#615 - Thomas DeLauer - Stop Making These Mistakes When Intermittent Fasting

24:49And my body just wasn't working the same way that it used to. So it was very easy for me to put on muscle, but then I also put on a bunch of fat with it too. So I always kind of joke. I was like, this was a classic example of a bulk gone wrong, but it wasn't like I was bulking on six cups of brown rice per day. I was eating jack in the box tacos. I was eating everything under the sun. I remember my wife's brother being like looking at this baking sheet that I had full of tater tots, like just an entire giant baking sheet. I remember him being like, that's healthy. And I just remember that such a snide little comment.

25:23And I was like I convinced myself like this is healthy, I'm bulking. I was totally like fucking Eric Cartman in Beefcake like that. I was like, uh, weight gain 5 ,000, like as long as, so fortunately, I wasn't overweight for a long period of time. I was like two and a half years where I was, but I tip the scales close to 300 pounds at one point. And the fact that I gained the weight that fast, at the time, I didn't think of it, but now I think about it now, I'm like, what the fuck was mentally going on with me? This was like a some weird element of self sabotage. It was like, I'm a, I'm not a stupid guy.

25:53Smart enough to know and self -aware enough to know that like if you eat 10 ,000 calories, it was like I was stuffing my face trying to gain weight. And I remember my wife even making comments like, you know, I love you anyway. I don't know what you're doing, but it was crazy. Like you see those my 600 pound life, you see that stuff where these people are laying in bed and they they know what they're doing and they're doing it to themselves. And I was walking down that path and then I think about like, oh my gosh, my sort of disordered eating past with being someone anorexic. This was like the opposite of it.

26:23I'm like, holy crap, I've got some serious eating disorder stuff that I got to work with. Fortunately, I was able to get a grasp on it. I always joke about the moment when I saw someone that was in acquaintance of mine. They were driving down the road and they saw me eating Jack in the Box Tacos. And maybe you've heard the story because it's floating around the internet all the time. But I went through Jack in the Box, pulled into a stall afterwards and was eating my translucent in Jack in the Box tacos because they're so full of grease you can see through them. And this person drives by and he's not a close friend, he's an acquaintance, but he just waves at me, nonchalantly.

26:56And it was the fact that it was such a nonchalant wave that I'm like, this dude, like he wasn't shocked by the fact that I'm sitting here stuffing my face. This was status quo normal to him. This is how people see me. The fact that he didn't, wasn't like, oh my God! The fact that he looked at me and was like, oh, what's up, Tom? It's like, oh fuck, I'm caught. I'm not going. I'm that guy. And that was it. That was the moment. People were like, what was your call to action? Did someone say you're gonna die? No, but I did make myself type do diabetic. I did give myself hypertension. I clinically made myself type do diabetic.

27:28So in a two year period of time. And that let that be a testament to how a fucked up diet can really mess you up, right? It can mess you up quick. And it took me like seven years to get that shit normal again. But anyway, that all of that aside. That's, you know, so this happens by the time I'm like, you know, 22, 23, you know, given my background and kind of what I was doing. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's kind of happening in the background there with my healthcare career health care administration going into Ancillary lab services in the private equity world for a short period of time.

27:54I Really developed a really strong knack for biochemistry because I was essentially in medical sales. So I knew I had to be able to sell to physicians and be able to explain Various lab services Salver and cortisol testing explain these things and I'm like I knew I was a really good salesperson with that because I was able to, I knew so much about the body just because I was so in tune of myself. And I got super into biochemistry, just super into it to the point where I'm like, I want to go back to school for biochemistry. I dropped out of college. You know, and I want to go to school for biochemistry.

28:29I want to go back. And then I realized like, you know what, like I'm actually making good money doing what I'm doing without that. And I'm really good at what I do. And physicians respect me and the community respects me. And the scientific community was respecting me then. So anyway, the point is, is that I had a good breath of knowledge. So all it took was like that catalyst for me to be like, I got to get my life in order. And you know, then there's this kind of whole interstitial period between when I launched my brand and everything like that, which is kind of there was some downtime. What did you do to take yourself from like what's what's the type of diabetes that you gave yourself and what does that mean?

29:05That I'm paying attention all that shit. And then how do you go from where you were to even anything approaching health? Yeah, so well type 2 diabetes. I mean clinically if you're over 125 N underguess for desoleter glucose you're technically clinically diabetic and you're fasting glucose Or pre -diabetic and then when you start claiming over what 140 then you're kind of in that clinical range So I remember my glucose being like 144 fasting repeatedly Bad really bad Knowing what I know now. I know why that happened knowing what I know now I know how it was corrected all I knew was that I needed to reverse it And I needed to fix this issue because I looked at my wife and I'm like, this is stupid.

29:44Like all this happened in a pursuit of building muscle, fucking up my body in a pursuit of building muscle, but also then losing side of that and fucking up my body in a pursuit of making money. So these two vanity things, muscle and money, I could have completely fucked up my life. I did fuck up a lot of my life because it took me years to get my health back. And there's certain things I still struggle with to this day as a result of just like massive basic binging for a couple of years. Well, I mean, for example, like it's still like my testosterone levels are still pretty tanked, right? I think that I did that damage at a very critical age.

30:21I think at a time when testosterone levels should have been peaking, I was ruining them, right? So you know, things like that, I deal with that, the mental repercussions of it. So there's a lot of attributes where, you know, maybe it's more difficult for my body to produce hormones naturally because at that point, obviously I stay in shape. Obviously, I'm lean. It doesn't affect me too much on the surface, but maybe there's step deeper down. Did I take years off my life? Possibly. Was it a massive, hormetic stressor that's going to make me live to be 130? Maybe. I don't know. That would be great.

30:53If the secret was jacking the box tacos for you to the whole centenarian, it was staring us in the face the whole time. So what you mentioned there is these two things around money and vanity. But as you said earlier on, you have this sense of obligation to be in shape now because your business relies on the condition that you're in, at least in part. So that dynamic is maybe much more integrated, maybe much more into your control, maybe much more holistic, transcended and included. But it's definitely still there. It's definitely still there. And if it wasn't for having my first kid, my son, I think I might have been chasing this for all the wrong reasons.

31:37You know, I thoroughly enjoy helping people, but I was starting to notice that I enjoyed the validation of helping people. I didn't just enjoy helping people. And it wasn't like I'm doing this for me, but at the same time I was like, I'm doing this for once again, a dopamine hit. like this dopamine hit that I get out of, this was, you know, five, seven years ago, creating content and I was like, for my son was born, I'm just like, I'm good at this. The brand is growing but felt so fucking empty. Feels so good. I or felt so wrong, right? Like nothing felt good. And when I had my son, you know, five and a half years ago, or at least when I found out we were pregnant, so six years ago, six and a half years ago, things changed, man.

32:20Like life just has to change. And all of a sudden, like when my son came into this world, And actually, right before my son, we found out we were pregnant a few days later, my dad passed away. So there was a lot of very interesting stuff that happened that sort of shifted my, like, rocked my world, man. And what probably needs to be said to be able to explain the full story is, you know, you notice I haven't said much about my dad. And it realized that, like, my mom, in an effort to, like, keep us with her all the time, sort of kept us away from our dad. And I don't think she was meaning to do it.

32:55Maybe she was. I don't know. I never want to speak ill of my mom. I love my mom so much. And, but it's weird because I felt like I didn't really establish a relationship with my dad until I was an adult. And then pretty much as soon as I established a relationship with him, he got a cancer diagnosis and I didn't get it. So I never got the relationship with my dad. And like to this age, day now, with my age, like I crave a dad so fucking much, right? like I missed like and we found out we were pregnant on Valentine's Day of 2017 and my wife gives me a Valentine's Day card and a scot the pregnancy test in it and she had just found out that day too.

33:33So like we're like this is I almost passed out like I you know think my wife videoed it sneaky bastard like she videoed it turned fucking pale and I kind of like put a fake smile on you know for a second and then you know 30 seconds minute goes by and I'm like wow okay This is gonna be cool. Like, there's no turning back. So, like, this is gonna be awesome. And then we get, my dad was in hospice, but then like the next day we get the call that, hey, like, he's going down. Like, this is, you gotta come up to the Bay Area and come see him. And like four days prior to this, we lose our dog that had been with my wife and I since we were together in high school, you know, right?

34:11So it was like, lost the dog, found out we're pregnant, and then we got, okay, let's make it be lineup to see my dad. So go see my dad, hold my dad's hand, and tell him he's totally incongruing, you know, he's out. And so dad, you know, you're gonna be a grandpa. And like, he hadn't made any signs of life whatsoever. Like, he was just breathing. Like, and cracked a smile. And hour and a half later, he died. You know, it was like, he waited and it was like, so just talk about just powerful stuff all happening at once, where it was like, I got this, like a little bit of closure, but also this sense of like, I don't wanna go super deep, But like right before the night before my son was born, I had a dream where my son was born.

34:54I was walking down my childhood hallway. My brother, who's 15 years older, half brother, was there and just giving me like a nod of approval. I walk past like the bathroom. My sister standing there giving me a nod of approval. And then I walk and I turn the corner in my hallway. And my dad, I just remember his big Italian hands of this dream. It was like reached out. I didn't see his face. I could just see his hands. and I handed the baby over to him. And then I woke up from the dream and my wife was going into labor. This is the weirdest crazy thing, man. And with all of that, dude, something just clicked, man.

35:29It was like, I gotta change. Something needs to change. And I can't tell you what actually changed, man. But how I looked at how I created content, how I looked at how I wanted to help people, how I looked at how I wanted to make the world a better place for my son, how I wanted to be a father that was present for my son, that my dad didn't fortunately have the ability to really do for me. Yeah, long -winded explanation. Given the fact that you're now a father of two, you have the opportunity to reflect on your experience both with mom and dad. Has this given you a new insight that you didn't see before?

36:09Has it thrown into harsh lights? Some things the thought that we're totally normal, has it motivated you to be a particular way as a father? Yes, a million percent. Yes, it's, I try to look at things, there's things that are maybe unconventional but not necessarily bad that I look out on my childhood. I try to, I do try to look at the world through rose color glasses as much as I can, like I try to find the positive and things, you know, so all these things that made me who I am today, but the fact, you know, So I see a lot of times, especially in divorced families, where parents, children against one another.

36:45And it happened to my wife's family, and unfortunately, I think it happened in mine. And I don't think that it was necessarily intentional. I think sometimes it's human nature to kind of like take, you know, like, oh, I want to reach out and grab it and hold this. And those are the kinds of things where my wife and I talk about all the time. Like, if we ever go our separate ways, like if something ever happened, like, we can't be like that. Don't use kids as leverage. Never, ever. That happened a lot. And I think that I look back at when I was dealing with most things. I eat, when I was pulling the hair out, I was right at the peak of the divorce.

37:17And I'm like, what was I feeling as a kid? So like for me, it's like, man, just to be able to shower my children with love, but be able to just make them feel like they can do anything in the world as long as they put in the work and that they're always going to have a safe place. Whereas I grew up thinking that like, no, like, you were only really loved if you perform. And I'm like, up until having children, I kind of thought that was the way it was supposed to be. It wasn't give this tough love, like you perform, you perform, you perform, and you equals love. Let's keep a spreadsheet. You know, where it's now, it's like, fuck man, you can do whatever you want kiddo.

37:53Like, if you were sincerely happy and you are accomplishing you were doing good in the world, I got your back. And that is definitely transcendent into how I create content because now I'm like, I used to live in this echo chamber with what works for me. Intermittent fasting worked for me. I lost a lot of weight with it. It fucking worked for me. 100%. Keto worked for me. So that means it's going to work for you, man. And here's why. And let me give you all the justification as to why. And let me create all this content surrounding why, why, why, justifying, justifying, justifying. Suddenly, I'm like, holy crap.

38:24I'm using my gift for all the wrong shit. I'm using my gift to justify what worked for me. And I'm motivated and inspire a lot of people. But I'm like, man, I can reach millions more people. If I stop leaning into my gift as being my transformation, and being my gift as my ability to articulate complex subject matter that gets people passionate and excited to be the best they can be, sincerely. Less dogmatic, less rigid with the way you're talking about stuff. 100%. Yeah, I mean, dude, I talk about this so much, the fact that you cannot understand the price that certain people pay to be in a position that you think you want to be in.

39:02So from the outside, the 3 .5 million person YouTube channel and respected by scientists all over the world and walking around at 5 % to 6 % body fat and jacked and wife and kids and money and so on and so forth, we go, okay, let's just take a small inventory of all of the things that have had to happen in order to contribute to this. right? You know, the entire childhood, the working from the age of 14, the pulling the hair out, the social awkwardness, like all of that, all of that. That is the price that you need to pay to be Thomas DeLauer. And it is, I think it's very important for people to see the human behind the success.

39:44I think it's one of the most important things. It's one of the most useful things about having conversations like this because all of the people that I respect who have achieved success have done it in spite of a thing, not because of a thing. And, you know, for all that success looks fantastic from the outside, a lot of the time people are running away from something that they fear as well as running towards something that they want. And the vast majority of people, Michael Jive, the guy that does seeking greatness, I think, chasing elite performance, the podcast. I asked him, he's worked with like every high perform on the planet, he helped Felix Baumgartner jump from the edge of space for the Red Bull stratos mission.

40:27And I said, on average, do you think that high performers are happier or more miserable than the normal person? It's like by a million miles more miserable. It's like people that perform, people that are successful on average are more miserable. You go, okay, well, what does it mean that the people that are the most successful are the ones with the least admirable internal states? Like what does that mean? And how should we frame success? How should we consider what we think of as being admirable, desirable? It's very difficult to work out. You want the outward success, but do you really want to go through the pain and the mental texture that comes along with it?

41:14100 % man. It's a Lewis Howe has asked me, what's your level of self -love, what a scale of 1 to 10? And I was like, dude, maybe like a 6, 5, 6. I was like, some days I wake up and I'm an 8. But other days I wake up and I'm a 4. It's like, so maybe it averages out to like 5 or 6. And he was like, really? And then I flipped around and I asked him sort of the same thing. I was like, you've come up to it. You talked to a lot of successful people and he's like, yeah, they all kind of fall around the same as you. Yeah. You know, there's a level of like I don't, I don't loathe myself, but I don't love myself.

41:52But as I try to get a grasp on this, you know, being self -aware of what drives me forward, what makes me, what makes me tick, I really, I try to be aware of that and I try to be aware of like, okay, just because myself love is a six, that doesn't mean it's actualized into me performing at a six. So I still try to say, like, I'm still going to perform like a 10. I'm still going to eat like a 10. I'm still going to live my life like a 10. And maybe it'll fake it till it makes it a little bit. But so far, it's not. I think that that's the way to do it, man. I believe that we lead with action. And I think that small steps are much more difficult for your psyche to deny, even if you are a glass half empty kind of person, if you continue to show up, if you continue to do the things that are good for you, if you continue to succeed in spite of your absolute certainty that you're not going to succeed.

42:48After a while, you just have this crushing weight of evidence that shows you that you are able to do this thing or you can achieve in the way that you are that you're intending. So one of the things that you mentioned there was that intimate and fasting was like a a bit of a godsend for you. It has been highly contested on the internet. What is, in your opinion, someone that has spent a lot of time researching, practicing, and coaching intermittent fasting? What is the optimal structure and the most important foundations to understand about intermittent fasting? The best structure is the structure that works best for you as the individual.

43:29It's not the sexiest answer. but it comes with practice and it comes with determining am I someone that likes to eat in an eight -hour window, am I someone that likes to eat in a four -hour window or a six -hour window. The best form of intermittent fasting is the one that you don't get addicted to. The one that you can still use as an effective tool without using as a crutch. The best form of intermittent fasting for the individual is going to be the one that you feel the best on. The one that you get the heightened mental alertness, that clarity that you seek out. The moment that you start to do it because of an arbitrary number is the moment that you've already lost the battle.

44:04The biggest benefit to me with intermittent fasting is not body composition changes. It's not cognitive awareness. It's not this. It's the element of mastery that comes with it. And that's where people miss the boat because you cannot contest that. You can sit here and you can fight every single look and cranny of intermittent fasting based upon where you stand in your views of nutrition, time restricted feeding. say, oh, well, caloric restriction is just as good. Well, yeah, intermittent fasting is kind of caloric restriction. You know, this, that, whatever, you cannot argue with me that there is an element of mastery that comes into place with abstaining from something.

44:39We talked about this with caffeine. We talked about this with alcohol. Food is a drug that we are constantly exposed to, which means that it's incredibly difficult to abstain from it in a proper way. And we are bombarded with social cues to tell us that it's okay to eat whenever we want. Is that the truth? Like should we eat whenever we want? Should we eat ad -libotum? I don't know. I mean, it's certainly real world because that's the world we live in today, but is it accurate? Is it fair to assume that that's how we should eat? Regardless of your beliefs there, being able to stain from food and having the control to do so seemingly gives me control in much, much many other, or gives me control in a lot of other elements of my life.

45:19And maybe that reflects back to my childhood and wanting to have some control. but there are a hell of a lot of people that respond in a very similar fashion. I do. That's very interesting. The fact that it's about the story that you tell yourself to do with the intermittent fast as much as it is to do with some magic that comes along for the ride. Yeah. I had Peter Atira on the show yesterday and he said the exact same thing. Every study that he has found so far hasn't suggested that there is any secret source hiding in time restricted eating beyond caloric restriction, that there is no, it just doesn't seem, it seems to be a very easy to follow root for caloric restriction.

46:07Is that your reading of the literature as well? Yeah, yeah, and I think there is a little bit of nuance there. I think that people that are severely metabolic, I think that people that are severely metabolically deranged and have severe metabolic disorder, probably get different benefits, slightly different benefit because there's something that needs to be unraveled there. And I think Peter's actually even talked about that. It's like people that when you're in a severe situation where you are very, very unhealthy, then abstaining from food in particular time fashions could have other advantages.

46:38That autophagy is one of these things. It's a word that's thrown around, right? Is it bullshit? Is autophagy bullshit? It's not bullshit. it, but it's definitely not this magic, like it's happening all the time, right? It's if I go into a caloric deficit or if I take some time in between meals or you know what the biggest driver of autophagy is is exercise, right? Nobody talks about that. That's not sexy. I can't say like, oh, exercise is going to induce autophagy. He's going to induce it three times more than fasting will. Now there are different types of autophagy. There's macro autophagy, micro autophagy.

47:09There's lipophagy, which is where you're actually sort of recycling fat cells. all different varying forms that happen at varying levels based upon what someone is doing, fasting, exercise, general caloric restriction. And autophagy is dictated a lot of times by many things, but at the very simple level, AMPK phosphorylation, which is a dimmer switch, not a light switch. So yes, the more aggressive the caloric restriction, the more aggressive the exercise induced deficit, the more aggressive the autophagic flux. Now, with that being said, It's like you can turn that to a certain degree and it's probably going to reach a maximum before you start degrading tissue and having a negative outcome.

47:52So it's not a light switch where it's as soon as you go into a deficit, you flip a switch and you have maximum autophagy. The argument with that is like, okay, well intermittent fasting, you're abstaining from food, you're ending up in that caloric restricted phase significantly faster because you're just not eating. So one could argue that you flip that dimmer switch a little bit faster. And if you combine that with exercise, maybe you get more autophagy. That's certainly a valid argument, but it does not warrant us to say that intermittent fasting is the best way to get autophagy. Not by any means.

48:22Okay, what about building muscle while fasting? So I think it sounds almost insane to say like while you are literally fasting, you're going to build muscle. It's funny enough, I think Peter Atia had actually mentioned some point in the past. Like muscle protein breakdown and muscle protein synthesis are always a balance of each other. And when you are in a fasted state, you have a high degree of muscle protein breakdown. That does not mean that you're necessarily catabolizing muscle. What it implies is that you could be breaking down tissue from one area of your body and then after the fast is complete when muscle protein synthesis increases, you reestablish formation in another area of your body or in that same area, right?

48:58So as long as basic protein needs are met within your eating period, you absolutely can build muscle with intermittent fasting. But I think there's a line. I usually kind of draw an arbitrary line at like 24 hours. I feel like if you're doing consistent 24 hour fast like every other day, perhaps it's harder to build muscle. But if someone's doing like an 18, 6, 3 or 4 days per week, of course, you can build muscle. I talked about this recently. Look at your calories over the course of a seven day period, not daily. Like, if you want to be in a surplus, be in a slight surplus at the end of the week.

49:29If you want to be in a deficit, be in a slight deficit at the end of the week. maybe Monday you eat 4 ,000 calories, maybe Tuesday you eat 1 ,000, maybe Wednesday you eat 4 ,000, maybe Thursday you eat 1 ,500. It's like that constant undulation might be good for the human metabolism because it doesn't reset every night at midnight to zero What about Looking at a fat loss plan overall If you were to design the non -negotiables that should go into it Regardless of time restricted regardless of how someone is coming into this What are the non -negotiables for a fat loss plant? Yeah, for me, I still have to side with just about everybody and say thermodynamics are probably the most important thing.

50:10Are we going to discover that to possibly be different later in the life? We might. Who knows? We always have to be open to that. But I think right now, the evidence is just too strong to ignore that. That thermodynamics matter. Too many camps trying to like oppose that. So let's just all agree on that. When you say that, you mean Kaiko, right? You mean calories and calories. Yeah. Which is a very complicated matter. It's not as simple as people think, but people try to make it simple for the sake of content, but it is very complex because there's all kinds of influential factors that determine that, right?

50:38How much calories we're actually burning, how much we're actually consuming. Did you juice this fiber, etc. etc. It's all kinds of stuff that comes into play. The other piece that I think is a non -negotiable is having adequate breaks between meals. I feel for me at least that's a non -negotiable. The reason that comes under fire a lot is because that implies that you're suggesting that insulin has to always be low. Not at all. I'm suggesting that we have periods of time between meals that we do allow insulin to be low. Maybe that's an 18 -hour fast. Maybe it's just having adequate three hours between meals.

51:13I think for maximum... Well, what would be the problem with just grazing every hour and a half? Personally, well, even an hour and a half, as long as you were just like taking that adequate break, because you have this spike in insulin and then insulin level needs to come down for glucose go on to counter regulatory hormones to release, which are ultimately going to allow fat loss to occur. Like, liposis, as far as I know, cannot occur in the presence of insulin. Like, if insulin is elevated at that particular moment, liposis cannot occur at that moment. You cannot be utilizing fat while insulin is elevated.

51:47That doesn't mean that you never spike insulin. That means you keep track of when things go up and down. Your fat burning mode isn't right when you eat contrary to the whole thermic effect of food thing, like that's such a negligible amount. The fat burning occurs after the insulin levels have come back down to baseline and liposis and bed oxidation can occur. So I think maybe it's not a non -negotiable as far as the general world is concerned because you could effectively eat like a pee every five minutes and be eating 800 calories. But I think for adequate muscle preservation and for maximum fat loss, I think just keeping a keen eye to that is very beneficial.

52:27Other non -negotiable I think G -Flex is a very important thing that's not talked about enough. That's energy flux. I subscribe to this, man. Yeah. I realize this as soon as I started doing CrossFit. Yeah. Right? You know what's crazy is I've had an Alan Ergon. No. He's great. You should have Moniz. He's just, he's basically the person that takes a lot of these major research papers and writes the summaries for them. Like that well -versed, so he basically writes the condensed summary. So he's so good at articulating. In fact, I literally did a number of videos with him just because he's so well spoken on this stuff.

53:02And he and I were talking about it. It's like, have you ever been in the presence of an athlete that is just a crazy intense athlete with a lot of energy? It's like you're around them and you can literally feel their energy. Compare that to someone that's on their deathbed. There's like a completely different, like they're literally fluxing at a different capacity. And people don't realize that there's like a mobilization cost or fee associated with more energy and using more energy. So if you eat 2000 calories per day and burn 2000 calories per day and I eat 5000 calories per day and burn 5000 calories per day, you'd say, hey, you guys are both at net zero, right?

53:42Wrong. I'm actually burning more because there is more energy cost and g flux, energy flux involved at a higher rate of metabolism. It's almost like the mobilization fee. It costs money, it costs currency to mobilize that much energy. It's like if you call someone over to replace your windshield, they're going to charge you a mobilization fee because it costs them money to get there. So every time you have an energy exchange, it costs currency. The more you eat and the more you move, the more you burn overall. This is what I realized when starting CrossFit that I'd always up until that point because I was doing brosupply bodybuilding, which means that really, unless you're doing incredibly intense sessions, how are you losing?

54:24You're not going to put yourself into a caloric deficit through training. You're going to do it through food, right? So it's always this sort of race chasing your tail of like fewer calories to be get fewer calories to be get lower metabolism to be get fewer calories. Then I started doing CrossFit and I'm like, okay, I need to eat three and a half thousand calories just to not be hungry when doing this. And I got Lena and I thought, oh, that's strange. And then I started training more and getting heavier and getting fitter and Lena. I was like, I keep on eating more and more food and yet I'm getting Lena because I couldn't put in a food away in order to be able to compensate for the deficit that the training was putting me in.

55:02And I understand, I understand that you have much more control over the food that goes in your mouth and the calories that you expend through your output. Ben Carpenter came on the show and gave me a really beautiful framework that helped me to understand why losing fat for most people through caloric restriction rather than the increase of exercise is at least something that they have a greater degree of control over. I think that seems to make a good bit of sense to me. But for the people that do have it in the tank to be able to go and do high intensity training with progressive overload, with some loading, multiple times maybe per day or at least every day.

55:40G -Flock's theory for me, which is the 3000 and 3000 in 3000 out versus 2000 in 2000 out, that seemed to make a massive difference as far as I could see. Dude, it's huge. I love Ben, by the way, dude, that guy is great. He does a really good job of just distilling things and just humanizing it. like he just like, there's not not a lot of people that I really like and he's kind of come on the scene recently for me like I've just and Yeah, just I mean just he's crushing it kudos to him. He's doing good. What else anything else? So well kind of dovetailing off the g -flux thing I think the non -negotiable that also comes to play is adequate die breaks like it so that comes with the g -flux like a If you just continually restrict calories You're gonna end up in that that cesspool of just and that happens so much with intermittent fasting It's relevant, right?

56:29Because people say, I'm going to do 16, eight fasting. So they restrict calories. And then next thing they know, like they think they're fasting, but all they're doing is restricting calories. Like sure, they're eating in a certain time block, but that doesn't absolve them of thermodynamics, right? So at the same time, there's like restrict calories, and then they have to restrict calories more. And then they're like, oh, well, I'm eating 1800 calories a day or 1500 calories a day because I'm intermittent fasting. But I'm fasting every day. Why isn't this working anymore? Well, because you're doing the same damn thing as just restricting calories, right?

56:59Now reintroducing calories and being able to actually get the metabolism back up to an adequate state involves applying g flux with proper diet breaks. So what I mean by that is you can't just say I'm going to have a diet break and start eating a bunch of shit. If you do that, things are going to go caddy -wampus, you're going to have compensatory mechanisms that come into play that make you gain fat very fast. Probably because you've driven it down and all. Yeah. So people make the mistake of going back to eating like they used to eat. No, you have to increase the calories to where you are at maintenance now, which is very difficult for people to understand because - Reverse diet back up gently.

57:37Yeah, well people don't, and most people aren't going to figure that out. They're not going to say like, okay, I've lost 30 pounds of lean mass, 20 pounds of fat mass. That means I need to adjust my calories to baseline at this for maintenance. So the easiest way to do that is when you get to those stages, if it's possible, increase your intensity of training to allow for increase in calories. That way you're increasing that flux while taking a diet break in a very conservative fashion that limits the risk of fat regain, but still allows for metabolic rate to increase in your RMR to come back up.

58:10Right, because that thing going to allow you to increase metabolic rate without gaining too much more weight, which then allows you to rebegin another diet from the top with this higher a basemanabolic right, right? Okay. How do you square the circle of one of the biggest predictors of longevity being caloric restriction with G -Flux theory? Yeah. So this has come to battle, right? Like I've seen this pop up in the comments for me multiple times. It's like, okay, where do you draw the line? And this is where I almost feel like is this where fractal eating and kind of breaking up how we eat could be beneficial?

58:47Like because where do you draw the line of caloric restriction? Like is color restriction daily? Is it weekly? Is it monthly? Is it yearly? Like, who's counting? How do we know? Is it protein restriction? We don't really know. Is it M -tor phosphorylation? Like, where do you really draw this line? So that is a use case where I could say, okay, maybe fractal eating makes sense. Maybe you eat in a surplus or slight surplus with a lot of activity one day and then lower activity, lower intake another day. So that your net over the course of the week maybe is a slight deficit, but you have adequate muscle stimulus is still preserved muscle.

59:22The topic you have if you choose to do that is that it's not a very routineized life, right? You know, so in a sandbox perhaps, or a petri dish, or a spreadsheet, that makes sense. But when it comes to humans want to do the same thing most days, I want to train five days a week and have weekends off. I want to do three days on one day off. I want to do whatever, right? Like a more complex and fractal that you make, the routine, the more poor the adherence and compliance is going to be. could people possibly just periodize quarterly? I mean, is that too much to ask? That would be, that would be easier.

59:54Say, hey, let's say, let's look at this globally over the course of a year. Let's say this quarter, I want you to be in a slight surplus, this quarter, I want you to be in a slight deficit and just keep on going back and forth quarterly. No one knows the answers to this. Obviously, otherwise, we'll be living to be a thousand years old. But then, you know, it brings up the equation of the protein thing too, right? Like, methionine and all this stuff, like protein is it aging us? What's your read at the moment? I asked Pete of this yesterday, so I can compare and contrast your answers. There's interesting arguments on both sides.

1:00:25I do think that the methionine research makes sense. I do think that there's a large plant -based kind of skew to it that sort of distorts how we look at that data. I try to look at that data objectively without sort of the plant -based skew and say how do we apply this methionine discussion and protein contributing to aging independent of any plant -based discussion. Can this apply for the Mediterranean diet where there's still moderate meat consumption? And I think the answer is yes. I do think that being able to have adequate mTOR phosphorylation is very important for adequate recovery. I think that we are learning.

1:01:00This means eating meat. Eating meat. Yes, yes, sorry. So I think it's very important for recovery. I think it's very important for cellular signaling. I think insulin is one of the most important hormones for longevity too. And, you know, as a peptide hormone, it comes under fire as this demonized thing, but I think insulin is also a catalyst for repair. So it is a balance, but do you balance at 51 % towards the intor phosphorylation side or 51 % more towards the AMPK side where you're trying to be like, I'm going to restrict. And with that, I lean slightly in the camp of being on the intor side, being protein being more important than restriction of protein.

1:01:40I think adequate amounts of protein with caloric restriction might be somewhat of the answer. This is an area that I find quite confusing because I've got on one side, friends like Michaela Peterson, Mark Bell, and also my own felt sense that when I do lean more heavily into meat that I think I perform better, I feel better. My body is better. The feedback that I got from Maric Health after I did my blood panel was the same. We need to get some organ meats in there, let's eat some more red meats. And then I see the other side of the world, especially the longevity by a hacking side. So the demonizes a lot of this.

1:02:21I don't know whether you've seen Brian Johnson, have you seen that guy? What do you think of him? What do you think of his approach to the world? So he sort of got the approach of, I mean, moderately low protein, right? Yeah. So it's, you know, other than kind of the surface level stuff with the moderate low protein, I don't follow or subscribe because I'm thinking so I can't comment aggressively. But I think that the more that we can thoughtfully acknowledge both sides, that's really important. Because again, we have to ask ourselves the question, are we looking at this through a wide angle lens or not?

1:02:51So what is happening globally? What is your protein intake? Are you in a net positive protein balance? I don't know this. You might be able to answer it. is like it's Brian suggesting that you be in a net negative protein balance. I have no idea. He's coming on the show in a few weeks, so I'm going to ask him. Yeah, I mean, I still think a net, like a net neutral protein balance would be optimal. But no one's going to be able to... What does that mean? That means your muscle protein synthesis is matching that exactly of your muscle protein breakdown. But who's going to be able to figure that out?

1:03:23Right. So that would be the ideal situation. So until we have a way to measure that, we're always going to be in a slight surplus, plus, which could be more, you know, methionine could be more issues facing as far as longevity is concerned, or you're slightly on the opposite. So for me, like, how do we attenuate certain things and activate AMPK and activate these markers that are associated with longevity and caloric restriction while also maintaining protein levels? Because I don't think protein is the problem. I think it's one of many different elements. And if you look at the blue zones, which people talk smack on the blue zones, and understandably so what's the blue zones for the people that don't know blue zones are the areas of the world that have the people that live the longest you've got like Costa Rica you've got Sardinia you've got Greece you've got you know so Okinawa And I did a video on this because I was so interested I was like we focus so much on the common denominators of these Regions we say oh well all of them eat in a 10 to 15 % caloric restriction.

1:04:24All of them eat low meat. Well, that's not necessarily true. All of them eat X fat, all of them do this, all of them do that. It's like you guys are trying to find the common denominators. I want to find the outliers. What makes these unique? What makes the Okinawan diet so unique and different from the other blue zones? What makes the Costa Rican diet so different from from Sardinia. Let's look at the outliers and take those outliers and craft the ultimate longevity diet. And that video crushed. Like, I think it just like got people thinking and there was no scientific rigor to it whatsoever.

1:04:58Other than that. What were the main takeaways? The main takeaways of it were like, okay, high omega -3 content, moderate polyunsaturative fat content, fruit polyphenols, fiber and diversity of diet. So you've got things like the Okanahuans eat a crap load of like purple sweet potatoes, you know, things like that, right? and looking at that still being in somewhat of a deficit, but that deficit being more from like 1 % to 8 % versus a universal 15%. So a slight deficit. No scientific rigor to that whatsoever. It's just looking and pulling outliers and being like, what are the benefits of these outliers?

1:05:31And if we combine that, is that doing something? And I just encourage people to look at things like that because we're so quick to look for patterns that we forget about the power of an outlier pulling an average. So you mentioned the thermic effective food earlier on somebody that you're a little bit more familiar with than Brian Johnson be V Shred. I am V Shred. What is your reading of V Shred and his work in the world of diet and fitness? I don't give two craps what V Shred does. I just don't want people that confuse me with him anymore. Do you see why people confuse you with V Shred? Well, we're both charlatan total.

1:06:11Dude, it's, you're significantly bigger and leaner than him, but... Well, that's a plus, thank you. If it was a dark foggy night, I could see why people could confuse you for him. Well, isn't that the most, most of social media? Like, I mean, it's a dark foggy night for most people. That's, if you put in a filters on it is, yeah, interesting. I mean, you'll speak to ZLater on about this, but he did a series of adverts because you can go on. I didn't know you could do this, but if you go find out someone's ad... manager account or something or you can press on a particular page and see all of the adverts that they're running on Facebook.

1:06:44And they went on and had a look at all of the different adverts that V Shred was doing. And in one of them, they'd set him up in a studio kind of like this that had the same red curtain, the same mic arm, the same mic, the same like muffler top, the same desk, the same lighting as Rogan's studio. But he He wasn't unrogan and it was him giving, doing basically an ad read, fake on a podcast. I'm like, yo, we don't need chat GPT and AI to CGI, like horse shit down our brains. People can do this in person at the moment. That, I mean, brings V Shred up to Zach later on because he's got very strong opinions on the guy.

1:07:25I mean, it's, it's, I saw that months ago and I actually screened highlights under my team. I was like, look at this guy. like he's literally faking me on Rogan and now I notice it it's a couple months later, it's like circulating around. But I mean, like if my shirt's off and my hair is styled the way it normally is, like it's ridiculous. I did a video on it like a, I don't know, three, four, five months ago and dude, I mean hundreds of comments being like, I thought you were him. Like, I'm sorry. Like I was really confused. I still wait. You're not. Have you ever considered that you might be like cleaning up V -Shred's public image.

1:08:04And V -Shred's really got his mind deep into the data here. He's reading the white papers. It really sounds like he's been educating himself. Well, it's, it comes up as he holds onto the coattails of your like, people. The like the best comment I saw was like, you know, oh, well, like I thought that you had all this really good content going organically so that you could afford the ability to be more aggressive in your ad campaigns, and be very superficial and simple in your ad campaigns, be more aggressive because people are, you know, they're not, they're watching your other content where it's very deep and very scientifically backed.

1:08:41Yeah, it's becoming an actual battle that I have to deal with. We're considered maybe a really aggressive design change, like a gender reassignment, and perhaps a pink hair, like, grow it out. I just think one of you needs to change, and it might as well be you. Well, dude, I had an idea. What if I reached out to them and I said, hey, do what you want with this ad? It's all good, but I want to film an ad with V -Stread. And yeah, I actually have both of us standing there and be like, I'm Tom Stellauer, I'm V -Stread. We have opposing views. Stop confusing us and then just let him go upon his merry way.

1:09:21That would be fun. That would probably convert really well for them. Yeah, because it's just different. It would, they spend millions of dollars on ad spend a month. So it would get it out there. And it would sanitize you from him. Very nice. Very nice. You need to do like, you need to identify. I have a freckle on this side. You'll notice that his ears are a little bit, like whatever you need to identify those. They're getting back to fat loss. One of the other, so the other side, if we've spoken a lot about diet, high intensity interval training is something that people focus on an awful lot.

1:09:51specifically for fat loss. I remember being at university 13 years ago, my first blood holiday was coming up, getting into the gym to do fasted cardio, first thing in the morning. If somebody is thinking, I want to use high intensity interval training, or zone two, to improve my fat loss. What are the principles, the most important principles that they need to know? Okay. Yeah, with high intensity interval training, I am a very firm believer that the The magic is in the intensity of the interval itself. Far too many people go into hit training with like, I'm going to do one minute on, one minute off, one minute on, one minute off.

1:10:28That's not really hit training if you ask me. That's more just high intensity training. That's not high intensity interval training. The magic of the high intensity interval training comes from the fact that your interval should be as close to maximal as possible. And if you are able to hold maximum intensity for one minute, you're insane. That's not gonna happen. You've got 15 maybe 20 seconds in you. So my idea of high intensity interval training is like 15 to 25 seconds, maximum intensity, and then however long it takes me to recover to be able to adequately go at that intensity again. Maybe it's two minutes, maybe it's a minute, maybe it's five minutes, probably not five minutes.

1:11:09It's probably realistically somewhere in the realm of like two minutes. That is to me, high intensity interval training. Other forms of training where you're going one minute on, one and off, that's more like various forms of Tabata, really, which has its place, very good for calorie burning, but it's not the same as interval training. Is there some secret source in maximal output for fat loss? I mean, a lot of central nervous system stimulation, so that definitely has an afterburn effect. There's definitely a more glycogen depletion because you're very, very, very glycolic when you're using that intensity.

1:11:42So if you're trying to deplete and you're trying to get in a carb -deprived state, there's certainly evidence there for sure. Arguably, you won't even burn as many calories, so is it the most effective? Not necessarily, but it's certainly good for the metabolism. What would you prescribe if somebody was going to introduce training overall? They want to add maybe two or three sessions in per week. Is that really one to add on top of an existing exercise protocol? Why would you go to? We might not go to the high intensity interval training, Would you suggest something more like a Tabata? I love Tabata training.

1:12:12I love E -MOM style training. For me, it's like every minute on the minute, whether it's cardio -based, whether it's resistance training, dude, it keeps me honest, a clock always keeps me honest, and it keeps me moving, keeps my heart rate elevated. But with an E -MOM, I can fluctuate it every minute on the minute. If I wanted to go relatively, if I wanted to do sets of five on bench press, I could do that in E -MOM fashion and taper and drop set accordingly. You could do so much with an E -MOM. I know Marcus Philly is a big fan of that too. And he and I both are just big on e -moms. It's such a way to combine cardio and resistance training, but also such a unique way to just do cardio.

1:12:48Like you could do, I'm going to do 20 minutes of every minute on the minute, and I'm going to have five different cardio things that I'm going to do. I'm going to do 10 bird piece for one minute, you know, or for however many I can do, 10 bird piece in that, and then the rest of the time I have that break. Next time I'm going to do 20 calories on the echo bike or whatever. So it keeps it fresh, it keeps it exciting, it keeps the mind going. so you're not bored. It's not repetitive on the joints. It's awesome. It's external accountability as well. For the people that aren't like CrossFit Pilled yet, introducing eMOMs into your training, especially if it's starting to run out of motivation, it's just like having a coach in the room with you, but the coach is just your watch.

1:13:26Because even trying to do timed rest periods when doing bodybuilding, you pick up your phone, when you, like, if you've got 25 seconds or 30 seconds of rest, you don't have enough time to go over and dick about on your phone. You go, look, it's a 20 minute or a 30 minute you month or 30 minutes I'm doing this thing. As opposed to saying I'm going to do, like, four by 12 on this exercise and four by 12 on that exercise and four by 12 on the third exercise and there will be a one minute breaking between. You go, it's not the same. It's not the same because you're not accountable to the clock. I'll give you two of my favorite workouts that I do.

1:13:59The first one is a descending pyramid of reps for any gymnastics movement. So handstand pressup, this is great for pushups, this is great for pullups, particularly. So those are the three movements I like to do this with most. So you warm up on the movement, however long you need to do that. And then you do a single set of max reps on that movement, strict. So you strict pullups, strict handstand pushups, strict pushups, two minute rest. Then you take 50 % of what that number was. You do that, one minute rest, 50 % one minute rest, and then you do 25 % with 30 seconds rest four times. So you do it 100 % with two minutes, 50 % with one minute twice, and then 25 % with 30 seconds four times.

1:14:48The reason that I love that workout is that it's over and done with in usually about eight minutes. You have worked maximally each time pretty much. You are basically creating an RPE for the day that everything else then gets percentageed off. So if you go in and you're feeling shit hot, you've slapped great, you've fed great, you're hydrated, your energy's good, you go and you go, oh holy shit, my first sudden Strik Pullips was 16 wraps there. I'm now looking at eights and fours for the rest of the day. Like this is gonna hurt. But well, yeah, but your 100 % was that big for a reason Because you came in and you felt great or one day you go in and it's 11 you go, okay I'm looking at like sixes and threes fine.

1:15:27Okay. Well, we'll work we'll work with that I really love it for that reason and it's just it's over and dumb it's so quickly and you can always continue Okay, what did I get last time on the first one right? I'll keep on pushing that So that's my favorite for that and then when it comes to cardio This was an exercise I did on a concept to bike hug ages ago, but it would work just as well on a row at work just as well in a ski you do pretty high intensity as much as you can. Two minutes off, two minutes on, one minute off, six rounds, one minute on 30 seconds off, eight rounds, 30 seconds on, 15 seconds off, 10 rounds.

1:16:04That's it. That's done in about 40 minutes or so. That's a really nice recovery workout. And again, it's the same, starting off big, getting down to small. Those are my two favorites. Man, I love any kind of like ascending or descending ladder. or like they're just, they do something with my brain. They just work. That gets us like it clicks. Well, you're always motivated, right? Because there's always something coming next. You're always excited about, oh, yeah. So I've got one more of the two's left. And then that's like, I'm nearly halfway done. And then you end up doing this complex arithmetic in your mind to be able to work out, right?

1:16:37Well, I'm actually in terms of working time. I'm really halfway done when I get to, you know, the second set of the whatever, whatever. But when it comes to dieting and a lot of people as me included with my Coke Zero, have a sweet tooth and don't want to absolutely wreck our diet when it comes to satisfying that, what are your favorite personal hacks or best pieces of advice for how people can satiate their sweet tooth without pumping a shit ton of calories and bad stuff into them? I'm going to give you one that's really interesting. And if you clip this, make sure you add this note that this is mechanistic data.

1:17:17Okay, but it's interesting and anecdotally it seems to work. We have what are called nsd neurons in our hind brain. And a lot of times when we're craving something sweet, we're starting to see some research that we could actually be craving something salty. And it's kind of a gustatory response with the vagus nerve and what happens with the hind brain. And what I have found, and again, it could just purely be anecdotal or placebo, having some salt actually kills that craving. And it does for me. Every time I'm really craving something sweet, if I have something salty or just some electrolytes or something like that, it feels like that just scratches that itch so quick.

1:17:51It's somewhat temporary. It goes away fast, but there's enough small scale data for me to say, hey, this might actually work, but not enough, you know, observational data to say 100 % works. Okay. So first thing is potentially look at throwing some element, perhaps, in water, knocking that back because you get a little bit of sweetness in that too. See if that blunts it. If the gravity force field pull of a desire for sweet stuff, what is some suggestions on foods that people could go to that you're okay with? Dude, I'm still a fan of like going for like 90 % dark chocolate that still has a little bit of sugar and it like don't be afraid it's not going to kill you.

1:18:29But the endorphins that you get out of the chocolate, like endorphins is kind of a colloquial way of putting it. But there are basically flamin 'alls in it that do have an impact on neurotransmitter function and that's been demonstrated in quite a few studies that people feel really good after they have chocolate. So that way you're getting that dopamine itch scratched, but it's not from the sugar. It's more so from the fact that the chocolate and the theobromine is kind of having that impact. So that's a nice hack. The only downside is, you know, if you do too much of it, it's still pretty caloric.

1:18:57Right. Okay. Another concern that I'm starting to see people talk about more on in my corner of the internet is bloating after people have food. food. Someone hasn't done a fod -map diet. They haven't gone and done restrictions on the foods that they're doing. What are the most likely culprits do you think that people should be looking at if they do suffer with bloating? I think gut dysbiosis is a huge one. That's just a lack of diversity of food within your diet, a lack of diversity of fibers. So you're looking at very simple gut imbalance. If If you imagine a forest with wolves and squirrels, and you have one wolf and you have 30 squirrels, and you throw a bunch of food into a bunch of corn or something out there, and the squirrels all eat that corn.

1:19:50The wolf might eat that corn, but the squirrels are going to eat that corn, and their population is going to proliferate, right? That's going to grow. Suddenly you've got this crazy imbalance, and this dysbiosis. But if you were to have wolves and you were to have squirrels and you were to have some possums, and you were to have a nice delicate ecosystem with lots of different animals, and you threw that food in there. They'd all compete for that food, and they'd all grow at somewhat proportional rates. And that's what we're really lacking a lot of times in the diet. And I know it has a little bit of a skew that people don't necessarily agree with sometimes, but it's not suggesting that everyone goes out and eats a bunch of fiber.

1:20:22One of the things that we do see across the board is that it's pretty well demonstrated that healthy guts are associated with a diverse diet. and having diversity of different fibers, diversity of different foods in general, whether it's proteins, whether it's fibers, even fats, and this all has an impact. So I think in this day and age, we get really used to eating the same kind of things over and over. If you talk to people, like they don't, yeah, maybe I go to this restaurant one night and this restaurant another night, but they're not diversifying, they're gut microbiome the way that I think they should.

1:20:52Like I really do try my best to like rotate different vegetables that I rotate different sources of fiber, all of chia some days, and then I'll have sweet potatoes another day. I really do try to rotate that up. And that helped my bloating issues. My wife dealt with SIBO with malintestinal bacteria all over growth for a number of years. For her kind of going back down to baseline with a ketogenic diet helped her a lot, but probably just because it's eliminating so much of those fibers. It's eliminating so much that it's broader back down to baseline that when she reintroduced everything sort of recalibrated.

1:21:23And I know a lot of people preach that. It's just not necessarily validated with research. I have a friend called the Meet Mafia podcast. Have you heard of that? Yeah, so both of those guys, same thing. You know, like really, really bad stomach issues. You are going to be on medication for the rest of your life. And they just went on a really aggressive elimination. Got themselves to the stage where it seemed like their stomach had been given enough time to get rid of inflammation, calm down, rebalance itself. and then they slowly reintroduced foods. And it seemed like what the stomach needed, it wasn't chronic, it was acute and consistent.

1:22:03And once you gave that acute problem a little bit of time to calm down, there wasn't necessarily an underlying chronic problem under that and it just allowed them to, they can relatively eat whatever they want. It's fascinating man, I think that, you know, the work that you do, Ben, Peter, Andrew, everybody is really helping to educate people. It's a very, I've been someone that's been training for 15 years and I find it still now. I'm like, fuck it. Is sugar in or out this month? Am I allowed it? Should I have, should I have berries after I have meat? Is meat and fruit cool now or should I do I need to, you know, it's, the trends that come and go, the, um, merciness of not only what is being communicated, but even the studies that this is coming out of and all of the perverse incentives, I think the work that you do is very impressive for the people that are listening that want to check out more that you do where should they go?

1:22:54Yeah, V -Street .com. No, it's... Yeah, YouTube is just Thomas Tlauer just typing my name. Instagram, Thomas Tlauer. ThomasTlauer .com, but I don't do much there, unfortunately. Yeah, and that's it. I'm just going to try to keep on fighting the good fight and just letting people do what they want with the information, just arm themselves with the tools and have it from there. Thomas, I appreciate you. I appreciate you being very open and vulnerable today. I think there's lots that people can take away from it. No, no brother, thank you.