If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. What's up, Pumpheads? This is Sal here. On the way back from the Spartan races last weekend, we had the awesome opportunity of sitting down with Rob Wolf, a good friend of ours. He's a huge figure in the wellness, paleo, health community. He wrote a fantastic book, Wired to Eat. In fact, it's a book that me, Adam, and Justin reference all the time. Highly recommend people read it. The information in there is excellent. Anyhow, in this episode, we talk about a lot of things. Rob gets a little unglued on a few subjects, which is hilarious. The guy's hilarious. We talk about business in here as well, but mostly about wellness and health. We have a great conversation. I know you're going to enjoy this interview. You can find Rob Wolf online on his website. It's Rob-O-R-O-B-B Wolf, W-O-L-F.com, so it's R-O-B-B-W-O-L-F.com. You can find him on Instagram, at DOS-D-A-S Wolf. That's his Instagram page. And also, I want to talk about one of our bundles that we don't talk about a whole lot that I get a lot of questions on.   We took both programs, we combined them, and then we added some modifications designed to get your glutes to fire more effectively so that when you do your squats and deadlifts and lunges, you get the glutes to do more of the work, so you get that butt building effect from them. And that's what this bundle's all about.  It comes with two maps programs. If you were to run those programs back to back, you're looking at about six months of exercise programming, if you combine them together with the mod, now you're doing the build your butt bundle kind of configuration, you can find that at MimePumpMedia.com. So without any further ado, here's me, Adam, and Justin, talking to our good friend, Rob Wolf. Man, we just had the 2017 Spartan Championship race. You're actually hoping to run into Rob while we were down there, but you got tied up a little bit. It was against my parole. Killed the mice? Obligations to go to California. It's funny, so we have a little three acre farm, and this time of year is kind of critical for getting everything buttoned up and winterized and all that type of stuff. And as part of that, this didn't specifically keep me away from Spartan, but we get flood irrigation, and when the field floods, mice and other critters die, and my dogs went out there and ate these partially decomposing animals, and then middle of the night, last night, they started pooing and spewing from both ends, and at some point I checked out and I put the earplugs in, and I'm like, okay, Nicky, you're up. I've got an 8 a.m. interview with the MimePump guys. Oh, gosh. Oh, so you're welcome. Yeah. Thank you. We got Janet on, buddy. Hashtag. My dog, not that long ago, drank, so my neighbor must, and I don't know if they use Roundup or some sort of chemicals or whatever, but they were washing, and then we get this little runoff of water that was in my backyard. Roundup's perfectly safe, dude. Yeah, I drink it. And my dogs must have drank out of it, and then the next day, it was the biggest scare I'd ever had with the dogs. I mean, he just, he couldn't move, he couldn't get up, and he was disoriented. I tried to pick him up, he started crying, freaking, I mean, I freaked out, rushed him down the hospital, and it literally took us all day long to try and, you know, process of elimination. What could it be? You know, we didn't leave this out. We didn't do this, and then I see this, like, pool of water that just, and you look at it, and it just looks disgusting, and it's a runoff from the neighbors next door. The toxic sludge. Yeah. So, but nothing I could do about it, man. I would be, I'd be worried about mice, and them eating that, and them getting sick, like, to the point where they could die from that, I would think. Yeah.   And I'm still searching for the upside of dog ownership, like, I've always been a cat guy, I had a dog when I was a little kid, didn't have one until my wife shook me down on this, and I'm still kind of like, ah, I'm not seeing the upside on any of this stuff, but... So, before we got on air, we were actually, and I love to talk to people like you about what they're going through with business, and it looks like you're getting ready to enter into the click funnel world, and start diving into Facebook every time. And you're somebody who pretty much has grown organically since you've started, and now you're heading that direction. What led you there?  And I just typed and talked and expected something good to happen. You were so good, you didn't have to do any of it. Well, it's probably deceiving, like you said, because, I mean, you were part of a lot of the CrossFit when it first started, and just kind of probably exploded with that. You're putting out great content. I mean, for sure, Paleo has now become attached to CrossFit. So it's probably kind of, I mean, it's kind of hard to probably tell that you weren't doing all the things that you could be doing. You probably were crushing it right out the gates and never thought twice. Why did you or what led you to start to look into this? What did you... You know, some of it, it's interesting. So we became more savvy about what's going on within Facebook and Google. Like we talked again a little bit before, rolling like Google in particular is interesting in that they're trying to curate and own medicine and health and fitness. So if you put in a search term like Bench Press or something like that, Google will typically now provide a curated response. And it doesn't go to any person or individual or organization site. It's something that Google decided to curate. And you've got to work your way down the list quite a bit before you get to the first paid ads, you know, with response to Bench Press.  Yeah, right. And fewer and fewer people will go through that process. And so we just noticed that we were kind of moving into a cul-de-sac, you know, where no matter how good the content was that we generated, you know, I mean, downloads on podcasts were good, but not spectacular. Website traffic was good. But again, you know, there wasn't this really spectacular element to it. And so we started kind of kicking some doors and talking to people. And they're like, yeah, so these click funnels and doing, you know, figuring out how you're going to do some of the paid advertising and what not. And what we're trying to figure out how to do is to not make it to like 30 pages of scrolling HTML text, even though that stuff clearly works. Like it just works, you know, it's kind of funny for a number of years. I kind of, you know, as a badge of honor, I'm like, yeah, I don't do any of those like seven steps to paleo ads type things. And then we were just at this event where there were people and we talked about this, like there are people who don't have nearly as much reach as I do. And they're pulling down like two million dollars a month. And what do they do? Seven steps to paleo. This is the challenge. This is where I wanted to go with you because this is something that we've struggled with since we started is, you know, if you do want to make a lot of money on the web, there are all these click baity things that you have to do. And guys like yourself, who I know have a lot of integrity, this has got to be a major challenge. Like, how do you do that?  I'm not totally sure. Like we're still in the process of kind of motoring through that. One thing is so we're working on it and have finished this thing called the keto masterclass. And so I put a ton of effort into that. Now, I would say that the technicality on it is geared for something that would be appropriate to like the the Weight Watchers crowd. But it would push them like they're going to understand a little bit about like beta oxidation of fatty acids. Like it's going to push them a little bit. This is not something that the super geeks who spend all day on the internet, like they're not going to learn anything super new with it. But it is a soup to nuts program. It's beautifully done. It's got great video. The coursework book alone, which takes you day by day through all of the materials, like 168 pages. So I mean, it's a book within the whole thing. So we put a ton of effort into that. So what I'm hoping is that, yeah, we'll have to do some of the clickbaity stuff. But then what we give people is actually really, really good.  Oh, wow, it's actually really good, you know, and that that's the the hope. And we've shown it to like the guys at Keto games and they were like, wow, this is really, really good. You know, it's engaging. It looks good. It has good polish and all that. And then the material is on point. And one element of the material is even though it's a it's recommending a ketogenic diet, we have a kind of a self selection process where maybe a ketogenic diet isn't the way you should go. Maybe it's just kind of moderate carbon. So we actually have a way for people, even though this is the Keto master class, we're not selling it as religious dogma that this is the one and only way to go go about this. If you're a CrossFit Games competitor, if you're into Jiu-Jitsu, if you have some adrenal fatigue or HBTA access, dysregulation or what have you, ketogenic diet might not be the way that you want to do it, like a moderate carb approach. And we give people a completely stepwise fashion to figure all that stuff out. So the hope there is that, yeah, we're going to lean on some of these clearly successful marketing tools and then hopefully deliver something that's not total dog shit. You said something I have a question about. So you talked about HPA dysregulation and Keto, why wouldn't that be a good necessarily a good option for people in that in that particular state? Well, and it's funny, it could be a great option or it could be a disastrous option. So if you have somebody who is experiencing now HPA dysregulation, what is that first? Hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal. And then you can also throw in thyroid. HPTA. I want to hear what he has to say about motorists. Yeah. But you have some people that become insulin resistant for a variety of reasons. It can be sleep. It can be gut dysbiosis. It can be in generally overeating is a big piece of this. It doesn't necessarily just need to be carbs, although carbs definitely facilitate the process. I'm not in the camp that carbs are the cause of like insulin resistance and diabetes and all that. I think that they're definitely a contributor. I'm not specifically in that like kind of Gary Todd's camp. It says carbs are our insulin resistance. I have been there, but over the course of time, I've kind of changed positions on that.  The brain does not like these peaks and troughs and blood sugar. So we get the adrenals pinged to release cortisol in adrenaline to bring the blood sugar back up on the back side. That antagonizes thyroid production. The cortisol released directly antagonizes conversion of T4 into T3. It accelerates conversion of T3 into reverse T3.  It's literally the body trying to balance out while it's going up and down. And over time, this can cause like receptors to downregulate and the body to become more resistant to even things like cortisol. Right. OK. Yeah. Yeah. So you have one group of people that is in a situation where they're they're getting that cyclic hypoglycemic kind of event in a low carb or ketogenic diet, maybe the ticket for those people. But you have other folks that maybe the HPTA axis dysregulation, whether it's thyroid specifically or some people with autoimmune disease. Guy, you guys need to get on the your podcast, Brian Walsh. He's a naturopath. OK. So I had him. I had him on my show. And I thought I knew my my immunology and like my my. Oh, wow. He's got some knowledge on you, then. Oh, dude. He I had some immunologists ping me who are like for a non immunologist. That guy knows his immunology. Yeah. And how's his conversation? Is it like yours? Phenomenal. Oh, he's he's an educator thrown through, but he really got in and started talking about like, OK, so if we do something like a Dutch test and we look at, you know, total cortisol and cortisol metabolites, maybe the reason why the cortisol is low is because the body is trying to turn on or off different segments of the immune system for a therapeutic effect. So your cortisol looks low and the kind of standard like three or four point adrenal stress index test is kind of like, OK, usually that somebody would see that they would see in an overall low cortisol status and then they would recommend something like licorice, which licorice extracts enhance the retention of cortisol in their system. It blocks the breakdown of cortisol in the liver. So we may get an elevated cortisol level, but that may be antagonistic to what the body actually needs you to do because it's actually trying to suppress or enhance one element. And so this is where you're basically doing green alipathy.  So you treat the symptom and then you end up making the overall problem worse. Now, are there signals that you see? Like when people are trying to figure this out, when like they say, we're trying to figure this out for me. And I notice stuff going on with my body that I can tell you about like the average person that's playing with going in or out of keto. Is there are other signs that that this could be you? It's sleep dysregulation, performance decrease. I mean, it's kind of the standard deal. Listen to your body. How do you look? How do you feel? How do you perform? We could look at some basic biomarker, you know, kind of considerations. But that's where I just I try we try to sort people. It's kind of like dropping a marble down this thing. And so we try to sort people, create a logic tree so that they can get themselves to a spot where they can then test. And then based off the testing, we can then drive the boat like, OK, yeah, man, keto is working great for you or no, it's not. Let's bump the carbs up to 75 grams a day and see how you do. And so we have a really transparent process with that to help people figure out what's what's best for them. So in that state, why would keto be bad? Then you were going down that path of the for some people. And in particularly in the beginning of this process, we do see an enhanced adrenal output. We tend to see elevated cortisol, elevated adrenaline, corticosteroids across the border elevated. And if somebody's already in kind of a compromised state, it might be too much. It is definitely a stress, particularly when you first enter into the the ketogenic state. So if they're already like teetering on the brink, it may not be the I noticed this was fasting with clients of mine in particular. I noticed it with myself when I fast, sometimes the energy I get feels very sympathetic in nature. It feels like it's cortisol driven. And I can tell the difference between normal good energy and that kind of wired, dare I say, addictive type of energy that I tend to get. And so that's when I'll start to modify how often I fast because I know if I push that too hard, I could enter into that state. I've also speculated potential behavioral changes in people where perhaps they're seeking out activities that cause cortisol to spike because they need more. For example, I'll notice people like this who are in this HPA kind of dysfunction will seek out the harder workouts because they feel so good while they're doing them, even though it's the exact opposite of what they need. Perhaps because those harder workouts are causing that spike of cortisol, now they feel good. Are there other behavioral effects that you can kind of connect to some of these things? Yeah. And I mean, this gets really soft science and a little bit woo.  That's why we're here. That's why we're here. I see people just like dysfunctional relationships.  We have a really amazing handoff deal. In working on this keto masterclass, when I was doing the primary content generation, she did the bulk of like the cooking, the house, all that type of stuff. I finished that. And now she is the one that's basically tasked with getting all this like click funnel integration, all this type of stuff. And so like the past two, three weeks, like I take the kids to school, pick them up. I do 99% of the cooking. So we have a really easy transition with that. And we have, there's no drama. Like we were just talking about, we're like, neither one of us ever hang the other one out to dry because it's like, oh fuck, I've been taking care of the kids for three weeks straight. It's like, well, yeah, because Nikki, you're doing all the important stuff now. And I don't have anything important to do. There are people that, and I think some of it is maturity also, but I think that there's something where like either low dopamine or maybe this need for that kind of adrenaline state, they just create drama. Because you feel more alive in the moment. And then you get all the makeup, sex and all that type of stuff afterwards too. But they can't deal with even keel. Even keel freaks them out. It's almost like there's no, it's almost like a sensory deprivation chamber in a way where they don't get any feedback. And so they need to start, it's like a bat, it's pinging out sonar to try to get something coming back. I don't see, when people say that's kind of soft science or woo-woo, I counter and say, we've known for a long time that changes in hormones and neurochemicals definitely can affect behavior. They can definitely change behavior.  You will see changes in behavior. It only makes sense that if the body is seeking out or needs cortisol that it will alter behavior in ways that will cause more cortisol to release. So things that I've noticed with clients is these people that I've identified in this particular, in this category of people, they'll be late for appointments often. They'll have deadlines and they'll wait till the last minute to get them going. Or things will be going good and they'll purposely sabotage themselves. And it's because it's almost like their body's driving them to do these types of things. And then when we work on, and it's funny because it's this cyclical type of thing because it feeds it. So then I'll tell them we need stress management and that'll also feed into getting their bodies more responsive to cortisol and all that stuff. Now is this something that could potentially be something that's more behavioral that they've been embedded with since they were children because of that? Because they grew up in a chaotic house and stress was always there. See for me being the reductionist biochemist guy where the neurophysiology, the biochemistry and the behavior to me are inseparable. God damn, I'm so happy you say that.  And everything and I'm like, I don't know man, I'm still waiting for my own book. So I don't know.  And all of those people, I really want to- So our favorite ones to poke at, Rob. I want to bring them to the hammer-o meter where we stick their foot in this thing and it's like you drop a hammer on their foot and it's like, did it hurt? And they're all, yeah.  It didn't hurt. There's no proof that it hurt. So yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because just through our process, through fitness, we've all been doing this for so long, you start to get to this point where you realize that in a state of optimal health, that your body kinda, the signals that it tells you to eat, sleep, and the way you should behave and whatever, it all, you just kinda listen to your body and it kinda tells you what to do, but then when you throw them off with poor diet or constant exposure to electric lights or whatever, it throws everything off to the point where it affects your entire life, not just the stuff that we normally can measure like body fat or performance and that kind of stuff. So it's very, very fascinating. I know when we deal with these people, I know I have a few series of things that I tend to go to. Do you have like a go-to advice that you kinda start? Because someone who seeks that all the time, it's kinda like, okay, let's address food, sleep. Do you have an order of operation that you tend to go to when helping somebody? Oh man.   And so, but I mean, it's the standard stuff, you know, sleep, appropriate movement, and then also trying to get people in their body and this is something that you kind of alluded to. If somebody was raised in a super chaotic environment and I would kinda put that with myself, I love my parents, they were great people, my dad had, someday I wanna do a book about both my parents' lives as kids. You lost them at what age, right? Not super early, but my dad, 11 years ago, my mom like four or five years ago, but they had super abusive, challenging lives and so what they were able to do with me was a quantum leap better than the lives that they experienced, but it was still like crazy. Like looking back now and talking to my sister sometimes, like my mom was probably bipolar, like she had all kinds of problems going on, but did a really amazing job for what she did, but coming out of that chaotic environment, I saw chaos and so a lot of my early relationships, like the more dysfunctional and broken the person was, like, man, I've got, exactly, here's your gears and man, my gears mesh, perfect dysfunction. Oh, I got your solution and it took a long time to be able to disengage from that and actually- Took me 28 years, how long did it take you, do you remember? Possibly a little longer than that. You're smarter than I am, so, you know, but and I talk to my wife about this, this is part of the reason why I do jujitsu, part of the reason why I do bow hunting and stuff like that. I've got to have that other thing that is the danger and the risk and the dopamine and the engagement.  So I would try to have that conversation with folks, but I'm not a therapist, but you know, just some of this kind of big picture stuff of, it's really interesting getting people to start functioning in a way that's healthy. So if they had a gambling habit or if they spent money that they don't have, like there's all this kind of dopamine, like, you know, living in the moment kind of deal. And if you get people to not do that, they'll look at you and they're like, dude, this is like eating cardboard. It's kind of like the hypopalatable food problem.  They don't have any joy, they don't have any excitement and you have to figure out ways of getting it from other places. And this is why you look into the CrossFit world. A ton of people that were addicts of various flavors. Oh geez, yeah. Dude, CrossFit.  And I just, perhaps the training volume actually kicks them out of that, like it would destroy them if they did it. But you know, you find things like that where hopefully it's a more, it's a healthier obsession, but there's still that need for the, you know, and Art DeVanny, I know I'm bouncing all over the place, but Art DeVanny has talked about this a lot from like the evolutionary perspective. We just had a certain amount of chaos and danger baked in the cake living as hunter-gatherers. And there's some expectation for that and life becomes so monotonous and predictable that then people start doing squirrely things. This is our theory on like the huge rise of like OCR and these events where we punish ourselves for 16, 19 miles in obstacle because we're becoming so plugged in that we need to feel again, we need to feel ourselves and feel alive. And so I think a lot of these businesses are going to continue to explode because tech is just moving so fast and we're becoming more, I mean, we got VR around the corner. Real soon here, we're going to see people that probably have a challenge of stepping out of VR because VR is better than their actual reality. It's so funny you said what you said because a lot of our issues early on with some of the movements of CrossFit and then OCR and Marathons is because when we were trainers, the clients that would seek those out were the last people that should probably be doing them. They would treat them like another addiction, like they're moving from one to another and just continue to pound their body because they're seeking that. And so a lot of our job was to try to, okay, well that's one step, now let's get you to another step. It's almost like you got to take a person through steps of obsession that are gradually better and better and better, kind of wean them off almost. This whole desensitizing process, I think is what you're talking about where people will stop and then just be like, life sucks. It's no different than for me at least than when I work with a client and I start to change their nutrition and they're finding the food that they're eating just boring. This one always used to blow me away, but I would tell people like, all you're gonna drink is water. Let's start with that from now, in the beginning. It's like punishing them. And the way I can't drink water, it doesn't taste good. And to me it was just mind blowing.  And you wanna lock them in a closet for like four days and then you're like, this is gonna be the best thing you ever drank, perspective.  Absolutely, but I do think just talking about this, it's as if we've been taught to ignore our body's signals since we were children, everything from hunger to, which most of us never experienced real hunger, to ignoring our systems of satiety to then hijacking our systems of, what is it called? When you get sick of eating something. The palette fatigue. Palate fatigue. And it's almost like we don't even, we're so disconnected from our bodies that it just turns into this total mess. And you're talking about the psychological piece. I see the future of health and wellness being like, you need to know all of that because it's such a big role in what we're doing. And to a degree, I tried to tackle all that in YRD, sleep and circadian rhythm, food, movement, and then community. And community has this whole, it goes from the gut microbiome to the people around us. And that's also though where stress, most of the things that we experience as stress live like the Keeping Up with the Joneses deal and all of that, so much of what we perceive to be stress is just this activity going on between our ears of something that happened in the past or that we're worried about potentially happening in the future. And it's very, very rare that it's actually something like right in front of us, like the car barreling towards us or something that's like, okay, that's a legitimate stress. We need to address that. And everything else is just something that we're bringing on ourselves. And the book, The Myth of Stress, like I fought that guy on that.   Like, but it was, people were more in the moment and we didn't have this past future orientation. And he pretty well, like beat me down. Oh, wow. Like, okay, yeah, you're actually totally right. So along those lines as a father, what are the things that you're scared about in the future? Or I don't know if scared is the right word, but what concerns you about your children's future and what are you excited for? So what do you think about? Oh man, that's a big, let me noodle on that a little bit. One thing I've been doing with both girls is when they get upset, we do a breathing exercise. So I'm like, okay, okay, you're okay.  And I'm like, okay, let's put our hands on our belly and we're going to do our breathing. Hold it, hold it. We have a contest to see who can, you know, go the longest on the way out. And I tell you like my youngest, Sagan, who's three, dude, she crashed her bike in the most epic way. And luckily it was chilly in the morning. So she had on gloves, she had on a sweatsuit and everything. But I mean, it was like tumble, she had on her helmet and everything. But it was like a dust cloud. Yard sale. Yeah, it was a goodie. And I went up there and she's crying completely reasonable. But I like, propped her on my leg. I'm like, okay, everything good. I'm like, let's do our breathing. It'll make you feel better. She's like, okay, Dad, let's do it. And it was. And by the third breath, she was even keel. That's cool. And you know, if I had had that technique as a kid and could have carried that through my adult life, that would have been pretty powerful. Now, usually I still need to coach them on it. Like they don't just like auto-regulate with that. But one thing I'm trying to teach them is just this very basic like kind of biofeedback thing. So if they're ever in a situation, if they can get the wherewithal, they can bring themselves back down to a really calm state. How do you handle tech right now? They watch a little bit of TV maybe twice a week. It's mainly PBS. I am chagrin to admit. And it's so funny. It's almost like the kids are attracted to junk food. Like Zoe has figured out how to navigate the Apple TV. And I went in there the other day and it was like Barbie and Friends Mermaid Adventures.  I watched it for a few minutes and I'm like, no, we're not watching this. It was just ridiculous. It was just conflict for the sake of conflict. Like there was nothing, even just like the dialogue and stuff was terrible. Now I will say she has wrote me into watching some My Little Pony stuff. And it's illustrated in kind of a Japanese anime kind of deal. And there's some funny stuff in there. And so I'm kind of like, okay, yeah, you can watch a little bit of that. But it's usually a little more... Some intelligent humor in there. Curious George, Wild Crats.  And so I'll pull up the Carl Sagan series. And so we'll watch some stuff on planets and stuff like that. But they really don't get any iPhone access, any iPad access. If we travel, then we have two iPads that we pull out and they get to watch some movies on the iPad. Because when we're in hour eight or 10 on the airplane going somewhere, I'm kind of like, okay, we'll deal with whatever ramifications are. And it's like cocaine for them. They want it desperately. And it's interesting. We bought both girls a little camera last Christmas, maybe a Christmas before. And it has a lot of games on it and everything, but it's a set number of options where these iPhones and iPads are effectively infinite. There's always something you can tweak and fiddle and download. And so it's interesting. They will go through cycles where they'll play with the camera and they take pictures and they do the kind of like low grade photo editing with it and stuff like that. And there's a few games that they play on it and they enjoy it, but then they put it down. They may not play with it for three weeks. Whereas like if there's any of that iPhone, iPad interaction, it's like cocaine. It's interesting.  So they'll get on these iPads and they'll be on them for, I mean, if I, no joke, I'm fully confident. And if I left them alone with an iPad, they would stay on there from morning till night. No problem. If you don't monitor them at all. Possibly until they starved to death. Maybe, yeah, maybe. But I'll take it away if they've been on there for three hours, you know, I'll come home and be like, no, I'm taking that away. And there's these classic withdrawal symptoms. And then they're... It's just like food. The great, probably one of the best books I've read this year was a book called Irresistible and they talk about the addiction and how all of these guys who created all these apps and was... They wouldn't let their kids go near them. They don't. Yeah. They don't, to me, that just fascinates me that here you are as a father who's creating this incredible thing. This is what probably provides the food for your children, but they're not allowed to use that tool because I know how much R&D I put in to making sure... Making it addictive. Yeah, making it addictive. That's a scary thought. And then you see, and I don't know how far you think because I know they're younger, but like you see with Instagram and Facebook and even now companies, when they go to hire somebody, they ask for social media. Right.  I know you're going to pull more for my business. So I mean, now it has that much power and influence.  Like, how do I introduce this to them? How do I let them use this? But then also not discourage them too much because I could potentially hurt them in the future for work and business. Like, you know, it's interesting. So both girls go to a Montessori school, which is super cool. And the way that they handle tech, they don't want any screen time. Like, even the amount of TV that we provide the kids, they're probably like, ah, it's too much. But one point that they make is that technology advances so quickly that the UI, the user interface gets simpler and simpler and simpler. There's no point in having the kids go over and type stuff into a keyboard or even like playing around with that quite yet because the user interface, when they get into like a work environment, it's probably gonna be different. So why even bother with this stuff? And so that's kind of interesting. And but when you go into their library, they definitely do have some nice computers in there for kids to do research and stuff like that. One of the things that caught me the most when I walked in there is that the top shelf of one of their main bookshelves was like 20 years of the Economist magazine.  They're teaching kids that now. That's excellent, which they should. They have some cool stuff where like all of the classes help to prepare the hot lunch. And then they start, as the kids get into the primary education, they learn about profit and loss and what they're charging. And okay, to make this thing. And macaroni and cheese costs this much money and we need to charge this much to be able to deal with these, you know. And stuff like that is real. So you ask what, you know, maybe I'll try to avoid the scary stuff. But one of the things that did just pop into my head the opportunity here, if you have an interest in something, in this day and age, like they would need to lock you in a room to prevent you from learning about it and potentially becoming a world expert on it. Now, if you want to learn welding or knife making or how to do cardiothoracic surgery or something like that, you need to go as effectively intern with that. But you can learn a massive amount about so many different things. You can learn languages, you know, all of the, what is it, Khan Academy and all that stuff. Like literally, potentially, if you want to learn economics, you could learn from someone who's not only brilliant in it but brilliant in communicating it versus like you hit the community college and it's kind of a mixed bag. Maybe they're good, maybe they're not. That's how I started, man. I was on YouTube and I saw Milton Friedman, which he's like one of the greatest communicators of economics that you can find and that just took me down a rabbit hole and I became very passionate about it.  Right. Then you hear Milton Friedman, I'm like, whoa, this is great, you know. Right. So exciting times, definitely exciting times. So you have an opportunity like that, you know, and our youngest is really interesting and at three, she, and you know, this is the doting dad to some degree, but even other people are kind of like, okay, she really understands math well. Like she'll, she's like, dad, I'm this many and Zoe is this many and you're four plus, you know, five, you know, for 45 and all this stuff.  And we just bought a puzzle the other day, this dinosaur puzzle and the kid just like scans the pile of pieces, grabs it, plugs it in. And like, it would take me 30 minutes to find that thing and I would have to sort each one I'm looking at the colors. So she's got some pattern recognition stuff early and so I'm like, maybe some math, maybe some engineering, who knows. And then Zoe has a whole, you know, set of stuff that she's really interested in. So it's really, that part is really exciting in that we could use some technology to be able to, you know, anything they're passionate about, anything they wanted to do. If one of them wanted to do art, you could learn so much about art online. And then if they really wanted to go intern with somebody, it's like, okay, there's a student, Florence, Italy.  You need to study and learn Italian and you're going to intern with this guy for one to two years. And so long as you stay on course, I'll pay for that, you know. So cool. So those are huge opportunities. And it'll cost the same amount. Right. It would probably cost the same amount, but the connections and the, you know, yeah, yeah. Are you familiar with the company Creative Live? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that. I know those folks, yeah. Oh, that's excellent. Great stuff for sure. That's fantastic. So along these lines with nutrition, obviously this is an area of expertise for you. How do you feed your kids and how do you recommend people feed their kids? Because I know obviously we talk about different ways of eating. Some of them are more restrictive than others, like keto. But when you feed children, what is the best approach to, you know, making sure that they're healthy? Or is there a best approach? I would be super reticent to saying there's a best approach. Like I would be really remiss in saying that. I'm glad in a way that we had kids later as opposed to earlier in my whole paleo process because I could have probably been a lunatic earlier on. But it's tough. So what did they have for breakfast this morning? They had some organic patty sausage that we got from Whole Foods. They had strawberries. They had this nutty hot cereal. So I take apples and almonds, blend them up in a blender, puree them super, super fine, basically like oatmeal kind of consistency, cook it on the stovetop. And it's just like hot cereal. And I put a little cinnamon in it and the girls crush it. So they had sausage, strawberries, nutty hot cereal, and then some pecans. And that's what they had yesterday. They had some sausage and they had some gluten-free french toast that I made on the weekends. We kind of loosened stuff up a little bit. But I tell you what, after they had french toast that morning, all the way through the evening, first thing this morning, they're like, Dad, can we have french toast? And usually Friday nights, we do gluten-free pizza night. And part of it is they really enjoy it. And part of it is by Friday, my wife and I are smoked and it's the one meal that we stick in front of them and they're like a pack of hyenas.    And they don't drop it on the floor. Like if they do, they're down, they're like licking it off the floor. So this is, you know, so you ask about what's optimum. Part of the optimum of that is we get one meal where my wife and I can have a glass of wine and we can just talk because the kids, they're like, Dad, have more pizza. And you're like, boom, there you go, done.  But generally, it's meat, fruit, veggies. It kind of rotates seasonally. The girls love soup. So I make soup a lot. And it's just like carrots and broccoli.   I do do some speed bump stuff or they're like, oh man, I'm trying to think of an example. Even just like blueberries or something like that, I want some more blueberries. I'm like, okay, finish your meat and you can have some more blueberries. So I do a little bit of a speed bump method where they have to do stuff like that. Zoe asked me, she's like, well, Dad, why can't we just have pizza and French toast all the time? I'm like, that is a really good question. And I was like, some people do pretty much do that. And for some people, they can be healthy. And for a lot of other people, it makes them unhealthy. They get sick. They're tummy hurts. They may be gained too much weight. She has a friend whose father had a heart attack and we talked to her a little bit about some of this food can cause problems with your heart and everything. So we're not trying to do scare tactics, but we're also trying to say, generally, we eat well.  And I try not to even call it treats and stuff like that because I don't want any emotional attachment to it. It's a tough one. Sometimes we have this stuff and sometimes we don't. We just don't, you know, and interestingly, I think both girls, and so this also dictates a little bit of what we do.  So I think that they kind of pull from that because even if we do like the French toast deal, the girls, we don't get like a blood sugar crash two hours later where they're like melting down and going crazy. Some of that may be because they always get some fat and protein with it. Some of it may be because they're active and they're just generally insulin sensitive. But I haven't noticed there's a little bit of dairy issues, so we tend to give them goat and sheep dairy instead of cow dairy. They'll get some cow dairy if we're out eating or something like that. I don't sweat that, but we don't do that. A huge amount. Yeah, I've done this world, the strategy that I've developed with my kids and it seems to work really well as I'll just serve them in the order of importance with the food. And I don't bring all the food out at the same time because that really fucks things up. So I'll literally be like, all right, and boom, here's your vegetables. And then I'll be like, what do we have for dinner? I'm like vegetables.   And then if they're not hungry anymore, then there's no need to continue progressing because they've eaten the important stuff. So now if they're like, I don't want to eat anymore, then it's like, okay, well then we're done eating and then eat the rest of it. Yeah, otherwise you end up doing the whole don't eat that, you have to eat that type of thing. So I want to circle back Rob to something you mentioned about your childhood. I grew up in a challenging household myself. My mom also had a crazy childhood and I probably talk about the same way you do where I think she did the best that she could and much better than what she probably went through. But nonetheless, my father took his life when I was seven. My mom remarried into an abusive relationship. So and I'm the oldest of five kids. So a lot of that definitely formed me into the man that I am today. Some things, awesome, and then I'm happy and I'm grateful for those characteristics. Some of the other ones have taken a long time to grow through. What are the things that you notice about yourself from being brought up like that, that have made you the man you are today as far as your strengths and then the ones that you still battle with? That's a really good question. You know it's funny because you opened with doing the business stuff and the click funnels and all that. Being raised in a poor, now poor is relative. This is poor in a first world country, white, blah, blah, blah, my privileged stuff. I have to explain to people like, I know what food stamps look like. Yeah. I've been evicted from a house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. But I had a roof over my head. The brick of government issue cheese, I really look forward to it. So comparatively, we were pretty poor. What I got phenomenally good with coming out of that environment was like, you could dump me anywhere and I would figure out something reasonably cool with that situation. Like I could make do with whatever I was thrown into. Drop me off in Siberia and I'll have a still and growing potatoes or whatever. And it was interesting. I was in a grad program and interestingly as part of this science-based grad program, they had an art elective and I'm like, oh, I'll take this art elective. And the gal told us to envision something that we wanted to make and then make it. And they were like legos and erector sets and all this different stuff.  I'm like, I don't know. This thing's kind of cool on this and that. And she's like, well, the exercise is to envision something and then make it. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. And I wasn't doing it. And she kept needling me and needling me.  Like, you know, meltdown, stomp out of there. Like she got in my kitchen and I didn't even realize until later the frustration that I had is I was incapable of envisioning something. I was completely cock-blocked on that. I couldn't envision anything I wanted to do. Now I could make do with what I had in front of me, but I was incapable of being able to envision something. Maybe five years fast forward and I'm in a relationship with Nikki, my wife. And she's talking to me about this stuff because these things pop up in the course of like business and whatnot. Like I became really good at making do, but I was abysmal at being able to envision something and then go for it. And part of what I believe in outgrowth of that is that in this chaotic environment, you can't really plan down the road. And so you become good at just dealing with the here and the now. And that's a very laudable thing. That's powerful, but an inability to plan and to dream and to chase that stuff.  So the thing that I'm really like just kind of birthing into is being able to say, Hey, I want to do this. I want to do that.  I may be 70 when I get it, but I'm going to do it, you know? And I'm ticking that stuff through.   The homeowners associations are neighbors.  I hate all of it. I want to be on a little farm. I want to be able to shoot my bows and arrows. I want to do this, that and the other. So Nikki was like, well, envision it. And I drew some stuff out and we went and got it and we knocked it out. But I'm probably at like a eight or nine year olds level of being able to like envision something and then go out and knock it out and do it. But that's, it's been a hugely powerful thing for me. And it was something that I, what happened to me being able to make do with the situation was really beneficial. And it still serves me a lot today. Like I don't have a lot of like frustrations. And I see people, they show up at a restaurant and they're like, this cheesecake just isn't the way it was last time.  Whereas for me, I'm like, oh, it's a little bit different. That's cool. I'm going to have more of the Brussels sprouts or whatever. Like it just doesn't phase me in that regard. But then also it allows me to not have the standards that I should have and the things that I do actually want. Like I'll be like, okay, that's cool. I'll just make do with this.  And it's a 45 year old male. I'm just now learning how to do that. But I've been very, very good at making do. And I'm just now learning how to make what I want. And it's really interesting. And honestly, God, it's still scary. Like I feel like I'm high wire walking and not real comfortable with what I'm doing with it. Because I've got years of skill set that's so refined in this other area. But that is a really good question. That requires such a high level of self-awareness because it was so much a part of who you are. How did you start to even see and recognize it? Well, especially when, and this is like, I can totally relate, when a majority of your life, it helped you get through. You were successful because of it. The route to success. So I remember being in my 20s. Yeah, because you could have very easily identified with it and be like, this is how I work and I'm already kicking ass and what's the big deal to it? This is why I always tell people, normally your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. And if you learn to look at it like that, because real easily we look at, oh, this is why I'm having success. Like you can't tell me otherwise that I shouldn't be doing this or to look into it because this is what got me here. So yeah, that's really interesting. And it's actually the opposite of me, which is funny because I think I always wanted to escape where I was at. So I was always envisioning stuff and the future and thinking all the time. So what I'm incredible at is the visionary piece. I'm horrible at the other part. Interesting. So you're probably frustrated by like almost every meal and like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, super-analytic restating. It's interesting. It's interesting. I'm trying to think, you know, so I think part of the self-awareness on this was realizing that I had a strong predilection towards super codependent dysfunctional relationships. And then when that got on my radar, I went through some therapy and counseling. The woman that I worked with on that was amazing and interesting. And you know, so like even my career path, I just kind of made do with where I was. I was like, I ended up in a chemistry class and I was good at it. This was another thing that's common from kind of poor or not. Maybe it's not just poor. Maybe it's just this make-do kind of deal. But you know, anything that I was good at, I would go for it because you got those easy accolades with it, you know? And so I ended up in this chemistry class and I was good at it. And then I got into organic chemistry and I was really good at that.  So that's largely what determined my career path. And then I was in a physiology class and I was pretty good at that. And the woman was like, dude, you should be a doctor. And I was like, oh, okay. It was basically somebody external to me had to give me some sort of validation. And then I would be like, wow, I could be a doctor? And she's like, yeah, you could look at what you're doing here.  Absolutely, on a lot of different levels. Which is probably why it's been great for you. Yeah, because one, I have a modicum of success in the world that I've been in. So I could just say, okay, I'm gonna be powerlifting Rob and I could go back into the gym and have some impressive numbers with that and just like stay in that scene. And that's fine. And I'm not running people down who do that. But part of the Jiu-Jitsu thing is you are naked every day.    My women, you know. Yeah, and so there's that element to it.  It's like, well, what type of game do I want? If I have a completely passive just let it come to me kind of approach Jiu-Jitsu, I'll never make any progress anywhere. And so it's something that keeps me engaged and forces me to have kind of that vision about where I want to go with it. But really becoming aware of the type of relationships that I was good at again, I had a great skill set for dysfunctional relationships. And then I was like, I don't want to be in dysfunctional relationship. So I've got to recognize when I'm heading in that direction and then I've got to develop a set of skills to do something else. And I have to get my wife huge credit on this stuff. Like it was interacting with her and in the process of growing multiple businesses, I would ask her a lot of questions. I'm like, so what are you thinking through with this? She's like, well, I'm imagining that we're going to do boom, boom, boom. And I'm like, I can't imagine any of this stuff. And then this is where I told her about the art class and this and that. And so it's been kind of a, you know, peeling the layers back of this whole thing. But it's a, yeah, I guess that's been kind of the process. I definitely, I used to say I had a sign on my back that you said, I'll help you. And I used to totally date those girls, you know. Right. The father figure. Captain Savvaho. Broken wing, I am your answer. Yeah. I just love to fix everybody, right? And it took, like I said, till about 28. Now was Nikki the first woman that wasn't like that for you? Or were there previous relationships where you started to notice that you were starting to put that together? Like, oh, I keep- She's not as messed up as the previous one. Yeah. She's still messed up. There was a little bit of a stepping stone process. Yeah. That's what I noticed. Because Katrina is definitely my rocker. She's been with me for six and a half years. But it took about three other women that weren't just really dysfunctional to lead up to that before I finally feel like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to be with. I'm supposed to be with a partner that actually makes me a better man too, right? My equal versus me always helping and teaching and growing. Yeah. And you know, I got lucky with Nikki. There's this thing called the Chico State Effect because you look at her and you look at me and you're like, I don't see how that works. And also she's smart and she's not crazy and everything. She's super even, Keel. But there tend to be five women for every two men at Chico State University.  So yeah, that works out. Yeah. Yeah. See, we live in San Jose. It was like two, three men for every woman. Yeah, they call that man Jose. I wouldn't do well there. Yeah. It'd be like cell block D, right? And like, okay, it's you and me, man. So exciting. Yeah, excellent. Well, if we can change gears a little bit and go back to nutrition, because I love bending your ear on that topic. Let's talk about the ketogenic diet for a second. Why does a keto type diet seem to work so well for people with autoimmune issues? Because it seems to be, dare I say, one of the better options for people with autoimmune issues or at least it tends to control or help a lot of them. What is it about it? Is it the fact that they're not eating carbohydrates because it can be inflammatory? Is it the ketones, both? You know, so I'll throw a caveat in there. I think that keto has application in some autoimmune contexts, but I think just an autoimmune paleo approach is probably even better. There's some interesting work by a guy, Walter Longo, doing a fasting mimicking diet, which may be even better, like do the autoimmune paleo foods, go the seven days without eating, reintroduce more or less anti-inflammatory foods. But there's clearly, I mean, without a shadow of a doubt, there is a gut permeability issue associated with autoimmune disease. You cannot have autoimmune disease without gut permeability. And now the question becomes, does the autoimmune disease cause the gut permeability or does the gut permeability cause the autoimmune disease? And there may in fact be some push-pull element to that, but this is one of the things that happens. One of the generally underappreciated elements of HIV turning into AIDS, the syndrome recognized as AIDS, is a loss of intestinal barrier function.  And this is why I literally want to choke fuckers to death who do not just at least give this a little airplay. It's like we have a suggested mechanism related to behind cancer and diabetes-related killers. This autoimmune thing is massive, and the treatment for it is piss-poor. So the people who just dismiss it out of hand, I'd literally want to kill them physically with my own two hands. But so if we have a gut permeability issue, then definitely fermentable carbohydrates can be a problem because we get the small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. That can lead to some problems with lipopolysaccharide translocating into the circulation and causing inflammatory problems, liver issues. That's an immune response right there. That's an immune response right there. Then we just have the immunogenic potential of foods, dairy, nuts, tomatoes. This is another thing. There's a couple of popular- If I can just clarify, when you say that to our audience, what you mean is there are foods that just have a higher propensity for an immune reaction. And this is just the fact. There's foods that typically people, if we go extreme and talk about allergy... If you just search, yeah. What are the most allergenic foods? There you go. Okay, thank you. Peanuts, wheat, soy, dairy, you know. And again, it's not say everybody has that, those problems, but a lot of people do. And the autoimmune foods tend to kind of follow and lock step with that list. So tomatoes are an interesting thing. A lot of people just dismiss tomatoes and nightshades that they could be problematic in the least, but yet the alkaloids and the saponins and the constituents that are in tomatoes are oftentimes used as adjuvants for vaccines. Yeah. And there have been people who are renowned for doing research reviews and stuff like that and have completely shit on the notion that nightshades could be problematic in any way.  Now, again, that doesn't mean that all autoimmune disease is triggered by nightshades or tomatoes. Doesn't mean that it always happens, but we have a proposed mechanism. We have all kinds of other supportive data. Can we at least kick the tires on this thing and at a minimum, if somebody's having a problem, say, hey, why don't you try this elimination diet? And I'm actually working on a review right now. There was just a paper that was a pilot study, so there was no control arm in this, but they used an autoimmune paleo diet for irritable bowel disease, which include ulcerative colitis and, oh man, Crohn's disease, and they had a really remarkable result with it. Now we didn't have a control arm, and it was a small number of people, and so people get in and start throwing all these hand grenades at it, but the purpose of the study was to show the potential efficacy and that people would actually adhere to the protocol, and is it worthwhile doing a randomized control trial? And the answer is yes. It's compelling, so yeah. I'm in that world, by the way, because I have a family member with Crohn's, and thank God for the internet. You've got enough people that can gather together and create enough anecdote to where that can drive some research, but also if you have Crohn's disease today or some other autoimmune disease that, like you were saying, Western medicine has shit treatments for it. It's either hammer your immune system with something or suppress the hell out of it, or even give you mild, low doses of chemotherapy, believe it or not, as some of the treatments. So you can go online and see these groups, and this family member found that something called a carbohydrate-specific diet seemed to work really well for people with Crohn's, and really, it literally is eliminating a lot of these foods that tend to have these immune responses, and he went into almost complete remission with his Crohn's from following this type of a diet. But at the same time, the Western medicine doctors or the traditional ones, they don't even seem to acknowledge that there could be a connection between the two at this particular point, and it's very, very frustrating. Oh, it's incredibly frustrating. It's reached a point for me where it's interesting. I ran across some of the lawyers. I think we talked about this a little bit on the last show, but the lawyers that were involved with the tobacco litigation, and we kind of put on their radar this idea about, if you have some sort of dyslipidemia or metabolic syndrome, you're a healthcare provider, and you recommend something other than a low-carb diet, you should be held legally responsible for the deleterious aftereffects, and they're like, oh, dude, this would be easier than tobacco. And in the same vein, any of these autoimmune diseases, it's reached a point where if you are a gastroenterologist, endocrinologist, what have you, and you're ignorant of the fact that there is some therapeutic potential here, because all we're asking people to do is tweak their food, maybe 30, 60 days, see what happens. And I think the number three killer of Americans is medical intervention.  Like, you go to your doctor for something, it should be benign. It's not even abuse. It's just doing exactly what they're telling you to do.   I don't care what your disease or disorder is, I really don't. Food is gonna play some kind of a role. Maybe that doesn't cause it, maybe it doesn't cure it, but it can definitely have an impact.  It's absolutely mind-blowing. Well, this is what we talked about. We did discuss this the last time and I think it's so fascinating that if we're studying an animal, that we just found somewhere, all the stuff that we look into, like their sleep patterns, the food they eat, when they sleep, we're taking that all into account. A human comes in to the doctor's office. And none of it applies. How does that make sense? Why do we do that for some animal across the world that we've never met before and we're trying to figure everything about it? But then if a human comes walking and says, I've got this issue and it's just like, all those things don't matter.  You have poor relationships. You eat terribly. You just have a statin deficiency, like that's the issue, you know? When you give you more statins. Yeah, yeah. So they just had a great research article on statins and it was basically like statins accelerate atherosclerosis. They are a calcifying agent and absolutely no or very, very suspicious justification for reckoning. It's a very narrow, narrow slice of the population that may benefit for statins. But the reason why they're so prescribed is because we made a bit, it's funny too, by the way, because we see this in the supplement industry where they'll take something and then they'll hammer that particular piece of information because they have something that can directly affect that. In other words, let's hammer cholesterol as like, this is the cause of everything. And then, oh, here we go. Take this medication and it fixes your cholesterol numbers and that's the cure. And because we're sold so hard on cholesterol being the cause of everything, now it's easy to prescribe. Well, that reminds me of what we're seeing right now and we called this years ago with the ketogenic diet because now it's become, you know, it's introduced. Now it's awesome. What do we do? Now we make a supplement and we try and do that. What are your thoughts on that? What are your thoughts on, yes, we got to go here, dude. We got to go here. Because we called this, we called it two plus years ago. Two years ago, literally on the podcast, we were talking about it and I said, it's a matter of time before supplement companies jump on the keto bandwagon and then sell you keto supplements. And now that's the thing where I'm seeing it already now. All the celebrities, all the people. Now with beta hydroxybutyrate. Testing their pee to make sure they're in ketosis and taking their supplement to get them in ketosis.   So what was the question now? It's super frustrating for me because I think whatever type of exogenous ketones we're talking about, there's huge therapeutic potential there. Like they vetted a bunch of this stuff out with like Navy SEAL divers and the hyperbaric. We had Dom talk about this. So there's huge therapeutic potential on the one hand, but then it's funny, some of the worst offenders of this stuff of basically suggesting that exogenous ketones are equivalent to being in a ketogenic state and fat burning. Early in their life cycle, this was the messaging. And it was kind of a wink, wink, not nod, but we'll just jam that out through back channel stuff. I've heard that some of these companies have made 60, 70 million dollars a year off this stuff. And so it's kind of like, well, they're a lot more successful than I am, but I have some ethical concerns around that. I have seen screen captures where somebody says, I just ate most of a chocolate cake. I blew my ketogenic diet. What do I do? And they're like, no man, just slam some of the ketone salts and you'll be right back into ketosis. So we're taking somebody and we're going to have sky high blood glucose levels and super high ketone body levels, a state that we only see in the most fucked up of medical scenarios, like diabetic ketoacidone. You don't see that naturally. No, the two should be as antagonistic of one another as you could possibly get.  And I could see some potentially huge problems with that. Now, there are some scenarios where you have somebody who's a high end athlete and there's some suggestion that say like a ketone ester plus elevated glucose levels at the right time, we may get some enhanced performance. Is elite athletic performance completely congruent with health and longevity? Not at all. No, not really. So but we've got a bunch of nuance and caveat with that. And so on the one hand, I really don't want to throw these products out because they could be really efficacious for a wide variety of situations, in particular like this spec ops scene, like those guys need every bit of support that we can throw to them.  But context is so important, right? Like ketones, probably good for you in this context. Change the context in a high carbohydrate situation who knows and maybe not and probably not. Right. And you know, so we could beat up on the ketone, the exogenous ketones, but I see people doing something as injurious and not scientifically credible just in the recommendations of fat bombs for people. So. Just throw this to add this to your diet. Yeah, just, you know, so. We could take a bulletproof coffee for that one. Yeah. It's so weird. 600 calorie coffee in the morning. I don't have to eat for another six hours. So it's a whole change. Yeah. And again, there are situations where that's great, you know. Well, let me say that too. We all use that, right? Right. I do it. I do it. Yeah, but that's on the day that I'm going to probably end up burning 4,000 calories between jujitsu, doing farm work, and everything else. And it's kind of like, yeah, I need that as a prop. But I saw, again, another screen capture where there was a person who was like, I had five cups of coffee today. Each cup of coffee, I had a half a cup of cream in it. And I'm not in ketosis. And I know why it was the 10 grams of sugar that was in the three and a half cups of whole cream. And it is kind of like, no, it definitely wasn't the 1,800 calories that you consume. Now, potentially, that should actually allow you to be in ketosis or whatever. They've been doing this for a while. And the person was reporting that their weight loss is stalled and everything. And they were like, everybody in this group was like, yeah, it's the sugar. It's the sugar. Maybe you could find a lower carb cream or use creme fraiche because it's fermented. And so the carbohydrate's been reduced. That is crazy, Bill. And there are subsections of this ketogenic diet world where they're basically telling you to eat oil because any amount of protein releases an insulin response. And so you're reduced to eating oil. So you get no vitamins, no minerals. Oil is probably satiating up to a point, but protein is arguably more satiating. And it's actually healthy. So I'm in this keto gains camp where it's get pretty reasonably high protein. And high is kind of a relative deal.  Eat as much nutrient dense vegetable matter as you can.  So long as we get an easy caloric deficit introduced with adequate protein and some resistance training, magic is going to happen. Now, speaking of protein, what do you think? Because we're coming from the fitness world and the muscle building world. Protein is the magic, macronutrient. You can't get enough, eat more and more and more. It's better for you. What do you think about occasional protein fasting or going low protein sometimes? I think that's brilliant. And you know, some of the stuff I've been playing with as a result of kind of learning about this stuff. So we've got these dueling banjos of things like mTOR and insulin versus the anabolic effects that we want and whatnot. And Art Devaney, again, I just have to give that guy a hat tip.  He's like dummies, just be intermittent. And so dinner happens at 5 p.m.  Or if you do eat, it's just carbs or it's just fat. And then you go until dinner and then you have another protein meal. And those two protein meals, like for me, if I want like 130, 140 grams of protein total than each of those meals is a half of that. And I've been playing around with that. And I'm like, man, I feel pretty good. And I'm leaner. My performance is good. Oftentimes I just skip that afternoon meal because I just wrapped up JITS. And I'm like, okay, it's 2 o'clock. We're going to eat at 5 p.m. Okay, maybe I'll do a Marxist-ing collagen bar. And I do that. And so I do like a collagen protein in the intermediate. Or I don't do anything. It just seems to me like anything you expose your body to, anything, hormones, food, whatever, over a period of time your body becomes desensitized to it. And it seems like, and there is some evidence, and I can't recite the study unfortunately. I usually can, but I can't remember. But there is some evidence to show that if you consume high protein all the time, very frequently you actually become less efficient with it. And you use it more for energy than for muscle building. There's a couple of studies that showed that actually a single protein meal a day was more anabolic than multiple feedings. Now you need to really get in and eat. Like you've got to have the days allotment, but the body is actually much more efficient with it versus using it as an energy substrate. And so I personally will do one vegan day a week, and it's usually just high vegetable, very low calories, low protein. And I definitely notice an anabolic effect the day after, and I just feel so much better doing it. And protein also in high amounts over frequently all the time can have some, it seems like there's evidence for that it will accelerate signs of aging. So it's probably a good idea. And from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes perfect sense, right? And mTOR is in certain contexts is fantastic, but in the wrong context, that's a pro-cancer. You don't want to necessarily blast mTOR all the time if you're in the wrong context or in the wrong house. So here's a good question for you that might get controversial. What is, and you might hate it, but what is more important, food quantity or food quality? Oh man. My clinical experience in general, if we chase the quality story first, then the quantity story is addressed. And this is what got me kicked out of CrossFit Ultimate. Yeah, their backstory, but this was the sand in the wheels because of the zone and all that type of stuff, which I think is all great. But so on the autoimmune side, and also it's a little bit context-driven, can we weigh and measure ourselves out of autoimmunity? No, not with the wrong foods. And this is part of the problem is that they had looked at a standard American diet and various sliced and diced deals with GI problems with autoimmune disease, and there's like there's no effect of diet on these diseases. And that's, no, that's not the case. There's no effect of the same diet in different ratios on these diseases. So depending on like health condition and disease state, like gastrointestinal issues, autoimmune issues, the food quality may be way more important than the amount. That's everything I would agree.  Okay, we do have some non-ridiculous parameters that we put around this.  I used to say as a trainer, go try.  Good luck.  It could happen, man.  It just seems to me that when you have, when you focus on food quality, your natural signals of satiety and hunger are so much, they're just in better balance. Yeah, and so a really good point of illustration of that is that if we have a skinny kid that's geeked out on paleo and he's lifting weights and he wants to gain weight for football, we may need to tweak that because it's so satiating he won't be able to eat enough calories. And so we actually need to tweak those parameters. It's like, hey, we're gonna throw in some rice. We'll throw in some dairy. We may throw in a slice or two of apple pie here and there just to actually prime that pump because these whole unprocessed foods are so satiating that if we have a situation where somebody needs to consume a significant amount of food, it may not be up to the task. And that is kind of an interesting juxtaposition to this whole thing. So yeah, I mean, I would generally say that the food quality is where it really starts. Now clearly if we want to get to figure competitor level of leanness and stuff like that, we've got to start weighing and measuring food. But yeah, I mean, I'm just a really kind of nervous about like the impending implosion of our economy and our healthcare system due to diabetesity and everybody else is, you know, and so all these guys are like, well, I train MBA players and, you know, you need to weigh and measure food.  When society falls, you don't have to drive food or interlocking grids of fire. I do, so we don't. Yeah, so let me ask you about gluten.  Here's an interesting anecdote I've heard from many, many people, clients, and I've even experienced this myself and I find it very, very strange. I have now, just because now I've been able to identify and eat so much better and take care of my body, I now have what I would consider kind of low level gluten intolerance, although I still have an intolerance to it. However, when I travel to Italy or to Europe, the same gluten there, or maybe it's not the same gluten, but gluten there does not affect me nearly as bad and I've heard this from many, many, many clients. Now my theory or what I'm deducing from this is I know that in the U.S. here, glyphosates are used as a desiccant on wheat many times, so they spray the hell out of wheat and although wheat isn't a GMO, they use the glyphosates to dry them or to get them ready to harvest much quicker, whereas in Europe they don't use that process and if they do, they have to label it. Is that the difference or are we just making things up or is there really an inherent issue with gluten or is it more of the glyphosates or both? So I mean for humans in general, gluten has always been a bit of an issue and when you look at the, if you do, this is always some interesting stuff. You do evolutionary advantage in the disease, so you do evolutionary advantage ciliac and the evolutionary advantage of ciliac disease is that these folks have a disproportionately elevated immune response in the gut and these tend to be people who, if you look at their derivations, tend to come out of these early farming communities where humans started living in proximity to each other and animals and an enhanced gut immune response kept them alive. Now some of the proteins in gluten though trigger an overactive immune response and zonulin release and intestinal permeability so this is the trade off with some of that stuff. So that's A piece. There's an inherent potentiality of this anti-predation chemical in wheat for being problematic. If you look at the European varieties of wheat and the way that they use them in the United States when we make bread and pastry tech products, we use concentrated gluten to enhance those products. So we add more. We are just adding more. Oh, wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, which is kind of an interesting deal. Really interesting story. So in kind of researching this autoimmune paleo diet, I wanted to make a point that it's in its early stages and we just had a pilot study and then things move along and I wanted to show that same historical process for the Mediterranean diet. There was a point in time when nobody knew what a Mediterranean diet was and then somebody suggested this and then there was a review paper, which is the first thing. And then people get curious enough about it to do a pilot study and then it goes from there. Interestingly though, if you go to the Wikipedia page for Mediterranean diet, one of the references there is gluten intolerance. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. There's a link there to a recently done paper that suggests that globally the incidence of gluten intolerance and celiac disease has increased as a consequence of recommending the Mediterranean diet to the world. And so we've recommended wheat. So this was interesting. This is a whole other like rabbit hole that I've gone down and they mentioned both the potential of the glyphosate issue and also just the fact that the type of wheat that we use in the wheat-containing products we tend to enhance. If you assume gluten to be a potentially toxic substance, which completely fits all the parameters of that, it's non-hyperbolic. It's not unscientific. That's all those definitions. And we add more to it than we're increasing the toxicant load. We tend to do more antibiotics in the United States than elsewhere. We have more C-sections. So you've got got dysbiotic issues. There was a study and I'm sorry I'm bouncing around. No, I love it. No, no, keep going. Big picture. It's fascinating. There was a study where they took kids with celiac and they did a fecal transplant on them. And I think like eight out of the 10 kids then were no longer celiac. So they could eat gluten and not have the celiac reaction. So we have enzymes that can break down different nutrients, but we kind of forget that these gut bacteria that ride along with us, they can do a hell of a job processing different nutrients. And so is a bunch of the problem that we have just lost a microbiotic constituent that could help degrade this stuff? I think it's all of these things. The interesting thing about the Roundup story is the Roundup is suspected to be mitochondrial toxin, mitochondrial disruptor. And so in addition to just the celiac or non-celiac gluten sensitivity issues that we see, these folks tend to have a bunch of other interrelated problems, you know, kind of multiple chemical sensitivities, which deals with detox, that, you know, liver mitochondrial activity and all the other, you know, organelles that are involved with that. So there's a lot of different moving parts to this thing. And but I have heard consistently that people will go from Italy to here, eat our wheat products, and they're like, dude, that crushed me. Or conversely, they go to Italy or somewhere else in Europe. They have a scone or some, you know, whatever there and they don't have a problem. I kept hearing it from my clients and I experienced it myself when I went there and ate the bread and the pasta. And I would expect, I was expecting like this major reaction and I didn't have one. Right.  And then when I came back. You thought it was glycophage, right? So that's great. Well, I mean, I'm just trying to put, you know, pieces together to figure out why this would be the case. And if it's the glyphosphate issue, then I would be, it would be unlikely that you would experience that immediate kind of GI response because the glyphosphate, to my understanding, takes some time and it's more this mitochondrial disruptor deal. So that in that situation, I would be leaning more towards. Towards the more gluten. That makes absolutely perfect sense. So very interesting. And then going back, there was a topic, there was something I did want to bring up when we were talking about the exogenous ketones. So I've done very, very well keto-ish because I tend to have autoimmune issues when it comes to my digestion. Although recently I seem to have gotten a lot better and I'll get into that in just a second. But I've always, I've messed around with the exogenous ketones and I noticed if I pushed my exogenous ketone consumption along with a ketogenic diet to the point where I had really high levels of ketones, I would be far more susceptible to fungal infections. Oh, interesting. And I did do a little bit of research and I found that some certain funguses can feed off of ketones. And so although you may be killing off some bacteria that may be doing some harm to you, you may be feeding other things that may cause problems. It just goes to show that balance is very, very important. Oh, that's fascinating. I mean, a few people like Grace Lu and God, Mike, I can't believe him. Ruchio? Ruchio, yeah, God. Oh yeah, good friend of ours.  But both of those people have mentioned small intestinal fungal overgrowth as being this thing that is like flying under the radar and like the biofilms and all that type of stuff. But I had not.  Ketones. With ketones. With that many. Because I was pushing them through the roof and I did it several times and every single time I'd get athlete's foot, which I never get. And I have no reason. Yeah.  Pretty crazy. And then more recently I did, which seems to be, okay, so, you know, Mike's recommendation, right? Wasn't this? Mike recommended this to me, Dr. Ruchio. So my diet dialed, you know, in terms of I know what I can eat, what I can't eat, what's going to work for me. You know, sleep was good. Exercise was good. But still always hypersensitive, still always if I have a little bit of too much of this or that or I don't have enough vegetables, I'm going to have gut problems.  And he recommended that I do a course of antimicrobial, you know, herbs or whatever. And I did these. You know, I did the exact same protocol with like the Saccharomyces balardae. And the, there's like eight different bottles that you end up with. And so I started with the fast. And then I took these, you know, these supplements.  Although I don't know if that's a real thing, but where I had this kind of reaction for a couple of days. And then I felt better. And I did that twice. And I swear to God, my gut has never been better or healthier.  And you did the same thing. I did the same thing. And how did it work for you? You know, it's funny. So I did it for a month and I felt good up until a month. I was heading into month two and then I felt crushed. Like it felt terrible. So I went off of it and I would have some kind of ups and downs. And then I did a month of keto while I was rehabbing my, my MCL strain. And, and it's interesting during that time, I doing some work with the Tommy Woods at a Nersh Bounds Thrive. And so they did some stool samples and everything. They sent me the report on it. And I don't really know how to interpret these things, but they're like, dude, this is the healthiest gut we've seen out of working with like 2000 people. And like, dude, if mine's the healthiest gut, like all these other people were probably like nearly dead. But it was after doing this, this intervention. And since then, my carb tolerance has been better. Like I still definitely have certain things, you know, like carrots I do great with, apple sauce I do well with, raw apples, they don't digest. And I'm like 2D fruity, you know, two hours after eating them. And they just, nothing good happens with it. What I noticed, which was really fascinating, was up until this point, my stimulant tolerance was poor. Like I'd have caffeine. My stimulant tolerance is better. Now, what is that? Do you think it's just the cortisol response? And maybe because the immune reaction, is it so strong? Cause I literally could handle 100 milligrams of caffeine. And that was it anymore. And I would be anxious and just feel terrible. And now it's like caffeine, it just feels great.  So I'm never going to be that like take. I'm the same way the whole liver enzyme is. Yeah, yeah. But I mean the, I don't know, but it definitely like that. Corticosteroid kind of, kind of release under a stress scenario. Definitely like if we, if we just have intestinal permeability, that is a low grade stress. And we're going to have a cortisol response, coming about that. And also the liver is impacted that way because it's dealing with LPS. So some of the detox pathways are dealing with the cellular byproducts of the bacterial fermentation and whatnot. And so if the liver in its different pathways, potentially, but if the liver is super bogged down dealing with this, then it may be less able to deal with the caffeine. Wow, that's very fascinating. So before we sign off, I have to ask you your opinion.  I know you did a thing on it. And it's a little old news now. We've hammered it to death, but our audience is like, you got to ask Rob. Man, so on the one hand, the greatest frustration I have with these guys is that they did a really, really good job of uncovering the relationship between these mega corporations and our food supply. That part of the film is spot on and is bulletproof. And whether you're vegan or not, the thing that is damaging about the way they handle things, they just wantonly ignored or misrepresented a huge number of scientific papers.  She can't make a movie that looks this nice and be dumb. So these people aren't dumb, but they were duplicitous and what they ended up doing in the process. So one of the examples, like they cited a study about dairy products, increasing cancer. I forget what one of the points was. One, it's a food frequency questionnaire deal, which I just put no credit in those things.  Low fat dairy was problematic and they didn't distinguish between the two. So that is wantonly nefarious. There's something really problematic there. But let's just back up a little bit and say that all the vegan land stuff is correct, more or less. But they misrepresent this data, but then they were right about the collusion between corporations and our food supply and all these problems. When they get the science wrong and they are easily verified as lying about the science, then the good work that they did in exposing the food industry is also thrown out. So this is the problem of turning anything like veganism into a religion such that you ignore the facts because these guys could have kind of a credible position to go in and we start saying, hey, we need to decouple the big money from our food supply and farm subsidies need to go away. And you could have a really credible position with that if you treat the science properly. But because they did a shitty treatment of the science and their message about the bigger picture of corporatism as it relates to our food supply, it's just gone. It has no credibility. And there was actually a vegan registered dietitian, masters of public health, who did almost as lengthy a takedown of the movie as I did and she raised exactly the same concerns. And the irony to me is pointing out the cronyism in the food supply, but then forgetting that some of the biggest... Well, they were saying it was all the meat owners, the meat suppliers.  They own the meat. They own the wheat. They own the sugar. It's not separated.  Yeah. To us, we interpreted it as a vegan propaganda in the sense that they were very driven by the moral opposition to eating meat. And so they're trying to make a case to get everybody stopped eating meat, but it's not based on health.  So let's try and lie to everybody. Oh, and you draw parallels to what was eggs and cigarettes.  Right. And you know, I don't know if you guys want to unpack all that stuff, but there was a tiny subset of people that were hyper responders to dietary cholesterol. And it... But even then, this begs the question. We just had this statin, you know, discussion. So there are some people who are hyper responders to cholesterol and so... And I mean, again, it's a really, really small piece of the overall pie. But if they consume eggs, they do get an elevation in cholesterol levels, which still begs the question, did it just raise cholesterol? Is it bad? Lipoproteins, does it have any bearing on anything, particularly because you're supplying choline and lecithin and antioxidants in the egg, even the shittiest eggs have some remarkable nutritional quality.  And they extrapolated it to the totality of the population and said everybody responds exactly the same way and that it's correlated to like a 15, you know, cigarette a day habit.  So I guess it is worth it. Well, this one actually, and I think why we came out, did an episode and we've talked about it and probably hammered it to death was, I was surprised on how much, how many people it impacted. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was, I was my phone and messages and seeing people all said, oh, I'm going vegan now. And I was like, oh, my God, really sheep. Everybody, come on, seriously. Right. Cigarettes, eggs, come on, that right away. And we're racist. If we eat pork or something like that. That was my favorite one. But, but definitely this will get the listeners shipped down. But I mean, if you can politicize anything right now and try to make it a race or gender issue. Oh, gosh. Then it's there in, in. Just when I thought I couldn't like you anymore. You say something like that. Well, in, in. Dividing conquer. Let's, let's be honest. If you show me a Republican vegan or a conservative vegan, then what you are showing me is someone who probably saw an animal slaughtered in their youth. And they just can't even deal with the thought of eating meat. It's got nothing else to do with anything. But I mean, the, the, the political divide in this, this whole story. So it's interesting, like the global warming stories and, and God, the social justice kind of element to it. But dude, that's sexy. And if you, if you even just try to have a discussion about it. I'm not even saying arguing, but if you just ask some questions like, well, better educate me on this.  Okay. And, and got it. I don't know if you guys have followed any of the Jordan Peterson stuff. You know, like Rogan and all that jive. Like people don't appreciate that this, there's a constant cycling and backlash. And when the kind of lunatic fringe left goes crazy, there's a chunk of kind of centrist individuals that migrate to the right and migrate to the right. And then what they've done is anybody who is, there's a race to the bottom in the, the marginalization deal. So I don't know, you could be a little ethnic possibly. So you are more marginalized than I am because I'm clearly whitey whitey whiter kins. So we've got a layer there. You talking about the oppression Olympics? Yeah, the oppression Olympics.  So just having a pulse and then you start peeling people. And what's scary is the right is well armed, well organized.  No, it's crazy, but yeah.  I don't blame you. We're going to stop soon only because I'll get going with you. And this will try to do something completely different. But yeah, if you can politicize, they will politicize anything including diet because if you ask the average person, how does a liberal typically eat or how does a conservative typically eat?  So anyway, man, always, always a pleasure talking. Honor being with you guys. Excellent, brother. Well, thanks again. Thank you guys. Excellent. So go to YouTube, check out Mind Pump TV. There's a new video posted every single day. Also, we're still offering 30 days of coaching. It's for free. It's at mindpumpmedia.com. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. 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Next question is from Joey0089. What are your thoughts on primal movement or animal flow?  I did.  Yeah, in my gym. I guess I was picking up on, because they all went to the animal flow certification and kind of brought back a lot of these movements. And I thought it was interesting. I thought it was like, how the hell am I going to incorporate this with clients? Because it's pretty out there in terms of getting people to subscribe to the idea of crawling and moving in all these weird directions. But I mean, I understand the concept of it in terms of applying positions that are challenging, whether in a static pose or now with movement, where I'm trying to connect everything. I'm trying to get more body awareness and be able to have more command over my body. It's really challenging and it's hard. A lot of people don't like to stay in that position where you're in sort of a quadruped type position and then do these types of crawling patterns. It's really challenging. But it's interesting because it's a totally different way to train your body. It's really inclusive of the entire system. And so I think that there's validity in it. But in terms of kind of contrasting that with lifting weights, we're so robotic and focused on either single joints or just sagittal plane type exercises that this totally is a shock for people. So it takes a lot of practice. That's why I think it's phenomenal. So I haven't gone through the certification. I've practiced some of the movements that you'll find in animal flow. It was towards the end of my training career, so I haven't used it a lot with clients. But I tell you what, this is something that I could see myself. I went on a mobility kick. I've gone on a bodybuilding kick. I've gone on a strength kick for a while. I'll go on these kicks where I'm just going to focus on something and get really good at it. I think there would be tremendous benefit to somebody like saying, I'm just going to get good at this animal flow. I think that, one, you're going to get some muscle from it. Obviously, if your goal is to build maximal muscle, it's not the most optimal way for you. Obviously, bodybuilding type of routine, strength routine is going to build more muscle. But you will get some muscle from it. But more than anything else, you're going to work on your movement. And Justin, you were alluding to, your entire body working together and then moving in all these different planes. So your joint mobility and health I think would be phenomenal from going through this. Yeah, just familiarizing yourself with being placed in a position that you wouldn't normally find yourself in throughout the day. So to be able to work your way out of that with strength, I think that's really interesting. And I think a lot of people could benefit from that because most injuries are going to occur when your body's in a position you're not familiar with and then now what happens is you try to gain stability really hard in one direction while your body might be turning or moving in another direction and then boom, you're caught off guard. Well, it reminds me of the feeling that I have right now from talking about wakeboarding. I mean, my body was contorted in a way that it hadn't been contorted in a very long time and I was reminded of that by how sore I am right now and just by doing movements like that probably would have prevented the way I feel today had I been doing things like that. Yeah, I think it's important though we kind of discern between the primal patterns and animal flow because they are different. Yeah. Primal patterns refers to movement patterns that we consider to be fundamental to humans, the human animal. Walking, squatting. So there's squatting, lunging, there's bending or hip-hinging, twisting, which would be like throwing, for example, that's which is a fundamental movement, pulling, pushing. Pulling, pushing, crawling. And then gait, walking, jogging or sprinting. I'm a huge proponent of primal pattern movements. In fact, the most effective exercises with weights that you could do from a muscle building, fat burning, body sculpting perspective. They don't have crawling? No, not on the primal patterns. That's interesting. Tend to be around these primal patterns, right? If you think of all the most effective exercises that we talk about, they're either squatting, lunging, bending, twisting, pulling, pushing, or have to do with gait, right? So there's that. Then when it comes to animal flow, that's a little bit different. Animal flow is more... Break dancing moves. That's the easy way to describe it. Well, animal flow is more stuff that's quadruped on hands and knees, crawling, gorilla, bear, that kind of stuff. I think that what they try to do is hark back to before maybe we became too laggy. You're emulating a lot of animals that aren't upright, and so you're trying to move where you're getting scapular involvement with your walking, with your hands, and your bending, and being able to stabilize your body in that position. Yeah, so if I was to rate both of them, I'd say primal movement patterns. I believe to be much more valuable, that doesn't mean that animal flow movements don't have a lot of value because getting on the floor, moving with hands and knees, doing these kinds of movements is going to work on mobility, just naturally, because you're on the floor, you're twisting, you're turning, you're using your hands and knees. It is going to work on wrist mobility, shoulder mobility, hip mobility, spinal mobility. It's going to help you get your body to communicate with itself differently. Just by practicing those movements, you're going to get better at moving overall. So I think they both have a lot of value, but if I had to pick one to focus on, the primal movement patterns just have a longer history of evidence. I think primal movement is mandatory. I think that's a mandatory one, and then animal foundational. Yeah, and then animal flow to me would be a cool, fun focus. If you wanted to get into something that's unique and different, that would have all kinds of these benefits that maybe you weren't aware of, like somebody who deals with chronic joint pain and tight and all the time, like going in, practicing animal flow and maybe less focused on building a bunch of maximal muscle inside the gym and doing that instead, you would see tremendous benefit from that. I look at it too, it's a progression of challenging your mobility, the after view of established that you're stable. So it's like, now I want to be able to actually work on strengthening it even more without just using it as maintenance. I want to challenge it. And I look at it the same way with macebells and Indian clubs and things like that that are unconventional, but it provides this fluidity of movement that's loaded. And so you're using like loaded because you're using gravitational forces being in this quadruped position. So it's really challenging, it's hard, and it's interesting that way.