You DON'T Need Carbs To Build Muscle with Carnivore Bodybuilder Jonathan Griffiths

I've competed over about 13 years at this point done 8 n 10 competitions and i' really found that the bottleneck of bodybuilding is always always always always recovery as we know the carnivore diet recovery is insane I can certainly get a lot out of my training and the recovery is so much better you know your sleep's better everything in your body is just so much more efficient and it's unbelievable when you actually look at yourself in a mirror day by day and you're thinking I can see exactly where I'm going from point A to point B each interent is very clear to spot because you're not holding that subcutaneous water that excess inflammation that your body would otherwise have on a high carbohydrate diet welcome to the plant-free MD podcast with Dr Anthony chaffy 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 all right hello everyone thank you for joining me on another episode of the plant-free MD podcast I'm your host Dr Anthony chaffy and today I have a very special return guest Mr Jonathan Griffith who is just off of a very successful win at his body building competition Jonathan uh thank you very much for coming on it's great to see you man and you it's nice see you again it's nice to actually meet you in person a few months back in public health collaboration um in somewhere in the UK where it was but I'm glad to be here hopefully I'll be able to give people some useful insights into what I do how I manage and um hopefully promote bodybuilding body composition physique sport in the carnival where eating so let's have it see see what we got to say yeah absolutely well so you know like like you just said you know you you we just said you you just got off a a um bodybuilding competition you're doing this on Carnival you've been carnivore for a number of years and what was your experience getting prepped for a bodybuilding competition uh with no carbs just eating meat what was that like it was pretty easy compared to what I used to do actually when I look at it and so I'm four and a half years in now I started on February the 2nd 2020 and every sort of year or a few months AG goes by I'm a bit more strict a bit more adherent my diet deviates a little bit maybe a bit more fish bit more eggs on meat just go to appetite pretty much um your body doesn't really lie to if you give it the right signals and do the right things pull the right levers but largely speaking the satiety benefit you get when you're dieting down guys is unbelievable when your protein is high as mine you just don't tend to feel hungry that much the hard part is when you're very lanly sub 4% body fat according to digital body fat calipers um it's tough because no matter what you do you feel like death so I don't advocate for this thing sort of bodyb buring thing for anyone I wouldn't recommend it but I can sort of show people this is roughly how I do it this is roughly how someone else can try and do the same thing um but it's going to be the healthiest way to do it honestly it really really is your inflammation's lower you don't have to train as much your muscle retention is higher your Fitness is better digestion is better and I've I've always said you know since since day one really mean I've competed over the span the last um since about 16 years it's about 30 years at this point done 8 n 10 competitions and i' really found that the bottleneck of bodybuilding terms of physique sport is always always always always recovery and as we know the carnival diet recovery is insane I know you've said before about you know you're in the gym you're sort of thinking I to see how many sets of squats I could do today do like 20 sets oh not bad do another 10 more do another five more you know that that sort of thing um I can't train that much um because of various issues in my back and SP things but I can certainly get a lot out of my training and the recovery is so much better you know your sleep's better everything in your body it's just so much more efficient and it's unbelievable when you actually look at yourself in a mirror day by day and you're thinking I can see exactly where I'm going from point A to point B each intervention is very clear to spot because you're not holding that subcutaneous water that excess you know inflammation that your body would otherwise have on a high carbohydrate diet so dieting down from the point of a coaching standpoint you've got less water in your body you know your your silhouette is a true silhouette it's not inflated because you're carbed up sort of thing it's very true and accurate so you can actually measure what you're doing easier and therefore you can manage what you're going to do and what interventions you're going to P in terms of diet training recovery um that you need to sort of pull what what leavs you need to pull is much more effective to manage um so for me it's been a drastic benefit and I know it sounds kind of like Sensational like yeah but you know do I really much more muscular well actually I am actually am so um what I will say is I acquired a certain level of muscularity which is pretty good considering um on a carbohydrate based diet you know years and years ago but what I find incredible which people don't quite understand they say you know oh you built all this muscle and you didn't do it on a Carnival diet no I exceeded my previous muscularity with a carnival diet that's the key Point here so you know as we scale up our muscle mass you know from rugby training things like that as you get better more towards a peak level of your sport you'll find that it's harder and you have to work harder and you have to be such more accurate everything and you know more pedantic sort of thing to achieve more from your sport um for me I've been able to get that last like 10% that would take me way longer like probably twice as long on a carbohydrate based diet with a kind of or Diet so for me I can say it's definitely been extraordinary in terms terms of getting more results from my body um I deal with like a lot of information because of my spine disease hip issues and you know chronic fatigue autism all those sort of things that I live with and I've been diagnosed with um and it just made my life so much more easier to manage and I remember in our first podcast we did something like a year year and a half ago I was saying to you Dr cha you know two years prior to this I I was so inflamed I couldn't sit in front of the camera and just chat to people and I so anxious I I the thought oh there's this guy from Australia I don't know who he is don't know what to say to him nervous and I'm still quite um an introverted person but my natural confidence has definitely Shin through um that's evident the fact you know I've built up my YouTube channel admittedly it's not huge by any means um 10,000 ofd subscribers at this point great though man but for a guy that's pretty much disabled 10,000 Subs I don't know what I'm talking about ible all the time I don't make much sense and I got a lot of criticism from the last interview we did so many troll comments guys it's nuts of jealous 4y old man but you know how it is but yeah like I said there results have been mad honestly and every year that goes by I'm thinking it can't get much better than this but it does um I don't live in perfect health I do look significantly aged but that's probably because of what I was doing before um so now I'm at the point where I can sort say yeah I might not have longevity I might otherwise had had I always been healthy and been born normal on quot um but I can live my life in the best possible state that I can with the diet that I follow so I'm grateful to people like yourself who just provided me with all this information press B Shan Baker all these guys that have just made life so much easier and they've given us really clear accurate information that's E helps us actually take a step forward in terms of our health span and lifespan so yeah it couldn't be it couldn't be more pleased honestly yeah good and that and that's great to have that contrast too you know because you were you were doing bodybuilding competitions in the traditional ways and then you you switched over and you know and and you you know so you know you can compare this to you've done both and you're saying like this is a lot easier I'm not inflamed all the time I'm not all puffed up I don't have to bulk up and then you know bulk up with all this this carb weight and fat and muscle and muscle glycogen and intramuscular fat and water weight and all that stuff and then try to lose all that garbage and then see what you're left over with like oh okay so that's all the lean mass I got damn it it wasn't as much as I was hoping for now all you're putting on is just lean body mass and it's just and you're just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and it doesn't go away again when you're cutting down when you cut down you're just cutting off fat you're not cutting out uh the size of the bulk of your muscle bodies because you you don't have to deflate your muscle bodies with water glycogen and intramuscular fat it's just just solid muscle so it's um it's it's great that you have that inside perspective um that uh that other people don't have that's great yeah 100% And I'm trying to stand as an advocate for the community so people with neurodiversity like I mentioned earlier people that maybe in the sort of in that middle line that grayer like oh I might be animal based might go Paul salad meat fruit and honey might just scrap it all together because can't be asked I don't see a benefit I'm trying to say to you guys look I've been there I've done that been through the Hoops I've tried all the diets this diet is such such a massive benefit to me um honestly the um what what I'm noticing more and more is with clients like I coach you know a handful of people at a time they're getting so much quicker benefits because everything's so much easier to me measure and therefore you know manage you know then they're not dealing with Bing eting and this sort of thing you know this all this sort of stuff just doesn't really happen what we'll typically see if we go to bodybuilding convention or exhibition is the girls or guys will step off stage and they're like everybody goes like Oh we we sell cookies and loaded donuts and all this crap and you think okay this is a fitness convention selling Donuts yeah what it's unbelievable and that's that's the common place that is you know go to the Arnold sport schs shorts and gu sports festival they're all sort of promoting this sort of way of eating so I'm going on Instagram each day I'm like like junk junk junk junk then I look at my day of eating I'm like well actually rather have my day of eating tins of sardines and macro and eggs and chicken and beef and all sorts of things much more than what they're eating because I know before during and after eat that food and I feel much better um I'm the one always like laughing thinking you think that's good you're just eating decoration and sugar basically so there we go yeah definitely it is it is unfortunate too that all these so-called Fitness competitions have been sort of overrun with this junk food garbage and and then paying off you know even Arnold I mean he got paid off to do the game changers thing and and push a plant-based diet which is very disappointing because you know his own experience was the exactly opposite oh if only I was vegan during my bodybuilding days I would have been I would have won 10 competitions like really because you were carnivore when you uh when you were doing the m Olympia because that was what everyone was doing it was steak and eggs steak and eggs steak and eggs because Gonda and serge newra really set the mold for how you train and get ready for these competitions and it was steak and eggs steak and eggs steak and eggs and his uh his body Idol was Serge new who ate six pounds of horsemeat a day and was an absolute unit I mean that guy's got one of the best physiques of all time and so you know saying that oh it would have been so much better this other way um you know there's absolutely no basis for him to say that you know apart from uh just money which is unfortunate and so you know I mean I guess you know Whole Foods is better than the junk food and donuts but not all that much better I mean it's just it's just not proper nutrition and it's sad to see you know these very influential very famous people pushing something that's uh bad people yeah I I kind of blame it on like the the brain fog brain fog and the inflammation you know guys like us sort of following a carnival diet if you look at my channel Dr Cha's Channel we only promote things which are actually helpful to people we're not putting out products that just rubbish you know oh this a product this isn't a package it's got 10 ingredients like I know you do um I think like Carnival bars and Tallow and things well they Animal product you sort of say even say like in your videos you know um you don't need to try this you don't need to buy it but it's better than having a Snickers bar for example you know it I think it does actually have some kind of um spiritual kind of benefit this this way of eating that you sort of your morals are more ethically aligned you think there's people going to watch this you know between myself and Dr chaffy here we've got something like 390,000 subscribers and I'm thinking well that's not far off half a million people that we can positively influence why are we going to squander and waste that opportunity by putting out crappy products you know we're here for the long to sort of put forward a positive way of eating you know it's going to benefit people for real because when we get emails from people you know oh you know my life's changed because this I'm like you're taking back and it's so much more rewarding than like the your oh 10% commission fee on your I don't know protein bar or something whatever like I'd rather take the you know longterm get to go to bed at night player conscience um so yeah definitely all for it yeah well that's the thing I I um I I you know this isn't my day job you know I'm very happy you know seeing patients and and uh doing surgeries and and uh just being a doctor um this is just because it's important I think it's important I see it helping my patients and myself and my family and everybody that comes across it and so I think it's important to get the message out there and show people how to do this and and do it in the right way so they can get the most health benefits out of it and so if something's not going to not going to fall in line with that message I'm just not interested in pushing it and I and I I'm very selective with I you know I only take sort of two main sponsors you know that uh that I do ads for and that's um and that's because I I don't want a whole bunch of ads on my on my um videos I don't want that to take away from you know the message you I do a two-hour podcast and it's got you know two 40 second ads in it that's not all that much and even then I'm just like no no no more no more than that and um you know because it's just like that's not that's not what I'm here for and and so if it is going to be something it's going to be something that that I'm you know that I'm happy that I'm happy with it actually adds to the message like you said and uh you know you I'm sure you do as well you know when your channel gets starts getting those numers numbers um you you start getting emails from weird companies saying hey you know do you want to Hawk this supplement or these uh you know organ tablets or this and the other it's just like yeah no not really you know and um cholesterol lowering products oh really they sent me this yeah you get you're send it to the wrong guy they send it away from Australia I'm like all right okay send right I'm like I'm shocked CU I'm like G think that I'm going to promote something to lower something your body is creating to help you yeah absolutely not yeah well it's probably they like well you're on this carnivore diet so I'm sure your cholesterol is through the roof so you can definitely get behind this and like the whole premise is that it's not bad for you and uh that's what we're going on oh that's funny though but yeah so you know you get these you get these people offering you whatever and it's just like and you know and and YouTube has a thing now where they just pop up like oh a new sponsor wants to do something with you and um I just have no interests you know and I just do a it's it's really easy you know like know a couple minutes to sit down in front of a camera and just say hey here's this supplement and here's these organ supplements or this vitamin thing or whatever and um and you get like you know you know $1 thousand doar a couple thousand dollars just just to make a like a you know 30 second you know 2minute video and uh and then you run up for 30 days and then you can put it on private for 6 months and then and then take it off it's like it's like it's nothing you know I mean that that would fly right under the radar of of U of of people it's just like I have no interest absolutely no interest I'm not going to promote something that uh that I don't believe in and um I I don't really want to promote many things anyway but if it's like it's something that you know adds to the message great you know carnivore bar I love what they're doing you know they're doing this in order to have a have a product out there that um people can have on the go that can replace uh military rations that was the whole idea behind it in the first place was that this is something that we could give to our troops in the military and they actually have real nutrition out in the field instead of these really garbage uh rations that they they give out and uh you know so that's something I can get behind you know and um yeah and so you know that's fine but if it's if it's something else just just there don't need for it like you know I have a day job I'm happy with that and I'm not looking for a career change yeah completely agree should we um should KRA on talk about diet and stuff cuz people going have complain in the comments and say oh have you not told me what his diet or training is like yeah go for bed they can they can calm the hell down I think relax a bit they they need to eat more nutrients that's it maybe they should try some of those supplements you know maybe that'll help uh or just a corner it could be good um but yeah so you know as far as your your Fitness your competition prep was concerned was there any change uh from what you did and especially leading up to the competition you know that's something that a lot of people ask well how do I get how do I get that super lean unhealthy low body fat physique uh leading up to a competition how how was that for you 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 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 it was um it was challenging towards the end um basically your feet go num all the time you sit down the bench you lose circulation to your backside and your feet and your legs um you have to sort of prepare yourself every day every time you some you sat there your energy is so low you almost forget to breathe honestly I'm not exaggerating um in terms of like what I did for my diet so my diet was determined by what was doing in the offseason phase so I've reached a point where I was trying to basically do like a mini priming thing um but over a long period of time I was trying to ramp up my protein intake and find that ctiy SP spot where I was like okay this is where I feel like I don't really want to eat more protein but at the same time that's the right amount for me based on my training recovery muscle soreness fatigue how I slept how my digestion was and I found I landed at 350 protein of protein grams mhm so for anyone wondering that's I don't know one and a half 2 kilos of meat a day something like that um and what I also found was my fat intake was that's basically lowered very quickly um I'm not someone likes to hang around and sort of oh do a 20 we diet no I want to get shredded quick I'm not wasting my time I've got things to do you know people to see and I don't really want to be on like 2 210 205 20 so I basic just dropped it right down cuz I knew I could I could could do that um based on my previous experience I've competed as a carnival before um this time is way more effective um and myut my my fat sorry was 120 gram so protein 350 fat 120 and it never changed from the last three to four months so I never adjusted those macros um the only thing I did do though was based on check-ins with my coach Marty rice um is that we includ included some feed days so as that competition approached my body become more tired drained body fat levels get lower your leptin needs a bit of a reset effectively so your metabolic rate will start to um it starts to dwindle a little bit your body slows down respiration rate slows down you can't train that hard your training volume has to go down a bit intensity has to drop off but I try to keep it as high as possible for as long as possible then all I do is at the checkin photos week one to week two oh you look very flat this week of training formance has gone down and we flat basically body means you if you've not eaten or you done a fast for like 3 days you know what it's like to feel flat your muscles just to pop to them like right now I'm not flat you can see like you know got solid full muscles cuz I'm I'm fed I'm not in a cutting phase so to speak right now um now when you're flat basically your performance does go to crap um honestly it goes to crap really quickly so every roughly 7 to 10 days some two weeks I'd have a refit feed day and it' be a Saturday or a Sunday just because that's when it works out well and that' be something like plus 50 or plus 70 gram of fat so what you find is when you eat that food your body picks up a bit you get a bit more fullness in the muscles and one or two maybe three days training sessions after that picks up a little bit um because you got more energy musle glycogen that sort of thing then it allows you to sort of keep pushing down so basically sort of ramping down a bit too low up a bit down bit so it ends up being like a little step every time um so you're just trying to like gradually lose body fat over time um what I did do um now I'm quite Limited in terms of my output what I can do so my training style is high intensity very low volume three to four sessions per week what I did was just use steps mostly as my lever to drop body fat um so that means I'm outside guys not inside staring at the wall looking at my phone and treadmill outside in the sun ideally and I'm just going for a walk with a dog just you know tracking my phone and say one week is like okay sa my Bas sign's 3,000 steps today I'm not very active my body is wrecked um I can't do 20,000 steps it's not going to work I'll be in bed for like a month um so I'd increase it by maybe 500 for that week so three and a half thousand you know 4,000 5,000 this thing over time gradually then that's how I got into shape I just increased my my um output just through walking B basically um then I think what he got to the point where I was about 7 to 8 weeks out we added in 10 minutes of cardio so for me cardio is like a slow pod plod on the treadmill after the gym just because I'm already doing cycling to and from the gym it's just a way to sort of add it on somewhere and it was either eliptical trainer cross trainer or just incline walk um very very slow stuff I can't be you know treading hard on things and strong my body um now was 10 minutes every few weeks as needed as required when body fat loss slowed down a bit add in 5 minutes would run that for a week pictures pictures oh Improvement here and here less fat on the glutes good don't need to change anything okay run the same program so it's very methodical approach um every intervention was carefully thought out by myself and my coach um and I got into shape effectively doing that and what was interesting is um I looked at my chronometer cuz I'm nuts I track everything tracking track my diet macros like 10 years now not a requirement guys if you're out there and watching thinking I need to tracker no but if you want to get shredded it it does make life a lot easier because like I keep saying what can be measured can be man managed um and my my calories calories measurement of heat guys not a measurement of food intake on been taken in by the body at all but if you looked at the calorie amount just a broad overarching number to compare protein C and fats combined to make a number um they actually were pretty steady through out but I went from 110 kilos roughly maybe 110 111 kilos down to 91 kilos on show day wow and that was without dropping calories there was no you know oh you know um zero fat days or anything like that at all um I can probably show you my phone if I can find it maybe I don't know but I I'll share it with Dr chaffy on the um on the system if I can but yeah basically what I found was my my calorie intake was something with a magnitude of like okay here we go I don't you probably can't see but I I can share this after um you see that green line basically means that's my weight you can see the weight G down apologies it's blurred out it's part of the zoom thing um the orange thing is the supposed calorie amount yeah right so calories in calories out debunked straight straight way so your body's biological dynamic system is the terminology that I use um so people out there thinking oh I burn this many calories per day it's it's up and down all the time guys if you get a bad night's sleep that will negatively impact your train for which will NE negatively impact your energy balance um so it doesn't compute it doesn't work basically um so what I'm looking at with my diet is how do I get the most Bank of my buck in terms of what I eat how do I train in a way that's going to give me the most benefit it with a minimal effective dose without over straining overburdening and inflaming my body then also how am I going to find ways to recover better and better and better so I've got red light therapy panels I've got blue light blocking glasses when it's dark you know my screens all go red all the time so I'm you know I'm autistic I live with Century overload so I have to that's think I have to more carefully manage in most people um getting a a good solid night night sleep good pillows good mattresses ground sheets I'm grounded for like 95% of the day um every Bick you can possibly use especially when you're getting lean it's going to be really helpful but you're not going to see the benefit overnight it's when you sort of compare and contrast what is doing three years prior on a Carnival diet and competing to versus now I can see all these things have much more into playay in terms of um benefiting recovery and therefore improve my train performance as we know if we can maintain train performance we actually improve our look our physique so if we're say lifting 100 kilos towards the end of prep if you're going down and dropping like 60 kilos chance say you probably drop to IT muscle but how are you going to retain that muscle tissue it's going to be through maintaining your training so what the model of you know um eat less smooth more simply doesn't work it works in an effect but when you're getting very very lean you're not going to be recovering if you're dropping your food intake by half of Baseline amount because your body will slow down and account for the fact that you've just Haled your intake take mhm um so it's it's a very nuanced kind of thing to discuss but that was the diet side of it I'm happy to go over the training if if you'd like what I'm doing yeah yeah definitely what what's uh your training because the thing is too is that what you sort of mentioned and alluded to that people may not understand that you you've actually had uh very serious and extensive back surgery um and so obviously you know most most doctors like you would probably tell you you're never squatting again you're never putting know back loaded you know uh loading through your axial uh loading through your spine uh ever again that's probably not a good idea so uh how was that for you and yeah what was take us through your uh lifting routine yeah so what I do typically and I've done this for most of my training crit is mostly resistance machines so not free weights basically um so for example rather than doing a a barbell Squad I do a hack squat in that my lower back is pressed against something therefore the axal loading is reduced obviously because my lower back's get something my upper back's against something so I'm spreading that weight across a larger surface area now if I do a barber back squat my body has to stabilize much more the more you have to stabilize yes you'll probably get more overall muscle fire recruitment you'll get less isolation of muscle groups that you want to work and the risk of injury is significantly higher um now also deployed um some high intensity training principles so that means I'm doing very slow reps my repetitions you can find it on my YouTube channel I've got an exercise playlist which shows you exactly what I'm doing in the gym as I'm doing it as I would would do it it's not for show it's not Ronnie Coleman lifting up 800B it's me just lifting away to stimulate my muscles then leave the gym feeling somewhat safe not trashed um but I'm doing something like around a 10-second Ecentric so it's it's lowering phase um usually two to three second hold but I'm doing that in a position where it's the most tension so for example in the hack squore it's a very generic example I might stand at the top might start it got a timer in front of me um that's a way of me counting what I'm doing because it's more accurate to measure because 1 second will always be 1 second whereas if I say to Dr chiefy I'm doing 10 reps well 10 reps of what 10 reps of 1 second or 10 reps of 40 seconds I could be doing 10 seconds of exercise or I could be doing minutes or hours so the seconds don't lie guys that's why I'm using that and for me someone's trying to be especially safe I do find much much much more benefit um now they did a study which was quite a few years back um you can probably find it online or chat gbt and ask it to tell you what what it who the off was I can't remember but um basically it was 1 second reps 4 second reps and 10c Reps and they found that the muscle growth by the end of all after a period of I think it was 3 months was the same so doing explosive reps doesn't cause more muscle growth it's a bit of a maybe a missomo it's like typical bro sort of thing you know I'll you know lift explosively then lower it slowly that everyone's been saying that so many years but no one's actually looked at the research that we do have um so yeah like I said the hack squat example 10 seconds down two to three seconds at the very bottom but that's where I know okay my lower back is not extended in a certain way I've not got too much flexion or extension I know that's a safe position so I'm going to hold that there and use my quads to activate and push up the weight I go back up it'll take about 10 seconds so largely speaking I'm recommending to most people about a 5 2 and five second Cadence with the 2 second uh isometric or um static hold being the most difficult part of the movement so that way you can control the rep and you're not using any inertia um now this is specific to bodybuilding it's not like power you know if I was a powerlifter I wouldn't be timing anything I just want to get that weight up but for me it's not feasible to do anything heavy mean I'm doing like two plates per side and a hack squat with a band to make it um safer at the very bottom position where my lowback could be compromised um and that's been really really effective but if anyone wants to know like my sets reps and what I'm doing I tend to train on Alternate days so that lands be somewhere around about three and a half sessions per week or 3 one week before the next um I do not like training back toback days personally just because the intensity level of what I do in the gym is at technical muscular failure or Beyond um so usually that means for example you lift until you can't lift safely anymore without using some uner or cheating it up basically like a bicep go like that um concentric muscular fail you can't push it anymore and it just gets stuck um when you can't push it anymore when you can't hold it anymore that's isometric failure then when you can't push it anymore can't hold anymore and can't lower it down any slower because it will crush you that's Ecentric failure so each degree failure will result in a greater degree and magnitude of intensity and therefore a greater more dilar impact and effect on your training recovery so the idea is you have to get in there and find out based on experience I can't tell people what to do what how far along that line in terms of training tens you have to go to get the result now some people use the model of you know High Reps or high volume and do 45 sets per week um problem is once you get to 45 sets per week what do you do you're stuck um then you end up spending hours in the gym under blue light that's going to negatively impact your cortisol levels it was a massive overburden and stress to your body and therefore you're spending four hours in a gym like Dr chafy does sometimes or used to um and for people like me that are particular like sensitive it's not going to be helpful so I tried to be in and out um as quickly as possible so I don't want to be in the gym for hours it just drains my soul um yeah so 3 to 4 SS per week 5 to 10 seconds e way up and down two to 3 seconds hold um in terms of toal volume so everything that I do in one session will be between about six and 10 total sets um now none of my sets require any warm-ups because when it's taking you 20 seconds to your first rep you don't need to do a warmup cuz you spend 20 seconds warming up um then when what what you actually find is I'm doing something between about on average between maybe four and eight maybe nine reps but that's going to take me sometimes 2 minutes to perform some of my sets are even two and a half minutes but what you'll see is that last 30 seconds where I'm doing that last rep it will take me like half a minute to do it because I'm I'm I'm like shaking if I'm a leg extension like trying to bring up and it's moving it's not moving it's not moving so that's the point where I know okay I can either overburden myself and do drop sets rest paw sets for straps these sort of things but that will negatively impact my recovery so you need to find out where your recovery is at how many sets you need to do how frequently you need to train how your muscle sness is what your appetite is doing how well you sleep at night and check your log book to make sure that when you're looking back at your training uh perimeters you're looking back at your training metric so for example the 100 kilo squat what have you are you progressing from session to session or not and if you're not making somewhat steady progression whether that be over a six month period or two we period you're probably not building more muscle because we know that strength is probably the best indicator that we're gaining muscle in terms of bodybuilding so that's what I'm looking at and that's my training philos philosophy in in a nutshell basically yeah nice yeah I like that idea with the with the slower reps you know you putting much much less load on the joint in your back and and then you have people are dealing with injuries that's that's a very good option for people to have I know there's a lot of uh trainers you know going back decades I really like that really slow sort of movement and yeah like you said the um you know the studies and there have been numerous ones that you can you can do fast reps slow reps you can do uh highweight Low Reps or low weight High Reps and things like that but as long as you're going to failure you're going to temporary muscle fatigue uh it all works yeah exactly it all works and so that's the key is just going to going to failure going to fatigue and and if you're doing that with with a lighter weight and slower more controlled reps you're more likely to be in control at that point of failure and not hurt yourself which is which is always good especially for people that are um starting out but also when people are are you know have a lot of weight that they're that they're pushing around and that can that can hurt you and so yeah I like um I uh yeah I toy around with some of the slow reps sometimes as well and then I just uh I think it's just because I'm I'm uh impatient just just like screw it just crank them out and uh and just try to wear myself out it's part of being a man for sure yeah yeah I I get that it's almost like an ego we have because it's hard to we're trying to separate that let's get that weight up and see how much we can push versus well how much can I destroy my muscles it's a different kind of mindset but once you done it for a few weeks you start logging it like oh this set took me 82 seconds next set 83 84 like as weeks goodby you've got that that number to calibrate by because you know you know you know what you're doing 82 seconds of reps is going to be 82 seconds you've got a standardized form standardized metric to measure what you're doing therefore you're just chasing the timer and that makes it fun for me cuz I come from background do chief is being a and quite competitive Sprinter so for me I was always chasing time you know I used to run 100 meters in 11 seconds yeah not anymore not anymore but I I could do 100 meters 11 seconds no no joke and um for me having that timer sort of side of it was really helpful so I remember going back in the day when I was like 12 years old I used to be on the sea front near my n used to live and I have um this old like brick brick phone sort of thing had it had like a stop watching it I have it in my pocket and be like press it put it in Pocket quick then run as fast as I could I'd go from lamp post to lamp post and i' just time it and um I was doing that over and over again over and over again like doing Wind Sprints because I was doing like 9:00 at night cuz um I had to basically sneak out the house to do it because a lot of people didn't like me going out on my own sort of thing cuz my brother wouldn't always go with me he's out of friends you know he's six years older than me so with friends you know that age sort thing he's about 18 at the time so yeah it's not going to be easy for him to S of uh keep an eye on me sort of thing but I used to sneak out the house just do activity and I was like I'm going to bloody win sports day and I always one sports day um the springs and that sort of thing because I put the time into it the dedication I I know no one else is doing that that's the thing it's the stuff you do behind the scenes which makes the biggest difference so I speak to lots of people you know clients and things and I'm like what else can you do but what else can you do you know what how can you e out more results because the people that come to me are serious people that want to they want to do some damage you know they they put their effort into it they put some serious well into what they're trying to achieve um so when they come to me I'm like okay what what have I done that you could try you know we're always trying to sort of hack hack our way through and find ways to do things better so um as a bodybuilder if you're a bit neurotic like me a bit over over obsessed overzealous then the timing stuff really does work and I I I suggest people try it out for a few weeks honestly yeah definitely um I other thing I you you talk about you know your muscles being flat and bulked up and things like that I heard that um you know some bodybuilders you know when obviously they're in a cutting phase they're basically just eating just very lean protein cutting down all their you know their macros and things like that but then like one thing that they would do is they like the night before the competition they would they would have more uh carbs and things like that and and water and that that would sort of plump up the muscles with glycogen and things like that is that something that you yourself or you dabbled with or you just did you have anything like on competition day or the day before that you changed or is it just the same exact routine straight into competition hey everyone really happy to announce a new sponsor for the show and for everybody down in Australia Stockman staks who are delivering highquality grass-fed and finished pasture raised beef and other meats flash frozen and vacuum sealed to Door something I've been enjoying a lot of myself recently as well they also have a great range of specialty items such as high fat keto mints and carnivore beef and organs mints with liver kidneys and beef heart as well so use code Chae today for a free order of beef mints or another specialty gift along with your order at Stockman steaks.com and I'll see you over there thanks guys I get asked this question a lot um I'll say largely speaking most people that ask me about car looing you know that's what they're pretty much talking about um they're not in a position to do it they're not lean enough to make a difference um if you upset your gut micro biome you add in a food that you haven't been eating for the three weeks prior I I think it's about 3 week period where you can sort of keep food in so some people I know are actually consult of and they like to have a bowl of fruit on a Sunday with their mom or something I don't know whatever I'll say okay you're going to have that each week on a Sunday with your mom then move on to the next thing you know next meal Carnival what have you um now when you start doing these things where you strict car one of all lion D for six months bodybuilding show one week later okay I'm G to add in a thousand grams of cup the St don't do it guys your gut micr is not built to um withstand that sort of change that quick um and for what I did in this carore bodying contest prep was fat loading so we used the prior weeks as data so I knew okay if 70 grand of fat gave me this result on between day one and day two I knew that that going to give me the benefit in terms of fullness that I needed um I'm someone that doesn't really go flat and it takes me a long time to go flat if that makes sense um which shocked my coach he's not a carnival coach by any means he's more of the carb Centric model of bodybuilding he's like you're very full I'm like yeah I've not eaten carbs in you know exogenous significant source of carbs for a long time um and he was like that's weird oh it must be the triglycerides right or or your your body can transmute fat into glycogen Downstream if you let it and if you eat enough protein so there is something called um glucan Genesis which guys can Google if you don't know about it I know Dr cha obviously knows but um your body is built to withstand these low carbohydrate low insulin states without any issue at all um yeah so that basically what I did so my competition was on Sunday and I knew roughly I'd be on stage somewhere between about 11: and 12:00 give or take so what I did was I made sure my training was always before that time so the time I'd get a pump in the gym you know build myself up sort of thing would be the same time roughly that I'd be on stage performing so I I I I my training timing was actually specific it specified because I knew at that time of day okay I've had that much water that much salt roughly give or take this much prote this much fat this many meals this is the result that's going to give me at this time of day so that's what I was priming myself for um then what I did basically was with the information I had from PRI weeks um I believe it was Thursday we did the high day so I added 100 grams of fat Friday I believe we added 70 or 75 grams of fat Saturday was my normal diet day so if I had any digestive upset or issues from that prior um it would fade fade away basically and also at that point I was also on a bit of a D Lo which means you're not training too much you're just going to the gym just moving weight you in a point where you can you're that low body fight you can easily get injured so you're basically reducing your output reducing systemic inflammation letting the food do its job to fill you back up so you're not depleting more because you're eating more you're trying to actually just let your levels go up in terms of your muscle glycogen by time Sunday hit I was in the best Peak condition I could possibly be in um now what did I use before the show did I use any magical you know prescription drugs to dry out um I took I believe two dandelion root extract capsules um which was very effective but for me because I wasn't holding much water um at all you don't really hold water when you're on a kind of RIS ketogenic sort of style diet it didn't really it did a bit but I'd say I started to feel a bit headachy so that tells me for next time I compete maybe just do one capsule um I felt quite dehydrated and when you're too dehydrated obviously you lose water you start expelling more water um through that sort of D dtic effect then you start to become flat so you need the glycogen side of it so that means more fat you need the hydration side of it so more sodium and also more water so we didn't taper off water or anything like that we just made sure that I drank enough on Shi that I wasn't thirsty but not so much that be extended impact digestion blo or anything like that just just enough to sort of get me through really um but that's effectively my my Peak queak um but that specifies to me someone else could try the same thing and it it could backfire but there's no way to know unless you do the do the data and ask yourself have pinpoints in time where you can say oh this is what I did at this day this was effective this wasn't so you have it yeah very good and um so actually I I actually um you know hopping back to where you mentioned before is just something you mentioned briefly but you have you're grounding almost 90% of the day and you have a grounding sheet in your bed it's not something I've looked into all that much the stuff I've looked at is actually very interesting and very um um you know intriguing as as the benefits of grounding but what what has your experience been with that getting that you know um you know it's one thing to just go out and walk Barefoot around on your lawn or something like that or walk in a park and obviously it's a it's a it's a bigger investment to buy something for your bed you a grounding mat uh what have you noticed just adding in the grounding side of things I think it's not something which you're going to notice a benefit from comparing yourself week to week okay I think it's more of a longitudinal thing which you notice if you compare twins twin a twin B this guy's grounded 100% time this guy's grounded 10% time okay maybe could draw a conclusion and say oh this guy's got more plaque in their archeries and better cardiovascular health um I don't think you can easily measure it and that's part of the problem with the grounding itself but mechanistically we do understand there's hard science on it um it will reduce inflammation um I believe it does don't quote me on this so someone will have to do the research and find out themselves the number itself but I believe it reduces the um viscosity of the blood by a factor of three or four something like that and I was quite shocked to hear it because three or four times less thinkness of blood is quite significant imagine doing that all the time yeah you know it's only going to benefit you in my opinion so I mean for me my investment um you know I'm I'm somewhat disabled I guess I don't have a ton of money but I could still afford it so for example my grounding mat grounding pillow combined or about 60 British pounds so maybe 80 American US dollar so it's quite affordable um and it's not something you just have then you got it for a week you tuck it away you you know you can use these things for I don't know a year two years till they turn to rags basically M um and they'll do the job and if you don't want to do that guys what you can do is you can actually get um just be careful this one you can get like a clip on bracelet some sort of copper bracelet I don't know some sort of um conducting material maybe around your ankle or something or your toe I don't know um or even just put a bit of metal behind you on your back when you're asleep like a flat sheet um stick a wire outside pin it stake it into the ground and there you go you got you're grounded done so it's it's it's affordable and it's achievable by a lot of people but um I'm not going to say it's going to change people's lives overnight and they're going to sort of noce the benefit it's it's something you do over a long period of time to acquire a subtle background effect okay yeah nice uh yeah very good so you know one thing that we were talking about uh last time and a bit now um was uh you know your experience with with autism as you say you you have autism and that's something that was very difficult for you uh before going carore you said that you be very difficult very anxious and things like that um but how how how has your experience been you know with with going carnivore obviously you you were bodybuilding before that um so you're still able to you know get the job done but you know what has your experiences been now and how has that been going have you seen a you know progress from going on a ketogenic carnivore diet but also it's been four and a half years now you seen an improvement subsequently you know since those four and a half years has that improved or has you sort of got to a point where it's like Yeah it's gotten a lot better and it's been pretty stable since then what has your experience been with that yeah that's a good question I mean I would say that the most benefit I achieved was somewhat in maybe the first one to two years MH um after that point it's more it's less as much being on a Carnival diet that's the benefit it seems to be more that you take on more bioh hacks so if someone's in the carnival space right now and they're watching this there a month in they've done a challenge whatever um join Cha's group you know yeah you GNA get immediate benefit something it's going to happen but down the line you're going to start chasing more benefits so maybe you get 90 or 80 or 70% benefit terms you subjective whole body well-being maybe you started at a five now you're at a 7 out of 10 or on the field eight out nine out of maybe even 10 out of 10 some people can chief that it's possible um but then you start incorporating more bioh hacks and I think that's been the main thing for me so the um the light exposure susing all that out has been very effective um I think that the diet is probably the largest part of the benefit I've had in terms of the things I've intervened with um i' put that as rank number one rank number two for me as an individual would be the light exposure then the third four things would be probably the Community settings obviously meeting people like yourself checking to other people online making new friends new experiences um that's definitely eased my symptoms of autism because I've met people that understand me a bit better um because I've got over that main hurdle of being anxious now I'm at the point where I can start to sort of Branch out a bit more um I still get social burn out burnout so I don't you know I'm not I'm not a extroverted person by any stretch at all I like to spend about 95 plus% of my day on my own um in the dark no not in the dark guys um but yeah I I do I do find the benefits kind of add up a little bit more each time I add something in um and what I found which is quite surprising and I've actually noticed more and more and more so um as one of the very few autistic people in our space online there's not many of us that really come out and talk about it um I found that people that have a diet higher in Amiga free especially through you know things like fish do seem to see a positive Improvement in their mental health um but I don't think it's a case of just eating loads and loads and loads of fish I think it's have some fish as your appetite permits and suggests then if you go off it for a few days don't have it you know um get some eggs in you some choline all the sort of co-actors um and if we look at the mechanistic data even blood tests even of people that have autism and the genes the the polymorphisms you know mthf far perhaps is quite bad detox path is quite bad um well poor sorry you know different genes that come to play suggest that maybe we need more of certain things than other people um I think being in a somewhat stressed state from being anxious or being autistic can mean we require more food um and that's been my experience overall so we do have to follow our appetites a bit more be a bit more diligent bit more um bit more pedantic at times as well just trying to be a bit more accurate what're eating um some things do really cause me a negative effect so I'm very intolerant to berries obviously um I don't eat them now at all and dark chocolate is a killer for me if I eat even a square of dark chocolate that day I am not a nice person to be around I'm a really miserable bastard I'm really not a nice guy um but I suspect it's the the bromine and some those sort of chemical compounds in it which which give me some delerious effect but it's all individual guys so um what I would look at a lot of the diet side of it for the most part then look at the other side of things just tackle one thing at a time don't try and achieve everything all at once just tackle one thing um and my personal experience I'd look at the diet first the light exposure second after that be the maybe the exercise if you don't exercise getting outside of nature then also the social side of things as well so tying it all together meeting like mind of people um just learning as well and following your passions is quite important to me as well so I spend about a third of my time researching listen to podcasts like Dr chaffy and stuff like that I I'm a information [ __ ] basically I always want more information nice yeah finding your passions is super important so hopefully there's some young guy out there that's like I want to go to the gym and I want to you know follow Carnival diet feel better not be anxious anymore not be depressed they can follow along my stuff following my journey i' speak very candidly about it in my channel um I don't hold back I'm very straight talking very straightforward honest with people um try to give people some insights into all that but the diet side of things is is definitely a key yeah well that yeah that's that's great and I think it's really important and I really appreciate uh you talking about these sorts of things because you know it's you know talking about our own personal you know issues is it's not always easy and um and it's it's not um NE always necessary you know it's it's it's our own business and so I appreciate you uh coming on talking about that because I'm I know that there are a lot of people who end up seeing this and and and being really inspired by it um I did a you know I've spoken about autism with yourself and and on other things and and done sort of Standalone things on autism as well and it's something that I think is is is really important because it's something that U you know can be help and this is this is in the literature it's in the data and and we're seeing real people apply this to their lives and and improve and even as adults they they can improve dramatically and as kids as well and so you know something that I feel you know strongly about but getting out there so I appreciate you saying that um talking about this and you know one thing I'll say is I did a video on autism talking about autism and I sort at the any I was like hey you know if people have you know dealt with this in in their own lives or in their family members or children's lives you know please do leave a comment and talk about it and I had some amazing comments from people on how um how amazing their experiences had been with themselves with their children you know children that had been completely nonverbal now all of a sudden were speaking again and being able to do well in school and and doing better you know Ally um carnivore had her on the podcast you know like two years ago and I met her at uh ketocon like three years ago and um or two years ago and um but it's three keto cons ago now and uh I you know conversed with her online before and and she came up with her kids and you know just happy nice normal kids and she said you know this is my son and he's actually a non-verbal autistic and I was just like I was in my head I was just like I'm pretty sure I just heard him speak and and then she said when eating carbohydrates and um and that was it and so they figured that out and they went ketogenic carnivore and he started you know started becoming more verbal and talking then he would go over to a relatives house and grandparents and they try to you know buy their love with candies and cookies and and cake and all that sort of stuff and come back and wouldn't speak for four days four days it would take them to recover and um then they got you know were more able better able to get him on on long-term uh you know ketogenic carnivore sort of things and uh after a couple years he started he actually tested into the gifted program at school he went from being nonverbal in you know special ed programs basically and uh went from from that to going into gifted programs I mean you know being able to just completely reverse the direction of someone's life like that you know was just amazing and one of the comments in that uh that really stuck with me um something you know would be interesting to hear your thoughts on was someone said imagine living in a world of your mind's own creation and being very happy there and then one day deciding to only eat meat and then a year later realizing that the world that you had lived in and always known was not the real world and now that you're in the real world and you can see it and realize that you're a grown adult and you don't have any life skills and you don't have any interpersonal skills you don't have any job skills and that you know you you you you you don't have the infrastructure to to live a normal life and he said I don't have to guess at what that's like I I'm living that and first of all scary as hell but also wow what a huge difference that must have been where that person that that consciously saw that evolution of his own reality and then the the really inspiring things were there's about three people who commented and said hey I was there two years ago it gets better you'll be fine and um and I just thought that was absolutely incredible that a that that that that's possible that someone can have that experience and and B that there's other people out there that did it and was to encourage them and say hey it gets better you can do this you can be like Jan and uh and win a bodybuilding competition and uh and get your life back and uh so I just yeah I thought that was amazing love to hear your thoughts on that yeah I love that I mean one of the reasons I quite touched s I've got a little T for a second but it does remind me so much of my journey honestly um I look back and think you know five years ago where was I what was I doing what could I be doing now if it wasn't for this this s of eating and you know coming across people's videos and stuff like that online and I'm like I could be somewhere very very bad right now honestly I I can't stress it enough and I'm I'm part of the reason why I make all these videos like baby Jonathan you know the guy there' be guys out there watching us thinking like oh this is L crap honestly it's not it's um there's there's nothing better for it we see like in the date of like the ketogenic diets at least with um metabolic psychi Psychiatry things like that Dr Rachel brown people like that Dr George Eid that are talking about these sort of things and these people are in real life practice and they're seeing changes which would otherwise not be apparent if it wasn't for this way of eating it just doesn't happen you know cuz I I never realized anything wrong with me you know wrong um now I look at myself in a different light having that diagnosis when I was an adult when I was older was was quite shocking um cuz you don't although you kind of feel like you're bit different you're a bit of an outcast Black Sheep you you see the other side of it so you you make the change you experience the change you're back on the other side and you look back and think baby Jonathan not he wouldn't be alive right now um so I can I can see that for sure but um you I just hope people watch this in full and they sort of understand that it's not at the end of everything you'll look back and almost laugh at yourself thinking baby Josh baby Lily or whatever your name happens to be you know there's there's light at the end of the tunnel as cliche as it sounds you just have to get there and make that change like like now or yesterday even before even watch this and if you're on that fence get off that fence get on the side of us you know they real positive likeminded people that are trying to you know put out good content to help you so people like baby Jonathan that would probably not exist right now that were you know undy know struggling in life dealing with you know just all these inner demons and like stress and torment a lot of it's placed upon yourself CU you don't fit in but once you realize that and you come out the other side honestly the the benefits just begin to add up more and more and more and what I say to people a lot is um to make like a gingerbread man picture of yourself like a a skeleton or a body or something and write down how you feel out of 10 head to toe maybe say oh head you know depressed brain [ __ ] tired anxious um no friends miserable no Social Circle oh knees sore you know um oh back back aches this s thing go through your whole body do a score out of 10 then do it again like a week later on the Carnival do it again a week later than a week later you'll start to see that Trend begin to Pi pick up so I'm still looking at this trend myself I'm the most self-critical person you could ever imagine um and part part of the reason why probably do bodybuilding is because it takes away that constant self evaluation because it gives me something different to our value that isn't relative to my inner inner self um yeah always always check yourself reevaluate who you are as a person and see what benefits you can get because some of you guys out there will be absolutely shocked what you can achieve if you let you get you just Scout Your Own Way eat the right diet try these bi hacks that we talk we talked about in this this discussion and um there's lots of people out there do want to help you I mean I'm looking through Dr Cha's comment section sometimes I can't keep up with the comments I get and I'm like swarmed by it I get two to 300 notifications every day yeah and I'm sure Dr chaffy is getting thousands every day but he makes the effort to go through and talk to real people with him his real self it's him answering these questions guys he's being professional about it and you know he's putting it his best foot forward and he's doing for people like I know Dr cha has a relative that lives of autism I know he's doing it partly for people like that that are almost shrouded in this like hidden cupboard in the corner being ignored not being shown these things not being found these things being found on line so the more we talk about it so if you're watching us now and you'll say living of autism you've got a mobile phone you can talk on a camera you've been on this way of eating for two years get on the show talk to talk talk chy um send me a message an email you know yeah defin would like to discuss it would like to find out what what you can do and what you've achieved because it does inspire it does get out to more people over time yeah yeah definitely and um you know I I I really you know love seeing those stories of people you know defying the odds and uh and really changing their lives in ways that you know society and medical science is adamant that cannot be done and um and yet we're doing it you know and you're doing it and you've done it and uh you know and so I I really appreciate your example to everybody else and I hope that people do reach out to you and to me and uh and we can keep getting people's stories out there to help encouraging others as well and um absolutely you better on on track so Jonathan thank you so much for that that was absolutely fantastic it was a pleasure to see you again thank you so much for your time and your Insight today I really appreciate it so you take care no so um where can people find you and follow you uh your YouTube channel Instagram things like that where we where do we find you buddy sure so my um YouTube channel is carnivore muscle um I'll just bring up my logo quickly not got be wearing a bit it's the hottest day of the year me there b me 15 de I've got like 10 I only wear these now I'm not I'm not it's hot guys um yeah so Carnival muscle on YouTube um Carnival muscle on Instagram and my website is composition consultant.com um that's just my website coaching plans ebooks free ebooks I give that stuff for free as well I'm not absolutely greedy like some people um what else I do you know all that sort of stuff diet plans training plans body composition stuff um PR all you need to build muscle loose fat on the Carnival D male female young old disabled able bodied whatnot so yeah you can find me quite easily through those routs all right sounds good well I'll put all those links in the description and people can uh find you there below and uh yeah Jonathan great to see you again hope to see you soon and good luck in your next competition buddy I'm sure you'll do great thank you I'm G try and make the community proud and get some more pro athletes out there no you're you've already done that buddy and I'm sure you'll keep doing it so thanks man we'll see you next time and thank you everybody for joining me hopefully you found that helpful if you like that please hit like And subscribe go over to Jonathan's Channel And subscribe to him as well to see more of his content and if you know someone who's getting ready for a fitness competition and thinking about the carnivore diet or has someone that uh has autism or has a family member with autism please do send this over to them as well so they can take a look and see what they think thank you all very much and we'll see you next time 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 podcast 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 can 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