USA Olympic Diver Brandon Loschiavo: 'How an Animal-Based Diet TRANSFORMED My Athletic Performance!

why do they get so personal about it like what what what is it really doing to them for you to give somebody advice like what the hell does that have to do with anything I've told all these dietitians you're talking to the person that was frantically trying different diets to make sure the IBS could go away so like I did the raw vegan diet for a bit I tried just a a regular vegan diet I watched the game changers propaganda and got screwed after that like I I was able to try all these different diets the the vegan diet I lost uh close to 12 lbs of muscle sure I was lean but I had nothing on me uh my stomach felt worse than it ever had welcome to the plant-free MD podcast with Dr Anthony chaffy where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically hello everyone 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 very special guest Mr Brandon Loo Who is joining me all the way from the states and uh in the middle of training for the Olympic trials Brandon so much uh thank you so much for coming on it's a pleasure thanks for having me I've been uh super excited ever since we uh jumped on a podcast you came on mine um my mom's been obsessed with all of your content so she's been did you watch did you watch this one what about this one it's it's incredible I've been eating more meat by the way I'm like yes yeah nice oh that's really good yeah yeah so it's it's an honor I'm I'm excited to jump on this podcast and chat oh that's great well thank you for having me on on your podcast as well that was a lot of fun so I'm glad that we could uh meet up again yeah yeah it's nice to actually have some like logic and um some like really solid foundations and reasoning behind why we should be you know integrating more animal Foods so um yeah it was it was a fun podcast to have definitely adds to my you know education side of why I'm doing what I'm doing for sure yeah great big help yeah well to that end uh can can you give us a bit um bit about you and and uh and what you do and and obviously you know your your Athletics and and nutritional uh stylings for that yeah of course so uh my name is Brandon lo shavo I am a 2020 or you can say 2021 uh Olympic finalist on t platform um I have tried many diets but ended up on an animal-based diet which is kind of really helped um a lot of my stomach problems um which is kind of the main one was like IBS um if we're going to just keep going with some diving accolades I'm a NCAA Champion three time Big 10 champion and then multi National Champion but um something that has helped me a lot is changing to the animal-based diet I did full carnivore for about 6 to 8 months um and then reintegrating some fruit after that but I did notice um and we'll definitely get into this um I did notice for those six to eight months I actually felt pretty important that I did those before I went on an animal based diet because that was the only thing that finally took my stomach to like a neutral position um the past with my IBS was kind of uh a rough time for me cuz it started in probably Middle School is when it started getting really bad and this would be from uh I thought I was lactose intolerant for a super long time um depending on the spice of the food I'd be curled up in bed for a day or two and I would have to skip school cuz it would get that bad um there was a lot of fear around food thankfully because of the animal based diet I am on now I kind of have a rule of thumb is 90 9010 or 955 so I will be everything I bring into my house is animal-based that's just like a non-negotiable for me but outside of that so like one to two meals a week maximum I can eat whatever the hell I want um and that's usually how it works for me and it's how um I've been able to keep my stomach in check we'll say because if I start going past the 955 or 9010 rule for me um I start to feel like some sort of regression back to you know the old IBS symptoms nice and do you do you feel do you notice any difference like when you have those those outside meals um and how you feel like obviously if you go too far then you get the IBS back again but you know other feelings you know getting getting sore getting a bit more tired or any other changes you feel pretty good no I definitely yeah I know what I'm doing like it definitely doesn't feel great but it's just like nice to kind of like sometimes let that go but yeah I mean it it's kind of funny I I was just talking to my girlfriend last night about this it's so funny you can you can eat these foods and there's a almost an instant recognition of what you just did just based off of how heavy um it takes a long time to digest um versus like an animal based meal I could have the largest meal of my life and I walk out of that that meal feeling phenomenal I feel better after I've had it um yeah I it's it's pretty quick um I don't know necessarily about soreness that that'd be a hard one I would actually have to test that which um is something I always like to do with all of the diets and we can go over how many different diets that I've tried but um yeah I think every weekend I'm kind of sore because we have so much training towards the back end of the week anyways so that's just kind of uh like as of as of recently we have two practices Friday with a strength training session so like Saturday is I just know I'm not going to feel amazing just from all of that like being beat up but um yeah I haven't I haven't noticed anything really longterm but the the day after I definitely feel um stomach wise I almost like to call it like a little bit slower like the processing speed just doesn't feel is good um and that's something I've been like pretty hyper aware and that's the part that sucks about like um not this diet but having to deal with the IBS stuff because when I go outside of my own confinements and I go to a competition let's say I was just in China for example um a few weeks ago and that was something that I had to deal with it always catches up to me the last day um and especially when I get high nerves the IBS kind of has that tendency to speak up a little bit and so in China that my day of the competition I was I was struggling with some IBS symptoms and stuff like that so yeah yeah not great when you're performing or in the pool no no it sucks yeah I actually I used to have to travel with packets not just like one or two but packets of em modium and I would know every time I would go on these trips I'm I'm taking one to two of them a day which was horrible cuz then you just feel bloated and stuffed up 2 47 yeah yeah that sucks when um when you were on when you were on like the full six month of just just carnivore when was that um so that was probably around I really started making the transition around 2020 2021 um because I was just so sick of dealing with the stomach issues it was like after slash during covid I started like really getting into the idea of it and then 2021 I really like leaned into it um so yeah I once I came back here um I I did full carnivore I actually don't think I did it that great and you can kind of correct me if we go over it um on how I did it but um yeah I did it for about roughly six months straight nice and um yeah so what do you mean you don't think you did it did it correct okay so it's like based off of what I was hearing because I was this was my like deep Paul saladino phase this this is when he was doing I think he was just uh carnivore MD back then I think that was his initial like Instagram name but um I was like okay I need fatty meat because I need the calories um but I was picking like really shitty meat which I don't know if that necessarily kind like I was I was buying chuck roast I was eating like two to three pounds of chuck roast um but like really thick it okay yeah if that's fine that's fine but like maybe I think it was and and you can correct me here but because my stomach was kind of going through something and it was trying to like regress um and this is kind of like a weird I don't know if this was a symptom or you know something I was just dealing with at the time but like I I noticed like armpit sweat was smelt really bad and like eating a lot of chuck roast and I think like that much fat was kind of like bothering my stomach but I just kept doing it because I knew like long term it would kind of like level out um I didn't get like the excuse my language but like uh Joe Rogan talks about like getting the shits when he does carnivore I never yeah like I never really got that when I was doing the whole chuck roast but um I think if I leaned towards doing like a New York strip or like a ribeye um I kind of like I don't know if it just feels like a little bit less fat compared cuz like the chuck roast has so much fat you're just sitting there chewing through all of that and it just felt like a little bit too much um but yeah those that was like the protocol I kind of felt like the armpits were really sweaty and I just didn't feel like I smelt that great but like once I got past that 6 months and my like stomach kind of felt like it leveled off I reintegrated eggs and then I brought in some fruits um so I brought in like blueberries and then a little bit of uh I started playing with some raw honey and that was starting to work well now and then my diets Chang quite a bit now comparative to then but that was kind of my my diet back then so yeah yeah well I mean I I certainly don't think you do anything wrong by eating chuck roast as long as you feel good with it you know if it's a little too much fat for you then you know certainly cut back on it but you know there's nothing wrong with chuck roast though it's still it's still good good meat though you know yeah yeah yeah I actually just had it last night I I think it it was definitely how I prepared it too um cuz I was cooking I was using I I didn't know back then but I was just cooking on uh like high heat with olive oil and just running through that and then so it's just it felt like it was like too much grease and so that that part was just kind of affecting me potentially that's kind of I felt like it was a little bit too much but um I had chuck roast last night I actually just cut it into smaller pieces and then I air fried it um and then you know I put put some seasonings on there a little bit of lemon pepper and salt and it was perfect yeah yeah cooking in the olive oil could you know could cause some issues as well just because when you when you cook with the olive oil can oxidize and very quickly and it can be pretty upsetting to your stomach as well so that's something to think about too do you cook with olive oil now or you sort of gone through that phase yeah I don't what I will do and again I I I feel like this podcast would answer some of my like remaining questions that I do have but um I know that cooking with olive oil at high Heats is not great for you so I'll I'll drizzle on a little bit after so I don't cook with it but I'll just put it on a little bit after um just for like a little bit of flavor but yeah I I don't cook with it anymore yeah that's good the yeah the olive oil um oxidizes on its own and so some some studies shown that it can take as little as six seven days after pressing that they oxidize in the in the bottle so it's it's really important to get it fresh then stick it in the fridge and then use it cold just like just like you okay interesting so there has to be like more that that's the annoying part and this is something I've like really recognized uh all of these things that you have to like put so many extra little details in which is not the it's not the worst thing in the world but I think that was like the hard part like I don't know I'm thinking of like a Rand like broccoli for example it's like you have to cook it you have to you have to clean it perfectly you have to buy the right one you have to make sure you're cooking it perfectly and then hopefully it doesn't affect your stomach in all of these ways you like you know maybe I just don't maybe I just don't eat it just skip it but yeah okay that's that's good to know because I knew the smaller ones were better so you didn't have it for an extended period of time um it's good to buy the olive oil from a singular spot so it's not from a bunch of different places and then hopefully you're buying one that's not seed oil like a bunch of seed oils I saw some big Scandal that came out unbelievable so yeah I took it out for a really long time though so yeah I'm fin taking it out again yeah do well I mean it might it might be a good experiment just to sort of see sort of how that affects um yeah yeah when you were doing just like that six months of just just straight up meat you know with a bit of olive oil whatever were did you notice difference in your soreness then from your training or not really it's kind of hard um if if I were to compare it now versus when I was eating just a regular diet of when my and I can't wait to get into this but when my you know like dietitians and stuff I'm I'm eating pasta in between practices and I'm getting the great um it it's more so and maybe this does play into soreness but energy throughout the day mhm um it it's just like it would started becoming more consistent that I wouldn't completely dip in between practices it's it's like the um I would eat pasta or um I would have like a big sandwich and I would crash right after it like having that much carbs and then I would get into the next practice and feel like I'd have to completely ramp back up like I just woke up um and I don't know if that's just me specifically that runs into that issue but my God I just could not every time after that second practice I was like I need some form of stimulant to like get me back going um and I could kind of buy that because like that was when my injuries were the worst though so I I could kind of agree once I got back on once I got onto a COR carnivore diet in the first place recovery got a lot easier so Patell tendinitis my my fat pads aren't just like like constantly inflamed so like overall um inflammation and just being able to recover even when I have these you know that five % 10% when I go eat one bad meal I still recover a million times better than I used to so in that aspect 100% I agree um that that's just like without a doubt for sure nice that's great yeah the um yeah we should get into that like what we reading before but the uh the reason I ask is because like I I I just you know I don't get sore anymore but I that's with getting rid of all coffee all everything besides oh even coffee yeah yeah oh I was sore for two days after drinking a cup of coffee after working out so I'm like no not doing that again and Okay and like the doctor I worked with he's or orthopedic surgeon here and uh we went to the gym together and we're doing like you know I had him go through like my workout and I was really pushing him he's like oh well you know I'm in surgery tomorrow I don't want to go too hard I don't want to be sore and I was just like look you're on Carnivore you've in carnivore for a month like you won't be sore as long as you've been strict so it's on you have you been strict he's like yeah yeah definitely he like then you won't be sore and so and he's just like looking at me up really skeptically and so you we did the whole workout he's like all right I'm really interested I'm really interested to see if you're right on this like well I'm really interested to see if you've actually been staying strict and it's like it will be if you if you have and next day uh we were in the we were in the bumping into each other he's like I really wanted you to be wrong I really wanted you I really wanted to wake up today just soore as hell he's like but I'm not I'm just I'm not soore it all and it and it it pissed me off I wanted you to be wrong but but not I'm not so at all I was like yeah it's kind of cool isn't it he's like yeah it's crazy uh we sort of sitting down there's like a you know we're all in break and uh one of the Reps one of the med reps came through and bought coffee for everyone I declined and he was having some coffee and I was just I didn't say anything I was just watching him and sort of like 10 minutes into it 15 minutes he's like hey you know actually actually am feeling a bit sore actually am kind of sore through my chest and sort of like down my arms and I just pointed at the coffee and said what are you drinking he's like damn you think that's it I'm like yes like you weren't sore 10 minutes ago now you're sore what do you think it is you know you gonna be sore for the next two days he's like damn it so yeah it's uh it's weird it's weird but like just those those little bits of inflammation you from these things it's surprising it's surprising yeah you know like that's what I talked about like like the last sort of bits you got really those last little remnants of this stuff and and it just gets so much inflammation out of your body it's like it's big difference so that's why yeah I was wondering if um if you had tried that because I certainly noticed a huge difference and then other athletes I've spoken to like that's like their favorite part is that they they do like a big competition a big training and the next day they could do it again and they're not held back but I did notice when I was going more strict uh recently um I was making sure that I had I was doing ground meat in the morning and then I would just do like a pound of um ribeye or whatever um at night I did feel really like really clean and that that did keep me I was having coffee and stuff like that but I definitely felt like I was recovering faster and I did I did notice it because you're looking for in athletics when we're at this high you're not looking for a 10% change you're looking for one to two um and I don't know do you do you ever do you eat eggs yeah yeah sometimes um the switch to it like having ground meat in the morning I definitely felt like I did feel a little bit better energized energy-wise too I definitely felt like I could maintain because that's that's what I'm always like that's something I'm hypervigilant of is am I getting into my afternoon practice and am I feeling like a mental dip mental and physical dip halfway through that's where I start to like kind of notice it um that's definitely I like because I eat six eggs in the morning so it's like I'll have six eggs in the morning um I'll have some sort of fruit so like frozen mangoes or some blueberries and then maybe like a little bit of raw honey um and that's usually kind of like a a meal first for me um and that usually keeps me pretty consistent but with the with the ground meat it did feel like obviously feel a little bit heavier so I have to watch out on how much I do eat cuz my whole Sports predicate on how light do I feel yeah cuz like you mentally feel like I can compress and maybe we can kind of show video of what what that looks like to the people but I have to be able to compress like as quickly as possible so if you kind of feel full like this used to happen to me if I went to like [ __ ] Chipotle and I would just feel so heavy I would feel so heavy I was like oh this is not this is not a good idea so uh making sure I'm eating soon enough and the right things usually makes makes that kind of uh like possible like a hell of a lot more possible when it's coming into that compression yeah so yeah makes sense and um what do did you have some some stuff you could pop up or what you talking about like some the diving stuff um yeah I didn't know if that's if that was possible but I mean maybe we can you can do that exteriorly or I'll send you some videos yeah but send me some click it in yeah I'll oh okay uh yeah let's I'll send you a few things but yeah just for people to kind of get an idea of what that looks like and that will just kind of kind of give you an idea of why I kind of need a feel light [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so yeah so you know you're talking about like you know changing that one to 2% like I would be I would be willing to say that if you like you go to just that just that brown beef and meat sort of thing and just do that like you'd get not one to two% I get you I'd say you get 15 20% out of that and you wouldn't get sore anymore but you'd have to drop coffee and you'd have to drop the olive oil as well because all of those things can can add to it you just go like beef and water or you know just just meat and water and just nothing else like I I think you I think you'd find you'd had have a big big change um serious serious Market Improvement not just a couple percentage and you would you would not be soaring anymore certainly not in that that same way you sort of feel like yeah sort of worked out but it wouldn't be sore it wouldn't be stiff you could do it again no problem and the the other thing is that yeah you're right like you don't eat you don't want to eat a big meal of meat before you work out definitely not you want to wait until after your you're training and then have something and if you're doing like two a days three a days something like that you just got to have sort of a bit of a smaller meal afterwards you have to give like a lot of space or even just just not eat until after and then you sort of ref feed on the on the next on the subsequent days but um yeah it could because yeah because it could just make you naturally lethargic if you have if you have a big meal of meat you're just going to have blood you know dedicated down to your your intestines and it's just going to slow you down your body's going to say like hey what are we doing what are we working for we already got we already got food like no chill chill spend the day in the sun you know so um yeah you definitely need to I always would fast on competition and um training days um I often would just naturally eat maybe sort of earlier in the day but you could I've tried to keep it like five hours between eating and training and I wouldn't eat that much during the day and uh and then eat like a big thing afterwards you know and that's that seemed to work for me and then on on game days just did not eat at all never ate okay yeah interesting yeah I so when I was just doing the ground beef that that did feel good um I was probably doing six to probably proba probably 6 to 8 ounces I feel like it was it was pretty light wasn't too much and that felt fine um but then at at night I would I would make sure I get like a pound if not a little bit more than that that's like a for me every day it's that's like my non-negotiable is like I I'm having a pound of red meat at night that's that's what we're that's what we're doing and that that always feels super good to me but um what are your thoughts then on um like would that even play to dairy products too would you completely take that out except except for butter okay yeah because usually in the morning I I'll have whole milk with a little bit of Celtic salt and I'll throw in creatine and sometimes I'll add in a little bit of maple syrup because Paul salino thank you for that but like that's like my pre like my healthy pre-or workout would be that drink and then um I'll have a meal after that that next practice which would be like the six eggs um and some fruit and then I would have my second practice um and then I would have my pound of meat so I'm usually done eating around anywhere from 3:30 to 5:30 depending on when I end practice and again like that was a big part for me is actually giving my stomach time to digest um if I'm eating too late at night I feel horrible I just I feel terrible so like having that time to to digest coming into the next day I usually feel pretty ready to eat yeah that makes sense hey everyone really happy to announce a new sponsor for the show and for everybody down in Australia Stockman Stakes who are delivering highquality grass fed and finished pasture raised beef and other meats flash frozen and vacuum sealed tood door something that I've been enjoying a lot of myself recently as well they also have a great range of specialty items such as high fat keto mints and carnivore beef and organs mints with liver kidneys and beef heart as well so use code chaffy today for free order of beef mints or another specialty gift along with your order at Stockman steaks.com and I'll see you over there thanks guys yeah um yeah I probably cut out the milk especially just because you know there's enough carbs that it can spike your insulin and then you get out of ketosis and you actually you know uh Paul doesn't like being ketosis I do like being ketosis I've been in ketosis for better part of a decade now and it feels great and and that's when I have uh the most energy and so you know especially for when you're training you mean that's what you want you want you want to be able to tap into your body's resources and your fat stores this is work from Professor Tim NOS down in South Africa he was all about like as an athlete you have to have carbs carbs cars because that was just the teaching of the time and he was just that was what that what he learned and so he was you know peret you know propagating that and then he realized like 15 years ago like damn it I was wrong and he could have just retired in a very very successful very influential uh you know uh doctor and uh writer he he wrote a bunch of books they were selling well you know he had no problems could have just just kicked back but he spent the last 15 years trying to undo his own legacy and and go against all the things that he's been pushing out and people are saying no no no no you know you need cards because of look at this paper it's like written by him and he's just like yeah that was wrong now it's this you know just they're trying to disprove him with his own work you know I was like no this is that's not how that works and and he's done he's done crossover trials with athletes where they have carb fuel athlete and a keto athlete and um give them like 42 days to get you know customized fat adapted but they said that it really didn't take more than three weeks for anybody but so 42 days is what they gave them and they had the know big high performance endurance all these sorts of things and they they could both compete at the same level carbs or fat adapted right and but the fat adapted ones were tapped into their their fat and so they they never crashed they never ran out and they didn't have to carb refuel and then they did swap over so it was a crossover trial and they did the the carb athletes went keto and the keto went carbs and again 42 days to re acclimate I found the exact same thing they didn't have any up or down in their performance on the you know sort of the The Upfront but then the keto people could just keep going right but there's no there's that's one one of the things that people say is well you know yes you know they'll they'll say either one whichever one they do they'll say that's impossible the other one right it's like you know high performance like sprinting uh you know or or like endurance whatever whatever it is it's you know that one is isn't possible oh yes well it works for sprinting but it wouldn't work for endurance because you're not going to replenish your glycogen and all that sort of stuff and you know but no it does so you have the exact same output except you just you just keep going you don't you never run out and there's actually studies looking at um athletes with glycogen they found that fat fueled athletes replenish their glycogen faster than carb fueled athletes you know sucking down sugar water and gels and things like that so it's it's a huge performance Advantage I certainly noticed that I played you know know 10 years high level rugby before medical school and then kept playing rugby five of those years was on just zero carb cornivore and five were on just a normal whole food homemade omnivorous diet mostly meat and vegetables and salad because I was supposed to eat salad and that that was sort of the only thing the only reason not much carbs not much anything else n and day difference just night and day I mean had I have some bread or this and that I you know but it wasn't like a m i wasn't like going out just buying sacks of bread and pasta you know every now I went through like some phases where I'd have some like whole wheat pasta because you're supposed to was just easy you know and I was doing that when I was studying for the mcats and I would crash like 2 in the afternoon I'd be on the couch like reading I just like and I have to take a nap and just pass out for two hours I I didn't know what the hell was going on and yeah and then athletically night and day difference n day difference when uh when I wasn't eating any carbs at all so you know for me at least and a lot of other athletes I mean there's a lot of like Pro rugby players now that are coming to this there a lot of guys in New Zealand Australia that are that are um professional rugby players and and and other athletes longdistance cyclists endurance cyclists and things like that couple in South Africa you know very very high level cyclists that are they are just absolutely crushing at doing this as well and there's one guy who I just interviewed guy Alex McDonald who ran wasn't a runner before this have to call him a runner now but he had never run a marathon or anything like that and he just decided to go out and run five marathons in five consecutive days without eating the entire time right so he ate he ate on Sunday yeah his last meal was on Sunday then he ran a full length Marathon Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and then Friday he ran the Seattle Sydney marathon and then he was going to eat after that he had like a big Tomahawk like all just like aging his fridge it's ready to go and he's like I'm not even hungry he just had like two burger patties and I called it a day you know and uh so you got tons of energy in your body your body's just constantly replenishing this and when you have the carbohydrates it yeah it'll give you energy while you're working out and if if that's all you need then that's fine you know I I don't like you said like Tim no found it's like you're not going to have a you're not going to do worse in the in the sort of the short term but it's the long term you might run out of energy and you have to sort of refeed and get more carved and things like that so uh but if you're not doing any of that you will make carbs you will make glucose you will make glycogen and you'll make ketones and you'll just have them just all day and you won't have any sort of ups and downs and any of that sort of stuff so it uh I certainly prefer that you know and I certainly feel better that as uh when I was you know playing sports yeah it's it's kind of baffling to me too is and I did want to talk about this at one point but it it cracks me up that um I'll have dietitians come up to me freaking out like I've I've literally been cussed out by a dietitian before I'm not kidding like swearing at me because because I'm eating meat and how unhealthy that is while she's while she's like fat like she was literally not in shape telling me this you know freaking out probably about like my cholesterol and all these things and I'm like are you sure yours is better like you're eating Pop-Tarts for breakfast but somehow eggs in the morning is bad like I'm just struggling to understand your reasoning here um and so I'm getting these I I had like two kind of just baffled with me like came up to me out of practice and started like just braiding me um because you know one of the athletes wanted to try it and they stopped eating pizza and pasta oh no I'm so sorry like it's like at at one point it wasn't even that they were eating a Whole Food's diet they were literally microwaving food like [ __ ] food and they they had the balls to come up to me and start yelling at me I'm like all I told them to do is to start cooking a steak instead of having pasta at night like he didn't know what to cook he didn't know how to cook and so I taught him I was like make eggs in the morning have steak at night if you feel like you want to have something else some fruit vegetables even sure but like you got to stop microwaving your food like he was he was a senior in high school and the kid's fat like he was starting to get like tubby I'm like this just doesn't work can't work so that it's just it's wild to see how dogmatic they are with maybe even I don't even know if it's what they've learned though like there's no way and I hope this is wrong I know we talked about this on my podcast but like the information that they learned I feel like is at least pushing them towards more Whole Food whole food esque food um even though again it's like we had dietitians here telling us to have you know pasta and sandwiches between practices so ah you know struggle there yeah well it is and it's you know but but they've you know they've been indoctrinated and so they they really think that what they're doing is the right thing but you know if they were doing the right thing and if their advice was right why don't they have the results that they think other people should get right I mean you know like yeah you know what I'm saying like like were they following their own advice you know it's like do you follow your advice why why should I follow your advice if you're following your advice I want my results not your results you know well the I think the one part that kind of still baffles me too is like okay well you're in Australia so maybe it's better but like you know the regulations and like the the food pyramid and the thing that ruined like 70% of the US to where they just like live a carb Centric uh diet like that's the information that they were built off of that was the information that I ate like my mom pushed me towards for a really long time who's now like she was a a nutritionist for the longest time became a clinical nutritionist and she was putting out this information until I started questioning I started tapping does it really make that much sense are you sure it makes that much sense you should try this and when I switched to a carnivore she was kind of like I don't know but you know coincidentally my IBS disappeared until I started eating bad foods again and it's just it's wild to me that you have a lot of dietitians and I know there's a lot of really good ones out there that try to like reintegrate and learn um but again I'm getting yelled at but all their information doesn't work look at the US don't look at athletes what about the whole us as a whole like everyone's fat like I feel like we have the old photos that maybe they hate to hear about but you know you look in like the 1970s 60s 50s probably the 50s everyone's in shape and it's like that was when we were using less seed oils and whatever and it it's just it cracks me up to think that all of their information that they're utilizing now is not only making them fat but it's making all of their their clients out of shape and even the athletes okay fine the athletes aren't out of shape because they they have to work like hell to get out of that hole but it it's just kind of like depressing saying that like we're in this NeverEnding cycle it's like a negative feedback loop it's just it keeps not working but we let me retry again MH so it's just it's baffling to me that we keep running in this circle of just like a logical thinking but well you just got to keep going deeper it's going to fix somehow at some point yeah yeah yeah yeah sure it's just so frustrating for me yeah well that's crazy that they came up and chewed you out too especially because you asking about this I mean that's completely inappropriate I mean they need to be at least professional and just say hey you we have concerns about this you know just like why why do they get so personal about it like what what what is it really doing to them for you to give somebody advice like what the hell is that have to do with anything well I just told him I was like hey this is what I've done and this is what I'm doing by the way like before that and this is the thing i' I've told all these dietitians you're talking to the person that was frantically trying different diets to make sure the IBS could go away so like I did the raw vegan diet for a bit I tried just a a regular vegan diet I watched the game changers propaganda and got screwed after that like I I was able to try all these different diets the the vegan diet I lost uh close to 12 pounds of muscle sure I was lean but I had on me uh my stomach felt worse than it ever had um and again it's like I'd rather you eat like vegetables than you know pasta and pizza and all these things like I feel like at some point you have to like recognize it's like first go Whole Foods I feel like that's like the Gateway you notice like most of the foods you're getting fed are just complete poison like you go to grocery stores and you're like it's only on like the Outer Circle there's some food and then all the inside is just [ __ ] at least in the US again I haven't been in Australia but it's everywhere yeah okay so it's everywhere yeah it's just like it's wild to me and uh you know you look into the grocery stores and again it's just fake it's hard to call it food it's just like processed chemicals that you're eating but um yeah I mean you start going down the gate the Gateway you start re- enjoying eggs and you're like holy crap these things are great and then you're like well let me have some meat but when I jumped back on the carnivore diet for example um just for people to recognize as athletes too um I went back on the carnivore diet I had a proper strength training regimen and this is like after I've been Lifting for four or five years so getting like newbie gains is just not as likely and I was able to gain 10 pounds of lean muscle in three months damn nice so it's like it again it's like you just have to walk back to things that make sense even though again it's like yeah I was I literally got cussed out and the I I I told them at like lit literally at that moment I was like I have to leave because I have other things I have to do um but I would love to sit down with you and actually talk with you about this because it's helped me it's worked with me and like my old dietitian that I had at Purdue when I was a student was fantastic and she was always eager and willing to work with me it's just like the the newer ones that I've had to like talk with at least were just yikes I think it's the the the sooner you're out of that little like box like right as you finish your degree you're so obsessed and you just have that knowledge I feel that maybe we talked about that on my podcast but you know if you learn within a small confined box of information then you going outside of that box makes you uncomfortable and you start freaking out and so you know I pushed the bounds for and uh the you know the dietitian kind of freaked out on me but she never wanted to meet coincidentally so yeah that's on her yeah that's on her yeah how did your how did your buddy do um did he end up sticking with it and did he or or did they him yeah no he's yet to go back yeah he's yet to go back so uh I he was struggling with cooking his steak so we actually had a um we had a little cooking session a few like probably a week ago and I showed him how I cook my steaks but yeah no ever since I showed him he started slowly changing and morphing towards that but yeah he eats it primarily uh animal based diet and he's uh he's doing great and he's been on that for like well over a year now so yeah nice yeah it's just funny to see that change in people again it's like even my mom who's learned all this old information she's starting to change and she's starting to feel better like she primarily ate uh a vegan diet for the longest time she was having she would sometimes add in some fish sometimes add in some chicken and I'm like Mom you're not one you're not eating enough and then two like you need to like reintegrate food that's like actually giving you like nutrients and so she started you know changing it and she said her hair started feeling better and like all these little pieces in her life were starting to you know change I'm like all well weirdly enough it only makes too much sense yeah exactly that's great so so that was actually fairly recent so I was like last year these guys chewed you out um uh it was last year last year I got like screamed out yeah yeah it's just wild that's upe they ever walk that back you know since they saw him doing well or they just still Twinkies are best no they they I mean even after that conversation still pushed them to eat you know like the little protein bars that you could have that are just like doused in sugar and [ __ ] like that real food it's like our it's like Mom used to make yeah yeah yeah so he should be eating more of that um you should be making sure to have one to two sandwiches in between practice that's that's literally what was pushed and said Jesus how they so no no they they didn't no I just no well I mean they have jobs specifically because of that which is like the frightening part like you have to say those things to get in I think here's my thing for a dietician you should be in shape like I don't know M maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong but like maybe for like a doctor like your schedule's hard and like you don't necess you should know about nutrition and stuff like that but like that's you know you don't have to looked apart to be like phenomenal mhm right but like a n a dietitian or a nutritionist like that's your [ __ ] job is to be like is to tell people how to eat so if you're eating like sweets candy and sugar and all of your meals or [ __ ] and you're literally out of shape uh like that's your resume is how you look to me like it's like a bodybuilding coach you know that's young like you should be in shape the older ones okay fine like your 60s 7s but even then like you should be in pretty good shape you should know how to eat properly and be lean um you know to me that's like okay that only makes sense a personal trainer should look like he knows how to train himself and others like these are things to me that are like hey your resume should show on you um I don't know it probably and you could correct me if I'm wrong it probably should be for doctors that you should be looking fairly healthy since you're trying to help people in back into Health but it just wild to me for a dietitian yeah no I think I think it's very I mean I've had I've had a lot of patients say that to me that they actually appreciate the fact that I look healthy and say okay you know I'm happy to take your advice like you do this and you look the part and it's just like all right you know um you know someone's like a heart surgeon or you brain surgeon something like that I mean it's just like well whatever like you need you need the surgery you just want someone who can do the job uh but you know being healthy obviously is is very helpful as well because you're going to be more mental you have more mental acuity you're going to have more energy you're going to you're not going to be all just stressed out and brain fog I you don't need that when you're in the middle of surgery and operating and so you know that's obviously helpful but it yeah if you're if you're not getting like the direct advice for that sort of Lifestyle hey here's how you be the healthiest you can be you know maybe they don't need to maybe they don't need to look the part but it is like have you know seeing your cardiologist smoke you know okay yeah that's a perfect example you know it's just like well hold on a second what are you doing and so but yeah like a nutritionist you have to sort of Wonder it's like okay you're not you're not healthy and is that because you're following your advice or you're not following your advice and either way there's a problem because if you are following your advice clearly your advice is is bad and if you're not following your advice why are you not following your advice is it because you don't believe your own advice you don't think that's the right way to go or or what I mean what what the hell is going on here and so yeah I mean I I I think you're right you know you you do you know your body and your physique and your health is your resume when you're in the health field there was uh there's actually I was at I was visiting a friend of mine who had a had a practice medical practice and they did a lot of diet and lifestyle and you know corrective Health Medicine preventative medicine trying to get people healthy and he had sort of a sort of a nutritionist counselor sort of guy but he the guy was vegan but he didn't push like a vegan diet but that's just what he did himself and so you know he promoted like the diet that that that that practice promoted and just you know helped them along and all that sort of stuff so he wasn't like you know pushing on anybody but he just he just ate like a whole food diet plant-based diet and so I was there Whole Food meat diet and I was here Whole Food plant-based diet and one of the patients came in like they ended up I actually felt bad because they ended up letting this guy go because they're like he just didn't look the part he was very frail he was very very pale and and very skinny and he just didn't look healthy and patients started commenting because I was I was there I just drop in and um and I looked healthy and they were like we were sort of standing next to each other one of the patients said to uh my friend whose practice it was they're like did you see those two next to each other like you know that that that meat guy just looks really good the other guy looks like he's dying he looks like he's on Cho or something you know and so they were just like yeah we got to let you go you know you're just not not video fitting the part you're not you don't look healthy and so people don't have confidence in taking your advice and so I think it is it is important to do that and you know some of the some of the nutritionists that I know who are now carnivore it's because they were following their own advice and they were getting really bad results that they started questioning their own education saying wait hold on a second this doesn't this doesn't add up you know I'm do every some said like like uh Dr Sarah zivar she has a PHD in nutrition right nutrition diex on PhD and and she's following the exact advice that you know that that she taught you know years and years and years of study years and years and years of school she's now a professor she's teaching this at a university level and she's getting more and more overweight more and more unwell she's like what the hell is going on I I should be just the healthiest person on Earth right now working out doing all this sort of stuff just getting worse and worse and so then she started reexamining this and like this was all [ __ ] and so you know now she's gone completely the other side now she's you know she's doing carnivore but it's uh you know it's it's it's difficult when you you don't even see the problem with your own advice and you don't even see that your own advice is causing harm and then you keep pushing it and get angry when someone goes away from that maybe it's just sort of you're stepping on their toes because they're like that advice sucks not listening to that [ __ ] and you go do something else and get better advice and then they're like well that that that could be my I could lose my job because people are doing something else I don't know but it's uh it's a bit it's a bit insecure I'd say well it's disheartening I think that's the frustrating part for me is I I do you know who Dr Mike is he's pretty big on YouTube he's got a big podcast um he's nutrition or Sports scientist or something like that or he's he's a general practicing doctor I think if that's what it's called Uh uh yeah just a general doctor aesome I too much but I think I have yeah he he recently had a podcast I forgot the the doctor he brought on who was I guess controversial but he brought on this specific like PhD uh dietitian and again like I'm Midway through and they bring up that she's this PhD and like she again looks like she's like 15 pounds I could just blow at her and she would snap in half but like she's this very world-renowned uh dietician and of course she follows the vegan diet I'm like dude it's just like it doesn't make sense to me again it's like the the doctors that have the you know the farthest phds again it's like I don't know if you're just like you're so deep that you just keep going thinking that like this makes sense um but like how many pills is she taking it's kind of like the Brian Johnson thing to me I'm like like this guy's spending $2 million a year to be like to live forever but he's on this veg diet and he's taking 120 pills a day yeah yeah that really sounds like you're living how long does that take you to hos down 120 pills it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard I'm like again like H how many of those pills could just be like wiped away if you just had like a nice piece of steak in front of you like that was that was my question like he he talks about like analyzing all of his like blood lipids and all of these he just goes through all of these things but like have you yet to try it something else outside of that diet like you say you have every every calorie has to fight for its life you're like okay but you have this like you have glob in front of you like really that's G to that's going to save you that's going to like allow you to live to it's just stupid so I I think the frustr the reason why I brought that up it's like frustrating because like even a lot of the the pills and the things that they would have to take like the B12 and stuff like that to like because you're not eating red meat like is is that even digestible does your body and you could probably speak into this like are all the things that you'd have to take because you're not eating red meat are you even able to like digest it in and your body able to like take in all the B12 K2 all that stuff based off of all the pills that you're taking that hopefully aren't laced with syn like synthetic crap on top of it like it just doesn't make sense to me like how is that you have a PhD and this is what you're doing like it's frustrating yeah that's always the thing that was a bit surprising to me that that phd's nutrition or just nutritionists in general could recommend a diet or subscribe to a diet that was devoid of nutrients right like like it's in the name right it's like you're a nutritionist it's about nutrients and you're saying this is the best diet oh but it's lacking like 30 things that you have to supplement for well that's not that's not really a good diet then is it um the the Italian Pediatrics board I forget the name it was of one of their uh big uh groups of Pediatricians they they made a public statement about vegetarian vegan diets they said these These are absolutely inappropriate diets for children and really anyone is that any diet that is that is lacking in even one nutrient is a bad diet and is not AC it is not appropriate for a growing child and you can cause a lot of harm so they they have publicly come out and condemned a vegan diet and said you you cannot feed your kids it's this crap it's just it's not now they're not advocating for a carnivore diet they're they're just advocating for the inclusion of meat like a whole food omnivorous diet and but you people say no you got to go play medicine they're saying absolutely not you cannot do that you know you have you have to eat uh meat it's there's no avoiding it you know like well you can supplement well no you can't because there are there was a there's a there's a paper that came out last year that estimated there was like 51,000 nutrients in red meat and we don't have names for a lot of these things and many of them don't exist in plants so we know of the nutrients we know about uh B12 can't get away from that but there's a number of others like you know K2 uh DHA EPA D3 and uh you retinol all these sorts of things well the plant version is converted yeah I mean there's so many mixed reviews on that there's so many things that say it's like 1% conversion others that say you know it does doesn't convert at all or even you know like ala uh actually lowers DHA for instance you know that that's the AL the omega-3 in in plants and they actually lower the animal-based uh omega-3 DHA which is the one you want and and some say you may be as much as 5% conversion so I mean there's all this this mixed nonsense but you can't get away from B12 and they're all a number of of nutrients we don't have names for that seem to be essential that you have to get for meat that you can't get from Plants don't even have names and then things like carnitine which is conditionally uh required because well that's a non-essential amino acid not for everybody only 70% of people make enough carnitine 30% of people literally onethird of the planet don't make carnitine or enough carnitine anyway and so they need it from their diet so it's it's very strange to me that they would just say oh yeah plant-based and that yeah I know the guy talking about the Brian Johnson guy he um and he's even said said that he's not doing a vegan diet because he thinks it's the best it's just that's his choice that's that's how he wants to live and so he's taking supplements for that and you know it's like you're doing all this you're spending millions of dollars and then you go for this diet that based on an ideology rather than you know the data in front of you you know that was that was a bit of a weird disconnect but at least he was honest about it he's just like yeah no this is just personal choice I'm not saying this is the best diet U but uh that's just what I do which is really funny but yeah I mean how can you how can you call yourself a nutritionist if you advocate for a diet that is lacking in nutrients it makes no sense to me well especially if we're coming out like if there's so much data coming out with like how muscle mass is like one of the number one indicators of longevity MH and then all of these dietitians are like again like you said they look like cancer patients they have no they have no muscle on them or they're literally skinny fat it's like you have no protein in your diet and like you're you're trying to tell people to like be healthier but like what path are you leading them down so like it starts to get like frightening for me I'm like I just don't I just don't understand it anymore to the point where it's just like uh like I'm good you know just you keep your information you keep all your papers because they're definitely working out for you like I I don't know like it's and we even talked about like the studies and stuff like that where it's you know with the the church group that was just kind of running the whole thing it's just kind of it's wild to not to not look at the pieces that are kind of laid down in front of you and honestly the the biggest one for me even if people don't want to get into that and they feel like that's kind of like tinfoil hat just look at them just look at the dietitian as the perfect example and it's like are they just hammering protein powders to make sure that they can get enough protein is that really what you want to do is just live off of like liquids yeah it's just the whole thing starts to feel backwards to me cuz like again like I started getting off the diet but I was still hammering like protein shakes cuz I need I need enough protein to this or that it's like or you could just eat real animal-based foods and you like you don't have to hammer all of that crap and you'll feel better most people feel pretty bad after a protein shake or feel kind of bloated I wonder why what's in there like what is in there yeah hopefully it's what they tell you but usually not yeah true yeah yeah yeah that's another thing it's if it's on a bag I mean you have no idea you know you see a piece of meat meat it's a piece of meat or even a piece of broccoli you know it's a piece of broccoli right and so you can at least make an informed decision otherwise you're just trusting whatever the hell is in there and like iron filings and arsonic that have sort of slipped their way in you know um but yeah but that that's the thing too is that a lot of people say that well when you go to a carnivore or meat diet you really just it's just the difference between going from a processed food junk diet to then cleaning up your cleaning up your act but that wasn't the case for you was it you I mean you tried all these different Whole Food approaches trying all these different sorts of things to try to fix your IBS but also to be to be a top athlete you know and and and perform at your best which you have to I mean there's no there's no wiggle room you know if you're not feeling your best it can it can affect your performance and so you know yeah maybe walk us through that like w What were what were you eating before and how were you feeling and then sort of what was your progression with diets yeah yeah uh so again I just started I'll just call it the standard American diet that's what I started on for the longest time so I would I would eat mac and cheese at night or you know pasta in between practices breakfast was cereal and of course I felt horrible after that I wonder I didn't know why but um you know I went from I went from whole milk or sorry I went from like one to 2% milk to oat milk thinking that would help me and so I think I just like slowly thinking again like listening to the documentaries and all these people around me I was like okay well like all I'll just start integrating more more plant Foods cuz you know my mom made us a pretty like Whole Foods diet but the farther away which was like okay it sustained me and then you know the more that I got to make my own Foods so like Middle School um it started like affecting me more um still eating like semi Whole Foods but again it's like you start adding the Pop-Tarts and the little things that well they're just good and it's just again excuse my language but it's like it's like mouth porn like for people like all you're searching for is like the most Savory Foods 247 and so it's hard to switch to just like a Whole Foods um diet but yeah so I went from the standard American diet and then I kept going more plant-based so when I got to college um this is plant-based I guess but like I would have um I would have some eggs in the morning but I would always make sure every single meal had to have some sort of greens so I used to hammer uh raw kale um raw spinach uh broccoli I would just I I didn't even like it I was just like I know it's good for me so I just hammered it and so that was that's what I actually ended up uh going to for like two two and a half years was that diet was just heavy carbs um I would have some meat I didn't stay away from meat but it was just here's a little bit of like 6 to8 ounces of meat and then the rest of the plate was just vegetables cuz that's what I was pushed towards um and then from there I gravitated I watched game changers so if people know what I'm talking about is a documentary on Netflix um and uh I tried going completely uh vegan for three I did it for three months geez and again lost probably 12 probably around 12 lounds um of muscle like I was I was still around the the 12 133% body fat but you can tell just like similar to a lot of these people like it started I just started looking skinny fat it just kind of looked it didn't look good it looked kind of gross um and then that didn't work uh my my IBS is like at this point like alltime alltime high spiking like I'm I'm living off of a modium essentially at this point and so uh after after a few months I I just couldn't take it so I re brought back um some eggs some meat I would do like uh chicken and stuff like that um thinking that it was leaner because I was still terrified of fat like everyone else because that's what I was taught um still cooking with olive oil because I didn't learn that that fact of like cooking with it was not great um so went from that for a bit and then after Tokyo the 2021 Olympics that's when I just started uh listening to a different because like at some point this is always what I've had to go through um so like I ran into a similar like dogmatic thinking for like my Patell tendonitis I had it for like eight years tried the standard thing go to your athletic trainer get your knees blown out um by doing too many back squats in the the weight room it it's just like it was the never ending cycle so I had to go and change things myself to fix it and all these things kind of happened to after Tokyo and so after Tokyo I started listening to Paul solino because I just kind of randomly ran into him thank God for that and then I started slowly changing and again like the the change and maybe this is something for people to understand like that change still wasn't easy because like my stomach's still trying to figure out what the hell's going on and so it took me it probably took me like two months for my stomach to start like leveling out and chilling out um so I started integrating um eggs and then I was going ground meat cuz it was just a little bit easier for me at the start I don't know if you found that for people to start with ground Meats a little bit easier um but I started doing that and then once I really committed to it I did the six months of just straight Chuck meat um and then from there reintegrated a couple of other things like uh some fruits and then um I would do like avocados here and there but not super consistently um but yeah that was kind of the transition for me and I just like another piece for athletes specifically and especially if you're on a high level such as myself to where you're getting tested um we were talking about protein powders and supplements like you get tested by usada you get tested by water um it's it's scary like it's a scary thing well I don't I like they say they're safe and they say they're not being mixed and tested that is the Hope but like there are still stories of people getting screwed there's an Australian swimer who couldn't go to the Olympics because of this uh the last cycle um so it's like again um you don't have to supplement as much or at all if you're eating a diet that like provides you the things that you actually need um and obviously there might be dietitians in the comment section freaking out but again like once I got onto this diet like I there was the need I I still take creatine um I don't know how you feel about that but I take creatine monohydrate just kind of throw it in for like the I guess there's been so many studies that I kind of lean into it Paul's a fan of it so I was like all right so um he explained his reasoning he likes it you can the more the better I guess and it's I guess it doesn't hurt but again it's like I don't really take anything outside of that because it's it's hard to trust the supplements that you're taking because you can get um kind of flagged for a baned substance and guess what if you get if you get hit for something that's six months to six months plus out of your sport mhm yeah does it sound worth it yeah does it sound worth it not so much so um that was one big thing that was actually kind of a reliever for me um I don't take protein powders I get a [ __ ] ton of protein I don't need more like I'm good so that was like a a big part for me that was like very relaxing was like okay I I know I know I'm not going to get popped so like that that's great I'm obviously not taking steroids so that's not a problem for me but like um that was a big appeal again to this diet versus the vegan diet where I'm trying to supplement everything so again like if people are even thinking of just going for like a a Whole Foods diet like just lean towards the animal side for athletes at least and even non-athletes you feel Fon better but the more protein that you can get in and all these uh more Whole Foods animal-based Foods again the the supplements just start disappearing on your on your shelf so that was one big appeal for me was like lowering the stress of getting popped for something because I'm taking you know three different protein powders yeah yeah but that's freaky too and and definitely not worth it I did wonder you know when you were on a vegan diet were you taking protein supplements then or you just trying to do it all with with beans and legumes and all that sort of stuff was doing yeah I was doing a lot of beans uh like beans and white rice yeah it's a great like a whole protein um like dinner I'm like okay um but yeah I would do like the vegan protein stuff like that with the oat milk yeah it's it sucked it was horrible and then like again like you're trying to get so creative with like all these sauces too because everything tastes horrible um I'm like like baking the hell out of these uh cauliflowers to make it taste crunchy or like again it's like the funny part for me is you I was eating the uh beyond meat like a bunch of it too which was ter like again and you come out it comes out that like these things are horrible for you like well I mean there's a reason why I felt like [ __ ] for three months but yeah and they're trying to like Beyond me it's like if you want to be vegan and you're trying to feel like morally great about it why are you trying to replicate meat like so you just think about like eating an animal while you're not eating an animal it feels backwards to me so yeah I don't know the whole thing the whole thing was just yeah you couldn't get enough protein even with the protein powder unless I was probably like taking like three shakes a day on top of what I was eating so hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want a nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnivore bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just your meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products there will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10% off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25% off total all right thanks guys yeah Lo and losing 10 or sorry 12 pounds of muscle while doing everything right and taking supplements and things like that I mean you know they say that it's just like well you know there's there's studies that come out say anything but one that the vegans try to prop out all the time is it's like well if you're as long as you're getting enough you know grams of protein then you know you don't have any sort of loss of muscle mass and you still gain muscle and all that sort of stuff it's a big if it's a big if know if you can get enough grams of protein and if they're bioavailable too because you're not necessarily absorbing these things and and then you got uh crude protein and and real protein the amount of protein that they say are in some sort of plants or vegan products is not necessarily actual protein it's just nitrogen they just they calculate the amount of nitrogen put Mass spectrometer this is how much nitrogen there is and so they say well every molecule of nitrogen that is a part of an amino acid but not necessarily it could be nitrogen in another form and so they're just saying that's all protein and it's not and that's crude protein but the real protein is a much smaller number or at least a smaller number and then how much of that is bioavailable like okay well what about you know the protein ice it uh as a as a shake it's like okay but you're not getting this out of your food is the pro is is the thing and and even then like you're saying you were getting a lot of protein and it just wasn't enough it was just it was just slowing you down if anything yeah well again too the concerning part was like I also had to watch because you're eating all these these foods and again like I felt bloated I felt horrible and so it's like I had to be careful of what I was eating when I was eating and the problem was it's like even if I was eating perfectly like I'm super gassy like talk about even smelling bad too then like it's just it's the funnest thing if you talk to uh my teammate who was my roommate back then um he was like I looked like a a a a scientist in in the kitchen because I'm trying to do anything to this food to make it like palatable and like I feel like again I feel like the there's like bodybuilders right that have you know super like a a [ __ ] ton of muscle mass but the the problem that we're not a lot of these people look at like well like look at me I'm I'm on a vegan diet you're also taking steroids so it it doesn't it's not a good argument because then you look at the athletes that are vegan and it's again you either run into the skinny fat problem or they're like they just don't look that in shape again like I'm like in my mind I'm looking for like lean with a lot of muscle mass that's obviously not cheating but a lot of the people that are eating eating Whole Foods are leaning towards that animal- based side of things just look a lot healthier um I had a podcast with a friend of mine um who also because of me transitioned to like an animal-based diet and again it's like you could see if if you he was able to show you the um transition of his his body composition like he's just he just ripped all the time he feels phenomenal like and again he loves like being able to make he's a great chef but the foods that he's able to make with an animal-based diet you call it restrictive but it's when you watch his food it's the last thing to me that comes to mind is restrictive so um again it's I think people just need to recognize the more you Center your diets around you know animal-based Foods the healthier you'll feel the stronger you'll feel and then again you take out all these supplements you ask him he's not taking a single supplement so it's just like you you lean towards things that are just more logical some less is more in my mind the less that we can start um you know hopping on all of these things because again it's in the end it's all business so you know they want you to kind of be sucked on to 14 different protein shakes because it makes them money but yeah I I I lean towards things that are a little bit more logical to me I'll say say which is just eating a whole you know animal- based diet that just puts me in just a way better position to compete and just feel better yeah definitely yeah so have you gotten other other others on your team or or athletes you you've uh you've known it sounds like a few of them have come on a corner or more meat-based diet as well are a lot of people coming around to this and how are they doing I think it's just more conversations again like I even had people in my my circle that would kind of first attack me for what I was doing because it's always that fear that's so stupid you're not eating vegetables you're like you're going to have high cholesterol high blood pressure you're going to die soon because you have clogged arteries you're like cool like keep saying that I have no IBS problems anymore so like there's nothing you can say to me that's going to push me back into that direction because it's just it's not true it's clearly not true and you can throw a million studies at me like they're not working and my study is look at the US population so I mean as we talked about um my coach um started leaning towards more of an animal-based diet um he did carnivore for like a week or two um but I think he wasn't feeling amazing doing that um but as he told me towards the end uh I wish he was a little bit more connected with you but he was like oh I was thinking of it more as a diet and so he wasn't eating enough food but like within five days he lost within five days I think he lost it 10 days he lost 8 pounds yeah wow and so the doctors freaked out but my question to to them would be he like if you lose eight pounds of visceral fat should we be that concerned like the doctor's freaking out that you've lost weight but like what is the weight is it muscle mass because I doubt it's muscle mass like you know if your belly starting to disappear like that's only a positive to me so yeah it's like a lot of people within my General Circle like we're leaning towards like 15 20 people have actually like uh pushed more towards in in like an animal-based diet um no one's I feel like it's hard for a lot of people to commit to the carnivore um diet just because that is like oh I have to eat meat 247 yeah it's just like a bigger commitment but uh when I say animal-based okay like I don't have to eat spinach in the morning yeah it sucks anyways and it's like a lot of those a lot of those vegetables are just like doused and GL and like maybe even to your point like even a lot of the fruits like it says organic but like how close is it to the crop that has glyphosate blasted within it like it's hard to know these are things that at least I've I've kind of heard is like you know how how separated is organic and non-organic like I they're the same is there one bad is there one bad Breeze that goes and then like you're screwed already all the Organics you know hope they just have a label on it it it is kind of hard to trust and that is the frustrating part that I run into is is you know how much can you trust the labels how much can you trust the companies because like we are leaned into a situation to where it's like and again like the tin foil hat comes back on but you run into like a crony capitalist esque situation it's not capitalism that's running the system it's crony capitalism so it's like the government's propping up bad companies so then like you can't trust what's really being thrown at you so I I'll take the the tin foil hat but I I've had uh I've had a lot of people my mom was one good example I know she'll be watching so hey mom um my dad started leaning back towards it um a lot of friends that um made uh a pretty big switch and again it's like the switch goes from eating Pop-Tarts Pizza P like all of these things that really just aren't that great you know like like synthetic Foods things that are just like out of a microwave to just food that I'm sorry you do have to cook it like it's going to take a little bit of time but I mean get a non-toxic air fryer and you're already in a better situation or like you know there's just so many ways to do it like there's no to me there's no excuse because like Health should be number one but within my immediate circle it's around like 20 people that are starting to understand why this is kind of a better way and then once they try it they're like yeah it just makes too much sense like how well how good you feel it just makes too much sense and then if again if I have a dietitian starting to cuss me out I go it's fine just look at your US population that's your sample do you feel confident with that because then you bring the sample of like sure it's a smaller group that's starting to like build but like then you look at all the carnivore or animal-based people and they all look there's no one that's obese is my point and a lot of Health markers autoimmune disorders like people are getting healthier people are feeling better so it's just it's a it's a hard argument to make for me personally for them to you know really push they might again throw a lot of studies but uh you know maybe the studies aren't that great so new ones need to come out yeah maybe maybe they've been paid for by the people trying to sell us this garbage in the first place which is most of them exactly yeah yeah and you know you can look at the US population and say you know we've gone away from meet and more towards this this plant-based problem and we've gotten fatter and sicker than we've ever been in in our history and you just look at India you people say oh the blue zones they eat all this all these plants and they live much longer and they're so much more healthy well what about the anti-blue zones you know there's places where they eat a lot of plants a lot of Whole Food plants and vegan diets and vegetarian diets and they're way less healthy and have a much shorter lifespan like the entire subcontinent of India you know they they eat average of three kgs of meat a year a year right yeah that's like a I mean I I went yeah I mean you go to like a Brazilian State you know like St putting that down in a day and and then uh 20 years ago they were eating about five kilos of meat per person per year now some of those people were carrying the weight because a lot of people weren't eating any meat whatsoever and so then when they dropped like 20 years ago to now they've actually gotten worse they've gotten higher rates of metabolic disease cancer diabetes heart disease uh you know cardiovascular disease like one in one in it's something like one in four people in India will die of a heart attack and one in three men will die of a heart attack they're all plant-based right I spoke to a guy uh who's a doctor over in India he's an emergency doctor and he's saying that the sickest people that come into His ER are all the vegans and vegetarians and um and you know obviously people that eat processed plant foods are even worse but that's all vegan and vegetarian and it's all all plant-based crap and he said he treated a vegetarian vegan kid who's 17 years old and came in with a freaking heart attack like a heart attack at 17 years old and and we're trying to say that this is the best way to go like kid's not eating meat like you can't blame you can't blame the meat on that right well he just he just wasn't doing the vegan diet right well that's it yeah India yeah the Hindu Indian Hindu he wasn't doing it right you know and um yeah and you're right he wasn't because he had a freaking heart attack so like whatever he was doing was wrong and he um and he was saying that that uh that India now has 30% of its population are have been diagnosed with diabetes 30% have been just diagnosed I mean how rural is that that country there's so many people living in you know these rural populations that have very little access to medicine so they may never be diagnosed and so how many people are undiagnosed but 30% of the population there only 9% in America right three times the rate of of diabetes in India and that gives you huge risk factors for heart disease and everything else and but when you consider the population of India it's something around like 1.2 billion people 30% is a is a massive massive number I you're talking around 400 million people diagnosed with diabetes in India that's that's more than the population in the United States all with diabetes confirmed diagnosed diabetes and they're all plant-based they're not eating a lot of meat and so people say to me it's like well you know if plants are so bad and meat's so good explain India I'm like you explain India like India explains me you know they don't eat meat they eat a bunch of plants and they're and they're very very sick they have some of the highest rates of malnutrition and chronic disease in the world and now 17 year- olds are having heart attack some doctor I saw online said well the reason we weren't having it was actually he was critiquing a clip from Paul saladino and saladino was saying like you we weren't having heart heart attacks in the 1800s we didn't have these chronic diseases we didn't have these until the 20th century and we're eating way more meat and and that's true and uh this guy was just like oh well that's nonsense people just weren't living long enough to get these diseases 17 17's not long enough really you know what the hell is wrong with your brain and and of course they were I mean the you know the minimum age to to run for president um was is 35 and that was a rule that came up in the 1700s so that's the minimum and so if people were dying in their 30s this is a pretty dumb minimum you know it should have been you know 13 or something like that you know oh venerable man of of 17 and um you of course not that's nonsense it's just people died in infancy much more so it brought the average down but when people lived to adulthood they on average lived a very a very uh similar lifespan to uh to to people today and um you know all the founding fathers they all they all died in their 80s and 90s unless they were killed by something and so mean you look up a historical figure and just and just see how long they lived you know um it's most of them are going to be more than 30 if they died of old age you know in fact none of them will have died of old age in their 30s so you know saying that oh just not going to see this because they just died too soon I mean that that's that is that is an ignorance that borders on the miraculous I mean you really have to try to just not know about about that and just not think properly minimum age for a president 35 oh they're just dying at 32 really then why 35 where' that come from you know I mean Ben Franklin was 64 uh on the outset of the Revolutionary War you know it's just people just don't don't think you know and uh it's it's very shocking um but I got to I was going to just jump in really quickly just on the blue zones like that again I've been to thankfully I've been to Japan uh four times now and that's one of their like favorite propped up blue zones and they're saying they're eating primarily like vegetables and and like this whole dude I've been there they eat nose to tail like every time I've gone there I've eaten either liver uh like you name it I've I've had it there like it in every meal again is based around the fish that they caught or the animals that they they butchered so it's like I didn't have that many vegetables in Japan it honestly felt phenomenal there so it's just kind of funny again like you go to these places and it's it's not what they're telling you like you actually and I was going into uh restaurants that are in the neighborhoods that's what I like to do let me go in the neighborhoods and see what this place looks like funny enough it was all animal-based foods all animal based foods and yeah they had some vegetables but that's not that's not what their their diets were surrounded by like it was just complete lie like I'm I'm literally sitting there eating um what I I had like eel heart one of the times I was thereand super cool super random but I was like yeah I'll try it why not this is sick I'm not gonna be able to do this again so let's have eel heart but yeah it's just it's serving eel heart yeah get that yeah so it's again like you I get to go to these places and actually see what they're eating and a majority of it is surrounded by um you know animal based foods which is really cool to see awesome so yeah yeah well that's cool um well cool I I just want to say one last thing before we wrap up just on the creatine I have no problem with creatine my only thing with creatine is is that there's a ton in meat especially red meat you know if you're if you're eating predominantly red meat you'll get five grams a day easily just just from eating the red meat um is more better to a point but I think that that you get you get you know uh past that point probably not at least that was what our biochemistry professor said um you know back when I was back when I was in my undergrad now granted he said that you know whole bed State fasting state so I mean you know I didn't I didn't see how I think he got that one wrong but that was just you know the the dogma of the day but he was just saying it was like look I mean this this is used in in these reactions and yes you need enough of it and if you don't have enough of it it's going to be a rate Limited uh step and then yeah you're going to hold yourself back but if you have enough you know past that point isn't going to speed that reaction it's just going to make sure you have enough substrate and what he was saying too is it actually Drew water into the cells as well so it going to make you look bigger but really what it was is it was sort of filling up with water weight and so that that didn't necessarily do you any favors as an athlete because it could just you're just sort of adding on a bit of extra water weight and it could slow you down just with the extra weight so he was saying I'm pretty agnostic to it I think it's just if people want to do it and they they feel better doing it then go for it if they try a month off of it and say they actually feel really good and maybe I've I've lost five pounds of water weight fine um you know when you're doing body scans the water in your muscle cells will be counted as muscle so say like oh look I have more muscle but is it muscle or is it more water in your muscle so that's sort of difficult to tell as well uh but I I certainly don't think it's unsafe because we use this in uh TBI and concussions we give people up to 60 grams a day for prolonged periods of time to recover from traumatic brain injuries and and concussions so I don't think that it's it's horrible I mean I remember when it first came out they were trying to Spook people about it because they said like you know some you know athletes like died of dehydration and crystallizing their organs and all that sort of stuff don't know about the crystall ation part but a couple people did die who were on Creatine but was it because of the creatine or was it because they were Collegiate wrestlers who were trying to drop 30 pounds in two days and had sweatsuits and garbage bags on and were on the exercise bike in a sauna and not drinking water and chewing tobacco and spitting constantly and taking diuretics maybe that had something to do with it as well you know no creatine you know shut it down so yeah I don't have a problem with it and if people you know I don't take it my myself I don't really take I don't take any supplements it's really just meat and water and I like that too I just like just going about my day not having to worry about it um and I've always just had very good results with that and um I I tried adding in like BCAAs which when I was on a sort of a a more omnivorous diet felt that was huge for me that was a big change I felt so much better with my workouts and especially like if I was playing like a tournament you you play like six games the day you're getting worn out by the end you're going into the finals you take some BCAAs I'm like just feel like I'm fresh first game out of the box I'm like yeah let's go and then now I I take it I'm like all right let's see if this adds anything I was like nope feel way worse it was much better before and so you know that that was it but you know if you try it and you you take some creatin and you feel it helps you know go for it yeah yeah it's kind of hard to know to be honest it's it's hard for me to recognize or feel a difference but maybe that's because I already get so much anyways that I I might be good but yeah it's again less is more so the the more I can take things out i' I've got like three months of uh my collegiate career so um or not my collegiate career my my diving career overall so um I'll probably just stay consistent yeah because I'm I'm done after this Olympic cycle really wow yeah yeah um and then you know I'll get to go elsewhere and you know start something new it's it's time for me but but yeah I I'll probably take that out then and just uh again fall into the diet and recognize that that's again you can't outrun you can't outwork a bad diet so thankfully I finally recognized that and so even calories and calories out it's like eat eat high quality foods and you'll you you won't even have to like really pay attention like again that would be sorry just a we'll we'll you know wrap it up here but the last thing I would say for people is like I used to try to like track all my and make sure I was like locked in perfectly but like I don't do that anymore and I'm I'm I have just as much uh you know my body fat percentage is the same if not lower and uh I have way more muscle mass and I feel a lot better and I don't track it all zero trafficking I just eat real food to satiation and then I'm good so you know just the final thing for athletes so you don't have to get uh eating disorder like just lean into really healthy foods and you won't have to just like stress over what you're putting in in yeah because the output's going to be a lot better absolutely yeah that was great so you know just just well thank you very much for taking the time you know that's that's I didn't realize you were you were uh this was your last cycle um if I can ask what what what are your plans after you you finish your diving career do you know yet or what are your plans it it's up in the air but some form of of coaching I have a training business that's kind of surrounded um by the niche of diving but once I'm done I'm going to lean into uh climbing obsessed with climbing and so if I can train divers and climbers and kind of just build that Community as much as I can because again you know you find these little niche sports sports they don't have the same amount of like funding that like football has for example and so you know the training just doesn't look as good so I'm gonna I always want to stay an athlete I think that's just uh something that has to stay for me so um I'm going to see how far I can get into climbing and build on that and then um yeah just train people and make sure I can you know keep helping people be as uh physically fit as possible nice well that's awesome and you can climb up Cliffs and then dive off of them and then do it again yeah you know it's a new sport it's a new sport I'll make it no vegans allowed though climbing diving yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah no vegans well if you start it it's your rules so there you go they wouldn't make it to the top anyway not not I'm not more than once so yeah like yeah right awesome man it it was great to have you on it was great talking to you and hearing your story uh really appreciate you taking the time and especially you know when you got you're coming up on the Olympics so that's a big big training day ahead of you I'm sure um where can people find you and and you know learn more about you and uh and follow you yeah well thanks for having me on um I'd say so you can like the podcast we had uh I have a podcast called the performance Playbook podcast on YouTube um and then you can just type in Brando loo into Instagram and you can find me there but those are as of right now I'm not a big uh Twitter guy so you got me on YouTube and and Instagram so those are my two spots so if uh if you guys are interested in training uh DM me and we can chat perfect we'll put those up in the in the the description people can uh find more about you there Brandon thanks a lot man it's appreciate it it's been a pleasure thank you hey guys thank you very much for taking the time out to listen to what I had to say if you like it then please like And subscribe to my YouTube channel and podcast and if you're on YouTube then please hit that little bell and subscribe and that'll let you know anytime I have a new video out which should be every week if not more and if you 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