Transcription
Total intake definitely does matter, regardless of the diet. I have noticed that with a well-formulated, nutritionally dense diet, as you would find with a ketogenic diet or a carnivore diet, you seem to be able to get away with a higher caloric intake from those foods than I would have ever been able to do with a carbohydrate-based diet.
Within the carnivore space, a lot of people fall into the belief system that it's it's all about insulin. Calories don't count. And you're supposed to just eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. For that reason, total intake doesn't really matter. Do you have a stance on any of that? I know you started tracking as of 2 years ago because that was kind of where people were going. What is your stance on that?
My stance is with my personal experience on a vegan diet, I remember I tracked heavily and I was obsessed with counting calories when I was eating vegan. And I would limit my limit myself down to 1,400 calories a day. I'm 5'10", so that was as low as I could push it without feeling just starving. So, 1,400 calories a day and I have photos that I love to post all the time and I looked puffy. 1,400 calories of plants and I looked puffy in the face, in the waist, in my ankles. I just look I looked like a different person.
And then [snorts and clears throat] now, I Okay, I started carnivore eating 5 lb of meat a day, by the way, and so much butter, like two sticks of butter plus more fat, more eggs, as many eggs as I wanted. So, the calories that I was eating my first year of carnivore was the highest I've ever eaten in my life. Yet, I look different. I had a I had an hourglass waist. My face started depuffing. The water retention went away. So, could it be that it's a calories in calories out thing? I'm not sure. I don't know the answer to that. I also don't really care about calories and tracking too too much. I like the freedom that carnivore gives me. I just know that changing the food source from plants to animal foods really made a dramatic impact on the way that my body looked and felt.
Um well, I would I would love to pick your brain. What is your stance?
Yeah, uh I agree with everything you said. Um total intake definitely does matter regardless of the diet. I have noticed that with a well-formulated, nutritionally dense diet as you would find with a ketogenic diet or a carnivore diet, you seem to be able to get away with a higher caloric intake um from those foods than I would have ever been able to do with a carbohydrate-based diet. I think that is largely because my body is operating more effectively, more healthfully. My metabolism has improved, my hormone function has improved, but also my energy expenditure has likely increased because I have more energy to work with. And the energy balance still comes into the equation, but you can get away with more food, and you just feel better doing it. You're healthier doing it. So, like energy balance does matter, but you can get away with more food if that makes sense.
It does make sense. And when I'm eating animal foods, I want to move my body more, probably because the nutrients that I'm eating wants wants to like be expended. Um but yeah, I find that when I'm carnivore, I want to go outside, go on walks, take my dogs out to play. Whereas when I was vegan, I just wanted to lay on the couch, stay in bed as long as possible, and just be a couch potato, not move too much. Um I remember forcing myself to go to the gym just to burn more calories. None of it was fun. Everything felt like a chore. Now I want to lift. I want to do some dumbbell workouts, which is crazy, you know? So things things that that they shifted.
Yeah, and metabolism itself is so it's such an adaptable thing. People don't realize how much of a flux and how smart our bodies are in that regard. Like when I'm dieting down for a show, you know, once I get crazy lean, my body my metabolism down regulates to follow suit. But then post-show, you know, your leptin and your ghrelin hormones are all messed up. You're you're ravenous. And there is a period of time there's a window where I can literally eat 6,000 calories a day and not really experience much weight gain. But once my body stabilizes, you know, I can't adhere to that high intake indefinitely and not expect to gain body fat. Like you can absolutely gain body fat on a carnivore or ketogenic diet high in fats and proteins. Like it's just reality. But like you have there's a lag effect with everything. And I think a lot of people over-sensationalize that lag effect and paint that as like reality. But it's like they don't understand the big scope of it all.
Interesting. So I have a follow-up to that. A lot of my members, not all of a lot of them, but a good group of them, they say "I'm the one that's gaining weight on carnivore diet, but it's not because I'm forcing myself to eat a lot. It's because I'm so hungry. Like I continue to be hungry." And they say I must have leptin resistance, where my body is not able to tell my brain to say I'm full, you can put the fork down. And so they're wondering when the weight loss will start happening if their appetite is constantly wanting to eat a lot of food. So what are your thoughts on that? Is there something to make it shift?
Oh, 100%. So this [clears throat] this is basically the exact same thing happening from a physiological standpoint for a competitor that's been dieting down for a show. I get so many of my clients that are not competitors, they're just often times you see this in women, but males too, that have just been chronically restricting and dieting down for months if not years. And when you do that, you're basically operating on E, you're in a highly stressed state, you're in a sympathetic state, not a parasympathetic state. Your body is from a metabolic standpoint has down regulated your metabolism. So, you're not going to have the same degree of expenditure. You're also in a place primed for catabolism, so you're losing the muscle tissue that you do have, which is also going to have a down regulatory effect on your metabolism. It's just a perfect storm for feeling hungry, having no energy, losing muscle, and your body fighting to add more body fat. Now, that doesn't mean This is where it gets tricky. So, you will lose weight if you just starve yourself, but that is obviously not sustainable sustainable, not healthy, certainly far from optimal. So, what I recommend in this context for both competitors and for everyday people that are trying to get out of this rut is to go through a period of reverse dieting where they're intentionally eating more food, intentionally giving themselves quality food, fats and proteins, living in a state of abundance, focusing on stabilizing leptin and ghrelin hormones, hormone function in general. Uh sex hormones will improve in that context. Go into that parasympathetic state. Focus your your energy and efforts on building more muscle, up regulating your metabolism or the result of that increased lean tissue, and then basically stabilizing before transitioning into a healthy fat loss phase at some point in the future. Not doing that is where so many people go wrong, and you're basically you know, you're you're you're bottomed out. There's there's no room left to go. I mean, I literally had a call the other day with someone that's in a very popular group, um and the recommendation from that group was to eat, you know, 600 calories a day, walk 10 miles a day, and it all be crazy super lean sources, no dietary fat, and I mean like my 4-year-old son eats more than that. Like it's just not good wisdom.
No, it's not. And so that's why with these types of members in my group, I encourage them to keep eating. I encourage them because with my own experience, that appetite eventually lowers. Like it it levels out and it calms down. For some people, it might take longer, right? And so that's why I'm always wondering, is there anything that we can do when we're in that rut [snorts] to speed up the journey of oh, the appetite reaching okay, I could stop eating this much. I can just eat less. Is there anything we can do?
Yeah, I mean there's it's like a perfect yin-yang scenario. Like in order to optimize for fat loss, you have to give yourself time in a muscle building phase. You have to have this moment of scarcity come, you know, on a counter end of a moment of abundance. But to just, you know, white-knuckle it on one end or the other is going to set yourself up for failure and you're not going to optimize the other. So like perfect example using myself as an illustration, but this same example holds true for people that are not competitors. When I did my shows in 2023, got down to 3.9% body fat, you know, I was eating about 1,700 calories at that point, at the very tail end of that cut. So when the when it was over, when I started reverse dieting, I could easily have eaten 7,000 calories a day and just still been ravenous. And I was doing that acutely from time to time, but now, now that I have reverse dieted out of that phase, I am maintaining a higher body fat because you can't maintain 3.9% body fat. Your testosterone's non-existent. Um I'm at a healthy body fat of 15% now, but I'm able to maintain an intake of 3,000 calories, maintaining that healthy body composition. My strength is up, my performance is up, my recovery is up. I'm in a parasympathetic state, my sleep is improved. That's where you want to go, but you can't get there without giving yourself time in abundance. And that doesn't mean you're going to just perpetually keep eating sweets and keep eating more and more food. And that's where people go wrong cuz they come from a place of, you know, having followed a standard American diet, have been 100 lbs overweight, they're afraid of going back there, which is reasonable fear cuz you don't want to go back there. But you can't live in this depleted sacrificial, you know, deficit indefinitely or you will down regulate everything and fail.
Right. Right. When you say parasympathetic, what are the signs to know that you're in a parasympathetic state?
I mean, HRV will likely improve, your sleep quality will improve, you'll get more deep sleep, you'll get more REM sleep, your hormone function will massively improve, uh leptin and ghrelin hormones will stabilize, your weight will be able to kind of maintain a healthy composition, um you know, while eating a healthy degree of food. Like for female clients, like I'm always typically having them maintain a healthy composition north of 2,000 calories. Like people should not be eating 1,300 calories a day. Like that is not where you want to be, you know.
Right. Right. That's so fascinating. And so with your female clients that you've worked with, do you have an average time frame where they eventually Well, they eat a lot, they gain a little bit of weight maybe, but then they eventually reach that parasympathetic. How long?
Yeah, when when people have been chronically under eating, I recommend to reverse that phase, it's no less than 6 months. Um ideally longer because, if you think about it, the more muscle you have, the better. You know, from a longevity standpoint, from a functional standpoint, plus from a metabolism standpoint, the more muscle you have, the better. And women are worried about looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but you're not going to do that unless you take on, you know, anabolic steroids. Like that's not going to happen naturally. So, more muscle is good and it takes time to build muscle. And in to order to optimize building muscle, you need to be in a caloric surplus so that you have the building blocks coming in to add more lean tissue to your frame. And with that said, you should be spending more time in a muscle-building state with a surplus of food coming in than you spend in a deficit focusing on fat loss. So, for me, I typically do like a three-to-one ratio, like three times as much time spent building as I do cutting. Uh but for people that are still wanting to lose body fat but have been chronically restricting, they got to give themselves a minimum of 6 months, ideally, but ideally more than that so they can actually build muscle as well.
Oh, and when you say build muscle, this means they must lift dumbbells to build that muscle?
I mean, that's going to be more effective from a hypertrophy and strength standpoint, like actually progressive overloading with resistance training, but, you know, I don't want that to be a limiting factor for people. Like, being active in and of itself is a huge win. So, like, you know, using resistance bands, going outside for a hike, rucking. You know, rucking weight-bearing movements are going to be better. So, like, if you are just vehemently opposed to weight training in a gym, you know, put a ruck on and then progressively overload the weight of that ruck while you're hiking. That's going to give you upper body and lower body, you know, engagement. That would be a pre-load for many people.
That's awesome. Yeah, thank you for that.
But yeah, it's a it's a it's a journey, for sure, but I just get so frustrated when I see so many people just chronically restricting for too long. Obviously, people overeat, and I think a carnivore or ketogenic diet is great for intuitively eating a more reasonable amount of food that's not hyper-palatable. But yeah, at the same end of the spectrum, on the opposite end of the spectrum, there's a lot of people out there that are just chronically restricting, and that's not good, either.