The TOP FOODS That Melt Fat, Build Muscle & Prevent CHRONIC DISEASE! | Stan Efferding

Six out of seven people who go on a diet lose weight. It's pretty simple. It's not easy. People don't adhere long-term to diet. About 90 plus percent of people gain the weight back within 3 years. Having said all of that, if you're overweight, significantly overweight, obese, probably a BMI exceeding 30, 35, 95% of the health benefits that you'll realize are strictly from the weight loss itself, irrespective of the diet. Stan Efferding, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I'm really excited. So, changing your body composition is one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life. It's also, when I think about mindset and I think about entrepreneurship, if I could give anybody the gift, it would be to get them to go into the gym to change their body, because you really realize in a super tactile way that change is possible, because the mind is so invisible that if you've never gone through a body transformation, it's I think difficult for people to believe in the depth of change that's possible. Tell me a little bit about your background. Did you start Obviously, I know the punchline, but did you start big? Did you start small? Like, how did you get to the the muscle mass we see today? I wrestled 98 lb in high school. As a freshman, sophomore, I was 106 as a junior, 115 106 as a junior? As a senior, I weighed 115. Oh, how tall were you? I was almost 6 ft. I was reasonably close to Yeah, I don't think I gained about another inch or 2 my senior year. I had a late uh onset puberty. I was eating terrible. I was working at 7-Eleven the whole time I was 12 years old, and so my food choices consisted of the hot dogs and the the nachos with the pump cheese and soda pop. And that's what I was happening. on the same diet. I'm excited. it didn't help me much for I I think that was probably the primary driver of the delayed onset puberty was the fact that I wasn't sleeping very well cuz I was working a swing shift and getting up in the morning going to school. Probably put in you know till midnight or so before I got home. And then eating like that. So I didn't have the foundation for my body even to to grow. A lot of folks consider that to be just a matter of of timing of genetics but I think that your body has to have the the right substrate. But if you're a a lean athlete that is trying to continue continuously year round cut weight to meet the lighter weight class such as in the case of wrestlers like we mentioned in the case of distance runners even gymna- gymnasts, ballerinas those kinds of sport that that put a high priority on on weight loss especially through puberty the time at which you should be accumulating the most bone mineral density which is a a finite time. It's not like you can you can continue to do that. It generally your bone mineral density the bulk of it is acquired through your teen years. Dude, childhood freaks me out because it is so there are mistakes that you can make that are either impossible to unwind or nearly impossible to unwind whether that's psychological which is what I spend a lot of time thinking about or physiological. That's pretty terrifying. We were talking before we started rolling camera about the bifurcation between men and women. Is there a bigger Do you have a bigger concern for either sex in terms of puberty and weight loss or is it sort of universal just be careful? Women tend to suffer from the osteoporosis at a greater rate. So to rob them of calories is more likely to have bone density issues. It's not just calcium like you said it's calories it's protein and it's resistance training that those that those together will optimize the accumulation of bone mineral density. Because you need need put the bones under stress in order to get that formation. And have protein as well. And there's some other micronutrients, you know, that help with accumulation of bone mineral density. And there's a finite period under which that is is the bone mineral density is accumulated. And then it kind of just deteriorates over time as you age. And and then the idea would be that you would maintain it as long as possible. And if if you're starting with that kind of foundation, uh particularly with the say the distance runners or the the wrestlers, uh then you'll have less you'll have accumulated less and so that earlier in your adult years, you'll you may experience some problems associated with osteoporosis. So, I'm looking at you. You weren't huge in high school. You've obviously not only gotten massive, but incredibly strong, known as the strongest bodybuilder, um set insane records for physical strength. How much do you think though that one, when did you start lifting? And how much as kids should we be laying down like the tendon strength, the ligament strength so that we can build the big muscle? Or cuz I didn't start lifting until I was in my 20s. And I do worry sometimes that um as much as that has been beneficial because now I can add muscle quite quickly. Like if I'm really focused for 3 weeks, the difference in my physique is crazy. Um whereas somebody who didn't spend their 20s lifting as much as I did, they're probably going to struggle more. But do you think that I have done myself dirty by not starting even younger? I don't think so at all. Now, if you're going to compete in athletics, it's good to have a as a teenager in high school and college, it's good to have a foundation. Uh the foundation would be uh mostly in uh in the kind of coordination movements, uh say dips, chin-ups, sprinting. It's not just weight training. Strength is an important component, speed is an important component. I think sprinting's probably the single best exercise for a youth. Hm. The single best more than I would believe squats and this is coming from a powerlifter who who thinks squats is the best thing. Uh well, because it's so dynamic to begin with. It also increases your nervous system's ability uh cuz sports performance isn't just strength, it's speed strength. Okay, it's velocity. And that's really what helps when you have kids sprinting that helps them with neural adaptation and recruitment and coordination and every time you sprint, you got to remember that you got rotation and anti-rotation going on in your torso, which is fantastic for your core, which is, you know, hundreds of muscles that act like guidelines for a tower that are intended to resist movements, not necessarily bend and flex. Uh so, you're building all of that. Coordination, uh that the speed I think is is huge. Plus, running is very dynamic. And again, I mentioned the the force production from landing, the decelerating force from landing when sprinting, if you look at pounds per square inch, is extraordinary. Uh but at the ankle, at the knee, so you're you're putting the kind of stress that is going to force them to adapt and start to develop, you know, stronger joints, muscles, obviously. Uh so, I I just think it's a probably the single best movement if you were going to pick one. Uh and then other than that, uh you know, coordination and balance. Although some of that is suggested you probably you have acquired by the time you're six or younger. Uh so, that's little kids who do skateboards and uh and snowboarding uh tend to have such great balance as they get older because it's something that's harder and harder to train as you age. And some people suggest that once you get past 10, 12 years old, you really can't do much with your balance and coordination. Really? See, that's what I'm talking about. Like that that really bothers me. I don't like that answer, Stan, that so much of this comes down to really doing things when we're young. So, all right, as a parent, as somebody who's just absolutely radically transformed your own physique, and you think about, okay, sprinting is the single most important thing if we're only going to do one thing, but as you look at your kids on balance, I know you believe in sleep hugely, so we'll set that aside for a second. We'll just assume that your kids are eating a healthy diet. What are the things like that you think about laying down the foundations so that later they can really do something extraordinary. Is it focusing on hitting a certain level, like being able to bench press twice your body weight by the time you're 18? Like, are there any sort of things like that that you think set people up for success? I don't think so, especially for young boys, primarily because until they have achieved puberty and start to have an increase in testosterone, they're not going to get a significant improvement in lean muscle mass. Uh they're they're going to have, you know, certainly some growth, but it's not going to be as significant as it was through puberty. So, I'm working on things like coordination, speed, maybe just going through those movements, having them learn the basics of a push-up, of a chin-up, uh of a squat. You know, there's your push, pull, legs right there, and that's and that's really what the foundation would be. The big thing is is the consistency at that point, and building the habits uh because, you know, as they get older, generally what happens is is is they may be uninterested, uh or not have the discipline or the consistency that's needed to to be able to progress, because the progression isn't about any one workout or a week or a month even. It's about consistently doing this year-round. The big piece, uh I think, for for kids is to make it fun. And I'm opposed to specializing at an early age, uh meaning having them do one thing year-round. You can get some repetitive strain injuries. We see this in gymnasts in particular with the, you know, tendon surgeries and the carpal tunnels. We see it even in 10-year-old badminton players who blow out lateral collateral ligaments just from repetitive strain from doing the same thing over and over again. And And so, continue to involve them year-round in sporting activities. And now they're staying active. They're They're continuing to get stronger, more coordinated, uh better habits, better conditioning, you know, it's another piece of this uh this whole thing is is to make sure that their their cardiovascular fitness is is continually supported throughout the year. And so, the kids that participate in sports year-round, you pick different sports, you know, they can do gymnastics or track or play soccer or football, but there's no off-season per se because you keep them involved in something. Uh and that will help them progress. I think also in the 10,000-hour rule they talked about at what age do kids get involved with more time in sports and better coaching. We looked at that in terms of hockey players born in January and February seem to bring up, you know, consist of the bulk of your pro hockey players in Canada. Explain that cuz when I read that, that made all the sense in the world to me. I think it's utterly fascinating. Well, kids can't start playing hockey in Canada until they're 6 years old. Well, are they 6 years old or they 6 years and 11 months old? Right. And chronological age and physiological age is is very different, especially at that age. A kid that's 6 years 11 months may be physiologically far ahead of a kid that's just 6 years old. And so, that kid's going to get recruited first because he's bigger, stronger, faster than the younger kid. And then that kid is going to be able to play on the teams that have more ice time, better coaches, more practices than the other kids. And so, what you find is is then again, as in the other examples, that compounds over time. Just more hours, better coaching, better facilities, etc. And so that by the time they're 10, 11, 12 years old, they're way ahead of the ones who were you know, playing part-time. And And so that's to me. It's a year-round thing. And it it doesn't have to be these balls to the wall workouts. You know, you're coming in it's access to the coaches like you said. And then also there's the psychological component of I'm bigger, I'm stronger cuz they don't get it, right? They don't think about, "Oh, wait, yeah, I guess I am 11 months older." They just know I'm better. And then they start getting more attention. And that the confidence that builds from that. This episode is sponsored by Future. Go to tryfuture.co/impact to get your first month for only $19. You can also click the link at the top of the episode description. Now, enjoy the episode. And in fact, I'll What was it? So, for the gains that you've had, which are just utterly extraordinary, what made you so interested that you kept pushing? And what do you think has been the key to your success other than consistency? Let's take that off the table. Yeah. Well, first and foremost, I fell in love with the sport of bodybuilding. I I was 140-lb 18-year-old freshman in college. And I I really, you know, I picked up a magazine and I I'd always wanted to be bigger, stronger, uh and have a a better physique. It just you saw it and you responded. Yeah, my soccer coach asked me to go lift weights that summer because I was a little light for the team. I was undersized for a soccer player, for a collegiate soccer player. And I just fell in love with it. I really liked lifting. I liked the way it made me feel. I liked seeing the little gains. More than anything, I liked seeing the weight progress. We use that intentionally as coaches with our clients. If we can get them in and find something measurable that they can progress at in a very rapid pace of time, which happens mostly from neurological adaptation, as you know. Somebody just begins to learn a deadlift, they'll get stronger at it every single week. You know, you deadlift them two, three times a week. They get stronger every single workout. Do they get stronger or do they get better at the movement, more coordinated, more skilled? We call neural adaptation. They learn to recruit the muscles and fire. That is how we lock people in to the passion of weightlifting is by showing them progress. And we use that strategically better than say a Metcon. You know, they're going to go in and do battle ropes and jump around and breathe hard, which is not a terribly effective way to lose Do you think that's because psychologically we're wired to get turned on by strength? I don't know what it is, but I see it like even in CrossFitters who who either switch over or often on the side will compete in powerlifting. And it's something about that feeling so powerful and the progression. This this week I did 200 lb and next week I did 210, next week I did 230. I'm going to try 240 next time. It never ends. It's coming from a powerlifter competed for over 30 years. You know, what's next? It never ends. Whatever your total was or whatever your lift was, it's like you're thinking about can I get this? What headspace do you go into when you're doing like a just a brutal lift? You know, I look at everything in terms of repeating the same movements. I do the exact thing that I did in practice. So for you it's clinical. You're not like in rage mode, I'm going to [ __ ] tear these weights apart. You're not imagining anything. It's just some evidence that smiling as opposed to frowning can actually have an adverse impact on your strength output and clenching your fists. There is some evidence to suggest that that those kinds of behaviors or making a loud noise. for sure you were going to say the opposite and I was like, "Oh my god, that's so contrary to how it feels to me." But I never hyped myself up for a particular lift. Yeah, I I just I've always been OCD my whole life. ADHD as a kid. And so I I used to count my steps and have ticks and you know, I did things repetitively my whole life. And so when I got into bodybuilding it was perfect for me. Sets and reps and workouts and and all these different blocks the meals, the timing of everything, you know, eat every 3 hours, prep your meals, go to the gym at the same time, you're doing everything's all mapped out, the reps times sets times weight, the progression over time. you the consistency is the superpower. magic for me because it it preoccupied my my OCD behaviors. It it it gave me an outlet to do things repetitively that that I could you know, progress with over time. to channel rage. Like for me in the beginning the only way I could motivate myself to lift because whatever the dopamine rushes that people get from either exercise or lifting, I don't get it. But to imagine somebody attacking my wife and not being able to stop them was insanely motivating. And so my wife and I would go lift at the same time and I would literally just stare at her and think about protecting her and having to be strong enough to defend her. And of course I probably would have been way better off putting all that time and energy into learning jujitsu or something like that, but it worked. And so learning to capture anger, to foment it, to channel it and then to your point about progress, 100%. Like when you see yourself getting stronger, like it's really cool. There's something super addictive and this feels very sad saying to you, but at my height I was deadlifting 385 lb. And I remember thinking, I can bend over and pick up almost 400 lb. Like that's crazy. Like that felt so cool. And so for me deadlifting was like the most fun thing I ever did. Um and that sense of being strong is really cool. Yeah. You said something interesting there. You talked about channeling that same kind of behavior into business. And I said before when people ask me about my success in business, I've said that anybody who has been very successful in say bodybuilding or powerlifting or some sport with the the discipline, the consistency, and the time management that's involved in that, if they applied that same amount of time, and effort, and consistency, and time management into any income producing Like when I look at Schwarzenegger and what he accomplished, and you hear him talk about exactly what you're saying. Like, "Well, this is exactly what I was doing in the gym, and that was the thing that made me good, and you understand you can change, and that you have to be insanely consistent, and work way harder than you ever think you're going to have to." And then you watch him channel that into a gazillion areas, and it's like, "Why aren't more people doing that?" I think it's the goal. I think it's harder to see, you know, if you say you my goal is I want to make a million dollars. It's not specific enough. It's hard to break that down. Uh there are setbacks, obviously. It always takes longer and costs more than you ever anticipate that it will. I mean, you can make an Excel spreadsheet say anything, and it would be like, "Oh, this is awesome." Uh the goals in bodybuilding and powerlifting, etc., are shorter term. I'm going to compete in this event 3 months from now. Very measurable, easy to break that down, go to the gym, creates a sense of urgency because you told everybody you're going to compete, and you certain numbers that you want to achieve. And then as soon as you do that, there's you set another one. And so I'm not sure that people identify a specific enough goal, and then break down the steps to get to that goal that are in achievable chunks because people are looking at the finish line instead of the journey. And I think that is probably what impairs people's ability to to to progress in business. Uh that and obviously there's a lot of unknowns there. This is pretty we pretty well know uh now in bodybuilding powerlifting what you know, is required to progress. And your progression is is only going to really be limited by your genetic predisposition. Um not you know, by doing things wrong. Cuz it's it's pretty simple pattern. Get into a business. Give us the pattern. We'll come back to business, which I'm very intrigued by how much you've been successful at both. But what is that sort of base set? If somebody wants to really get big and strong, what do they have to do? Well, I said that the caveat being is we know now. I've always said if I knew then what I know now. In 1985 when I started bodybuilding, we didn't have all the science we have today. I used to think because we didn't have the internet back in 1985, I went to the gym and the guy behind the counter was jacked and he was getting ready for a bodybuilding show and he he was eating tuna fish out of a can and some rice cakes. So, ding ding ding, I'm you know, let me take this one step back. I'm this 115-lb kid and and as a senior in high school and I go out to my uncle's farm in Pennsylvania that winter. And uh I was eating at 7-Eleven every day and all of a sudden the neighbors got a uh a dairy farm and I'm going down and I'm getting bottles of of raw milk with cream on the top like this that you have to shake. And they're making every single day my uncle is making steak and my grand and my aunt is cooking bacon in lard and I'm eating, you know, potatoes and steak and bacon and eggs and and raw milk. Next thing you know, I'm 140. 135. I put on like 20 lb, went through puberty during that time frame because I gave my body what it needed. More sleep. Uh it was winter time, got dark, we worked uh in the fields on his farm during the day, and then at night I would sleep. I would sleep longer hours and more soundly than ever before. Sleep in, you know, until I woke up rather than on my alarm to get up for school at 6:00 a.m. Uh and I grew for the first time uh significantly, put on 20 lb. Wow. So, I get to college after eating steaks and raw milk and eggs and and potatoes every day. And I see these guys eating tuna fish and rice cakes. I switch to tuna fish and rice cakes cuz this guy's a bodybuilder and I want to be a bodybuilder. And then I get Arnold Schwarzenegger's Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding and I start training 2 hours a day, 7 days a week, you know, every single exercise you can imagine that's in that encyclopedia. So, I'm overtraining and I'm undereating. I also thought that the stronger I got, the bigger I would get, which now we have plenty of evidence to suggest that that's also not the case. Uh that the amount of weight you lift is not nearly as important as a as a host of other factors. We call volume load, sets times reps times weight, then the range of motion. It's also a critical component. And so, I had everything ass-backwards for about 2 years. I went from about 140 lb to 158 lb in 2 full years. And I competed in my first bodybuilding show at 158 lb at 6 ft tall. That's not a big guy. Right. Yeah, that's certainly not anywhere near my goal of trying to become a pro bodybuilder, which at 6 ft I would need to be 240, 250 in order to accomplish that goal. So, I was a long way off and I of course at every turn had people laughing and telling me that that was a ridiculous goal. Uh and so, I spent, you know, the next 10 years uh gradually growing, but fortunately after that first show, the promoter was also a gym owner and a competitor, and he said, "Look, you need to flip the script. You need to train less and eat more." So, what we know now is that you obviously need to be in a calorie surplus. You have to get a sufficient amount of protein, generally about a gram of protein per pound of body weight. Uh and the training students Per body weight or lean ideal lean muscle mass? As ideally goal weight or lean weight, particularly for, you know, people who are significantly have a BMI over 30, that would be sufficient in order to maintain lean body mass when dieting, etc. But if you're athletic individual, you know, if you're a high school athlete and and you've got, you know, at least four pack, shoot for a gram of protein per pound of body weight. Just shoot for it. Uh, I I think that that you can go up to as high as, say, 1.2 and still see, although it's kind of gradually tapers off, uh, an improvement in in lean mass accretion uh, from what most of the research has shown us. Uh, more recently 2 years, I did 2 g per pound of lean body mass. It was hateful. Yeah, it's hard to like chicken. Oh god, it was so horrible. It's hard. Uh, Dr. Jose Antonio from the International Society of Sports Nutrition has done a lot of protein overfeeding studies. And he had the dropout rates for people trying to eat 2 g of protein per pound of body weight is there's hardly anybody stays in the program. And they have to be down in protein shakes to your sick of eating. It's unbelievable. It's actually a strategy that we utilize to help people with weight loss. The more protein you want to eat, eat all you want. Eat all the chicken breast and top sirloin steak and lean meats that you want. If you're hungry, are you hungry or are you bored or are you stressed? Because if you have to sit down and eat 40 g of protein, uh, are you still hungry? Yeah. Real fast, you're not. Yes. Has a high thermic effect of food. It has a very, uh, high satiety effect. And so, we push protein first with weight loss for those very reasons. It's a strategy that we utilize to help people with hunger and primarily. Also very beneficial for blood sugar control, as we were talking earlier to your assistant. Um, one of the primary things you do to try and control blood sugars is get at least 30% of your daily intake with protein. Uh, and then you the protein first in the meal. It has a ameliorating effect on uh, postprandial glycemia, which is the elevation of blood sugars after a meal. And there's some other strategies and we get too far off of the side with that, but so we do have uh, with respect to hypertrophy, a pretty good Hypertrophy is getting big muscles. Getting big muscles. We do know you need to be in a calorie surplus. You need to get sufficient protein. And then you need to start going down this list of evidence-based hypertrophy guidelines that uh, that we we see in the research. You want to train everybody part twice a week. You want to get about 10 to 20 sets per body part per week. That's kind of a minimum effective volume and a maximum recovery volume. You want to generally train in the You can get just as big training heavy at five reps as you can training moderately at 10 to 12 reps as you can training with light weights at 20 reps, presuming you take each set to within a rep or two of failure. Having said that don't buy into like that you have to go all the way to failure. No, you don't. The research has shown us that now, too, that that there's a stimulus to fatigue ratio. You know, if you go to failure, you're going to have more fatigue. You might have a little more stimulus, but you'll have more fatigue, which might delay recovery and that's going to affect total volume. And volume is a superior driver than fatigue than muscle damage. And so what we find in that 10 to 12 range, I I was saying that that you can grow just as well in the five rep, 12 rep, and 20 rep ranges. The fives are going to be a lot heavier. You're going to build up accumulate more fatigue. The 20s as well. You accumulate more fatigue. And so the bulk of your volume, although we like to get a variety, the bulk of your volume in like in that mid range, eight to 15 reps, kind of the bulk of your 80% of your volume or so. And then throw in a a heavy set of five once a week and throw in a an AMRAP at the end of your workout with a set of 20 if you'd like. An AMRAP? Uh, as many reps as possible. Yeah, I'm learning these things, too. I thought that was a breakfast burrito when somebody mentioned it years ago. We always just called it failure. Uh but it's nice to train in each of the rep ranges to to hit some different muscle fibers. You got slow twitch, fast twitch fibers. So, but the bulk of your training in that mid-range because it affords you the opportunity to do more volume and then to recover at a at a faster rate. Uh that covers intensity as well or effort, which is within a rep or two of failure. And then we get down into some, you know, less important things such as maybe the um uh the rest periods. We like to see those between 90 seconds and 3 minutes. People who go in and do a set and 30 seconds later do another set, that's probably better for muscular endurance, not for hypertrophy. So, it's kind of hard for some folks though that are really active in the gym to wait 2 minutes. For busy individuals and people that like to move a little faster or get a better cardiovascular benefit from the workout, now I start combining uh antagonistic body parts. I'll do a a back and a chest workout together. I'll have them do a dip, rest 1 minute, do a chin-up, rest 1 minute, and go back and do the dip. The reason being is is because then you've had at least 2 minutes between the dip sets. Each subsequent set on dips should be relatively close to the number of reps you got the first set. Uh because that shows that your muscles have recovered to the point where you can then stress them again. And then the limiting factor doesn't become your cardiovascular fitness or your lactate clearing capacity. It The limiting factor becomes did your muscles get stressed? Did they adequately recover to get stressed again? And so, your your repetitions, you might be able to do 15 reps the first time, 15 reps the second, and then 14, and then 12. That's sufficient to stay within uh the loading necessary to to give you a good hypertrophy stimulus. The speed of the repetition is on this list. Uh you don't want to go too fast on the way down. You want to have under control. But doing a 10-second negative doesn't uh impart any better hypertrophy benefits than doing a a 2-to-5 second negative or each section. time under load, which is something this idea that you hear a lot about. And when you were giving us the multiplier earlier, I was I may have filled in a gap that you didn't actually say with with that you do want to go slow on the negative, but no? You want to go under control. You want to be under control on the negative, but they've looked at a 2-second negative and a 10-second negative and there's no difference. There's no difference. It does There's no added benefit in the of time in the gym standing doing these real slow negatives. and there was a phase there and you know, there's always been a lot of phases. I've been the business for over 30 years. I've seen all of the the fads and phases. I've tried them all. Uh but now we have research that that is pretty definitively showing us that that there's kind of an ideal range there in terms of time of 2 to 5 seconds and then on the negative. One of the reasons being is is that that eccentric load causes more muscle damage, but you're also stronger on the eccentric and that's another you know, fatigue ratio issue. Uh stimulate to fatigue ratio issue to where if you're doing a lot of eccentric loading, it's going to take you longer to recover. It's going to affect your total volume for the week and the volume's the primary driver. You know, mechanical tension first and then the volume and frequency after that. So, there's some smaller things. I think the split is really not that important whether you train your whole body Monday and whole body Friday or whether you do a an upper body Monday and a lower body Tuesday and then an upper body Thursday and lower body Friday or you do a push pull legs Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and then repeat it or take a day off and then repeat it. It doesn't seem to matter. Your body adapts to the stimulus provided. If that stimulus doesn't increase over time, the body has no incentive to continue to adapt and get stronger or bigger. Have you set a goal to work out more, but don't know which exercises to start with? Future is here to help. Future is a new fitness app that connects you with an online personal trainer who will send you workouts each week, monitor your performance, and message you to keep you motivated. If you don't already have one, Future will send you an Apple Watch to borrow for the duration of your membership, which is amazing, and your trainer will use that to monitor your progress, tracking your heart rate and activity data while you work out. Your phone, your watch, and your trainer all work seamlessly together. So, if you want a workout plan that's built for you, not the masses, that will keep you focused and motivated, then go to tryfuture. co/impact to try your first month for just $19. That's cheaper than most gym memberships. Once again, go to tryfuture.co/impact to try your first month for just $19. You can also click the link at the top of the episode description. All right, guys, take care and be legendary. All right, so let's shift gears into diet. So, one of the core tenants of your diet that I like a lot is that you're looking at the idea of what's easy to digest. Gut health is going to be hugely important. Mhm. As I was saying, when I was on the seafood diet, as uh we jokingly called it, if you see food, eat it. Uh just trying to get in that caloric surplus. At one point, I was doing shots of olive oil. Yeah. Just trying to get calories. Oh, it was so hateful. I absolutely hated that phase, but I put on a ton of muscle. And if I had to do it over, though, I would do it so differently. Yeah. What are the core tenants of the vertical diet? Why does it work so well? Well, the vertical diet is everything that I want my clients to do. It's not just diet. It's sleep optimization. It's hydration. Obviously, it's it's nutrition, macros and micros. Um uh it's uh injury prevention and rehabilitation. It's blood testing. It's blood pressure uh control, blood sugar control. uh So it's hypertrophy training as we just discussed, strength training. So and and cardiovascular training. So it's everything that I want them to do. And so if I want to talk just about nutrition in the vertical diet uh again, sleep and exercise being inseparable from from from nutrition. The vertical diet was intended to be more inclusive of what historically I had seen as over restrictive. Cuz I come from the bodybuilding figure physique bikini industry. And those folks, they get a guru and the guru tells them don't eat red meat don't eat dairy don't eat fruit don't eat the egg yolk and don't salt your food. All the things I lead with now. Because what I saw in the guru diet industry and almost anybody that that that goes to a dietitian uh or a guru dieter to lose weight, particularly if you're getting ready for competition, they walk out of there with the same diet plan. It's egg whites tilapia, some chicken breast and a and a just a ton of broccoli. I remember it well. And maybe a dollop of peanut butter. Right? And and and some avocado. And not that any of those foods are bad foods. This isn't a good food bad food conversation. But they pale in comparison to the list that I just made. Red meat, whole eggs, fruit, dairy, sodium. Those are the things your body needs for Those are the things that are going to kill me. Yeah, that's what people have have presumed. Equating for calories, and I'll jump into the going to kill you. Equating for calories and protein where you put carbohydrates and fats does not matter in terms of weight loss, in terms of glycemic control, it doesn't matter if you're in a calorie deficit. Okay. And this was born out in many randomized control trials and meta-analysis. strictly from the position of you are losing fat because it drives me crazy when people talk about that what you eat doesn't matter. Now, maybe if you're just talking about like losing fat, maybe. Although even that I think is questionable. I'm going to take you one more step that you're going to hate, too. Love it. Take me. We'll start here. We'll start with and this is the diet fits trial. It was a year long at a Stanford. It had over 600 people and and even Gary Taubes was was part of the the promoters of the of the study itself and because obviously he's a keto researcher. If you control for calories and protein, where you move carbs and fats don't seem to matter for weight loss and you get similar weight loss outcomes. So, the best diet's the one you'll follow. There's many paths to the same destination. It's all a matter of personal preference at that point. And personal preference can include how you respond to carbohydrates or fats. And I have clients that that that do both. So, I don't respond well to these carbohydrates very well. What does respond well mean? Meaning maybe you have adverse glycemic responses to a certain type or quantity of carbohydrate or maybe your when your fats go up, you have difficult with bile and soft stool. So, you may not be able to metabolize one or the other as efficiently and it may more comfortable for you. And so, I'm when I talk about the vertical diet, I make some very specific recommendations in terms of the macronutrients because that's what my customers Your macro breakdown is maybe the most startling and I love it, by the way. Maybe the most startling thing in the book. It's two things. Yeah. Red meat, white rice. Yeah. That's it. Yeah, that's what And I was like, "Well, that's amazing." That's what that's what folks presume to think because that's the most obvious. It's right on the front page of the book, red meat and white rice. We can get there. I'm going to go one step further first in terms of of you talked about calories or or uh fats and and carbohydrates. All diets work when they're strictly adhered to. Okay, six out of seven people If you're in a caloric deficit. If you're in a caloric deficit. And they all work the same way. There's no all you can eat diet, whether you're keto, whether you're intermittent fasting, whether you're paleo, whether you're vertical, they all work for the same reason, you're in a calorie deficit. In order to lose weight, you have to be in a calorie deficit. All diets work when they're strictly adhered to. Six out of seven people who go on a diet lose weight. It's pretty simple. It's not easy. People don't adhere long-term to diets. About 90 plus percent of people gain the weight back within 3 years. Having said all of that, if you're overweight, significantly overweight, obese probably BMI BMI exceeding 30, 35, 95% of the health benefits that you'll realize are strictly from the weight loss itself irrespective of the diet. So, I'm going to say, and the studies have been done, the McDonald's diet, a guy went ate at McDonald's, had his students track everything. 1,850 calories a day. They measured everything that he ate, but everything he ate was off the McDonald's menu. Big Macs, French fries, uh ice cream, whatever fit, you know, presuming he got sufficient protein. And he walked for 40 minutes a day. And then if he lost 30 lb, his blood pressure improved, his blood sugars improved, his cholesterol improved. All of those things improved simply from the weight loss itself. The Twinkie diet also got the same result. for a second and ask a question? Do we know what his diet was like before that? I would presume standard American diet if he's Because let me if he's 30-40 lbs overweight. Right. So, standard American diet for anybody keeping score is going to be high in carbohydrates which means it's high in sugar. 70% of all the processed and this is where and I I think I'm right but I'm super open to being wrong. I just want to put that out there because one thing I know like what I believed 10 years ago I do not believe now so I can only imagine what I will believe 10 years from now. But if he were putting on fat by overeating red meat let's say that his blood sugar cuz you can put on fat absolutely by overeating red meat. Yeah. I wouldn't expect in fact I would be startled if his blood sugar went down if he were eating 1850 calories of ice cream. So, my hypothesis and I haven't tested this so I don't know but my hypothesis is even though I would expect him to lose fat that the blood sugar would go up. So, my gut instinct is that his blood sugar wasn't coming down because of the caloric deficit. His blood sugar was coming down because he had even more forms of sugar which we don't think of as sugar. Could be potatoes, it could be white rice, it could be God only knows but all things that turn into glucose in your bloodstream um or show up in your bloodstream as glucose is a better way to say it. That that is what's causing the drop in glucose and then the caloric deficit is what's causing the loss of fat. Does that ring true to you or do you think I'm missing something? Few things there. One pretty rare that somebody who's eating uh you know, that much protein when you say red meat that much protein is uh has a BMI of 35. No, I agree. It's pretty rare. So, the standard American diet usually applies to the 70% of the population that's overweight or obese that's consuming about 7 saying that I think that his drop in blood sugar would have more to do with he was already eating a terrible diet. Yeah. And now he's eating another variation of a terrible diet just with less calories. which would also mean fewer carbs. Right. Uh I would say this as well that when people get a BMI over 35, generally speaking, they have some degree of fatty liver. Which compromises your insulin sensitivity. Losing 7% of your body weight. So you're 300 lb, you got to lose 20 lb. Will resolve 95% of fatty liver as tested by biopsy. Irrespective of how you lost the weight. And so you become a little more efficient at metabolizing carbohydrates simply from the weight loss itself from the fact that the liver doesn't have the the the fatty liver. Strain on it stopping it from Cuz that elevates triglycerides, you know, they convert blood sugars and triglycerides that lipids start increasing. So that there's some nuance there. But I I would want to suggest and I'll you know, as I as I progress through this, I'll come back and say that this applied to the Twinkie diet, it applied to the 7-Eleven diet, it applied to the you know, a whole host of terrible diets which when uh consumed in a deficit and and associated with weight loss, uh people realize an improvement in their metabolic markers, their blood tests. Having said that, I would never recommend that kind of diet for a few reasons. One because a 30 or 60-day trial tells us nothing about long-term in terms of micronutrient deficiencies. I I kind of glossed over that when I was talking about the guru diet with the egg whites and the broccoli and the tilapia as compared to whole eggs, steak, and fruit. One of the things that happens over time is that those people on those restrictive diets start experiencing the deficiencies associated with just eating egg whites, you're not getting the biotin and the avidin in the egg whites robs the biotin from your body. Well, that's for skin, hair, and nails. Then being in a deficit, you're going to suppress your thyroid function. Next you know, that dry skin and dry hair starts falling out. Um that that gets us back to the metabolic syndrome when you're just eating egg whites and tilapia, uh where's your iron? Especially for women. And now they they suffer from anemia. So, we start seeing all of these things manifest over time. They can get to the show and compete, and they got lean, but within a week after the show, they're at the doctor's office getting injections for for iron and D3, and sometimes antidepressants, and sometimes this this huge rebound of 20 lb of weight gain in a week. problems? Uh it's all the deficiency in the diet. It's it's these it's the too much of a deficit and over-restriction. Deficiency though in what? Calories and micronutrients. Like I mentioned in terms of the iron deficiency, the biotin deficiency, then you know, the cause of the usually iodine deficiency, the hypothyroidism, the water imbalance from not getting adequate sodium and potassium, and then they end up with edema following the show. I I mean, really serious, like painful, like I'd go to the doctor. Ankles swollen kind of This is what I was seeing in the late '80s. I started training women for competition back in the late '80s and early '90s. And I was seeing this quite regularly that they would just torture themselves to get ready for a show and then have this enormous rebound. They would gain 20 lb within a week or two. Unintentionally. Yeah, unintentionally. Obviously, you know, they'd have that rebound eating, but your body gains the fat back much faster than the muscle. It's a problem with this uh with this yo-yo dieting is that you lose a lot of muscle with the fat if it's done incorrectly, if it's not done gradually enough without adequate sleep and resistance training and protein. And then when you binge in you know, to recover from this this cravings from the dieting, you gain a significant amount of fat back. And so, your body composition changes over the years. That's what gets us that metabolic adaptation that we saw in The Biggest Loser studies to show that that their basal metabolic rates have been significantly suppressed by somewhere between 300 and 700 calories a day even after they gained the weight back. They had a lower BMR. So, that I see the same kind of thing with Well, I talk about like the McDonald's diet and that kind of thing is I would not recommend that diet because it can manifest in in micronutrient deficiencies long-term. And I I I've over the years discovered, "Hey, there's a better way to do this." And that's kind of why I speak out against these guru diets uh for both men and women. I want to go back to specifically the vertical diet. So, in the book you say that the macronutrients are red meat and white rice. Then under that you get into micronutrients and you've got a whole [ __ ] host of Let's define macronutrients: proteins, fats, and carbs. And then we'll attach foods to those afterwards. My macronutrient percentages are 30% protein as a percentage of total calories in the diet. That's what I recommend. It's what I've been recommending for for a decade. Probably what I've been eating for 30 years and what most of the bodybuilding, figure, physique, bikini industry probably accepts to be uh most beneficial for performance and lean mass retention and and growth. About a gram of protein per pound of body weight or, you know, lean weight or goal weight if you're significantly uh heavy. Uh 30% protein. And that's been studied extensively as well. We've seen even in a recent study comparing the Mediterranean diet, which is lauded as the healthiest diet, right? The Mediterranean diet only has 18 to 20% protein. So, they put the Mediterranean diet next to a 30% protein diet. The 30% protein diet outperformed the Mediterranean diet for glycemic control. And glycemic control is the most important factor because it it it it's the most predictive of of long-term disease, uh hyperinsulinemia, uh type 2 diabetes, uh far above even blood pressure, obesity, and lipids way down at the bottom. Uh so, when you're trying to make the most significant comparison, you want to look at blood sugars first. And it's a you know, obviously hugely important and we keep going back to that. And that is kind of it's kind of what precipitates everything else. The the fatty liver and all the other metabolic syndromes, the high blood pressure, it's all the foundation of it is is hyperinsulinemia. It's high blood sugars. Um so, I start with 30% protein and very effective for controlling blood sugars uh and retaining lean body mass. And then I about 30% fats in the diet. And I may make some adjustment on those based on, you know, the individual's personal preference. But you need fat, obviously. You need cholesterol. You know, every membrane cell in the body has a has a lipid bilayer and you need the ADEK. You need to be able to move nutrients through the body. Fat's important. You can't eliminate fat. It'll affect your hormones. Oh, I've tried it. Yeah. It's terrible. Pain. Yes. It sucked. So, we need fats in the diet. Uh and then I put in 40% carbs. There's a a a big only work when you're lifting? Or is would you if somebody weren't going to lift, would you still recommend 30-30-40? I would bring the carbs down if they were inactive. But I again, just like sleep is as important as diet is exercise. And exercise not so much in terms of burning calories for weight loss, but exercise in terms of cardiovascular health and long-term weight loss maintenance. Which is is important both in the step count throughout the day in terms of suppressing appetite and uh doing some sort of resistance work. The the the the muscle is is the most important organ in the body, the largest organ. I know people think it's the skin, but it's the muscle. It's the largest organ in the body. It's a sink Certainly in your body. Uh yeah. It's a sink for glucose. That's what the muscle is so effective at, particularly when you're moving it and working it. Uh I mentioned that post-meal, if you move your muscles, take a 10-minute ride a recumbent bike, you know, something like that, you'll uptake glucose from the bloodstream without the need of insulin. And you can reduce your postprandial glycemia by up to 30% just with a 10-minute walk post meal. That's twice as effective as metformin, the number one prescribed type 2 diabetes medication. Taking a 10-minute walk after each meal is twice as effective as metformin for reversing or preventing type 2 diabetes. Just from moving the muscles and getting your your body to do what it's supposed to do, your your muscles to take up glucose from the bloodstream without the need of insulin. So, I will bring carbs down if people aren't training, but I mean lifting weights to me I I come right out of the gate with that. It's the first thing I prescribe along with 10-minute walks. Those are the two things. Above cardio. It as a priority over cardio. Uh to me, 10-minute walks are cardio. Uh you do them briskly, you can elevate your heart rate significantly enough to where it'll provide you some improvement in VO2 max sufficient to give you a you know, a longevity benefit. So, I think that that's sufficient if you're not competing in something. But three 10-minute walks a day following meals and then some weightlifting two to three times a week would be to me a minimum prescription if you're really serious about trying to uh to improve your general health and body composition and and long-term weight loss maintenance and your energy levels. And so, I like to keep the carbs in there primarily for performance. Like you said, and it might be that you eat a few more carbs around workouts on the day that you train and a few less on the days that you don't train if that's what you prefer, if your energy levels Yeah, take me back. So, I the vertical diet really lines up with how I accidentally eat. Yeah. So, minus the I don't eat a lot of rice. Um but I eat a metric [ __ ] ton of red meat. Yeah. That's like my primary source of calories. Eggs, I eat a lot of eggs, whole eggs. Um and then I eat vegetables, but I don't like go way out of my way. I probably get 85 80 for sure percent of my calories from meat and eggs. Yeah. Why isn't it going to kill me? And salmon a couple times a week for sure. I don't [ __ ] with salmon. Yeah. But fish, sardines? Um yes, sometimes, but I don't go out of my way for it. Yeah. So I'm super curious. I know you do. I'm super curious to know if you think like that's a big part of your strategy and that's a real missing part of my game. item. It's omega-3s. You can probably get a sufficient amount from two 5-oz servings a week. Uh salmon has 200 times the omega-3s as as beef as ruminant animals. I choose beef. Ruminant animals, bison, cow, beef, uh sheep, uh deer. I choose beef because it's a ruminant animal. It has a four-chambered stomach digestive system. It can ferment cellulose, predigests, provides you with uh a better omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio than say a monogastric like a chicken or a turkey. Uh three times as much iron, I think six times as much B12, nine times as much zinc, carnosine, creatine, selenium. It's just a more nutrient dense. And I personally don't eat chicken. I don't enjoy it. Uh I don't think it's uh it's kind of a good better best scenario where I think that the beef is I get more bang for my buck. It's more highly bioavailable and has a lot more nutrient density. Um and so I prefer to eat steak, but I eat a leaner steak. Mhm. I am somewhat cautious. And again, this depends just for calories or are you worried about saturated fat? Like what's the concern? I'm cautious about saturated fat because I uh have historically when I've been overweight because I I bulked up to over 300 lb many times throughout my career and it's part of this powerlifting bodybuilding thing and the dirty bulking etc. Uh and I had some elevated LDLs. Triglyceride HDL's were always great, great ratio, uh you know, everything else looked really good. Um but my LDLs would be elevated and one of the you know, primary drivers of LDL is saturated fat. And so I tend to control especially now being 54 years old, I tend to control my You look [ __ ] amazing by the way for 54. You look amazing for a lot of ages, but 54 especially. Thank you. And and my goal now really because I don't compete anymore and haven't since I was 45 is really uh it is just long-term health maintenance. Uh I just lift, you know, because I really love it and I enjoy it, but I'm focused mostly on my nutrition, my sleep, my cardiovascular fitness, you know, all the all the indicators, my my blood sugars, my blood pressure, my lipids, I focus on these things. I've had over 100 blood tests. Most of them throughout the last 10 years of my uh competitive career from 2006 to 2015 and then about every other month or every third month since. So I've you know, I'm kind of a hypochondriac that way and I have a lot of clients who are around my age who aren't as healthy uh and their blood tests uh you know, show that and so I I try and help them with a broad you know, foundational program like we talk about the vertical diet and improve their sleep, get a CPAP where necessary if they've got high blood pressure and uh and they've got sleep apnea. Um uh and then go to work with the high blood pressure and high blood sugar quick fix kits that I provide in the book to show them I kind of put things I'm a big lists guy and I like to put things in a hierarchy of most importance and You you have two quick fixes that I think are really powerful and I think it would be helpful if you break them down for people. So you've got a blood pressure quick fix and you've got a glucose blood glucose quick fix. quick fix kit. Walk people what are the Show us the diet through the lens of those two things. Yeah. High blood pressure quick fix kit. Probably the most uh uh Just as an aside, a lot of people think that cuz I've talked about how I like to make sure I keep sodium in the diet. A lot of people think that that sodium is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease or high blood pressure, and it's not. It's very small and only for hypertensives. It's a small portion of the population, maybe 25% of the population uh is hypertensive, salt sensitive. And generally, those people are overweight to begin with, and that's why they have, you know, a poor reaction. But reducing salt in those people, even down to you know, really small amounts, um uh like 2,500 mg a day, only results in 2 to 5 mm of systolic blood pressure decrease. It's not significant. It It's not uh uh It's not nothing, but it's not significant. Starting at the very top, losing weight. You get about a a a millimeter of systolic blood pressure decrease for every pound that you lose. You lose 20 lb, you can drop 20 points on your systolic blood pressure. You go from 150 to 130, just like that. You eliminate salt, you might go from 150 to 147. So not that that salt shouldn't be considered for hypertensives and salt sensitive individuals, but I'm just trying to make the comparison. Um The next big one on there uh is hypothyroidism. Can have a significant impact on on blood pressure. Underactive thyroid. Yeah, an underactive thyroid. Uh especially in women. Can be up to a 20-point difference between normal thyroid and hypothyroidism between women and in terms of of blood pressure. Sleep apnea. It's a monster for high blood pressure. Uh I I cannot believe sometimes I'll get people to contact me. They went to the doctor, and the doctor gave them blood pressure medications. And understandably so, they're under obligation to do so. You walk in there with high blood pressure, and they don't prescribe you medicine, and you drop in the street, and you know, they're going to get a lawsuit. But without mentioning, do you have sleep apnea? And Is it the lack of sleep, or is it something about the constantly waking up? A combination of both. Holding your breath Mhm. uh has an effect on it. Uh the inflammation from that. Um but it's something that's that's fixable immediately with a CPAP. It's like a 99% fix to get a CPAP. I deal with this with a lot of my clients. Myself, I've used a CPAP off and on since 1993. Ever since I got over 240 plus pounds. do you need it because of all the muscle mass? It's neck girth. Fat or muscle. Uh if you get above, say, 17 in for a male, you're generally going to start to experience some degree of apnea. Uh there's a STOP-BANG questionnaire that I I have in the book that that goes through and talks to you about, you know, your neck size, snoring, um uh waking up tired, did your partner observe you holding your breath? Uh those kinds of things. And getting a CPAP is a resolution for that. Has a significant effect. Maybe up to 20 points on your systolic blood pressure. It's significant. Take brisk 10-minute walks after meals. That helps with postprandial glycemia and uh insulin seems to be a driver of of blood pressure, hyperinsulinemia. Uh resistance training is huge. It it It helps with uh it releases nitric oxide, which of course vasodilates, and it also helps with uh uh the blood vessels uh elasticity. So, lifting weights has a significant impact on that. Um and then we're down to things like consuming sufficient amounts of potassium and calcium and magnesium. And it's hard to do, and most people don't do it. You want to get over 4,000 mg, probably closer to 4,500 mg of potassium. And I have a whole list in the book that shows you kind of how to do that. That's why I eat a potato every day, and I recommend it as part of the foundation of the of the vertical diet is because I'm trying to get potassium in first. And a potato's twice the potassium as as say, um a banana, even. Mhm. Wow. And so, I'm trying to get that 4,700 of potassium in. And so uh these are some some key things. I mentioned thyroid. Uh I mentioned salt for salt sensitive people. Uh vitamin D. Uh avoiding diuretics and caffeine. Those can Although caffeine is an acute uh has an acute effect, not a chronic effect on blood pressure. Uh might just be something to consider how you respond to it. Uh and then another one is uh uric acid. High uric acid can cause high blood pressure. And a lot of people think uric acid is related to meat. It it has a a bigger effect on uric acid with things like um Trying to think of the food. Fructose is the one that I've heard. Fructose is one. The biggest one is beer. Things that are high in RNA and DNA. Beer, sardines uh can have a significant effect. So in your blood test, get your uric acid tested. If that's elevated, it's something that you're going to want to minimize. Uh fructose. But those studies are on pure fructose, not fruit. Fruit always has a fructose glucose combination. Glucose helps with the digestion of fructose. And the quantity with the fiber and the water is so low that fruits aren't going to have a significant impact on uric acid. Beer will. Purines in in the RNA and DNA in beer and sardines is probably the primary driver. Second person to talk about that. It's really interesting. I never considered uric acid at all until about 2 months ago. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. It it it's something that you look at with people who have these uh these conditions, you know, for high blood high blood pressure. Uh and I did mention here lower fructose intake. That is the high blood pressure quick fix kit. It's very similar to the high blood sugar quick fix kit. Uh we talked a little bit about blood sugars. These kind of go together because blood sugar affects hyperinsulinemia affects blood pressure. And so we're back to losing weight. We talked about eating sufficient protein. 30% protein in your diet has a significant effect on ameliorating um uh postprandial glycemia. Also eating protein earlier in the day. Uh the bigger protein meal that you have for breakfast has an effect on the subsequent meals postprandial glycemia. Seems to have an an important effect. And then eating the protein first in the meal. Also Interesting. has a huge effect on on your glycemia. Taking the 10-minute walks after meals as we were mentioned, resistance training is important, sleep obviously is huge for blood sugars. Uh insulin resistance occurs in like one night of bad sleep. And so that's a huge one. Uh getting adequate vitamin D seems to be important for blood sugars as well, but you know, potassium, magnesium, iodine. Um I even threw eat carrots in here for a source of fiber. One of my favorite sources of fiber because it's low gas. It's a It's a low FODMAP food which I I talk about in the diet in terms of digestibility. I mentioned eggs in here for choline. Choline helps prevent and reverse fatty liver disease. And you get about 150 mg of choline for each egg yolk. Uh you want about 1,000 mg a day. That's about six eggs. Your body can only absorb about 2 or 300 mg of choline at any given meal, and so I spread them out. Uh you know, half and half or a third a third a third. I get about six eggs a day. It would seem counterintuitive that I get a 400-lb guy like Hafthor Björnsson with metabolic syndrome and fatty liver and high blood pressure, and I start feeding him more whole eggs. Mhm. Uh but it's for the choline and primarily. Well, is it just for the choline or is it that a lot of the rap that eggs have is unwarranted? A lot of the rap is unwarranted and and uh people would uh used to assume that the choline in your diet affected the cholesterol in your diet affected the cholesterol in your bloodstream. And it it doesn't for the vast majority of people. There's a small percentage of the population that has hypercholesterolemia who has to be cautious about how much cholesterol they eat, but more importantly, how much saturated fat because that affects um cholesterol clearance which seems to be a bigger problem than the cholesterol that you're consuming is that you're just not clearing it. And that is partly because of fatty liver, it's partly because of inadequate bile production because a lot of the cholesterol is sequestered and and eliminated with through the bile system. And so those are all things to consider. And that's when we start to maybe get into supplementation, which I'm looking at NAC, N-acetylcysteine, which is a precursor to glutathione that can help uh the liver and also something like TUDCA, which I'm not going to try and TUDCA? T U D C A. And I'm not going to try and spell that one out, but it's a big long name. But TUDCA helps with inflammation in the liver to allow the bile that's bound up in the liver to escape so that that you don't have bile formation in the really interesting about all the different ways that inflammation ends up affecting somebody that people don't necessarily think about. Yeah. It's really interesting. Where can people find out more about you? Everything's Stan Efferding. My website is stanefferding.com. My Instagram is @stanefferding. My YouTube, and I have some Rhino's Rants on YouTube where I've gone through a lot of this. It's kind of a fun little thing where I talk about all these topics. It's a YouTube's also Stan Efferding. And then I have The Vertical Diet Meal Prep Company is a nationwide meal prep company where we make low FODMAP meals that are high in protein. And we deliver those nationwide door-to-door. And that's at the verticaldiet.com. Love it. Guys, his results speak for themselves. Highly encourage you guys to check it out and to try it out for yourself. N of 1 experimentation ultimately is all that matters when it comes to diet. So it may work for other people, may not for you, or something that other people think is crazy may work perfectly for you. So definitely experiment on yourself and find the things that give you the results you want. It is so important to experiment with diet, to take this stuff seriously. Your health is everything. Protect it. Experiment. See what works. Speaking of things that work, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care, peace.