October 11, 2024 • 47 mins
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Robert Sikes, aka "Keto Savage," a natural ketogenic bodybuilder who shares his journey overcoming eating disorders and embracing the ketogenic lifestyle, offering fresh insights on performance and healthy eating.
We explore his seven-phase approach to sustainable body transformation, focusing on muscle growth, fat loss, and well-being. Learn how a high-fat, low-carb diet redefines bodybuilding success, from hormone balance to practical nutrition tips. This episode is packed with guidance for athletes and fitness enthusiasts aiming to optimize their performance.
Connect with Keto Savage:
https://www.instagram.com/ketosavage/
https://ketosavage.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Primal Foundations podcast.
I'm your host, tony Pascola.
We will dive into what Ibelieve are the four central
foundations you need for ahealthy lifestyle Strength,
nutrition, movement and recovery.
Get ready to unlock your pathto optimal health and enjoy the
episode.
Our guest today is Robert Sykes, a natural ketogenic
(00:27):
bodybuilder.
Author, podcast host andentrepreneur.
As the CEO and founder of KetoSavage, robert has dedicated his
career to helping athletes andbodybuilders optimize their
performance through specializedcoaching, training and nutrition
.
He also is the mastermindbehind Keto Bricks, a company
that produces top tier ketogenicmeal replacement bars designed
(00:48):
for efficient, high qualitynutrition.
Robert Sykes, welcome to thepodcast.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Hey man, thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be chatting withyou today.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Absolutely.
I'm super excited to have someconversation with you.
It was really cool to meet youat Hack your Health.
I got to kind of chop it upwith you a little bit.
I got to eat some keto bricks,which were really good.
I really enjoyed your.
I was in the back of the panelsession of the food addiction
(01:16):
and I really enjoyed that whole.
Just basically, it was like asmorgasbord of different people
with different backgrounds anddifferent perspectives of food
addiction.
I thought we were tackling somereally good topics.
The place was packed.
It was a jam-packed room.
It was very unfortunate.
They're like five minutes andeverybody was like, oh man, we
(01:39):
could have been there at leastanother hour easily.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, I think so.
That was an interesting one.
That was the first time I'vebeen on a food addiction panel
per se, but um, the otherpanelists and I we had there was
definitely a difference in ourapproaches to how we treated, uh
, disordered eating tendencies.
So he has an interestingdialogue for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Took a lot of good nuggets walking out of that room
.
And today I want to start withyour, your backstory, to give
kind of listeners a little bitmore information about you.
You know you're a bodybuilder,entrepreneur, all these things
but I want to kind of focus onwhat inspired your journey into
bodybuilding and what motivatedyou to adopt a ketogenic diet
for your approach.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Man, I was 115 pounds when I was in high school.
I was, I was scrawny, I was, Iwas super self-conscious,
probably, started getting intolifting to I don't know make
amends with the ladies orsomething, as one does right
meaner.
(02:40):
So I tried to emulate that.
He showed me how to do a bicepcurl and the rest was history.
Man, I just fell in love withdoing something where I could
legitimately see the fruits ofmy labor paying off.
Like that was very fulfillingfor me.
So I started lifting, um, justwith pieces of equipment I had
laying around the house I wasusing.
Like my first bench was a, agreen igloo ice chest, uh, and
(03:00):
some you know crappy weightsthat I got from Walmart or
something Very, very basic stuff.
But I fell in love with it, man.
I fell in love with the activetraining and then seeing my body
and physique develop from it.
And I did that.
I bulked up to like 230 pounds.
So I was pretty hefty and I'monly like 5'7", 5'8", so not a
good 230.
But I thought I was going tocompete at 200.
(03:26):
Dieted down for my first show,lost 80 pounds in 12 weeks and
won the show.
But it was like not healthy atall.
I developed a bunch of eatingdisorders in the process and I
knew that there had to be abetter way, a more sustainable
way with nutrition.
So I played around with a bunchof different diets and started
doing carbohydrate backloading,which was kind of keto during
the day, and then really highglycemic index carbs at night,
(03:46):
and I felt better without thecarbs.
So I just phased those outentirely.
And this was all before keto waspopular, so I didn't even know
what keto was Like.
This was not something peoplewere talking about.
But I started dabbling aroundwith carb backloading minus the
carbs and recognized that I feltreally good with that.
My relationship with foodimproved, my performance
improved, I got really lean andmy inflammation was
(04:08):
significantly reduced.
So for me, that was a prettygood win-win.
So I decided to do a prep withthat approach in 2017, got my
pro card in a differentfederation there and didn't have
to struggle with thisdisordered eating tendencies.
So I pretty much hadn't lookedback since then.
Man, I've been doing keto nowfor close to 10 years and I've
been coaching people and wentpro in a different federation
(04:30):
this past year and it's justbrought me my most sustainable
physique and the most healthiestman at possible, so I'm a big
advocate for it.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
And, if you wouldn't mind, kind of take us through.
You know those eating issuesthat you had and or disorders,
Because when we talk aboutbodybuilding, right, some people
would say bodybuilding isunhealthy.
You know what are your thoughtson the sport Like, does it have
a negative health benefit?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
to it.
It certainly can.
Man, like a lot of people, likebeing sub 5% body fat, is not
healthy.
Like you, wouldn't want tosustain that for any length of
time at all.
I think the mental benefit thatI get, the psychological
benefit that I get, from pushingmy body to that extreme
provides more, a net benefitoverall, but simply from a
(05:20):
physical standpoint, gettingthat lean is not healthy.
From a physical standpoint,getting that lean is not healthy
.
However, having the tools atyour disposal to know how to
change your body composition,how to build more muscle, how to
lose body fat, how to eat andmanipulate your nutrition
accordingly, is incrediblyhealthy and for that reason I
think anybody would benefit fromthe principles of bodybuilding,
whether they plan on steppingon stage and competing or not is
(05:42):
irrelevant.
Like anybody, we're all thesame species.
So, like what works for us isall relevant.
Again, whether you plan oncompeting or not is irrelevant.
Like anybody, we're all thesame species.
So, like, what works for us isall relevant Again, whether you
plan on competing or not.
So taking those skill sets andkind of implementing into a
healthy, sustainable life is keyFor me with the disordered
eating tendencies man like I'mafter my first show when I lost
those 80 pounds in 12 weeks.
I like sacrificed so much food,starved myself this was way
(06:05):
before keto, doing everythingthe wrong way, and I recognized
that I pretty much just threwaway my identity in an instant.
Like I went after the show wasover.
I went and we all went to RedLobster and I ate everything and
like I literally gained 20pounds back in 24 hours.
Like it was not a good thing.
I was super sick afterwards andthat pretty much was just the
norm.
I did that for probably threeyears.
(06:26):
Afterwards I've got pictures ofme going to IHOP and literally
ordering one of everything thatyou could get on the menu,
eating it all and then walkingout in the parking lot and
puking.
That was just my norm andthat's not atypical in the
bodybuilding space.
A lot of people do that andthat's just not healthy,
obviously, so had to had to finda a more sustainable approach
(06:47):
that was, you know, stillallowing me the benefit of the
sport, but was healthy overallthat seems like you're taking,
you know, those tools of mindsetand discipline and all those
and carrying that over into reallife.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Uh, you know, and every sport, too, has its own
sacrifices, right, like footballplayers that you know
sacrificing when they step onthe field.
Soccer players, you know ifyou're going to be stepping
cause.
Bodybuilding is a sport, right,going and putting yourself in
these really hard situations,but you seem to kind of find
your way or groove and to do it,you know, a little bit
healthier.
(07:22):
Could you kind of take usthrough?
You know, in today's day, likeyou know you've kind of learned
these lessons.
You're on keto, you're feelingreally great.
Like, can you take us throughthis?
The building, you know inpeaking phases and what you do
to get ready for competition.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah.
So there's, first of all, youhave to kind of define it as a
building or cutting phase.
Like they want to work with meas a client and I say, okay,
what's your, what's your maingoal?
And they say, okay, I want tobuild muscle and lose body fat.
That's what everybody says.
You know, the thing is thosekind of compete for another.
In order to optimize buildingmuscle, you need to be in a
caloric surplus.
You need to optimize losing fat, you ideally need to be in a
(08:09):
caloric deficit.
You can do both simultaneously,but you're going to be kind of
stuck in purgatory limbo land ifyou try.
So having a defined buildingand cutting phase is key.
And then spending more time ina building phase than in a
cutting phase is also key.
And the idea of maintenance iskind of a myth.
Like there's no such thing asmaintenance.
You're either getting better oryou're getting worse.
So knowing that and recognizingthat at the onset is very
important.
And then, when it comes to kindof stringing that into a
sustainable format or framework,what I've done basically is
(08:33):
develop this seven-phaseprotocol.
So phase one for me is justestablishing what my actual
baseline is.
So what is my baseline?
Caloric intake?
You know I'll track, that.
I'll figure out what myconsumption is that allows my
body to stay at the samecomposition and weight
relatively, you know seamlesslyand then decide if that's a
(08:56):
healthy point to start a cut ora fat loss phase.
To begin with, a lot of peopleare chronically under eating,
which means you know they're noteating enough food at the onset
.
They don't have the caloricrunway to taper more calories
and drop body fat for asustained period of time anyway.
So they need to kind ofupregulate their metabolic and
hormonal pathways to have ahealthy starting position.
So phase one, pretty muchestablishing that baseline make
sure it's a good baseline andI'll typically start my clients
(09:19):
at higher fat ratio at the onsetto basically just optimize
their fat metabolism from aketogenic standpoint.
And then from there we moveinto phase two, which is
increasing protein and droppingdietary fat to figure out what
their unique protein thresholdis.
There's been a lot of debate onprotein right now how much is
ideal, what's too much, what'stoo little.
But you can't really guess onthat.
(09:41):
You need to test.
You got to figure out what yourbody responds well to and what
it doesn't.
So if you start low with thathigh fat ratio and then titrate
the protein up and the fat downweek after week, you'll be able
to definitively know what youractual protein threshold is and
you can get that dialed in.
Phase three is dropping both fatand protein simultaneously, so
overall calories are dropping,and that kind of goes for
(10:03):
several months typically whenI'm in a cutting fat loss phase.
So overall calories aredropping, both fats and proteins
are dropping and I'm justgetting leaner at that point.
And phase four is kind of whereI start introducing these
ketogenic caloric refeeds.
So when your calories aredropping, having a bolus of
calories from both fat andprotein to kind of help with the
metabolism, help with thehormones, help with the
(10:24):
psychological component of beingin a deficit, is really
important.
So I'll bring in these refeedsto kind of make that, you know,
more sustainable there towardsthe tail end.
And then I also, from acompetitive standpoint, I use
those refeeds to kind of testout my peak weeks for what I
would do, you know, prior tostepping on stage.
Phase five is the actual peakweek itself and if you're not a
(10:45):
competitor, that would be like,say, people wanting to lean out
for a wedding.
You know that would be the weekof the wedding, you want to try
and peak for that event or aphoto shoot, or whatever the
case may be.
Um, but you need to have like alike a climax to the cutting
phase, or else it just goes onindefinitely and you wind up
chronically under reading, whichis no bueno.
Having that period there, thatapex to the cut, that's when
(11:06):
I'll manipulate electrolytes alittle bit, I'll manipulate
those refeeds to peak for thatspecific event.
And then, phase six, I starttransitioning into a reverse
stat, so from that depth of mycalories I start bringing my
food intake up and actuallyincreasing my intake over weeks
time, several weeks time, andbut I'm still including those
refeeds that have brought intothe equation from phase four.
(11:29):
And then phase seven isbasically figuring out what that
new baseline is, once you'vekind of reached your, you know,
caloric maintenance or slightsurplus, ideally in a slight
surplus that you can focus thenon building muscle and then
basically staying at that slightsurplus for significantly more
time than you were in a deficit,so that you're able to build
more muscle.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Uh, focused then on building muscle and then
basically staying at that slightsurplus for significantly more
time than you were in a deficit,so that you're able to build
more muscle over that length oftime yeah, that's uh, I mean
it's a smart way to approach itbecause for the most of the
people who I've known or havespoken with that you know, have
done bodybuilder, it's more orless huge swings like these low
(12:05):
fat diets, chicken broccoli, youknow, white rice, typical stuff
, uh, and then it's just like avery, very drastic progression
downward of cutting out calories.
How psycho.
How is it psychologically Doyou feel for the, your clients,
for refeeds?
Uh, you know.
And and how does that affecttheir?
Um, you know competition?
Well, I don't do carbohydraterefeeds, you know, and how does
that affect their?
(12:25):
You know competition.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Well, I don't do carbohydrate refeeds.
That's an appreciating factorwith me.
Like, a lot of people will do acarb refeed and if they're
following a standard Americandiet or like a bro diet, they
might do, you know, the normalmeals and have this massive
bolus of you know, I was talkingto one guy that's going to be
having a thousand thousand gramsof carbohydrates on his refeed.
Like to me, that's just notnecessary.
(12:46):
It's a huge variable to theequation because, like from a
bodybuilding standpoint, if youoverdo your carbohydrates, you
run the risk of spilling overand washing out the definition
that you do have, especially ifyou don't time your electrolytes
properly, don't have the rightamount of sodium or the right
amount of fluid in your system.
It's just a really unnecessaryrisk without as much reward to
(13:08):
it, whereas with my approachwith the fats and proteins like
if you're fat adapted, you'reketogenic and you have a bolus
of fat and protein your body isable to assimilate that you
don't really run those issuesfrom a carbohydrate variable
standpoint.
From a psychological standpoint,it's also much easier on you
too, because if I'm having abolus of fat and protein it's
still real quality food.
(13:28):
It's not like I'm eating abolus of ice cream or something
that's going to kind of playmore from a negative hedonic
factor.
So just always eating real food, whether I'm in a prep or not,
is one of the main things.
I'll definitely allow myselfmore flexibility if I'm not in a
prep to have foods that foods alittle bit hard to track
accurately, or more pleasurefoods, but they're all quality
foods, like never deviating fromthe quality component I think
(13:50):
is key.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
And you mentioned that hedonic effect and for some
listeners that might not know,this is the way that I it's been
described to me as if you'rehaving high carbohydrates.
You know that craving factor ofwanting carbohydrates could
last anywhere from 24 to 36hours.
Is that kind of the gist of it?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
yeah, I mean you crave things and then, like, you
also fixate on things like sothe more you think about food,
the more fixated you become andthe more that plays into the
emotional component as well.
Whereas, like, if you removethat decision fatigue and you
just know, okay, I'm going to beeating this, it's going to come
from these sources, it's goingto be this amount, I mean at
this time, and you can just planon it, it removes that you know
(14:31):
psychological component to somedegree.
So, like, when I'm in a youknow a prep, I'm having
something that I enjoy for thoserefeed meals.
I'm having a fat head ketopizza usually.
So it's something that's supertasty and I look forward to it.
But so it's something that'ssuper tasty and I look forward
to it, but it's not going tospike my blood sugar, blood
insulin.
It's not going to cause me thisemotional roller coaster where
it just sends me into a downwardtailspin.
(14:51):
I'm still eating everythingplanned for the right reasons,
and then I'm looking for a veryspecific response that I want to
be elicited from that.
You know, bolus of calories,but it's always good quality
stuff that I don't have to feelguilty about eating.
I think guilt with what you'reconsuming is why people have
such an issue with food, likewhen you're eating something
that you feel guilty for.
That kind of creates thisnegative feedback loop in which
(15:14):
you're trying to then make upfor it or redeem yourself, and
that is never really an issue ifyou're never having guilt
around the food you're eating.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, I brought up that psychology.
You know how are you feeling onthese refeed.
Uh, you know plan days, um, inthe pro in your programming,
cause I was a high schoolwrestler.
Uh, you know, I struggled withthe food addiction prior to
wrestling when I got intowrestling.
Love the sport, like you knowwe're talking about like every
(15:43):
athlete's going to sacrificesomething a little bit.
But you know, there would beweeks where I'm like struggling
to make weight, I'm watching howmuch water I could have I'd be
really guilty if I had somethingthat I shouldn't have had and
then the next morning I have toget up and run it off.
But I just remember when wewere allowed, you know, if we're
wrestling a team, that wasn'tas good and we really not not
everybody needed to make weight.
(16:04):
You can wrestle one way classup, you know, and the coaches
are like everybody could wrestleone way class up.
We're like, oh, yes, like thatwhole week, you know, and we all
we had to do was reallymaintain, eat just regularly.
We didn't have to cut our youknow food.
We didn't want to do it anymoreWith adapting a ketogenic diet
(16:36):
and performing on stage andyou've had some success in this
bodybuilding sphere.
How are other competitors liketaking this in where they're
like this guy's crazy?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
yeah, especially in the beginning, man, like when I
was first doing this likethey're like you can't, you
can't fill out without carbs,you can't be shredded without
carbs, you're not gonna haveenergy to train without carbs.
Like you hear all the negativenaysay stuff, but I mean, once I
started doing it and justbeating them all like they
couldn't really talk at thatpoint, you know like, uh, if
you're winning, you know procaliber shows like what, what
(17:09):
are they going to say?
Speaker 1 (17:10):
You know, yeah, I mean let let the scoreboard, you
know, look at the scoreboard.
Let the let the results speakfor itself.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, there not to take anything from them.
Like if you're competing onstage, like you're putting in
the work and I've got respectfor you, but like I'm working
with a client right now that hascompeted multiple times, coming
from that traditionalbackground of the high carbs,
high protein, low fat, and nowhe's doing a ketogenic approach,
he's like man, I feel waybetter.
I'm excited about the food thatI'm eating.
(17:39):
I'm not letting it rule my life.
I not letting it rule my life.
I've got more time with my kids, more time with my wife, more
time to excel in my career, likelike that's, that's what it's
about for me, like just makingit work within the other
components of their life asopposed to be their only
fixation, you know.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah, and this other piece too.
I think a big part of that isincorporating a lot more fat in
a ketogenic diet, especiallyaround bodybuilding or any
sports, or I think it just ingeneral.
There is this big push that wewe've just been around it for so
long and this is the narrativethat too much fat is bad for you
.
You have to lower it.
(18:15):
And then this traditional thequote unquote bro diet of
boneless, skinless chickenbreasts, very low fat.
Um, you know, I'm going to havemy vegetables and have this.
I'm going to have that whenpeople bring that down so low,
like what are some of the thingsthat you're seeing, either with
clients, that you work withother people as a result of just
(18:36):
this consistent low fat diet?
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Well, it definitely wrecks their hormones.
I mean, like there's a lot ofthings that impact hormone
health.
You know, body fat levels arecertainly one.
So once you dip below a certainbody fat, like my testosterone
tanked.
But I was also 3.9% body fat,like when you're that lean,
everything tanks realistic,sustainable body fat levels.
(19:05):
If you're at a healthy body fatand you're consuming hardly any
dietary fat, you're going tohave issues with your hormones,
whereas if you're able to keepthat dietary fat relatively high
, your hormones stay much morestable.
I mean, cholesterol is aprecursor to testosterone.
So if you're not consuming anycholesterol through the lipids
in your diet, then you're notgoing to be able to have optimal
hormonal health.
So that's one thing there forsure.
But then also, just from asatiety standpoint, I mean, like
satiety from fat is hard todeny and when you're not
(19:28):
consuming any fat you'reconsuming just massive amounts
of proteins and carbohydrates.
Satiety factor is certainly lowand a lot of times these
competitors will do a lot ofvolume foods.
So they'll have, like thesemassive salads and, you know,
breast or something.
So very minimal carbohydrate,sometimes very minimal, uh,
dietary fat, and they may have alot of food volume which kind
(19:49):
of has this allure of being full, but it's not like a deep, true
satiety.
That deep satiety comes fromhaving that ample dietary effect
coming in yeah, and when you?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
because because you basically eat the same way, you
know, and you just change yourdiet kind of, you know just the
digits around a little bit rightCan you take us kind of through
, like, when you're getting upinto that cutting phase and
getting ready for thatcompetition, how do you play?
Do you bring both the fat andthe protein down, one or the
(20:21):
other, vice versa, and thengetting out of that?
What does that look likepost-competition?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Well, I kind of go through, I mean those seven
phases, like when I'm increasingmy protein to find my protein
threshold.
At that point my fat's dropping, my protein's increasing.
Once I hit that threshold, thenI drop both fats and protein,
usually by about five or 10 gramincrements, so very gradual
changes.
I mean I may be cutting 25calories a week, so very, very
minimal Um.
And then, once I hit that, youknow, phase um four and five,
(20:51):
during the peak week section.
You know, at that point I'mdropping overall calories but
I'll have, like this bolus offat and protein on those refeed
days and that's typically about30 to 40% above baseline um,
baseline coming from both fatand protein.
And then, as I'm increasingcalories with the reverse diet,
then I'm again just ramping thatup by sometimes, but more
(21:11):
aggressively with the reversediet.
So I might be increasing by 10or 20 grams per week instead of
dropping by 5 or 10.
So there's that, but I'mbasically just finessing the
macro distribution to figure outwhat my body responds well to.
It's going to be a little bitdifferent for the individual,
but also you know what sex youare.
Generally speaking, females tendto do a little bit better, or
males tend to tolerate moreprotein, have a higher protein
(21:34):
threshold than females.
All else equals.
So there's factors at playthere, but it's all just very
gradual manipulations of five or10 gram increments.
I'm never increasing by 100grams at a time or dropping by
100 grams at a time, becausethat's what gets people in
trouble and they don't reallyknow at what point their body
would start changing and thatleaves a lot of margin for error
(21:55):
on the table.
So I kind of like to treatthings as like a minimum viable
dose.
What's the minimum change I canmake to elicit the response I'm
looking for.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
That's what makes it more sustainable change I can
make to elicit the response I'mlooking for.
That's what makes it moresustainable.
I mean, it seems like you'revery dialed in with how much
you're consuming and what macros.
You are.
Going on to this other aspectof intuitive eating, right, I've
had this conversation with alot of people and there's a
bunch of there's alwaysinformation out there, right,
(22:23):
you don't really know what tofollow.
That fat can't make you fat.
You can eat as much fat as youwant.
You're just going to.
You know it's going to come outthe other end and you won't
gain any weight.
I've found and you maybe cankind of contest this a little
bit that yeah, there is kind ofa limit of how much fat you can
have before you are starting togain weight.
(22:43):
And, um, there is kind of alimit of how much fat you can
have before you are starting togain weight.
And over time and again I wasmore of an intuitive eater.
I've slowly started to gainweight, not really changing
anything, just eating, and againeating a carnivore diet 90, 95%
carnivore fat and protein, butnot really looking at it, just
waiting until I feel full, and Ijust I gained weight like crazy
, like I just started slowlygoing up and up and up.
(23:06):
And then when I kind of lockedthat in a little bit, you know a
little bit leaner cuts, whichis a little bit cheaper, to be
honest, a little bit leaner cutsthat are cheaper uh, in 85 or
90% ground beef, the weight justboom.
It looks like a pull the weightloss lever.
Do you feel that's the same, oris there?
Are there people that can't eatas much fat?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I mean you can definitely get fat eating a keto
, carnivore diet, like there'speople that say otherwise, but
those people are wrong.
I mean you can most definitelygain fat eating just fats and
proteins.
Now I will say, if you'retrying to attack it from an
intuitive eating standpoint, itis much easier to eat
intuitively on a keto orcarnivore diet and that be
(23:47):
relatively close to within therealms of what your body
actually needs, because it's notgoing to be getting a lot of
this noise in the equation fromexcessive blood sugar and
insulin spikes brought on byincreased sugar and processed
carbohydrate consumption orthese hyper palatable foods.
So there is that going for it.
(24:08):
But yeah, you can definitelygain body fat by eating too much
dietary fat.
You can gain body fat by eatingtoo much dietary protein.
I mean I've done that before too, so all of that can come into
play for sure.
So you got to figure out youknow what the goal is, how to
make that sustainable and what,what levers you want to pull to
really get that dialed in.
I mean you can lose weight, youcan lose fat, eat nothing but
(24:30):
Twinkies as well, but that'scertainly far from optimal from
a hormonal standpoint, from ametabolic standpoint, from a
lean muscle muscle massretention standpoint.
So really kind of getting allthat dialed in to figure out
what's best is.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Is the key really kind of getting all that dialed
in to figure out what's best isthe key?
Yeah, that's a great point.
You know you got people outthere.
I mean I know to prove points,but I don't know if you've seen
the whole Oreo statin issuething.
Have you seen any of that?
Yeah, I mean I have Oreos for Xamount of time and it's going
to lower my cholesterol as muchas a statin would.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, yeah, Nick, he's a smart guy man, I've got
him.
You know, I've corresponded afew times.
He's actually coming on mypodcast next week.
Probably dive into that as alittle bit as well.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Oh yeah, that's awesome.
And this aspect of reversedieting too, and I feel like
people have been using this andI'm trying to wrap my head
around it too.
I kind of understand it, asyou're going to start to drive
your intake up slowly and thenbring it down quickly, so that
(25:32):
your metabolism is like full revand then you're going to burn
fat faster, or is that the basicconcept of it?
Speaker 2 (25:40):
kind of.
I mean, I don't typically dropcalories quickly once I'm
reached the end of my reversediet.
I'm pretty gradual, increasingand decreasing, but I spend
quite a bit of time at thathigher intake.
That that's the main thing,that's the key.
And, like, reverse dieting atits simplest level is basically
just the reverse of dieting down.
So when people think of dietingthey're typically thinking of
(26:01):
reducing caloric intake andconsumption.
The reverse of that would bethe increased caloric intake.
And the whole reason you wantto do that is your.
Your body's metabolism is veryadaptable.
So, like, when you start eatingless, it down regulates to
follow suit.
When you start eating more, itup regulates the fall suit.
Now there is definitely a pointof diminishing return.
You can't just eat, you know,10 000 calories every single day
(26:21):
and expect your metabolism tojust, you know, allow proper
metabolic function to happen.
So you don't gain weight atthat intake.
Most people likely wouldn't.
I would certainly gain weightat 10,000 calories every single
day.
But it does allow you to kindof adapt your metabolism where
it needs to be and where itshould go, and give you more
freedom to, you know, build morelean tissue as well, like when
(26:43):
you're eating at a caloricsurplus.
Yes, your metabolism is goingto be upregulated, but you're
also going to be able topartition that increased fuel
intake to hopefully build morelean tissue.
If you're demanding more leantissue be built so like if you
increase your food but thenyou're not doing anything but
sit on the couch, watch Netflixthat's probably going to mostly
go to body fat.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
I like to use the athletic couch potato too,
because there's a lot of peoplethat hit the gym.
They do like a 45-minutesession.
I crushed my workout today.
It was great.
You hit the couch, you hit theNetflix and then you, literally,
you really didn't make a dent,buddy.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yeah, no for sure, man.
I mean, like it's kind of crazy, like I'm doing a 50 mile march
this week and I'm not anendurance athlete by any means
but like preparation for that,I've been walking an extra like
two and a half hours everysingle day on top of my weight
training and it's like, man,this is not my norm, it's
kicking my butt, but it's likeyou got to do these things.
You got to move your body.
I mean, we're not designed tobe sitting all day long.
(27:42):
And when you do sit all daylong, it becomes very apparent
that your body was not meant tobe doing that.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I just had a conversation with Linda Salant,
the Carnitarian, and I wastalking about I just went to
Japan and I even ate off my dieta little bit.
I had pizza in Tokyo best pizzaI've ever had in my life.
I had sushi.
I don, I had pizza in Tokyobest pizza I've ever had in my
life.
I had sushi.
I don't even like really eatlike fish.
I had a bunch of differentthings, local cuisines, and I
(28:11):
came back and I was I think Iwas like eight pounds lighter
than when I left.
I just like still worked out,still ran a little bit, but just
the amount of walking that Idid every single day, I mean on
top of still being active, I waslike damn.
I was like this is great.
I come back from vacation.
(28:31):
Usually people are like bloatedand heavy.
I'm like dude, I'm lookingpretty good.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
That's the key to man .
You shouldn't have to deviateso far from your norm that when
you return to your norm, likeyou have to catch up, far from
your norm that when you returnto your norm, like you have to
catch up, like.
I don't understand the conceptof people that go off, that they
diet down for a vacation or acruise or whatever and they just
totally blow it and they feellike crap when they're in this
vacation cruise.
You know mode.
They sacrifice their workouts,their movement, their nutrition,
(28:59):
they gain a bunch of weightback and they're miserable the
whole time they're there Likeit's just, it's not good.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
They gain a bunch of weight back and they're
miserable the whole time they'rethere.
It's just not good.
I felt it in Japan too.
But this is kind of a telltalesign for me when I know the diet
works.
If I go off of the diet, if Ieat pizza, if I eat anything, if
I have some beers with friends,I immediately the next morning
(29:24):
do not feel good at all.
I don't know if you have thesame effect if you kind of sway
off a little bit.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
It's been about nine years since I've swayed off, so
I don't.
It's been a while.
It's foggy in my mind, but if Iever like, just go.
But it's interesting, man likeI can have a freaking rotisserie
chicken and I'll recognizewhat's optimal and not for my
body.
If I eat too much lean proteinin a sitting then I don't feel
as good the next day when I wakeup.
(29:48):
So I've got it finessed in thatsense.
If I go off in that regard, Ican tell a difference.
But I don't even want to knowwhat I would feel like if I had
a big pizza or something.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, dude, you are freaking dialed in man, yeah,
yeah.
And speaking about having goodnutritious food, let's talk
about some keto bricks hereFirst of all, like if anybody
told you you're going to haveyour own, you know supplement
bar, would you have believedthem?
Speaker 2 (30:14):
I've always been entrepreneurial in spirit, so I
wouldn't have put it past me todo something like that.
But I made the bricks for myown personal consumption back in
2017, so I never planned onthem being a product.
It just kind of happened towork out that way and I love it.
I love that I have these.
I produce them in-house, I meanI love where it's become or
(30:34):
what's come of it.
But yeah, I would not haveguessed that what was happening
at the time would turn into whatit is now and what was the?
Speaker 1 (30:43):
you know what was this gap that you're trying to
fill in the ketogenic space,where you're like I need to.
I need to push this out to themasses.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah, I mean when I was doing my first prep with
keto back in 2017, I mean, therewere no keto products at that
time.
There was nothing that I wasaware of.
There was certainly nothingthat was with the quality of
ingredients that I was lookingfor for a competition prep and I
just wanted to streamline allof my prep endeavors.
I wanted to streamline my mealprep.
I wanted to streamline mynutrition needs.
I wanted to find a quality fatsource and there wasn't really
(31:11):
any of that out there, so I justset out to make my own and once
I did, I was documenting mywhole prep on YouTube and people
kept asking about you know thebricks?
Hey, what are those?
What can I get them?
What's the recipe?
And I just kind of wrote it offand said, oh, it's nothing, I'm
just using this to hit mymacros.
But then we decided to roll oursleeves up and turn it into a
business and, lo and behold, itjust took off.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
That's so cool, that's awesome.
I had what was the new flavoryou guys brought to Hack your
Health so we had our firsttallow-based flavor there.
So peanut butter tallow timewas what we got.
Okay, that was.
I mean, they're all good.
That was different.
I remember I think it was abanana one too.
I really enjoyed.
So all the stuff, they'reawesome, they're really good,
convenient and you're right, Iwould say, even in the space of
(31:56):
keto there are these.
Everything has keto on the labelnowadays and that's where it
gets it.
As a consumer, it gets reallykind of.
It gets hard to kind of figureout what is actually good and
what's not.
Vinny Tortorich I don't know ifyou're familiar with he just
came out with that documentaryDirty Keto where he kind of
(32:16):
dives into some of thesupplements and things like that
.
But it's just really good toyou know.
Know that.
You know there's people outthere that are going to really
go for the high quality stuff.
You know, because I can go downthe street and get 15 things
that say Atkinson it, keto,whatever, but if you turn the
label around, I want, I can'tpronounce half the stuff and
then two, it's literally alaundry list.
(32:37):
It goes all the way downhalfway of the package.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, I'm all for simplifying ingredients.
I want it to be the highestquality, minimal, clean
ingredients, and that's whywe've kept production in-house
from day one.
I want to be able to overseeall that directly.
And you're absolutely right,man, there's so many packaged
goods out there that I would noteat.
I wouldn't feed it to my dogmuch less.
You know, I don't want that inmy house.
I got a two-year-old kid nowand like a lot of kids I mean
(33:04):
you look at what they're servingkids and like the child aisle
in the grocery stores, like forbaby food and stuff, like it's
horrendous man, like there's nonutrition in there and like,
especially during that chaptertheir lives where their brain's
developing, their body'sdeveloping like you want to give
them everything that they needand you're not going to find it
in a carrot celery puree that'sgot a whole bunch of sugar in
there.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Yeah, I mean you're seeing that there's different
formulas now that are includinghigh fructose corn syrup inside
of the formula.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah, it's.
I mean everything's got highfructose corn syrup.
Man, it's ridiculous, it'slaughable how bad our food
system is it really is.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
You know you go to different countries.
Uh, if you have see, you knowdifferent american products on
the shelf.
There's some of them havewarning labels.
There's a legit warning labelsaying like this is dangerous
and it's a freaking box ofcereal yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cereal's not even food, man,it's not no bueno it is no bueno
, uh, and and how is that now?
(34:00):
Because you're a newer dad,right?
Or I could be wrong there.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, yeah, he just turned two about a month ago now
.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Okay, how's that?
In preparation, are you feedinghim a little bit differently as
he's starting to get older?
Like what are the kinds ofthings Cause this is topic
actually has come up a lot ofpeople who follow this diet and
are either in relationships withsomebody who isn't, or maybe
getting on board or expecting afamily.
I'm trying to figure out.
Okay, like what are we going tobe feeding them when they're
(34:30):
this age, when they're young,and then also when they go off
to school?
If they do go off to school,like what you know, how are you
going to navigate that?
Speaker 2 (34:38):
and we've been pretty much dialed in with him from
the get-go.
So, like my wife's also keto,she was keto all throughout her
pregnancy, um, all throughoutthe you know, postpartum
breastfeeding, all that stuff,uh, so he was getting the
highest quality upregulatednutrition and breast milk from
her and what she was consuming.
And now that he is eating food,I I mean he's like his first
meal like real food.
(34:59):
Meal was, I think, like a bigold beef bone knuckle with
collagen and I mean somethingthat we had braised.
Like he's eating the real deal.
Like he eats a lot of eggs, alot of meat, avocado, you know,
good quality whole fat dairy.
Like he eats the same thingsthat we eat basically like no
deviation from it.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
That's, that's awesome.
Yeah, I I don't I have no kids,but I I just know like that's
something that's, you know, whenwe have to teach our kids how
to navigate through the world,because once they go out and
they're gonna be on their own,like it's our job as parents to
educate them, but they're gonnahave to be making these
decisions out on their own.
There's so many things that arestacked up against them.
(35:41):
You know they're starting.
The starting line is here.
They're starting all the way,you know, a hundred yards back
in the world, because everythingyou turn on the TV, any
advertisement, the normalcy ofhigh sugary foods, it's like, oh
, it's a treat, treat, theyshould have it.
I I think that's we really haveto look into that and kind of
(36:01):
get away from that.
But it, that is a, that is anabsolute uphill battle.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
No, no, any way you look at that's an absolute
uphill battle and it's got acompounding effect too, because
like there's this epigenetic uhyou know concept that takes
place, that basically what weconsume impacts not only our
kids, but like three generations, four generations deep.
So like we can't just eat forour own health anymore.
We have to take responsibilityfor us and our lineage, and that
(36:28):
does not mean eating HotPockets and, you know, cereal by
any means.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
I've heard you talk about this and I was wondering
if you can kind of speak aboutit, about that you think balance
in life is bullshit.
Yeah, Can you kind of elaborate?
Speaker 2 (36:47):
I'm going to put that on a t-shirt at some point for
sure.
But yeah, the notion ofwork-life balance has never
really sat well with me becauseby definition, if something is
balanced it's an equilibrium,which means it's zeroed out, and
I don't want anything in mylife to be at zero.
And then if you look at like abalance beam, like a
teeter-totter, you know ifsomething's going up, something
else is going down.
I don't ever want that to bethe case either, but I've tried
(37:09):
to adopt this mentality oftensegrity, which is basically
an architectural you know wordthat means tensional integrity.
You know word that meanstensional integrity.
So you have these things thatyou know have tension placed on
them, from the other componentsof your life, for instance, but
that tension creates morerigidity, more overall structure
and resilience and everythingthat's in my life I can pretty
(37:32):
much separate into five primarypillars.
So you got health, wealth,relationships, spirituality and
self-development, and as long aseverything I'm doing can be put
into one of those buckets andbe symbiotic in nature to
everything else, then in theoryeverything grows and develops.
And there's certainly times inmy life, certain chapters, where
one thing may be getting a lotmore focused than the other.
(37:53):
But at the end of the day,everything is still improving.
Like when I was going throughmy five competition preps last
year, that was definitelyprioritizing the health
component of my life, but it wasputting a our kid with us you
know she's meal prepping for meLike like a lot, a lot of
relationships would would wouldfind that very difficult, but we
(38:23):
became stronger because of it.
So everything that I'm workingon builds the overall resilience
of everything in my life, whichis is the key.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah, man that's a good.
That's a good way to put it,you know, and time under tension
is going to make you stronger.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, 100% man.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
And speaking of strength, let's talk about when
you're outside of competition.
What does your strengthtraining routine kind of look
like?
I'm sure it's different incompetition, but when you're not
really training for anythingbut just for life and to kind of
stay strong, what does thatlook like on the week?
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Man, I've been doing like a full body split for the
past two years now and I'vereally been digging that.
I enjoy it.
It works well for my schedulebeing kind of all over the board
right now.
So the main difference betweenin-season and out-of-season
training is just the intensityof the progressive overloads.
When I'm eating at a surplus ina building phase, I'm able to
(39:17):
push the envelope with theweight training a little bit
more, be a little bit moreintense, increase the volume, go
a little bit heavier.
When I'm in a cut, I'm more so,trying to just preserve the
strength markers that I'vereached up to that point so that
I can preserve as much leantissue as possible.
But when I'm in a buildingphase, I'm just, you know, going
in and trying to hit new PRs asfrequently as I can.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
And I was wondering about this question too that I
have is, you know, for I'mlooking at like power lifters,
right, they have thisprogressive over.
There are a few ways they cantrain.
Right, they're going to have aprogressive overload.
They're going to say, okay, myweight that I want to lift at
competition is X, and I'm goingto backtrack the weeks and then
(39:59):
figure out where's my startingdate, and this is kind of
figuring how much I'm going toprogress and when I'm going to
progress.
Or they can step or they canwave their programming, however
it is.
But for you know, you guys,it's the aesthetic that you're
getting to.
So how do you kind of pinpoint,you know, the weights that you
need to be getting at, if theoutcome isn't the weight, it's
(40:21):
the look?
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, well, it's not like like I'm never judged on
show day based off of how much Ican deadlift, like the judges
don't care, but they're lookingfor really defined and built and
proportional, symmetrical, youknow, back density.
So if I'm lacking in thatdepartment then I need to be
doing more deadlifts to buildthat up.
So it's kind of more like anart form.
So like, if you look atpowerlifting, it's like
(40:44):
mathematics.
Okay, so what do I need to doto be getting the top total, you
know, weight that I can acrossmy three primary lifts squats,
deadlift and bench press andit's just math, it's numbers.
When you look at bodybuilding,it's more like an art form than
a mathematical form.
So like if I'm lagging in myrear delts, then I need to
(41:06):
incorporate some reverse fliesand some rear delt work and
basically act as a sculptor andadd more clay to that
masterpiece, so to speak.
And I just increase the volume,the training intensity, the
types of exercise I'm doing totarget that lagging body part,
um, but that typically equatesto getting stronger with those
movements, those exercises.
(41:26):
But I'm never judged, like yousaid, off of those, those
weights.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Yeah, I mean, true, you guys are like artists Like I
go out there fricking likechiseled it's, it's, it's, it's
a it's a big feat, man, I think,and it's.
It's takes a lot for somebodyto step into that realm and it's
a lot of discipline, a lot oftime, a lot of commitment and
you also have a new course and Iwas kind of talking offline how
I was seeing it on Instagram alittle bit.
(41:52):
You know, for somebody that'slooking to get in some.
You know ketogenic orbodybuilding, you know who is
this course for and you knowwhat can somebody expect when
they register for it.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
So this course is basically those seven phases
that I outlined earlier.
It's that on a much morecomprehensive level.
As far as who it would bedesigned for, I would say it'd
be designed for currentbodybuilders that are following
traditional conventional brodiet or anything other than keto
but want to adopt a ketogeniclife towards their prep
(42:25):
endeavors.
Or for people that arewell-versed in keto or low carb
or carnivore but have hit aplateau and want to take things
to the next level.
Maybe they've been doingintuitive eating with a
carnivore approach or ketoapproach, but they're stuck in a
way to composition.
They need to learn how tomanipulate their macros, track
their intake and get that dialedin.
Either of those avatars wouldfind this course beneficial.
(42:48):
It's got 150 plus video modules.
It's super comprehensive, butit's also got a whole bunch of
discounts and partnership brandsin there.
We've got our own tribe privatecommunity in there with I do
weekly live calls.
We do challenges in there.
I've got my own custom built AIsoftware in there that people
can use as a dashboard to tracktheir metrics over time.
(43:10):
I got my own workout app inthere.
Like it's, it's becoming mylife's work worth of content in
one comprehensive place that I'mjust going to keep adding
content to over time, so I'msuper proud of it.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
That's all.
How do you keep up with?
Author podcasting?
You know keto bricks and this.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Man, I don't even know.
I feel like I don't know that Ican say that I'm keeping up
with it all.
I feel like sometimes I'm justscrambling, but everything I'm
working on I'm passionate aboutdoing, which makes things easier
, for sure.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Oh yeah, man, they're labors of love, right yeah,
100%.
And you know, as you'reprobably already thinking ahead,
once you probably finish oneproject, you're probably on to
the next.
You know, just kind of seeingyour trend here, what's some
things that might be coming upthat you're excited about,
whether it be new products orevents coming up.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I guess we got some really cool new flavors for Keto
Brick in the pipeline that aretallow-based.
I'm really focused on justgetting this course continually
polished and dialed in.
Like I am making this, I've gota bad habit of just adding more
things to my plate, and Ireally just want to refine and
polish all the things that Icurrently have on my plate
before I add more.
So really just sinking my teethinto this course and getting it
(44:24):
like optimized and dialed inand just better with every
single week that passes.
That's the main things, but I'malso hosting another
bodybuilding competition nextyear, so I'm going to be a
promoter.
So I'll be hosting my owncompetition, which is pretty
exciting.
So always something new coming,though, for sure.
Yeah, where's that going to betaking place?
It's going to be in NorthwestArkansas, so it's going to be
(44:44):
called the Natural State Savagesbecause Arkansas is the natural
state.
So it's going to be a WNBF INBFcompetition, and anybody is
welcome to come compete.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
That's awesome, that's great, and if people are
interested in kind of connectingwith you, where can they find
you?
Via Instagram or website?
Speaker 2 (45:05):
So I'm Keto Savage on all socials.
This course is KetoBodybuilding, so
ketobodybuildingcom for that andthen ketobrickcom for the
bricks Awesome.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Well, man, this was great.
I got to learn a lot about youknow bodybuilding, which I
didn't know, a ton of everything, and I'm excited to put this
out and I'm sure the listenerswill be too.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Hey, man, always a pleasure.
I love talking about this stuff.
I appreciate you bringing me on.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Thank you all for joining us.
If you enjoyed this episode,don't forget to subscribe, like
and share.
See you all next time on thePrimal Foundations podcast.
Welcome to the Primal Foundations podcast.
I'm your host, tony Pascola.
We will dive into what Ibelieve are the four central
foundations you need for ahealthy lifestyle Strength,
nutrition, movement and recovery.
Get ready to unlock your pathto optimal health and enjoy the
episode.
Our guest today is Robert Sykes, a natural ketogenic
(00:27):
bodybuilder.
Author, podcast host andentrepreneur.
As the CEO and founder of KetoSavage, robert has dedicated his
career to helping athletes andbodybuilders optimize their
performance through specializedcoaching, training and nutrition
.
He also is the mastermindbehind Keto Bricks, a company
that produces top tier ketogenicmeal replacement bars designed
(00:48):
for efficient, high qualitynutrition.
Robert Sykes, welcome to thepodcast.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Hey man, thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be chatting withyou today.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Absolutely.
I'm super excited to have someconversation with you.
It was really cool to meet youat Hack your Health.
I got to kind of chop it upwith you a little bit.
I got to eat some keto bricks,which were really good.
I really enjoyed your.
I was in the back of the panelsession of the food addiction
(01:16):
and I really enjoyed that whole.
Just basically, it was like asmorgasbord of different people
with different backgrounds anddifferent perspectives of food
addiction.
I thought we were tackling somereally good topics.
The place was packed.
It was a jam-packed room.
It was very unfortunate.
They're like five minutes andeverybody was like, oh man, we
(01:39):
could have been there at leastanother hour easily.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, I think so.
That was an interesting one.
That was the first time I'vebeen on a food addiction panel
per se, but um, the otherpanelists and I we had there was
definitely a difference in ourapproaches to how we treated, uh
, disordered eating tendencies.
So he has an interestingdialogue for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Took a lot of good nuggets walking out of that room
.
And today I want to start withyour, your backstory, to give
kind of listeners a little bitmore information about you.
You know you're a bodybuilder,entrepreneur, all these things
but I want to kind of focus onwhat inspired your journey into
bodybuilding and what motivatedyou to adopt a ketogenic diet
for your approach.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Man, I was 115 pounds when I was in high school.
I was, I was scrawny, I was, Iwas super self-conscious,
probably, started getting intolifting to I don't know make
amends with the ladies orsomething, as one does right
meaner.
(02:40):
So I tried to emulate that.
He showed me how to do a bicepcurl and the rest was history.
Man, I just fell in love withdoing something where I could
legitimately see the fruits ofmy labor paying off.
Like that was very fulfillingfor me.
So I started lifting, um, justwith pieces of equipment I had
laying around the house I wasusing.
Like my first bench was a, agreen igloo ice chest, uh, and
(03:00):
some you know crappy weightsthat I got from Walmart or
something Very, very basic stuff.
But I fell in love with it, man.
I fell in love with the activetraining and then seeing my body
and physique develop from it.
And I did that.
I bulked up to like 230 pounds.
So I was pretty hefty and I'monly like 5'7", 5'8", so not a
good 230.
But I thought I was going tocompete at 200.
(03:26):
Dieted down for my first show,lost 80 pounds in 12 weeks and
won the show.
But it was like not healthy atall.
I developed a bunch of eatingdisorders in the process and I
knew that there had to be abetter way, a more sustainable
way with nutrition.
So I played around with a bunchof different diets and started
doing carbohydrate backloading,which was kind of keto during
the day, and then really highglycemic index carbs at night,
(03:46):
and I felt better without thecarbs.
So I just phased those outentirely.
And this was all before keto waspopular, so I didn't even know
what keto was Like.
This was not something peoplewere talking about.
But I started dabbling aroundwith carb backloading minus the
carbs and recognized that I feltreally good with that.
My relationship with foodimproved, my performance
improved, I got really lean andmy inflammation was
(04:08):
significantly reduced.
So for me, that was a prettygood win-win.
So I decided to do a prep withthat approach in 2017, got my
pro card in a differentfederation there and didn't have
to struggle with thisdisordered eating tendencies.
So I pretty much hadn't lookedback since then.
Man, I've been doing keto nowfor close to 10 years and I've
been coaching people and wentpro in a different federation
(04:30):
this past year and it's justbrought me my most sustainable
physique and the most healthiestman at possible, so I'm a big
advocate for it.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
And, if you wouldn't mind, kind of take us through.
You know those eating issuesthat you had and or disorders,
Because when we talk aboutbodybuilding, right, some people
would say bodybuilding isunhealthy.
You know what are your thoughtson the sport Like, does it have
a negative health benefit?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
to it.
It certainly can.
Man, like a lot of people, likebeing sub 5% body fat, is not
healthy.
Like you, wouldn't want tosustain that for any length of
time at all.
I think the mental benefit thatI get, the psychological
benefit that I get, from pushingmy body to that extreme
provides more, a net benefitoverall, but simply from a
(05:20):
physical standpoint, gettingthat lean is not healthy.
From a physical standpoint,getting that lean is not healthy
.
However, having the tools atyour disposal to know how to
change your body composition,how to build more muscle, how to
lose body fat, how to eat andmanipulate your nutrition
accordingly, is incrediblyhealthy and for that reason I
think anybody would benefit fromthe principles of bodybuilding,
whether they plan on steppingon stage and competing or not is
(05:42):
irrelevant.
Like anybody, we're all thesame species.
So, like what works for us isall relevant.
Again, whether you plan oncompeting or not is irrelevant.
Like anybody, we're all thesame species.
So, like, what works for us isall relevant Again, whether you
plan on competing or not.
So taking those skill sets andkind of implementing into a
healthy, sustainable life is keyFor me with the disordered
eating tendencies man like I'mafter my first show when I lost
those 80 pounds in 12 weeks.
I like sacrificed so much food,starved myself this was way
(06:05):
before keto, doing everythingthe wrong way, and I recognized
that I pretty much just threwaway my identity in an instant.
Like I went after the show wasover.
I went and we all went to RedLobster and I ate everything and
like I literally gained 20pounds back in 24 hours.
Like it was not a good thing.
I was super sick afterwards andthat pretty much was just the
norm.
I did that for probably threeyears.
(06:26):
Afterwards I've got pictures ofme going to IHOP and literally
ordering one of everything thatyou could get on the menu,
eating it all and then walkingout in the parking lot and
puking.
That was just my norm andthat's not atypical in the
bodybuilding space.
A lot of people do that andthat's just not healthy,
obviously, so had to had to finda a more sustainable approach
(06:47):
that was, you know, stillallowing me the benefit of the
sport, but was healthy overallthat seems like you're taking,
you know, those tools of mindsetand discipline and all those
and carrying that over into reallife.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Uh, you know, and every sport, too, has its own
sacrifices, right, like footballplayers that you know
sacrificing when they step onthe field.
Soccer players, you know ifyou're going to be stepping
cause.
Bodybuilding is a sport, right,going and putting yourself in
these really hard situations,but you seem to kind of find
your way or groove and to do it,you know, a little bit
healthier.
(07:22):
Could you kind of take usthrough?
You know, in today's day, likeyou know you've kind of learned
these lessons.
You're on keto, you're feelingreally great.
Like, can you take us throughthis?
The building, you know inpeaking phases and what you do
to get ready for competition.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah.
So there's, first of all, youhave to kind of define it as a
building or cutting phase.
Like they want to work with meas a client and I say, okay,
what's your, what's your maingoal?
And they say, okay, I want tobuild muscle and lose body fat.
That's what everybody says.
You know, the thing is thosekind of compete for another.
In order to optimize buildingmuscle, you need to be in a
caloric surplus.
You need to optimize losing fat, you ideally need to be in a
(08:09):
caloric deficit.
You can do both simultaneously,but you're going to be kind of
stuck in purgatory limbo land ifyou try.
So having a defined buildingand cutting phase is key.
And then spending more time ina building phase than in a
cutting phase is also key.
And the idea of maintenance iskind of a myth.
Like there's no such thing asmaintenance.
You're either getting better oryou're getting worse.
So knowing that and recognizingthat at the onset is very
important.
And then, when it comes to kindof stringing that into a
sustainable format or framework,what I've done basically is
(08:33):
develop this seven-phaseprotocol.
So phase one for me is justestablishing what my actual
baseline is.
So what is my baseline?
Caloric intake?
You know I'll track, that.
I'll figure out what myconsumption is that allows my
body to stay at the samecomposition and weight
relatively, you know seamlesslyand then decide if that's a
(08:56):
healthy point to start a cut ora fat loss phase.
To begin with, a lot of peopleare chronically under eating,
which means you know they're noteating enough food at the onset
.
They don't have the caloricrunway to taper more calories
and drop body fat for asustained period of time anyway.
So they need to kind ofupregulate their metabolic and
hormonal pathways to have ahealthy starting position.
So phase one, pretty muchestablishing that baseline make
sure it's a good baseline andI'll typically start my clients
(09:19):
at higher fat ratio at the onsetto basically just optimize
their fat metabolism from aketogenic standpoint.
And then from there we moveinto phase two, which is
increasing protein and droppingdietary fat to figure out what
their unique protein thresholdis.
There's been a lot of debate onprotein right now how much is
ideal, what's too much, what'stoo little.
But you can't really guess onthat.
(09:41):
You need to test.
You got to figure out what yourbody responds well to and what
it doesn't.
So if you start low with thathigh fat ratio and then titrate
the protein up and the fat downweek after week, you'll be able
to definitively know what youractual protein threshold is and
you can get that dialed in.
Phase three is dropping both fatand protein simultaneously, so
overall calories are dropping,and that kind of goes for
(10:03):
several months typically whenI'm in a cutting fat loss phase.
So overall calories aredropping, both fats and proteins
are dropping and I'm justgetting leaner at that point.
And phase four is kind of whereI start introducing these
ketogenic caloric refeeds.
So when your calories aredropping, having a bolus of
calories from both fat andprotein to kind of help with the
metabolism, help with thehormones, help with the
(10:24):
psychological component of beingin a deficit, is really
important.
So I'll bring in these refeedsto kind of make that, you know,
more sustainable there towardsthe tail end.
And then I also, from acompetitive standpoint, I use
those refeeds to kind of testout my peak weeks for what I
would do, you know, prior tostepping on stage.
Phase five is the actual peakweek itself and if you're not a
(10:45):
competitor, that would be like,say, people wanting to lean out
for a wedding.
You know that would be the weekof the wedding, you want to try
and peak for that event or aphoto shoot, or whatever the
case may be.
Um, but you need to have like alike a climax to the cutting
phase, or else it just goes onindefinitely and you wind up
chronically under reading, whichis no bueno.
Having that period there, thatapex to the cut, that's when
(11:06):
I'll manipulate electrolytes alittle bit, I'll manipulate
those refeeds to peak for thatspecific event.
And then, phase six, I starttransitioning into a reverse
stat, so from that depth of mycalories I start bringing my
food intake up and actuallyincreasing my intake over weeks
time, several weeks time, andbut I'm still including those
refeeds that have brought intothe equation from phase four.
(11:29):
And then phase seven isbasically figuring out what that
new baseline is, once you'vekind of reached your, you know,
caloric maintenance or slightsurplus, ideally in a slight
surplus that you can focus thenon building muscle and then
basically staying at that slightsurplus for significantly more
time than you were in a deficit,so that you're able to build
more muscle.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Uh, focused then on building muscle and then
basically staying at that slightsurplus for significantly more
time than you were in a deficit,so that you're able to build
more muscle over that length oftime yeah, that's uh, I mean
it's a smart way to approach itbecause for the most of the
people who I've known or havespoken with that you know, have
done bodybuilder, it's more orless huge swings like these low
(12:05):
fat diets, chicken broccoli, youknow, white rice, typical stuff
, uh, and then it's just like avery, very drastic progression
downward of cutting out calories.
How psycho.
How is it psychologically Doyou feel for the, your clients,
for refeeds?
Uh, you know.
And and how does that affecttheir?
Um, you know competition?
Well, I don't do carbohydraterefeeds, you know, and how does
that affect their?
(12:25):
You know competition.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Well, I don't do carbohydrate refeeds.
That's an appreciating factorwith me.
Like, a lot of people will do acarb refeed and if they're
following a standard Americandiet or like a bro diet, they
might do, you know, the normalmeals and have this massive
bolus of you know, I was talkingto one guy that's going to be
having a thousand thousand gramsof carbohydrates on his refeed.
Like to me, that's just notnecessary.
(12:46):
It's a huge variable to theequation because, like from a
bodybuilding standpoint, if youoverdo your carbohydrates, you
run the risk of spilling overand washing out the definition
that you do have, especially ifyou don't time your electrolytes
properly, don't have the rightamount of sodium or the right
amount of fluid in your system.
It's just a really unnecessaryrisk without as much reward to
(13:08):
it, whereas with my approachwith the fats and proteins like
if you're fat adapted, you'reketogenic and you have a bolus
of fat and protein your body isable to assimilate that you
don't really run those issuesfrom a carbohydrate variable
standpoint.
From a psychological standpoint,it's also much easier on you
too, because if I'm having abolus of fat and protein it's
still real quality food.
(13:28):
It's not like I'm eating abolus of ice cream or something
that's going to kind of playmore from a negative hedonic
factor.
So just always eating real food, whether I'm in a prep or not,
is one of the main things.
I'll definitely allow myselfmore flexibility if I'm not in a
prep to have foods that foods alittle bit hard to track
accurately, or more pleasurefoods, but they're all quality
foods, like never deviating fromthe quality component I think
(13:50):
is key.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
And you mentioned that hedonic effect and for some
listeners that might not know,this is the way that I it's been
described to me as if you'rehaving high carbohydrates.
You know that craving factor ofwanting carbohydrates could
last anywhere from 24 to 36hours.
Is that kind of the gist of it?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
yeah, I mean you crave things and then, like, you
also fixate on things like sothe more you think about food,
the more fixated you become andthe more that plays into the
emotional component as well.
Whereas, like, if you removethat decision fatigue and you
just know, okay, I'm going to beeating this, it's going to come
from these sources, it's goingto be this amount, I mean at
this time, and you can just planon it, it removes that you know
(14:31):
psychological component to somedegree.
So, like, when I'm in a youknow a prep, I'm having
something that I enjoy for thoserefeed meals.
I'm having a fat head ketopizza usually.
So it's something that's supertasty and I look forward to it.
But so it's something that'ssuper tasty and I look forward
to it, but it's not going tospike my blood sugar, blood
insulin.
It's not going to cause me thisemotional roller coaster where
it just sends me into a downwardtailspin.
(14:51):
I'm still eating everythingplanned for the right reasons,
and then I'm looking for a veryspecific response that I want to
be elicited from that.
You know, bolus of calories,but it's always good quality
stuff that I don't have to feelguilty about eating.
I think guilt with what you'reconsuming is why people have
such an issue with food, likewhen you're eating something
that you feel guilty for.
That kind of creates thisnegative feedback loop in which
(15:14):
you're trying to then make upfor it or redeem yourself, and
that is never really an issue ifyou're never having guilt
around the food you're eating.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, I brought up that psychology.
You know how are you feeling onthese refeed.
Uh, you know plan days, um, inthe pro in your programming,
cause I was a high schoolwrestler.
Uh, you know, I struggled withthe food addiction prior to
wrestling when I got intowrestling.
Love the sport, like you knowwe're talking about like every
(15:43):
athlete's going to sacrificesomething a little bit.
But you know, there would beweeks where I'm like struggling
to make weight, I'm watching howmuch water I could have I'd be
really guilty if I had somethingthat I shouldn't have had and
then the next morning I have toget up and run it off.
But I just remember when wewere allowed, you know, if we're
wrestling a team, that wasn'tas good and we really not not
everybody needed to make weight.
(16:04):
You can wrestle one way classup, you know, and the coaches
are like everybody could wrestleone way class up.
We're like, oh, yes, like thatwhole week, you know, and we all
we had to do was reallymaintain, eat just regularly.
We didn't have to cut our youknow food.
We didn't want to do it anymoreWith adapting a ketogenic diet
(16:36):
and performing on stage andyou've had some success in this
bodybuilding sphere.
How are other competitors liketaking this in where they're
like this guy's crazy?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
yeah, especially in the beginning, man, like when I
was first doing this likethey're like you can't, you
can't fill out without carbs,you can't be shredded without
carbs, you're not gonna haveenergy to train without carbs.
Like you hear all the negativenaysay stuff, but I mean, once I
started doing it and justbeating them all like they
couldn't really talk at thatpoint, you know like, uh, if
you're winning, you know procaliber shows like what, what
(17:09):
are they going to say?
Speaker 1 (17:10):
You know, yeah, I mean let let the scoreboard, you
know, look at the scoreboard.
Let the let the results speakfor itself.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah, there not to take anything from them.
Like if you're competing onstage, like you're putting in
the work and I've got respectfor you, but like I'm working
with a client right now that hascompeted multiple times, coming
from that traditionalbackground of the high carbs,
high protein, low fat, and nowhe's doing a ketogenic approach,
he's like man, I feel waybetter.
I'm excited about the food thatI'm eating.
(17:39):
I'm not letting it rule my life.
I not letting it rule my life.
I've got more time with my kids, more time with my wife, more
time to excel in my career, likelike that's, that's what it's
about for me, like just makingit work within the other
components of their life asopposed to be their only
fixation, you know.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah, and this other piece too.
I think a big part of that isincorporating a lot more fat in
a ketogenic diet, especiallyaround bodybuilding or any
sports, or I think it just ingeneral.
There is this big push that wewe've just been around it for so
long and this is the narrativethat too much fat is bad for you
.
You have to lower it.
(18:15):
And then this traditional thequote unquote bro diet of
boneless, skinless chickenbreasts, very low fat.
Um, you know, I'm going to havemy vegetables and have this.
I'm going to have that whenpeople bring that down so low,
like what are some of the thingsthat you're seeing, either with
clients, that you work withother people as a result of just
(18:36):
this consistent low fat diet?
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Well, it definitely wrecks their hormones.
I mean, like there's a lot ofthings that impact hormone
health.
You know, body fat levels arecertainly one.
So once you dip below a certainbody fat, like my testosterone
tanked.
But I was also 3.9% body fat,like when you're that lean,
everything tanks realistic,sustainable body fat levels.
(19:05):
If you're at a healthy body fatand you're consuming hardly any
dietary fat, you're going tohave issues with your hormones,
whereas if you're able to keepthat dietary fat relatively high
, your hormones stay much morestable.
I mean, cholesterol is aprecursor to testosterone.
So if you're not consuming anycholesterol through the lipids
in your diet, then you're notgoing to be able to have optimal
hormonal health.
So that's one thing there forsure.
But then also, just from asatiety standpoint, I mean, like
satiety from fat is hard todeny and when you're not
(19:28):
consuming any fat you'reconsuming just massive amounts
of proteins and carbohydrates.
Satiety factor is certainly lowand a lot of times these
competitors will do a lot ofvolume foods.
So they'll have, like thesemassive salads and, you know,
breast or something.
So very minimal carbohydrate,sometimes very minimal, uh,
dietary fat, and they may have alot of food volume which kind
(19:49):
of has this allure of being full, but it's not like a deep, true
satiety.
That deep satiety comes fromhaving that ample dietary effect
coming in yeah, and when you?
Speaker 1 (19:59):
because because you basically eat the same way, you
know, and you just change yourdiet kind of, you know just the
digits around a little bit rightCan you take us kind of through
, like, when you're getting upinto that cutting phase and
getting ready for thatcompetition, how do you play?
Do you bring both the fat andthe protein down, one or the
(20:21):
other, vice versa, and thengetting out of that?
What does that look likepost-competition?
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Well, I kind of go through, I mean those seven
phases, like when I'm increasingmy protein to find my protein
threshold.
At that point my fat's dropping, my protein's increasing.
Once I hit that threshold, thenI drop both fats and protein,
usually by about five or 10 gramincrements, so very gradual
changes.
I mean I may be cutting 25calories a week, so very, very
minimal Um.
And then, once I hit that, youknow, phase um four and five,
(20:51):
during the peak week section.
You know, at that point I'mdropping overall calories but
I'll have, like this bolus offat and protein on those refeed
days and that's typically about30 to 40% above baseline um,
baseline coming from both fatand protein.
And then, as I'm increasingcalories with the reverse diet,
then I'm again just ramping thatup by sometimes, but more
(21:11):
aggressively with the reversediet.
So I might be increasing by 10or 20 grams per week instead of
dropping by 5 or 10.
So there's that, but I'mbasically just finessing the
macro distribution to figure outwhat my body responds well to.
It's going to be a little bitdifferent for the individual,
but also you know what sex youare.
Generally speaking, females tendto do a little bit better, or
males tend to tolerate moreprotein, have a higher protein
(21:34):
threshold than females.
All else equals.
So there's factors at playthere, but it's all just very
gradual manipulations of five or10 gram increments.
I'm never increasing by 100grams at a time or dropping by
100 grams at a time, becausethat's what gets people in
trouble and they don't reallyknow at what point their body
would start changing and thatleaves a lot of margin for error
(21:55):
on the table.
So I kind of like to treatthings as like a minimum viable
dose.
What's the minimum change I canmake to elicit the response I'm
looking for.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
That's what makes it more sustainable change I can
make to elicit the response I'mlooking for.
That's what makes it moresustainable.
I mean, it seems like you'revery dialed in with how much
you're consuming and what macros.
You are.
Going on to this other aspectof intuitive eating, right, I've
had this conversation with alot of people and there's a
bunch of there's alwaysinformation out there, right,
(22:23):
you don't really know what tofollow.
That fat can't make you fat.
You can eat as much fat as youwant.
You're just going to.
You know it's going to come outthe other end and you won't
gain any weight.
I've found and you maybe cankind of contest this a little
bit that yeah, there is kind ofa limit of how much fat you can
have before you are starting togain weight.
(22:43):
And, um, there is kind of alimit of how much fat you can
have before you are starting togain weight.
And over time and again I wasmore of an intuitive eater.
I've slowly started to gainweight, not really changing
anything, just eating, and againeating a carnivore diet 90, 95%
carnivore fat and protein, butnot really looking at it, just
waiting until I feel full, and Ijust I gained weight like crazy
, like I just started slowlygoing up and up and up.
(23:06):
And then when I kind of lockedthat in a little bit, you know a
little bit leaner cuts, whichis a little bit cheaper, to be
honest, a little bit leaner cutsthat are cheaper uh, in 85 or
90% ground beef, the weight justboom.
It looks like a pull the weightloss lever.
Do you feel that's the same, oris there?
Are there people that can't eatas much fat?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I mean you can definitely get fat eating a keto
, carnivore diet, like there'speople that say otherwise, but
those people are wrong.
I mean you can most definitelygain fat eating just fats and
proteins.
Now I will say, if you'retrying to attack it from an
intuitive eating standpoint, itis much easier to eat
intuitively on a keto orcarnivore diet and that be
(23:47):
relatively close to within therealms of what your body
actually needs, because it's notgoing to be getting a lot of
this noise in the equation fromexcessive blood sugar and
insulin spikes brought on byincreased sugar and processed
carbohydrate consumption orthese hyper palatable foods.
So there is that going for it.
(24:08):
But yeah, you can definitelygain body fat by eating too much
dietary fat.
You can gain body fat by eatingtoo much dietary protein.
I mean I've done that before too, so all of that can come into
play for sure.
So you got to figure out youknow what the goal is, how to
make that sustainable and what,what levers you want to pull to
really get that dialed in.
I mean you can lose weight, youcan lose fat, eat nothing but
(24:30):
Twinkies as well, but that'scertainly far from optimal from
a hormonal standpoint, from ametabolic standpoint, from a
lean muscle muscle massretention standpoint.
So really kind of getting allthat dialed in to figure out
what's best is.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Is the key really kind of getting all that dialed
in to figure out what's best isthe key?
Yeah, that's a great point.
You know you got people outthere.
I mean I know to prove points,but I don't know if you've seen
the whole Oreo statin issuething.
Have you seen any of that?
Yeah, I mean I have Oreos for Xamount of time and it's going
to lower my cholesterol as muchas a statin would.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, yeah, Nick, he's a smart guy man, I've got
him.
You know, I've corresponded afew times.
He's actually coming on mypodcast next week.
Probably dive into that as alittle bit as well.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Oh yeah, that's awesome.
And this aspect of reversedieting too, and I feel like
people have been using this andI'm trying to wrap my head
around it too.
I kind of understand it, asyou're going to start to drive
your intake up slowly and thenbring it down quickly, so that
(25:32):
your metabolism is like full revand then you're going to burn
fat faster, or is that the basicconcept of it?
Speaker 2 (25:40):
kind of.
I mean, I don't typically dropcalories quickly once I'm
reached the end of my reversediet.
I'm pretty gradual, increasingand decreasing, but I spend
quite a bit of time at thathigher intake.
That that's the main thing,that's the key.
And, like, reverse dieting atits simplest level is basically
just the reverse of dieting down.
So when people think of dietingthey're typically thinking of
(26:01):
reducing caloric intake andconsumption.
The reverse of that would bethe increased caloric intake.
And the whole reason you wantto do that is your.
Your body's metabolism is veryadaptable.
So, like, when you start eatingless, it down regulates to
follow suit.
When you start eating more, itup regulates the fall suit.
Now there is definitely a pointof diminishing return.
You can't just eat, you know,10 000 calories every single day
(26:21):
and expect your metabolism tojust, you know, allow proper
metabolic function to happen.
So you don't gain weight atthat intake.
Most people likely wouldn't.
I would certainly gain weightat 10,000 calories every single
day.
But it does allow you to kindof adapt your metabolism where
it needs to be and where itshould go, and give you more
freedom to, you know, build morelean tissue as well, like when
(26:43):
you're eating at a caloricsurplus.
Yes, your metabolism is goingto be upregulated, but you're
also going to be able topartition that increased fuel
intake to hopefully build morelean tissue.
If you're demanding more leantissue be built so like if you
increase your food but thenyou're not doing anything but
sit on the couch, watch Netflixthat's probably going to mostly
go to body fat.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
I like to use the athletic couch potato too,
because there's a lot of peoplethat hit the gym.
They do like a 45-minutesession.
I crushed my workout today.
It was great.
You hit the couch, you hit theNetflix and then you, literally,
you really didn't make a dent,buddy.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yeah, no for sure, man.
I mean, like it's kind of crazy, like I'm doing a 50 mile march
this week and I'm not anendurance athlete by any means
but like preparation for that,I've been walking an extra like
two and a half hours everysingle day on top of my weight
training and it's like, man,this is not my norm, it's
kicking my butt, but it's likeyou got to do these things.
You got to move your body.
I mean, we're not designed tobe sitting all day long.
(27:42):
And when you do sit all daylong, it becomes very apparent
that your body was not meant tobe doing that.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I just had a conversation with Linda Salant,
the Carnitarian, and I wastalking about I just went to
Japan and I even ate off my dieta little bit.
I had pizza in Tokyo best pizzaI've ever had in my life.
I had sushi.
I don, I had pizza in Tokyobest pizza I've ever had in my
life.
I had sushi.
I don't even like really eatlike fish.
I had a bunch of differentthings, local cuisines, and I
(28:11):
came back and I was I think Iwas like eight pounds lighter
than when I left.
I just like still worked out,still ran a little bit, but just
the amount of walking that Idid every single day, I mean on
top of still being active, I waslike damn.
I was like this is great.
I come back from vacation.
(28:31):
Usually people are like bloatedand heavy.
I'm like dude, I'm lookingpretty good.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
That's the key to man .
You shouldn't have to deviateso far from your norm that when
you return to your norm, likeyou have to catch up, far from
your norm that when you returnto your norm, like you have to
catch up, like.
I don't understand the conceptof people that go off, that they
diet down for a vacation or acruise or whatever and they just
totally blow it and they feellike crap when they're in this
vacation cruise.
You know mode.
They sacrifice their workouts,their movement, their nutrition,
(28:59):
they gain a bunch of weightback and they're miserable the
whole time they're there Likeit's just, it's not good.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
They gain a bunch of weight back and they're
miserable the whole time they'rethere.
It's just not good.
I felt it in Japan too.
But this is kind of a telltalesign for me when I know the diet
works.
If I go off of the diet, if Ieat pizza, if I eat anything, if
I have some beers with friends,I immediately the next morning
(29:24):
do not feel good at all.
I don't know if you have thesame effect if you kind of sway
off a little bit.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
It's been about nine years since I've swayed off, so
I don't.
It's been a while.
It's foggy in my mind, but if Iever like, just go.
But it's interesting, man likeI can have a freaking rotisserie
chicken and I'll recognizewhat's optimal and not for my
body.
If I eat too much lean proteinin a sitting then I don't feel
as good the next day when I wakeup.
(29:48):
So I've got it finessed in thatsense.
If I go off in that regard, Ican tell a difference.
But I don't even want to knowwhat I would feel like if I had
a big pizza or something.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, dude, you are freaking dialed in man, yeah,
yeah.
And speaking about having goodnutritious food, let's talk
about some keto bricks hereFirst of all, like if anybody
told you you're going to haveyour own, you know supplement
bar, would you have believedthem?
Speaker 2 (30:14):
I've always been entrepreneurial in spirit, so I
wouldn't have put it past me todo something like that.
But I made the bricks for myown personal consumption back in
2017, so I never planned onthem being a product.
It just kind of happened towork out that way and I love it.
I love that I have these.
I produce them in-house, I meanI love where it's become or
(30:34):
what's come of it.
But yeah, I would not haveguessed that what was happening
at the time would turn into whatit is now and what was the?
Speaker 1 (30:43):
you know what was this gap that you're trying to
fill in the ketogenic space,where you're like I need to.
I need to push this out to themasses.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah, I mean when I was doing my first prep with
keto back in 2017, I mean, therewere no keto products at that
time.
There was nothing that I wasaware of.
There was certainly nothingthat was with the quality of
ingredients that I was lookingfor for a competition prep and I
just wanted to streamline allof my prep endeavors.
I wanted to streamline my mealprep.
I wanted to streamline mynutrition needs.
I wanted to find a quality fatsource and there wasn't really
(31:11):
any of that out there, so I justset out to make my own and once
I did, I was documenting mywhole prep on YouTube and people
kept asking about you know thebricks?
Hey, what are those?
What can I get them?
What's the recipe?
And I just kind of wrote it offand said, oh, it's nothing, I'm
just using this to hit mymacros.
But then we decided to roll oursleeves up and turn it into a
business and, lo and behold, itjust took off.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
That's so cool, that's awesome.
I had what was the new flavoryou guys brought to Hack your
Health so we had our firsttallow-based flavor there.
So peanut butter tallow timewas what we got.
Okay, that was.
I mean, they're all good.
That was different.
I remember I think it was abanana one too.
I really enjoyed.
So all the stuff, they'reawesome, they're really good,
convenient and you're right, Iwould say, even in the space of
(31:56):
keto there are these.
Everything has keto on the labelnowadays and that's where it
gets it.
As a consumer, it gets reallykind of.
It gets hard to kind of figureout what is actually good and
what's not.
Vinny Tortorich I don't know ifyou're familiar with he just
came out with that documentaryDirty Keto where he kind of
(32:16):
dives into some of thesupplements and things like that
.
But it's just really good toyou know.
Know that.
You know there's people outthere that are going to really
go for the high quality stuff.
You know, because I can go downthe street and get 15 things
that say Atkinson it, keto,whatever, but if you turn the
label around, I want, I can'tpronounce half the stuff and
then two, it's literally alaundry list.
(32:37):
It goes all the way downhalfway of the package.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, I'm all for simplifying ingredients.
I want it to be the highestquality, minimal, clean
ingredients, and that's whywe've kept production in-house
from day one.
I want to be able to overseeall that directly.
And you're absolutely right,man, there's so many packaged
goods out there that I would noteat.
I wouldn't feed it to my dogmuch less.
You know, I don't want that inmy house.
I got a two-year-old kid nowand like a lot of kids I mean
(33:04):
you look at what they're servingkids and like the child aisle
in the grocery stores, like forbaby food and stuff, like it's
horrendous man, like there's nonutrition in there and like,
especially during that chaptertheir lives where their brain's
developing, their body'sdeveloping like you want to give
them everything that they needand you're not going to find it
in a carrot celery puree that'sgot a whole bunch of sugar in
there.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Yeah, I mean you're seeing that there's different
formulas now that are includinghigh fructose corn syrup inside
of the formula.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah, it's.
I mean everything's got highfructose corn syrup.
Man, it's ridiculous, it'slaughable how bad our food
system is it really is.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
You know you go to different countries.
Uh, if you have see, you knowdifferent american products on
the shelf.
There's some of them havewarning labels.
There's a legit warning labelsaying like this is dangerous
and it's a freaking box ofcereal yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cereal's not even food, man,it's not no bueno it is no bueno
, uh, and and how is that now?
(34:00):
Because you're a newer dad,right?
Or I could be wrong there.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, yeah, he just turned two about a month ago now
.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Okay, how's that?
In preparation, are you feedinghim a little bit differently as
he's starting to get older?
Like what are the kinds ofthings Cause this is topic
actually has come up a lot ofpeople who follow this diet and
are either in relationships withsomebody who isn't, or maybe
getting on board or expecting afamily.
I'm trying to figure out.
Okay, like what are we going tobe feeding them when they're
(34:30):
this age, when they're young,and then also when they go off
to school?
If they do go off to school,like what you know, how are you
going to navigate that?
Speaker 2 (34:38):
and we've been pretty much dialed in with him from
the get-go.
So, like my wife's also keto,she was keto all throughout her
pregnancy, um, all throughoutthe you know, postpartum
breastfeeding, all that stuff,uh, so he was getting the
highest quality upregulatednutrition and breast milk from
her and what she was consuming.
And now that he is eating food,I I mean he's like his first
meal like real food.
(34:59):
Meal was, I think, like a bigold beef bone knuckle with
collagen and I mean somethingthat we had braised.
Like he's eating the real deal.
Like he eats a lot of eggs, alot of meat, avocado, you know,
good quality whole fat dairy.
Like he eats the same thingsthat we eat basically like no
deviation from it.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
That's, that's awesome.
Yeah, I I don't I have no kids,but I I just know like that's
something that's, you know, whenwe have to teach our kids how
to navigate through the world,because once they go out and
they're gonna be on their own,like it's our job as parents to
educate them, but they're gonnahave to be making these
decisions out on their own.
There's so many things that arestacked up against them.
(35:41):
You know they're starting.
The starting line is here.
They're starting all the way,you know, a hundred yards back
in the world, because everythingyou turn on the TV, any
advertisement, the normalcy ofhigh sugary foods, it's like, oh
, it's a treat, treat, theyshould have it.
I I think that's we really haveto look into that and kind of
(36:01):
get away from that.
But it, that is a, that is anabsolute uphill battle.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
No, no, any way you look at that's an absolute
uphill battle and it's got acompounding effect too, because
like there's this epigenetic uhyou know concept that takes
place, that basically what weconsume impacts not only our
kids, but like three generations, four generations deep.
So like we can't just eat forour own health anymore.
We have to take responsibilityfor us and our lineage, and that
(36:28):
does not mean eating HotPockets and, you know, cereal by
any means.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
I've heard you talk about this and I was wondering
if you can kind of speak aboutit, about that you think balance
in life is bullshit.
Yeah, Can you kind of elaborate?
Speaker 2 (36:47):
I'm going to put that on a t-shirt at some point for
sure.
But yeah, the notion ofwork-life balance has never
really sat well with me becauseby definition, if something is
balanced it's an equilibrium,which means it's zeroed out, and
I don't want anything in mylife to be at zero.
And then if you look at like abalance beam, like a
teeter-totter, you know ifsomething's going up, something
else is going down.
I don't ever want that to bethe case either, but I've tried
(37:09):
to adopt this mentality oftensegrity, which is basically
an architectural you know wordthat means tensional integrity.
You know word that meanstensional integrity.
So you have these things thatyou know have tension placed on
them, from the other componentsof your life, for instance, but
that tension creates morerigidity, more overall structure
and resilience and everythingthat's in my life I can pretty
(37:32):
much separate into five primarypillars.
So you got health, wealth,relationships, spirituality and
self-development, and as long aseverything I'm doing can be put
into one of those buckets andbe symbiotic in nature to
everything else, then in theoryeverything grows and develops.
And there's certainly times inmy life, certain chapters, where
one thing may be getting a lotmore focused than the other.
(37:53):
But at the end of the day,everything is still improving.
Like when I was going throughmy five competition preps last
year, that was definitelyprioritizing the health
component of my life, but it wasputting a our kid with us you
know she's meal prepping for meLike like a lot, a lot of
relationships would would wouldfind that very difficult, but we
(38:23):
became stronger because of it.
So everything that I'm workingon builds the overall resilience
of everything in my life, whichis is the key.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah, man that's a good.
That's a good way to put it,you know, and time under tension
is going to make you stronger.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Yeah, 100% man.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
And speaking of strength, let's talk about when
you're outside of competition.
What does your strengthtraining routine kind of look
like?
I'm sure it's different incompetition, but when you're not
really training for anythingbut just for life and to kind of
stay strong, what does thatlook like on the week?
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Man, I've been doing like a full body split for the
past two years now and I'vereally been digging that.
I enjoy it.
It works well for my schedulebeing kind of all over the board
right now.
So the main difference betweenin-season and out-of-season
training is just the intensityof the progressive overloads.
When I'm eating at a surplus ina building phase, I'm able to
(39:17):
push the envelope with theweight training a little bit
more, be a little bit moreintense, increase the volume, go
a little bit heavier.
When I'm in a cut, I'm more so,trying to just preserve the
strength markers that I'vereached up to that point so that
I can preserve as much leantissue as possible.
But when I'm in a buildingphase, I'm just, you know, going
in and trying to hit new PRs asfrequently as I can.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
And I was wondering about this question too that I
have is, you know, for I'mlooking at like power lifters,
right, they have thisprogressive over.
There are a few ways they cantrain.
Right, they're going to have aprogressive overload.
They're going to say, okay, myweight that I want to lift at
competition is X, and I'm goingto backtrack the weeks and then
(39:59):
figure out where's my startingdate, and this is kind of
figuring how much I'm going toprogress and when I'm going to
progress.
Or they can step or they canwave their programming, however
it is.
But for you know, you guys,it's the aesthetic that you're
getting to.
So how do you kind of pinpoint,you know, the weights that you
need to be getting at, if theoutcome isn't the weight, it's
(40:21):
the look?
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Yeah, well, it's not like like I'm never judged on
show day based off of how much Ican deadlift, like the judges
don't care, but they're lookingfor really defined and built and
proportional, symmetrical, youknow, back density.
So if I'm lacking in thatdepartment then I need to be
doing more deadlifts to buildthat up.
So it's kind of more like anart form.
So like, if you look atpowerlifting, it's like
(40:44):
mathematics.
Okay, so what do I need to doto be getting the top total, you
know, weight that I can acrossmy three primary lifts squats,
deadlift and bench press andit's just math, it's numbers.
When you look at bodybuilding,it's more like an art form than
a mathematical form.
So like if I'm lagging in myrear delts, then I need to
(41:06):
incorporate some reverse fliesand some rear delt work and
basically act as a sculptor andadd more clay to that
masterpiece, so to speak.
And I just increase the volume,the training intensity, the
types of exercise I'm doing totarget that lagging body part,
um, but that typically equatesto getting stronger with those
movements, those exercises.
(41:26):
But I'm never judged, like yousaid, off of those, those
weights.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
Yeah, I mean, true, you guys are like artists Like I
go out there fricking likechiseled it's, it's, it's, it's
a it's a big feat, man, I think,and it's.
It's takes a lot for somebodyto step into that realm and it's
a lot of discipline, a lot oftime, a lot of commitment and
you also have a new course and Iwas kind of talking offline how
I was seeing it on Instagram alittle bit.
(41:52):
You know, for somebody that'slooking to get in some.
You know ketogenic orbodybuilding, you know who is
this course for and you knowwhat can somebody expect when
they register for it.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
So this course is basically those seven phases
that I outlined earlier.
It's that on a much morecomprehensive level.
As far as who it would bedesigned for, I would say it'd
be designed for currentbodybuilders that are following
traditional conventional brodiet or anything other than keto
but want to adopt a ketogeniclife towards their prep
(42:25):
endeavors.
Or for people that arewell-versed in keto or low carb
or carnivore but have hit aplateau and want to take things
to the next level.
Maybe they've been doingintuitive eating with a
carnivore approach or ketoapproach, but they're stuck in a
way to composition.
They need to learn how tomanipulate their macros, track
their intake and get that dialedin.
Either of those avatars wouldfind this course beneficial.
(42:48):
It's got 150 plus video modules.
It's super comprehensive, butit's also got a whole bunch of
discounts and partnership brandsin there.
We've got our own tribe privatecommunity in there with I do
weekly live calls.
We do challenges in there.
I've got my own custom built AIsoftware in there that people
can use as a dashboard to tracktheir metrics over time.
(43:10):
I got my own workout app inthere.
Like it's, it's becoming mylife's work worth of content in
one comprehensive place that I'mjust going to keep adding
content to over time, so I'msuper proud of it.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
That's all.
How do you keep up with?
Author podcasting?
You know keto bricks and this.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Man, I don't even know.
I feel like I don't know that Ican say that I'm keeping up
with it all.
I feel like sometimes I'm justscrambling, but everything I'm
working on I'm passionate aboutdoing, which makes things easier
, for sure.
Speaker 1 (43:43):
Oh yeah, man, they're labors of love, right yeah,
100%.
And you know, as you'reprobably already thinking ahead,
once you probably finish oneproject, you're probably on to
the next.
You know, just kind of seeingyour trend here, what's some
things that might be coming upthat you're excited about,
whether it be new products orevents coming up.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I guess we got some really cool new flavors for Keto
Brick in the pipeline that aretallow-based.
I'm really focused on justgetting this course continually
polished and dialed in.
Like I am making this, I've gota bad habit of just adding more
things to my plate, and Ireally just want to refine and
polish all the things that Icurrently have on my plate
before I add more.
So really just sinking my teethinto this course and getting it
(44:24):
like optimized and dialed inand just better with every
single week that passes.
That's the main things, but I'malso hosting another
bodybuilding competition nextyear, so I'm going to be a
promoter.
So I'll be hosting my owncompetition, which is pretty
exciting.
So always something new coming,though, for sure.
Yeah, where's that going to betaking place?
It's going to be in NorthwestArkansas, so it's going to be
(44:44):
called the Natural State Savagesbecause Arkansas is the natural
state.
So it's going to be a WNBF INBFcompetition, and anybody is
welcome to come compete.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
That's awesome, that's great, and if people are
interested in kind of connectingwith you, where can they find
you?
Via Instagram or website?
Speaker 2 (45:05):
So I'm Keto Savage on all socials.
This course is KetoBodybuilding, so
ketobodybuildingcom for that andthen ketobrickcom for the
bricks Awesome.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Well, man, this was great.
I got to learn a lot about youknow bodybuilding, which I
didn't know, a ton of everything, and I'm excited to put this
out and I'm sure the listenerswill be too.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Hey, man, always a pleasure.
I love talking about this stuff.
I appreciate you bringing me on.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Thank you all for joining us.
If you enjoyed this episode,don't forget to subscribe, like
and share.
See you all next time on thePrimal Foundations podcast.
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