Craig Emmerich | Engineer to Nutrition Expert: Low Carb Diet Science| July 29, 2025 Ep. 13 - The Low Carb Consultant

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
All right guys, welcome back to the Low Carb Consultant podcast.
So today we've got on Craig Emmerich, so an electrical
engineer turned nutrition strategist, co-author of the
book Keto the Complete Guide andthe Carnivore Cookbook and coach
to countless clients navigating low carb protein sparing,

(00:31):
modified fasting, which we're going to talk about today, and
carnivore lifestyles. Craig's method, Mary's
biochemistry, engineering precision and real world lived
experience. He's tackled Lyme disease,
chronic pain and family nutrition head on.
So expect no nonsense science, macro clarity and deep inside.

(00:52):
So again, Craig, great to have you on man.
Great to, to finally meet you. I'm I'm glad we could make this
happen. Thank you Max for having me on.
I'm happy to be here. And apparently Bella is too
here. She's climbing in.
That's all good. Perfect.
Great to have her with, with us as well.
So Craig, maybe before we kind of get into all the fun stuff,
can you give the listeners just a real brief background on

(01:13):
yourself and maybe I know you, you and Maria, your wife, you
guys have been doing this for I,I think nearly 20 years at this
point. Can you maybe give the listeners
A brief background on how you even got here and and how you
switched from, you know, the mechanical engineering side to
this side with you and your wife?
Sure. Yeah, it was.
It's an interesting journey. It has been over 20 years for

(01:36):
Maria. I think she's been down this
path in this lifestyle for like 25 years now for herself.
But you know, for herself, it started out as something for her
health. She had PCOS, she had acid
reflux, IBS, this extra weight that she couldn't get rid of,
even though she's following all the standard guidelines and

(01:57):
running marathons and all this stuff.
And she just started down the path to, to kind of figure out a
way to fix herself, right? And she did.
And then everybody wants to knowwhat she was doing cuz she was,
you know, losing this weight, even though she stopped running
marathons and all this stuff wasimproving and her PCOS reversed
and she got rid of all of her health issues.
So she started helping people with, you know what she learned

(02:20):
that's, you know, 20 years ago. Me, it took me, I don't know,
5-6 years longer to come around cuz I didn't have health issues
at the time and so wasn't as pressing of a need.
I ended up gaining, I don't know, maybe 30 or losing like 30
lbs once I finally came over. But you know, wasn't a, wasn't
super worried about it at the time.

(02:40):
And I German background, German roots, I brewed my own beer and,
you know, it's hard to give up some of those old habits.
And finally I, I just realized when I eat, ate the food she
made for me at work or wherever,I didn't have that afternoon
slump. And I, you know, where I wanted
to take a nap after lunch and, you know, just had that better
energy all day when I ate the stuff she made me.

(03:00):
So I just decided I want to feelthat way all the time.
And I switched over, I don't know, 15-16 years ago now to
eating this way all the time about, I don't know, 3-4.
Five years after that, we decided that her business was
taking off. And if I was doing everything in
the back, you know, keeping the website working and you know,

(03:22):
all the technical issues, all that stuff I was doing from the
back end while I was still working as an engineer.
So got pretty busy. And I just decided, you know
what, you're growing enough thatif we dedicate full time to your
business, you know, we can make this even bigger.
And at that point, I took my engineering mindset of just
learn, learn, learn. And it just applied it to
biochemistry and just started learning everything I could

(03:43):
about nutrition and and biochemistry.
Yeah. And it's interesting because we
see actually there's a lot of engineers that kind of go over
into this space like I've had Ted Naman on.
Ted's great. Yeah, Ted's great interviewed
the fittest doc and he was an engineer turned doctor and it's
weird. I and and maybe this kind of

(04:04):
leads into the question I had for you.
Like how do you think your, and maybe not just for you, but why
do you think like your engineering background and other
engineer backgrounds translate well to this?
Like transitioning over to this different type of lifestyle like
diet, low carb, like what? How do why do you think that
works? And why do you think engineers

(04:25):
find a lot of similarities or not similarities, but like why
do you think they gravitate toward the towards this
approach? Yeah, there's a ton of engineers
in this space. It's it's interesting.
Like Marty Kendall down in Australia, he's awesome.
He's an engineer, Dave Feldman, you know the.
Dave Feldman. Yeah, yeah.
Former engineer Tyler Cartwrightover with Keto Gaines, He's a

(04:46):
former engineer. There's a bunch of us in this
space and I think it's, you know, we're problem solvers, you
know, like we look at systems and we figure out what's the
problem and fix the root causes.You know, those problems, right?
Like electrical engineer, if I had a computer chip and my
outputs of that chip were wrong,first thing I'm going to do is

(05:06):
go look at the inputs. Where the inputs right, right.
And then if if they're not right, fix the inputs and then
the outputs hopefully will it should work if the chips, you
know, designed right, the human body's a lot the same, right,
you know, and today in healthcare, a lot of it isn't
fixing problem. It's band aids on the outputs,
right. You get a bad output, you throw

(05:27):
a prescription at it to mask thesymptoms.
You're not fixing the root causeand engineers, I think are
really, you know, root cause kind of people or that we go
back and look at fixing those root causes of, you know, in
this in our keto book over here,we, I started out the whole
chapter called the disease tree.And it's just talking about the
disease process, how this is tree and the roots, the root

(05:50):
causes. The roots are, you know,
nutrition, obviously a big one, exercise or lack thereof.
It's going to be a negative input, you know, smoking, you
know, how much sunlight you get,how much sleep you get.
These are all inputs to the bodyand these inputs get off the
outputs. The leaves can get bad, you
know, get failed while they're in those outputs that were, you

(06:13):
know, insulin resistance, cancer, Alzheimer's, all these
problems that can result that ifyou go back to the root causes,
a lot of times those things can be reversed or or fixed.
Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense
too, right, Because just touching on inputs and outputs,
right. And if you think about like your
inputs like, OK. And, and I think we're going to

(06:33):
talk about this today because I've seen you on a handful of
different podcasts talk about, you know, people in some
circumstances we can talk about like Lipotoxicity.
We'll, we'll, we'll get to all that stuff and people gaining
weight on keto and carnivore. But like 1, I think one very
simple way to, to look at it is like, OK, if your energy input
is, is much too high, right? The body is not.

(06:57):
And the goal is, let's say, to just lose weight.
The body is not necessarily going to have a reason to tap in
a stored body fat. If you know, our energy or let's
say our fat is, is not like astronomical, but it's, if it's
too high, then why would the body want to tap into stored
body fat and, and go off those reserves when it can just go off
the energy that you're putting into the body?
So it's like you kind of got to be careful and not, I'm not

(07:20):
careful, but I would say also may be aware of your energy
inputs and then also what your output is, what's your
expenditure? Are you active?
Are you not active? And you kind of have to find a
diet, I would say, and an energyintake that's going to work with
that basic that that basic type of activity level directly.
Right. You know that, you know, a lot

(07:41):
of people in the carnivore space, they kind of, you know,
it's sort of like A1 size fits all for everyone's solution.
Yeah, everybody can eat high fat, high fat carnivore, that's
it. And everything will just be
perfect. But you know, humans are not A1
size fits all in any way, shape or form, you know, And you know
what, a lot of men in carnivore or people that are maybe like 6

(08:05):
foot tall and you know, have more lean mass and whatnot, that
advice can work quite well for those people or you know, not a
big history of obesity in your past and those kind of things.
And a lot of the people in this space, the influencers fit those
categories. You know, they're 6 foot tall.
A man with a lot of muscle in myass.
Well, he's going to, I personally couldn't eat what

(08:25):
they eat without gaining weight because, you know, I just, I'm
not as much lean mass as them. I don't have as much muscle.
I'm not as active. You know, I, I can't eat what
they eat. I've got to have my diet a
little different. And it very much applies to, you
know, the middle-aged woman who has a history of obesity.
Their diet is not going to work well if they follow that

(08:46):
solution and they might see someinitial results because guess
what, you change from the standard American diet to
anything whole food based, you're probably going to see
some initial weight loss. You're going from basically the
worst possible diet to, you know, anything, anything whole
food base is going to be better.And you know, but then they'll
probably plateau. But we've even seen and I've got

(09:07):
hundreds of testimonies from people that come to us from the
eat all the butter and steak and, you know, eat all the fatty
meats space where they're just gaining weight.
And one one woman just recently,she's 130 lbs overweight.
She gained 30 lbs that's all in following that advice, she

(09:28):
gained 30 lbs and her insulin went up.
Her fasting insulin went up to 50 that is.
And so this kind of touches on the lipotoxicity and that side
of things, but sure that that ismaking her health worse.
I don't care what never in in nocase will gaining weight be
healing for you unless you're underweight.
If you're already obese, gainingweight is taking you in a less

(09:51):
healthy direction. Period. 100% yeah.
And, and, and, and I want to getto some of the things that you
and Maria have talked about overthe years.
I want to talk on protein sparing, modified fasting, high
protein diets, lipotoxicity. I want to get there.
One thing I wanted to touch on here too, 'cause you've been
pretty open about this, you know, you've discussed like your

(10:13):
like Lyme disease, chronic inflammation.
And before we kind of go into like the, the diet and the
energy side of things. Like I, I was curious to see,
and maybe for the listeners to maybe know and understand from
you as well, like how did switching to carnivore like
shift the symptoms? Like what protocol did you
follow? Like do, did you go like low
carb, then keto, then carnivore?I was just kind of curious to

(10:34):
see like what your experience was.
Yeah, so my journey, you know, like 16 years ago, I started
eating keto all the time, very low carb.
But I'd say nine years ago I started having these symptoms
like the stiffness in my back, my low back.
I thought it was from this old football injury that I have.
I have a damaged disc in my low back from football in high

(10:55):
school, thought maybe there's something acting up there.
But over the years, it moved up my back into my shoulders, into
my neck. And there's this like constant
soreness, pain, you know, less mobility, you know, over time.
And it got to the point where I was just like, there's something
wrong here. I got a, this isn't that old
back injury. So I started getting all the

(11:17):
tests done that I could and all this stuff.
And at the time, you know, the standard Western blot Lyme test
that they they run, if you go toa typical doctor, it said
negative for Lyme. So because all of my symptoms, I
sounded like Lyme disease to me.Well, OK, it says negative.
So I went another year after that, still getting worse,
finally got a functional Dr. andsaid here's all the tests I want

(11:41):
to run. I just please run all these
tests. What my understanding of
biochemistry and nutrition and everything I want to try to
diagnose myself. And all the tests that we ran,
everything was totally fine except for inflammation, CRP, it
was like 50. I was like, whoa, OK, something
I got a lot of inflammation here.
This is not good. And then I got there's an

(12:03):
Igenics and there's also a Galaxy Labs Lyme test that's
tests all the bands, not just a few that the western standard
western blood test test and it came back positive for Lyme.
So you know, at this point I'm like 6-7 years of Lyme disease,
chronic pain and symptoms. And at that point, and this is,

(12:27):
gosh, I don't know if I'm getting the years right, but
it's at least 6-7 years ago I went full carnivore to because I
know some people you don't even probably know in the space
there's Charlene Anderson is somebody that I had followed a
little bit who she's not, she doesn't talk about a lot, but
she, she had Lyme disease and probably 2234 years ago she went

(12:49):
carnivore for her Lyme disease and she's been doing that ever
since and driving. So did you like start off like
low carb and then you kind of started to see maybe like a
reduction in like the inflammation and the pain and
you just did you like slowly cutthe carbs down to when you got
to carnivore and you're like, wow, this actually works or.

(13:11):
So what I did, you know, when I was keto or low carb, I was not
a person who liked like, you know, the full mashed potatoes
made with cauliflower or all this.
I was, you know, I, I, I'm a very savoury kind of person.
I'm not, I don't like sweets much.
So I really was eating, you know, pretty what, what today
people probably call like ketovore, you know, you have a

(13:33):
little onion on my burger or a little, little sugar free
ketchup on my burger and that's about it.
You know, so I wasn't eating a lot of plants at that time
because that's just my preference.
And so when I went to full carnivore, I just stripped off
the rest of the plants I was eating and I did see improvement
in my pain and and inflammation at that time.

(13:56):
Very cool, very cool. Well, glad to hear like things
are are are feeling better for you.
Here's where I wanted to switch over to like the fat versus
protein debate a lipo toxicity concerns.
So from what you're seeing with like your current clients right
now, like in your experience, like when is more fat?

(14:17):
And I know you were just giving an example of the, the young
woman that was 130 lbs and then she gained weight on carnivore.
But like maybe, and I know this can be again, different from
gender, male, female to where someone's starting out how
overweight they are. But like when, when does like
adding more fat become detrimental?

(14:38):
I would get I would say or move us in the wrong direction.
Yeah. So it, it depends on a lot of
things, you know, and that, and this is where it's a very
individualized approach, right? You know, somebody like Doctor
Baker, you know, who works out like a monster and he's huge and
got all this muscle mass, He needs a lot of fuel.

(15:01):
He doesn't have a ton of fuel onhis body, so he needs a lot of
fuel in his diet. And protein is not a fuel.
And so you need a certain amountof protein to maintain your
muscle mass every day. There's constant protein, you
know, amino acid turnover in your body, whether it's building
muscle, turning over cells through autophagy, which, you
know, the Nobel Prize, I always get a kick on people who talk

(15:22):
about autophagy, autophagy when it comes to like, fasting and
stuff. And yeah, toffee markers will
increase, you know, you know, will go up.
We can't measure autophagy. We just have markers.
They'll go up when you extend itfast.
But the Nobel Prize winner for autophagy estimated that every
three to four months you turn over all your protein cells in

(15:44):
your entire body through autophagy.
So. Interesting.
That's that's average like somebody eating the standard
American diet and doing 0 fasting.
So I don't know if we. Really what was the time frame
on that again? So it just just even if we're
three to four months where we can turn over like all the cells
in the body. Cells through autophagy.
Autophagy, if somebody doesn't know, it's the process where the

(16:05):
body takes cells that are older or aging and they break them
apart into their parts, use amino acid to build up new cells
from those parts. And it's kind of the the
reversing of aging within the body, if you will.
But again, there was another recent study that looked at the
brain and I think it was four tofive months.
Your entire brain, every cell isturned over through autophagy.

(16:27):
So while how are you still you? Even with no fasting though,
correct. Even with no fasting, just
standard. That's just the average.
And so, so that's interesting then.
So, so, because I think we, we, we hear this word, word from a
lot of, you know, influencers and people that talk about like
fasting, intermittent fasting. So what you're saying here is

(16:49):
like the, the body has a naturalprocess of, of autophagy.
You don't necessarily have to goon a fast or a prolonged fast or
even do intermittent fasting to,to get into like an autophagy
type of state. Your body will naturally get
there. Can you maybe accelerate A
autophagy by going through a prolonged fast?
I'm sure you can correct. You know what?

(17:10):
Increases a lot of the autophagymarkers just about as much as
extended fast strength training and you're building muscle
instead of losing it with an extended fast.
So. Strength training every day,
every time if I want to increaseautophagy.
So, so here's another thing, strength training in a fasted
state. Or does it matter if you've like
eaten and then you strength training?

(17:30):
Doesn't have to be fasted. Strength training by itself will
cause autophagy to increase a post training.
Very cool, very cool. OK, well, so.
Back-to-back to what we were saying, sorry.
Sure, right there. But but you know, so, you know,
getting enough amino acids to fuel that process is so

(17:52):
important. Not just, you know, to fuel
autophagy to build muscle, but also to replace skin, hair,
nails that you're constantly losing every day.
It's all amino acids. You need this constant supply.
So everybody should get a, you know, minimum amount of amino
acids. So in a carnivore setting where
you basically have little to no carbs, what's left?

(18:13):
Fat, right? And so fat becomes a thing that
you can bury, right? So if things aren't working for
you, you bury the fat, right? That's all it's left to change.
So if you, if you lower the fat,you'll allow the body to burn
more off your fat stores. I mean, that's why you have fat
stores, right, Is when you don'thave enough energy in the diet,

(18:34):
carbs or, or fat, you have some fuel tank there to tap into if
you're, if you're losing too much weight or you're not, if
you're at maintenance and you want to maintain and fuel
workouts and why not raise the fat a bit more so that you, you
feel those workouts, you have enough to maintain your weight.
That's that's kind of the approach we take from a

(18:55):
carnivore setting. Or, you know, it doesn't have to
be carnivore either. You can take that same concept
and move it into keto, you know,low carb space as well.
Yeah, that makes that. That makes all the sense in the
world to me. And then now switching, let's
let's talk about like fasting, protein sparing, modified
fasting. So when I first heard this term,

(19:16):
I'm not going to lie, it soundedlike a lot, right?
Protein sparing, modified fast. And I almost want to say like
you and Maria kind of maybe madethis term up or kind of coined
it. Would that be accurate?
Because I feel like I first heard it heard it from you guys.
Literally 15 plus years ago we used to do this with clients
because we knew how well it worked.
We called it pure protein days and I think that's a much better

(19:39):
term because that. Protein.
Does it a lot better it's a pureprotein day yeah.
But later on we found the medical term, which is what you
know and if you look at papers and scientific studies and it's
called a protein Sperry modifiedfast.
And the reason it's called that is they, they, they would do
studies on extended fasting, youknow, people eating nothing,

(20:00):
just drinking water for multipledays.
And they saw how great it was for fat loss, right?
Because you don't eat anything. But they also saw the muscle
loss. So people losing lean mass when
they do that. So they developed a protein
sparing, sparing the protein on your body, protein sparing
modified fast. So they modify of water fast to

(20:22):
spare your body's protein. That's the, that's where the
term comes from, from the medical setting.
And so we just started using that term.
That was the medical term. Yeah.
So I had a couple questions here.
So basically if I'm doing and and I actually incorporate like
a high protein day or protein Sperry modified fast about once

(20:43):
a week and usually I'll do it ona Sunday.
So Saturday I made-up my own phrase.
I have like an excess energy intake day.
So on Saturday, that's typicallywhen, you know, that's just
basically a fancy word for if I want to eat a little bit more
than I'm than I normally do. I do if I want to eat things
that I know I don't typically eat, I'll, I'll do them on a

(21:04):
Saturday. Saturday's typically like my
longer workout or am I more intense workout And then that's
the day I'll do like an excess energy intake day.
Sunday is the day where I'll kind of let my body work through
a lot of that energy. I, I have basically accumulated
in my body from, from the prior day and Saturday.

(21:25):
So when you're doing like a protein sparing modified fast,
is there like timing around it like like like intermittent
fasting, meaning this like if I'm going to do a high protein
day, could I, if I wanted to? Does this matter if I were to
wake up like let's say have likea chicken breast and some low
starch veggies for like a breakfast if I wanted to and

(21:46):
then have the same thing for a late lunch and then dinner, I
could have like maybe a pork tenderloin, lean cut of meat and
then veggies. Or it would it be better to
almost treat it as like an intermittent fasting where it's
like as long as you're getting the protein and is the timing
around the protein matter in terms of like what we're trying

(22:06):
to get out of that specific typeof that process?
Yeah. So a couple things.
The way we do them is number #1 it's, you know, treat it like
you would a water fast. You're not going to do a water
fast every day and keep doing itforever, right?
You're going to use it occasionally as a tool and
that's how we use it. Is it it's, you know, you do

(22:28):
PSMF days. We'd say generally if you're
trying to lose weight, do them one to maybe up to maybe three
days a week, depending on, again, very individual.
If you're 200 lbs overweight, you can probably do more of
them. You know, if you're 10 lbs from
goal weight, you know, maybe onea week if, if, if you know that.
So it's a it's a tool and use itsparingly if you're doing it

(22:51):
frequently. Yeah, we actually recommend the
same where you do an over feeding day or a maintenance
day, basically a day where you you eat maintenance level or
more, more calories just to keepthe metabolism honest and all
that kind of stuff in the low calorie days, because protein
sparing days are pretty low calorie.
You know, the way we design themis it's basically little to no
carbohydrates, 20 to 30 grams offat and then your protein goal

(23:16):
and protein. So it's really just a lot of
lean protein with with minimal fat.
Got it. And how do you, how do you and
Maria Craig, how do you guys calculate the protein needs for
each individual person? Do you guys just go off like
lean? You know, I know there's a lot
of doctors out there like Gabrielle Lyons saying that you
know, you got to eat like a gramof protein per pound of body

(23:37):
weight. Then there's people out there,
you got to eat gram of protein per pound of lean body weight,
then there's like .5 grams. I was curious to see and then
again, I know it's probably different from person to person,
male to female. I was curious to see how do you
calculate out the actual proteingoals during some when someone's
doing like a protein sparing modified fast.
Yeah, we, we have a calculator on our website that's free that

(23:57):
people can use kind of 1 is we used to be based on lean body
mass, but it's so hard to get anaccurate body fat percentage,
you know, and people will use like the impedance scales, which
are not very accurate. And then their numbers would get
all shit, you know, shifted off,you know, for protein goals and
all that. So we actually switched there

(24:19):
not too long ago to go by heightand this this metric, it
basically does like 90 grams of protein for a 5 foot tall woman
and then add five grams of protein per inch above that.
So if you're 5 foot four, you'readding 20 grams to ninety. 110
grams is your protein goal. Got it.

(24:40):
A man start at like 100 gram or 100 grams of protein at 5 foot
and then add five grams per inchabove that.
So you know, me, I'm 5-6, I'd belike 130 grams of protein.
That's sort of the goal or I would even call it more of a
floor like a minimum of protein to hit for the day.

(25:02):
And that is a pretty good metric.
I mean, it's not going to be perfect all the time.
If you got a bodybuilder who's 5-6, but they're, you know, huge
muscle mass, they're going to need more than that.
But, you know, as as far as sortof a floor for autophagy for,
you know, just the size of the person, all that, that's a good
starting point. And a quick question now, is

(25:23):
that just typical daily protein intake or is that just the
minimum amount or the floor likeyou said a protein an individual
should have on a protein sparingto modified fast day?
That's just in general, got it. And protein sparing days, we
typically like in our calculator, we'll add a little
more protein to it. So well, it's you know, let's

(25:44):
say for example, that example, Igave you 130 grams of protein
for five foot six man. We'd probably GO-140150 on a
protein sparing day just becauseit helps with satiety, because
again, it's a very low calorie day.
Adding a little extra protein will help you with satiety that
day. So you're not ravenous.
But if you know, if you're at 130 and you're, you're not

(26:04):
hungry, you don't have to add extra that day.
It's just, you know, if you if you need it.
Got it. And again, the timing doesn't
necessarily matter with something like this, right?
As long as you're getting the, as long as you're getting the
grams for protein and throughoutthe day, that's that's the key,
right? Couple things on that.
Number one, we would say generally speaking probably you
know you could try to hit your protein goal every day.

(26:25):
It would be ideal. The next best would be maybe
averaging out to your protein goal over the course of the
week. So, you know, one day I'm, you
know, a little short tomorrow maybe I'll add a little extra,
that kind of thing that that's that's totally fine too.
From a inter day timing. I think it's important to get a
good complete protein meal with,you know, complete amino acid

(26:50):
profile. So, you know, like animal
proteins, at least 30 grams in your first meal and have that
first meal be as early in the day as you can personally.
And this is from a, you know, ideal standpoint of muscle
protein synthesis and muscle building and all that kind of
stuff. You get that first meal.
There's kind of a, once you hit that for the day, that sort of
threshold of leucine to get enough to start building muscle.

(27:14):
It's sort of a Halo. And now over the next maybe 2024
hours, your body's like, OK, we're building muscle today.
So if that second meal is maybe not even 30 grams of protein,
maybe it's only 20, your body isstill going to say we're
building muscle today because that first meal had enough and
you get sort of a 24 hour Halo on that.
So if you get that first meal tohave enough complete protein and

(27:36):
and move it earlier in the day, then you can have a little more
leeway throughout the day. Yeah, perfect.
And I've got a couple more things on protein here, because
I do want to talk to you about the sugar diet, believe it or
not, and your thought and your thought and your thoughts on
that. But in in terms of protein, now
let's talk about like, just likeper meal, because you know,

(28:00):
again, going back to having conversations with Ted name and
he was saying like there's basically no limit on basically
a lot of that stuff is a myth. You hear about, Hey, your body
can only take in so much proteinper meal is typically between 30
to 50 grams. You know, if you're going over
that, you're basically you're that protein goes into it.
And I think, I think I've heard who Peter Attia, I saw him on AI

(28:21):
saw him talking about this too. It's like anything over 50 grams
during a meal like that, that protein is just basically going
to put into like a gluconeogenesis type of state.
I was curious on your thoughts on that in regards to do you
feel like there is a certain like protein time, not time

(28:42):
frame, but like range we should be eating or does that even
really matter? Could I have 100 grams of
protein in in one sitting and feel good about it?
Like I was just curious there. So, yeah, generally speaking,
you know, we, there's, there's people in the community that
will promote things like, oh, mad one meal a day.

(29:02):
And I'm not a big fan of that. And, and mainly it's because
especially with women, they, they struggle to get enough
protein in one meal. And that's the main reason for
us for not doing that. But I think in general, if you
get extra protein in a meal, thebody is going to use all the
protein you, you consume. It's going to use it all.
It's going to use it for building nails, hair, you know,

(29:23):
all the things that it's going to do with the protein build
muscle, it's going to use extra for, you know, if you have a
need for glucose in the body, whether you've done you've done
a workout and you've depleted your glycogen, you need some
more glucose and you're not eating enough carbohydrate to to
resupply that great. It'll take some of that protein
to make glucose from a gluconatogenesis.

(29:46):
And that's fine because your body needs glucose as well.
And no matter how what you do, you, you always need steady
supply of glucose in the body for, you know, red blood cells
don't have mitochondria so that they can only be fueled on
glucose. There's other tissues like brain
neurons and things that, that use glucose.
And, and if you're not eating any glucose, like in a carnivore

(30:08):
setting, you got to make it fromprotein.
And I'd rather have it make it, make it from the protein I eat
than the protein off my body. And so, but there's, you know,
Ted's right on this. There's, there's like the amino
acid pool, you know, your body will pull up and it'll start
doing autophagy. And yet autophagy or sorry, M
Tor, it will start muscle, muscle protein since this.

(30:30):
And then there, there is a sort of rest period with that.
But but here's the thing with the protein, the body's smart
and it's going to make sure it uses it all, not only with the
amino acid pool where it kind ofpulls up amino acids and gets
ready, waits for the next M Tor cycle, but also it slows
digestion. And you know one of the things
you know, GOP ones, they're all the rave, right?

(30:51):
I guess what also stimulates andwhat's 1 of the things that GOP
ones do? They slow digestion.
Oh, did they? I I thought it was just more of
like a a hunger mitigation drug,but.
That's part of it, but they alsoslow digestion.
Interesting. Because that's what GLP one in
the body does, right? And guess what?
Protein stimulates GOP 1. And so it's protein will

(31:11):
stimulate it much shorter, you know, an hour or two after a
meal versus, you know, the drugsthat last longer.
But it stimulates GOP 1. So it slows digestion, helps
with satiety, and it slows digestion to make sure that you
digest all that protein. So if you eat a big protein
meal, you'll stimulate more GOP one, slow digestion down a
little more to make sure you have time to consume and use all

(31:32):
that protein. So yeah, I don't think there's
any upper limit really to protein.
Interesting. And so that just out of
curiosity, why? Why, why you brought that up?
So that's not necessarily a bad thing, right?
Like if someone's taking a GOP1 and they're eating a high
protein diet, really what that'sgonna do is it's gonna just slow
down the digestion of the food and you can absorb more of the

(31:53):
protein. That's obviously that's what we
want. That's not a bad thing.
Yeah, it's. The GOP one that is stimulated
from food is the natural processof your body to got it statiety
foods. High statiety foods, the drugs
are obviously going to try to over stimulate that and you
know, there's all that potentialissues there.
But if you're taking a GL P1, I would for sure prioritize

(32:16):
protein even more because those have been shown to lose.
You know, in an ideal setting ofof of fat loss, you're going to
want to try to push the muscle loss down to, you know, under
10%, maybe as low as, you know, 678 percent.
That's ideal. With the GLP one drugs, it's
been shown that, you know, they can be 50% or more of the weight

(32:37):
loss is muscle. So you really want to prioritize
protein and really want a strength train to try to
preserve that muscle. Yeah.
So, OK, so I got a question there.
So, so let's say then we're heating up high protein diet,
which is already pretty satiating, right.
And then we're, we're bringing in a GLP, one that slows
basically it does mitigate hunger and appetite and the
desire to eat. And then it's also slows down

(32:58):
digestion. Could you be running into a
situation where if you're takinga GLP, one that slows the
digestion even more is could yoube running into some like
negative consequences there? I mean, it's possible, it
depends on the GLP 1, the dose and all those kind of things,
you know. But at the end of the day, you
know, one of the problems that with GLP ones, and This is why,

(33:19):
you know, you see so much muscleloss, I think is if you're in
that state of I'm just not hungry at all, what's going to
what's going to whet your appetite to, to grab something
to eat a chicken breast? Why not?
It's going to be the potato chips or the cookies or that's
the only thing that's going to entice you at that point.
And so that I think ends up one of the reasons why, you know,

(33:41):
people don't get as much proteinand then they they lose more
lean mass in those states. That makes sense.
That makes sense. So for the people out there that
are doing the GLP ones, like no matter what, just bump up that
protein, get as much protein as you possibly can, mitigate any
drop in muscle. That's the.
And strength train or even Doctor Lehman I, when I talked
to Tammy, he mentioned some of the studies they did.
He doesn't have to be like, you know, when you say strength

(34:03):
training, you're picturing like in the gym with all these
weights and, and that is great. But you know, even in one of his
studies they looked at just likeyoga and stretching and that did
pretty well. That got them to like 10% lean
mass loss. So you know, any kind of
activity that you can do can be helpful like that.
Oh dude, I'm a huge fan of yoga.Like I mean, if you look at my

(34:25):
Instagram page, yes, it's just like me working out.
I, I like to lift, I like to run, I do kettlebell work, pull
ups, push ups, dips, like all that type of stuff.
But man, a yoga class will humble you like and you will go
in there. I remember my first yoga class
when I walked in there, I saw all these like, you know, 6070
year old ladies and they were holding like a side plank on one

(34:47):
arm. And I was just like, OK, like I
could do this. No, I couldn't.
Like it was just, it was all like body weight and holding
poses and no man. And so like, it kind of sold me
on like yoga, like, OK, like I need to be doing this.
Like to be able to manoeuvre your body weight and hold those
types of positions. Like to be honest with you, that
is a form of strength training. And it's a.
Great and different muscles and balance and Oh yeah, one of the

(35:11):
things my wife loves to do is body pump.
I don't know if you're familiar with those classes.
They used to have them at the Y.She does them on her own now.
And I would do those with her. And those are humbling too,
because it's, it's weights, but you'll do like, they have a, you
know, somebody up in the front, you know, you follow sort of
like yoga, but it's, and, and you'll do like a bench press

(35:33):
type thing, but you'll do it forlike 8 minutes straight.
And so you put, you know, lighter weight on, but you're
doing different ones halfway up down, all the way up down.
And you're doing this for like 8straight minutes.
And it's like, Oh my God, my arms are burning.
And yeah, I mean, it's, it's a different exercise, but yeah,
it's, it's great. Yeah, that's, that's the, that's
the maybe the main, the main message to send people like try

(35:55):
new things like, you know, your body adapts to, you know, if
you're a runner, your body will adapt if you're a strength, if
you're a bodybuilder, your body's going to adapt to that
routine. If you're a strength trainer
and, or you're a weight lifter and you're doing like clean and
jerk and snatch all the time, your body's going to adapt to
those movement patterns. Try a movement pattern that your
body's not used to. It will humble you a really.
Cool one that I just recently read from a study.

(36:18):
They looked at the difference between a one hour walk.
So at like at lunchtime, say somebody sits all day at the
computer, they in at lunchtime, they go on a pretty vigorous one
hour walk, or maybe it was 30 minutes, but it was, it was
pretty extensive walk. And then they compared that to

(36:38):
instead of doing nothing at lunchtime, but every hour, just
stand up and do 10 body weight squats.
That's it. And the body weight squats were
better for body composition and,and everything than the 30 or 45
minute walk, whatever it was at lunch.
So I think that's another interesting way to like every
hour to stand up 10 body weight squats.
Anybody can do that. Yeah.

(37:00):
Oh, I do that dude. I do that stuff all the time.
Like like this one before I jumped on this podcast, 30 push
ups. And like even when I'm having
meetings throughout the day, I'll do 30 push ups, 30 air
squats and like it, it gets the blood especially.
And I've got a standing desk. I'm standing here sometimes for
work, like I'll sit down and then for podcasts and other

(37:21):
meetings, like I'll bring the desk up just so I can like move
around and be stiff. But I was just talking to my
wife about this because, you know, with her job, she was
recently promoted, so she's doesn't have as much time as she
wants to to find a workout. And I just told her I was like,
hey, every like 30 minutes or every like every hour and a
half, like put like a reminder on your phone and just do 20

(37:43):
walking lunges down to the end of the hall and back.
You know what I mean? And just do that five times a
day. 20 boom, you'll lock out 100 lunges.
And that, that that shows to be just as beneficial as spending,
you know, like 30 minutes doing like a leg workout.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
And it's great that it's it's soapproachable that anybody can do
it. That's what I love.
It it's, it's they're like microworkouts, yeah.

(38:05):
Exactly. Very cool.
OK, so I wanted to talk about the sugar diet because I feel
like, and I've got my two cents on this and, and I think, and I
think some people are seeing it work.
I think some people are seeing it not work, but I've got some
hesitations, concerns long term,like ramification.

(38:28):
Like I think, you know, I, to behonest, I think in, in this
situation, I feel like we're, you know, stepping over dollar
bills to pick up nickels and Dimes in the long run with the
sugar diet. But I, I, I want to talk about
this with you real quick and just get your insights here,
because I am a big fan of the Bell brothers and Mark Bell.
I, I, I know you and Maria are too.

(38:48):
You, you, you guys know the bellbrothers very, very well.
And the one thing I will say about Mark and one of the
reasons why I kind of love that guy and respect him is like he's
willing to try just about everything.
You know what I mean? He did the war on carbs years
ago. He was on Joe Rogan talking
about the war on carbs. And then but he'll, he'll, he'll
do these experiments And I do respect him not being like

(39:10):
religious and stuck with anyone diet.
You know, he's going, he's willing to go out and test and
try some things around. The the the one issue that I've
got in the hesitation I've got is like, you know, people that
are already like pre diabetic and overweight, like, is this
really the right route to go down like right out of the gate?
And this is kind of what I want to talk to you about because we

(39:33):
are seeing it work. We are seeing the sugar diet
work and maybe to breakdown the sugar diet for the listeners
just so they have a good understanding.
And Craig, come in here, correctme if I'm wrong here, but the
sugar diet, when we're doing a sugar diet, we're basically what
we're doing is we are dropping the carbohydrates, the starchy
ones, we're dropping the protein, we're dropping the fat.

(39:55):
And then we're increasing basically like the simple
sugars. And the foods that potentially
you can eat on the sugar diet would be like candy, like table,
table sugar, syrups, fruit. And basically like low starch
vegetables and fruit with is that an accurate assessment from
what you understand about it? I believe so, yeah.
And, and generally it's a littlelow.

(40:16):
It's lower protein too. Yeah, low protein, yeah, Yeah.
And, and so basically what I think's going on here, and I
think you're going to be the guyto ask about this with like the
engineering background. I think what the people that do
see results on it, basically what they're doing is they're
manipulating their metabolism insuch a way to where like they're

(40:37):
putting their metabolism and OverDrive.
Yes, they can burn some fat. But what I'm worried about and
what I think people should understand is the accumulation
of sugars that we're eating can put potentially have detrimental
impacts down the line on our system and, and how we in
disease like cancer, like all these other types of things that
we know sugar can induce. Just what are your thoughts on

(40:59):
the sugar diet and maybe give your insights there.
I I'd love to. Know I can share with you a
chart that you know can overlay with this if you want or or I
could probably pull up my phone.I don't know if I have on my
phone anymore. My biggest problems with the
sugar diet are are twofold #1 going low protein I think is
never a good idea long term. You know, muscle loss is

(41:23):
something that you're not going to see it in a week, you're not
going to see it in a month, maybe not even six months, but a
year, 2 years down the road of eating low protein, you're going
to start noticing a loss of muscle.
And that's not good. Nobody wants that.
Nobody over, especially anybody over like 50 does not want to
lose any muscle. You're, it's so hard to maintain

(41:45):
muscle as you get older that anymuscle loss is a, you know,
something to really be concernedabout.
That's one part of it. My other part that is my biggest
concern is Maria and I from the beginning of all of this, we've
always focused on a Whole Foods approach and always looking at
what's the most nutrient dense foods I can eat.

(42:08):
Because you know, at the end of the day, I think for so many
reasons from the environment to,you know, the population to just
health, if we could consume, getall the vitamins and minerals my
body needs, all the amino acids my body needs and do it in the
fewest amount of calories, but get everything my body needs,

(42:29):
that's probably good for everybody and everything, right?
And. A high protein Whole Foods based
approach. Exactly.
And then that's what approach, that's what gets you that
because if you look at, you know, in this book, I dedicated
a whole chapter and we wrote this book out 10 years ago now.
I think we were actually writingthe book, right?
And at that time it wasn't widely understood and he wasn't,

(42:51):
you didn't see it all the time online of what was the most
nutrient dense food in in, in that you can eat.
And so I made all these charts with like a steak versus
broccoli versus, you know, blueberries, all these super
foods, right, that you would, we're always told these are
super foods. Well, I lined them up with like
13 of the most essential meat, vitamins and minerals and just a

(43:15):
steak blows them out of the water.
There's so many more vitamins and minerals than just a steak,
than any of those other foods. And so one of the most nutrient
dense foods you can eat is animal proteins.
And you know, things like organ meats or liver are just off the
charts. It's probably the most nutrient
dense food on the planet. But you know, when you focus on
those foods, you're getting the amino acids and all the vitamins

(43:37):
and minerals your body needs. That's why I think prioritizing
proteins should for for health, not only short term health, but
long term health is always essential for anyone.
And that's that's probably my biggest problem with the sugar
diet is that you look at the in that chart I can send you we.
Can share it in the show notes too.
Yeah, one of the influencers, I took his diet for the day, what

(43:59):
everything he described eating, put it in the chronometer,
looked at all the vitamins and minerals, put it in the chart
compared to, you know, what I eat in a typical day, same
calories, and it's not even close.
I mean, they're just, there's hardly any vitamins and minerals
in the in the sugar diet compared to this.
Oh God, and I agree with you here.

(44:20):
Here's another question then foryou.
Why are and why do you think some people are seeing success
with it though? Yeah.
So a couple things on that to the people kind of in the
forefront on this, like Mark, they're open about taking
testosterone, you know, and if if you're taking steroids, you

(44:40):
can eat damn near anything you want and you're going to be in a
growth mode. And so it doesn't really matter.
That's a good point breakdown. Standpoint, secondary to that,
you know, at the end of the day,we talked, you know, talked
about this earlier, protein isn't really a fuel.
It doesn't want to be used as a fuel.
So you got fat and carbohydratesas your two fuel sources.

(45:01):
Well, they're just, is it. What we typically do is we ramp
down the carbohydrates and then adjust the fat based on the
goals. They're ramping down the fat to
almost 0 and then, you know, using more carbohydrates.
Well, either one will work. You know, just like vegan vegans
that eat little to no fat, they'll lose a lot of weight,

(45:24):
right? They're eating a lot of carbs,
They get a lot of fruit and whatnot, but they're not eating any
fat. So, and there's there, I mean,
you're probably familiar with the Randall cycle.
It's a, you know, this body, thebody prioritizes fuels and it
prioritizes carbohydrates over fats.
And so if you're eating high carb and high fat, that fats
going to get stored while it burns the carbs.

(45:46):
If you lower the carbohydrates, more fat gets oxidized in the
body. It's just kind of it prioritizes
carbs over fat. So when you lower the carbs,
more fat gets oxidized. Well, if you don't eat any fat,
it doesn't really matter becausethey didn't, you can't store fat
you didn't eat, right. And carbohydrates, yeah, in
great excess, they will get turned into fat.

(46:08):
If you have you run out of storage and you got too much
carbohydrates, you can, some of it can be turned to fat.
But you know, everybody, you know, somebody's 100 lbs
overweight, The vast majority ofthat fat was from fat in the
diet. It's just the high fat and the
high carb. The high carb was being burned.
All that fat was being stored. And so, yeah, I mean it, it can

(46:30):
work. I don't think it's healthy
really, short term or long term in my opinion.
Yeah, and, and, and and and alsotoo, it's like the people that
should be because again, going back to what you were saying
about Mark, like to be, he's already lean.
Yes. What?
Yes, there is the anabolic steroid component to it, but he
was already decently lean. He's, you know, he's doing this

(46:53):
in the name of being more, more jacked, more tan, as he would
probably say, but he's already decently lean.
He's basically losing the last maybe 10 to 20 lbs of like
stubborn body fat that you know,and he's got specific goals.
But what about on the flip side of someone that's maybe like pre
diabetic, they're obese and they're going the sugar diet
route? Like there is no way.

(47:14):
And maybe maybe system wise, this is where I can get your
insights. There's probably no reason that
person should be doing a diet like that, correct?
Yeah. So two things on that.
If, if Mark was doing blood markers all this time, that
would be very enlightening. You know, triglycerides, A1C,
fasting glucose fasting, these different components.

(47:38):
Jenny Mitich did a sugar diet and she did labs and she showed
how hers got a lot worse in a lot of categories and she gained
weight. So it didn't work well for her,
but I what you're talking about.So here's the thing and this we
can kind of come all the way back to lipotoxicity discussion.
Sure, sure. So a lot of this comes back to
kind of the, the, the root causeof insulin resistance and

(48:01):
insulin resistance, metabolic dysfunction in the body.
A large amount of it originates in the adipocytes in your fat
cells. And what happens is everybody,
I, I've learned this a long timeago and now it's, I'm, I'm
preaching about it almost daily.Like when I was a teenager, I
heard this interesting thing where, you know, when you're a
toddler, you make lots of new fat cells typically.

(48:23):
And then you get to an age whereyou just stop making new fat
cells and you just fill up and empty the ones you have.
OK, That was something I learnedwhen I was a teenager.
And now I really understand whatit means.
And what it means from a metabolic standpoint is you can
have a certain number of fat cells.
And if you don't have a lot of them genetically or, you know, a
lot of Asian people don't have alot of fat cells.

(48:46):
And so they get insulin resistance quicker without
getting a lot of body fat. And the reason is because those
fat cells are like balloons and they, you can't, you can only
stuff them so full and at some point they're going to burst if
they, so they, they stop accepting fat or they reject
insulin. So those fat cells will reject
insulin and say, I can't store any more fat, I'm full.

(49:09):
And the problem is if you get a lot of the fat cells on your
body doing this, what's happening now, the fat you eat
is going in the bloodstream. The pancreas does not, it
tightly controls fuel in the bloodstream.
And if there's a lot of fat in that bloodstream, high
triglycerides, it doesn't like that.
So it tries to drive it into storage.
But guess what? The fat cells aren't taking it.
They're rejecting insulin. I'm full.

(49:31):
So now the fasting insulin goes up even more and even more
because it's trying to drive this fat out of the bloodstream.
It's it's kind of panicking because the fat cells aren't
taking it. Well, now the fats can
accumulate, you know, in the liver, in the pancreas, around
the organs. Got fatty liver, You got high
triglycerides all the time. You got high fasting insulin,

(49:52):
you're insulin resistant. It's all starts with the fat
cells being too full and this can happen with your.
We've had clients that are 110 lbs and they're insulin
resistant because they have so few fat cells genetically, they
fill up so fast they become insulin resistant almost right
away. We, On the contrary, we've had
people 300 lbs overweight and their blood markers look pretty

(50:14):
normal because genetically they either have a lot of fat cells
or there's a few genetic, vast majority of people you only have
so many and you fill or empty them.
There's a few people that can keep making new fat cells later
in life and one of them I can also, we can also put it in the
notes. But Tyler, he was 645 lbs and he

(50:36):
came to us for help and we helped him pro bono because
he's, he actually went to high school with my wife's brother
and he lost like 150 lbs like notime.
But what was interesting when hewas 650 lbs, I sent a blood
marker panel to him. It it tested his triglycerides,

(50:56):
his A, his A1C, his fasting glucose, his fasting insulin and
a couple other things. He at 650 lbs.
His fasting glucose was was a little low on this test for some
reason, like it was like 60. I think normally it's like 8090
fasting glucose. His fasting insulin I think was
like 4. His A1C was like 5.6 or 5.7.

(51:24):
His, his blood markers is if youdo the home IR where you take
fasting glucose and fasting goes, it was like 2.
It was like totally insulin sensitive range.
And, and he's £650, you know, And So what he was is he's one
of the genetic variants that could keep creating new fat
cells. And if you keep creating new fat
cells and keep them small, you'll never get insulin

(51:46):
resistant. And that's the kind of show us
the, the power of the fat cells in this whole process.
And so back to the original discussion, Lipotoxicity so and,
and to the sugar diet. So back to the sugar diet.
If you're not eating. So at the end of the day, no
matter what you eat, if you shrink your fat cells, lose body

(52:07):
fat, your insulin will come down, your fasting insulin will
come down, your insulin resistance will go down.
So you could improve your insulin resistance if you shrink
your fat cells, lose body fat even eating the sugar diet.
Now again, is that the healthiest way to do it?
Not by far. But the other end of the

(52:28):
spectrum, eating high fat carnivore when you're already at
your fat threshold, the fat cells are like, I'm not taking
it anymore. You can make insulin resistant
worse by eating too much fat, and we see it all the time.
I've got slides in my presentation.
I'm going to be presenting in San Diego at the conference

(52:48):
there, and I've got a bunch of these testimonies from people
that followed that advice, gained additional weight, and
everything got worse. Triglycerides shot up, fasting
glucose shot up, eating zero carb, insulin shot up.
It's because the metabolic dysfunction that's originating

(53:08):
in those fat cells. And it's funny, like I feel like
now I'm, I'm talking about Ted Naman's approach or Gabrielle
Lyon now on basically like everypodcast, but like going back to
Ted, it's like it really comes down to a protein to energy type
of ratio, right? Like where, what, what energy
are we bringing into the bot? How much energy, How much stored

(53:28):
energy do we have on our body? How much energy are we bringing
into the body? What's the activity look like?
But like the, the main that the kicker is protein, I would say.
And then what energy come like keeping the protein high that's
going to help satiate us. But the energy that comes along
with that protein, whether it's on a rib eye or whether it's a
stick of butter or whether it's,you know, a, a loaf of bread or

(53:49):
whatever, that kind of matters. That kind of matters.
Yeah. I mean, that's the engineering
Ted and the engineering me that looked like the biochemistry
standpoint of this, that yeah, Imean, protein isn't really used
as a fuel unless it's a, it's a,it's basically a fuel of last
resort. And that's another thing we can
touch on real quick here is thatwe'll talk about what about
rabbit starvation. If you're doing protein sparing
modified fast because you're eating very little carbs or fat,

(54:12):
right? And it's just lean protein,
rabbit starvation only occurs ifyou're very lean.
So you have very little fat on your body and the diet you're
eating is very lean all the time, right.
And so now your body's struggling for fuel and what's
it going to do? It's going to have to turn
protein in the fuel and it that's very energy intensive and

(54:32):
the body doesn't like doing thata lot.
And that's when a problem occurs, right.
If you have stored, you know, extra £20 on you to, to lose,
there's zero issue what whatsoever with rapid
starvation. But yeah, at the end of the day,
it's for me, it's fuels, carbs and fat and and protein and
protein always should be prioritized because of the amino

(54:54):
acids, because of the vitamins and minerals, how it satiates
you, all of those things. And then either fuel.
But for me, if I, if I upped the, the carb side of the thing,
like the sugar diet, I'm going to be eating all I, I, I'm
basically back to kind of what Iwas doing before I eat ate this
way. And I had that afternoon slump
where I want to take a nap and I'm, you know, I I've got this

(55:15):
roller coaster of hunger every two hours.
You know, that's what you know, like you can eat 1000 calorie
Blizzard and 1000 calories. Boom, your blood sugar spikes
through the roof, and then it crashes.
And guess what happens when yourblood Sugar's crashing and going
too low? You're hungry again.
Yeah. And so now you're eating again.
And two hours later, even thoughyou just ate 1000 calorie

(55:36):
flurry, right. Eat 1000 calorie eggs and tell
me the next time you eat. Yeah.
Probably you're not going to be eating for a while.
Yeah, right. So yeah, that's that's kind of
the way I look at it. 100% I, I couldn't agree with you more.
And, and yeah, I mean, if we're just talking about like the,
that's why I think Ted wrote hissecond book satiety per Calorie,

(55:59):
right? Like if you're just looking at
like, you know, you can eat 1010Oreos, you know, an egg and an
Oreo basically have roughly the same amount of calories, but you
can eat a whole entire box of Oreos.
You, you I I would bet you couldn't put down more than like
5 or 6 hard boiled eggs before you wanted to, before you wanted
to throw up or just stop eating all all together.

(56:19):
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
And I know, I know we're coming up on here here on time, Craig.
And by the way, this has been fantastic.
I think you've dropped a lot of really good Nuggets here.
I wanted to, but before I kind of get into like what you and
Maria are doing next, like what's coming down the pipeline
for you? Like how people can work with
you. What, just out of curiosity,
what does your day-to-day look like now?

(56:39):
Like, can you walk us through like a day of like eating and
working out for us and what maybe your your training and
workout looks like too? Yeah, I've been really blessed
to have gotten a lot of my inflammation under control, not
just a diet, but last year I gota hip replacement.
One of the things is I, the Lymedisease has led to ankylosing
spondylitis, autoimmune disorderfor me, which is like arthritis

(57:02):
of the joints that a lot of times is the hips, back, neck,
sometimes shoulders. But the, the, the hip that I
replaced was my biggest problem by far.
And now I feel amazing. I mean, I can, I take my pup for
a long walk every morning and then the afternoons I do some
weight lifting. We got a nice gym over here.

(57:23):
We built cool, do as much weightlifting as I'm able to.
But my diet is, you know, I'm kind of like a dog.
I can eat the same thing every day and it just works.
And I usually have some combination of eggs in the
morning, whether it's eggs and chorizo or eggs and, you know,
bacon or something like that. And then the afternoon I usually

(57:45):
have a couple, couple of hamburger patties, cheese maybe
I've gotten to the point now where I can add, I think
especially with the hip replacement, I can add some,
maybe some caramelized onions, you know, cooked in butter or
something like that to those andadd some cheese.
And that's, you know, those are pretty much it, you know, just

(58:06):
I'm, I'm pretty, I usually have two meals.
Sometimes in the evening I'll have a little snack, maybe some
pork rinds or something. Yeah.
But yeah, that's about it for, for food.
I'm still not nearly as active as I'd like to be because of all
of this. But you know, I'm definitely in
a better place than I was. Very cool.
Yeah, it's funny. It's funny going back to eating
the same thing. I mean, when you think about it

(58:26):
though, it's like typically, youknow, we get to this, a lot of
people talk about, oh, like carnivore or keto or all of
these diets in general, low carb, they're not like they're
not really sustainable and there's not enough variety.
And it's like really when you'retalking to people, it's like,
well, think about really all thedifferent types of things that

(58:46):
you're eating. Like if you really were to break
it down, you really don't have that much variety in your diet,
right? Like, you know, like and I, I
eat the same thing every day too.
It's typically like chicken breasts and like hamburger
patties, roasted carrots. I'm a big fan of Greek yogurt.
I am. I make a, an awesome like for,
for basically a dessert every night.

(59:07):
I'll have dinner and then I'll make like a Greek yogurt protein
bomb. 2 servings of Greek yogurtprotein, collagen throw some
cinnamon in there some maybe some blueberries and peanut
butter whatever the case is it's70 grams of protein in that bowl
and it tastes like a better to me than ice cream guys you know
so so it's like literally. We actually planted some

(59:28):
strawberries here, so every every night's out.
A lot of times it's my snack because I'll have a few berries,
a little bit of cream on it. That's awesome, can't beat it.
Yeah, can't beat it. Yeah, the the simplest things
tend to be the most effective. That's that's what I found.
Well, perfect. I know we're kind of up up here
against the clock. What's what's what projects are

(59:49):
you and Maria working on? Are you specifically any new
books, speaking engagements likewhat's coming down the pipeline?
I actually got a couple things coming up here.
We less than 30 days away now inthe San Diego conference.
It used to be low carb San Diego.
I think it's a metabolic, I can't remember the full name,
but we have, if you go to ketomaria.com, you can get to

(01:00:10):
all of our events and things we're doing that's in San Diego.
In August and then September, I'm going to be in Tennessee at
low carb for better health. I'll be speaking there.
And then Maria and I have this crazy trip we're doing.
We plan to go to Africa. I like I'm a, I'm big into
photography. You'll see on my Instagram page,

(01:00:31):
I do a lot of photography. We're going back to Africa for a
photo safari, and we got a call from Doctor Noakes.
You know, Doctor Noakes down and. 10 notes, right?
Yeah, yeah, he's got a conference in Cape Town, he
said. I'd love for you guys to come
speak and it lined right up withthis trip we already had
planned. So that's awesome.
We did a couple days and we're going to Cape Town for that, and

(01:00:52):
then we got a call from Low CarbCairo about speaking there.
So in the beginning of the trip,we're going to speak in Cairo,
then do the safari, then do CapeTown, and then come back.
So it was this whole whirlwind trip, but.
Oh my God, how amazing and how awesome that sounds.
How it all lined up. We're going to be North Africa
all the way down to Cape Town. It's going to be quite the trip.

(01:01:13):
Awesome. Well, hopefully guys, I mean
that sounds incredible. Hopefully you guys have a blast
and that's gone. It's going to be kind of like
work and fun at the same time, but probably a lot of exploring
too. That's awesome.
Hopefully, hopefully you guys have a blast A.
Little bit on the on the down low, but we're actually writing
a new book. You know, this book is almost
from when we wrote it, almost 10years old keto, but it's I think

(01:01:35):
it's really solid still. We talked about personal fat
threshold in there. We talked about, but we kind of
touched on it. I know so much more now about it
that we're writing our own general health book.
It's a nutrition guide kind of book to kind of supersede, you
know, both of these and and add tons more information.
So that's probably 6 to 9 monthsout, but.

(01:01:57):
You got it. Marie and I are both working on
that right now. New book coming out.
That's awesome. Well, Craig, this was absolutely
fantastic. And again, I want to be
respectful of your time. So where can people go to find
you, Maria? The books like I know you
dropped, the Keto Maria website,where can people find you and
all that good stuff. That's the best spot because I
what I did on that, it's Keto maria.com and I put links to all

(01:02:19):
of our websites, all of our information at the bottom
there's links to all of our social media, so you can find
all of our accounts right there.Awesome, awesome.
Well, this was fantastic. Thanks guys for listening to the
Low Carb Consultant podcast. We'll catch you guys on the next
one.

All Episodes

Craig Emmerich | Engineer to Nutrition Expert: Low Carb Diet Science| July 29, 2025 Ep. 13

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Craig Emmerich | Engineer to Nutrition Expert: Low Carb Diet Science| July 29, 2025 Ep. 13