Vegan to Carnivore: Jake Thomas' Unbelievable Health Journey | Ep 141

welcome to the plant free MD podcast with Dr Anthony chafee where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically hi everyone thank you for coming back to another episode of the plant free MD and today I have a very special guest Jake Thomas who is a former Marine a five-time natural physique champion and has actually won uh well sorry he's run marathons uh doing keto carnivore fasting and has been a carnivore for the last three years Jake thank you so much for coming on thanks for having me today Doc it's great to be here no not a problem at all so uh for those who are really familiar with you can you tell us a bit about yourself and tell us a bit about uh uh you know all of your accomplishments yeah I grew up in New Orleans originally and uh kind of started getting into my athletic career in high school played all the ball sports but mainly soccer and ran track but didn't really start taking my need for performance seriously until I got into the military where I was able to kind of draw the correlation of like okay how I am physically and how I'm able to perform physically my life can literally depend on it and not just mine but the lives of other people so I was frail I was skinny I wasn't that strong I was in good shape but I just wasn't sizable so as I started to work out and really understand that you know this matters more than just my physical health it's my self-esteem it's my confidence it's how I am and how I interact with people how it basically affects and influences my life uh it started to become my life right so I really started to prioritize how I was eating what I was doing um and seeing the benefits up and down when I say how I was eating at the time it was protein shakes you know the Bro diet standard American eyes but you know where's my protein where's my my carbs and whatnot I didn't know anything about macros I just knew like get my gram per pound of body weight per day pump some steel and hey that should work out this way took me years of doing that before I got into the carnivore space I mean I did you know the standard American stuff for a long time it served me well don't get me wrong but it wasn't until I really started to go animal based that I found wow the Simplicity and the minimalism of what can be achieved from so little and at the same time what doesn't come with that as far as in the the negative costs to my body you know like digestive issues um mental health issues depression going away anxiety going in a way inflammation going away and then being able to understand that while from these few sources I'm able to get all of this to which I used to need this cabinet's worth of supplements for or that I had to eat in this anabolic window that I had to refuel with these chemical substances the substances or I had to refuel with these chemical substances as opposed to you know now I'll go days without eating from fasting and totally dissolve that anabolic window compete without anything pre-race compete without anything on course compete like all these what I thought to be dogmatic things about performance as an athlete just blown away and the more I test those things the more I found New Frontiers and and more rabbit holes and that's where I'm pretty much stuck at now but happily stuck nice and so what got you into carnivore in the first place what did what did you come across that influenced you I had actually just finished my last season in uh competitive bodybuilding I competed in men's physique category so board shorts not Speedos and um I always liked the category because to me it was more about the I don't want to say ideal physique because each person has their own uh definition of that but more of not so bulky but about lean mass and slenderness and tonality to the body and um I did it as a vegan well I've been a vegan for 14 months and I'd experiment with various diets because when I was coaching as a personal trainer and Coach with nutrition certifications I wanted to be able to better empathize to clients my way of actual knowledge not just like theorists uh an assumption you know like to me the difference between a theorist and a practitioner you're great if you get all the knowledge in the world from books but if you've never put it out on the field like you with the rugby like if I'd if I was a rugby animals but I never stepped foot and never knew what Turf tasted like in my teeth like there's not a you know there's a big disconnect there so for me I kept running into things with people at the Advent of my career with like they were vegetarians or they were this and I couldn't really relate to it I had information but I didn't understand it so through various girlfriends honestly I adopted these different diets I had a dated a girl that was a vegetarian I became a vegetarian for over a year I did a girl that was a vegan I became a vegan for like I said 14 months and I'd already had successful campaigns as a bodybuilder on If It Fits your Macros you know standard American and bro so as a vegan I looked into it and there weren't too many vegan bodybuilders and it certainly weren't notable ones and there definitely were not within the wnbf which is the world natural bodybuilding Federation and so I was like man this would be really cool to do you know it's kind of a new frontier and so I started to to look into it obviously I would need a lot of supplements blah blah blah blah but I said I can do this and the fact that a lot of people said I couldn't was why I did so the question about carnivore I just finished this and a good friend of mine that I served with in the Marines pitched it to me and I laughed at him at first because I was like um respectfully because he wasn't very healthy at all not very he was terribly unhealthy at the time in multiple ways and I was just like you know with the metal proverbially still hanging around my neck I was like who are you to tell me about nutrition and health I was like I'm the one that just won a World Championship here like what yeah but still he kept peppering me about he's like just read into this look into this watch these podcasts you know watch these YouTube videos and tell me what you think I was like all right I'm not arrogant enough to not be humble and if anything I'm always curious so I couldn't help my curiosity and that's how it started man I started to read I started to listen I started to watch and I couldn't deny the information so I told myself all right 30 days let's give it a shot and I went total you know Varsity version carnivore 30 days no no caffeine nothing else but uh animals and animal byproducts and that began the uh the next Rabbit Hole of Fascination and how I started the journey that's awesome man hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnival bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just pure meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products there will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10 off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25 off total all right thanks guys you know it's funny like um when was that that you went vegan then you revealed started in 2018 and finished no yeah it started in 2018. or 2019 in January and finished in February or March of 2019 or 19 to 20 something like that you know I swear to God that that's ringing so many Bells I was talking to a friend of mine uh Grace she makes uh documentaries and and uh has a radio program uh radio show and things like that and um and we were talking about the whole carnivore thing and uh talking about you know Optimal Health and all of that and and she um actually I I swear to God she sent me your picture he's like well here's this guy he's a vegan bodybuilder and a champion and I I swear to God I was just like as soon as you said that I'm like holy [ __ ] that was that guy and that was that picture and um and we talked about it and like and um you know so I was very interested in that but like you say you know it's not common you know and uh and and just like like anything else you know I mean you you can you can do something if you challenge yourself you push yourself and you put in put in the effort and as we were talking about off off camera before we started you know even people that do steroids like they still have to put in the work and there are people that unfortunately abused arrows and don't even put in the work and so it's like they really didn't get anything out of it and you know but it's you know you can you can you can accomplish a lot with just a lot of you know just testicular fortitude but you know it's a matter of you know is that is that the best way for your body to do it is that the healthiest way for your body to do it is that the easiest way for your body to do it so I think you're the perfect person to ask how is training now on on a meat-based diet versus when you're on a vegan diet it's funny to we're gonna get a little dirty right away um the first the first sign man that came up to me was my bowel movement change straight up right like when I was a vegan I used to have you know four maybe five bowel movements a day and usually all sizable and in my mind at the time I was like well I'm an athlete I'm in really good shape it's my metabolism blah blah blah and then when I went carnivore and the frequency plummeted the volume limited and by in frequency I think the longest I've gone is like nine or ten days with nothing with nothing discarded and people hear that and they're like dude that is so unhealthy blah blah blah and I don't balk at them because if they're sitting that way I'm not going to try to you know create an argument there but I immediately made that connection of like wow I was literally discarding all of that as a vegan to where my body is getting this whole you know amount or this mass and going we don't need any of this we just need this small little package of nutrients and like the rest of that stuff dude we literally don't want it we don't need to stop bringing it to us and then when I go carnivore and again the frequency drops tremendously the the size drops tremendously I made this connection with my brother's daughter was born she's going to be four in July we share a birthday like only a couple days apart which is awesome which is my godchild but when she was an infant and changing diapers you know when newborns are just on breast milk their bowel movements are not that bad if anything they're neutral and kind of strange because many people make the mistake of thinking their kids are God's gift to the world because their their poops don't smell because those first uh movements when they're just on breast milk the the odor is very strange the texture like I touched it I was like what is this this is weird like this isn't like disgusting horribly smelling poop I was like is it because her pipes are so clean and she's so pure inside yes and yes but more than anything it's because what she was consuming was a single source of optimal sustenance that gave her everything she needed with immediate use minimal storage and the least amount of duress on her body is possible right so it's maximum utilization because it's a hundred percent bioavailability and that was like a pink pink of Lights to where it all came into play of like oh my God the reason my bowel movements are so infrequent and so minimized now is because I'm literally absorbing and utilizing everything nothing is being discarded nothing is to waste why because what I'm consuming is essentially what I am you know it couldn't be more Hannibal than being a carnivore right we're literally consuming tissue flesh organs fat I mean we're consuming what we are as opposed to having foreign bodies enter our own body and then having to sift through that stuff and say what we want and what we don't most of which we don't and that's you know where I made the first connection and I was like damn so as far as in minimalism and to your point about optimal ways of eating for training like to me it's almost inarguable to think that I needed the entire cabinet worth of pills vitamins powders all of which had to go through plants had to go through processing many of which did not exist in the plant kingdom naturally Allah the amino acids the non-essential ones right that can only be derived from actual meat sources how could you do that other than that right I had the luxury of being a vegan athlete you cannot be a plant-based or a vegan athlete without consuming massive amounts of processed foods that's a fact if you're a raw vegan I applaud you I respect you because you are consistent and dedicated to a very narrowed scope of dietary discipline similar to being a strict carnivore or a lion diet eater you're really in a tight window but if you're just an open scoped plant-based athlete or open scoped vegan athlete please don't come to me and talk about how cleanly your diet and lifestyle choices are because you're eating tons of processed food and then so in do you still compete or you still are just doing that um just for your own fun like running the marathons and things like that ah as far as in the marathons and and swims and everything that's just me kind of being in the lab I haven't competed in bodybuilding since 2019 will I ever do it again I don't know I don't want to say never because there's always the the next the next way to do it right like I've I've never done it let's say as a lion diet competitor I think that would be amazing to to hop on stage and be like yep I'm up here with a ruminant animals only salt and water yeah you know and for people to be like what the [ __ ] like us I'm losing to this guy you know after all my my shelf worth of subs and endorsements and all that and I'm just like I'm sponsored by nobody you know I I buy the lowest grade ground beef and here I am yeah um as far as in the runs and the swims and everything else honestly doc I feel like I am a Scientist more than an athlete and the job of a true scientist like yourself is not to try to prove law but it is to try and constantly disprove our hypothesis and I can't disprove this man I can't I keep failing at it like gladly but the failures make me keep coming back you can't do a three and a half mile open swim without dot dot dot dot supplements at you know two minutes per 100 meter Pace okay did it you can't run a marathon without pre-race fuel eating the day before or rather eating the day of having water throughout the course you can't run a half marathon under x amount of time doing this and like I kept doing these things to me it was more about people saying no and me just saying all right well what's the worst thing that could happen if I try and fail and so I just keep doing that and the more that I stay in the lab the more I continue failing and trying to disprove the hypothesis but that's what keeps me coming back nice and so uh so tell us about the the marathon uh that you ran which one was this and what was it and and uh yeah I just walks through it this was a Philadelphia 2021 so I just ran on Halloween of that year a half marathon in New Orleans the the Halloween half which is a blast because it's on Halloween day we don't need excuses to dress up again costumes in New Orleans which is it's kind of our thing you know so Halloween is like a real heightened sense and the Saints are our professional football team play on Halloween a lot so it was a great day because we had a game that night I took my mother to the game it was a blast of course we dressed up we went as Wayne's World she was killing it people were like just coming up to us like a party on Wayne party on Garth yeah and my mom's like are they talking to us I was like yes you know I was like everybody knows this costume but I ran the race um fasted that morning uh all I had was electrolytes before I didn't have any solid food and that's how I've been training for a while I've been doing that even since I've been bodybuilding as Horrors and fasting and you know breaking out of the anabolic window Assumption of need and timing of food and thinking that you know okay what happens if I eat all my macros right before bed or what happens if I eat my whole meal you know first thing in the morning then don't eat the rest of the day so I've been testing and theorizing a lot of these laws or perceived laws for for years now and kind of trickled my way into to doing them with extended competitions like half marathons and so the day of that one again I didn't have food I had my electrolytes and that's it and on the course I was keeping a good Pace I was running just over seven minutes per mile and I passed the first uh checkpoint with water and I didn't take any water and then I passed the second one the third one and I just kept going and I was like I don't need the water up I'm not thirsty my pace is good I'm gonna flow just just run and that's what I did so it wasn't planned it just kind of happened and I finished the race and I was like I was like man I feel great um I'm not tired I'm not uh I'm not broke off I'm not cramping you know like you watch some people finish races in 5Ks right but for sure half marathons you see people finishing they're like freaking passing out yes ready to die they're vomiting they're they're clearly you know their skin is is clammy and they're white and they're green or purple whatever and they are not looking good and I was like man what a beautiful yeah this was this was awesome and um left the race went home got cleaned up took my mother to the Saints game you know we or rather we got cleaned up got in costume walked around the French Quarter had a beautiful afternoon and then went to the game and people are like dude you're crazy how would you do that I met with friends there at the game and they're like and what was your time I was like you know just over 90 minutes I'm like what the [ __ ] man like what is wrong I I don't know I feel good what do you want me to say what else do you want me to say you know and then um right after I crossed the Finish Line I was like well if I could do this the way I did and feel the way I do by this logic I think I should be able to run this double the distance at this same pace and output and thus feel that same that was my kind of maybe uh you know altered sense of of mind with all the dopamine and oxytocin in me from after the race but thinking that like hey I could do this for a marathon so I said right there I was like all right next marathon that's close to me I wasn't living in New York City at the time Max Marathon close to me I'm gonna I'm gonna go for it so I looked it up Philadelphia November 21st and I was like that's kind of a tight window 21 days away you know and I've never run a marathon before it's my first one to this day it's still my only one um I never ran further than like 15 16 miles so in that 20 days I was like okay we need to really make a intense kind of training schedule but at the same time I can't overload so it was really about understanding Progressive overload load management and just really Placebo and kind of my way through it right so like I was gonna have to use some Kentucky windage and and really understand like my body and just believe my way through it as opposed to saying this is a 16 to 22 week race prep I didn't have that so I train the same way the longest run I made in training was 17 miles and when I finished that I was like all right I feel fine it's only you know a few more miles after this it'll be the complete race and I said everything after 17 will be you know New Frontier and we'll just kind of wing it on the Fly and I was like how bad could it be and so we get uh to Philadelphia it was beautiful I'd never been there night before went to a Brazilian steakhouse got the full dining experience and just fueled up you know pecania pecania pecania as fatty as I could get it short ribs as fatty as I could get it I always skip all the lean meats when I go there I'm just straight pecanha and pretty much ribs and lamb chops and I just you know keep it coming until I can't eat any more and so I did finish dinner around 1800 maybe 18 30 local time race uh was kicking off at like zero six the next morning or zero six thirty I forget exactly night before and morning of I started to prep race gel that I was making for myself like carnivore ratio I took um bone marrow heated in the microwave at the hotel to soften it up mixed in some raw cream that I'd purchased from a market there in um in Philadelphia from some Amish farmers sprinkled in some of my electrolyte mix into that and basically made my own carnivore race gels to have on me and in my mind I was like if I need to use these I'll have them and that's what I'm going to just you know tear open the zip locks and dig in so I had those on me the morning of the race right before the race starts I'm ready to go no food before just electrolytes and water or nothing else and right before the race starts I did not do a sound check so I only had one headphone working and I was like well this is a great way to start you know but um started running and was great first uh a few miles was awesome you know like 7 15 7 30 got a little faster finished the first half right about the same time that I finished the last half hat so just over 90 minutes I was definitely on like a 3 10 311 Pace uh total which was great because my goal time was to run under three and a half hours good good Goods 15 16 and then right around 17 I just felt the a big wall because again just like from the half I was foregoing water at all the water stations the first half of the marathon I felt great again all the miles I was passing the cups no problem no problem no problem but then when I started to feel the pain I was definitely like wow I would love to drink some water right now you know I could feel my body wanting it needing it everything was starting to constrict and and lose its uh you know of my ability to push was just falling my drive was going away and um in my mind I was like I wanted to do that but I was like God I've come this far like just just get through it just just churn through it see what happens just make the point so I kept going and it was get to the next mile get to the next mile and then I had to say get to the next half mile get to the next quarter mile and I just broke it down you know little by little and really compartmentalized to my mind into it so it was painful my Pace slowed down a lot but I finished the race in like 325 so under 3 30 I made the goal I did not drink any water you know I damned the naysayers I disproved the criticism and uh yeah that was it Saints played again that day in Philadelphia I did not go to that game I should have but uh yeah I I point made I guess you know yeah yeah that's awesome and you were saying that you you talked to some of the guys that would do Ultras and do a lot of marathons and and uh they said that they were actually you know quite quite taken aback that you were able to do that in the first place is that right yeah I was in a group of um athletes at a real estate brokerage I used to be with and I thought it was so cool that we had this like athletes of of the agency and the first time I went to one of our meetings I was like wow these are really impressive people like she's run 50 different marathons you know he's got this all the all seven this guy had run the Moab 240 somebody else in there had run like Breakneck and two of the people had run had run bad water and I was like oh my God these are like you know real real Runners and real athletes here and I'm like you know I'll run one marathon and so they're all kind of telling their stories at their first at the first meeting and I was just like I don't even want to talk you know because I'm like super humbled and thinking myself low man on the totem pole but then when it came to me I told the story and the zoom screen of like you know it's like 50 people just exploded with hands like like all the yellow hands went up and I was like and then they were like uh the moderator was like well I guess we had some questions Jake and I was like holy cow you know uh and I was like you know first person whatever and they all started asking but yeah man with all their accolades that I thought was super impressive which is you know to this day I think is still way cooler than what I did they were fascinated by me you know thinking about like not just running it but to run it in that time you know to think like you know to them like what several of them said that's impossible I was just like dude don't tell me that like you just crushed your credibility of what I had of you in my mind to say that you know like you can't like impossible is nothing like don't put that self-imposed obstacle in there yeah it was just uh the more people that I've told that to or have asked me about it and to see their reactions I'm like God I guess it's more of a big deal than I thought it was just at the time to me like I said it was a on the spot experiment yeah well that's awesome man well it is it is impressive and it goes completely in the face of what everyone you know says can happen to me even exercise physiologists you know so you have to eat carbs you have to do that and uh of course you know we people have taken biochemistry we know that no you don't you know if you stop eating carbohydrates you make all the energy that you need but we forget this you know because this is in the the you know the wisdom that's passed down you know generation after generation is like no no you have to have carbs you have to have carbs have to have carbs in order to do this and yet you know someone comes in like yourself and then just blows that out of the water uh it's uh you know it's it's going to be quite challenging to them I think to or at least confronting and hopefully they look at that and they they challenge their own sort of thoughts as a result of that I hope so man you know like I I say it's like if I were to go up to David Beckham and say hey hey mate I know you are great a great right footed player but you would have been better as a lefty yeah and he would be like respect but like I don't think so you know but but that's what it's like right or me going to Mariano Rivera and being like yo yo Duke like I know you were you know six World Series rings for the Yankees as a closer as a righty but like that left man you would have been a murderer yeah if you didn't throw it but you just kicked it down towards them you know that would have been really yeah you know and it's like that's it's that contrarian and I get it man like like you yourself you know the amount of time you've put into study and practice to become who you are in your Fields be it in rugby be it in medicine and for someone to speak against what you believe to be right which you know that you definitely put in time to learn and to again execute in not just Theory but in practice and someone's going to say something that's you know the diametric opposite of that I'd be confrontational too I'd be defensive it'd be hard for me like when my buddy pitched the cardboard thing to me about you know being a vegan I was like headphones with gas things like that who the f are you man to like you're the one eating potato chips and being unhealthy on the sofa I'm the one with the the metal around my neck on the stage to be healthy so I get it um and especially when they're older than us right um anyone to our senior they've got you know some people I talk about this have more time in their fields of practice but be it Athletics or medicine or science then I have time on Earth so someone that's got a livelihood devoted to that maybe they have a business devoted to that maybe they've coached people counseled people treated people how do you feel if someone all of a sudden tells you maybe there is another way you know what if people have died in your care what if people have lost their battles with cancer or you know epilepsy depression anxiety you know any autoimmune issue that couldn't be dissolved through your treatment but now there's maybe this other way that how they make you feel and so I think about that a lot but at the same time if I'm able to change through humility empathy and just curiosity if you can do that which obviously you have had to do if other people can do that if my mother can do that my friends can do that the people that I coach and counsel can do that I believe anyone could anyone can the ability to do that or not do that as a choice right it's a simple Choice Simplicity is a matter of fact it's not an opinion that's something either is or is not simple whether it's easy or difficult though that's that's up to us that's the subjective part of Simplicity and I think that's where most people run into problems is that it's easy for me it's difficult for you it's easy for you it's difficult for me yeah and uh you know do you I think you make a very good point there especially with doctors you know if they've been treating patients a certain way for a long time and then you say hey well actually this other way would get you a better result and in fact the other way that you were doing it may have actually harmed people that can be very confronting and very upsetting and uh so you obviously have to be very very careful on how you say that to someone you know it's not like a challenge like hey you know you messed up you've been killing people totally they don't they're not going to want to believe that they're not going to want to hear that but you say like hey oh look there's this better way of doing it like what you're doing was how we were supposed to do it and that was the best way we had but I think this is this can be better um you know it's it's important to keep in mind that that that people are people and uh and they can they're not going to just just respond how you want them to respond they're going to respond uh based on their own situation and and uh and where they're coming from at that time and um but I think it's very important especially as doctors when you have patients lives at hand um to to really ask those questions and of yourself you know because it's not it's not that you've failed people you did anything wrong you did what you thought was the right thing to do at the time totally you know totally hopefully we all do um but you know you have you have to learn you know and maybe maybe the way you're doing it is the best way that's ever going to be you know discovered but if it's not and something else comes out that's better well you have a responsibility to to pick that up and absolutely right because like you know if you say well no that can't possibly be true because if that were true then that means that I've been hurting a lot of people and I haven't been hurting people I've been doing a good job so I'm just not going to listen to you okay but you know if you continue to do what you were doing and it is the wrong way it's going to continue to hurt people and so one just like yeah and so wouldn't it be better to then say like okay well I thought I was doing the right thing but you know there might be a better way I'll change that and I'll do something better I think that's that's really the only responsible thing to do as a clinician the man I'm so glad you said all that because you know ego is is probably one of the hardest hurdles to get over with all that because at the end of the day that's all we're really talking about Pride yeah our own pride and like right now if something came out if there was backing if there was legitimate efficacy evidence you know anecdotal research truth whatever that there is a better way a different way I'd be like oh let me read up on that okay let me experiment with that let me play with that I'm never gonna say I'm set in stone and I'm in a movable object on this Frontier now maybe on certain things like I don't think drinking gasoline would be the best thing for your health on a regular basis so maybe on certain topics I am immovable but regarding optimal human health and nutrition I'm always open do I think that there is definitely a pretty narrow scope as far as in limits and uh constraints yeah do I think those limits and constraints can be bent also yes right and I think that's what kind of you me and other people in this space have have proven is that there are laws but then there are limits but those limits can either be pushed bent or sometimes broken right I'll tell you a story about about doctors and whatnot when I go to the VA as a patient it's a trip man because you know your first rule in practice of course following the oath is to do no harm Roger that well at the VA there's there's a rule even above that it's don't let these guys leave and [ __ ] kill themselves Jesus right like you know veteran suicide and suicide prevention awareness is is massive and huge so before the Do no harm it's literally do whatever you can to prevent this person man or woman from leaving this hospital and killing themselves yeah then we've stepped to do no harm then we step to you know patient uh individuality and and custom prescription Etc et cetera so how would you be able to practice how do you prescribe how do you diagnose you know properly when you have to meet those first two Criterion before you can really get into the specifics of their needs as an individual so for me I go in there and I'm like classic lean mass hyper responder you know Monster total cholesterol htl and LDL ratios to match but triglycerides you know at 39. yeah and they look at my lipid panels and they're like and my fasted glucose you know when I go there is like in the 50s and they look in my they look in my stuff and they're like what the hell are you man you know literally they say this they're like and you know blood pressure all the vitals everything all the uh creatinine and everything else and um uh what's it called the digestive protein I can't remember um it'll come to me um or one of the react the C-reactive protein you know C scores being zero all that and they're like what the hell are you man and I'm like ah you know just push-ups and whatever and uh and they're like well tell can you tell us more what's your diet and then I tell them and they go oh my God we need we immediately need to put you on a Statin oh my God yeah and I'm like okay let me let me think here first of all the person telling me this does not look like we do um and I'm I go and this was the other this is just a couple of weeks ago actually in Miami at the VA and the two doctors telling me this they're like you need to stop doing that we need to put you on dot dot immediately and I'm like hold on you both literally just told me I'm one of if not the healthiest patients in the Miami VA Health System the VA is like the largest patient populist maybe in the world I think I believe so um so if you ever need a sample size or anything like that's a great place to go for data yeah because it's super controlled and obviously very expensive and and diverse but to hear that I was like you literally just told me I might be the healthiest patient you have or I've ever seen in the hospital and you're telling me to change something right based off of what you read on a panel compared to what I told you I'm eating why don't you ask me more questions instead and and we had we started to have this conversation like granted just like you said I am not here to be pounding my fists and beating my chest like I'm right you're wrong no no no no I just I'm trying to share if anything the idea I'm trying to share like like guys look what I found like check this out you know what I mean like this isn't about again being right or wrong so I I'm very delicately trying to explain myself and in the back of my mind I'm like don't get confrontational don't get confrontational you know be calm be passive and I said why don't you ask me more questions I was like I'll come in for a study and hook me up to whatever you want like use me as a guinea pig let's let's help other people with what I found maybe there's something someone else can get or benefit from from from what I've been able to find and and they weren't too Pro for that no you know I that's great but just clean up your diet and we'll see you in six months Mike okay I tried but um I appreciate what they they have to say I appreciate their advice I appreciate their Insight I appreciate the testing I just don't really respond when I'm asked about things now I'm just like yeah you know I just eat balanced whatever Yeah Yeah well yeah well as you say I just you either eat a healthy diet that's it you know and you do be a very healthy diet you know I I like sort of getting in that confrontation you know not like in a combative sort of way but it you know did you not it gives you an opportunity to test yourself and your and your knowledge and uh you know against people you know who like okay well let's see what you got you know this is where I'm coming from where are you coming from yeah and yeah yeah exactly yeah try and convince me I want you to convince me this is where I'm doing what are you doing and uh you know and so it's um uh it's worked out in in such a way that that uh it used to be a very big vegan movement in Perth and Australia and now it's like going the other way and getting like a corner movement and I was just talking to someone today actually um and uh I was out just just running errands and someone you know just said like oh you know and you know what do you do and I was like well you know I'm a physician and uh she was like what kind and what do you do and all that sort of stuff and and I just told them that uh you know about the podcast and you know do stuff on diet nutrition and like oh that's cool I was like well you know specifically on you know meat-based eating like you know carnivore Diner I was just talking about the carnivore diet I was just talking to this person like right over there and we were talking about it and how they they loved it and they were doing so great and I was thinking about it I'm like well you know here's there's some stuff you can check out but when I first got to Australia you know four years ago people thought I was out of my damn mind you know by only eating meat um and and now it's just just moving moving moving and I think it's because of those conversations that you just have on a one-to-one basis and it spreads out from there because you get uh someone interested and and then they start looking into it and they start going like damn it this is this there's something to this they start getting interested they start talking about it they start having these sort of confronting conversations with people and they start talking about it and and it just grows from there and so now there's quite a lot of people that are that are talking about it and trying it just because of that and um yeah I mean especially doctors I think it's great because because also you know I mean you're very knowledgeable in this and you you've done a lot of work in this because like you know you do you you want to know what it's about you know your friend challenged you on and said hey why don't you check this out when you think about it and you did you know and I'm sure that you could talk to these guys in ways that they could they would probably come around because a lot of it it's almost easier to uh to talk doctors into it because the you know they you know the the they can't deny the legitimacy of it of the effects well there's yeah well absolutely and they you know looking at your results and your blood tests and your objective markers everything else is is all you know all all showing uh that it's good uh but also like these Concepts make sense from a medical standpoint from from a biological standpoint scientific standpoint you just point these things out and they just go damn it that does make sense and that's what I'm saying yeah and so you know I have I have yet to meet like a doctor or a medical professional nurse or whomever that we've actually had a you know in-depth conversation with that they haven't gone like damn it that all makes a lot of sense you know and like okay I'm gonna look into that uh yeah man like I love stepping into the ring so to speak with a professional that's clearly above my pay grade you know and they're in their respective field because it took me a while to get that confidence but through knowledge you know and experience to to feel like I can have that conversation with with this person I mean even to sit with you or just sit with Dr Baker like Sean Baker that I have before um or other Physicians and not be what am I going to say like I'm walking on eggshells I'm going to say the wrong word they're going to destroy me with medical vocabulary I'm stupid I'm ignorant like don't get me wrong I'm still very much respected respectful to the diploma and the experience and the knowledge and everything else but like I'm not afraid because I know how I feel I know what I've been doing and I know what the the causal relationships of what I've consumed to how I feel you know create and so when I was at the VA this last time between the two of them one was a senior resident and the other was you know like a 30-year um physician I wasn't scared I was I was honest I knew everything that I was saying was true it was not theorized you know it was literally X Plus y equals z to where the relationship and the results from it were totally causal and complementary as well as um um symbiotic to one another right they were 100 correlated and that to me is so cool because now I think you know the patient's side is becoming much more aware and informed and and wanting to be as opposed to just showing up here's your script take your pills see out the door right now it's more of this like cohesiveness between a patient and a doctor to where let's find the right and best formula for you let's let's devise a plan together let's put something together let's put our minds together my knowledge as a physician your mind and intuition of yourself and your body and how it you know responds to certain stimulus or stimuli and that's really what I've been going with so like I go to the VA for their systems right for their checks for their data for the ability to get the calcium score test to get my full EKGs to get my lipid panels to get everything else and then I use that data go back to my lab and think like okay what can I tweak here to manipulate these numbers or like let's see if I do something it's going to change you know like in 2022 I went from like I think a 250 total and then again like low ratio HCL LDL to match and the triglycerides under 50. cool and then I pushed it all the way up to like 450 for total but the same low ratios of HCL LDL and triglycerides still under like 75. and I was like oh man this is amazing you know and I talked to Dr Sean Baker about it and that's when I went into the lean mass hyper responder uh Rabbit Hole from um Dave uh Feldman um and loved all that information on that and to think like how is this not more in the common you know public domain of awareness or medical awareness to think like you know you for sure and now like me like I continue to find myself on these edges of the map man or like I'm trying to Google things about how I feel and where I am in my life and what my body is going through these things my body are exhibiting like hyperkalemia I had to learn about the other day because I was I definitely consumed too much potassium and I was uh feeling strange from it and I was like something's not right and I started to deconstruct what I had gone through in the day and I was like you know over abundance of potassium in the body simple symptoms I found hyperkalemia and I was like oh yeah this is definitely what's going on let's not do that you know um but learning stuff like that that's amazing but the more I or further I go into this space the less information there seems to be because of how novel it is you know like somebody asked me they're like well dude what are you gonna do when you finish your lion diet like right now today is Day 70 out of 100 days of of rumen and animals salt and water and um I was like I don't know man he's like what are you gonna become a vampire and just drink blood I was like maybe like I wouldn't say I wouldn't do it you know but it just keeps fascinating me man and and back to that you know theorists and practition and dogma and hypothesis it's just constant testing to try to disprove it because honestly man it's like I don't want to believe it you know I don't want to believe that my health how I feel my ability to fire up out of bed at 3 15 in the morning every single day without any like you know feeling of inadequacy or that my rest was poor like even if I go to bed at 11 o'clock or I'm still like bam wired ready to go how I feel during the day the fact that I don't have depression anymore anxiety addictive personality I'm not you know going out and drinking and using drugs anymore and I was able to get myself out of all these complications within my mind because of how I ate I'm like don't tell me that I don't want that to be true and that's why I keep testing this you know and it's like the Matrix to me where I'm like uh you know the scene where he's a cipher the character is sifting the wine he's like I don't I don't I don't want to remember anything I want to remember nothing when he's trying to sell out the crew to become you know plugged back in but it's like you can't unsee this stuff man and what you were kind of touching on with the Physicians and and whatnot with with data and results you can't deny the biological and physiological correlations right if you do this thing if you eat these Foods this is what's going to happen internally and essentially like what we can you know clean self-clean ourselves our self-heal Auto regulate it's not the diet healing people it's people healing themselves within but it's the diet that's enabling that because it's the removal of all the variables and it took me again this is you know my other Eureka moment so the breast milk was the first one that you know why does that exist it's a miracle of mammalian Evolution it exists for the exact reasons listed right single source of total and optimal substance immediate use minimal uh discard through digestion and is the least amount of duress on the body as possible how else can we do that as an adult there's only one way to do it how do you get a single sword okay red meat it's not avocados it's not coconuts it's not spinach like when people like what about vegetables like you know much [ __ ] spinach if it taste like you would need a dump truck literally a dump truck to do it and then not to mention the internal stress because we're going back to that East amount of stress on the body and again back to the to the infants their their bowel movements are neutral they're not so foul when they're on breast milk the second you start using those orange and green and multicolored jars that's when the war takes place that's when you can smell it from three rooms away that's when you have to talk to your girlfriend and be like who's going to change your I don't want to do it right and so like I kept seeing that and I was like damn okay that's one and then the other one became how I felt noticeably different not having depression not feeling you know inflamed in certain places like my hands or my fingers are knowing after I ate or consumed things that I had the swelling in my brain or my feet and my shoes didn't fit right like all the signs are there why because the body is the greatest Communicator in the world because it's unbiased hey Anthony it's hot outside um I'm gonna start sweating and perspiring so if you could do us a favor and like cool us off some more maybe take some shade or stop this activity that'd be great because if you don't we're gonna eventually get you kind of hypoxic and um you know hypoglycemic and then maybe you're gonna get a little lightheaded and eventually you're gonna have heat exhaustion and then heat stroke and you might die just saying that's that's the body and you go all right cool no problem I'm gonna take some fluids I'm gonna get out of this I'm gonna listen to you but if you don't listen to us those things are going to happen same thing if it's cold Anthony it's cold here's some Goosebumps I'm telling you we're cold here's some again hypoxia we're telling we're cold fingers are getting light colored and insensitive if you don't warm up we're gonna investigate frostbite if you don't continue to warm-up we're eventually going to die you don't listen to it you die all of those things the signals the messages that we get from the body the unbiased objective straight messaging center of the body it's this and this the brain and the tongue obviously they're connected but that's where we mess it all up because we choose to disregard those messages and we choose to to act and and we you know essentially choose for pleasure make choices palatable choices based on Pleasure rather than purpose and so we think with our tongues and our emotional Hearts rather than listening to our body and really about how we feel and that's to me the big line of it all is that seeing is one thing I see Dr Anthony chafee I hear his message hearing is another I see how he looks I understand his background I can I can hear what he says the passion the feelings voices knowledge but I can't actually feel it it's not until you feel it that you understand and that to me is is everything the feeling becomes the understanding that's when it becomes inarguable that's why I do my 30-day Carnival resets the same way you do the 30-day carnivore challenges with people because once they feel that you can unsee it yeah yeah absolutely and that's why I just think just trying it for 30 days I think 30 days is a good minimum you know like you get totally crap sort of gets out of your system in the first sort of two weeks or so and then you really start feeling amazing and so then you have another two weeks of just feeling awesome and all of a sudden you're like okay hey I didn't know that I could feel like this you know I'm 58 years old and like I I I want to go run I want to go jump I want to go play sports again I'm going to go to the gym like I feel amazing I've lost 20 pounds like what the hell is going on you know I feel like I'm you know 20 again and you know and just having that that little taster people generally want want more I do like the Hundred Days thing like what you're doing just 100 days just give it a shot I think obviously that's going to give you a very very good look and you'll see very clearly what this is doing to your body and the benefits that it has and the detriments that all the other things have had and then you come off the line diet and you say okay well maybe I'll try you know pork chop or some uh yeah exactly eggs or something like that and then all of a sudden you're like you know what I actually don't feel my best and uh you know because I'm primarily eating beef and uh you know the first few years I was really just eating beef and just purely out of preference and I've always preferred beef and then you know you have some some like bacon eggs things like that especially at the hospital because that's like the only thing that I can I can get sure so I'll just give it like a pile of bacon and eggs like it only comes in three plates so I'll have like 10 10 eggs and like six long strips of bacon not just little things you get it at like a diner but they're like a foot long and there's like six of these like good Aussie bacon yeah yeah just big big bass or just like half a pig you know in each one right and so it's like it's like literally piles of bacon and eggs and I'll just eat that and like that's what I can get at the hospital and so if I'm working out a lot I just I just need to eat more often and when I do that I sort of you know if I didn't bring a steak to work or or whatever and I had to get get lunch there you know after like you know four or five days I'm like you know like I feel good but like I don't I don't feel my best and then I'm like I'm just gonna I'm just gonna cut all that out I'm just going back to steaks for a while because I just I just do feel better on just just the beef you know and um and you can you can only tell that if you've tried you can only tell that if you've actually eliminated these things you can see the contrast and people say well you know I mean Carnival diet looks interesting sounds interesting but you actually feel pretty good you know I don't have any major health issues that I need to correct and so you know I feel fine and you know my argument to them is like you don't actually realize how bad you feel you know because you're in it you don't know yeah this is like this is what you feel that's just normal for you because you've always done this but you get outside of this or even a month or even two weeks not for the second half of that first 30 days you'll you'll see just how rotten you've felt for right now and previously in your life I I did I did you know 38 years old you know mentioned this I I felt so good I went back and and started uh practicing with the professional team in Seattle Seattle Sea Wolves that I'd grown up playing with and I just felt amazing and I was back at practice and just running dead Sprint just hauling ass and felt fantastic having not run in I mean God knows how long I mean I hadn't played a full season a couple of years and so I was really out of shape but I felt fantastic and I remember thinking back this is just just two weeks into a carnivore diet most recently and my most recent time I've come to carnivore and I remember thinking to myself I was just like I've felt like crap my whole life you know and I should be I should have felt like this my whole life and I feel robbed for not having felt that but I would never have known unless I actually tried it you know ignorance is bliss but ignorance is also ignorance and you're also living in that squalor that you think is normal and uh yeah you can get out of it and then all of you sudden you can realize that you know things are a lot better and maybe you can't go back in time and and live your whole life this way but you can live the rest of your life this way and you can definitely improve on all of this and yeah yeah you have to live with the fact that you're not six inches taller with a ten percent larger brain you know like you would be if you you know sort of grew up like this what you know you're going to be you want to be better on for the rest of your life and that's no one can take away from you God man it's so true yeah you know I wish I had known that top and top in the charts at five nine I could have used it six inches nutrition you know but uh or even more man you know yeah or even more God knows right yeah but like you said it's the feeling feeling is truly the understanding and that's what is undeniable and that's what makes me so not scared but I'm just like gosh you know what am I going to do when I finish my 100 days like somebody asked me the other day what's you know what are you going to do I was like I would love some bacon and eggs right now for sure for sure love bacon and eggs but it's gonna be about how do things make me feel not about how things taste because the majority of people in the world us all of us you know at some point have been guilty of are just innocent or dishonest have lived to eat rather than you know eating to live and that's what most people do most people live to eat straight up you know they travel to eat they do something to eat somebody dies they eat somebody gets married they eat somebody's birthday they eat living to eat rather than you know eating to live and like this is about eating to live man and not just live but to thrive and to realize like my God and you know I think about it like being a bouncer at a nightclub if I'm standing at the door and it's just Anthony shaffey coming through I'm like man he's always good his money's always good he doesn't even drink he just sits on the on the on the sofas and just chills out the place is immaculate when he's here we have no problems awesome hey Anthony do you mind today we're going to do some Renovations while you're hanging out yeah go for it no problem we can repair the walls we can install new TVs new carpeting all this stuff can be done internally to clean the place up because we just have Anthony the best customer ever but when Anthony comes in and it's Jake and Steve and Rebecca and Siobhan Jake's always in trouble Steve gets in fights Rebecca brings drugs and Siobhan who knows what she's doing those problems bring more staff we have to have additional security sometimes the fire department has to get called we got to call people off work that are normally uh not working that day to come in we can't repair stuff we have damage going on TVs get knocked off the wall the house the internal space is destroyed that story is a metaphor for the body and variables and toxic variables when it's just Anthony that single source of sustenance breast milk or red meat the place is immaculate everybody's happy everything's copacetic it's not just homeostasis it's like humming homeostasis and we can self-regulate we can clean the walls we can paint we can do all these things inside with less because now the cleanup crew is not being tasked to put out a fire now the accounting department is not being tasked to take out Jake because he's been fighting with someone now X department is not having to help the fire or chief or the the police all these systems that their responsibilities are being intruded upon because of these variables that are going on that's what happens to the body when we consume not just variables but garbage variables it's constantly okay what is this where does it go I don't know just put it over there okay what is this where does it go I don't know just put it over there what is this where does it go uh just just throw it on the shelf and that's just store store store store right and that's eventually does it get dealt with I don't know no a lot of times no as opposed to Anthony Anthony Anthony Anthony and for years of doing that because it starts basically as soon as we get off the teeth that's when it starts literally it begins the second we come off of that and we start having those jars those jars evolve into you know liquid gel Kool-Aid pops and and sweets and treats like you know my poor God child like I've still yet to watch her eat a piece of a whole food to this day granite a lot of times we hang out it's it's special occasions birthdays and whatnot I've never seen it to this day I've never seen her eat a blueberry I've never even seen a pizza chicken a piece of fish a piece of steak a banana it's only been cereals pastries and candy that's it so coincidentally enough when I finished my lion diet on June 1st I'll actually be in New Orleans and I have a massive recipes list of things that I'm going to be making specifically for her right like healthy versions of ice cream healthy versions just real Whole Foods ingredients of things that she's eating that I can bring over and say hey look what Uncle Jake made you baby like oh my God this is so good she's four but she's already like this tall you know she's halfway up to me which is not much but um she's gonna be a big girl but but that's the future that's where I see if you want to talk about like leaving a legacy to me it's you know our elders are already you know the most part made their decisions even though my mother 71 years old um two years carnivore now is recovered and stronger than ever and amazing yeah she looks like a bionic human literally same thing goes to her doctor's healthiest patients she they have tells her what she tells them what she's eating or you need to change that she's just like okay right same thing but the Legacy to me is the young the youth right because whether it's the 80 of American adults that are metabolically sick or already obese it's one in three I believe it's more than one in three I believe it's greater than 35 percent now of American children are either metabolically sick or obese that is not their faults they're being fed that way they cannot make those decisions but like how do you write those wrongs or how do you you know change the direction of those ships it's about leadership it's about home you know your kids don't go to school and get sick at school they get sick at home they're sick before they go to school they just go to school and it magnifies why is it that my clients that are teachers first grade teachers in California first grade teachers in other countries or parents of kids that are that are adolescents or toddlers that aren't sick that don't get sick at the frequency and regularity that all these other people do because they say oh she's a toddler she's a newborn he's a toddler he's a newborn they go to school they get sick and they bring it home no they're sick because you're sick they have cultivated that sickness at home they bring it to school and they just magnify it because they're all little gremlins and they multiply when you put water on them so when I hear that it's it's tough because you know close to home it's the hardest to deal with because it's where you want to have the most impact and Effectiveness but it's where you also have to be the most delicate empathetic of understanding and that's it's probably one of the toughest plays for me and toughest things to deal with but the whole thing is is the reality of the truth and bearing it yeah yeah well it's it's especially when we got kids involved you know it's uh it's not something that you can be a sideline Observer uh for if it's your kids you know because whatever you do it's going to have an influence on them you know so you have to make the best choice that you can and it is it is sad that we've sort of bequeathed our you know nutritional you know sovereignty over to guidelines and started saying like oh well you know Kellogg's they make children's cereal and that's balanced and they say it's balanced and that's what it's supposed to be and we just trust that we trust that these cereals are good for them and they will they know what's good for these kids obviously or they or they wouldn't allow them to make who's they you know anyone can make a product if they want to and so it's um you know it's one of those things that I think are so important just especially with kids that you have to get that right and um you know if if nothing else I mean eat real food you know I mean just process stuff that has such a huge uh correlation with all major diseases and going on any whole food diet away from processed food diabetes vegan or carnivore you all you already start getting benefits because radical radical yeah because it they are so bad that like you know even going to another sub-optimal diet which you know you you could argue we're either carnivores or herbivores right we're not going to be both right uh We're not gonna be one or and the other right we say well we're omnivores but you know you can't Thrive as a vegan and Thrive just as much as a carnivore one's got elect you know right and um you know so one of those is going to be sub-optimal but they both cause improvements coming from a you know a processed food diet so that's how bad the processed food diet is processed food is all processed carbs sugar and plants you know so you're just substituting you know bad plants for Worse plants really you know you'll go to another another diet like that but it makes a huge difference and if you can just just feed kids real food does that I mean just things that you make that have that have ingredients you can see and have to chop up yourself you know I think that that's that's just a huge benefit already than just getting something in a packet that's just smooshed together and God knows what's in it you have a you know 30 ingredients in it you know that's insane to me you know anything that has more than you know two ingredients you know to just not be allowed you know I mean I should really just be one just meet you know I I had this I had this yesterday with my cousin I'm visiting right now in San Antonio and um he approached me about wanted to start working out and eating eating more healthy etc etc I was like my man absolutely let's do it so we went to the grocery store yesterday um I was like it's going to be a while because we're going to do a full audit and Analysis of understanding nutritional facts and macronutrients and labeling you know uh slander and how to shop in the grocery store I was like all right dude first thing when we get in here the key stick to the perimeter an American grocery store if you keep to the outer ring right that's pretty much where you're going to be solid what do you see when you first walk in produce why because it's bright and colorful and attractive almost always but it's on the outside you navigate depending on you know how the store is laid out fish meat you keep going your Dairy et cetera et cetera and your maybe you finish with like flowers right but it's in the center is where you run into problems that's where all your boxes are as well your packages are while your wrappers are all the prepared foods are so that was his first like lesson of let's say you know dietary Enlightenment was like oh wow that's really it's so funny because it's so obvious I was like yeah exactly right and so then we start reading ingredients and looking at things chips for example explaining the difference between you know corn flour versus actual corn or you know purees and concentrates versus real pieces and whatnots or extracts versus the real thing or naturally flavored meaning it's not necessarily from a natural source it just has an essence of something and you know trying to be informative without being overwhelming and finally um we both grew up in Mexico he more than I did but both of our parents are from there and talking about you know our love for for pork rinds or chicharrones right and he's like yeah man but those are so unhealthy right I was like watch this I grab a bag of chips grab a bag of pork rinds I was like I want you to count how many ingredients are in this the chips the colors you know the works of course all the oils and the lectins and he's like God it's a lot I was like would you stop counting that he's like 25. I was like okay I'm gonna read you how many ingredients are in this one pork and sea salt yeah you still think this is unhealthy and he's like I don't understand I was like well he's like I understand but like he's like how can that be I was like exactly you know and the bag is much less attractive right it's not nearly as brightly colored and all this stuff but we were basically going from thing to thing like like bees for pollen you know I was like going over eggs and showing him the the soy not just something being organic and pasteurized anti you know no hormones no antibiotics outdoor access I was like look at these you've got 12 different versions that all say organic I was like but only one of these says soy free and he goes yeah I see that I was like that's your guy right there and he's like what does it matter and I was like well you know naturally chickens hens and roosters they don't eat grass they forage their Pluckers from the ground they're looking for worms and grubs and bugs that's what they like to chew on vegetarian diet means corn and soy just because it says a vegetarian diet we assume it to be the healthy it's not true same thing with our animals and we literally use corn and soy to fat in all of our animals cows pigs chicken everything why humans can't make that correlation or connect that correlation is beyond me we literally use corn and soy grain to fatten our animals and you think it's not going to do the same thing to you come on you know but talking to him about just understanding that you know and the having that awareness and then based on that awareness making it informed and mindful decision I'm not a judge I'm not a Critic I'm not a condemner I'm not Billy Graham saying come to Jesus this is the way there are parts of me that want to be out of selfishness because I want people to feel great and to be healthy and to live long and happily not to just live long long happily and healthily just because the U.S mortality rate has increased over the last like 10 years by by significant bips up to close to 80 years old now I'd love to know what the last 20 years of those lifespans typically are what's the quality of life because I guarantee it's the opposite at a tremendously rated decline meaning we may have ascended a couple of points in the overall life expectancy year but I guarantee the quality of life has a vertical downslope towards the x-axis to show how crappily our health has been declining in those later years so being just just being mindful you know knowing like if you're going to eat this stuff know what you're eating as opposed to I eat this because my friends eat it I eat this because my parents eat it I eat this because I grew up eating it I never actually question I never actually understood I never took the time to know why or wonder and to the foods thing like you're talking about things you can chop and whatnot if I can say one thing to anybody to make it as simple as possible if you can pick it pull it or kill it start there that's a good that's a good rule yeah and um yeah I was I was reminded of a number of conversations that I have with people it's funny to me most people are like oh I want to live forever I want I don't want to die young I want to have all this this life ahead of me and that's always been the dream you know the search of the Fountain of Youth and all these different sorts of things sure sure and I've sort of you know I think we sort of stumbled on that with with a carnivore diet just eating to a biologically appropriate degree because genetically we're designed to live 120 years right so I mean that's right there you're stacking on another 40 years on on the national average actually more than 40 years now because it's going down um but it's funny because I talk to people and they're like oh my God I don't want to live that long I'm like well just why don't you just kill yourself now then you just don't want to live you know it's just like what the hell are you talking about you're like well the last you know um you know I mean that's just gonna suck you're just going to be miserable and crippled you know they're thinking that you're going to age at this end and Decay at the same rate uh and and then instead of being just a frail crusty old you know 78 year old and then dying did you just continue to wither and turn to dust but you just I can't die you know it's like some sort of like you know curse out of a you know uh like a horror movie or something like that you know and um I was like no you're living to 120 because you're healthy you know you're healthy as you are you're healthier at 85 than you are now at 30. and and then I talk to other people that say uh well you might as well smoke and drink it was like oh well smoking takes 20 years off your life but the last 20 years suck anyway right so I might as well just take those off self-fulfilling prophecy because it's the ones who smoke who have the shitty last 20 years because they're the ones degrading their body and decaying and yeah and aging prematurely and and having all these health problems they're the ones that they're trying to avoid by dying early but they're they're guaranteeing that they're one of those people so you know for me it's it's a much better uh you know intellectual Endeavor to realize that if you don't do all that you can live longer and be healthier the whole time and not only will you get more life but you'll get more quality of life as well and um yeah and there's there's this weird fad that people are talking about like well yeah you know doing a meat diet yes you can be healthy now but that doesn't mean that you're gonna like live longer and like uh why wouldn't that be if you're like if you're as healthy as you biologically can be what what about that doesn't doesn't suggest longer life you're not decaying you're not breaking down you're not aging prematurely that means you're not aging you're not growing older as fast as someone else doing something else um the The Logical gymnastics that people try to to do as a workaround from actually just recognizing the reality that's in front of their face that that biologically we are carnivores and that that's going to give us the healthiest longest life that we can have because that's what we're biologically adapted to to have you know that's what we're biologically adapted to eat that's why meat is basically 100 bioavailable you get all the nutrients you need from that One Stop Shop just as you say everything's right there everything you need in the proportion you need it nothing that you don't need or can't handle and so you only get good you don't get bad and you're perfectly set up and adapted to thrive on that and somehow that biological and evolutionary mechanism that's spent years millions of years honing itself millions of generations honing itself hundreds of thousands anyway that that that somehow isn't as good as something that was just made up in a [ __ ] Factory you know 30 years ago or or even last year you know like the impossible or the best thing that could ever have man wow oh God possibly be I um a few things number one The Impossible meets and whatnot plant-based foods and stuff I did a a comparison one day with a couple of brands of impossible or whatever plant-based burgers and whatnot and uh a couple of bags of dog food and put the ingredients all side by side and said see if you can guess which one is dog food and which one is a plant-based burger or plant-based sausages do they're pretty similar no lies like no freaking lie and I said I've had that discussion with friends of mine that are veterinarians have been like I'd love to go on camera with you and talk about a dog food is trash for the most part like people wonder my dog's always sick he's always farting like it's not normal for dogs to have [ __ ] heartworms all the time you guys it's not normal for every dog's hips to be displaced it's not normal for dogs not to be able to breathe like even if they're compacted faces are the way they are like animals and otherwise they don't want dry kibble they want to eat meat they have their teeth for a reason that's one two uh and this is kind of a question a trivia question do you know what animal we actually have a closest stomach pH too uh vulture some of the carrying animals I believe so it's between that and also the crocodile oh yeah yeah so like many people would sorry it's just gonna be a chimpanzee or something like that it couldn't be further right so like the crocodile I believe is between like one five and just over three so very very acidic has to be and ours dips into that low three up to five range right I believe um whereas the Chimpanzee is is above the five and into the sevens because it has to be able to ferment all the uh the the cellulose and plant food where people would think like again we have to be close to the chimpanzee it's like no dude we're closer to the Damned vultures and the crocodile why and like what did they eat like this is back to those undeniables breast milk the stomach pH and the uh the bowel movement thing like that's not by chance that's not by coincidence so you know I I I don't know man like again it's about to me testing this theories testing those hypotheses and constantly uh not being able to disprove them and the answers are in the natural world they exist in the natural world right all around us whether it's the stomach pH is or anything else you know I I'm just I'm just perplexed and mind-blown by it and I I applaud you for having to kind of stand in the fire around the the doubters and the naysayers that are that are certainly obviously omnipresent in in your world more than mine but um yeah man I just you know try to extend the message as best I can to me it's sharing how I feel more than anything and the more I continue to feel this way the more I'm going to just continue to tell people about it and I think that's the best thing I can do awesome well we everyone appreciates it and uh you know he's just very good get your voice out there your experience out there showing people with you know as a living example uh that everything has said that couldn't happen can't happen you know that actually lines up perfectly with biochemistry we know it we've seen it we know people fast we know people have been fasting for a long time every major religion has some sort of incorporate some sort of fasting um you know we we understand I've taught since I was a kid humans are apex predators top of the food chain always these major megafauna Hunters that has never been in question except for last week sometime when someone said oh you know not only is it more ethical to not kill animals that's actually how we evolved and that's uh you know totally what I think uh I mean the the amount of nonsense that um you know comes out of some of these clients is just pure it's just a just a just an unfounded uh statement you know they're saying well this is this is what happens and uh it's like without any evidence either asked for or presented people will just take that up and just repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and it blows my mind you know that bumper sticker profits yeah yeah yeah and they just they just see this they go oh well that that lines up with my ideology therefore it's true it's just like like did you did you check did you make sure that they're not completely full of [ __ ] man I um when you're talking about the food and things that we eat you know over the last 30 years a couple hundred years let's say let's say post-industrial Revolution and you know agricultural expansion uh throughout the world preceding that for two and a half million years is how we ate now we lived how we developed how we evolved if you were to put that on a clock a 24-hour clock the current or modern form of eating represents 30 seconds compared to the rest of that 23 hours 59 minutes and 30 seconds of time represents the human evolution timeline of eating and to think that that 30 seconds is all of a sudden so profound don't get me wrong there's been tremendous breakthroughs in science and medicine Electronics every other field imaginable right but to think that how we've evolved as humans is suddenly now become better to eat things out of boxes out of packages out of wrappers or things that have been created in Labs or now even being genetically and otherwise altered or even made through 3D printing for our consumption to think that that is the way to unlock human optimal human health it's just mind-boggling to me you know as opposed to could it really be this simple yes it is could it really have all gone so wrong in awry yes it has is the system really actually working against us yes it is I am not a conspiracy theorist this is truth you want some you want some [ __ ] reality go to go to your airport America take a look around your airport see what your people look like it's probably one of the best Petri dishes to give you an accurate understanding of what America looks like every time I go to the airport man I love being in there because I'm the only person reading a book number one rarely do I see other people reading a book not to mention I'm doing it standing up I'm neutral spine looking straight at my pages my neck is not broken I'm not looking down and like I said I'm standing everywhere else I look and the first time I kind of made this connection was I was flying to Paris a few years ago I'm in an international terminal in Newark every flight in this terminal or in this The Concourse is going to be a minimum of six hours you know Zurich Berlin Dubai Paris Etc every single person was sitting down except me I'm sitting I'm there I'm standing reading my book observing you know kind of doing some stretching here moving around I'm just I'm staying mobile I'm staying limber every other person was sitting and the majority of those people is their neck broken they're here and they're on electronic devices now what are those people what else are they consuming oh I can tell you it wasn't water yeah bottles of cola all over the place bags in hands of chips of course so consumption consumption is the mother of of our Salvation truth what we eat what we listen to who we hang out with what we subscribe to and the environments we live in that is consumption right physical and spiritual nutrition and just looking at this sample size of people in this terminal not one of them this isn't about being vain not one of them look like me not one of them look like you not one of them look like my mother now one of them look like my clients successfully do now they all look like 80 of American adults being obese or metabolically sick they all look like one-third of American children being obese or metabolically sick they all looked like allergen prone and abundant flies everywhere and they look like slaves they look like drones so when I say it's not me being a conspiracy theorist and that the system is working against you it is because here's the formula eat these Foods watch this news listen to these puppets get sick drink this medicine alcohol stay sick go pay money for these drugs rx get hooked caffeinate caffeinate caffeinate trying to bring yourself Back in Balance artificially repeat the cycle that's the reality of what we live in and you want to continue to give money to that machine to keep paying it and then ask why do I not feel better the answer is in your hands and the powers up to you to be able to make the decision but people are scared man they don't know this is this is you know back to the Matrix of the speech that Lawrence Fishburne gives when he says you know these people are part of a system and they are doctors they're lawyers they're disguised they're working around this world and they live amongst this system and they will defend it if chastise it's back to what we were talking about the beginning how do you how do you tell David Beckham he's better as a lefty how can I tell these children that Santa Claus you know or these adults that grew up believing Santa Claus was you know the real thing like is is maybe different or that the world doesn't spin clockwise it's counterclockwise you can't fathom that and then to think that my God all of it is connected to what I've been eating all these things that I love my emotional attachments I I can't I can't I can't you how do you get through those layers I don't know yeah well is it yeah it's it's a difficult tangled web of of uh issues that just sort of have to pick through one by one but you know you can start with your own health you can start with doing what you can recognize objectively is an improvement in your own life and then once you see that and you see that with your own with your own eyes and your own experience then you can at least you have that and you have your own health that's the best foundation which would with which to work on and work off them from there you know there's a book um it was a general I can't recall his name but it said it was called um it was like make your bed or something like that it was all about you know just the first thing you do in the morning mcraven is that him yeah yeah Admiral Navy Admiral okay yeah yeah and it was just you know once you just you get up in the morning you make your beds the first thing you do you've accomplished something you've already accomplished a task you've already you know on your way to doing accomplishing more tasks and and this sets you up for the day and at the worst case scenario the day was horrible and you come back home this is perfectly made bed it's right there ready to go to bed and just you know start over again and it was a book just just talking about that you start off with something that you can control something very basic and simple and then you work up from there and doing that with your own health that's something you can objectively measure you may not be able to tell where the world's going to go in 20 years and how to how to plan and account for that but what you can tell is how do you feel right now what is your health doing right now are you coming off your medications is your blood pressure normalizing do you have diabetes anymore did your Crohn's go away you know that's something that you can look at right now and you can see from a very real objective standpoint and you can see hey this is getting better and so you start with that and then you can work up from there and if you're in good health and you have your Independence back you're going to be a much more formidable person in every aspect of your life and going forward and you're not gonna you're much less likely to be a drone or a slave and you're much more likely to be able to be your own person and and continue a much more fruitful life the the sum of it is powerful people healthy people intelligent people informed people are not valuable we you me as human beings we are the the ultimate commodity on the planet now and we're much more valuable sick scared and stupid um and that's the reality of it yeah yeah and being people are I mean we're being you know I mean that's a whole other other thing but you know that you they uh they couldn't uh you know slavery is illegal now and very uh uh out of Vogue but you know there's the whole whole idea of well it's 2030 you own nothing and you love it like what who else doesn't know anything and works uh for free and just gets provided uh their basic necessities for life was that was that the slaves was that slaves and they just get just get what they needed to survive and nothing else and they couldn't build their own wealth and and and their own fortune and their own uh the products of their labor belong to someone else and they didn't own their house they didn't own their clothes they didn't own anything that was all provided for them did they just love it you know that was actually an argument back in the 1800s was that um because this was hotly debated for decades um after the the formation of the Union before the Civil War because you know most of the states were trying to most of the people were trying to abolish slavery but they were trying to do it through the legal measures that we had set up through the Constitution they said look we don't like this but we can't just make a system of laws and then break the laws right then like we can't we can't do that we have to do this for real and unfortunately this is one of this is one of the laws this is this is something that they're allowed to do in these states and so they argued that look this is this is wrong this is immoral this is unjust this is blah blah blah and the other side was well no you're immoral you're unjust I take care of these people I take care of their families I feed them I clothe them I house them I make sure that they have they have food every single day that they're not going hungry that they're not going out and spending this money and getting drunk and so there's no food no money left to feed their kids you're just giving money to some you know some unwitting adult who's gonna go and like gamble it away spend it away and and their family is going to suffer as a result you're the one who's immoral by just paying your your uh your employees we're the moral ones by taking care of them they're like our family more than anything and so you can you can argue uh Morality In A number of different ways and and they tried to but at the end of the day you know uh you're taking away someone's an individual's freedom is is always immoral and the idea that you know 2030 you own nothing and you're and you love it like um you know I can tell if I love something or not you don't have to tell me and if you if you have to go tell people oh no no you like this clearly you know it's not going to be something that people are going to like um before I get misquoted I want to say um the mcraven I believe his last name is mcraven he was a an admiral with the with the SEAL Teams and the speech I'm not sure if he wrote that book specifically but either he wrote it or referenced it in a commencement speech I believe at the University of Texas at Austin is where it kind of got virally publicized on YouTube so it's a great speech it's so true man like it's the first thing you can do in the morning and kind of set your set yourself on on a win right and I I coach this to people and you know people literally ask about you know what's what's your process I shot a video this morning talking about it and and why I do it because life is always going to be tough the uncertainty that's going to happen the spontaneity the the disasters the circumstances as hard as your life might be right now as hard as it may have been in the past it's not impossible to say it might not get harder you might go through something even further tragic or horrendous I hope you don't but statistics would kind of show and suggest that you would you're gonna have more responsibility you're gonna have more hardship man a more heartbreak more people are going to die you're going to go through things additionally we can't change that we can't prevent necessarily all of that from happening but we can do something about how we're able to handle it our ability to handle those situations and things I mean Victor Frankel top example the last human Freedom you know the famed Holocaust prisoner talking about in his book the last human freedom is our ability to choose how we respond to situations and circumstances around us for a guy in his place to say that meaning my soul is not my soul but my body is taken my physical being my humility my pride all these things are taken and being you know horribly infringed upon yet my soul is intact and that's mine and how I choose to let these things affect me is my ultimate choice and final freedom so by having those small things in the morning like for me waking up at this non-negotiable wake-up time no matter where I am no matter what time zone no matter what time I go to sleep no matter what to get up on that and to honor myself and be like wow that's another day that I did it bam starting the day with that and then going right into my process of like Reading Writing meditation and exercise stretching routine that morning flow knocking them out it's like putting on a suit of armor before you go out into the day to where you know we didn't even get into like hormetic effects of cold and heat exposure and whatnot and why why to utilize that to mitigate stress but like it's kind of the same to me in the sense that if you don't do those things the weight the guilt of having not done them you feel it tremendously man I wish I had meditated today I wish I'd gotten up early I wish I made my [ __ ] bed I would like all that becomes negative energy and it weighs on you like a plague whereas when you do those things they don't necessarily give you this huge boost of like oh my God I'm on fire but they'll make you feel comfortable they'll give you some confidence they'll boost your self-esteem that you will have the knowledge of knowing that you did something and you carry that through the day as opposed to having the knowledge of knowing you didn't and you have that train you through the day and then you do it again or you don't do it again you don't do it again and see how you feel after missing for a week or a month or for years and that's where most people are coming from they're coming from a place of having missed for years and all it takes is that one day to get started that one activity that one chance of making your bed that one chance of honoring yourself with a wake-up time and then setting an intention and a purpose to the day and executing on that and then you stack those days together and then before you know it you have a week 30 100 six months a year and then it's life you know like somebody told me talking about our 30-day challenges 30 days is amazing yes in 30 days the awareness you gain from from going to a carnivore diet can change your your life absolutely because the feeling becomes understanding and the knowledge obtained becomes undeniable that's like sending a weed whacker through the rainforest it's going to be a very fine line and it's going to get overgrown very quickly if you don't continue to cut it right so let's call it 30 days let's say a hundred days all right well now you've got like a push mower and you've made a larger path that's going to take longer to grow over but still if you forego it and say no more for me after 100 days it's going to grow back over so what about like six months well now we've got a rider mower it's a much bigger path it's really nice like we can clearly see all the way through the rainforest but still if you don't continue to mow that it's going to grow over what if you keep to something for like a year well now we're talking about a bulldozer through the forest we've paved the road and it's there it's permanent it becomes who you are you become what you are rather like you know the world is not as we perceive it the world is as we are and if you're not living in a manner that's like congruent with what you're trying to achieve or how you see yourself to be it doesn't matter because the goal can be irrelevant I don't care if you're trying to attract a mate you're trying to change businesses improve your career improve your health if you don't have a system in place to do it it's irrelevant because we're not going to rise to the level of our goals we're going to fall to the strengths of our systems and I know that's what you help people with and teach through your uh your reset and and Challenge and I do the same and then extrapolate that through a coaching program to do the same because it's about the system but you can't even adhere to the system if you're just constantly feeling yourself with poison and I'll leave you with this is my my favorite thing in the world to say is that the single most effective thing we can do as human beings in regards to our health is controlling what we put into our mouths absolutely well Jake that was awesome um tell us where are you sure you do what sort of coaching are you offering people now is it is it just carnivore what what do you what are you uh doing at the moment I'm open to all dietary restrictions adherences abstinences observations and otherwise I will certainly tell you if uh you asked me an open question what do you think is the most optimal and I'm going to tell you that but uh now I coach people uh obviously a nutrition exercise but also in business helping a digital creators scale online tap into their spaces entrepreneurs sbos um relationship counseling has been big and popular lately uh whether it's male attract you know someone or trying to maintain marriages and personal growth and development has been big with younger people too and uh people in their maybe midlife crises that are trying to refine themselves but most of it I would say is personal growth and development Focus regardless of what they come for nutrition is the foundation you know even if you come as an entrepreneur or a business mobile still it's going to be about you first whether you're in sales marketing PR the product the venture is irrelevant especially if you're in a face game especially if you're in a personality game of a pitch it's you the product is is great and having a great product is great but being a person that people want to work with having you be the attractor that's what I try to really cultivate and teach people with and it starts with how they eat and how they take care of themselves absolutely well great well Jake there's been a it's been an absolute pleasure it's great talking to you and meeting you uh uh face to face and um can you uh tell everyone how to get a hold of you how to follow you how to uh find you for coaching yes uh I'm most active on Instagram you can find me at life like Jake say it says on my shirt um on YouTube it's youtube.com at lifelikejake for the YouTube channel and then for my website is also lifelikejake.com you can read a little bit more about me some bits about the program see some of the testimonials and success stories check out my blog my blog and also apply for coaching uh Direct on site on there I do answer all the messages it's me it's not a bot I don't have an assistant working on the side so anything anybody reach outs um you're gonna get direct contact with me awesome well Grant we'll put all those links up in the description everyone can find them there Jake thank you so much for coming on it's been a pleasure thanks for having me Dr Jeffrey appreciate it likewise not a problem man all right we'll see you soon man hey guys thank you very much for taking the time out to listen to what I had to say if you like it then please like And subscribe to my YouTube channel and podcasts and if you're on YouTube then please hit that little bell and subscribe and that'll let you know anytime I have a new video out which should be every week if not more and if you could share this with your friends that would help me get the word out and let me know that you like what I'm doing thanks again guys [Music]