Episode 402: Liron Kayvan: The Truth about Plant-Based Diets + Is Creatine Crucial for Aging?

0:01Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it.

0:08Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up.

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1:56Welcome to Fitness Friday. We have my friend Leron with us. another fitness trainer slash enthusiast slash soccer player. Last gym owner, we just opened a brand new gym on Westwood. Slash gym owner, congrats. Yeah. I love that. What's it called? Beyond Fitness LA. I love it. We might rebrand at some point, but for now it's Beyond Fitness LA. Beyond Fitness LA. Okay, we're going to talk about creatine. Creatine's all the rage now. This is the supplement that everyone talks about. Do you think there is a way to supplement creatine that's better than others? and how much should people actually take?

2:31Okay, so I'm going to give a very nuanced and boring answer. No, it's not boring, but it's nuanced. Okay. There's a pro and con. The pro is, I think creatine is the most scientifically studied supplement ever. Genuinely, I think. You can fact check me on this, but I'm pretty sure it's accurate. I'm going to say that again. Creatine is the most science-backed, most studied supplement, I think, on the market right now. By far. I think of all time, and it's not just studied by companies trying to sell it to the masses. This is very deep medical practice. If a woman needs to get the birth weight of their baby up, if they're dangerously low birth weight, they'll take creatine.

3:16I know people take it for all sorts of brain. This is what I want to talk about. So let's just back it up a second, okay? Because creatine scares me. I'm a woman. I'm scared of creatine, even though I know that it's the most studied supplement. I know that it helps build muscle. I know that there's amazing research that proves that's great for your cognitive abilities, your brain health. However, I'm not alone when I feel, and I don't know if it's just like the psychological thing, that creatine will make me gain weight. I feel like that to me because I've seen in my life. Well, listen, I've seen in my life because it's It's been predominantly used by men, okay?

3:55And up until very recently, right? It's really been like a man supplement. Like every guy I know would take like a scoop of creatine and put in his shake, right? To get like, you know, to get super mass and get like jacked. Protein used to be like that, but now we realize protein is for everyone and everyone needs more protein essentially. True, true. But how do women get over the psychological hump that creatine will make them fat? So a couple of things. As I was saying before, it's the most scientifically studied supplement ever. And it was studied not for like aesthetic, muscular fitness goals.

4:35It was studied for medical things. So this is safe and they wouldn't give it to women if it made you unhealthy. So that's the first thing you need to say about it. Second, it won't make you fat because it doesn't touch your fat cells. It only touches, it only pulls in water, are like hydrogen ions, water into your lean body mass because fat is hydro, whatever, hydrophobic. It doesn't like water. Fat and water separate. So basically it's a water-based supplement. It pulls water into your cells, primarily your muscle cells. So it gives a volume to your muscle. If you're worried that you're going to swell up, so you definitely won't get fat.

5:14That's just something you don't have to worry about at all. If you think you're going to swell up and start looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you realize like that type of muscularity is near impossible for a natural woman. Women who look overly muscular have either been training for 10, 15, 20 years, or they're taking steroids, which a lot of women do. So a lot of these fitness people you see at the gym or on social media, the females are taking low doses of male androgenic anabolic steroids. So you have to realize the smoke and mirrors there creatine is a supplement that will not touch your fat cells at all so you don't have to worry about getting fat at all it will volumize your lean body mass which is basically every part of your body that's not fat based so that's everything so it's your eyeballs it's your muscles okay but i believe that it does you just said yourself you can retain water on it.

6:07In your lean body. Okay, but still, if you're retaining water, and that will make you bloated. And not one girl I know, not one girl I know, wants to take that risk of feeling bloated. It's just, it's human nature. I don't care what you say. It's just human nature. So how can we take creatine and lower our chances of getting bloated? So the second point going on from that, the fact that it's safe and it won't make you fat is it's also natural. So creatine is a natural part of red meat, which is what we are. We are red meat. It's part of every muscle fiber in nature. Okay. So it would be abundant.

6:51It's abundant in the meats that we eat, or at least red meat. It's naturally there. And it's part of every, all the energy systems of our body use creatine. Again, I haven't done any of this AMP stuff for years, so I'm probably butchering it. But it's essentially part of a natural fundamental part of our energy system. So the idea that you shouldn't have creatine in your body is another complete myth. You need creatine in your body. We just have it naturally. Okay, we have it naturally. What are some of the ways that we can naturally increase our creatine without taking a creatine supplement? That's the other side.

7:28So I said this was nuanced. These are the positives for creatine. You didn't give me anything. You just kind of talked a lot. So the positives of creatine, let me sum it up. Okay, no, be much more succinct. So positives of creatine are, it's natural, it's safe, it boosts your muscle capability, and it boosts your health. The negatives for taking creatine is you don't need to. All you need to do is eat red meat and eat enough red meat. In nature, we've evolved to eat red meat. I'm sure you've had plant-based people on here. Don't care. We evolved to eat red meat. That's how we've evolved. It's part of our evolution.

8:00You can look at our digestive tract. You can look at our teeth. You can look at our brains. You can look at the size of our colon. We can look at anything. You can look at archaeological records. It all adds up. Anyone who tells you that we are not meat-based, meaning a sizable amount of our calories in nature, should come and we would thrive on a meat-based diet. It's talking out of their art. So you think people who are on a plant - diet, they should be taking creatine. Absolutely. I would imagine that creatine, along with a whole host of other supplements, would need to be taken by a plant-based person because it's an unnatural diet, essentially.

8:36I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. I'm just saying it's an unnatural diet and it's not the optimal diet. Isn't it crazy that you have to have all these precursors now to talk about people who are plant-based versus animal-based? It's a little bit woke, isn't it? You might get cancelled, yeah. It's part of the whole work. No, like you'll literally offend somebody if you say you have to eat meat. Like right when you said, oh my God, we've evolved to be somebody who eats red meat, whatever. Literally in my head while you were saying it, I was like, oh my God, he's going to get in trouble. But to me, that is so effed up.

9:10It's politicized. It's socialized. But it shouldn't be. It should be like, this is your opinion. That's what you think. By the way, I'm a person that needs to have animal protein as well, or else I feel starving. I have a friend, actually, Darren Olean, who's one of my best friends, who is plant-based. I have best friends who are plant-based. Okay, vegan. And it works for him. He looks amazing. Because he takes up them, though? Maybe a couple. He takes Truniogen, NAD. I'm sure he takes a bunch of other things I don't know about. But the reason why I'm bringing him up is he has a lot of lean muscle mass.

9:45He looks good, but he's probably one of the only people I know who are vegan, who look that good and who feel to me like that he's super healthy. I could be totally wrong. He is probably really, really healthy, really dedicated and has all his ducks in a row and would probably be five or 10 percent better if you didn't. Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't know. I don't know. Listen, you and me both. I believe that like, I would say everybody's different, but I will say the majority of people in my world or I've meet because I mean a lot of people that they saw a significant difference in their health, in their energy, the way they feel when they incorporated animal protein back into their diet when they were vegan.

10:34Especially women, which is another thing. We talk about women. Women, if anything, need, I wouldn't say they need more, but we know like women lose their period. I know, I know girls, they lose their periods when they go plant-based. You even have to take iron supplements. What is the most, what is the most like? This is the problem with it, I think. Well, it's so ironic, right? I find this to be really interesting because the problem is, unless you know how to do food combinations really well as a vegan, you're going to be missing out. You have to be like math, yeah. No, you're going to be missing on fundamental nutrients because you have to know that beans plus a rice equals a protein.

11:13But if you have to be doing, like if you are a bad math student or you don't understand how combinations work, please add animal protein to your diet and make it simple for yourself and call it a day. Yeah, if you don't know, then just like stick to just moderation and you don't have to take my word for it. Just eat at least a little bit of animal protein. Well, I find that you can look very emaciated and unhealthy in gray. Like there's a place in LA. Oh, my God. Gray or great? Gray. Gray. Like the color gray. Okay, gray. Very different to gray. Yeah, not gray. Jaundice. There's a place I used to go all the time.

11:47It was so hilarious. It was called The Co-op. It was like this grocery store in Santa Monica. It's probably still there. Some like hippie thing. Yeah, it's very hippie dippy. And I would take my mom would come visit me from Canada. and we would go there to get like, you know, after the gym and I would take her there. And my mother was so perplexed because she looked around. It's supposed to be like a health food store. And she's like, why does everyone here look like they were like jaundice out of the hospital? They were like, they all looked very like weak and either too thin or like just unhealthy.

12:19And like the irony is that like that's like a health food store that's supposed to be, it was supposed to be like for all the, you know, where all the healthy people looked. But yet like Ralphs down the street had way more of a healthy person looking. I just find a lot of this stuff to be so absurd, right? And I don't know. I just found that to be funny. I did 10 parts on my podcast about this, about that whole. I used to plug your podcast on my podcast. Doesn't everyone do that? Doesn't literally everyone do that? First of all, that's what I'm supposed to do. Second of all, no, genuinely, I've just done this to death.

12:55Like I've, I've done 10 parts on this and I, I, I explain, and I, I kind of meander away from the, the actual kind of lie itself that meat is bad for you. And you kind of trace the roots of it and you start to see like big pharma and the big food companies and like people are benefiting from this. And again, we were talking about business. We're talking about like capitalism business. And like, there are people profiting off of this idea that you shouldn't eat meat, you know? And there are also people profiting off the idea that you should be sick. Like being sick is very profitable in America.

13:30Hugely profitable. It's very profitable. But at the same time, if you say that, just to play devil's advocate, then there should be people profiting on the meat side saying that you should eat meat. Because, I mean, you have people on both sides who profit. I'm talking from actual personal experience. Yeah. Like neither of us are going, I'm not, I'm not going to make a cent off of people eating meat. No, but what I'm saying is like, I know when I'm not eating protein, like, like animal protein, I have less energy. I can't work out as hard. I don't look as good. Like how do you build lean muscle without eating more like animal protein?

14:09It's very difficult. It's very difficult. Like you need, I mean, I reckon if you're on steroids, you probably don't need as much. So my theory and this is like maybe wild and whatever but like i think a lot of the plant-based athletes were probably either built their muscle when they weren't plant-based so for example arne schwarzenegger like arne schwarzenegger spent 70 years eating three steaks a day and then he goes oh you know you don't need so much meat like you can go live meatless mondays or whatever that's horrible impression but actually a good one but it's too like it's like okay well it's all well and good you being 70 years old and having dominated like hollywood and the bodybuilding industry eating three steaks a day and being on steroids but now you're now you can say go meatless monday like too late if you if you did that in your prime fine so i think one is they either built the muscle with the meat and then once they were just maintaining it they went plant-based and so that was okay two is they're on steroids yeah i think that's a good okay by the way i think that's a great impression i also think it's not my best go meatless i think having the idea of meatless mondays is a fine thing because i do it sometimes on saturdays i actually do meatless days i have no problem with that because like it's like one day or two days a week but as like a general rule where you're just you're like excluding meat from your diet completely it's crazy because this is the bottom line muscle is the answer and the i guess the secret sauce to overall longevity and to aging well.

15:42Mental health. Yes. It's an organ. No, and especially as you're aging, especially middle age, you need to have muscle on your body. The leading cause of death is lack of muscle, right? In elderly. Yes, but let me finish what I was going to say. I was going to say that if muscle is the main driver for longevity and for aging well, right? And you need to keep muscle on. And as you get older, it's harder and harder and harder. You're depleting and you're losing so much muscle. How much is it a year just by overall age? Right. So the problem is how do you keep it on? What's the easiest way to keep it on?

16:22You've got weightlifting. Besides heavy weightlifting, you've got to lift weights heavy and you've got to eat a lot of protein. A fuck ton of protein. So how I'm going to, I am. Creatine is very good for aging too. Just to pull it back to creatine. But I think what I was going to say about the downside of taking creatine is you don't actually need it. It's present in red meat. The reason why it's so studied and the reason why it's so pumped by the sports industry, by the muscle building industry, by even the medical industry is because in nature, we would have it just as part of our body, our makeup.

16:57Because we would eat, you know, a healthy society would eat a good amount of red meat. We would hunt and eat a good amount of red meat. We would be getting in all the creatine we need naturally. But in modern society where we're divorced from red meat, where most people maybe eat red meat once a week or something like that, then we need to supplement. The only reason why we need to supplement is because we're divorced from our natural habitat and our natural diet. That's the only reason. And the reason why creatine is good for your hair and good for your muscles and good for your pregnancy and good for your when you're old and you have Parkinson's or whatever.

17:32Right. I'm throwing things out. The reason why it's good for everything is because it's such a fundamental part of how we are. It's a building block of everything. So it's going to have all these benefits aside from just muscle gain. Right. Muscle gain is interesting, but it's just one thing. Okay. How much do you take? Like, okay. Because for a woman... Me, nothing. But yes. How much should someone take? Oh my God. So after all that big yelling and screaming about creatine, you're not taking it. But I eat meat. Because you eat it tough. Yeah. But so you don't take creatine as a supplement because you're getting it from your red meat.

18:02Yes. Okay, so let's say this. For someone who's not eating red meat, maybe they're just eating chicken and turkey, let's just say, or salmon or whatever, then they should be taking a creatine supplement. Definitely. Five grams for men, three grams for women. Okay, and for people who are regularly eating red meat, who regularly eat animal protein, to take the creatine supplement is not as necessary. Is that what you're saying? Yes. Okay, thank you. That's exactly what I'm saying. Okay, good, thank you. All right, guys. that is and the end okay so by the way should we do this shot of magic mind before we leave yeah speaking of it have you ever done this before yeah you should have done this before I've got to go build my gym right now I need some magic mind oh I should get you some they're delicious they're my favorite shots because it's A good for great energy and great for focus we should have done it before the podcast but Ashwakanda yeah there's a lot of good stuff a lot of great stuff Rodeola I love Rodeola huge fan of Rodeola you know what Rodeola is by the way Rodeola is the natural herb for like what people use for like for adhd like it's like a natural what do you call it it's a natural adderall that's what i heard really yeah it helps you like really with like your focus and your attention i've been i've been actually um i've been on the rhodiola tip for a while i love it i've always loved it well why do you take it then i think i initially it was for stress uh adaptation but now i take it as a tea just because i like it but it's got a just general i think yeah mostly it's like stress adaptation but it's got this general feeling like you feel it pretty quick like you can like i can drink a tea of rhodiola and i can feel it within half an hour but what are you feeling like i just sort of i know you don't like this word but balance like i just feel like i'm just drink your shot so we can finish this podcast yeah i'm going to do i did like two already today i forgot i can't take more than two down the hatch are we live by the way we're just rambling no go go ahead yeah and by the way guys before we say goodbye i should say at the beginning of the podcast but if you're still here listening always if you guys can leave me a review subscribe if you haven't it really helps with the podcast so i always am remiss in saying that to people so i'm gonna even though i said the end of the podcast i'm glad like and subscribe yes thank you bye