then I dropped just the vegetables and and I dropped 23 lbs in 10 days and it was just all water weight. It looked like I just taken like diuretics. I just like deflated, you know, over the course of two weeks. And you just someone squeezed me out like a rag or something like that. And uh I'm sure I lost some fat too, but I think a lot of it was water weight probably. And that's just what it sort of looked like to me. And um yeah, and so, you know, and then I was just I my my weight didn't fluctuate. I was I went I went down from like 267 down to 243 and I was 243 on the nose every single day for the next 6 months. It wasn't a single day it went to 242 or 244. 243 every single day. But I was lifting weights, I was sprinting, I was playing rugby. And because I felt so good, I at 38, I went back and started playing high level rugby and like my team here in Seattle, my professional. And so I was like back in training with all these these pro athletes. Felt amazing. And um and uh yeah, and so then after like six months, I hurt my knee. And so I I couldn't finish the season and um couldn't really play in the season. and it was sort of um um only played a few games and um and then I started losing weight because my I couldn't train, I couldn't lift, I couldn't run and so my legs started getting smaller, you know, and I was I was pissed. I didn't want to lose weight, you know, because my body was transfor I was losing fat and stacking on muscle. I got down to like 6% body fat without trying, you know, I'm just working hard at 240. Yeah. Wow. 243. So it was always 243. 23 and um yeah and and eating eating until meat stopped tasting good. Just listening to my body. Wasn't counting any calories. Didn't have any macros and like, "Oh, this is what I'm have this meal. I'm have 15 meals a day and I'm going to eat this and I'm going to do this. I'm going to take that." None of that [ __ ] I didn't take any supplements. I didn't have any meal prep. I didn't split up my meals. I ate one I ate two pounds of of amazing ribeye every day. And uh and that was it. I ate once every 24 hours and I felt fantastic. I didn't want to eat any more than that, you know. And um and one day I didn't even want to eat that. I'd like been training. I like three hours of lifting and three hours of rugby and I'm like, "All right, great. I'm going to go home and eat a big ass steak and go and crush this out again tomorrow." And everything like, "Oo, don't do that. Steak sounds awful." I'm like, "How is that possible? I love steak. It's my favorite thing ever. Why would that not sound good right now?" Couldn't figure it out. But I was just like, yeah. I was just like, "Don't eat it. Don't do it." you know, I was like, "That's bizarre. What the hell's going on?" And um I said, "Okay, well, I'm going to cook a steak anyway, but I'll I'll like reverse sear it, take like two hours, make this like amazing ass thing, and give myself some time to settle down." So, I I watched a movie, chilled out, steak was ready, add it. And I was like, I guess I could I could eat a little. I started eating it, and it was just like I got like a quarter of the way through and I was just like, I am just not enjoying this. I just really don't want to eat this. It was amazing steak. There's nothing wrong with it, but I just just just wasn't feeling it. So, I was like I was really nervous because I had a lot of training the next day. I had like I don't know six hours of training the next day planned and I was like [ __ ] All right. I really need this energy though. Not realizing that I was, you know, you know, bulkier then. So, I still had a lot of fat on me, you know. So, I'm like probably had, you know, like, you know, like 100,000 calories, you know, sitting there waiting for me. I didn't need anything. That's what I real and and then the next day I felt fine. Didn't eat it, put it away. Next day I felt fine. Felt absolutely amazing and no problem because you know I I you you know I sort of came to the realization you know you you don't you don't the energy that you use now for your training today did not come from your meal this morning or last night. It came from two weeks ago, right? And you put that in your fat and then now you're using the fat, right? And so you yeah, you don't need to eat the same day or the day before, whatever. And I I and then I thought back on all my games before I realized all this stuff that all the games when I felt my best, I never ate that. I never ate on game day. Never ate. I that was like just an unbreakable rule like that. I tried a couple times. It was just like never again. And so I always played fasted. Always play. I always tell people always play hungry. you know, you want that little that little edge, that little killer instinct that I need to go out and kill something. I have to go and fight for my dinner and uh and have that sort of edge. And um and then I even started feeling better. If I if I had dinner the night before, I didn't feel as good. So, I would like skip dinner. I may may not even eat on a on a Friday if I had a Saturday game or maybe would eat way earlier in the day. And and I started feeling better doing that. And it just it naturally sort of went into that. And now I know why, you know, because I, you know, you just want to be running on your body. You don't want a bunch of food in your gut and uh, you know, slowing you down, you know. So, in fighting, we make weight and then 24 hours later, we fight, right? So, they give you a bit of a a bit of a breather to like build yourself back. Everybody's dehydrating and and bringing themselves down like 20, 30 pounds. It's a lot unhealthy, dangerous stuff. Yeah. But the amount of food, the amount of food that people are and and juice and just sugar that people are ingesting after weigh-ins, like if it was more beneficial to to be fasted when you're competing, it's like the absolute opposite. Like you're people are stuffing themselves so much it like hurts. They're like, "It actually hurts." And they're like, "Oh, but that's not enough carbs, right? That's not the right number yet. I have to eat x amount of of carbs in order to to be able to have the energy to perform tomorrow." Yeah, man. There's just so much benefit. There's just so much benefit. Yeah. Well, I mean, just like the, you know, the the Volic study, you know, the muscle glycogen in the keto group and the carb carb loading group exactly the same. You know, you don't get any benefits. And, you know, you replace your glycogen on the fly when you're in ketosis where they got to keep sucking down sugar gels and sugar water and crap like that. Yeah. You know, and you can't even you can't even do that in in a cage. You you you can't have anything other than water in the corner. You're not allowed your your sugar gels or electrolytes. It's just water. Oh, good. Yeah. Even a bigger advantage, dude. I mean, that's that's insane, you know? Like, that's huge, you know? And then, you know, and you you you know, you do your weighin and like and you're not starving. You haven't cut 20 pounds in the last five days, you know? So, you're you're just you're just tone you're just tone ripped, ready to go. And um you know, and then you're drinking water as normal. eat a big ass steak and then don't eat anything and you know until you like eat that dude for dinner the next day, you know, and then Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Carve him up real nice. Yeah. Exactly. I like it. I like it. I like it. I like it. That's awesome, man. All right. Well, well, thanks, man. Well, I appreciate you doing this and uh it's been awesome to talk to you and um you know, has anybody else in your gym uh been doing this? you were getting around or there is it you just been meeting up with a bunch of uh skeptics so far? Uh it's pretty skeptical so far. Uh I've got one female fighter and she's the one that's the most interested. She seems like she's the most receptive to all my crazy ideas. Um uh but she's actually she she she has a really high histamine response. So like dra any drastic change kind of messes with her. um weight cutting being one of them. Even just the act of fighting, but like any like massive diet switch kind of messes with her. Right now she's on like a like kind of an elimination diet trying to just like weed things out and and and figure out exactly what her body can tolerate. But um she says that once I figure out weight cutting uh then then she's on board. But I just have to figure out weight cutting. I just have to prove it. I just have to go and show her like, okay, it's still possible. You can do it, you know, and maybe I cut less, you know, because I'm not able to to drop way down and then go back way back up. That's may not be all the most beneficial either, right? But if you but if you're in the range for your fight, like let's say you you want you want to fight at 155, right? And that and you have a fight set with a dude at 155, there's there's no benefit to drop down to 140 and then come back up to 155, right? You want to be at 154.9. No, it would, you know. Yeah, we would. Nobody Nobody does that. Everybody would try to get to 155. The thing is that like like the week of the fight, seven days out from the fight, um, how I was operating before, seven days out from the fight, I want to be 170, you know, and then I know that, okay, I'm going to be able to to throughout the week, I'll diet and reduce my food a little bit and like water loading and then cut the carbs, cut the salt, right? and and cut the water and then PPP, do a little sauna or bath or whatever and boom, I'm 155 and then and then I'm back to 170 again. A lot of these guys though, like Islam, right, Islam fought him, he was like 185 pounds in the cage. So like he was really big with it with with this too. Like they they cut a lot of weight, right? So you're fighting a big person. So, if you are in the cage and you're fighting at 155, but you're weighing in at like you're in the cage at like 165 or a lot of the time I would end up at 167 168 even when I was fighting when I was uh still burning sugar. Um these you're fighting some dude that's 185 pounds. So, see you're still a pretty big disadvantage. So, if I was to say like gradually go down to 155, I'm going to make weight at 155 and then the next day I'm going to be like 162, you know, I'm not going to there's not going to be that big bounce back. So, I'm going to be a lot lighter than the person that I'm fighting. And this is why most people try to cut massive amounts of weight and it's all half of it is like a weight cutting competition to see who can fight at the lowest weight. um it's not very healthy, but the power that somebody can generate when they're heavier is is significantly more than somebody that is which is usually why like if you see any of the fights that happen in the UFC where somebody misses weight, right? They they tried to make their weight and they they missed it by five pounds or six pounds or eight pounds, right? That guy almost always wins a fight. Almost always. It's not always, but it's almost always wins the fight. Um, so that's one thing that I'm going to have to try to figure out is, okay, can I figure out how to get down and then get back up again? Or am I h am I going to have to sacrifice that like, okay, I'm just going to be fighting bigger people and then uh create a method around that. Okay, because I'm fighting bigger people, I'm going to do XYZ instead of like Z, right? Yeah. Well, I mean that was, you know, back in the day, you know, they didn't um like when I started, they still hadn't had they didn't have weight classes yet, you know, and that was all like the, you know, King of Pancra and the Shudo tournaments and all like that, the old school Japanese [ __ ] That was all just unlimited, you know, whatever. just then and Matt Hume was like a a buck 65 you know and and he would he was fighting like roided out you know you know dudes in there 250 270 lb roid monsters you know and he was just like get scared about this and he's just like I don't give a [ __ ] they just move slower and there's more of them to break like I'll fight a big guy sounds great you know and um he he was good though man that guy had perfect technique you remember chemo um chemo Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Real. So, he trained at AMC when I was when I was first there and uh he was actually a really nice guy. [ __ ] huge, man. His his calves were like the size of my waist, you know? He was huge, man. Huge. But he was like one of these dudes. He was like 270 lbs. 275 lbs. Just a monster. And he could not take Matt Hume down. Could not take him down with Matt standing there. not even like moving around, shuffling around, whatever. He stood there. This was right before the super fight with Ken Shamrock. Not everybody knows this, but um he he fought Ken Shamrock. I think it was a super fight in UFC 6. And and Ken Shamrock's a really really good wrestler. And Matt Matt fought him I think like three times back in the day. And um and so Matt was just like, "Hey, look, you know, Ken's a really good wrestler. like you need you need to have your takedowns and your takedown defenses like this has to be on point and um and he wasn't really happy with with where he was at. So he's just like okay all right take me down and and he just stood there I mean like literally just stood there like hands by his side like this standing straight up and down. He said take me down and you know first like Kimmo went in not like like trying to bull rush him but just went in to shoot like a double leg. Matt has this thing. He was a freestyle wrestling, you know, national champion. And like he had this thing where he would um where people would shoot in on him. He wouldn't even sprawl. He'd just pop his hits. It was like a gunshot, man. It was like it was like a punch. It was like, you know, the same sort of hip snap that you'd have when you're throwing like a right cross. He'd do that just with his hip and just smack them right in their shoulders. They're coming in. He just time it perfectly. Sat Kimo on his ass just standing. Bam. Just hip pop. Right. And so he's just like, "That's not good enough. You get up and do it again." And he did it again. Boom. Sat him down. Now he's like really trying out. Boom. Sit him down like go again. And we're all just like And uh like holy [ __ ] Couldn't take him down. Could not take him down. And so I I have no doubt. And you just have have no problem. So there there's definitely techniques, but um you know the thing is is that you know like you're talking about like yeah you know they're starting off bigger. They're cutting off a bunch of weight, but then they eat a whole bunch of carbs and junk and water and [ __ ] So that weight that they're gaining back, they still have the same amount of lean body mass, you know? It's just that now they're slowed down with a bunch of water, weight, and carbs and and [ __ ] and inflammation. You're not going to have that. So maybe you won't have like the physical weight, but they're going to have they're going to have the lean body mass they already had, you know? And yeah, I totally understand your point that they're they have more lean body mass and they're trying to super dehydrate down and then try to get back up to that and reinflate their muscles, but you can do a very similar thing. It is just again about dehydration. So you you can dehydrate yourself when you're when you're eating carbs. You just have more water weight. So it's it's not so you weigh 170, but a lot of that's actually like just [ __ ] water weight and inflammation that you didn't want in the first place. It's not lean body mass. So now maybe you'll cut less water weight, but you'll have more lean body mass if that makes sense. You know what I mean? Because like Yeah. You know what I mean? So you have less [ __ ] to to deal with. It's just lean hard ass tissue. You know what I mean? Yeah. And and then you can dehydrate that tissue and then reinflate that, you know? But if you're not eating carbs in the first place, like as soon as you stop eating carbs, water's coming off, fat's coming off, weight's coming off. Okay, we've already done that. you've already done that part of it. Yeah. Right. And uh and so now you know, you know, now you don't need to just fill back up with with useless weight. Now you're just lean and light on your feet and just every ounce of you is just, you know, rock solid and ready to go. Yeah. Yeah. You'll be fine. And and the thing is too, you know, like and you'll just you'll just feel so much better, you I mean, you know, fights are you, you know, you know better than anybody. I mean, it's they're they're hectic. It's war, you know, like anything can happen at any time and anybody can take anybody out at at any given, you know, on any given day. But, you know, that's why you have to be on on point, but like, you know, you're you're going to have an advantage mentally and now physically as well, you know, even on top of your natural gifts that you already had, you know. So, it's uh I'm excited for you, man. I can't wait to see it. Thank you, man. Yeah. Well, we'll definitely make sure that uh that you're aware when uh when it pops off and it'll probably be popping off quite quite probably in the summer. I'm I'm hoping that that by summer everything is uh everything is in line and we get the right promotion and we get the right money and and we get the right fight, which I don't really care exactly who it is. It's just like finding somebody to fight me might be a little bit difficult just because of like what I've done. And most people are just trying to get into the UFC, right? So they're like, "Oh, no. I don't want to fight that guy because he might beat me and then Dana White will hate me." And yeah, I don't care. I don't I don't need to do that anymore. I can fight whoever I want and if I lose, I don't whatever. If I win, whatever, you know? It's just for fun now. So yeah, gonna be fun. It's going to be a good time. Awesome, man. Well, that's cool. All right, man. Well, thank you so much uh for coming on. Um you you have um how do people follow you? help people find you, you know, name your gym, where it's at. Give that a give that a shout out again, too. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. So, you can you can find us in person, right? Tristar gym West Coast in Burnaby, BC, 7759 Edmond Street. And uh you can find me on YouTube under Coach Kan. Also under the gym name Tristar Gym West Coast. Yes, the Tristar gym. Like Faza Hobbies Tristar. I've got a I've got my own branch here on the west coast and uh yeah, you can find me on Instagram as well, but my my wife runs that account, so you won't actually be talking to me. Um it's try it's Kjan Johnson official and yeah, Instagram is just terrible for you. So I I try to stay away from it and stick to the YouTube and even that's can be a rabbit hole. So yeah, that's that's my socials and uh and yeah, this has been really great, man. Thank you. Thank you for making the time. I appreciate it. Oh, thank you, man. I I appreciate you taking time out and um yeah, and talking with us and and tell us your story. I think I think it's great and I'm again I'm really excited to see um you know uh your your upcoming fights and um see how your uh your team responds to this and see what they say about it. Yeah. Yeah. We'll we'll try to film the the session where I try to make them all vomit and puke and and Oh, dude, please. That would be so great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you and even just doing that that you know just sprinting the straits and jogging the flat that's still one of the best workouts I've ever done. you know, sometimes I'll I'll just redo that getting back in, you know, it's there's it's obviously, you know, when you're you're in a sprinting sport, you know, like rugby or something like that, it's really applicable, but I mean, we were doing that we were doing that um you know, in fighters training, too, man. My god, it just it just like when you push yourself like super past your own your own sort of threshold like you just you just come out the other side like just you know made out of steel, you know, you just like tempers you in in the heat, you know. So yeah, it's fantastic. So yeah, maybe do a couple trial runs there and uh and then and bring them out unsuspecting just crush them. Appreciate it. Awesome, man. Thank you. All right, man. You're very welcome and uh thanks for coming on. Thank you everybody. Really appreciate you watching that. Really hope that was helpful. For any of you athletes or aspiring athletes out there, really take this under under uh consideration because it absolute game changer. You know, um Kan here, you know, he's been a top fighter and a top athlete in the world for decades and you know, prove positive. You know, he's he is now um 20 years down the chain and he's saying, "Wow, I feel so good. I want to come back and start competing again." And that's how powerful this is. I've noticed it first firsthand myself in my 20s when I was doing this. Never felt better in my entire life. Couldn't figure out how to get back there until I was 38 years old, an old ass man, middle-aged, you know, shouldn't have had any sort of fight left in me. And all of a sudden, 2 weeks into it, I felt so good. I'm like, "Yep, screw it. I'm going to go play some rugby and hit somebody. Like, I just feel amazing." And I was going out there and uh and just wrecking shops. So, you know, this is something that's a huge huge advantage. And um you know and the people that think oh you have to do carb, you have to do this, that and the other, they're just not going to be the ones getting the benefit of this. So this is your secret weapon and you're going to be able to out compete every single one of them because you know they're too scared to give it a try and actually see for themselves. So if you're brave enough to try it out, you're the one that's going to get the rewards. And uh we'll see you guys on the podium. Thanks everyone. We'll see you next time. 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 could 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.