Why Going STRICT Carnivore Makes ALL The Difference

For those who don't know you, could you just give a little bit of background on who you are? And then since we're going to be talking about what you eat in a day, do you mind sharing your age, height, and weight? That way people have kind of a reference point. >> Uh yeah, my name is Dr. Anthony Chaffy. I'm a neurosurgical resident. Uh currently practicing in Perth, Australia, though I'm I'm from America. I I played professional rugby for, you know, 10 years before medical school and you know uh travel quite extensively with that and was always interested in Australia. So when I had an opportunity to come down here and practice after I finished doing my humanitarian work in Bangladesh in the refugee camps there, I decided to come down and take it. Um, I've been doing research into diet and nutrition and how that affects the body and chronic disease and and athletic performance for probably 24 years now. And um, and have come across, you know, the full sort of carnivore lifestyle and and advocate for that and live it myself. Um, and now because I have such a such a base of knowledge and understanding about it and I've tried to challenge my knowledge by going to vegan uh doctors and nutritionists and going to their websites and asking them questions and looking at their argument saying, "Okay, am I missing anything?" And, you know, challenge, you know, I want to I I don't want to be wrong. I I want I just want to know what's going on. I don't care what the answer is as long as it's the answer. And so, you know, I've I've done that. So now that I have such a base of understanding about it um to the point that I'm happy with it, you know, I'm never never going to be slipping off that again. I'm 6 foot three. I'm about 240 lbs. Um and I just turned 42 uh a couple weeks ago in January. >> Well, happy belated birthday and you look great. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Um how many meals in a day do you eat then? Because I would think you're pretty busy. So, I'm thinking you're sitting down and having one meal, but that would just be like a ton of food. So, how many meals are you having? And what size portions of meals? >> Yeah, I I often eat once a day. I might have like a bit throughout the day. Like, if I'm if I'm able to work out, I'll eat more. Um, on an average day, I'll probably eat about two pounds of ribeye and I'll eat that all at once. You just like a big massive steak, possibly two. I always I always make more than I think I'm going to want because I want to bring myself to satiety. So, I want to I want to eat as much as my body is asking for. Um I think that's very important especially when you're working out because you you don't have the same hunger signals when you're on carnivore when you're just not eating carbohydrates as you do when you are. And so you have to sort of relearn that. And so one of the ways that I figured out how to do that is just by eating but by just keep eating until it doesn't taste good. And I found that taste is a very good marker of that. the more your body wants a nutrient, the better it's going to taste. And so when I first start the steak, it tastes just amazing, amazing, and it gets less and less good. And then all of a sudden it gets to a point where I just go, I'm not really enjoying this. And so that's that's how I know I want to stop. Um I I sometimes eat like during the day, like if I'm working out a lot, I might do that twice. So, you know, I'll be just like hungry through the day. You know, I have the the cafeteria at my hospital sort of knows my orders by now. So they I go and I'll get like 10 eggs and six like long strips of bacon and that's sort of my my midday snack if I if I feel I need one, but but mostly it's like most two meals a day, like two big meat meals a day. >> Okay. Do do you um I feel I I agree with you when it comes to the taste part because for me I don't know I'll I'd love to know what your thoughts are on organ meats then but when I first started having liver I feel like probably I was just nutrient like deficient in some nutrients so I really enjoyed the taste and then after a certain point I was like nope I do not like the taste anymore so I haven't had it in >> I mean like a year now but um >> that's something that I felt like I was learning just my by taste if that's something that I was missing or something that I'm I'm craving Um, do you ever have organ meats or have you ever experimented with that? >> Um, yeah, I I would agree with you. Yeah, if if if your body's telling you just like gh this isn't tasting good, like I think you should listen to that and um, you know, specifically with things that are bitter and so forth, like obviously this rolls into like plants and things like that and them having, you know, toxic elements that are bad for you and that's what that bitter taste is. It's your tongue and brain telling you this is bad for you. Spit it out. Um, I I occasionally eat organ. not one of the I I don't think that you need them. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I've had liver in the past 20 years. I could count on two hands how many I've had in my entire life. And so I don't think you need them. You can have it if you want to, but it's not it's not a requirement. And I think that especially things like liver, which is very nutrientdense, but therein lies the problem because it has, you know, a higher proportion of nutrients such as vitamin A and so forth that that [clears throat] you can handle. So if you think of proportion of liver to skeletal muscle, you think of a cow, you know, how many hundreds of pounds of skeletal muscle does it have to every one pound of liver. You know, if you're out hunting and you take down this big animal, the proportion of skeletal muscle to liver is going to be be very slight. So you're you're not going to have much liver to all the skeletal muscle. So having it every now and then is great, but you know, eating it every single day, you can you can run into problems, I think. >> Right. So, you don't ever do chicken or lamb or bison or other other cuts or other kinds of animals? >> Yeah, sometimes I I have no problem with them. Like, no, I'll eat any any animal, you know, anything that moves and had a face. Like, I'm I'm all for, you know, and and even some things that didn't have a face. Like I I say the face thing just because some people have problems with shellfish and so forth. And so, you know, but I don't have a problem with shellfish and so I'll eat that as well. I I rarely eat chicken just because it's it's just not my favorite. And so, um I just I generally prefer beef. I buy it in bulk, so I always sort of have it. But yeah, lamb's great. Um chicken's fine, too. I just um I I would eat the dark meat with the skin on, you know, because I I do want the fat. I I generally I try to get between 70 and 80% calories from fat. >> Do you ever do fish then? Do you ever do seafood? >> Okay. But it's not like a weekly thing or a monthly thing. >> No, it's just sort of whenever I feel like it. You know, I was I was at Costco the other day and I just saw a salmon. I was like, "Oh, that looks good. I'll grab some salmon." Um, but you know, 99% of what I eat would be beef. >> And do you ever eat your beef raw >> sometimes? Yeah, it's good. You know, I mean, think about it. You know, we have we have steak tartar and uh we have beef jerky, pemkin. All these things are raw. They're just dried. And so, you know, bilong and so forth is, you know, a dried sort of meat that they use. South Africa is great. You know, sushi like sashimi and things like that, those are all raw. And uh and then you just think about like a rare steak, you know, people say like, "Oh my god, raw, that sounds gross." A rare steak, the inside of that, that's what raw steak tastes like, >> you know, and it just has a sear on the outside. People get worried about this because there've been a lot of um they made a boogeyman out of raw meat thinking that oh you're going to get parasites, you're going to get um you know bacteria and food poisoning so forth. Over 97% of the food poisoning cases in America come from produce generally things like like lettuce and things like that. And uh and then the only you know food poisoning issues that you get from meat are from food handling after the fact. So you're at a restaurant and someone, you know, didn't wash their hands or something like that. The USDA and and any western country has very strict controls on meat packaging and so forth. You know, they process for 6 hours and then for two hours they mandatorily have to shut down, they have to bleach the whole place, deep clean, pressure wash everything, and then uh represented from the USDA, they're there 24 hours a day when they're when they're producing. And they'll they'll test different spots. If they find any contamination, they have to do another 2-hour deep clean. And then they take samples from all the different little um you know from all the rounds of of packaging and they send those off to the lab for cultures and so forth. It can take a few days. If anything comes back they pull the entire lot back. So this is this is very safe stuff. And so you know we haven't even had like you know even even raw pork you know we haven't had a single case of of tchinosis in the domestic uh animal population in America in over 20 years you know and that's why I say you know you know cook you know pork you know well done. actually don't necessarily have to anymore. I'm not telling people to eat it raw, but I'm just saying that that that we don't have tinchinosis as a problem in America. So, uh yeah, I love raw meat. I I don't eat it all the time, but you know, sometimes I'll I'll dry steaks and things like that. I'll age them in different ways and then I'll just be getting ready and I'll just sort of slice them off. I'm like, "Well, this is good." And I'll just like just keep eating it and it's sort of like, you know, wet beef jerky. It's kind of a gross way of putting it, but like it's it's actually really good. Um, I don't know if you've ever seen Liver King, but he he was chugging 50 raw eggs, so a lot of people started doing that. >> I don't know what Liver King is up to because I would be running to the bathroom, but do you ever eat raw eggs then? >> Uh, sometimes. Yeah. I've um I have just basically when I'm in a rush and I but I I want to get something down and I'm just like, "Okay, I'm hungry. I want to eat. I have no time. I, you know, I've got to be at the hospital or something to do. I'll just like, you know, crack, you know, you know, six or 10 eggs into a big culp and just just gulp it down and then just go. Uh, I don't even really mind. I'll add a bit of salt as well sometimes. And I I don't really mind the taste. It actually just sort of, funny enough, just tastes like scrambled eggs almost, you know, just, you know, in liquid form. But, um, yeah, I'm certainly not going to try to 50 of them. They just take a long time to crack, you know, just take half your day right there. >> And how many calories he just threw down and how much protein he just ate in one in one. I was like, that's crazy. Um, >> do you drink coffee? >> I don't. No. So, um, you know, my my hard rule is no plants, no sugar, nothing artificial. And that goes for sauces, seasonings, and drinks as well. So, you know, coffee, you know, is a plant. And so, I don't do that. Um I more specifically I don't do that just because when I was sort of back on doing this about you know five years ago I just I just wanted to experiment and and so you know I hadn't had coffee and I wasn't really a big coffee drinker anyway but you know it was like several weeks in I was feeling amazing and I just had some like heavy workouts throughout the week. I was just back playing rugby and so I said okay you know I was out with a friend and they were getting coffee so I was like okay let's see what coffee does. You know can I have coffee or how's this going to affect me? Um, I'd been doing heavy workouts that week, but I wasn't sore. You know, that was that was something that I noticed when, you know, I was back on doing carnivore. Like, I couldn't get sore no matter how hard I worked out. So, I ended up like putting this to the test and I ended up doing like 32 sets of heavy weights like for leg day um like 12 sets of whatever and then like 20 sets of squats and I couldn't wear myself out. So, I was like, "Okay, I'm just going to stop here because it's been four hours." Cool. I wasn't sore. I felt great. And then, you know, a day or so after that, you know, when I should be at that like the peak of my soreness, I was fine. I went out for coffee with a friend. I had one cup of black coffee and I within 20 minutes, I could feel my legs getting stiffened up. My back started getting sore. I'm like, "Oh, okay. What's happening? What's happening? What's happening?" And I I was sore for two full days after that. I was like, "That is not worth it." And so, that was just from one cup of coffee. Um, and so it wasn't really a big loss to me. You know, I never really drank too much coffee anyway, but I I specifically avoid it now. >> Do you I see for me, I sometimes think that I have become more sensitive to other foods when before I used to be able to eat whatever. And of course, when I was eating a standard American diet, you wouldn't know that, oh, the avocado is causing me XYZ because I'm eating pizza and chips and drinking alcohol. Um, and so when you remove those things, then you're like, okay, I can digest avocados. Well, I can do apples or whatever. And then when I would did carnivore, then I tried reintroducing an avocado and I broke out into a rash. Now, I don't know if that's because avocados are terrible or because I just don't have my gut wasn't used to having that yet. Do you think that the rash came from plant toxins or from just not being able to digest the foods yet? Since you are the most strict carnivore I have met, I'm just very interested to know what you think. >> Yeah. Well, I think I think you're right. I think both of those are correct. Um, you know, I I think that that happens for two reasons. Uh, first of all, because first of all, we can see the contrast now. You know, when you're when you're eating a standard American diet, you know, I I I I describe as, you know, having this baseline level of crap that we feel all the time. And we call that normal. And and it is normal to us because that's how we normally feel. And so we just say, okay, this is how I normally feel. And you sort of go go up and down based on that. And you can make slight changes. Oh, I feel really good or blah blah blah. When you get out of that, when you get all these sort of toxic elements out of your body and you're eating optimally and you're giving your body exactly what it wants and nothing that it doesn't want, you feel better than you ever felt in your entire life. And so then when you eat something suboptimal or even even harmful, you're going to see that stark contrast and you be like, "Oh, I'm not like me with coffee." So I think, you know, a ma major point is just that contrast. You can now see what this is doing for to you one-on-one. This is a controlled experiment. You've changed one factor. you have one result. Um the other side I think um is you're right, you know, you're not used to these sorts of things, poisons and drugs and alcohol and cigarettes and all these sorts of things. You build up a tolerance to them. And so, you know, you you you drink and you drink and drink and now you need more alcohol to get the same drunk and and so forth. You build up tolerances and you can build up tolerances to harm other harmful chemicals that don't, you know, get you high or drunk. And then when you get away from that, your body says, "Oh, okay. now we don't need to expend the energy to to build up these defenses against these sort of things because we're not seeing them and all of a sudden you slam yourself back into that and and now you you get the full full brunt of that because you're not you haven't sort of been um you know downplay you been you building up this resistance so I think it's both of those you're seeing a contrast and you don't have you your body hasn't mounted the same tolerance defense to it >> do so it sounds like you don't even take maybe supplements you don't do electrolytes It's >> no >> you and then you said you don't do seasonings other than salt. So I mean like I said you are the most strict carnivore I have met. How do you know? So a lot of times people ask me how do you know that you're getting all the vitamins and minerals your body needs especially on the weeks or the months or the years where you don't do organ meats and if you don't do uh you know every day with eggs and if you don't have every day with um more variety or fish even I was kind of confu the the fish thing I was surprised about too. So you're just doing mostly red meat all the time and how are you getting all the vitamins and minerals you need? >> Yeah. I mean, so it it just comes down to to if this is our evolved diet, then by definition, it will have everything that we need to live optimally and it will have no deficiencies. You know, a simple test of this is looking at the Inuit and other people living in the northern reaches that they, you know, they're up in the Arctic Circle. There are no plants for them to eat. Um, how are they doing it? If you're deficient in one nutrient to one degree, you cannot live generationally. You you cannot, you know, gestate and grow a fetus inside of you, give birth to that fetus, have that fetus exclusively, eat this thing, make more babies and so forth, generation after generation after generation, if you are deficient in one thing. Um, then you look at um things like, you know, Herodotus, who's the, you know, the original Greek historian. He chronicled an interaction between um a Persian emissary and the king of Ethiopia. And the king of Ethiopia asked like, "Okay, what do you what do you you know your emperor Eden? What do you pe how long do your people live to?" And they, you know, this was early on in the agricultural revolution. And so they said they described, you know, make you know, growing wheat and making bread. And they said, you know, our people would live, you know, about 70 years. This is this is 3,000 years ago, by the way. and and uh you know the king of Ethiopia sort of laughed at him and said like well you know no wonder you live such short lives if you eat dirt you know like our people only eat boiled meat and we only drink the milk of our cattle and we live 120 years sometimes more. That sounds far-fetched but we know as geneticists for the past 20 years that the that chromosomally genetically humans should be living on average about 120 years exactly. And so, you know, that means that if you just stay out of your own way, if you just don't mess up, you should live 120 years without doing anything special. And yet, we're dying in our 60s and 70s. And you see that as that first example, you know, in Persia, they're eating a lot of bread and they're living 70 years. And then place not eating bread, they're eating as they're eating, you know, the way we've sort of evolved to eat, they're living 120 years. They're making it to our, you know, genetic average. These other guys are making it to today's average, basically. And that that shows you how significant uh of a detriment these things are. And they say, "Oh, what about your RDAs and what about this?" I mean, that was that those were all um you know, those all came up with uh first of all by a guy named Anel Keys who was who is a known crook and uh and Paige Schill for the sugar companies. he's uh put forth a lot of fake um fake uh studies and so forth, you know, arguing that that cholesterol caused heart disease when it's actually sugar and and now we have we have clear documentation that he was being paid off by the sugar companies to falsify uh data and and publish fraudulent studies. So, this guy's a you know, this guy I I just don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth anyway, but let's say that that was legitimate. He was looking at people who were eating a mixed diet. And when you eat a mixed diet, you need a different constellation of nutrients. Um, vitamin C is a classic example. If you're not eating enough meat, you're not going to get enough collagen. You'll need vitamin C to hydrayze, you know, proline. I think it's proline lysine in order to uh, you know, have proper binding collagen. Vitamin C looks like a fructose molecule with a tail on it. So, it's like it looks like a carbohydrate with with another couple molecules on it. Um, this actually competes for binding sites in your gut with carbohydrates. And so if you're eating carbohydrates, you need to eat a lot more vitamin C in order to absorb that. Then if you have higher blood sugar, this actually opposes uh vitamin C uh utilization in your body. Uh so you're you're hitting yourself twice. So you're going to need a lot more vitamin C just to get any any use out of it. And then if you're um exclusively eating meat, you're going to already be getting these uh you know, collagen and and these um you know, hydrayzeed proteins. So you don't actually need the the the vitamin C for that, right? So it's it's a very different thing. And so, you know, if you're looking at a carnivore population, the amount of vitamin C that we need is is minuscule. Okay? And so, um, I don't worry about the RDAs. I worry about, you know, hard facts and science and and the fact that, you know, I've been doing this 10 out of the last 20 years and my gums aren't bleeding and I feel amazing, you know, tells me that I really don't actually need to take a vitamin C supplement. And so when I was I a friend of mine who's an endocrinologist uh when I was talking to him about you know carnivore diet and so forth he was very interested in this because he'd been doing beriatric medicine and weight loss and preventive medicine for 40 years and so you know all this stuff was really resonating with him. He's like well this is really interesting and he said okay well you look good you know you look like you're in really good shape but you know let's check under the hood let's see what your bloods are like and you know he called me a couple weeks later when the you know uh when the results were back and you know I I was confident that they would be fine. So, I never I never took them because I I didn't really care because I whatever they were, I was I was confident they were. >> You're a medical doctor and you don't get blood work done. I love it. >> No, no, I don't care. Like, it's like um you know, I I mean, you know, it's like, you know, you don't you don't get blood work on a patient unless it's going to, you know, affect your treatment. You know, do I want you know, I order this blood test. Is that going to is the answer to that going to change something that I do? >> If it's not, then, you know, why do it? Um, and he called me up a couple weeks later when the all the results were back in and he said, "You know, we should talk about this diet thing over a steak sometime because like you results came back and they were they were really good." So, we went through them and we went through all the tests and he said that I think I was 30 38 at the time. Um, he said, "You know, for someone your age, if you took a 100,000 people off the street your same age, your blood and did all their bloods, yours would be number one without a shadow of a doubt." And and so we went through we went through each each and every one. And so, not only were my my numbers, you know, my my hormone panel, my vitamin panel, my all these sorts of different markers, not only were they, you know, optimal for someone my age, they were op they most of these were optimal for healthy male adult 25. My magnesium and my zinc uh were sort of in the low normal range, >> but that but he said that it was far higher than anyone else in Australia that doesn't take supplements that he's seen. Um, so that's one thing, but I I still think that even even with the deficiencies of the soil in whatever area there that you're in, if you're just eating meat that you'll be fine. >> Do you um do grass-fed meat, is that important to you? Does it matter? 100% grass-fed, I should say. >> It's um Well, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, you know, even even, you know, uh grainfinished beef is 80% grass-fed. You know, 80% of their life is on grass. It does make a difference, but you know, I think of it as, you know, the difference between getting gold and silver at the Olympics. >> You know, silver didn't beat gold, but they beat everyone else on Earth, you know, and that's how I think about with with grass-fed versus, you know, uh grainfinished beef. Um it's it's not as good as grass-fed, but it's better than anything else you'll ever eat. And so, I don't have too much of a problem doing that. when I was in the states, it was it was easier to uh sort of source these sorts of things. And so I bought a cow. I went, you know, directly to a farmer, which is the best way to go. It's cheapest and you you support the local farmers. It's good for them. It's good for you. >> And um and you know exactly what you're getting from whom and so forth. And I sourced a cow that was, you know, grass-fed his whole life. I actually went for an older cow because I'd seen a lot of things that, you know, older cows actually have much much better flavor. And they do. They're amazing. And so I asked for a call cow that they would, you know, they're calling from the herd. And it was actually much cheaper as well. It was about, you know, you know, twothirds of the price of, you know, a yearling or, you know, something that was 18 months old. So, it was cheaper. And it, oh my god, it tasted so much better. And it was a 10-year-old cow. It was grass-fed it whole life. It had smell had this fresh almost like citrusy smell to the meat. I was like, "Oh my god, it was amazing." The the fat was like dark yellow. It was absolutely fantastic. And every time I ate it, it actually had not much fat because it was, you know, grass-fed, so it was quite lean. Um, I just felt supercharged every time I ate this stuff. So, I definitely think that truly grass-fed. And and the thing is, a lot of things will say grass-fed, if the fat is white, it's probably not grass-fed because when they're eating grass, green grass, you know, the the the beta carotene, things like that turns the fat yellow. When we're doing surgery on people's bodies, fat's yellow. And so, you know, white fat means that they've been, you know, giving them hay or feed lot or something like that because that's, you know, just marketability. For some reason, they've decided that white fat looks better. Um, yellow fat tastes better. And so, if you get if you get that yellow fat beef um grass-fed, that's great. Um, not everybody have access to that. And some people can't afford it because you when you're buying it sort of in individual stakes, it can be much more expensive. So if uh but so you know just Safeway beef is perfectly fine. I go to Costco because I like buying in bulk and I love Costco and so that's what I generally do. Um but you know yeah if but yes there is a difference but in comparison to anything else you'll ever eat it's it's you know immaterial. Hey guys, just want to take a second to thank our sponsor 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 Carnivore 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. >> Do Speaking of fat, do you think like do you ever use tallow then or is there a hierarchy of fats for you? Like you're like ghee is the best or butter is the best or is there a hierarchy of like the best fats and which ones you use? >> Uh, I do like like tallow. can get um grass-fed tallow and it's, you know, yellow, you know, you get this tub of yellow sort of stuff and that's how you know it's the good stuff. Um, and I definitely prefer that. Uh, but I use ghee. I don't have a problem with ghee and and other animal fats uh just to cook with. And I I quite often will, you know, melt butter into my steaks if if it's like a leaner steak. Um, Australia has gone, you know, very, very fullon low fat and so, um, I have to, you know, melt butter into steaks sometimes and so I have no problem with that. Butter tastes amazing and, um, you know, so I use that. But yeah, I think I think grass-fed beef tallow would, if you're if you're going to rank them, would be at the top. And then do you do you said butter and ghee which I call like byproducts of dairy but do you ever do dairy dairy yogurts cheeses kafir milk? >> Very rarely. Um and if I were to eat dairy it's it's going to be with meat. And so meat's always the meal. Um dairy is okay. It's fine but it's not optimal. And I I really like being optimal. I feel better optimal. Um, dairy, first of all, there's a big difference between raw milk and whole milk. Raw milk and pasteurized milk and so forth. And so, if I were to get that, I try to get like a raw milk. Um, if I'm going to have milk, I'm going to have a glass of milk every now and then, like every few months or a few weeks or something like that. Um, you know, there's a few times that I maybe wouldn't have had milk that whole year. Um, yogurt every now and then. Like my brother when he got on this, he um did really well. He lost like, you know, 20 pounds in a month. I was feeling great. And then he's like, "Well, can can you eat dairy?" I was like, "Well, you can, but I would only eat it with meat." You know, melt cheese onto meat or whatever. Have a glass of milk occasionally. And I say that very spec, very carefully, very specifically to everyone. And everyone always hears, "I can eat as much dairy as I want." And they go and they go crazy. And so they're just eating chunks of cheese and they're just eating bowls full of yogurt and just drinking gallons of milk. And um you know my brother was like what the hell is going on? He gained like the 20 pounds like right back like that. But um you know certainly I noticed people that um will start drinking a lot more milk and eating a lot more dairy and and yogurt and they'll start have a bit you know skin blotchiness and they'll have little problems because it's not um necessarily something that you want to have every day. Certainly. I'm guessing then your thoughts on like whey protein isolate or protein powders, even if they're the 100% grass-fed beef protein. I know there's one called Prime Protein that's out right now that's like 100% beef of protein powder somehow. Um I'm guessing you would think those ones are a no-go. >> Um you know, I I just don't think you need them, you know, and um you know, if you're if you're eating enough meat, like you don't. Um so that's that's first of all. Second of all, most of these things have a lot of crap in them besides the whey protein or the beef protein. They have artificial sweeteners and and other sorts of things that I just don't want. Um any, you know, artificial sweeteners have have a ton of problems. You know, they they can give an insulin response and they can they can screw up your metabolism and just like sugar can. Um and so that's something that I think people should really avoid as well. Um it's very hard. you can get some of the like the natural proteins that are just like you I think there's something called like naked protein or whatever and it's just the whey protein. Um and if you wanted to like fine you know but you don't need to you know and that's the thing it is a supplement you're supplementing uh your diet well do you need to is your diet deficient in anything if you if it's not then you don't need to supplement. >> Wow. Yeah. So, I I have protein powder sometimes, but that's just because I don't like I like the I get sometimes I'm like, "Okay, more beef. Can I just have a new flavor?" I I'm gonna be I tell people I say, "Hey, I'm not promoting protein powder. I'm not saying have people have protein powder." I'm just saying it's convenient for me in the morning. I'm I'm most interested in that. For me, I go to the gym and work out, though, you can't tell. Uh because for me, my background, I was a track athlete, so I was a hurdler and a sprinter, and I had more muscle. And then when I started eating more carnivore, I have not been able to gain the same kind of muscle or feel like I have the same kind of pump in the gym without having maybe some carbs. So, I talked to keto savage Robert Sykes about this and he was like, "That's just because you're not fat adapted because you go back and forth between having some carbs sometimes and not." So, I'm just wondering for you, do you ever notice a dip in energy? >> Um, yeah. So, when I when I work out, I actually get energy from working out. um biochemically, you know, when you well, the reason people take supp, you know, um stimulants and things like that, like coffee, like, you know, other sorts of, you know, pre-workout sort of drinks to give them that hit of energy because you feel better when you burn more energy. So, this causes you to burn more energy short term and then it screws you up. But you feel better for that moment. When you're in a in a carnivore metabolism, you're looking, you know, this fstead versus fasting metabolism, which I think is completely off. I think that so-called fasting metabolism was our primary metabolic state. That's where all of our heavy machinery comes to bear. And you make carbohydrates, you make glucose, you make glycogen and ketones and so forth. When I start working out, I will produce the amount of energy I need to do whatever my workout is. And I will feel better as a result of that. So, I don't need to, you know, drink coffee or take caffeine in order to get energy so I can work out. I go work out so that I can get energy and so I will produce more energy and I'll feel better and this will make me want to work out harder which will make me feel better which will make me want to work out harder and so you get this positive feedback and you just you just push yourself push yourself push yourself and um you know the thing with with as far as the pump is concerned I just did a post on this actually talking about like bodybuilding you know they go through this bulking phase where they just eat just tons and tons of carbs and so forth and they get all all bulked up no they get fat you And um and so you know the thing is is that when your blood sugar is high when you eat carbohydrates your blood sugar goes up. High blood sugar is causes direct damage. These these glucose molecules actually physically fuse to other molecules. It's called glycation. It damages them or destroys them. And so this actually causes serious harm to your body. This is what kills diabetics. This is why their body just sort of breaks down. Um so in a defensive mechanism your body looks at this goes you know why what the hell is this person doing? It slams up your insulin to try to get this stuff out of your body as quickly as possible. It's this sort of damage control hazmat cleanup. And so this is sort of a side note, but it uh this is why people overeat is because you know when you're eating carbohydrates, your insulin goes up. It blocks leptin. Your blood sugar is going down. As your brain gets a signal that you have zero energy reserves and your blood sugar is dropping. So you get this panic signal that says if you don't eat now, you will die. And this is why people I have to eat, I have to eat, I have to eat. But because insulin, you know, forces energy into cells and it doesn't allow it to come out of cells, it really disrupts your whole metabolism. So, you're eating all these carbohydrates and this is just stuffing it into every cell available into your fat cells, into your muscle cells, into your in forms of glycogen, in forms of fat, and, you know, into your liver and so forth. And so, it's actually, you know, depositing glycogen and fat in your muscles. And so, this is where, you know, like a marbled steak comes from, >> right? They feed them grain to get that intramuscular fat because it's this is depositing all that energy. So, we get that, too. So, you have someone who's eating a bunch of carbohydrates. Well, they may look big, but that's all marbled fat. Mine is is like that grass-fed cow. It's just lean. And so, well, someone else is going to be like wag you. Well, you may you look you may look bigger than me, but like you're not actually as far as lean muscle mass is concerned. Um, and also glycogen. Glycogen has um you know has has has has a mass to it and it can actually physically you know fill these muscles up um and these things also uh you know retain water. So, you're getting fat, glycogen filled, watery, bogged muscles. And so, your your pump is big. You, oh, I look so big. I look so huge. But it's it's it's just fool's gold. It's not real. And so, when you're when you're just eating um you know, carnivore and so forth, all the gains you get are lean muscle mass. You're never going to have to cut that, you know? So, you bulk up and then you cut down. like you're you're you're just fooling yourself because you know you're you're putting in a bunch of fat and glycogen and water into your muscles and then it just goes away and the whole time you're you're limiting your workouts too because your body's not working as well as it should be. Your metabolism isn't where it's supposed to be. You're not you're not eating your you're not giving your body this optimal nutrition for optimal performance. So it may look like you're doing better when you're eating carbohydrates, but in fact you're you're shooting yourself in the foot. This is great. Um, so I purposfully will eat carbs for the puffiness look. Now granted, I would love to know the key to success on how to not have to do that as an but I have found no matter. So for me, I'm a small person. I'm 100 pounds. It's hard for me to sit down and just keep eating. So for me, my goal is to gain weight, gain muscle. Um, so what would you and I have a lot of followers and people who ask me this, how do I gain muscle? Now, my answer is eat more food and lift heavier, but I try to do that myself. And obviously, it's a lot easier said than done, especially if we go on vacation or something like that and we don't have access to going to the gym, then all of all of our muscle that we built for x amount of months disappears very quickly and we just become little sticks. So, any tips on how to build muscle? >> Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, you're exactly right. You know, you do you do need to, you know, to lift heavy and you need to stimulate your muscles in your body to, you know, rebuild, you know, bigger, better, stronger. Uh, definitely the best thing to do is obviously going to muscle fatigue. You know, when you're you're pushing yourself, pushing yourself into into absolute failure, it's those last two sort of things. You get to 10, you're just kind of like like, "Oh, yeah. Oh, that's really hard. I'll stop it there." If you can squeeze out 12, you know, those two reps will make all the difference, you know, and and then you have to feed yourself. So again, you know, after you you finish working out. I always always try to eat after I work out. I always just feel better when I train on an empty stomach. I've always, you know, played better, trained better when I did that. Um, and then so I'd eat until I was full. And then if I'm working out a lot, maybe the next morning be like, I want to eat again. And so I have another steak or something like that. Generally, when I'm when I'm working out a lot, I I double the amount of meat that I'm eating. So, I might eat like four pounds, 5 lbs of fatty meat in a day. And um and that's that's if I'm lifting consistently. If I'm if I'm not, my body will just sort of switch back to about two pounds a day. And that's how much it takes to maintain me. But that's the thing. So, you have to you have to be conscious of that. Obviously, you have to put in the work. It's not just going to happen on its own. It'll go to a certain extent, but it you know, you need to put in the work and to get past that. And um and then you need to recognize how much food your body wants and you need to give it to it. So you know I don't think you need to force feed yourself anything. I think your body will um you know ask for a caloric um you know uh uh you know abundancy like on its own if you're giving it the stimul stimulus that it needs. I think that'll happen naturally. But you have to recognize the signals and you have to be able to to provide it what it needs to build more muscle. >> You don't count calories or anything like that? Never count calories. No, I never do. No. Um, you know, if you need a calculator to figure out what to eat, you're probably eating the wrong thing. You know, like you should just you should just be able to eat. Um, you know, I think about, you know, a carnivore diet as as more of what not to eat as opposed to what just what to eat. You know, it's it's it's great to eat more meat and fatty meat. That's great. But it's the trick is not eating all the other crap because that's what really brings you down. And that's why I just feel amazing. And that, you know, just that last 5% of going pure, I think makes, you know, 95% of the difference. And, you know, that's and and and that's, you know, what I say, you know, I I literally feel like a different breed of human. You know, I I just do my body compared to myself as a professional athlete on and off carnivore, you know, I my body just works differently. And so just go as pure as you can and then just you know and then after that you just you just hit the weights you know and just and just push yourself and you know how to push yourself so that shouldn't be an issue and it's just a matter of dedicating the time to be able to do that in and then your your body will take care of the rest. It will ask you for more food and it will it will do the right thing with it. Like you you'd be you'd be surprised. Like if you get pure pure pure, your body works entirely different.