July 16, 2025 • 36 mins
Can eating 1,000 extra calories of fat every day actually transform your body and mind? How does sugar fit into the equation? In this groundbreaking episode of the Savage Perspective Podcast, host Robert Sikes dives into the ultimate nutritional face-off: The Sugar Diet vs. The FAT Diet. Joined by Greg Mahler, they discuss the astounding results from Robert’s personal experiment consuming 1,000 extra fat calories daily. Hear how it impacted his energy, mental clarity, and performance, and uncover the surprising truth about sugar’s role in your diet. Episode 797 will change how you look at the fuel your body runs on.
Looking to take your fitness and nutrition to a whole new level? Join Robert’s FREE Bodybuilding Masterclass today and learn the exact strategies you need to dominate your goals: https://www.ketobodybuilding.com/registration-2. Don’t wait—your transformation starts now!
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Subscribe to the podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/42cjJssghqD01bdWBxRYEg?si=1XYKmPXmR4eKw2O9gGCEuQ
0:00 Why I Ate 1,000 Extra Fat Calories (Crazy Idea!)
3:45 What Happens to Your Body on a Fat-Heavy Diet
6:12 How Sugar Affects Your Energy and Focus
8:25 The Shocking Results of My Experiment
10:40 Myths About Fat: The Truth You Need to Hear
12:05 How Fat Helped Me Improve Mental Clarity
14:30 Practical Tips for Switching to a Fat-First Diet
17:00 The Surprising Impact on My Workouts
19:20 Why Sugar Is Sabotaging Your Progress
21:00 Overcoming Sugar Cravings (Simple Strategies)
23:15 Balancing Fat and Sugar for Peak Performance
25:40 Lessons Learned from My 30-Day Nutrition Shift
28:05 Real-Life Stories: How My Clients Benefitted
30:30 Final Verdict: Who Wins - Sugar or Fat?
33:05 Work-Life Balance Tips That Actually Work
34:40 Takeaways You Can Apply Today!
36:00 Closing Thoughts: Become the CEO of Your Health
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Sugar diet obviously is gaining traction, momentum, hype on
social media. You've got some pretty prevalent
figures really hyping it up and promoting it.
In which case you are exclusively consuming very high
glycemic and deck sugars, fruits, honeys, syrups,
leveraging candy, pure table sugars.
I've seen a lot of gummy worms on social media.
(00:21):
All the while losing body weightat a pretty impressive rate.
You know 510 lbs a week. The whole concept behind it is
basically that you are improvingyour metabolic rate.
I obviously got a ton of questions on this being pretty
much the antithesis of the sugardiet.
Following the strict keto now for over a decade, everything
(00:42):
that people are wanting to do with the sugar diet, I basically
did with the opposite of the Sugar Dine.
What is going on, y'all? We've got a very involved
podcast today. I'm going to be going over my
latest experiments and I'm goingto be flipping through several
different windows. This would be optimal if you're
viewing this on YouTube or in video format as opposed to just
(01:06):
listening to an audio, but I'm going to try to explain
everything. So that's relevant if you're
just listening to the audio. I was just going to do this
solo, but I've actually got Greghere as well.
He's going to kind of offer somebanter back and forth,
especially as I'm tabbing between slides and finding data.
So there's not just this silencein between that, but I just
conducted an experiment kind of in response to the sugar diet
(01:30):
trend. So we're about to dive into
that. Greg is currently on the sugar
diet. No, the opposite, the opposite.
So I'm excited. Everybody should know you, Greg,
So no need to introduce you because everyone listens to you
all the time anyways. But to give you all a little
back story as to why this experiment was even conducted.
(01:51):
So sugar diet obviously is gaining traction momentum hype
on social media. You've got some pretty prevalent
figures really hyping it up and promoting it.
And the whole concept behind it is basically that you are
improving your metabolic rate via the pathways of FGF 21
(02:12):
hormone which is risen basicallypronounced when you reduce as
they claim, pretty much consume nothing but sugars.
Therefore your protein consumption is relatively low or
non existent. There's been multiple different
protocols put out there as to how to best operate around it.
I've seen a few of these different protocols.
(02:32):
Some recommend sugar fasting, inwhich case you are exclusively
consuming very high glycemic anddeck sugars, fruits, you know,
honeys, syrups. A lot of people are promoting or
leveraging candy, pure dextrose,sucrose, pure table sugars.
A lot of people, I've seen a lotof gummy worms on social media,
(02:54):
a lot of people using miconics, things like that.
So basically just pure sugar, whether it come from natural
sources like fruit or, you know,man made sources like candy for
sugar fasting periods in which they'll have several days a week
where they're only consuming sugar.
And the whole concept has been to eat that ad libitum.
(03:14):
So as much as you can consume ortolerate, all the while losing
body weight at a pretty impressive rate.
Some people touting the loss of you know, 510 lbs a week with
this approach. I obviously got a ton of
questions on this being pretty much the antithesis of the sugar
(03:35):
diet following the strict keto now for over a decade.
So I decided to actually peel the curtain back on what was
happening here mechanistically and then conduct an experiment
kind of in contrary to it, but using a similar pathway via this
FGF 21 hormone. So to give you even more back
story, I had just gone through like a 2 month period where I
(03:57):
was gradually reducing my calories down to about 2500,
lost about 1012 lbs in the process.
So I was down at 2500 calories when all of this sugar, that
hype hit the fan. So I decided to do an
experiment, but I wanted to kindof give myself kind of a period
where I could eat more food having come off of that slight
(04:17):
deficit, which for me was not a major deficit.
My maintenance intake for context sake is right around
3000 calories. So I had basically a week post.
You know, I don't want to use the word mini cup, but for the
the listeners will use that word.
So I basically had a week after that 2500 calorie drop where I
ate ad libinum or you know, tried to average around 3000
(04:40):
calories. I had a couple days that were
4500 calories. I had one day that was fasted
basically just kind of like a disconnect from that gradual
reduction in intake that I've had over the past few months.
So I had like a week washout period where I was doing that,
which from scientific standpointis not really a great washout
period. But I'm a human being and not a
(05:00):
lab mouse. So I wanted to just kind of do
what I wanted to do from a nutrition standpoint.
And then I was planning on jumping into this experiments.
So I started doing that for a few days and then Nick Norwich
reached out to me, asked if you wanted if I want to do a more
involved, you know, study with this.
I agreed. But due to that, you know,
(05:22):
variability in that week, I don't know if he'll use my data
or not, but I have all my data. So I'm going to share it with
you here. So let's dive into it.
There's a study called from the Nature Metabolism journal and
the title of it is Dietary Protein Restriction Elevates FGF
21 Levels and Energy Requirements to Maintain Body
(05:44):
Weight in Lean Men. And for those listening, I'm
just going to go ahead and read the abstract here, so bear with
me. Dietary protein restriction
increases energy expenditure andenhances insulin sensitivity in
mice. However, the effects of
eucaloric protein restricted diets in healthy humans remains
unexplored. Here we show in lean healthy men
(06:05):
that a protein restricted diet meeting the minimum protein
requirements for five weeks nesitates an increase in energy
intake to uphold body weight, regardless of whether proteins
are placed with fats or carbohydrates.
Upon reverting to the customary higher protein intake in the
following five weeks, energy requirements return to baseline
levels, thus preventing weight gain.
(06:26):
We also show that fasting plasmaFGF 21 levels increase during
protein restriction. Proteomic analysis of human
white adipose tissue and an FGF 21 knockout mice reveal
alterations in key components ofthe electron transport training
within white adipose tissue mitochondria, notably in male
(06:46):
mice. These changes appear to be
dependent on the FGF 21. In conclusion, we demonstrate
that maintaining body weight during dietary protein
restriction in healthy lean men requires a higher energy intake
partitionally or partially driven by FGF 21 mediated
mitochondrial adaptations in adipose tissue.
(07:08):
So has a mouthful going into it now.
The whole premise of this experiment was basically do to
do the opposite of the sugar diet.
To illustrate what would happen in me if I replaced what people
are using sugar with higher fat intake, all the while keeping
protein incredibly low, that would in theory also increase F
(07:31):
shift 21 and result in a similarresponse.
Now I am in a building phase. Right now I do not want to go
into a caloric deficit because that would be kind of productive
to me building more lean tissue.So I wanted to do this and see
if I could increase my total intake above baseline and see if
I can maintain weight, which would in theory mean that if I
(07:52):
was to keep the same caloric intake, I would drop weight.
But again, I'm not trying to drop weight right now.
So in essence, high level view, if people were to do this, they
would basically have a similar response to what people are
doing with the sugar diet by wayof, you know, minimizing protein
consumption to increase FGF 21. If they were to do so at a
(08:15):
maintenance caloric intake, theywould in theory lose weight.
I was not trying to lose weight,so I bumped up my intake
significantly. Well, it makes sense so far,
Greg. All right, so let's dive into
it. I decided to again take my
maintenance intake, which was about 3000 calories and then be
very aggressive with the increase.
(08:35):
So I decided to make my new intake 4000 calories, so an
additional 1000 calories above, above baseline.
And I was targeting nearly a four to one ratio, 4 to 1 being
defined as carbohydrates plus protein in grams times 4 is how
much fat you need to consume to have that 4 to 1 ratio.
(08:56):
I think Nick was doing it based off of net carbs and not total
carbs. So I was following a similar
protocol. So I was a little shy of a true
4:00 to 1:00. But the study that was done in
the Nature Metabolism magazine or article basically had protein
at 9 percent or less of total calories for the day.
So every day throughout this experiment, I targeted 9% or
(09:19):
fewer calories from protein as apercentage of total caloric
intake for the day, which for mewound up being around 400 grams
of fat, 75 to 85 grams of protein a day, and depending on
what I was consuming, 30 to 50 grams of total carbohydrates for
the day. Typically, I was using a lot
more like cauliflower rice to soak up oils and stuff.
(09:43):
So to kind of illustrate what a typical day of eating for me was
over this two week span, I wouldwake up, I'd have, you know, a
tablespoon of ghee in my coffee along with some heavy cream.
On this particular day, I had some of that what's that stuff
cost like the mascarpone cheese,peanut butter, macadamia nuts, a
(10:04):
keto brick or two more ghee and then more macadamia nuts.
And then for dinner, the big hack that I had to hit this high
fat intake was I would have a can of cod liver, which is
pretty much 500 calories primarily coming from fat.
They would still be the liver inthere and have that.
I have that soaking up with a bunch of cauliflower rice.
Usually I was doing 200 to 300 grams of that a day.
(10:26):
I put some Primal Kitchen dipping sauce in there to
increase the fat, took a few eggs in there with it with two
tablespoons of butter, 2 tablespoons of ghee to pretty
much hit that target intake. This day for instance, my intake
was 4053 calories and that was 86.6 grams of protein, 62 grams
(10:46):
of carbs. That may have been the highest
carb day, most of which is coming from the fiber and the
cauliflower rice, and then 391 grams of fat.
So pretty significant increase in dietary fat.
Normally I'm consuming around 200 to 250 grams of fat and most
often with this I was around 400grams of fat.
(11:07):
Going into it, I thought I was going to have a ton of GI
distress, but honestly, I had zero GI distress.
I had no loose stool. That was honestly one of the
biggest surprises. I had no GI.
I was going to. Ask you about that.
Yeah. Yeah, it was.
Pretty smooth. That's a little bit of a shock
to your normal. Yeah, definitely a higher
increase in fat and very little protein relative to my normal
(11:27):
consumption. So that's what typical day of
eating look like throughout thistwo week span.
And then if we look at my other chronometer data here from a
visual standpoint, just to kind of give you all some context,
this period here was where I wasactually in that quote UN quote
mini cut. And then I had a few refeed ad
libitum days. I fasted one day.
(11:48):
That's what that was actually did not track these two days,
but that was probably 25000 calorie days.
So a pretty high intake to kind of just eat whatever I wanted to
for that spam, which basically defeats the purpose of having a
lead in a week. But you know, I'm a human, not a
mouse. So this span here, I started the
(12:09):
experiment on June 9th and I went until the 23rd of June.
So pretty much consuming around 4000 calories that entire span.
And then that's what I'm lookinglike there.
And if we look at my weights over that span as well, after
those two 5000 calorie days and kind of add aluminum eating, my
(12:31):
weight did jump up quite a bit, which I would have expected.
I think I went from 176 at my lowest during that mini cuts.
I don't even like the word that I'm using mini cut, but people
understand that. And then after having a week of
consuming more food and you know, 2 pretty high, high
caloric intake days, my weight jumped to 183.2.
(12:53):
All right. And then I started the
experiments on the 9th at a weight of 183.2.
So that's where the 4000 calories basically started.
There's a little bit of a discrepancy there because again,
I was eating less, ate a whole lot more.
And then my weight jumped up largely from water retention,
(13:14):
from eating more saltier foods, things like that.
But over that span, while eating4000 calories, my weights had a
little bit of an increase in thefirst few days, and then you can
see it just steadily dropping throughout the time of the
experiment. I believe on the last day of the
experiment, June 23rd, my weightwas 179.2.
(13:36):
So pretty much flushed out that water and then dropped to just
right above where I was. But just keep in mind here, I'm
eating 4000 calories whereas before I was eating 2500
calories. So pretty impressive from a
weight standpoint there. For all intents and purposes, it
was holding stable or dropping relative to what I would be at
(13:58):
baseline intake 3000 calories. Now if we look at my AI
dashboard of this experiment to do a little bit more of a deep
dive here, you can see just thatspan of time.
And I am again starting the experiments at about 183 on 6/9.
(14:18):
And then you can kind of see thetrend line holding pretty stable
or actually taking a dip there towards the end.
So, you know, pretty impressive trend line while eating
significantly more food. And here you can see my protein
consumption throughout the wholetime at about 9% of total
calories. Carbs were at about 6% of total
calories and then fat was typically around 85 to 87% of
(14:42):
total calories coming from fat throughout that experiment.
And then over the course of thatspan, my average caloric intake
was 41141 hundred 39186. So pretty much right there
around 4000 calories. Now I decided to get blood work
both when did I got, I got the first lab on the 25th I believe.
(15:05):
So a little bit in the middle ofthat intermediary week.
And then again on the last day of the experiment, I anticipated
a significant increase in my lipid panel, triglycerides,
cholesterol, sure. I was kind of expecting that
since I had so much more fat coming in relative to my
baseline. Now I am very deeply fat
(15:25):
adapted, but I assumed with thismuch fat intake over baseline, I
would see those numbers increase.
But when I actually got the lab markers, I saw a very different
outlook. So let's go to that lab results
here, Greg, you're kind of in a cut right now.
There's 4000 calories of pure fat.
(15:47):
I would not complain about, thatwould be nice.
All right, so look at these two panel these.
This is basically when I got my first drone at 5:29 and then
again on the last day of the experiment on 6/23.
My total cholesterol went from 274 to 276, so not much of A
change there. HDL cholesterol went from 91 to
(16:10):
one O 6, so not a significant change there, but HDL actually
improved. LDL went from 165 to 155 S LDL
dropped. Triglycerides went from 77 to
57, so I thought that was a little interesting.
There's a whole bunch of markershere.
HDL ratio went from 3 to 2.6. Triglyceride to HDL ratio went
(16:36):
from .85 to .54. So pretty much for all intents
and purposes an improvement in lipid markers.
My APOB A1 ratio stayed steady at .53.
Glucose is consistent 91 both times.
Let me just Scroll down here. The main thing I want to talk
(16:57):
about is the hormones 'cause this one really surprised.
Me you were you were telling us about that.
So see if I can Scroll down to find them.
So just kind of give people somecontext.
I've never had super high testosterone.
That's why, Greg, one of the funny things people always
accuse me of taking steroids. Or TRT or anything.
Yeah, but like I get on my lab work and I think when I was at
(17:19):
3.9% in my prep, I hit like 86 or 87 is total testosterone.
So obviously not taking gear. But yeah, I've never been one to
have super high testosterone. Typically I'm around like 4 to
600 is pretty average for me, but when I go down to hormones,
my total testosterone serum at the time of the experiment
(17:41):
starting was 334 total testosterone, so not that great.
After the experiment was over itmore than doubled and went to
696. That's crazy.
So it literally more than doubled in that span while
eating minimal protein and significantly high dietary fat.
My sex hormone binding globulin did increase a little bit, so it
(18:02):
went from 60 to 87. So that's not great.
But if I could have found a way to unbind some of that
testosterone, my free testosterone would be even
higher. And then for some reason on
Heads up Healthier, my free testosterone is not showing, but
I have that as well. Let me sign in.
I guess it must have logged me on.
(18:23):
Say something, Greg. It's that's pretty wild.
Were you expecting it to go in any certain direction or you
kind of just open minded? Yeah, honestly didn't really
expect any change in hormones, especially for such a short time
span. But that's a.
Pretty significant change too. That's just not like a
questionable little bit of a variation that's a that's a
(18:45):
notable amount. So here we've got IGF one and
that went from, let's see here it's 81.
Now if I look at overtime, so myIGF one went from one O 7 to 81.
So that one actually dropped a little bit.
(19:06):
Where's is the OK estradiolm that went from 8 to 22.
So that one increased cortisol, interesting marker there.
That one actually dropped a little bit.
It went from 12.4 to 9.9 insulin.
See, a lot of the reasons peopleare doing this is to improve
(19:27):
insulin sensitivity. Sure.
My insulin went from, that's allthe back in May.
I guess I didn't get insulin tested the first time, but it
ended at 2.5 and then let's see here.
Is your free test. Yeah, free test.
All right, So my free testosterone, which is the one
that really matters, went from, that's total free testosterone
(19:49):
went from 27.8. So again, pretty low.
And that also pretty much doubled and landed at 58.7 over
the course of this experiment. So my total testosterone
effectively doubled, my free testosterone effectively
doubled, and all of my lipid markers improved while eating
1000 extra calories, a ton of fat, a ton of fat, and less than
9% of my calories coming from protein.
(20:10):
No protein. So super interesting there.
One of the graph here to kind ofshow a visual.
This is my weight and calories graphed out in tandem from a
heads up health standpoint. And again, you see all this
volatility here. That was during that week
period. It's dropping during that quote
(20:31):
UN quote mini cut. And then over the course of the
experiment, pretty much holding stable from a weight standpoint
and actually starting to drop a little bit throughout it.
So super interesting there. So what does all of this mean?
This is kind of where it gets relevant for you, Greg.
So what I'm thinking, first of all, everything that people are
(20:54):
wanting to do with the sugar dying, I basically did with the
opposite of the sugar dying. I showed that eating 1000
calories more didn't result in an increase in body weight over
that span. So had I kept calories
consistent at 3000 of my baseline, I probably would have
seen a significant drop in body weight, which is the main reason
(21:16):
people are doing the sugar down.Like there's been poles down and
most people are doing it to losea lot of weight really quickly.
So had I wanted to lose weight, I feel like I could have
effectively done that with this experiment.
Now, a couple other things to note is that doing it this way,
as opposed to eating, you know, sweet tarts and apples and, you
(21:38):
know, gummy worms, Sour Patch Kids, I'm eating real food the
whole time. So from an instant sensitivity
standpoint, I don't think there was any issues with what I had
for my blood work and markers. Main thing is I just ate real
food the whole time. Like I'm a huge nutrient eating
real food, Yeah. You had nutrient dense.
Choices, like I'm playing the long game with everything and
(21:58):
like one of the big question marks that I have with the
people doing the sugar dad is what are they going to do in
another next five years? Like, are they going to be doing
the same thing in five years or are they going to have too many
cavities to be able to eat any food?
And you know what, what are theygoing to do?
Yeah. I think what's interesting is
all the foods that you used to leverage the Super high fat
(22:19):
intake are still the same foods you could eat today off this
protocol. Whereas the sugar diet, people
are leveraging candy in Twizzlers and high glycemic
fruit juice and all that kind ofstuff.
When they stop the sugar diet, they probably aren't going to be
consuming that. So like they're, they're going
(22:40):
from whatever they're eating beforehand to just an insane
amount of sugar in these food choices that are just serving
them a temporary change, You know what I mean?
Yeah, not great. But your food choices are the
same, they're just elevated. Yeah.
So in light of all this information, I think there's
(23:02):
probably 2 use case scenarios that I think this could be
really effective because like when you look at it on a big
level, it's advocating pretty low protein.
And I was consuming 4000 calories, 9% of that coming from
protein, putting me at like 7585grams of protein a day, which is
not very much. That's definitely in stark
contrast to them 1g of protein per pound of lean mass that you
(23:24):
see throwing around a lot. Do I think, am I doing this to
advocate people consume a ton offat and hardly any protein?
Not at all. I don't think that is optimal
long term from a longevity standpoint, from health
standpoint, from a muscle building and retention
standpoint. But from a metabolic standpoint,
I think this could be leveraged in a useful manner in both a
(23:46):
building phase and a cutting phase.
So from a building phase standpoint, you know, I'm
looking at myself right now. I'm in a building phase.
I like the idea of my testosterone doubling.
That's pretty cool. I don't know if anybody that's
doing the sugar diet tested hormones, but I would be
doubtful that eating sweet tartshas resulted in a doubling of
their testosterone. Maybe, maybe they can prove me
(24:07):
wrong, but I'm highly unlikely of them.
So in a building phase or anytime really, you want to
optimize testosterone, especially as a natural athlete.
So the fact that my testosteroneliterally doubled in this span,
you know, I could leverage that,you know, intermittently,
intermittently throughout a building phase to keep those
(24:28):
levels higher at a baseline. So what I would like to do for
myself is kind of treat this in a similar fashion to how I would
and extended fast. I'm not an advocate for extended
fasting to change body composition.
I'm not an advocate of extended fasting while also being in a
caloric deficits, too many stressors on the body.
But when I'm eating at a surplusand I'm eating more protein on a
(24:52):
day-to-day basis, I mean that istaxing on your digestive system
and just eating a lot of foods taxing on your digestive system.
So I'll, you know, throw in an extended fast on a quarterly or
you know, by annually basis in abuilding phase.
And I think I could treat this in a similar fashion.
So once a quarter, probably do one week of this 4 to 1 ratio
(25:15):
that's going to ramp up my metabolic rate.
It's going to obviously effectively keep my testosterone
functioning at a high rate and it'll be less protein coming in
to give my digestive system a break.
So on a quarterly basis, in the context of a build, I think a
week of 4 to 1 lower protein, higher fat, and then either
equal or slightly higher calories could be advantageous.
(25:38):
And the other setting it would be beneficial, and we're going
to experiment on this with you, is if you were in an extended
cut, it's like my last cut was 33 weeks long.
Your current cut is how many weeks are you in right now?
Oh boy. Since January.
Since January, so pretty good wow.
And then depending on how your shows go, you may be competing
until November. So that's like a whole year, 12
(26:00):
months. That's a lot of a lot of weeks
in a in a deficit. If you were just, you know,
consistently drop intake throughout that whole span.
You know, granted we're going tobe doing refeeds.
We have been doing refeeds with you, keto refeeds.
That's still a long time in a deficit, which is going to
inevitably result in a down playon your testosterone, your
(26:21):
metabolic rates, energy levels, all that jazz.
So if we could, if you're in an extended cut like that, offer a
week where your calories are actually increased a little bit,
your fat ratio is higher, your protein is a little bit lower,
and that results in an uptick oftestosterone or metabolic rate
(26:41):
that would bode well for you elongating that cut even more in
a healthy fashion. So just using you as an example,
you're actually in peak week at the time of this recording.
You've been in the cut since January.
Your calories are pretty low right now.
They're what do I have you? At this week, right around 1800.
1800 calories. So after your show this weekend,
(27:03):
you've got another 2 1/2 months before your next show.
So what we'll probably do with you is next week post first
show, we'll bump up your intake to maybe 2500 calories at this 4
to 1 ratio. So it's going to be pretty low
protein for you, but we'll only sustain it for a week and then
we'll probably just do it for a week as opposed to two weeks.
(27:26):
And that's in essence should increase your metabolic rate,
probably give you a benefit testosterone wise.
And then after that week is over, rather than dropping you
back down to 1800 because of that increased metabolic rate,
we may only be able to drop, youonly need to drop you to like
2200. So you'll effectively have, you
(27:47):
know, 400 calories more runway going into the week following
this high fat ratio then you would had we not done the high
fat ratio so we can more healthfully continue your cut
without any unnecessary downwardtrend in your metabolic rate or
hormone levels. Sweet, I like it.
So that's the plan. Essentially you're looking at,
(28:08):
you know, if you're on one of the bottom couple rungs of a
ladder, we're going to take a step back up one or two rungs so
we have the rest of that ladder to come back down again.
Yeah. And if we were to do the same
thing calorically speaking, but at your current macro
distribution, not have a similareffect to your hormones or you
would likely risk putting on more weight.
(28:29):
And we don't want to take one step forward and two steps back
from a weight standpoint with you in a prep right now.
But if we can give you an extra 400 calories as a baseline from
which to continue the taper, increase your metabolic rates,
increase your hormone levels, any that's going to be super
positive for you in a extended prep.
I don't think people that are doing like a shorter cut, like
(28:51):
12 weeks or 16 weeks would benefit from this likely.
But with you being in a, you know, practically year long cut,
it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I like it.
So definitely. Rather try.
This and see what this yields than just throwing a ton of
cardio in there. Yeah, for sure.
A couple other things to note apart from the data, just
(29:14):
observations throughout doing it.
I was eating an extra 1000 calories, but man, my hunger
that first week especially really ramped up.
I think it's because my food volume actually wasn't that high
because when you're not eating much protein, you don't have
very much food volume. I have the cauliflower rice to
help soak up some of the fat that I was consuming, but
(29:35):
actually a reduction in overall food volume.
So hunger increased, which honestly kind of illustrated the
increase in metabolic rate as well 'cause like when your
metabolism is ramped up, your hunger increases.
That seemed to subside after about a week and a half.
And like my hunger seemed to stabilize after a week and 1/2,
which leads me to believe that my metabolism started to
(29:56):
stabilize as well. So I don't think there would
have been a benefit to doing it any longer because I wanted to
kind of benefit from that stocking of the metabolic
flames, so to speak. So I don't think you'd want to
do it for longer periods of time.
And obviously throughout this experiment, my protein was low.
So I people have pegged me as the high fat, low protein guy.
(30:18):
I'm not that at all. Like I eat, I mean, like
yesterday I had 200 grams of protein.
Like I'm not low protein by any means.
But one thing that I find funny is that people in the
bodybuilding space for sure, buteven in the keto space as well,
they've always just kind of likeleft protein as a stand alone
constant. They don't change it, whether
(30:39):
their goal is to build or to cut.
Like they leave protein pretty stable.
They'll cut, you know, fat if the goal is to lose fat.
They'll keep carbs low if they're doing a keto or a
carnivore approach. But they've always been really
protective of that protein. And from day one I've always
said, hey look, you can get awaywith using protein as one of the
levers you can manipulate if youdo it in a healthy manner
(31:03):
without any risk of loss of leantissue.
My first ketogenic prep in 2017,on the very tail end of it, I
brought my protein all the way down to 65g, which I'm not
advocating for, but I wanted to see how far I could push it
without any loss of lean tissue.In the context of being very fat
adapted, having higher circulating ketones, my strength
markers held constant. I didn't lose any skeletal
(31:25):
muscle tissue, even my protein that low.
That's pretty wild. So I don't want people to hear
this and say, OK, I'm I'm dropping protein to the floor,
ramping fat up because you got to be strategic with it.
But I do hope people recognize that you've got 3 levers to
manipulate. And as far as nutrition goes,
you get your fats, proteins and carbs.
If you're doing keto or carnivore, you know your carbs
(31:47):
are pretty much non existent. So that's not even a lever
anymore. So then you got your fat and
protein. Just simply manipulating fat is
leaving 50% of the table, 50% onthe table that you could
leverage and benefit from. So this was insightful in that
regard for sure. What else that what else did I
say when I was going through this experiment?
(32:07):
Anything else notable? I remember you saying you were.
Hungry. Definitely hungry.
You. You.
You got to consume a little extra key to brick.
Yeah, I was having. I think one day I had like two
or three key to brick and that that's where some of the carbs
were coming from too. There's just trace of carbs.
In some of those, yeah. And like eggs.
Trace carbs and heavy cream trace carbs.
I was eating a lot of that SCT oil, which is really good.
(32:27):
So it's a short chain triglyceride.
I'm trying to remember the brand.
It was like happy healthy or something like that.
But it was super good and didn'tmess with my gut at all.
But I was putting that in my coffee.
I was putting that on the bricks.
So that short chain triglyceride.
How was your? How was your?
Mental acuity and stuff during that, it was good, it was good.
(32:49):
I don't like feeling hungry. And again, I felt hungry that in
the first week I felt a little tired in the morning.
It took me, it seemed a little bit longer to get going.
And I think that may have been because I was just eating so
much food. It's almost like I had so much
fuel coming in that kind of akinto like a motor.
I was basically flooding it, so to speak, you know, flooding
(33:11):
myself with so much fuel that I didn't need that much fuel.
So I just kind of felt, I felt alittle nausea in the beginning
too. I think I just had so much
energy coming into my system that it kind of backfired in
that regard. But again, all that kind of
levelled off after about a week and a half.
And then I only had another halfweek before I, you know, called
it quits on the experiment. But there was that that I
(33:33):
noticed. But like all my strength markers
were totally fine. Didn't see any reduction
strength whatsoever. I was getting good pumps while
training. All of my blood markers
obviously improved, so no complaints there.
I do. I didn't miss like a big old
steak though, man, like I was. Yeah, you could do have much to
chew. On yeah, I didn't have much to
(33:54):
chew. On So from a texture standpoint,
I was craving like, like when the experiment was over, like
one of the first things I ate was a big old rotisserie
chicken. I just want a whole bunch of
protein and just chewing on somemeat tissue, you know, but for
like a week, which I think wouldprobably be the ideal time to do
this, you know, you can do anything for a week.
And honestly, the cod liver, which is a great source of
(34:15):
vitamin A and all kinds of othergood stuff that cooked in with
the cauliflower rice and a few scrambled eggs in there do
tasty. And like, I mean, that's a
pretty big bowl of food for like300 grams cauliflower rice that
was pretty filling. So that was good.
So yeah, All in all, I think it was a success.
I'm, I am curious to try and do the same thing at my my keeping
(34:40):
the calories constant. So rather than it's like right
now, I've been averaging about 3000 calories kind of back to
baseline. I'll probably do this same
experiment for a week and keep calories at 3000 just to see
what happens. Compositionally speaking, that
would mean my protein would be even lower to hit that 4 to 1
ratio at a reduced intake. But for a week, I think that'd
(35:02):
be totally sustainable and I'm curious to see what happens.
Yeah, so track the data. Yeah, from a from.
A title click baity standpoint, we could effectively say I
naturally more than doubled my testosterone doing the opposite
of the sugar diet. Sugar diet.
So yeah, not throwing shade. I mean people do whatever they
(35:22):
want to do. But this is insightful though.
Yeah, I think this was. Insightful for me.
I mean, it's kind of doing the same thing that we're doing with
the ketogenic caloric refeeds inthe context of your prep, but
just kind of on the other end ofthe spectrum with an increase in
calories over baseline as opposed to a increase in macros
(35:43):
acutely in the context of the deficit.
So yeah, I mean, it makes total sense.
I didn't get like FGF 21 plasma tested, so I'd be curious to
know what that level was pre andpost.
But I was super pleased with allthe hormone markers and lipid
panel and I think this will probably be something that I
throw into the mix similar to myextended fast on a somewhat
(36:07):
quarterly basis or something like that.
Cool. And in the context of a prep
another tool in the toolbox. Another tool in the toolbox.
So appreciate you all for tuningin.
Appreciate you, Greg, for being my sidekick here with pleasure.
And we'll we'll do we'll do thisfor you in the prep.
You'll be the Guinea pig in the context of a deficit.
And we'll do a follow up work podcast for sure, kind of diving
(36:30):
into some of the results there. So sweet.
I'm excited. Let's be cool.
Yes, indeed, till. Next time y'all stay savage and
always be experimenting ta ta.
Sugar diet obviously is gaining traction, momentum, hype on
social media. You've got some pretty prevalent
figures really hyping it up and promoting it.
In which case you are exclusively consuming very high
glycemic and deck sugars, fruits, honeys, syrups,
leveraging candy, pure table sugars.
I've seen a lot of gummy worms on social media.
(00:21):
All the while losing body weightat a pretty impressive rate.
You know 510 lbs a week. The whole concept behind it is
basically that you are improvingyour metabolic rate.
I obviously got a ton of questions on this being pretty
much the antithesis of the sugardiet.
Following the strict keto now for over a decade, everything
(00:42):
that people are wanting to do with the sugar diet, I basically
did with the opposite of the Sugar Dine.
What is going on, y'all? We've got a very involved
podcast today. I'm going to be going over my
latest experiments and I'm goingto be flipping through several
different windows. This would be optimal if you're
viewing this on YouTube or in video format as opposed to just
(01:06):
listening to an audio, but I'm going to try to explain
everything. So that's relevant if you're
just listening to the audio. I was just going to do this
solo, but I've actually got Greghere as well.
He's going to kind of offer somebanter back and forth,
especially as I'm tabbing between slides and finding data.
So there's not just this silencein between that, but I just
conducted an experiment kind of in response to the sugar diet
(01:30):
trend. So we're about to dive into
that. Greg is currently on the sugar
diet. No, the opposite, the opposite.
So I'm excited. Everybody should know you, Greg,
So no need to introduce you because everyone listens to you
all the time anyways. But to give you all a little
back story as to why this experiment was even conducted.
(01:51):
So sugar diet obviously is gaining traction momentum hype
on social media. You've got some pretty prevalent
figures really hyping it up and promoting it.
And the whole concept behind it is basically that you are
improving your metabolic rate via the pathways of FGF 21
(02:12):
hormone which is risen basicallypronounced when you reduce as
they claim, pretty much consume nothing but sugars.
Therefore your protein consumption is relatively low or
non existent. There's been multiple different
protocols put out there as to how to best operate around it.
I've seen a few of these different protocols.
(02:32):
Some recommend sugar fasting, inwhich case you are exclusively
consuming very high glycemic anddeck sugars, fruits, you know,
honeys, syrups. A lot of people are promoting or
leveraging candy, pure dextrose,sucrose, pure table sugars.
A lot of people, I've seen a lotof gummy worms on social media,
(02:54):
a lot of people using miconics, things like that.
So basically just pure sugar, whether it come from natural
sources like fruit or, you know,man made sources like candy for
sugar fasting periods in which they'll have several days a week
where they're only consuming sugar.
And the whole concept has been to eat that ad libitum.
(03:14):
So as much as you can consume ortolerate, all the while losing
body weight at a pretty impressive rate.
Some people touting the loss of you know, 510 lbs a week with
this approach. I obviously got a ton of
questions on this being pretty much the antithesis of the sugar
(03:35):
diet following the strict keto now for over a decade.
So I decided to actually peel the curtain back on what was
happening here mechanistically and then conduct an experiment
kind of in contrary to it, but using a similar pathway via this
FGF 21 hormone. So to give you even more back
story, I had just gone through like a 2 month period where I
(03:57):
was gradually reducing my calories down to about 2500,
lost about 1012 lbs in the process.
So I was down at 2500 calories when all of this sugar, that
hype hit the fan. So I decided to do an
experiment, but I wanted to kindof give myself kind of a period
where I could eat more food having come off of that slight
(04:17):
deficit, which for me was not a major deficit.
My maintenance intake for context sake is right around
3000 calories. So I had basically a week post.
You know, I don't want to use the word mini cup, but for the
the listeners will use that word.
So I basically had a week after that 2500 calorie drop where I
ate ad libinum or you know, tried to average around 3000
(04:40):
calories. I had a couple days that were
4500 calories. I had one day that was fasted
basically just kind of like a disconnect from that gradual
reduction in intake that I've had over the past few months.
So I had like a week washout period where I was doing that,
which from scientific standpointis not really a great washout
period. But I'm a human being and not a
(05:00):
lab mouse. So I wanted to just kind of do
what I wanted to do from a nutrition standpoint.
And then I was planning on jumping into this experiments.
So I started doing that for a few days and then Nick Norwich
reached out to me, asked if you wanted if I want to do a more
involved, you know, study with this.
I agreed. But due to that, you know,
(05:22):
variability in that week, I don't know if he'll use my data
or not, but I have all my data. So I'm going to share it with
you here. So let's dive into it.
There's a study called from the Nature Metabolism journal and
the title of it is Dietary Protein Restriction Elevates FGF
21 Levels and Energy Requirements to Maintain Body
(05:44):
Weight in Lean Men. And for those listening, I'm
just going to go ahead and read the abstract here, so bear with
me. Dietary protein restriction
increases energy expenditure andenhances insulin sensitivity in
mice. However, the effects of
eucaloric protein restricted diets in healthy humans remains
unexplored. Here we show in lean healthy men
(06:05):
that a protein restricted diet meeting the minimum protein
requirements for five weeks nesitates an increase in energy
intake to uphold body weight, regardless of whether proteins
are placed with fats or carbohydrates.
Upon reverting to the customary higher protein intake in the
following five weeks, energy requirements return to baseline
levels, thus preventing weight gain.
(06:26):
We also show that fasting plasmaFGF 21 levels increase during
protein restriction. Proteomic analysis of human
white adipose tissue and an FGF 21 knockout mice reveal
alterations in key components ofthe electron transport training
within white adipose tissue mitochondria, notably in male
(06:46):
mice. These changes appear to be
dependent on the FGF 21. In conclusion, we demonstrate
that maintaining body weight during dietary protein
restriction in healthy lean men requires a higher energy intake
partitionally or partially driven by FGF 21 mediated
mitochondrial adaptations in adipose tissue.
(07:08):
So has a mouthful going into it now.
The whole premise of this experiment was basically do to
do the opposite of the sugar diet.
To illustrate what would happen in me if I replaced what people
are using sugar with higher fat intake, all the while keeping
protein incredibly low, that would in theory also increase F
(07:31):
shift 21 and result in a similarresponse.
Now I am in a building phase. Right now I do not want to go
into a caloric deficit because that would be kind of productive
to me building more lean tissue.So I wanted to do this and see
if I could increase my total intake above baseline and see if
I can maintain weight, which would in theory mean that if I
(07:52):
was to keep the same caloric intake, I would drop weight.
But again, I'm not trying to drop weight right now.
So in essence, high level view, if people were to do this, they
would basically have a similar response to what people are
doing with the sugar diet by wayof, you know, minimizing protein
consumption to increase FGF 21. If they were to do so at a
(08:15):
maintenance caloric intake, theywould in theory lose weight.
I was not trying to lose weight,so I bumped up my intake
significantly. Well, it makes sense so far,
Greg. All right, so let's dive into
it. I decided to again take my
maintenance intake, which was about 3000 calories and then be
very aggressive with the increase.
(08:35):
So I decided to make my new intake 4000 calories, so an
additional 1000 calories above, above baseline.
And I was targeting nearly a four to one ratio, 4 to 1 being
defined as carbohydrates plus protein in grams times 4 is how
much fat you need to consume to have that 4 to 1 ratio.
(08:56):
I think Nick was doing it based off of net carbs and not total
carbs. So I was following a similar
protocol. So I was a little shy of a true
4:00 to 1:00. But the study that was done in
the Nature Metabolism magazine or article basically had protein
at 9 percent or less of total calories for the day.
So every day throughout this experiment, I targeted 9% or
(09:19):
fewer calories from protein as apercentage of total caloric
intake for the day, which for mewound up being around 400 grams
of fat, 75 to 85 grams of protein a day, and depending on
what I was consuming, 30 to 50 grams of total carbohydrates for
the day. Typically, I was using a lot
more like cauliflower rice to soak up oils and stuff.
(09:43):
So to kind of illustrate what a typical day of eating for me was
over this two week span, I wouldwake up, I'd have, you know, a
tablespoon of ghee in my coffee along with some heavy cream.
On this particular day, I had some of that what's that stuff
cost like the mascarpone cheese,peanut butter, macadamia nuts, a
(10:04):
keto brick or two more ghee and then more macadamia nuts.
And then for dinner, the big hack that I had to hit this high
fat intake was I would have a can of cod liver, which is
pretty much 500 calories primarily coming from fat.
They would still be the liver inthere and have that.
I have that soaking up with a bunch of cauliflower rice.
Usually I was doing 200 to 300 grams of that a day.
(10:26):
I put some Primal Kitchen dipping sauce in there to
increase the fat, took a few eggs in there with it with two
tablespoons of butter, 2 tablespoons of ghee to pretty
much hit that target intake. This day for instance, my intake
was 4053 calories and that was 86.6 grams of protein, 62 grams
(10:46):
of carbs. That may have been the highest
carb day, most of which is coming from the fiber and the
cauliflower rice, and then 391 grams of fat.
So pretty significant increase in dietary fat.
Normally I'm consuming around 200 to 250 grams of fat and most
often with this I was around 400grams of fat.
(11:07):
Going into it, I thought I was going to have a ton of GI
distress, but honestly, I had zero GI distress.
I had no loose stool. That was honestly one of the
biggest surprises. I had no GI.
I was going to. Ask you about that.
Yeah. Yeah, it was.
Pretty smooth. That's a little bit of a shock
to your normal. Yeah, definitely a higher
increase in fat and very little protein relative to my normal
(11:27):
consumption. So that's what typical day of
eating look like throughout thistwo week span.
And then if we look at my other chronometer data here from a
visual standpoint, just to kind of give you all some context,
this period here was where I wasactually in that quote UN quote
mini cut. And then I had a few refeed ad
libitum days. I fasted one day.
(11:48):
That's what that was actually did not track these two days,
but that was probably 25000 calorie days.
So a pretty high intake to kind of just eat whatever I wanted to
for that spam, which basically defeats the purpose of having a
lead in a week. But you know, I'm a human, not a
mouse. So this span here, I started the
(12:09):
experiment on June 9th and I went until the 23rd of June.
So pretty much consuming around 4000 calories that entire span.
And then that's what I'm lookinglike there.
And if we look at my weights over that span as well, after
those two 5000 calorie days and kind of add aluminum eating, my
(12:31):
weight did jump up quite a bit, which I would have expected.
I think I went from 176 at my lowest during that mini cuts.
I don't even like the word that I'm using mini cut, but people
understand that. And then after having a week of
consuming more food and you know, 2 pretty high, high
caloric intake days, my weight jumped to 183.2.
(12:53):
All right. And then I started the
experiments on the 9th at a weight of 183.2.
So that's where the 4000 calories basically started.
There's a little bit of a discrepancy there because again,
I was eating less, ate a whole lot more.
And then my weight jumped up largely from water retention,
(13:14):
from eating more saltier foods, things like that.
But over that span, while eating4000 calories, my weights had a
little bit of an increase in thefirst few days, and then you can
see it just steadily dropping throughout the time of the
experiment. I believe on the last day of the
experiment, June 23rd, my weightwas 179.2.
(13:36):
So pretty much flushed out that water and then dropped to just
right above where I was. But just keep in mind here, I'm
eating 4000 calories whereas before I was eating 2500
calories. So pretty impressive from a
weight standpoint there. For all intents and purposes, it
was holding stable or dropping relative to what I would be at
(13:58):
baseline intake 3000 calories. Now if we look at my AI
dashboard of this experiment to do a little bit more of a deep
dive here, you can see just thatspan of time.
And I am again starting the experiments at about 183 on 6/9.
(14:18):
And then you can kind of see thetrend line holding pretty stable
or actually taking a dip there towards the end.
So, you know, pretty impressive trend line while eating
significantly more food. And here you can see my protein
consumption throughout the wholetime at about 9% of total
calories. Carbs were at about 6% of total
calories and then fat was typically around 85 to 87% of
(14:42):
total calories coming from fat throughout that experiment.
And then over the course of thatspan, my average caloric intake
was 41141 hundred 39186. So pretty much right there
around 4000 calories. Now I decided to get blood work
both when did I got, I got the first lab on the 25th I believe.
(15:05):
So a little bit in the middle ofthat intermediary week.
And then again on the last day of the experiment, I anticipated
a significant increase in my lipid panel, triglycerides,
cholesterol, sure. I was kind of expecting that
since I had so much more fat coming in relative to my
baseline. Now I am very deeply fat
(15:25):
adapted, but I assumed with thismuch fat intake over baseline, I
would see those numbers increase.
But when I actually got the lab markers, I saw a very different
outlook. So let's go to that lab results
here, Greg, you're kind of in a cut right now.
There's 4000 calories of pure fat.
(15:47):
I would not complain about, thatwould be nice.
All right, so look at these two panel these.
This is basically when I got my first drone at 5:29 and then
again on the last day of the experiment on 6/23.
My total cholesterol went from 274 to 276, so not much of A
change there. HDL cholesterol went from 91 to
(16:10):
one O 6, so not a significant change there, but HDL actually
improved. LDL went from 165 to 155 S LDL
dropped. Triglycerides went from 77 to
57, so I thought that was a little interesting.
There's a whole bunch of markershere.
HDL ratio went from 3 to 2.6. Triglyceride to HDL ratio went
(16:36):
from .85 to .54. So pretty much for all intents
and purposes an improvement in lipid markers.
My APOB A1 ratio stayed steady at .53.
Glucose is consistent 91 both times.
Let me just Scroll down here. The main thing I want to talk
(16:57):
about is the hormones 'cause this one really surprised.
Me you were you were telling us about that.
So see if I can Scroll down to find them.
So just kind of give people somecontext.
I've never had super high testosterone.
That's why, Greg, one of the funny things people always
accuse me of taking steroids. Or TRT or anything.
Yeah, but like I get on my lab work and I think when I was at
(17:19):
3.9% in my prep, I hit like 86 or 87 is total testosterone.
So obviously not taking gear. But yeah, I've never been one to
have super high testosterone. Typically I'm around like 4 to
600 is pretty average for me, but when I go down to hormones,
my total testosterone serum at the time of the experiment
(17:41):
starting was 334 total testosterone, so not that great.
After the experiment was over itmore than doubled and went to
696. That's crazy.
So it literally more than doubled in that span while
eating minimal protein and significantly high dietary fat.
My sex hormone binding globulin did increase a little bit, so it
(18:02):
went from 60 to 87. So that's not great.
But if I could have found a way to unbind some of that
testosterone, my free testosterone would be even
higher. And then for some reason on
Heads up Healthier, my free testosterone is not showing, but
I have that as well. Let me sign in.
I guess it must have logged me on.
(18:23):
Say something, Greg. It's that's pretty wild.
Were you expecting it to go in any certain direction or you
kind of just open minded? Yeah, honestly didn't really
expect any change in hormones, especially for such a short time
span. But that's a.
Pretty significant change too. That's just not like a
questionable little bit of a variation that's a that's a
(18:45):
notable amount. So here we've got IGF one and
that went from, let's see here it's 81.
Now if I look at overtime, so myIGF one went from one O 7 to 81.
So that one actually dropped a little bit.
(19:06):
Where's is the OK estradiolm that went from 8 to 22.
So that one increased cortisol, interesting marker there.
That one actually dropped a little bit.
It went from 12.4 to 9.9 insulin.
See, a lot of the reasons peopleare doing this is to improve
(19:27):
insulin sensitivity. Sure.
My insulin went from, that's allthe back in May.
I guess I didn't get insulin tested the first time, but it
ended at 2.5 and then let's see here.
Is your free test. Yeah, free test.
All right, So my free testosterone, which is the one
that really matters, went from, that's total free testosterone
(19:49):
went from 27.8. So again, pretty low.
And that also pretty much doubled and landed at 58.7 over
the course of this experiment. So my total testosterone
effectively doubled, my free testosterone effectively
doubled, and all of my lipid markers improved while eating
1000 extra calories, a ton of fat, a ton of fat, and less than
9% of my calories coming from protein.
(20:10):
No protein. So super interesting there.
One of the graph here to kind ofshow a visual.
This is my weight and calories graphed out in tandem from a
heads up health standpoint. And again, you see all this
volatility here. That was during that week
period. It's dropping during that quote
(20:31):
UN quote mini cut. And then over the course of the
experiment, pretty much holding stable from a weight standpoint
and actually starting to drop a little bit throughout it.
So super interesting there. So what does all of this mean?
This is kind of where it gets relevant for you, Greg.
So what I'm thinking, first of all, everything that people are
(20:54):
wanting to do with the sugar dying, I basically did with the
opposite of the sugar dying. I showed that eating 1000
calories more didn't result in an increase in body weight over
that span. So had I kept calories
consistent at 3000 of my baseline, I probably would have
seen a significant drop in body weight, which is the main reason
(21:16):
people are doing the sugar down.Like there's been poles down and
most people are doing it to losea lot of weight really quickly.
So had I wanted to lose weight, I feel like I could have
effectively done that with this experiment.
Now, a couple other things to note is that doing it this way,
as opposed to eating, you know, sweet tarts and apples and, you
(21:38):
know, gummy worms, Sour Patch Kids, I'm eating real food the
whole time. So from an instant sensitivity
standpoint, I don't think there was any issues with what I had
for my blood work and markers. Main thing is I just ate real
food the whole time. Like I'm a huge nutrient eating
real food, Yeah. You had nutrient dense.
Choices, like I'm playing the long game with everything and
(21:58):
like one of the big question marks that I have with the
people doing the sugar dad is what are they going to do in
another next five years? Like, are they going to be doing
the same thing in five years or are they going to have too many
cavities to be able to eat any food?
And you know what, what are theygoing to do?
Yeah. I think what's interesting is
all the foods that you used to leverage the Super high fat
(22:19):
intake are still the same foods you could eat today off this
protocol. Whereas the sugar diet, people
are leveraging candy in Twizzlers and high glycemic
fruit juice and all that kind ofstuff.
When they stop the sugar diet, they probably aren't going to be
consuming that. So like they're, they're going
(22:40):
from whatever they're eating beforehand to just an insane
amount of sugar in these food choices that are just serving
them a temporary change, You know what I mean?
Yeah, not great. But your food choices are the
same, they're just elevated. Yeah.
So in light of all this information, I think there's
(23:02):
probably 2 use case scenarios that I think this could be
really effective because like when you look at it on a big
level, it's advocating pretty low protein.
And I was consuming 4000 calories, 9% of that coming from
protein, putting me at like 7585grams of protein a day, which is
not very much. That's definitely in stark
contrast to them 1g of protein per pound of lean mass that you
(23:24):
see throwing around a lot. Do I think, am I doing this to
advocate people consume a ton offat and hardly any protein?
Not at all. I don't think that is optimal
long term from a longevity standpoint, from health
standpoint, from a muscle building and retention
standpoint. But from a metabolic standpoint,
I think this could be leveraged in a useful manner in both a
(23:46):
building phase and a cutting phase.
So from a building phase standpoint, you know, I'm
looking at myself right now. I'm in a building phase.
I like the idea of my testosterone doubling.
That's pretty cool. I don't know if anybody that's
doing the sugar diet tested hormones, but I would be
doubtful that eating sweet tartshas resulted in a doubling of
their testosterone. Maybe, maybe they can prove me
(24:07):
wrong, but I'm highly unlikely of them.
So in a building phase or anytime really, you want to
optimize testosterone, especially as a natural athlete.
So the fact that my testosteroneliterally doubled in this span,
you know, I could leverage that,you know, intermittently,
intermittently throughout a building phase to keep those
(24:28):
levels higher at a baseline. So what I would like to do for
myself is kind of treat this in a similar fashion to how I would
and extended fast. I'm not an advocate for extended
fasting to change body composition.
I'm not an advocate of extended fasting while also being in a
caloric deficits, too many stressors on the body.
But when I'm eating at a surplusand I'm eating more protein on a
(24:52):
day-to-day basis, I mean that istaxing on your digestive system
and just eating a lot of foods taxing on your digestive system.
So I'll, you know, throw in an extended fast on a quarterly or
you know, by annually basis in abuilding phase.
And I think I could treat this in a similar fashion.
So once a quarter, probably do one week of this 4 to 1 ratio
(25:15):
that's going to ramp up my metabolic rate.
It's going to obviously effectively keep my testosterone
functioning at a high rate and it'll be less protein coming in
to give my digestive system a break.
So on a quarterly basis, in the context of a build, I think a
week of 4 to 1 lower protein, higher fat, and then either
equal or slightly higher calories could be advantageous.
(25:38):
And the other setting it would be beneficial, and we're going
to experiment on this with you, is if you were in an extended
cut, it's like my last cut was 33 weeks long.
Your current cut is how many weeks are you in right now?
Oh boy. Since January.
Since January, so pretty good wow.
And then depending on how your shows go, you may be competing
until November. So that's like a whole year, 12
(26:00):
months. That's a lot of a lot of weeks
in a in a deficit. If you were just, you know,
consistently drop intake throughout that whole span.
You know, granted we're going tobe doing refeeds.
We have been doing refeeds with you, keto refeeds.
That's still a long time in a deficit, which is going to
inevitably result in a down playon your testosterone, your
(26:21):
metabolic rates, energy levels, all that jazz.
So if we could, if you're in an extended cut like that, offer a
week where your calories are actually increased a little bit,
your fat ratio is higher, your protein is a little bit lower,
and that results in an uptick oftestosterone or metabolic rate
(26:41):
that would bode well for you elongating that cut even more in
a healthy fashion. So just using you as an example,
you're actually in peak week at the time of this recording.
You've been in the cut since January.
Your calories are pretty low right now.
They're what do I have you? At this week, right around 1800.
1800 calories. So after your show this weekend,
(27:03):
you've got another 2 1/2 months before your next show.
So what we'll probably do with you is next week post first
show, we'll bump up your intake to maybe 2500 calories at this 4
to 1 ratio. So it's going to be pretty low
protein for you, but we'll only sustain it for a week and then
we'll probably just do it for a week as opposed to two weeks.
(27:26):
And that's in essence should increase your metabolic rate,
probably give you a benefit testosterone wise.
And then after that week is over, rather than dropping you
back down to 1800 because of that increased metabolic rate,
we may only be able to drop, youonly need to drop you to like
2200. So you'll effectively have, you
(27:47):
know, 400 calories more runway going into the week following
this high fat ratio then you would had we not done the high
fat ratio so we can more healthfully continue your cut
without any unnecessary downwardtrend in your metabolic rate or
hormone levels. Sweet, I like it.
So that's the plan. Essentially you're looking at,
(28:08):
you know, if you're on one of the bottom couple rungs of a
ladder, we're going to take a step back up one or two rungs so
we have the rest of that ladder to come back down again.
Yeah. And if we were to do the same
thing calorically speaking, but at your current macro
distribution, not have a similareffect to your hormones or you
would likely risk putting on more weight.
(28:29):
And we don't want to take one step forward and two steps back
from a weight standpoint with you in a prep right now.
But if we can give you an extra 400 calories as a baseline from
which to continue the taper, increase your metabolic rates,
increase your hormone levels, any that's going to be super
positive for you in a extended prep.
I don't think people that are doing like a shorter cut, like
(28:51):
12 weeks or 16 weeks would benefit from this likely.
But with you being in a, you know, practically year long cut,
it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I like it.
So definitely. Rather try.
This and see what this yields than just throwing a ton of
cardio in there. Yeah, for sure.
A couple other things to note apart from the data, just
(29:14):
observations throughout doing it.
I was eating an extra 1000 calories, but man, my hunger
that first week especially really ramped up.
I think it's because my food volume actually wasn't that high
because when you're not eating much protein, you don't have
very much food volume. I have the cauliflower rice to
help soak up some of the fat that I was consuming, but
(29:35):
actually a reduction in overall food volume.
So hunger increased, which honestly kind of illustrated the
increase in metabolic rate as well 'cause like when your
metabolism is ramped up, your hunger increases.
That seemed to subside after about a week and a half.
And like my hunger seemed to stabilize after a week and 1/2,
which leads me to believe that my metabolism started to
(29:56):
stabilize as well. So I don't think there would
have been a benefit to doing it any longer because I wanted to
kind of benefit from that stocking of the metabolic
flames, so to speak. So I don't think you'd want to
do it for longer periods of time.
And obviously throughout this experiment, my protein was low.
So I people have pegged me as the high fat, low protein guy.
(30:18):
I'm not that at all. Like I eat, I mean, like
yesterday I had 200 grams of protein.
Like I'm not low protein by any means.
But one thing that I find funny is that people in the
bodybuilding space for sure, buteven in the keto space as well,
they've always just kind of likeleft protein as a stand alone
constant. They don't change it, whether
(30:39):
their goal is to build or to cut.
Like they leave protein pretty stable.
They'll cut, you know, fat if the goal is to lose fat.
They'll keep carbs low if they're doing a keto or a
carnivore approach. But they've always been really
protective of that protein. And from day one I've always
said, hey look, you can get awaywith using protein as one of the
levers you can manipulate if youdo it in a healthy manner
(31:03):
without any risk of loss of leantissue.
My first ketogenic prep in 2017,on the very tail end of it, I
brought my protein all the way down to 65g, which I'm not
advocating for, but I wanted to see how far I could push it
without any loss of lean tissue.In the context of being very fat
adapted, having higher circulating ketones, my strength
markers held constant. I didn't lose any skeletal
(31:25):
muscle tissue, even my protein that low.
That's pretty wild. So I don't want people to hear
this and say, OK, I'm I'm dropping protein to the floor,
ramping fat up because you got to be strategic with it.
But I do hope people recognize that you've got 3 levers to
manipulate. And as far as nutrition goes,
you get your fats, proteins and carbs.
If you're doing keto or carnivore, you know your carbs
(31:47):
are pretty much non existent. So that's not even a lever
anymore. So then you got your fat and
protein. Just simply manipulating fat is
leaving 50% of the table, 50% onthe table that you could
leverage and benefit from. So this was insightful in that
regard for sure. What else that what else did I
say when I was going through this experiment?
(32:07):
Anything else notable? I remember you saying you were.
Hungry. Definitely hungry.
You. You.
You got to consume a little extra key to brick.
Yeah, I was having. I think one day I had like two
or three key to brick and that that's where some of the carbs
were coming from too. There's just trace of carbs.
In some of those, yeah. And like eggs.
Trace carbs and heavy cream trace carbs.
I was eating a lot of that SCT oil, which is really good.
(32:27):
So it's a short chain triglyceride.
I'm trying to remember the brand.
It was like happy healthy or something like that.
But it was super good and didn'tmess with my gut at all.
But I was putting that in my coffee.
I was putting that on the bricks.
So that short chain triglyceride.
How was your? How was your?
Mental acuity and stuff during that, it was good, it was good.
(32:49):
I don't like feeling hungry. And again, I felt hungry that in
the first week I felt a little tired in the morning.
It took me, it seemed a little bit longer to get going.
And I think that may have been because I was just eating so
much food. It's almost like I had so much
fuel coming in that kind of akinto like a motor.
I was basically flooding it, so to speak, you know, flooding
(33:11):
myself with so much fuel that I didn't need that much fuel.
So I just kind of felt, I felt alittle nausea in the beginning
too. I think I just had so much
energy coming into my system that it kind of backfired in
that regard. But again, all that kind of
levelled off after about a week and a half.
And then I only had another halfweek before I, you know, called
it quits on the experiment. But there was that that I
(33:33):
noticed. But like all my strength markers
were totally fine. Didn't see any reduction
strength whatsoever. I was getting good pumps while
training. All of my blood markers
obviously improved, so no complaints there.
I do. I didn't miss like a big old
steak though, man, like I was. Yeah, you could do have much to
chew. On yeah, I didn't have much to
(33:54):
chew. On So from a texture standpoint,
I was craving like, like when the experiment was over, like
one of the first things I ate was a big old rotisserie
chicken. I just want a whole bunch of
protein and just chewing on somemeat tissue, you know, but for
like a week, which I think wouldprobably be the ideal time to do
this, you know, you can do anything for a week.
And honestly, the cod liver, which is a great source of
(34:15):
vitamin A and all kinds of othergood stuff that cooked in with
the cauliflower rice and a few scrambled eggs in there do
tasty. And like, I mean, that's a
pretty big bowl of food for like300 grams cauliflower rice that
was pretty filling. So that was good.
So yeah, All in all, I think it was a success.
I'm, I am curious to try and do the same thing at my my keeping
(34:40):
the calories constant. So rather than it's like right
now, I've been averaging about 3000 calories kind of back to
baseline. I'll probably do this same
experiment for a week and keep calories at 3000 just to see
what happens. Compositionally speaking, that
would mean my protein would be even lower to hit that 4 to 1
ratio at a reduced intake. But for a week, I think that'd
(35:02):
be totally sustainable and I'm curious to see what happens.
Yeah, so track the data. Yeah, from a from.
A title click baity standpoint, we could effectively say I
naturally more than doubled my testosterone doing the opposite
of the sugar diet. Sugar diet.
So yeah, not throwing shade. I mean people do whatever they
(35:22):
want to do. But this is insightful though.
Yeah, I think this was. Insightful for me.
I mean, it's kind of doing the same thing that we're doing with
the ketogenic caloric refeeds inthe context of your prep, but
just kind of on the other end ofthe spectrum with an increase in
calories over baseline as opposed to a increase in macros
(35:43):
acutely in the context of the deficit.
So yeah, I mean, it makes total sense.
I didn't get like FGF 21 plasma tested, so I'd be curious to
know what that level was pre andpost.
But I was super pleased with allthe hormone markers and lipid
panel and I think this will probably be something that I
throw into the mix similar to myextended fast on a somewhat
(36:07):
quarterly basis or something like that.
Cool. And in the context of a prep
another tool in the toolbox. Another tool in the toolbox.
So appreciate you all for tuningin.
Appreciate you, Greg, for being my sidekick here with pleasure.
And we'll we'll do we'll do thisfor you in the prep.
You'll be the Guinea pig in the context of a deficit.
And we'll do a follow up work podcast for sure, kind of diving
(36:30):
into some of the results there. So sweet.
I'm excited. Let's be cool.
Yes, indeed, till. Next time y'all stay savage and
always be experimenting ta ta.
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