The Primal Blueprint for Men | Mark Sisson | Full Speech

Right guys, it's day two of the 21 convention 2010. Hope you guys had an awesome night last night. I did. A lot of fun.

Our first speaker up today is Mark Sisson. He is the author of Mark's Daily Apple.com, which is an unbelievably popular blog on the internet about healthy living. And he's the author of the bestselling book, The Primal Blueprint. The interesting thing about Mark, uh, why I'm really, really happy that he's here is, I believe he's one of, if not the world's top authority on healthy living. And his book that he wrote, The Primal Blueprint, is, in my opinion, the single best introduction to proper nutrition and healthy living ever written. It's a really great honor to have him here. And here he is. Give it up!

[Applause]

Thanks, Mark. How's everybody doing?

This is for TV. All right, good. Right. Um, how many people here are familiar with The Primal Blueprint and or Paleo living and or Primal living? See this is what I thought. This is great. Okay, sweet. Uh, so I had a glitzy PowerPoint kind of ready for you guys today that kind of, I do that explains the whole concept. But most of you who have already been involved in this a little bit kind of get the basic concept. So today, I thought I'm going to freestyle this a little bit. I'm going to make this about what you want, not what I think you need to know or what I think you need to hear, but what, what do you need to hear from me today so that by the time I finish up here and you guys leave here, you've got some skills, you've got some, some tools, and some strategies to take you to the next level.

So, um, I'll give a brief overview for those few of you who are not familiar. But for the most part, I want you to kind of just right now, give me some, some questions or some concepts that you'd like me to cover and be sure that we cover in this, uh, talk today. Yes, thoughts on vegetables? My thoughts on vegetables. Okay, that's good. Uh, see, that's my thought. I can't even spell it right. So, uh, I have to think. Okay. Uh, yes, incorporating cycling. Cycling meaning bicycling. Okay. Uh, let's just say cycling. Cardio in general. Okay. Yes, grains, like, you know. Okay. Alternative grains, maybe. All right. Uh, let's dig deep here. What, what else? Blue dark blue shirt, like sleeping patterns, when, how to improve them. Okay, good. So, yeah, because I have more time today, we don't need to. I was going to make this really kind of about the diet hacks, but we'll, I think we'll get through that pretty quickly. So let's, we'll expand it. So sleep, sleep patterns, like you didn't get last. Pardon me? How to sleep better, basically. Okay, how to sleep better. All right. Uh, yes, high impact sports. High impact sports, for example, contact. Contact sports. Yeah, sure. Okay. All right, all right. Ways to gather, like, some motivation for sticking to, uh, your exercise plan. Motivation. Good. These are all good. See, these are things that I didn't clearly didn't have. Yes. Frequency of works. Okay. Workout frequency. Alcohol. Alcohol. Yeah, yeah. Uh, okay. You put caffeine up there with that. Okay. Uh, alcohol, caffeine. All right. Now, we'll have some time for more questions at the end. But talking about vegetables, can you focus on like potatoes, sweet potatoes? Okay, so vegetables and then, uh, starches. Yeah. Okay. All right. Uh, yeah, orange shirt. F. Pardon me? Weightlifting. Weightlifting. Okay. Of course. Weightlifting. Carb sugars, body fat relationship. Carb sugars, body fat relationship. Will. Yeah. Okay. Sure. I mean, uh, I want to be sure that we, that you fully get that. And one more. In the back. Yeah. You talk about like the differences between people's edity and how that relates to. All right. So, uh, genetic, uh, predisposition, maybe. Okay. Um, all right, that's a good start.

So, you know, the basic premise of The Primal Blueprint is that, uh, we are all born perfect. We are born with a perfect set of human genes, human DNA. It's the recipe for a lean, fit, happy, healthy, strong, productive, loving, seductive individual. These are, this is the, the raw material that we're given at birth. And somehow, over the course of the next 20 or 50 years, we screw it up. We do that by sending our genes the wrong signals. And those wrong signals are mostly a result of the, the artificial environment in which, for which we have created, uh, for ourselves. This, this idea that we're, um, somehow living in a technologically improved society and that things are made easier for us and life is wonderful and we don't have to think about survival anymore. It's really about, about getting our hedonistic needs achieved. Um, and I got no problem with that. But basically, we're given this great, wonderful recipe that's, that's the end result of 2 million years of really specific evolution where our genes expect us to do certain things. Our genes expect us to send them certain signals that became the, the impetus for my 10 Primal Blueprint laws: Move around a lot at a low level of aerobic activity, lift heavy things, sprint once in a while, avoid poisonous things, eat lots of plants and animals, get sleep, play, use your brain. All of these things are, are, are integral to making sure that we create the ideal iteration of our recipe. And make no mistake, you get certain things from your parents. They made a contribution to, to your recipe, your heart, your, your hair color, your skin color, your eye color, maybe a slight predisposition to the amount, a range of height. But if you're 5'7", your genetic recipe didn't say this guy's going to be 5'7". It said, uh, depending on the signals you send your genes, you could be 5'3" and you can be 6'2". That's a range. You wound up at 5'7" or whatever you. So it's a range that you're given. It's not a definitive, like, endpoint. All of these are affected by the signals we give our genes.

Now, a lot of the signals we give our genes come from the way we eat. And so one of the first things I tell people is that 80% of your body composition is determined by how you eat. So that part, part of you that is muscle versus fat, that part of you that is lean versus non-lean, 80% of that. And some guys, you know, McGuff might even argue that it's more. I, I'm on the conservative side. But think about it, 80% of what makes you lean, fit, happy, healthy, ripped, what, all the things that you, that you sort of look for, comes from how you eat. So that's a pretty powerful first statement. So my point is, and if you take nothing away from this talk today, is if you can dial the diet in, you are well on your way to a long, productive, fit, healthy life. And you know, I can, we can talk a little bit about how this applies to the business world. But, you know, you guys, most of you are in your 20s and you can get away with murder right now. You know, you can stay out late and get up and, you know, attend a course and do it again tonight. And, uh, you know, that's the luxury of being in your 20s. But that ends, believe me. In your 30s or in your 40s, and at some point, you wake up one day and you go, what am I going to do now? I, you know, I've, I've been living this lifestyle and I've been getting away with it for too long. And now what? Now, now people have to backtrack. Now people have 20, 30, 40 pounds, 50 pounds to lose. Now people have, uh, they've, they've incurred some arthritis or some predisposition to heart disease because of the way they've, these choices that they've made.

So one of my points to you is, cuz you can sit here and go, well, cuz I was in your shoes, you know, 20-some, you know, got the world by the balls. What am I going to, you know, how, why should I do anything differently than what I'm doing? Because I look pretty good, because I'm active, because I'm doing whatever I'm doing, because I'm fairly successful. Why should I take steps now when everything seems to be pretty good around me for 20, 30, 40, 50 years in the future? Cuz a lot of people in in their 20s can't really think in that long-term strategy. Um, you know, when I, when I was your age, the term "seduction community" didn't exist. We just went out and met chicks. And but I couldn't, I couldn't think in terms of getting married in my 20s. It, I didn't have a long-term strategy. I was sort of living for the moment and doing what I was doing. And I was lucky in some regards that I was able to compete well and do the things I, I, I did. But a lot of my contemporaries, after they got out of college, started gaining weight, you know, started getting losing their hair, started doing, uh, you know, drugs or doing, you know, getting going down this path of being depressed and, and, and it, and it just sort of a little bit over the years, it escalates.

So what, what's in it for you now if everything's great? We can look at the long-term stuff. You know, the risk reduction in disease. I, I don't know what that means to you. It means a lot to some people. But risk, risk reduction, disease risk reduction didn't mean that much in my 20s. But what did mean a lot was, how can I have the energy to get through the day on a daily basis, to do my job, to go out at night? How can I have the energy to be active and enjoy playing? I missed out on playing when I was your age. And it's a really important concept that I've reincorporated into my life. How can I have the energy to take on new sports, to, you know, go on, on hikes, to pick up, play Frisbee, to, uh, stand up paddle, body surf, all these fun things? How can I have the energy to do that? How can I, how can I have the energy to get through a business meeting that's going to skip lunch? These are some of the practical applications. You know, when you get to the point where you get the diet dialed in and you realize you can go 10, 12, 15 hours without eating, not have a drop in blood sugar, not obsess about, am I losing muscle mass because I didn't eat every three, three to four hours? Because that's the mantra that we've all been told for the last 10 years. That's one of the, you know, that's one of the fitness mantras. Oh, you got to eat every, you know, every couple hours to keep your blood sugar up and keep your energy level up, making sure you don't go into starvation mode and cannibalize your muscle tissue. It's not, that's an old assumption.

So once you get the, the eating dialed in, you have more energy all the time. So you can get through a business meeting so that you can impress some, you, you going into a, to a do a deal with a, with a group of guys and, you know, the reality is, a lean, fit guy is going to have a little bit more edge in a business meeting than a guy who's grossly overweight. You know, a guy, guy who's going out to work on his approaches is going to have a lot more success if he's got a little washboard action going on than if he's 40 or 50 pounds overweight. So these are sort of the real-world implications of why, why it's really kind of critical to start incorporating this now. And the other point in regards to that is that I spent years pursuing high-level fitness. And I, from the age of 11, I wanted to be healthy. I mean, I was really into health, almost like Rain Man. I mean, I was 11 years old and I was reading these books on Adele Davis and doing all this and tinkering with my diet. And I read, um, Ken Cooper's book on aerobics. And I, so I started running because running was the best thing you could do, according to the conventional wisdom. And, you know, over a bunch of years, my idea of what it took to be lean, fit, healthy, all these things we want, my idea was that it's all about discipline, sacrifice, pain and suffering, struggling, sweating, being tired, not having any energy to go out at night. All of this, all these negative assumptions I had about what it took to be healthy and lean and fit and energetic. Well, the reality is, after I, you know, 20, cut to 25 years later, and I realized as a result of this Primal Blueprint, as a result of our genetic predisposition to being all these things, as long as we send our, our genes the correct signal, we can be all those things with, forget the struggle. It's with, it doesn't take much. It's easy. It's, it's, it's enjoyable. It's pleasurable. I eat great food. I don't work out very much. I work out like a tenth of what I used to do. Uh, and so when you get all this stuff dialed in, it all comes together. And it all applies to the rest of your life. It's, this is not just about looking good naked. This is about all the other things in your life that kind of come together. You have more energy, you're more focused at work, you can, again, like I say, you have a leg up on, uh, in a, in a business meeting. Or if you're flying across the country and they don't serve a hot meal anymore, you don't freak out. You know, you just, this is what I do. I'm going to use this as an opportunity to intermittently fast.

Okay, so, uh, as an intro here, what do I think about vegetables and starches? Uh, you know, the bottom of the Primal Blueprint food pyramid is vegetables and fruit. Now, I wish I could, I'm going to, I'm changing that over time to vegetables and a little bit of fruit because the vegetables are probably the primary source of carbohydrate in, in my diet. I'm not the biggest fan of fruit in, in mass quantities anymore. So I'm a, I'm a huge fan of vegetables. And my, my point to most people who are kind of stepping into their first, um, experience with The Primal Blueprint and they're kind of going, geez, I don't know, what am I going to do about carbohydrates? And how am I going to get my carbs if I cut out the grains and the sugars? And I said, well, you, first of all, you can eat all the, all the vegetables you want. And if you, well, I'm not a big vegetable guy. I said, slather them in butter. You know, put sauces on them. I don't care. Just, you know, use vegetables as, as your main source of carbohydrate. You cannot overconsume carbohydrates if you stick to vegetables. The difference is with the starches. And when we get into, we'll talk about, uh, well, cycling cardio is the next thing. So if you're somebody who's on The Primal Blueprint and you want to be a, a bicycle racer or a triathlete or a runner, uh, it is possible to do this entirely on a low-carb strategy, but it's a long adaptation period. Instead of the normal three weeks, it's probably three months. Uh, and it's, and it's painful. Not painful, but it, it's, it's one of those things. Like I say, if you're choosing to be an endurance athlete, and I don't recommend that to anybody because I did that for a long time and it's sort of a, I don't know, um, it's a nice pursuit and, and, uh, you know, it has its benefits in terms of, uh, personal accomplishment. But in the long term, it's not a good strategy for anti-aging or for, uh, longevity or for health. Um, but if, so, so you can, the idea with a starches, with, with cycling is, and other cardio and endurance sports is, if it's all about the carbohydrate. And, and what I tell people is that you don't need, there's nobody in this room, if you're not, if you're not competing in endurance events, you don't need more than 150 grams of carbs a day. A lot of people don't realize this. There is no requirement in human nutrition for carbohydrates. You guys get that? You can, you can go your entire life without eating protein. I mean, I mean, no, you can go to your entire life without eating carbon. You can't go three weeks without eating protein. You can't go three weeks without eating fat, or you get really sick and over a short period of time, you'll die. But you can go your entire life without eating carbohydrates. So there is no requirement. Your body makes 150 grams of glucose a day from the fat and protein that you consume otherwise in your diet. That's how, that's how we survived 2 million years. Was this fallback position where fat became the, the fat and ketones became the predominant fuel source. Uh, so we don't really need a lot of carbohydrate to get through a normally active day. Um, short workout, uh, again, going, going about your, if your normal business day, uh, going out at night, all of that is, is driven by fat metabolism. If you take that three weeks and you reprogram your genes to burn primarily fat, Uh, I'll take a step back and I'll explain what I mean by that. This is again, a central premise of The Primal Blueprint is that humans were designed to get derive most of our energy on a daily basis from fat, either dietary fat or the stored body fat. As a result of the society and the civilization that we, in the grain-based civilization and all the carbs that are available to us, we have programmed our genes over almost every one of us to preferentially burn carbohydrate on a daily basis. That's why so many people in the, uh, fitness community assume that we need to have 40 to 60% of our calories come from carbohydrate. That's why the medical community assumes it. That's why the American Diabetes Association, in my estimation, still stupidly recommends that that type 2 diabetics can consume a lot of carbs as long as they take their meds. Uh, the idea about, that we, that we program our genes is simply a matter of upregulating all those genes that are involved in directing the traffic that causes, uh, muscles to want to preferentially burn glycogen and, and glucose and sugar, and downregulating all those genes that want to burn fat. When we reprogram the genes through the diet and through certain exercise choices, we upregulate all of the enzymes and all of those gene processes that, that are involved in preferentially deriving most of our, our energy from stored body fat. So this is really the key. The essential thing about the 80% of your body composition comes from how you eat. It's in reprogramming your genes through diet and through exercise to preferentially derive most of your energy from stored body fat on a daily basis. Um, when you do that, you don't need to do much cardio. This is the, another irony is that we, we assume, assume because we've lived in a, uh, in a grain-based society, in a, in a, in a carbohydrate-based paradigm, the old paradigm is, got to do a lot of cardio because cardio is what burns off my body fat. But if I do a lot of cardio, I have to eat a lot of carbs the next, that night or that day, so I can go back to the gym tomorrow and do more cardio to burn off my stored body fat. But the problem is, when you eat the, the higher carbs, the body converts the excess carbs into stored body fat, which makes it, gets this cycle. It keeps going. Now I got more body fat. Now I got to go to the gym and do more cardio. And it's a, it's a cycle. All based on a carbohydrate-dependent metabolism that's all wrong. And it's, and it's frustrating. And it's why so many people, you see people at the gym, I'm sure, who are in there every day or every four or five days a week, they're on the treadmill, they're hammering, they're sweating, they're watching that readout go to 00 calories. And four years later, they still got 25 pounds to lose. That's not working because they haven't, they're still using this carbohydrate-based, uh, energy system that they have programmed into their human genes, into their human recipe. And, and what I'm saying is, you can just as easily reprogram that pathway to preferentially burn fat. In which case, you don't need to do all that cardio. So the new paradigm is, 80% of your body composition is determined by how you eat. So if you cut, if you basically watch the carbs and watch the Omega-6 intake, then you reprogram your genes to preferentially stored body fat. So now you can allocate more time to sprinting and to building muscles with resistance training and less time to cardio. And you wind up back to that 80% of your body composition determined by how you eat. And so it's a cycle that's, that's a much more, uh, user-friendly cycle. Doesn't take as much time. It's much more pleasurable. And, uh, in my mind, it's a, it's a sustainable cycle as opposed to the carbohydrate-based cycle.

Alternative grains. You know, uh, grains are the, even the alternative grains are still a high, uh, carbohydrate content meal. So the question is, why, why do you want grains? I mean, once in a while, look, I, I don't, I don't pick the rice off my sushi. I don't, you know, I'm, I'm not a grain Nazi. I, uh, I'll have grains once in a while. It's not, it's not a big deal. I just don't make it part of my regular lifestyle. So quinoa, spelled, you know, a lot of these, um, uh, alternative grains are fine. There's, in fact, a lot of the alternative grains, the main thing about the alternative grains is that they don't have quite the high levels of phytic lectins, gluten, gliadin, and all of those antinutrients that has, that cause other problems. Yes. I don't want to interrupt, but, uh, while you're on grains, so we don't forget it later, can you talk about wheat real quick and the dangers of eating, just having wheat in your diet? Yeah. Uh, wheat, in my estimation, is that, is it's a, there's a, a continuum, a spectrum of like worst to less worst. I mean, some foods are like best to worst or what, uh, the grain spectrum is worst to less worse. And at the, at the end is, is wheat. And at the, uh, other end, the less worst end would be rice, brown rice, spelled things like that. Wheat is, is such a, in my estimation, a devastating form of calories for a number of reasons. I mean, I tell people, first of all, why do you want to eat grains in the first place? I mean, they don't, they don't particularly taste great. You got to put on them. You got a bowl of pasta, you got a, a slice of bread, you got a bowl of oatmeal. I mean, none of this stuff tastes very good unless you put the sauce or the butter or the oil or the cheese or the meat or something else with them. Cuz by themselves, most grains are just really, really, really bland. You know, whose favorite meal here is a plain bowl of spaghetti with nothing on it? You know, how many people here love to order a, can't give up their bowl of oatmeal with nothing on it in the morning? No cream, no sugar, no, you know, how many people would love to just have a plain piece of bread with no butter, no, you know, it just doesn't work that way. So the grains are sort of an excuse to eat, you know, other foods. I say, just eat the other food. You know, just eat a bowl of marinara sauce instead of pasta. Um, you know, people say, well, how will I eat a sandwich? I mean, just take the bread off and eat the. I mean, it's like, you know, wrap it in, in lettuce or whatever. It's, we have this assumption that we need grains. They, grains are a cheap source of calories that readily convert into glucose in the body. Full stop. That's the only reason to make grains a part of your diet. If that's what you want, a cheap source of calories that readily converts into sugar in the body. Dig down, drill down. And now we get to the point, what, what are some of the other reasons not to eat grains? Well, these antinutrients. And one of the things that people are, are, um, I mean, most of you have heard of gluten intolerance and probably know people who are gluten intolerant. It's now a big thing. You know, a lot of labels say contain no gluten. Well, some people are wickedly gluten intolerant. They'll get, uh, celiac disease. And, and a lot of people die from celiac disease. Uh, a lot. So there are a lot of people who get Crohn's or IBS or Celiac or these digestive diseases or or conditions as a result of these antinutrients that are in wheat and all grains. But, but largely in wheat. Uh, so gluten is one of, one of those antinutrients. Um, it's, it's what we call lectin, gluten, gliadin. Lectins interfere with the turnover of the cells lining the gut. They're, they're a, um, an adaptation that plants made to not wanting to be eaten. So plants didn't want to be eaten. So they said, we're going to, we're going to either, uh, kill off whatever's eating us so they don't eat us anymore, or, uh, we're going to prevent them from ever having babies. So they, some, some of these plants interfere with, um, reproductive, uh, aspects of other animals. So these are plants' defenses. They can't run, they can't scream, they can't, they can't claw, they can't bite. They have poisonous chemicals that they have developed over millions of years of evolution. And we as humans have not evolved to be able to handle these chemicals. And so gluten is one of these chemicals, lectins. Uh, and so what happens with, uh, with a lot of people is that because the cells lining the gut, uh, turn over more rapidly as a result of this interference, they never come together and they never form that tight junction. And so we get gaps between the cells lining the gut. And that leads, lead to a condition known as leaky gut syndrome. Now, leaky gut syndrome simply means your gut, which is normally only allowing in short chain fatty acids, uh, uh, glucose, you know, simple sugars, amino acids, uh, one at a time, maybe dipeptides, but it does not like to allow in large molecules. So your gut is like, it's, it only wants the stuff it wants. Well, if you have a leaky gut and now you're allowing in large undigested protein molecules to go directly into the bloodstream, a lot of these undigested protein molecules start your immune system to thinking there's something, this must be either a virus or bacteria or something I've never seen it before, but I'm going to get it. I'm going to build a defense against it. And so the, your immune system starts to identify some of these undigested protein molecules, sets up an immune response. The other bad news is that a lot of these undigested protein molecules, like the ones, casein, for instance, and milk, um, they resemble, they resemble molecules that reside on the outside of certain cells in the body. In particular, uh, cells, for instance, uh, that are involved in joint repair. Now, when your immune system starts to attack the cells in your joints, you get arthritis. And so that's why arthritis is largely an autoimmune disease. And largely, in many cases, brought on because of your diet, not because you're predisposed to it, not because of some, uh, exposure to man-made. No, it's just because you ate your, you know, your diet set you up to set up an autoimmune process that ultimately led to to either arthritis or lupus or, uh, MS, or, I mean, there's like 75 different autoimmune diseases. And, and you're really just, uh, at the effect of where your weakest link is in that case. So we go back to, well, how can I not have that happen? Well, one way you can not have that happen is to cut out grains from your diet. And wheat is the, is probably the biggest offender. So if I had my say in school lunch programs and, and creating the food pyramid, I'd get rid of wheat entirely. There's no good reason to eat wheat except as a cheap source of calories that converts into glucose really rapidly in the bloodstream. Um, does that answer your question, Anthony? Okay. Um, let's see. Let's go down. So we're still talking about food. Alcohol and caffeine on the, uh, a primal blueprint program. I wanted this to be very user-friendly. And, uh, so there are certain areas that I said, you know, if you can deal with this, uh, you know, well on your own, it's probably not going to, uh, sabotage your entire program. If you incorporate some of these foods. Cheese would be an example. If you true paleo guys would say, no dairy because we didn't start eating dairy until 10,000 years ago. Um, I'm a little, uh, on the fence about dairy. My, my position on dairy is, if you want to go full primal, cut out the dairy. But if you just, you know, want to have a, an enjoyable, full pallet of food that you want to eat, and you're okay, and you, and you can, uh, digest lactose well, and you haven't had any of these autoimmune issues, and you've cut out the grains, a little bit of dairy isn't going to hurt you. And so, uh, dairy is one of the things that we allow in there. Chocolate. You know, Grok didn't eat chocolate. But there's a lot of good research that shows it's, there's some polyphenols in chocolate that have a benefit. You know, beyond just the great taste of chocolate. So dark chocolate is allowed in the program. Two of the things that we do allow, um, within reason, uh, caffeine and alcohol. Um, I have a cup of coffee every morning. Love it. Uh, put a big fat dollop of heavy whipping cream in there. Uh, cuz I'm all about the fat. And, um, you know, I almost, it's not like a, a great start to a morning if I don't have my cup of coffee. However, if you start growing back and having six cups here and, you know, you're at work and you're, you know, getting through work all day with filling that coffee cup up left and right, now we have a problem. Now it becomes more of a, a long-term central nervous stimulant. The caffeine and coffee, which is what sort of one of the things you all seek, can have a short-term effect on the central nervous system to amp you up. So it gets you started in the morning. Might, uh, even ramp up your, uh, uh, peristalsis and your digestive tract. So you might, you know, might be what some people use as their way to, to help them get ready to take a dump first thing in the morning. Whatever. We all have a reasons. A lot of athletes take caffeine because it mobilizes free fatty acids better. So the old, when I was running, the deal was, you drank two cups of coffee an hour before your race, and that started the free fatty acids flowing. And then the, again, the more you can depend on fats instead of glycogen or glucose as an athlete, the longer you can go. So that was always a good thing. So I'm, I'm fine with caffeine in moderation. Alcohol, uh, kind of a, a similar thing. Uh, there's a lot of great research on the beneficial effects of alcohol. A lot of great research that that men who drink two or fewer, one to two drinks a day, women who drink one drink, glass of alcohol a day, um, tend to live longer, tend to, um, you know, enjoy life, be have a little bit lower stress levels. The, and I kind of, I buy into that. I love research. So, but the problem with research is you, a lot of times you say, okay, I like this part of the research, I don't like that part of the research. But this part of the research, man, this is where I'm sticking. Um, I like, I have a glass of wine or two, just about every night. I used to be a big beer drinker. Um, I mean, from my size, you wouldn't know about a big beer. I think serious problems almost at one point. And, always maintain my body weight because I was running 100 miles a week. But, um, when I realized the, the nature of the grain-based nature of of what was going on with my diet and how I was, uh, severely impacting my health and, my sanity with my grain-based diet, when I cut out the grains, I had to cut out the beer. So I went, I just went to red wine. I love red wine. It's great. Um, the problem is that in a, in an ideal world, you would not drink alcohol because alcohol, ethanol, it's a poison. And it does have dilus effects. And there is research that shows that there may be a slight increase in your risk for cancer from drinking, uh, over consuming alcohol. I always come back to the balance, the interplay. Um, I'll confess to you guys that while I have this whole fitness thing dialed in, I get it. And there's very few people, I think, in this country who who have it dialed in the way I do, if I say so myself. I got the diet thing down. I got the, the workout thing down. I know exactly what I need to do to be lean, fit, happy, healthy, productive, and all those things. The one thing I don't have handled is stress. I talk about it all the time, how important it is to manage stress and how critical it is over the long term. Uh, stress is a major risk factor for a lot of disease. I don't handle stress well. So, you know, at the end of the day, that's my, that's my anti-stress thing. So I, I pull on the research that shows that a glass of wine or two glasses of wine, uh, you know, may have on balance for those people who don't handle stress well, may be more beneficial for its anti-stress, uh, uh, qualities than it does, or than it does for its, you know, than the negatives for its, uh, potential risk factor for other things. So that's kind of how I look at alcohol. You know, I'm not, I, I would not encourage anyone to abuse alcohol ever. Even, there's a lot of studies that show that even binge drinking, you know, one night a week is, uh, is unhealthy. But if you can handle alcohol in moderation, um, then I'm say, I say, you know, figure out how that fits into your life and make, you know, make an informed decision on that.

Yeah, I was just wondering if you could, uh, because at dinner the other night, you mentioned that when you do eat carbohydrates, you feel little. Is it really amplified, or is it just like, are you fatigued, or is it amplified? Uh, he asked him when I, when I, um, eat carbohydrates, I mentioned on my blog a lot that I feel kind of sickly. Is it amplified? Are you saying is it amplified by alcohol, or just by, like, in the structure of the diet, if you, any intake of carbohydrates, does that really affect your, your? Yeah. So the question is, if I, if I amp up my carb intake, uh, does it have, does it have a, a negative effect on me? You know, there's a lot of stuff going on. How many people read, um, uh, Rob Wolf, Matt Stone? Um, there's a lot of these guys out there who now talking about overfeeding. And this notion that if you have a low-carb diet all the time, that, um, you, some, you know, you'll, that you'll downregulate so much that you'll, I don't even know what their, what their basic premise is. Jolly, what's their basic premise of overfeeding? Well, I didn't mean to put you on the spot there, man. But so essentially, their viewpoint is pretty much what you said, that, and I think you mentioned it in one of your recent posts, uh, in order to optimize the fat burning over a long period of time, having an occasional overfeed is beneficial in order to make sure that your body just doesn't downregulate. I mean, the body tries to regulate itself and maintain homeostasis over time. So by occasionally eating higher amounts of carbohydrates, it'll help your body still keep burning fat. But I think a lot of people tend to have more issues if they go a long time without eating wheat and then suddenly get gluten in their diet. I've seen people that that will mess up. So that's, that's, that's basically the idea is that, is that there's a fear that if you continue on this low-carb program for too long, that you'll, uh, you'll downregulate certain, uh, aspects. You'll, you'll create such a, a low level of, um, uh, of, uh, energy requirement that if you ever, I don't know, even I don't even know what the fear is, because if, if I, I've been eating this way for eight or 10 years, and I always have the energy I need. And the only time I ever encounter a problem is if I, um, if I do a minor overfeed with carbohydrate. And in this case, uh, you know, I had my birthday last week, and, uh, you know, I had to have some cake. I can't piss off the host. And, uh, you know, just a little piece of cake. But, but even now, that it's the sugar, it's the, you know, it's that, um, combined with the alcohol, combined with whatever else I was eating at that meal, that winds up being a carbohydrate load that I'm not used to. And I, it's not, um, it's not devastating. It's just a feeling I don't like. You know, it's just a little bit of a, if you do it late at night, I can't sleep as well. I sleep, but I can't sleep as well. You know, you feel the temperature rise a little bit. You feel the stress hormones kick in because sugar, at that point, is, is kind of poisonous. This is the, the only downside to eating really, really clean this way is that when you do go off the wagon, and you really notice it. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing because it, at some point, it, it'll kick you in the ass and you go, why, I'm not going to do that again. And so a lot of people who start going down the primal route and they do it for a couple of weeks or a couple of months and they say they go off, you know, they go on a vacation, do something, and they realize how bad they feel, uh, when they, when they have a, a meal of, you know, huge pasta meal or a lot of bread or a lot of. And it may be the gluten, it may be the carbs, it may be a combination of the two. But once you've started eating clean and, and you stopped doing that, you, you sort of get this isn't working for my body. And the sad part is that there's 90% well, 75 or 80% of our country is walking around oblivious to these same effects. They're oblivious to the effect of of their blood sugar rising and their insulin going up and their insulin resistance and their fat being hoarded in the cells and their and their cortisol rising as a result of a meal. They're just oblivious because one of the, one of the main adaptations of the human body is, take the pain away. Take the pain away. If you're doing something bad to me, at some point, I want to be able to adapt to that level of pain so I don't, I don't just go bonkers. I don't go crazy. So the, the, the brain is always trying to adapt to whatever level of pain you are giving it. Well, if you're giving it, if you're eating at crap every single day and you're gaining weight and you're doing all of these, uh, typical standard American diet, uh, protocols, the body becomes immune to the effects of it. It just doesn't want to feel that anymore. Well, when you start eating clean, now you start feeling better. And you start doing all the things right. Now, if you go back and eat the way you used to, now you've got a real comparison because now your body's gotten used to being, your brain's gotten used to certain level of of, uh, uh, endorphins, a certain level of glucose. And now when you throw that off, you really notice it. So kind of good news, bad news. You know, the bad news is, you know, it's, you feel it, you notice it when you go off the wagon. The good news is when you, uh, you, you make the decision, I'm not, I'm not doing that again. And it gets you more and more down that path.

Okay, uh, so we tal, I mean, the carbs, sugars, body fat thing. Did we, did we address whose question was that? Carbs. Yeah. So specifically, specifically like he's going to bring. No, he's going to bring you the mic. That yeah, at some point in the day, do you, I know you said like low fruit and things of that sort, but sort of a balance between like the cardio and I don't really know the exact question, but you could, you could touch on the fruits a little bit and about like the, you know, the excess sugar and the body fat. Yeah. Uh, the question about fruits is, um, you know, they are a source of, um, of sugar and primarily fructose. And the thing about fructose that's becoming a bigger and bigger talking point on the internet right now is the fact that fructose does not use the same pathway as glucose in the body. Fructose doesn't raise insulin. Fructose kind of gets shunted directly to the liver, has a predisposition to being converted into triglycerides at a higher rate than glucose does. So the idea that that you, if you on an all-fruit diet and you're going to eat a lot of fruit, just means you're going to get in a lot of fructose. And at some point, there's no, you've heard how bad high fructose corn syrup is. Well, it's a form of fructose. And there's a lot of fructose in certain fruits. The more fruits you take in, the more you, you sort of, um, tinker with or play around with or get near that that area where you're going to start converting more of those into, uh, triglycerides and potentially store them as fat. And potentially store them as hepatic or liver fat. Uh, so on balance, vegetables, which don't have a lot of fructose in them and convert to primarily to glucose slowly, um, are a better choice of carbohydrates. So when I look at the, again, it's a spectrum, it's a continuum. So I'm, I'm not going to, I love fruit. I have fruit pretty much every day. But I, you know, I have blueberries. I'll have low, low fructose containing fruits. And there are sites you can go on the internet that shows you the amount of fructose in a fruit. I just stay away from the ones that have a lot of fructose. I stick with the ones that have, uh, a low amount of fructose. And I also realize that, um, you know, every time I'm, uh, and it's a seasonal thing too, by the way. I'm not, I don't know about you, but I, I feel like having more fruit in the summer when it's available and the berries and all stuff. I don't feel like having that much fruit in the winter. So it may be a, it may be a, it's a genetic predisposition. It's a, what I kind of listening to what your genes kind of want you to do. The reason, by the way, um, evolutionarily, that, um, this seasonality of fruits and, and it's kind of interesting of why fruits would would store more readily as fat is, imagine you're in a, in a seasonal environment where the only, uh, choices of food are, uh, animals and some plants and some fruits. And it's the end of the summer, and you eat a lot of fruit because you know, not that you know, but it's going to happen that there's a winter coming where there won't be a lot, lot of this stuff available. And how convenient is it that the fruit converts into body fat pretty quickly? You know, that's kind of a neat evolutionary, uh, adaptation. That's one of the reasons that we would that we would store fructose so readily. End of the summer, end of the season, end of the growing season, end of the availability of food. I want to store as much fat as I can to prepare for a long period through the winter where there won't be much food available. So it all makes sense in the context of evolution. We don't have that problem anymore. So we have to kind of, you know, kind of, uh, cogitate, think about, what do I want to accomplish? Do I want to store a lot of fat before the winter? Well, if you do, fruit's a great choice. If you don't.

Then you kind of back off and you say, "Okay, what's, how does this fit into my overall plan?" Particularly when there's plenty of lamb chops right over here. You know, there's plenty of, uh, other, other choices. Macadamia nuts, there's a chicken wing, there's a. So it's, it's just, uh, we luckily we have all these choices available to us.

Um, let's talk about, uh, contact sport. So, uh, spec, what would you like to know about contact sports? I'll just, I'll just repeat the question. Okay. Yeah. Well, one of the sports I do, I, um, it's a lot of high impact. So like landing. Yeah. Um, I want to know over the long term, like what's, you do, so you do a lot of, uh, land. What are you doing? Parkour? What you? Okay, okay. Good.

So, um, the question is, what, what's the, um, effect of, of a paleo diet on, on high impact sports? Or, yeah. And also, like, what's the long-term effects like of that type of activity? Yeah. Okay. And what are the long-term effects, not just what are the diet effects, but what are the long-term effects of doing an act, contact sport like parkour? Now, I don't know that, U, I would put parkour in the same, uh, category as I would, um, you know, football or rugby or, uh, you know, uh, women's field hockey. Just kidding. Uh, um, parkour is a great sport. And, you know, your issues are getting up. I mean, get, you know, you, you know, you, if you land wrong or do something, you can break something. Uh, it's almost a question of that, which doesn't kill me makes me stronger. Because parkour is a great application of a totally primal workout. Uh, we're introducing a, uh, I've got the Primal Leap kit coming up, in a few weeks. And part of the Primal Leap kit, and part of our whole new program, involves this, this, uh, we've, we've now started to include more of the exercise complement. And it's really based around body weight exercises. Because what we've, what we've, um, gleaned from all the research is that, you know, the, the, the sustainability of an exercise program has a lot to do with, with your avoidance of injury, your mobility, uh, your wide range of motion, and the application, the functionality of the fitness. So we're doing body weight stuff more than we're telling people to get on a $4,000 piece of equipment and and isolate your biceps and then go do the three heads of the tricep on three different machines. You know, we're, we're taking and trying to simplify the whole exercise prescription. Which again, if you get the diet dialed in, 80% of your body composition comes from how you eat. So you don't need to do that much training to actually develop a toned, lean, strong, you know, all the agility, the speed, all the things you want, uh, with, with parkour. That's just the, that's the application of all of those push-ups, pull-ups, dips, lunges, squats, uh, all the other iterations of that. Fabulous, uh, fun kind of. And that's it. Fun. And, and that. And by the way, that's, that's critical. And that's what I, I tell people now is I don't, I train as little as possible. My idea, I, I spent my most of my life achieving this high-end fitness with pain and suffering and sacrifice. I turned 40. I said to myself, I would rather look fit than be fit. And that became a mantra. And that became a thing. And it's, it's a little tongue-in-cheek. And yet the reality is, if you do what it takes to look fit, you're probably fit. You know? So. And because, because I'm not, I'm not race fit anymore. But I'm stronger than I ever was when I was a world-class athlete. Uh, you know, I can sprint just as fast now as I could when I was a marathoner, because of the way I train then versus the way I train now. Uh, all of, all of this is contemplated. So my workouts now, two, uh, body weight workouts a week, one sprint routine a week is all the training I do. I train for two reasons. I train to play. I want to play. Parkour is playing. I want to play uninjured. That's number reason number two. So they're kind of related. I don't want to get injured. So my training is contemplated to prevent injuries and to allow me to get, pick up new sports and to play more often. Now, when I play, I'll go out for a two-hour paddle on surf, just stand-up paddling. Uh, I play ultimate frisbee every week, two hours of ultimate. Uh, I, I, I hike. Find all kinds of ways that I can incorporate my limited focus training into play. And it's not like the play doesn't count. Play counts. You know, it's movement. But it sort of counts. I put it in my law number seven, which is play. I'm, I'm trying to, so I'm, I'm killing two birds with one stone here. But I'm training is, get me out of here. I mean, I'm having fun doing it. But get me out of here as quickly as possible with the most amount of benefit. You know, least amount of time, least, most amount of benefit. I want to go play. And so parkour is a great example of application of that where you now, you've, you've built, uh, the strength and the agility and, and, uh, the endurance and all of those single elements you need. And you put them together in a playful, uh, kind of, uh, deal. And, and I think, and parkour is great. So, uh, it's almost a perfect, and I wouldn't, contact sport in some regards. You're building bone density better than anybody. Cuz you know, when you do a landing and, and you do it appropriately, uh, you're, you know, you're increasing your bone density. You look at, uh, some of the guys in, in ultra athletes or endurance athletes, Tour de France cyclists, very low bone density because they're not doing any, any weight-bearing activity. Swimmers, really low bone density, they're not doing any weight-bearing activity. Uh, not that that, you know, is the main driving force. They're not doing it for that reason. In fact, they're doing it, you know, for a lot of other reasons. But that's just something to, to keep in mind. So, um, no, I, great, uh, it's a great sport. I wish, I wish I had the balls to do it now. But I'm a little too, like I said, I want to, I want to play uninjured. And, and that's, uh, you know, that's my, my big thing.

Okay, um, who's question? Who had a question about frequency? Yes. What do you mean? So what, let's talk about frequency. Like how many times? Yeah. Okay. So I sort of just addressed that. But let's, let's get specific. Um, when you dial in the diet and you realize that 80% of your body composition is determined by how you eat, you don't need to do that much exercise. If you look at our ancestral movement patterns, there was a lot of walking around. You know, a lot of hunting, migrating, foraging, crawling, low level of aerobic activity. That's, it's about the movement. That's why I try to incorporate the movement into my play. Uh, but, you know, I, I, I like going for walks in the city when I'm in a city. I like, you know, um, I like standing, standing at my desk. I like moving around throughout the course of the day. The, the ancestral pattern has a lot of standing up, a lot of, a lot of low-level aerobic activity, and very short, intense bursts of of strength or sprinting. So, in other words, our, our ancestors really only sprinted when they had to for their lives, either to catch something or to run away from something that was going to catch them. Uh, there was no, uh, maybe there was, uh, uh, you know, some, some, some games playing later on our development, but not, not a lot. And, you know, lift a boulder, tow a carcass. All of this stuff is, uh, it's not like our ancestors went to the gym for an hour and a half to work on their delts. You know, they just, they didn't. And in my world, again, it's about, what's the least amount of stuff that I can do and get the results I want? If you want to go to the gym for an hour and a half and work every piece of equipment, I'm not, you know, it's fine. I mean, there's a lot of people do it. A lot of people look great doing it. But I'm not sure it's giving you the functional fitness. It's certainly not giving you the optimal use of your time. But if you want to go to the gym and check out the chicks and talk to the guys or whatever, you know, fine, go ahead and do it. I'm just saying you can get 95% of all of the strength you'll ever get from doing body weight routines, if you do them appropriately. And what do you mean, body weight routines? I see guys deadlifting, you know, 500 pounds or whatever. You know, doing, you know, overhead presses with 250, bench pressing 600 pounds. Dude, if you can do 51 arm push-ups, if you can do 50 one-legged, you know, pistol squats, you, you know, you're a mean, you're a badass. And you know, you're as, you're as fit as any guy on the planet. So you can do all this stuff with body weight. It's just a question of, you know, how do you, how do you slot it in and how often do you do it? Well, if you do it right, you can only do it twice a week. You can't recover from a full-on badass body workout, body weight workout, every day, every other day, maybe every third day. So that's the beauty of, of the program that we put together. Is one sprint routine a week, because sprinting is different from the other stuff. It works different, um, energy pathways and it has different, uh, hormonal response patterns that we're trying to accomplish. One sprint workout a week, two high-intensity body weight routines a week. You're done. You know? And now go play. Go do parkour. Now go do a pickup game of basketball with your buds. You know, now, um, um, you know, whatever it is you're going to do, go water skiing, you know, walk with your girlfriend, you know, whatever suits your face. By the way, this, this, the low-level activity is never about calories. So when people say, well, I'm going to go, I'm put my pedometer on, I'm going to burn, I'm going to do 10,000 steps or I'm going to burn 500 calories. It, body doesn't care about that. It's, it's about the movement. It's just about the movement. You cannot, uh, it's, it's not an accounting program where, oh, I burned off 500 calories in this hike or I burned off 400 calories on this treadmill run. It's really just about the movement pattern. It's the movement that's causing a lot of the genetic adaptations. It's that's causing the capillary profusion. And it's causing the, um, it's supporting the fat mobilization and fat burning of the enzymes. Don't worry about the calories when you do that. Because the calories, the calories in, calories out thing, if you've read any of, uh, Gary Taubes or I talk about it in my book, it's not about, it's, it's about the context of those calories. It's about what those types of macronutrients, predominantly protein and fat, are doing and how they're controlling insulin. And how insulin is then the gateway to whether or not you store fat for the rest of your life, or whether you burn fat on an ongoing basis, day in and day out, and have this easy transition into a primal lifestyle. So the low-level stuff, just get out and, and, and make it fun.

Yes. Talk about your drff. The science certainly seems to back off a low carbohydrate diet, even logic. But yet the AMA categorizes low diets as fad diets. Yeah. Why do you think there is so much skepticism, outright antagonism toward the low carbohydrate diet program? Why is there so much skepticism in the established medical community about low carb diet? Um, the, I mean, I, I have my opinion why. And it's, you know, it has to do with politics. It has to do. I can't, I don't have an answer, but I have an opinion. It's like doctors, you know, doctors don't have answers. Lawyers don't have answers. The CPAs don't have answers. They just have opinions. Which is fine. But you're the guy, you're the one who makes the ultimate decision. Okay? So when you, when you, when you do the research, when you come into a, a new opportunity like this, you've got to sort of make the decision for yourself. And there are a number of physicians who are like, Jesus, why, you know, why doesn't every doctor do this low carb thing? This is magic. But the, you know, public policy making in this country is like, you know, going to a sausage factory. You know, that whole analogy about, you know, if you, as much as you love sausage, you do not want to see how it's made. Well, public policy is kind of like that. Is it, it's, it's, it's mind-blowing that we would have in place a food pyramid that bears no resemblance whatsoever, does not reflect at all on what the science has been showing us for 20 years. But the fact that the grain lobbyists and the special interest groups and the and the AMA and the American Diabetes Association, who are in cahoots with the, and I say, I mean, it's not a conspiracy theory. I'm not, you know, so funny, I was listening to Orlando yesterday talk about conspiracies and stuff. And everything, you know, it's, it's just the reality is that the American Diabetes Association, they don't want people to die. And they're, they're much better off allowing everybody to have your, have your drugs. Take your Metformin, your Glucophage, your Apidra. Take your drugs. And then if you take your drugs, you're going to have to have a little bit of carbohydrate. Because otherwise the drugs are going to be, you know, whatever. So, so they're supporting this. I, you know, I, you've heard me refer to it. I call it digging a hole to put the ladder in to wash the basement windows. You know, they're overthinking this. They're over strategizing. They're making it way too complicated. It's such a simple kind of thing. Um, it's like, you know, telling a, can you imagine what it would take for the US government, after 50 years of giving us a food pyramid that has, uh, 45 to 65% of calories from carbohydrate, for them to one day go, oops, up, we were wrong. It's the opposite. It's just, it's just, you know, it's, it's not going to happen in, in our lifetime.

Fad diet is pretty strong. Pardon me? Fad? They call it a fad diet. Yeah. A fad. Oh, fad. F-A-D. Fad diet. Yeah. Fad diet. Um, you know, I, thanks to the internet, this is. See, this is 10 years ago, we could not have had this growing community where where it's like everybody's kind of linking together. And I mean, the, the, the viral nature of this, cuz it would have been a couple of lone voices off in the dark. It would have been Gary Taubes' book, great book, not a lot of people, not as many people have read it as as should have, and not many people have understood it. Then it would have been, you know, Cordain, who's been wrote his stuff 10 years ago and sort of disappeared. He's come back. Atkins, you know, just Atkins. You would have thought it was a very successful program. And people would, without the internet, without everybody getting together and starting to build this community, this probably would have died on the vine as well. So I'm, I'm very excited about the prospect that we are amassing, uh, you know, a critical mass of people who are going to kind of take this to the next level. And you go to my site, and there's hundreds of success stories. Have you, I don't know if anybody's seen the success stories on my site? They're mind-boggling. You know, people who, they talk about they, uh, you know, three months, they lose 40 pounds. Their blood lipids come right back into a healthy range. Their doctor is stunned. Says, I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it. But, you know, don't tell me, cuz I don't want to hear it. If it involves fat, I don't want to hear it. It's crazy stuff. But this is, this is why one of the reasons that you, you guys are here to get this information. I did an event, uh, in, um, uh, in Oxnard, in California, back in April. We called it Primal Con. It was a, it was a three-day experience of how to really delve into the primal lifestyle. We had primal food, we had primal activities, primal exercises. We had cold plunges in the ocean. It was a, it was a lot of fun. And I had a, and, and it was some great information, if I say so myself. And this, I had this 27-year-old guy come up to me. And he goes, he goes, dude, I just, I feel bad. I said, what do you mean, you feel bad? He goes, well, I feel, I don't know, I feel bad because you had to go through all that. You know, you had to have the arthritis and irritable bowel syndrome and the tendinitis. And you had to go through all that stuff. And now you're just giving it to us like we don't have to go through that. I'm 27 and I can look forward, you know, to the rest of my life doing that. And that, and that really hit home for me. Like, first of all, I said, don't feel bad for me. I mean, I got a great life. I, I know, I've been married 20 years. I got great kids. The fact that I'm here today and my, my journey, uh, you know, so infused me with the knowledge and the and the and the certainty that what I'm doing is the right thing. I'm not sure I would have gotten it if I necessarily somebody just told me about it. So I'm glad I experienced it. And I'm glad, I'm thrilled that I can pass this along to to other people. That's sort of my, my mission right now is to pass this along. Um, but it was, it was really interesting to, you know, you guys are a generation, probably one of the first generations that on the one hand, your recipe got messed up, uh, by no fault of your parents. But their recipe got messed up by their parents. And by the time it got to you, you know, there's some, there's some things that this generation can fix. And if you don't fix them, if you, you're going to gain 10 pounds a decade for the next, you know, 50 years. You're going to get the arthritis and the irritable bowel syndrome. And you're going to get the, you know, all of the things. The type two diabetes. It's a freaking epidemic. Type two diabetes is the most stupid disease there is. First of all, in my mind, it's not even a disease, it's a condition. But completely preventable. Comp. There is nobody who is born with type two diabetes. You know, you just, you just develop it because you send your genes the wrong signals. And your genes are taking the information and they're going, geez, I got to, I got to save this guy. He's eating too much sugar. So your genes are just responding to the signals, doing exactly what they're programmed to do. Your perfect human genes, your perfect human recipe is taking your information that you're giving it. I'm not working out much. I'm eating a lot of sugar. I'm eating, um, uh, I'm not controlling stress. And the, they go, okay, if that's what you're going to do, we're going to try and save you. We're going to try and so they make you insulin resistant. You know, they, they, the genes are, every manifestation of what type two diabetes is, is simply a, it's just your genes responding to your signals. So if you guys have this information and you can start using this now and start, you know, plotting a strategy, because again, it's not about pain and suffering and sacrifice and discipline and all this. That doesn't appeal to a 20-something. It's about reality. It's about how can I have all this stuff? Stuff. How can I eat, you know, go to McDonald's and order two cheeseburgers and take the buns off? You know, how can I go to to a Mexican restaurant and instead of getting beans and rice and and, uh, tortillas and all that grain stuff, you know, if all my friends want to go there and get that, I'll just order two carne asada's and a guacamole. Mix it up together. Dude, I'm, I'm happy. I'm thrilled. You know, this is, um, it's about using your, yeah, using your brain and and figuring out how do I, how do I, this primal life that I'm, you know, knowing what I know into the context of a modern 21st century environment where I'm going to bump up against stuff every once in a while and I have to be smart about how I approach it. Makes sense? Yeah. Uh, yeah.

What's your take on, uh, well, number one, pizza? And also, what's your, like, liquid intake? I know you said you drink wine, but in terms of like juices. Yeah. Like, pizza. Pizza, first of all, and my intake on, uh, on liquids. Um, I, I, I don't eat pizza at all. At all. I mean, it's, uh, it's one of those things that, again, it's a, it's a food that's become ubiquitous in the American diet. And, um, I gave a talk in Philadelphia a while back and I went to a restaurant afterwards and I, and I, um, sat there eating a 2-pound ribeye steak with a glass of Cabernet and a big bowl of sauteed mushrooms. And I thought to myself, do I feel sorry for myself because I couldn't eat bread or that I didn't order a side of rice? No, not really. Um, do I feel sorry for myself that I can't eat pizza? Pizza never really appealed to me in the first place. I mean, it's just one of the ways I look at this is, um, yeah, 10 minutes. 45. Oh, 45. Okay. Okay. Um, yeah. So regarding the pizza, and one of the, one of the things is, um, uh, we have these foods that we think are comfort foods or that we grew up, you know, eating. And so now they become the kind of go-to thing. Let's go off for pizza. Let's order pizza. Let's, you know, whatever. Um, but the reality is, there are, um, there are so many other choices out there that you don't have to, you know, you, you go, all right, so for the three or four minutes of gustatory pleasure, right? Cuz that's how I look at it. Like, like when I'm going to have, if I have a dessert or something like that, I just do the, I said, okay, for three or four minutes of, you know, hedonistic gustatory pleasure, it'll taste good and then it'll be done. Am I willing to, you know, not feel well for the next, three, four, five hours? And that, for me, is, that's, that's an easy one for me. You know, I just, I have to, you rationalize it that way. Cuz because the human brain is kind of programmed to eat. It's, it's programmed to eat whatever is out there. Cuz that's for 2 million years, up until the last 10,000 years, you came across some food, you ate it, man. Because if you just didn't eat it, no, not for me today. You know, you're going to die. But now with food storage and grains and and all of the different choices, you know, last thing on our mind is we're not going to die of starvation. We're not, that's not a survival issue anymore. So now we, we kind of have to think about those things.

Yes. Right here. Yeah. Um, my question was kind of about, like, exercise throughout the day. Like, you know, parking far away, walk in, taking the, the stair instead of the elevator. Do you think there's any benefit to that, or you think it's just not worth it at all? That's totally. Yes. The idea is, you know, as part of your movement pattern, parking far away from work, taking the elevator, or taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Um, no, I, I always look for ways that I can, uh, incorporate that. Um, because the reality is, I don't know what you guys, you know, do for most of us, sit at a desk all day. It's one of the worst things we can do for ourselves. It messes with our, our, um, uh, posture, uh, you know, predisposed us to a bad back, um, you know, messes with our energy fluctuation, messes with our eyesight because we're staring at a monitor. Anytime you can get up and move around, just for the sake of moving, I say do it. I say the, the, the American workplace is a joke now because you ought to be able to get up and and, and move around every 10 or 15 minutes. You ought to be able to, you know, again, incorporate the 21st century technology, get a headset and talk on the cell phone while you're walking around. You know, um, uh, one of my, um, good friends is a, uh, is is one of the wealthiest guys in the country. And he goes on hikes with his, with his phone. And he does, he does his work while he's hiking. You know, he, he's combining, uh, his, his activity pattern with what we call productive leisure. And I think that's sort of one of the things we need to try and figure out ways that we can incorporate into our lives so that we're not just sitting there waiting for, you know, the 5:00 punch the clock and and go home. We got to figure out ways that we can move more frequently, more often. So anything you can do in that regard, I mean, I, um, you know, I, uh, fly out of LAX and I park my car and I walk instead of taking the shuttle. I walk to the, I just allow extra time to do that. You know, through the, through the, uh, through the airport.

Yes. I have several friends of Indian background. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the comment is about about cultures. Yes. The, uh, question about cultures that, uh, are vegetarian for generations and haven't eaten meat for a long time. And, and are still trying to do what he's a weightlifter, a bodybuilder. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, it's, at least in this day and age, it's possible to be healthy and be vegetarian. But there are the compromise you make. I mean, as long as you are consuming a good protein powder, uh, as long as you're eating mostly, if you're a vegetable-based vegetarian, as opposed to a, uh, pasta-based vegetarian. I love that, you know, people are in, in vegans who are, you know, eat so much pasta and think that they're doing themselves a big solid because they're not eating meat. It's like, Jesus, I mean, but, you know, everybody's got their belief systems, right? And this is all about it's, it really is all about you choosing from a position of power and choosing from a position of knowledge and having done an experiment of one on yourself and figuring out, does this work for me? I went the vegetarian route. I was, uh, involved with a girl for a couple of years, and she was a vegetarian. And she forced it on me. And, you know, I wanted, I wanted to get some. So I, you know, I, I, I did vegetarian for 90 days. And it was, you know, it was very clear to me that that does not work for me. And it was very clear, you know, then, and 20 years later, it's even more clear why it didn't work for me. But again, the human body is really resilient. And from an evolutionary standpoint, look, I mean, if we stop and we go, if you guys don't do anything else, if you don't incorporate anything that I've told you or anyone else tells you, you're probably going to live a long, relatively happy, relatively fun life. You know, you may gain pounds here or there or not. But, you know, it's not like you're going to die in a week or if you don't do what I say. So this is not about necessarily that I have a better way. It's that I have a different way. And my way is that I've based in science, probably is going to, in my mind, my belief system, is going to predispose you to being stronger, having more of a six-pack, uh, getting sick less often, having more energy on a regular basis. Uh, you, that's, that's what I know. But that doesn't mean that there are necessarily wrong choices out there in the world. I mean, half the world depends on grain because they're going to die if they don't get the calories. I can't, you know, I'm not going to go up to some guy starving in, you know, in Ethiopia or Uganda and say, dude, this grain's gonna kill you, man. It's not like that's not my gig. Mine, mine is is to say, okay, from where we sit right here, and with the tools that we have, and with the access that we have, you know, what's, what's the best, easiest path? What are the hacks? What are the hacks that we can use to burn body fat, to look good naked, to have more energy, to do all the things that we want to accomplish, again, with the least amount of pain, suffering, sacrifice, discipline, calorie counting, portion control, and all that other nonsense. So, um, I don't, I, I can't, you know, the comment is, God bless them. They, you know, have, you know, good luck. I hope you, you get your, you know, get some good protein powder. Um, and you're probably going to, you know, be fine. But, you know, try to get them to read the Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith. Anybody read that? All right. I highly recommend it. It's, you know, this is a woman who is vegetarian for 20 years and then vegan, and then saw the light and now writes like how devastating a lifestyle that can be. Uh, okay.

Yes. In the back here. What's your advice for people that are vegetarian? I'm one of those people. It's not, I don't do because, yeah, follow this. Based on your experience. Yeah. I mean, so now you're a vegetarian. You want to, you want to remain a vegetarian. And again, I'm not saying I got a better way. I have a different way. And I'm not, uh, suggesting that, um, you know, you shouldn't remain a vegetarian. But what I would do is I would take advantage of the tools that are available. I would say, if there are any good protein powders that you can take, uh, I would, um, make sure that I can figure my workout strategy to, uh, you know, to incorporate the same kind of high-intensity stuff. And then just kind of watch, you know, watch. Do an experimental one. Incorporate that part into your lifestyle. But, I mean, there are, there are a number of vegetarians on Mark's site. There are no vegans. Are you vegan? Okay. So what? So what are the compromises you make from vegan to vegetarianism? Like, you do eggs? I eat eggs, milk, dairy. Okay. So, so you eat eggs, milk, and dairy. So that's not, in my mind, that's not really a vegetarian. I mean, I don't, that's, it's, it's whatever it is for your culture. But you're, you know, you've got enough of those protein sources coming in that, uh, you know, and then are you largely grain-based? I am. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good. Who, uh, have I not heard from? First over here. Yeah. You. I don't know if you want to go into this much detail, but you just give like an example what one of your body weight routines might look like. Uh, all right. So the other day, what is my body weight routine? My body weight routine, um, the other day I did, um, reverse rows. Do you know what reverse rows are? You're sort of like a pull-up, a modified pull-up. You're hanging from a bar with your feet extended out on the floor and you just pull up. Okay. So 30 of those. Turn over, do 30 push-ups. 30 of those. Do 30 push-ups. So do three sets of those. Then I'll go do, uh, pull-ups and and dips combination. So I'll do, I usually do 12 wide grip pull-ups, 20 dips, 12 pull-ups, 20 dips, you know, uh, and then I'll do, you know, maybe a squat. What did I do after that? Maybe just finish it up with squats. I think. And that was it. Couple of, you know, like two sets of 50 squats. You know, but these are body, body weight squats. Yeah. Body weight squats. Now, I do sometimes use a weight vest. And that's a kick ass. So if you do body weight stuff with a weight vest on, all of a sudden a bunch of pull-ups or a bunch of push-ups or a bunch of whatever you're doing, dips, become, you know, gargantuan. And, uh, so that's the one, uh, concession that I make to the extra equipment. Equipment. But it's still, it's still a body weight stuff. There's still the functional body weight type movements. Yeah. You three, uh, yeah. Depend, just depends on what I'm trying to accomplish. Like sometimes I'll do, uh, I'll do sets of 100. And so I do as many as I can and stop and do a finish off until I get to 100. And then move on to the next exercise and do as many as I can in, in as many sets as it takes to get to 100. You know, I just, I mix it up all the time. It's almost different every day. That's why I, I had to kind of think about what I do. It's really, um, again, for me, it's just about making sure I incorporate the full whole body into the routine. Um, now, if some days, if I'm going to, like, if I got a sprint day scheduled two days out from that, I won't do as much lower body stuff.

Yes. I wanted to know your take on salt and other. We know about high fructose corn. But the other ingredients to watch out for that get added. Okay. Other, other Neolithic agents, as, uh, Cordain refers to them as, as, uh, as, uh, Kurt Harris and and the rest. NE, other Neolithic agents besides, um, high fructose corn syrup. So salt, I'm not. I think what I find is that once you cut the grains out of your diet, uh, a lot of these, um, predispositions, a lot of these cravings that we have, kind of diminish. So I don't, I don't even crave salt that much now. If you, by the way, salt is mostly a problem in the American diet because of processed foods, because a lot of the processed foods that we eat are processed with sodium. If you cut out the processed foods, you've already cut out 2,000 grams of sodium a day. Now, if you put salt on your vegetables or whatever, it's fine. It doesn't even have a, it's, it's, it's a no impact issue. Um, other Neolithic agents, one of the, one of the biggest, um, you know, if I had a, my, my hack list of what to do, cutting out sugars and cutting out grains, one and two, cutting out Omega-6s as much as you can, cutting, cutting back on polyunsaturated fatty acids from vegetable oils and seed oils. So, um, those are the kind of bad fats and trans fats. Now, if you get rid of, again, if you get rid of the processed foods, you're, you're likely getting rid of the trans fats. Um, but, uh, uh, so I'd stay away from, uh, safflower oil, corn oil, canola oil, soybean oil. And just, I'd stick with healthy fats. I, you know, I, I try and convince people to do, uh, range-fed, you know, grass-fed beef, which are higher in the good fats. I try to convince people to do, you know, virgin olive oil instead of the other oil choices they make. I got, I just, I put this in my pocket this morning. This is an example of of how, what we have to deal with, in the, in the marketing of foods and stuff. Flew out here yesterday, and I was offered a glass of orange juice and two of these. And I look at this thing, and it says, zero grams of trans fat per serving, no artificial colors or flavors, no, no cholesterol. Dude, this is healthy. Check it out. This doesn't have any trans fat, no artificial, no cholesterol. This must be great. And yet, you look at the ingredients, wheat flour, sugar, vegetable oils, soybean oil, soy flour, everything I talk about being crap, you know? Um, and, but that's what we deal with. We, we're dealing with this on a regular basis. That this concept that that anything that contains cholesterol is bad for us, because you can't. Well, no, cholesterol and food has nothing to do with the cholesterol your body makes. And the cholesterol your body makes, by the way, has very little to do with whether or not you're going to get, uh, heart disease. And that's, that's another, we could do a whole day on that. Uh, so Neolithic agents, there, you know, we stay, we stay away from the, those oils, and, and we stay away from the sugars, and we stay away from the grains, man. We're, we're so, so dialed in. It almost, the other stuff almost doesn't matter. Then it's just kind of refining the little, the finer points.

Yes. Right here. What are your thoughts on zinc and magnesium? Uh, zinc and magnesium, uh, you know, there's, uh, 72 minerals, trace minerals in the body that are required. And, uh, for the most part, we get a lot of those through the vegetables we eat. The issue is, and this is again, this is where we get to this, um, a little dilemma in that modern produce bears very little resemblance to the produce that they did the original on 60 years ago. In those 60 years, we've so trashed the soil that we grow this stuff on that it has fewer phytonutrients, fewer minerals, fewer vitamins, fewer of all the things that we're looking for. So we have to kind of, you know, we have to make those adaptations and compromises. I, you know, I don't know if you guys know this, I own a supplement company. That's my main business. Is I make supplements. The main reason I make supplements is because I get that as as healthy as you try to eat, there are going to be areas of your diet that are probably going to be either lacking or that you would be better off supplementing. So, I take a daily, a high, very high potency multi, which has zinc and magnesium and among, you know, 65 other things in it. Um, are you asking specifically about supplementing, specifically with zinc and magnesium? Yes. Like a ZMA kind of? Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's some studies. Again, you, when we get into these real individual nutrient supplementation concepts, then we start to get into a little bit of a gray area. Because once you start over-supplementing one, and you haven't accounted for, uh, other aspects of of energy pathways, for instance, that incorporate other, um, micronutrients, and you haven't accounted for all of that, you kind of throw the, the balance off. So I try to, I try, one of the reasons I created what is quite literally the world's highest potency full spectrum multivitamin, multimineral, antioxidant, is because I wanted to look at the broadest spectrum of what we knew the science showed to get everything dialed in. And, you know, because you'll see people say, well, I have restless leg syndrome, and somebody say, well, take an extra 600 milligrams of magnesium. Well, you get this, you know, maybe the restless leg syndrome goes goes away, but then you get the shits because you got because it's a laxative. You know, you wind up having all this, um, you know, these imbalances. So I'm a, I'm a fan of supplementing. And if I said, you know, if I gave you some, some directives on what to supplement with, probably the number one thing would be, supplement with some high omega-3 fish oil, high EPA, DHA fish oil. Nobody's going to go wrong supplementing with that. You know, it, it has, fish oil has more exceptional research in every area of human nutrition than health than any other, uh, supplement. So that's number one. Number two would probably be a probiotic. Um, you know, we say this on the side, like Grok ate dirt. You know, our ancestors ate dirt every meal, every day. They never washed that off. Are you kidding me? That's, that's how our gut got populated with healthy bacteria. We are a, we are a symbiotic organism. We have 10 to 30 trillion bacteria residing in our gut every minute of every day. And we depend on those bacteria for partly for our immune system. Some people say 80% of your immune system resides in your GI tract. We, we depend on those to be able to, uh, assist us with digesting food, particularly, uh, um, soluble fiber, which is part of the vegetables that we eat. Uh, so, and yet, you know, we live in this pristine environment where we have to wash everything, and we have to sanitize everything, and we have to, it's, it's, it's just crazy. I mean, from the day you're born, when your mom was supposed to squat down and push you out, it was supposed to pass by her butt and pick up some of the bacteria on the way out to start you on your healthy road to a to to populating your healthy gut. You know, if you didn't get nursed as a child, God bless you. But if you didn't get nursed as a child, you missed out on early, the, the early formation of an immune system that required that you get healthy bacteria, among other things. Um, we become such a pristine society that we, you know, uh, give the kid, you know, give the woman a C-section, yank the baby out, bottle feed him. Next, it's ridiculous. And that's when I say, when we're born perfectly, we have a perfect, perfect recipe to create a lean, fit, happy, healthy, productive, seductive human being. And we just mess it up from day one. We didn't, you know, we weren't, we're not responsible from day one. But other people who didn't know any better, who think that they have our best interests at heart, start us down this path. So long-winded answer to your question, but I think it's important to take, um, probiotics.

Anthony, our videographer, wanted to know about your sprint routine. Pardon me? Our videographer wanted to know about your sprint routine. Okay. Um, normally my sprint routine is running. But when I talk about sprinting, it doesn't have to be sprinting. The concept of sprinting is really about an all-out effort. Uh, so I will do sprints on a bike once in a while. Uh, and, and again, if I do a, if I do a sprint workout on a bike, I might even do it in the gym. And it's just, uh, get on a lifecycle or something, warm up for 10 or 12 minutes. Uh, I might do a 40 minute, you know, hit the resistance, go 40 minutes, 40 seconds, uh, all out to where my heart rate is is maxed out. Back it off, rest two minutes, do it again. 40 seconds. Maybe do six of those. That's all. Cool it down and see you guys later. I'm out. You know, uh, if I'm running, uh, I do, because because I'm old, um, it takes me a little bit longer to warm up sometimes. So I, I, I'll go to the beach. I like, I only sprint, do running sprints, barefoot, or or with fives on. And again, I do a five to six minute warm-up. Some, then what we call striders, where I'll ease into a full-on sprint stride. So I don't just, you know, the gun doesn't just go off and go, bam. You know, I got to ease into it. And then when I'm ready to start, I do my sprints. Go, um, 10 strides easy, counting the right footfall. So it's one, two, three, four. 10 strides medium. And then boom, 10, 15, or 20 strides all out. And that's my run sprint. And again, I'll do that down the beach. Maybe I'll do four or five of them down the beach, turn around, do four or five, come back to the beach, and then sit and watch the chicks. So, uh, it's a, it's such a, the sprint routine is such a, a great compact workout. And it provides such a benefit. You know, I have people come to me all the time, dude, I've been doing Primal diet. I love it. I've lost, you know, 35 pounds or whatever. Um, I feel better. I got more energy. But I, I, I, I seem to have plateaued. I've gotten to the point where I can't, you know, I can't take off the last 10 or 15 pounds or whatever. I say, are you sprinting? No, I haven't done that. Well, you're going to get to 80% of your body composition maximum, your ideal genetic composition based on your unique familial genes, because not everybody is going to have world-class sprinter genes in their family background. But you're going to be within a few percentage points when you're ideal. You'll be within a few percentage points.

body fat of of your friend or your this world-class athlete or whatever you know. And what's it going to take to get to the next level? It might take, you know. And sprinting is, is the biggest, the best shredding exercise there is. So people who've had a tough time and are plateaued, man, you get into a sprint routine and you start five or six weeks into that, you know, you'll, you'll shred, um, pretty quickly. It'll, it'll, it'll get you to the next level.

Um, yeah, can you talk about vitamin D? Uh, vitamin D, um, more other than fish, more good research on vitamin D in the last decade than any other single of the vitamins. Uh, no reason. It's, it's bizarre to me because, um, again, vitamin D is, is an integral part of, uh, of a, of a series of events that take place in the body. And not the least among which is, is your immune system, and it's, and, and your ability to detect cancer and, and get rid of it.

Um, you know, we, we come in contact with carcinogens every single day. There's, there's happening in cells in our body every day that are trying to, trying to mutate and trying to become, um, marauders, are dangerous. And our immune system typically takes care of it. But if you don't take care of your immune system, that's when you, you have a problem. So people who have, um, a lot of issues in, in their lives, that means it's your immune system. I said, I cannot stress enough how important it is to eat right for the immune system, to control stress for the immune system, to exercise appropriately for the immune system. And if you over-exercise, you'll trash your immune system. If you eat too much sugar, you'll trash your immune system. By the way, sugar is probably the biggest immune suppressor there is. So there's a reason a lot of people who eat a lot of sugar have a very high carbohydrate diet get sick so often. They're just always opening the door for, for, um, getting, getting a cold, a flu, or whatever.

Um, vitamin E. Uh, so vitamin E is, is critical. And it's just ironic that, you know, one of my laws, the Primal Blueprint laws, is get adequate sunlight. Everybody should be getting 20 minutes of, of, um, totally exposed sun every day. That's how the body makes vitamin D. Yes, you can supplement. And yes, if you can't, like, I'm not going to get any sun today about you, but I'll be in here. And so I, I do supplement with vitamin D. It's a critical, critical, um, vitamin to get. I would much prefer that you spend time out in the sun. And the notion that, again, the medical community, which suggests that we, we would do ourselves much greater service if we avoided the sun at all times because the sun is, you know, you, it predisposes you to skin cancer. It's the reason we have so much cancer in this country is because of a lack of vitamin D, is from a lack of sun exposure and, and vitamin D and natural vitamin D. Uh, it's, it's like, again, it's, I don't even get it. I don't get how the medical community can continue to endorse this concept. And ironically, one of the things that's happened over the last 20 years, and they said, well, but the, but the incidence of, of skin cancer has increased. Well, it's increased partly because, and they're thinking it's because of sun exposure. When in fact, it's, it may be. But here's the problem. For, for the last 20 years, the industry has been making these sunscreens that prevent you from burning. You know, so you put on a sunscreen and you go out and you go out for this SPF, you know, 200 or whatever. You go out for as long as you want. You could be pale, pasty white, go out in the sun for eight hours, hang out all day, not burn. The problem is, it's keeping, it's, these sunscreens largely prevent the UVB rays. The UVB rays are what cause a burning. The UVB rays are also what interact with cholesterol in your skin to produce vitamin D. So you're out all day long, not burning, thinking, hey, life's wonderful. I'm out all day, I'm not burning. And actually, what you're doing is you're exposing yourself to incredibly larger amounts of UVA rays, which are the cancer-causing rays. That's point number one. And you haven't made any vitamin D because you've blocked the UVB rays. They, they've started to make some higher tech sunscreens that block both rays. But I'm just telling you, there's a generation of people out there who put on all this sunblock thinking they were doing themselves a service, and in fact, were predisposing themselves to, to not just skin cancer, but other forms of cancers. It's just ironic. So the best thing you can do in my mind is know where you are. Go out in the sun, you know, don't burn, get a little pink, cover up, go in, or then put on, you know, full-on sunscreen. That's what we should be doing. And in the, in, in the absence of that, we should be taking supplemental vitamin D, probably at least 4,000 international units a day.

Um, yes, what's your opinion on farmed like meat and grass? Is it really important to the grass? Yeah. So what's the, um, what's my take on grass-fed versus maybe conventionally raised meat? Uh, again, it's a, it's a continuum. It's a spectrum. And so from best to, um, to not quite best, but certainly better than grains, uh, grass-fed, grass-finished beef. That's all I eat when I'm home. It's tough to find on the road sometimes, and I don't agonize about it. But when I'm home, I eat grass-fed, grass-finished beef. Um, I look for, uh, pastured chicken, pastured eggs. That's the ideal. And we talk about that in the book. And we'll, we've got, I just wrote a new guide to modern foraging. That's part of my, um, uh, Primal Leap kit. And, and that, we talk about, you know, how to, how to dial in those and how to source those things. On the other end of the spectrum, though, if you're somebody who says, I'm going to, I want to start eating Primal, but I don't have the budget, I don't have access to these types of foods, going to the grocery market or the grocery store or the supermarket and buying a bunch of conventionally fed beef is still, in my estimation, better than than the pizza, the pasta, the, you know, all the other crap choices out there. It's still better. You're still going to get yourself closer to where you want to be to reprogram your genes to selectively burn fat and preserve muscle and do all the things you want. Yes.

Um, your, your talk kind of got me thinking about some, some personal things in my life. For example, like my little brother suffered about a year with ulcerative colitis surgeries, and my dad's not taking cholesterol pills. Like, what's your advice on talking to other people about this kind of stuff? Yeah. So, um, we've got, we've got a family situation with, uh, ulcerative colitis and, uh, a father who's got some issues with, uh, a doctor and, and wanting to prescribe cholesterol medications. Um, and the question is, how do you deal with this with family members or friends, or how do you, you know, how do you involve them in your new lifestyle, uh, choice without pissing them off, or without turning them away? You know, it starts with you. It really does. It's, uh, you're, you're responsible for yourself primarily. And, and that's really the, the strongest message I can give you is that, you know, everything that you do is, is your responsibility. And again, as Orlando said yesterday, it's not your fault necessarily, you know, but you take responsibility. Say, whatever, wherever I'm at right now, you know, I have a choice to make here. I can go this way, I can go that way, I can do so. I, I'm taking responsibility for the choices that I'm making. I'm going to do this, and I'm going to show my family my results. Now, if you got a, a sibling with with ulcerative colitis, it does not hurt to try and get rid of grains, you know, that's like, that would be, um, I'd be experimenting left and right whenever I could at, for whatever reason anybody ever suggested anything, I said, well, I'll give that a try. So I'd really try that. But, you know, it starts with you. It just starts with you. Show them how you feel. You show you become a, a fan of the, of the lifestyle and the process. And you say, you basically look, I enjoy what I do. I love what I do. I love my life. I love the energy level I have. I don't get sick. Uh, you know, so you're going to try and convince me to go back to to that way? It's not going to work because what's, what's I'm doing right now is working for me. I mean, it's working. And one of the things that I, that I tell people, you, you guys are a little young for this, but imagine being 40 years old or 45 years old, coming across a strategy like this, and coming across a strategy like this and going, wow, I just noticed results in the last six weeks. I've gotten, I'm 45, I'm 50 years old, I've gotten stronger, I've gotten, I don't get sick as often. Imagine having in your brain that you could improve your health, improve your strength, improve your fitness, have more fun for the next 20 or 30 years, as opposed to when I, when I was a kid, I'm 57. When I was a kid, 57 was old, man. That was like over the hill. And, and it was people were, they looked at, they couldn't, you know, they were planning their their exit strategy, you know, they're writing their wheels, they're, you know, they're getting ready to retire at 62 and then die at 65, which is what all, you know. So the whole premise of Social Security was you were only going to live three years after you retired. Imagine though, having this sort of newfound, um, excitement about how you live your life. And again, it's not, it's not a cult, it's not a, you know, it's just, it's the reality of how we're designed. And, and finding what the, the puzzle pieces are and, and fitting them on. And it's just going to get better. We're just going to find more and more of this. I think we have it dialed in pretty much now, but it's going to be more and more over time. Yes.

In the back, speaking of getting old, what's thoughts on carb levels for longevity, particularly worried about the levels of or the effects of insulin on aging? Well, um, the question is, what's the, in terms of longevity, what are my, uh, thoughts on carb intake and longevity and insulin? Um, the reason I'm, uh, I, I use insulin as the main focal point of my strategy. And, and insulin's not the only player in this game. There's a lot there. Insulin, there's glucagon, there's ghrelin, there's leptin, there's cortisol, there's epinephrine, there's, there's all these different hormones. But, but when it comes to diet, insulin is like the major, major player. So when we can control insulin and we can sort of manipulate insulin, we can, we can then manipulate all these other, uh, lesser hormones, if you will, quite easily. Most of the studies done on longevity with other animals suggest that in within any species, the individual that produces the least amount of insulin lives the longest. Within any species. So if you take, you know, uh, nematodes, if you take monkeys, if you take pigs, if you take, within that species, the individual, the person, the what that produces the least amount of insulin over a lifetime lives the longest. So insulin speeds up the aging process. That's a benefit to having a low-carb diet and, and reducing insulin for that reason alone. There are many other reasons, but I mean, benefits, but that's, that's one. If you want to live longer, that's clearly in the research now. There's, um, there are lots of studies on calorie restriction that show that if you, that the, um, the proven method for longevity in other species, we haven't proven in humans yet, but the proven method in, in other species for increasing longevity is, is calorie reduction. Is forced calorie reduction. My problem with that for humans is I want to enjoy my life. As I said, in the beginning, I'm looking for the hat. I'm looking for what's the least amount of pain, suffering, sacrifice, discipline, calorie counting, portion control, and all that other horseshit that I have to deal with in order to be lean, fit, strong, productive, fast, agile, seductive, and all of the things that we say we want. How can I have that without without all of the, and all, you know, and all all the pain? So there's a calorie restriction society. Just individual humans who choose to eat 1,200 calories a day. It's just doesn't appeal to me. You, it's like, so what's my take? He says, what's my take on insulin and carb intake? Uh, when I first came up with my carbohydrate pyramid, um, or my carbohydrate curve, excuse me, my carb curve a few years ago, um, it was based on research and it was based on a, on a lot of different component parts. And I came up with this curve, and it had a range of zero to 50 if you wanted to be ketogenic and, and really aggressively lose weight. 50 to 100 grams a day if you wanted to be in that, what we call the sweet spot for weight loss, where you could lose two to three pounds a week of stored body fat effortlessly. 100 to 150 grams a day to maintain your weight effortlessly without any big. And then above 150 was where you get into this dangerous zone where depending on who you are and your activity level, you could gain weight insidiously, store body fat insidiously at the rate of, you know, a few pounds a year, a few pounds a month, whatever. It turns out that that carbohydrate curve was pretty spot-on. And the more time we spend with it, the more we see people are dialing into these different levels. And so when I, when I said early on in this talk that, um, I don't see any reason that anybody who's not an endurance athlete needs more than 150 grams of carbohydrate a day, pretty much ever. That's right. And especially if you've learned, if you've reprogrammed your genes to direct traffic to to preferentially derive most of your energy on a daily basis from stored body fat, you don't. All you ever need glucose for is a little bit of, uh, brain function and, and red blood cells. But the brain can function on ketones. The rest of, you know, we can, we can burn ketones all day long if we have to. But we don't even have to because if we become good at burning free fatty acids, we're dialed into that to that level. So if you can keep your carb intake down, um, um, and I, I tell people, look, my, my, um, diet is probably 55 to 60% fat on a daily basis. And, and I don't do that much workout. And my, you know, my body fat now is, um, on very little work, my body fat's lower than it was when I was a world-class marathoner running 100 miles a week, because it's all about the diet. If 80% of your body composition is diet, so the carb thing is, um, you know, like I say, I, I see no reason for the carbs. And the lower you can keep the carbs down, the more of the other good you can eat, so you don't have to calorie restrict.

Okay, uh, let's see. Orlando, Orlando, you have any thoughts on there seems to be a lot of confusion about glycemic index versus glycemic load? Like mangoes for instance would be high index, but I don't think high say white sugar. Yeah. So my, my deal is mostly based on glycemic load because I say, uh, they have a thing called area under the curve. And when you produce insulin, glycemic index is all about how, how rapidly the body responds with an insulin rise. And when insulin rises, it, it drops off over time. And there's an area under the curve, and they wind up, um, equilibrating a little bit over time. And so I'm, I'm really about what's your total insulin load over the course of a day versus, and that's just that that has more to do with with the glycemic load than it does with the glycemic index. Now, having said that, glycemic index would would connote, um, you know, a sugar, a, a glucose analog, a very rapid glucose analog. And so the higher the glycemic index, the faster it converts to glucose. And I just try and stay away from those foods that convert to glucose rapidly anyway, because I know what it does. And it's, if it's going to be, again, on load-wise, if it's going to be 20 grams, no deal. It's going to be 150 grams, then then I'm not, I'm not interested because I know what it'll do to me. Yes.

Does the Primal diet have kind of any opinions on the types of meats and how you should prepare? Uh, interesting question. Um, yeah, on types of meats and how you should prepare them. There is some research that shows that the more you cook a meat, the more you you involve, um, potential carcinogenic agents, heterocyclic amines, um, browning, Maillard reactions, things like that. One of the reasons that I've incorporated so many vegetables into the Primal, uh, blueprint concept is, uh, veeg. There's a, a guy's done, I forget his name offhand, done a lot of research on the bioreactor that is the stomach, and where a lot of the, uh, antioxidants that are in the vegetables that we eat neutralize these potentially harmful carcinogens. Having said that, the lower you cook your meat, the, uh, less well-done it is, the less burned it is, probably the safer it is. And so raw would be kind of ideal. There's a, there's a, a method of cooking now called sous vide, and it's a very slow cooking method. And, um, uh, and that's probably, if you have the time, which I don't. I like, you know, I'm an instant gratification kind of guy. But if you have the time, sous vide is a great way because it cooks your, cooks a steak at 132 degrees for four hours, and it's perfectly, you know, pink on the inside, or however you want it done. Uh, and that would be kind of an ideal way. But because I take, I take supplemental antioxidants, because I'll drink a glass of red wine with my steak, because I eat vegetables with my steak, and because I've read the research on this guy that says that there's a, there's a real neutralization of those potential, um, issues, then, um, I, I don't worry about it one bit. Um, anybody who has not had a question answered? Oh, yes. In the back there.

Runs much. I don't. I, yeah. Um, so, uh, runs every day and is now thinking about incorporating sprinting. Uh, the, the idea behind the Primal Blueprint fitness program and the fitness strategy, and because it involves body weight routines, as well as sprinting, as well as moving around a lot at a slow pace, as well as play, uh, my idea is, why, why do I want to run? If I love of the, if it's a sheer joy of running in Orlando in the middle of the day, uh, then that's fine. But if it's not, if I'm doing it because I think I have to, or because it's part of my strategy to my, you know, my longevity strategy, then I'm going to suggest that maybe there are kinder, gentler ways to achieve the same result. And sprinting is one of those ways. And when you add sprints to your, to your Primal Blueprint Fitness routine, which includes body weight exercises, and when you add the sprints in, you find that you're fit enough that if you want to go jump in a 10K, you do pretty well. You know, you don't need to run every. The fact that I can run a 10K doesn't mean I have to do it every day. I was in college, I had a girlfriend who went to the gym once a month, and she would do her workout. And if she could do her workout, it meant she didn't have to go to the gym for another month. You get that? I mean, she was, her, her whole thing was, she just did an analysis of how fit she was. That was her workout. Hey, I could do my workout. That means I don't have to train anymore. I love that concept. And we, you know, we sort of have the reverse concept, which is we got to, we feel we have to do this every day, every day. So sprinting once a week is all you need. If you do it right, once a week is all you can handle. If you do it right, once a week will contribute more to your endurance, aerobic capacity, and everything else, then slogging out three to five miles, you know, hating life with a, I don't know, maybe you love life, but you know what I mean? It's some days you get out there and you know, it's just like, dude, when this is over, this, you know, I'll feel good about myself about running at. Usually when I, yeah, this, you know, run if you want to run, run whenever you feel like running. And that's, I don't, there's no magic to a, to a time of day. Uh, okay. Any other question? How we doing on time? Anthony? Okay. I'm sure questions anyway. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Uh, blue in the front. Egg white. Egg. Yeah. I mean, anybody who would order an egg white omelet for people who eat eggs every day, anybody who would order an egg white omelet is like, what are you missing out on life? It's, it's, uh, I got to find a better analogy. I don't know what what I would use, but to order an egg white omelet. The yolk is the whole thing, man. That's why you have the egg. I mean, the egg cholesterol, on the egg, it just doesn't, has nothing to do. There's a lot of research showing the cholesterol in eggs has nothing to do with cholesterol in your blood. And by the way, cholesterol in your blood has very little to do with your relative risk of heart disease. It has more to do with your carbohydrate intake, your sugar intake, the amount of insulin you produce, the oxidation, uh, and inflammation that's caused by all of that. And, and cholesterol, by the way, in your bloodstream, um, it's, it's like in, inditing cholesterol for heart disease because cholesterol is just what your body's using to repair the damage. It's like saying, okay, um, we got to get rid of all your white blood cells because whenever you have an infection, man, there's these white blood cells, they're everywhere. We got to, we got to get rid of them. You know, it's the same thing. Cholesterol is just there to repair the damage, and it's not the bad guy anyway. Yes.

An analogy for cholesterol is like, you look at the crime rate. Let's say Minneapolis has a certain amount, and then they have a whole lot of police that are there. Now, the crime rate. Well, you being the cause of heart disease is like saying the high amount of police in Minneapolis is the reason for. Right. Yeah, exactly, exactly. No, it's a, again, it's causation and correlation, and they're two different, they're two different concepts. Um, yes. Um, I want to ask you, uh, in terms of chemicals, like when you're eating traditional versus organic foods, how do you, because they're kind of invisible when you're eating pesticides on an apple, how do you, how do you avoid some of that stuff? How do you know which foods to, you need to get organic, which you need to get traditional? Right. And that's one, one of the reasons we wrote this, uh, how to forage, um, guide book, which is part of our leap kit. It's, you know, it's some of it's, um, if it's got a hard skin and you can wash it, great. You know, that's probably going to get you 90% of where you need to be. Um, some, some of the, uh, vegetables like broccoli, which has a lot of surface area and you, you know, you can't really scrub broccoli, so you soak it. Um, sometimes organic isn't necessarily the best form. I mean, so I tell people, you know, if you could buy at a farmer's market, that's probably the best place to buy because they don't use the, the huge amounts of pesticides and stuff. Um, but it's a, it's a, it's a complex equation. And the bottom line is, you're still better off doing this than you are going the route of the grain-based diet. Yeah. Uh, yes. The, in first, is there anything that you would attribute this to our society, of autoimmune diseases? The incidence of autoimmune diseases in developed nations is skyrocketing. Yeah. I mean, uh, it's, it's severalfold. I mean, it's certainly the, the whole grain-based nature of, of, uh, of developed everywhere diets everywhere. But the grain-based nature of, of and the processed grain nature of what we do, um, probably, I would say, is, is the major factor in autoimmune diseases. So I would, that's why I say I would get rid of grains in the human diet. If I were king, you know, that's, I'd say get rid of grains, and, you know, meat, fish, fowl, eggs, nuts, seeds, vegetables, and a little bit of fruit. I mean, it's, and you got it covered, man. It's like a long list of that you can eat from as much as you want, whenever you want, as long as you don't eat from this list, you know, it's pretty, pretty simple. Anthony, oh, wrap out of time. You want to share with us? Do probably okay. Yeah. Um, so, uh, just for your information, so we have a, a Primal Leap kit coming out. It's, uh, probably two weeks away. Basically, it is a, um, 30-day, uh, hold your hand through the whole Primal experience. You guys seem to have it dialed in, but if you got somebody that you want to maybe, you know, show them, this is how it's done. Uh, everything you do every day, there's a lot of journaling. It's a, it's a, a 150-page workbook. I did a DVD to explain the Primal Blueprint. We've got the book on CD. Um, probably we've got this special report, how to forage. It's a 60-page guide book on how to forage in the modern world. So it shows you how to shop in the restaurant, shop in the, in the food stores, and how to buy in the restaurants, and, and all that stuff. Primal Blueprint Fitness, the whole new fitness thing is in there. And the, I think the most interesting and compelling part about this is we have, uh, unlimited online support. So you're working with me or my trainers, um, for the 30 days. You, any questions you have, there's a special, uh, login and, and you get to ask us whatever you need to ask us, however personal or not it is, or whatever you can do that. So, and it's guaranteed. So if you don't get the results you expect or want, full money back guarantee. I have, I think you guys got some signup sheets. And then we're doing a $50 off this, if you, if you sign up today. So, anyway, I'm, I'm very excited about that program because I think that's what people are asking for after the book. Those be available separately? Like, no, that, no. So the kit is, we're not, the question is, will the, will the components of the kit be available separately? And the answer is no. We, we, uh, decided because of one of the things was just to, to make this the, the go-to kind of, uh, personal training, private training concept. You know, the book is available and, you know, a lot of the stuff on the site, but this really puts it all together. Just as a, as a special separate kit. Yeah. All right. Hey guys, I really appreciate your time. Uh, hope we answered everything on here. Um, and, uh, you know, I'll be around for a little while if you got other questions that you need to ask me. Thanks a lot.