Mark Bell on Fat vs. Carbs, What’s Really Making You Fat?

26:05Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:I am telling you, I love this technology. It is beautiful, it is on my wall and it is a system that meets me where I'm at, regardless of the day. If I need some recovery, it's there. If your goal is to build muscle, get stronger, no more guesswork and be consistent, go to amp.ai. Check it out. That's amp.ai. Training should be effective and it doesn't have to be complicated. It makes me think of the time when I was at Super Training. you and nisema were there and you were what i thought what we were going to do was a tricep extension and i don't know what you took the rope and you guys were let's just say it was not a form or it was almost a interpretive dance move and um it was outside of the scope of any it wasn't even in the what not to do right and you're you said to me gabriel well i'm training patterns.

27:06Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Your body can move all these different ways. Yeah, I love exploring different things. Some of what I was doing on that particular day is from a guy named Naughty Aguilar. He's the biggest heel in the fitness industry, pretty much. Everybody has their own thoughts about him. But I've always thought that he has a lot of brilliant techniques. And I don't care who somebody is and I don't care a ton about my personal views or anybody else's views on what a particular person does outside of the information I'm trying to gleam for myself for my own selfish reasons. He has great information and I think he does great things.

27:47And so I just, I just adopted some of them and I found them to be really powerful. Now you start to see like there's more people doing twisty stuff on Instagram. I think people owe it to him. He's not the only guy to ever take a cable and twist with it, but he's done a lot of great things with that. So his whole, one of the things that he talks about is, he talks about increasing your capacity for just being able to move properly. And what he considers to be proper movement movement is just your gait, just like walking. So you know a lot of lifters, you know a lot of former military, you know people that parachute out of planes and stuff.

28:31And those people that do those activities for a long time, you tend to stiffen up. And even just with like bodybuilding movements and stuff, you can stiffen up over the years. So we're like, hey, this kind of training is really great. And then you go to turn around and walk and you're kind of like moving like a robot. Your hips and your, like we certainly don't move, don't move like a gymnast. You don't move necessarily like a dancer. I'm not saying that everyone needs to be able to move that way. But oftentimes we end up with symptoms. Sometimes we end up with our backs hurting, our hips hurting, our knees hurting.

29:03And again, those other sports, gymnastics, they all have their fair share of injuries. But being able to move properly and being able to figure out ways of decompressing your body, I think, is really important. So most of what you do in the gym is going to be kind of compressive. It's going to be things that are going to strengthen ligaments, tendons, and so on. But a lot of times, they could be, in some cases, at the sacrifice of movement. And you would think, oh, if I just do things with a full range of motion, that I won't really lose those abilities. But sometimes you still do. I've always squatted to parallel or slightly below parallel.

29:43And then I have issues with my mobility. Like it just my mobility has never been very good. I've always been pretty tight and that's probably why I chose powerlifting in the first place. But Anyway, I do some of these things rope flow and some other things that people might see me do. I do these as a practice to Work towards being able to move better. Do we have it wrong in the way that

30:09Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Your medicine is interesting it silos things and And part of training, I think, this idea of muscle as this organ system is it's very siloed. We do bench, we do squat, but there's not much thought into what's outside of that. It's training the muscle group as opposed to training the pattern, per se. I think we do have it wrong a little bit. In this case, we already have bodybuilding, we already have powerlifting, we already have Olympic lifting, we already have CrossFit. and we can't help to continue to identify the way those people look and we have like an obsession with that. I think we do have it wrong in a sense of like isolating muscles and things like that.

30:54It might be more helpful from the beginning if we just had an understanding that if I do this all the time always and forever without integrating something else into the mix I could end up feeling worse and exercise is supposed to mainly help you to feel better. I know so many people, they really, really love lifting and they love all the different stuff I sell, the slingshot and the elbow sleeves and knee sleeves, but they're outfitted head to toe. They got the knee sleeves on, the elbow sleeves and they can't do anything in the gym without all that stuff on.

31:26Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Because it hurts? Yeah, because they're in pain, like their body is, and pain is a weird thing because the that your body moves, they don't always go together. There's people that are super flexible that are in pain. There's people that are really tight that are in pain. Neither one is great, but being somewhere in the middle is usually better. There's a lot of things that we identify with our eyes that are hard to put into words, but when you see someone that's really aesthetic, it's like beautiful to you, and you can't really tell 100 % what it is. It's not, the person isn't always heavily muscled, The person isn't always, you know, 6 '5".

32:04Some of these things might be true sometimes, but it's not always the same exact things. You just watch someone walk and you're like, that person, when they walk, they walk really nicely. And then maybe they do a movement where they jump up onto something and do it smoother than everybody else. To each their own. If you want to bodybuild, then bodybuild and do it to your best of your ability and all that. Same thing with powerlifting. But it would probably be wise to think about an exit strategy out of it at some point because how long are you going to do it for i mean you could do it your whole life i guess if you really wanted to but is it going to compromise your life

32:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:are there training modalities that you think everyone should be doing beyond say power lifting which obviously not everyone should do but strength training are there things like i mean again i've seen you do flow i've seen you over the years experiment with many different things. I think there's a lot of different things you can do. I don't think there's any one thing that anyone particularly needs to do. I also think in terms of longevity, maybe the best thing for Americans is just not to overeat. I'm not a fan necessarily of making yourself super hungry. I actually think that there's more on the other side of that.

33:23There's more on the side of move more, eat more. But not everybody is going to gravitate towards that because that it's a time commitment to be able to move a lot.

33:35Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Training is fun, mostly. And if we are thinking about all of the different modalities, it takes a lot of time, right? You're waking up and you're doing maybe some cardio and then you're doing some training and then maybe you're going for walks and then maybe you're doing some road flow. I mean, at the end of the day, how many, for example, how many hours a day are you moving? I move all day, pretty much every day, except for stuff like this where even my podcast is standing. Yes, I know. I'm standing on a box, but it's fine. We had to boost you up a little bit. Yes, we did. Yeah, just moving all day.

34:11It's like my go-to. But I also can understand that I could simply just probably eat a little bit less and probably have similar results with maybe less movement. Is there a minimum effective dose of movement? No, because it changes all the time. And so there is a minimum effective dose, but then it goes up. Because that's the way your body works. Your body kind of needs more stimulus as you continue to go. But I do want to add to this a little bit. I think no one really has to do much of anything when we talk about longevity. The problem is just modern times. So we're talking right now about moving all day.

34:50Well, that's what we would have normally done. I have these numbers in my head. I don't know where they came from. but sometimes shit just pops in my head that I can't explain. But I've always felt that everybody within normal age ranges, like 18 to 70, has like five to seven miles of stuff to do every single day. Doesn't necessarily mean you need to walk five to seven miles, but you need to do the equivalent of something that would equal that every day. Otherwise, I think that's where anxiety and I think a lot of things stem from that. I think a lot of things get created from that because we're meant to move.

35:28We're creatures of the sun. We're creatures of the light. We're creatures of outside, either evolving through cold or either evolving through heat. And so as crazy as it sounds for us to talk about just training all day or having businesses and having different things that provide you a life to where you can just go train whenever you want and you can dedicate a ton of time to it. A ton of time has to be dedicated to it somehow since that's our biology. I didn't make that up. I didn't do that. A bigger power than me designed us that way. We're supposed to move a lot. We're supposed to be outside.

36:14If you go and examine some animals, you know just walk through some of these parks and you just birds are the birds are only inside by mistake you know like we we are different we do need like shelter it's helpful but we have like everything is cushioned everything is so even just sitting you know even mobility drills like you don't need to do mobility drills you want to the best mobility the best mobility drill you'll ever

36:39Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:do it's just to sit on your own floor sitting why is that because when you sit because it's not Yeah, getting down getting up it's uncomfortable like it's comfortable at first right and then you sit for a few minutes You're like oh my butt cheeks fall asleep And then you got to kind of move to the other side You got to move the other side you got to you know move like for me because I'm not like super mobile I don't have as many options as far as sitting goes It's like you'll see people sit and their leg will be up here and they the more options that you have the better off that you are Because you can kind of keep moving and even the floor just while you're watching TV or something like that can be a form of exercise.

37:18So in modern times, we need artificial exercise, which is the gym, which is fitness.

37:27Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:That's really well said, and I've never heard of artificial exercise. It makes me also think about an exercise deficiency. We have to remember that all of exercise is made up. The bench press, for example. You know this. your audience already knows this, George Hackenschmidt. He's the one that made the bench press famous. He also made the hack squat famous. That's why people probably heard that name before. But yeah, all the exercise in the gym, they're all made up, lateral raise, all these different things, lat pull down. There's even machines for a lot of stuff, right? Then there's people that are nutrient deficient.

38:07There's people that are exercise deficient. But the exercise deficiency just comes from the fact that in modern times, we don't really need to exercise. I don't have to go and do that.

38:20Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:When the kids are moving well and they're young, and we've seen that, and then it's like we move less as we get older, part of what you have said is that we don't have to move as much. Totally agree with that. But there's also been a lot of stigma around all of this stuff. So for example, kids shouldn't train when they're young. I don't know if your kid's trained, if you've thought about that. But what I've seen is I, you know, Leonidas is five. And I just watch him continue to move well. I can't wait to see him. He's like the best. But because we don't do electronics and we do a lot of outside time, I'm watching them move and develop as opposed to some of his classmates who I know are not nearly as active or on an iPad.

39:14Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And it just makes me think of this next generation. Because if we talk about exercise deficiency or artificial exercise, I don't know if we have a choice. I think it's incredible to try to start your kids off as best that you think that you can in terms of like physical culture. have a huge advantage. You know, it might sound mean or callous, but if you're fat, it just, it's very limiting. You know, if you're a 12-year-old boy and you weigh like 150 pounds or something, yeah, maybe you're playing football or maybe you're doing some of the other stuff that like a bigger person would do. But your confidence in yourself, and it just, it wrecks a lot of things.

40:00it also might make you more shy like it just it causes too many problems so as a parent you're the one driving to the store you're the one buying the groceries you're the one paying attention and it doesn't mean that your kid has to you know only eat chicken breast and broccoli and and rice it doesn't mean your kid has to eat like a bodybuilder or anything but you should just teach them about nutrition and teach them about try to get fruit around them try to get lean meats, vegetables, try to get good choices around them. And then also they can still have their normal kid stuff. But this idea that like forcing a kid to do something is bad, maybe unusual, isn't correct.

40:43It's actually like the opposite. Because in today's culture, we don't have the kids do enough stuff physically. But yeah, physical activity, you know, both for male and female is obviously, it's tremendously important. and I think that parents should not only encourage, I think they should force. I think they should force their kids a little bit when their kids are young, when appropriate. As your kid gets older, then as they get older, you might want to give them options. Now, okay, you can play one of these three sports, but I'd like you to play some sport during some part of the year. And they might say, oh, it's too much.

41:23I don't have time for my friends. Or, okay, reasonable. It sounds like we can have a discussion and try to figure out what she can play or do. But even aside from a sport, there's nothing wrong with a kid getting on a treadmill. There's nothing wrong with a boy or girl. There's nothing wrong with an 11-year-old girl being on a treadmill. That doesn't mean that somebody fat shamed her or somebody's being cruel and saying mean stuff. It means they care about her and they want to see when she's 14 or 15 that she has a lot of great opportunity. Yeah, it's much more difficult, I imagine, if a child is not fit when they are younger, because, you know, you hear that kids shouldn't be lifting weights and all of that.

42:04Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:That's not evidence based. But I also believe that you should, for lack of a better word, force your children to be active, because if they get to 10, 11, 12, and they're surrounded by a culture that is very sedentary, it's going to be much more difficult. Think about, you know, as we were growing up, it's much more difficult to break these habits when you're in your 30s and 40s and beyond than it is to be forced to make your bed, to do these things so it becomes ingrained. And that, I suppose, would make many people outliers because what's considered normal is here's the iPad, here's some and go ahead, get after it and play these games.

42:52Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:When it comes to nutrition, you've written a book. It was - Jacked and Tan. Yeah, Jacked and Tan, Carb Wars. I still have that book somewhere. Oh yeah, War on Carbs, yep. War on Carbs, Carb Wars, Carbicide. I still have that book. You're in a militia. It tastes very funny. Is that even still available? Shooting Donuts, uh-huh. It is, yeah. Okay, well, we gotta link it because it is pretty funny. This episode is sponsored by Branch Basics. One thing I've become much more aware of over the years is the impact of the environmental chemicals on our food and also inside our home. If you're a frequent listener, you know we spend a lot of time talking about nutrition and muscle health, but beyond that, we should be thinking about what we're exposed to every day through things like cleaning products.

43:35Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Now, I started using Branch Basics when I was pregnant to, of course, limit my exposure to harsh chemicals. Their products are made with plant and mineral-based ingredients and their premium starter kit uses a single powerful concentrate that can replace almost everything in your home from laundry detergent to bathroom cleaner and even get this produce wash i like that it simplifies my cleaning routine and removes any concern of exposure for myself and my little ones if you're also worried about the chemicals you are using in your home I suggest you try Branch Basics. You can get 15 % off the premium starter kit at branchbasics.com with the code Dr.

44:22Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Lion. Again, that's 15 % off branchbasics.com with the code Dr. Lion. The best part is your pictures, but you've been coaching people. You've been involved in the nutrition space for decades. What do you think the biggest mistake is for weight loss? How about that? Well, I'll give it a specific target. Most people want to lose weight in the first place because I think they spent too many years eating too much fat. When you look at like a donut, yeah, there's sugar in there. There's a ton of sugar in there, but they couldn't even pack a donut with enough sugar. It just would turn into something else for it to equal out the amount of calories that come from fat.

45:09Ribeye steaks and the different foods that we have in modern times, they're not real foods. They are manufactured foods. So we might want to say like, oh, I'm only eating single ingredient food. It's like, yeah, you're having single ingredient food, but that's a ribeye from Costco and it has 60 grams of fat. Like that's a lot. if somebody's going to have 60 grams of fat, that's the equivalent of probably what they might want to consider having for the whole entire day. Or if it's a bigger person, maybe they can tolerate a little bit more. I think fat is a bigger problem than is understood. And I think a simple way for people to lose weight would be if they turned all of their meat into being as lean as they can possibly handle without them thinking it's disgusting and without ending up binging.

46:09Because if you don't have any fat in your diet, there's going to be a price to pay at some point. It's going to wreck your hormones, first of all. And secondly, it's going to make you tremendously hungry. So I'm not advocating for no fat. but I think that the carnivore diet, keto diet, the war on carbs, a lot of those diets, they took some of the carbs out and you replace it with some fat, which is normally fine when you're on a lower carbohydrate diet because you need some form of energy, right? But just in modern times with the standard American diet, I just think even though they don't eat enough protein we know we know that protein is a big factor too for the amount of protein that sometimes Americans are trying to consume because now the word is out finally people talking more about protein I feel like it's good now I can move on so people are understanding and and they're at least they're in the ballpark at least people are talking about like maybe they're not you know eating as much as we would still like to see them eat or whatever but they're getting better.

47:19But you have to be careful with protein because protein and fat come together. And again, in modern times, so if we were going to hunt something and it was like a long-ass time ago, normally the meat that you would get, it would only have so much fat in it. There would only be so much availability of fat. And you could say, oh, they killed a buffalo and they got the liver and they got, yeah. But it's like to harvest the whole thing and to do the whole entire act is like, It takes a lot. It takes a lot of manpower. It takes a lot of calories burned. There's a lot that goes into all that. But now you can just go and grab 80, 20 ground beef from the store.

48:00And the only way that that would make sense to eat is if you were somebody that is on like a carnivore diet or a ketogenic diet.

48:07Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:It's a very delicate balance. Americans consume 1.1 grams per kg, which is good. I mean, you and I would like a little bit more. I would say that the ideal range would be 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kg. And then if we recognize the importance of protein, which we do, it does become tricky because there is this fat issue. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. So the 10 % saturated fat has not changed from the guidelines. And we're not talking about the guidelines per se, but that number, 10 % saturated fat was pretty much plucked out of thin air, right? Americans consume around 11 % saturated fat.

48:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Maybe in the 70s, I think it was around 15. But the other component is, it is total caloric density, right? What you're saying, and it is much easier to over consume, especially if animals are bred to be more sedentary. They have more intermuscular fat, intramuscular fat. And so we're eating essentially a sedentary animal. And it becomes challenging. And I do agree with you. Typically choosing a lower fat option is great. And I have one other thought I'll share with you. That some people, so for example, if this idea of saturated fat should be less than 10%, let's just say, which I don't think that that is true for everybody.

49:39That recommendation is really a medical intervention.

49:45Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Here's what I mean. If someone has, and I won't go off on this tangent, but I just want to mention, if someone has an LDL cholesterol greater than 130 milligrams per deciliter, that would indicate treatment. That's 25 % of the population, which means 70 % of the population doesn't have a LDL cholesterol problem. But we're making these recommendations, again, with saturated fat, and it's more of a medical intervention. So is it a medical intervention or is a dietary guideline? And then with carbohydrates, not everybody has a carb problem. But if someone has elevated triglycerides or they're not moving, then maybe we have to address carbohydrates.

50:27Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:so it comes down to personalization but also over total caloric load yeah and also what does somebody like what do they like to eat what do they like to do you know what you like i think is a little bit of egg it you know obviously you'd be like well i love donuts or i love cookies and that'd be great if you could eat those often but realistically you have to keep an eye on foods like that just again because they're so easy to overeat the over consumption thing is is a huge I didn't know it was 10%. That's actually really interesting. They believe that's like hunter-gatherer. That's like how much saturated fat they would get.

51:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You know where the initial studies of saturated fat came out of? And I just recently learned this. So in the 1970s, they were trying to address heart disease. And they were doing that with this idea of go low fat and reduce cholesterol. all. In the 70s, and you know heart disease takes years to develop, what you didn't hear about, and so then they created the free guy pyramid because of heart disease. But I don't know if you knew that almost 30 % of the population was smoking. When we talk about in the space, I was talking about smoking. In the cohort that was born in 1920, so if you go from 1920 to 1970, 70, that's what, 50 years?

51:48Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:So people in their 50s now having heart disease, 80 % of that group is smokers. But that's never discussed. And one of the number one contributors to heart disease is smoking. So they created the Food Guide pyramid, they reduced fat, increased carbohydrates, and what happened? Everybody became obese right now. 74 % of Americans are either overweight or obese. That's pretty crazy. That's insane. And this was the origins of that were to address heart disease. But no one talks about smoking. Like the elephant in the room that it's we forget about the past and then look at the present as if it's in isolation.

52:31Right.

52:31Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:It makes me really think about now the era of GLP-1s. So the people born in 1920, 80 % were smoking. 30 % of the population in the 70s, they were smoking. GLP-1s and the GLP medications, I wonder how many individuals will eventually be on them and if it's going to be a smoking issue. Meaning are we going to find something for the longest time people thought that it was benign? And listen, I understand the GOP ones have been around for 20 some years. I mean, I think the future is full of drugs. And they can solve a lot of problems for people. And if they can solve the intermediate problem of solving something for now, I think a lot of people are okay with that.

53:23There's still a lot of lawsuits and stuff like that. People are like, oh, I didn't know it was going to do this or that. we're still gonna run into a lot of that but the you know big pharma has deep pockets and they already understand that's the price of doing business and the drugs will get better you know they'll have different versions of them and I think in terms of I mean what you're seeing in the peptide space and what you're seeing like in the bodybuilding space and bodybuilders using performance enhancing drugs utilizing steroids and being on steroid cycles is just going to be like, it already is common.

54:02It's already happening. Steroids are interesting because of the altering of your hormones. And obviously, there's peptides that can do similar things. They can alter your hormones, but they don't seem to shut you down the same way that testosterone can for a man type thing. So I don't know. I just think we're heading in some interesting times where I think we're going to see more and more people gravitate towards that because it solves a problem pretty quickly it helps people to instantly look look better what's actually going on I don't quite know yet but what from what I'm hearing from most people is like they'll have improved blood work and things like that but I don't think blood work is like the answer to everything but yeah I just think around the corner is just more and more and more drug.

54:58Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:What kind of peptides? And for those people that don't know you and are being reintroduced to you, when you say peptides, what are you talking about? Everything from like copper peptide to BPC to TB500 to redditrutide or trisepatide or so everything from the GLP-1s to the GLP-1, 2s and 3s. and they believe that redditrutide is like a triple agonist, right? That one helps with hunger signaling and so on. And then there's all these other ones that people believe can help your mitochondria be more efficient. There's some that people think can help with your insulin sensitivity. And there's supplements that you can take too that do certain things like that, like berberine and things of that nature.

55:51It's supposed to be able to help a little bit with insulin sensitivity, even supposedly help a little bit with cholesterol and maybe heart disease to some extent. So yeah, I just think that that's the route we're going, and I think that more things are going to be made that way because there's a lot of money to be made. The peptide company, a friend of mine started one up, and he was just telling me some of his numbers, and I was like, holy crap. The thing is, is why are people feeling like they need them?

56:23Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And I think people feel as if they need things because their lives are not engineered in a way that is as supportive and as healthy as they could be. That being said, I do think that we're going to see more and more peptides come out. Again, we don't have a ton of data on their efficacy in humans. I mean, obviously this is just a broad statement. But then the question is, is there a risk? Are they dangerous? I mean, someone might think like, okay, well, this one's associated with thyroid cancer, right? But they're like, but I'm fat. And I don't want to be fat anymore. Like I want to move on from this and I'm stuck, you know, and I feel like I need help.

57:09And there's some people that, I don't know, maybe they just, for whatever reason, maybe they can't turn the corner that way. and then maybe these drugs can assist or help them to go in the right direction and then maybe if they do end up with the cancer, they're like, well, it got me 15 or 10 good years where I was able to live my life differently than the way I was when I didn't like myself as much. I mean, who's to argue with that? I don't know. So it's just, yeah, it's interesting times. Hopefully people will try to research stuff the best they can, but that's really hard to know if you're researching things because so many people are tied to these things financially.

57:53Like, hey, this works really great. This is what I did. This is what I took. And you're like, okay, well, that worked for now. It was like a 12-week thing that you did. But what's the ramifications of that 12 years from now?

58:05Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You've been very involved in bodybuilding, right? It's kind of you've been in this space. You've watched this. obviously your brother produced bigger, stronger, faster. There's a lot of discussion on anabolics, anabolic steroids. Again, it carries a really heavy mark just from use because of abuse. Is there still the same drug utilization now? I'd first off say that there's more people on drugs than ever, You know, whether it's a housewife or whether it's an NFL football player. And one of the reasons why is I think that a lot of these drugs are working. Supplements, you know, we said earlier, define the word work.

58:52You don't feel protein powder. You don't feel collagen. There's so many of these things you don't feel.

58:59Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You feel niacin. You'll feel that for sure. Citrulline and arginine. Yeah, make sure. A nice pre-workout stack. Yeah. Make you all. Beta alanine. You feel that. Make you all red. Terrible, but people don't really believe in stuff that they can't feel or see You know, there's there's all these things that are messing with our biology blue light Wi-Fi all these other things people barely believe they barely believe in it They don't want to believe it because it's like it's too much for people to to dive into so they'd rather just You know kind of sweep it all under the rug and it's not harmful Non-native EMF, but it's a it's a thing But when it comes to these peptides when it comes to these drugs you actually feel them.

59:41Again, creatine might be something maybe you feel a tiny bit. If you've been natural your whole life and you throw in a couple scoops and you take it for a few weeks, maybe you feel like a little boost from it. But you're not really going to feel, nothing feels like taking testosterone. Nothing feels like injecting Trenbolone. Nothing feels like, and some of these peptides that are coming along, I think they're not all always going to be felt, but they're going to be seen. So you look at yourself in the mirror and you go, holy shit, this is really making a big difference. And recently in Davis, there's a Planet Fitness that opened up over there.

1:00:16And I have gyms everywhere. I have a gym in my house. I have two gyms at my house. I have a gym at my studio. But my son and I still go to Planet Fitness every once in a while. And when I'm there, it's obvious of the people that are using a little bit of stuff. They got a little extra something going on on the side, just because they're just in slightly better shape. The only other people that you see that are in amazing shape like that normally are people that are in their 20s. And so, yeah, I think that we're just going to continue to see more and more and more of it, and hopefully it just gets refined, and hopefully we figure out ways to make it safe so people don't get hurt or sick or killed.

1:01:02Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:You know that feeling after a really hard training session where the last thing you want to do is sit down and eat a full meal? Yeah, I get it. And I'm not about forcing down a steak when my body just isn't ready for it. But here's the thing. Intense exercise and really all exercise is catabolic, meaning it increases muscle breakdown. So to protect my muscle and build new muscle and recover, I consume essential amino acids around my workout. This helps with the recovery. Body Health Perfect Amino helps me hit the protein threshold I need to stimulate muscle with minimal calories and not a huge digestive burden like a large steak.

1:01:47Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:The workout was the hard part, but the recovery doesn't have to be. Head to bodyhealth.com and use the code LION20 to get 20 % off your first order. That's bodyhealth.com and use the code LION20. It's unfortunate that in medicine, we're always trying to fix a problem as opposed to how do we optimize a result, if that makes sense. For example, and I don't know if you've thought about this, the, I'll just throw out their LDL numbers. It's an LDL number to not have heart disease, but what about the LDL number to have good energy, good brain function? We don't actually know those numbers. And maybe because it's an arbitrary target.

1:02:38Well, and sometimes those LDL numbers are from people that have already had like events. And it's like, well, you're trying to keep it really low for someone that already had a heart attack. That's totally understandable, but maybe not everyone. Right.

1:02:50Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And we don't have these targeted numbers because it's the way in which we frame things. Just like exercise. You go, you do your resistance training, you do cardiovascular activity as opposed to this idea of thinking that we have artificial constructs of how we have to engineer our life so that we can reach some baseline level of fitness to not have an increase in mortality. I believe that you are always thinking about and curious about the next new thing. Do you think that there's the next new thing? Well, we're getting close. I think with cancer, there's the guy from UCLA who believes he created a vaccine.

1:03:28I do think that it's great that we continue to learn more. And the studies and stuff, I think sometimes are as much as they are off and as much as you can probably take almost all of nutrition science and probably just throw it in the trash can.

1:03:45Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Not all of it, but yeah. Well, because a lot of it, I don't think it's really gotten us anywhere. I mean, it's like stuff that your great grandma would, you know, your great grandma would be like, hey, like, don't eat too many of these, right? Like she would just know, right? But I agree. It's not all in jest. I think it is helpful and it helps us get closer. But I think usually what we learn from a study is, oh, we should actually try to set the study up this way. And then you get closer with each study afterwards. Like, oh, it would have been better if it's conducted this way. A collective body of research is, I think, really what you're getting after.

1:04:18Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:One of the other things is supplementation, right? And you and I, again, we've been friends for a long time. We've gone through, oh, shit. I have a whole room of supplements. Yeah. In fact, it has its own area. You should probably name that area. Yeah. Daisy guards the supplement door. But have you experimented with anything that you think really works? And I recognize that this is more anecdotal, but you're always looking. You're always thinking about these things. 12 years ago or so, I got some blood work done, and then I had Stan Efferding read it. And Stan's learned a lot, too, since that time.

1:04:53But even at that time, he was pretty knowledgeable and pretty good at being able to assist me and stuff with the blood work. And then he was like, hey, try some of these. He's not a big supplement guy, but he was like, try some of these supplements, basically just vitamins and minerals and things like that. and I was like okay so I'll try these you know six or ten different things that you recommended and get my blood work again and if my blood work is good if it's better then I'll continue the supplements otherwise I'll just it doesn't seem like it makes sense to continue them you know so I take the supplements that he suggests do a couple other things that he suggested just maybe be more uh cognizant of like sleep and just trying to value my sleep a little bit more along with a couple other things.

1:05:41And then I took those supplements, got retested, and sure enough, my labs were way better. And so I'm like, damn it, now I have to do this. So that's why I take, I don't know, I probably take like some days I might take like 40 different things. Oh, gosh. Other days I might just take like 10 or five. But it's like magnesium, vitamin C, like it's just stuff that, and I don't take all of them all the time because sometimes I'm like, my diet already has that. Or like vitamin D is something I go back and forth on all the time. But I'm like, I'm tan. It's summertime or the sun's coming out. I don't think I really need vitamin D.

1:06:19But then when we don't have as much sunlight and stuff like that in Sacramento, then I'll maybe take a little bit more for a little while. But yeah, just trying to go not based off of my thoughts or my feelings, just based off of mainly my blood work. supplement wise, you know, I don't, I mean, I just believe in my, the stuff that I have, you know, I have the steak shake and the total carnivore and those things. And those have titrated into them basically multivitamins because it has organs, has liver, kidney, heart, spleen, pancreas and all that stuff. Um, and I take those daily, but that's not something that you're, I don't think it's something that you're necessarily going to really like feel, or you're not going to be like, Oh my God, I benched, you know, 40 more pounds or something like that.

1:06:59Those are just, it's just protein powder, you know, and I've always liked protein powder. It's just a way for me to kind of control my sweet tooth. But yeah, in terms of, and then in terms of the peptides though, I do like some peptides. I've used Mott C. I used TB500 and BPC, but those two, I didn't really feel like it, I couldn't really tell if it did much, but I did tear a hamstring not that long ago. I know you had a hammy issue a while back and it seemed like it did help for my hamstring to heal faster. So that was kind of cool. Like it healed up in maybe about five weeks or so as opposed to it maybe taking a little longer but I don't really have a test.

1:07:46Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:So it's still to be determined. So MOTC for someone who's listening to this, it's been around for actually quite some time. One of your family members came to see me and we were talking about it and that was over 10 years ago. Oh, yeah, it was a long time ago. Yeah, MOTC for mitochondrial function. Right. TB500, people will say tendon and bone for recovery. BPC157 is another peptide that's good for, depending on how you take it, stomach, joints, recovery. They call it, again, like you said, the Wolverine stack. I tried the copper peptide, but it just seemed to hurt more than anything. And then retitrutide is one that I've also used.

1:08:33I started using that about three months ago. And so far, I like it a lot.

1:08:41Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:What do you notice? Just the food noise. You know, people always talk about food noise, like just having cravings and things like that. So that's a lot less. Sometimes, though, in a bad way, it makes me not want to eat. So I need to just figure out I guess like the right dose for me Seems like everyone's a little bit different on that and then some of my blood work came back better redditriotide my like fasted glucose a couple things like that were just small small improvements but improvement nonetheless, so I'm interested to kind of see you know how that how that will kind of continue over the years you've been in fitness since you were 11, probably before that.

1:09:25Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Circling back to 2026, are there any major myths that you were like, man, I got this wrong? Static stretching. I think like kind of on that topic of stretching, I think that that is maybe like if you think about a lot of sports where stretching is like it's like part of it, like gymnastics comes to mind. like stretching hasn't really ever been like a huge part of anything that I've ever done even though I did do some track and I did football and stuff um it wasn't like a concentration but as we're saying earlier with our kids like if if stuff is normalized for the kids if it's normal for your kids to uh you know learn how to climb a rope or do a bunch of crazy stuff in the backyard throw the football around with your husband tackle each other um if more if more stuff is like normalized and it's easier to do and I think for myself with something like stretching it would be that would be great if that was like more normalized for me to do so I'm trying to figure out with everything you know how do I just simple things like setting up my living room so that's easier for me to get on the floor just so there's like not stuff in the way that I have to move out of the way like you don't want any hurdles you know and I think something that I wasn't necessarily wrong about but something I think that everyone can kind of take from this show is have a kettlebell in your living room and i don't mean that you necessarily literally have to have a kettlebell in your living room but have stuff that's in close proximity that you can just get to so that you can uh so you can practice some of these things often so for me in my living room i have a bunch of different things for like myofascial release just um these different balls and different things like that that i like roll on so like i'll watch TV and sometimes I'm just you know sitting on the floor sometimes I'm like rubbing on something to try like get something to recover and Andy will do it too like we're both in fact when we were on vacation like not too long ago everybody's making a big deal because her and I were on the ground like why don't you guys take the couch like no we don't want the couch we like be like on the ground and so things like that I just I oh I've been aware of them and I know that I've you know should have been kind of like working on some of those things, but...

1:11:40Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Do you think you can catch up? No, not really. I think I'm... Well, I could catch up, but that would mean that I would have to stop doing some of the things that I like to do. Because your body won't... Your body really won't change. It's not going to change massively unless you massively change what you're doing. So I'd have to, for me personally, maybe not for somebody else, but for me personally, I'd have to basically stop lifting. Stop lifting and just work on mobility all the time and have that be my new have that be my new training and then I would might be able to put my shoes on easier I wonder if there's a mobility set point there seems to be a strength threshold yeah I wonder if there's a mobility set point I think when it comes to exercise I think it's easy to think that everyone has like free will but um I think we have something that's more like boxed, it's boxed free will.

1:12:39So boxed free will would be like you enjoy exercise every day because you're you. I enjoy exercise every day because I'm me. But what if my powerlifting career, what if it ended by me breaking my leg, okay, and I'm 330 pounds, and then my leg doesn't really work as good. I kind of have just like a little hitch, a little limp. Well, then maybe I I would never have been able to get back to this because I have that physiology. Now I'm more limited. So then you end up with this kind of like, you end up with these, you end up being like stuck in a box. And even with, even if your thoughts, if I said, hey, you know, think of, try to be as creative as you possibly can and do this search on your phone.

1:13:24Just pick whatever you want to be creative. You can only be so creative because it's a byproduct of everything that you've done, the past it's a byproduct of all these different things um i grew up where i didn't feel like i was smart when i was when i was in school and had some struggles in school and so what i build myself up and bigger you've always been petite you've always been a smaller person so you i am build your mouth build your muscle up and have some tattoos right so there we think that we we think that we're like We're free, but I think that we're... I mean, that just kind of goes back to what we were talking about, about stretching and stuff.

1:14:05Why is my body tight? It's tight because I don't want to stretch. You know what I mean? It's not something that calls to me. I mean, I do stretch. I do some mobility stuff, but I don't do a lot of it because my body doesn't love it. And that's the same thing that we might get frustrated with a family member or a friend who's saying, hey, you really got to do something. You got to start moving. We got to start getting you to do this. And we don't understand why they don't want to do that. It's because they have their own. But then you have to figure out like, okay, well, what's within that box that we can sort of unlock?

1:14:42Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:It's personalized nutrition, if you take the framework for personalized nutrition. This is personalized physicality, the movements. You know, there's a ton of variability in the human body. like you said i'm petite but jacked and you you know you might be not so petite and jack but all kidding aside your movement patterns are perhaps some way because that's the way in which you would gravitate so that's the thing that you do conversely the things that you don't do like ballroom dancing or i don't know yoga although you might be doing it later with the kids um maybe you don't do it for a reason or those that are hypermobile so maybe there's a inherent wisdom, potentially.

1:15:25You tend to like things that you're good at, too, right? So if you're like, Mark, try this dance, I'll probably be like, no. Because I know I'm going to look foolish or whatever. Or maybe I don't have a problem with doing it with you and your kids because we all know each other, right?

1:15:38Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:And we all look foolish together. Yeah, and then maybe I saw you guys dancing the other day. That's why I brought it up. It was great. I mean, we do at 5 p.m., we do a dance party every day. We have to get creative in movement. I was thinking about this as a parent. You know, we've got Father's Day, we have Mother's Day, all these things. And the best gift anyone could give us as a parent is healthy kids. Yeah. How do we get our children healthy? And I've come up with this idea that there should be a parent playlist. The songs are embarrassing enough that your kids are interested. So we're really into Paula Abdul right now, but only partially because we've been watching zombies.

1:16:16Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:That's right. if you're going to get a dose of zombies shortly, but we're the Top Gun song track. Oh, nice. Yeah. And it's embarrassing enough where they're interested, but then they want to do it. And this is kind of the way in which we get them moving and create a culture, a movement culture within that. I love that. You know, and I want to go back to that word we said earlier, force. You know, like some people might be like, this guy's a dick talking about forcing his kids to do stuff. So, you know, I'm the least likely person to force my kids to really do anything. I don't necessarily believe in forcing anything yourself or necessarily, in most cases, forcing people to do stuff.

1:16:59But you think about with your kids, you are forcing everything. You're just forcing them to sometimes just put on clothes. Every day. There's certain things you're like, I mean, it's against the law for your kids to not go to school. So they get forced. They're either homeschooling. There's some type of schooling is going to happen. They're forced. There's some situations in life where you yourself might need to force yourself to do certain things and you yourself might need to force your kids to do something. It's protection, really. You're trying to... I think ultimately with your kids, and it's not the same for everybody.

1:17:40It's not everybody wants to have kids, where you're trying to make great parents is ultimately what you're trying to do or try to make your son or daughter be strong with what they do and it might be harder for them to be strong if they're if they're behind you know if they're behind physically then maybe they didn't really develop the way they needed to mentally and so you're hoping that they have a good mesh of both because if they don't feel smart, that's going to show. And if they don't feel strong, that's going to show. And so you don't want it. It's a hard balance, right? Because every kid is something.

1:18:19Every kid is too skinny, too short, too tall, too big, too fat, too insert whatever word. So you can't really necessarily protect them for everything. But what if you're a kid that's undersized? What if he knows jujitsu? That might have him be a little. Maybe he's not going around hurting anybody, but maybe he's a little bit more confident. Maybe the bully at school goes to push him and he just pushes him back. That's the end of it because he's like, oh, I can't really pick on that kid. I'm not sure why. He's a lot smaller than me, but I wasn't able to pick on him the way I wanted to.

1:18:51Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:Mark Bell, thank you for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. I just want to end with one thing, is that if you are listening to this show, I would encourage you to go back and listen again because there's two ways to take Mark. The words at which he's saying through the lens of physical strength and I want you to listen to the episode one way through that and in addition to listen to it one more time through the lens of mental strength and just something bigger than ourselves. So thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you. You