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I have the privilege of sitting down with a true game changer in the world of health and nutrition, Dr. Shawn Baker. Yes, this guy is breaking world records powered by meat.

He shattered the masters 500-meter world record on the Concept 2 rowing machine, something gym-goers across the globe are familiar with. What’s more, Shawn claims that at age 53, his performances and recovery rate are superior to when he was in his 30s and 40s. During that time, he was an elite, drug-free power athlete, winning US and world championships in the Highland Games. Today, Shawn is one of the top-5 fastest rowers in the world of any age! How can an aging athlete perform at the highest level in sports requiring extreme power and explosiveness – stuff we are supposed to lose as we age? Shawn credits a switch over to a carnivore-style diet in 2016 with helping him alleviate an assortment of athletic aches and pains (he was an elite level rugby player in his youth, competing in New Zealand and all over the world with the US military) and prompt a spike in performance.

Shawn had a long career as an orthopedic surgeon in the military before devoting his efforts to helping others heal through carnivore-style eating with his current operation called MeatRx.com. In this show, you will hear Shawn convey a simple and scientifically supported strategy of narrowing your food choices to alleviate an assortment of inflammatory and autoimmune conditions. Shawn keeps things simple by sitting down to a couple meals a day of mainly meat (~# 3 pounds worth) and perhaps some eggs and salmon as desired.

If you are suffering from any kind of nagging health condition, or are a peak performer looking for a competitive edge, Shawn presents a very compelling case for at least trying out a carnivore-style eating pattern for 30 days and looking for improvements. Today, in the age of confusion and controversy in the diet scene, Shawn lets his athletic performances, his scientific and medical expertise, and his rapidly growing community of success stories speak for themselves. Enjoy the show!

TIMESTAMPS:

Dr. Baker is in the 50+ group and doing amazing athletic feats which he attributes to diet. [03:10]

His dietary journey included paleo/primal, all sorts of diets, then to carnivore. [09:01]

The idea of carnivore diet goes back many years. [12:35]

The propaganda that is out there on carnivore can be confusing. [14:12]

Shawn claims that many of his aches and pains have been alleviated. [16:25]

What is going on, scientifically, when a person switches over to carnivore? [18:53]

Get the junk out of your diet no matter what path you are on! [22:05]

The scientific studies on diet vary and are difficult to draw conclusions from. [23:28]

Does red meat really cause disease? What about sugar? [26:29]

How can we define what is healthy? [29:46]

Testosterone level is a marker for the aging processes. [35:30]

A good longevity marker is to see if you can run one mile at age 50. [40:17]

This concept of biological age is strongly validated. [43:34]

As one ages, is it important to change training or recovery times? [45:21]

Shawn has set a lot of world records. [51:20]

The carnivore diet has many components are variables. [55:29]

It is hard to tell if you are getting better if you feel good.  What do you compare with? [01:02:51]

Try it for 30 days then add foods back to see you it affects you. [01:04:20]

What is Shawn’s daily eating pattern? [01:07:42]

The disease management industry is sick. [01:11:06]

LINKS:

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Get Over Yourself Podcast

Brad (00:00:01):
All right. We’re hanging in sunny Southern California looking at Saddleback Mountain. So glad to connect in person with Dr. Sean Baker. How you doing man?

Shawn (00:02:23):
Yeah, Brad. I’m doing well.

Brad (00:02:24):
Thanks for coming out.

New Speaker (00:02:25):
Yeah, it’s good to see you in person as well.

Brad (00:02:27):
You’re a busy guy. Uh, I don’t do much social media but I, I find you on Instagram once in a while and you know how those videos run on a loop on Instagram. So you watch through it and then start to over and you don’t know. And so I saw you doing the, the squats, the 405 pound squats and I thought it was just a loop like you did, you know, a few reps and then it loops back and then it loops back. But you were, you were doing 20 reps of how much weight on that squat bar?

Shawn (00:02:53):
Uh, yeah. I can’t remember the law. I think I did four Oh five for 20,000 or something. I mean names were high black squat, so it was fairly relatively light.

Brad (00:03:00):
But, uh, that’s relatively,

Shawn (00:03:02):
well from what I’m used to doing. I, I was doing, you know, a couple of weeks ago I was doing 520 pounds. So, uh, yeah, I do a lot of, I tend to do higher rep stuff.

Brad (00:03:10):
Yeah. And you’re in the, uh, you’re in the 50 plus category.

Shawn (00:03:14):
I turned 53 a couple of days ago, so thumbs up to the 50 plus.

Brad (00:03:19):
Yeah. Um, and you know, on a serious note, you’re walking your talk, so you’re, you’re talking about this crazy diet that the average person will find a quick pop off for. Um, everyone’s begging me to watch this new movie where people are performing amazing athletic feats because of this special diet. And then here you are doing, doing 20 reps of a 405 pound squat bar over 50 years old. That’s gotta be, that’s gotta be up there and the record record levels. Uh, but I, I do want to ask you about your rowing record and your athletic exploits here at this age cause something, something’s working right?

Shawn (00:03:54):
Yeah. I mean, I, I didn’t just wake up one day, start eating meat and turned to a phenomenal athlete. I mean, you know, [inaudible] I mean, I’ve been training, my whole life.

Brad (00:04:04):
has been training. Okay. Yeah.

Shawn (00:04:06):
And so I’ve been doing that for, for, for years and years. But I mean, the unique thing I think for me is, you know, as you get older you kind of see a gradual decline in performance. And when I turned 50 and I adopt this and all me died, I actually saw an increase in performance, which I thought was pretty good. And I started to kind of rival things I could do in my early forties and late thirties which, you know, again, it’s pretty cool when you’re, when you’re 50 plus and I don’t, I don’t take hormones or drugs or anything like that. And so I have to attribute it to the diet because it’s the only thing I really changed.

Shawn (00:04:34):
My training has not changed significantly in the philosophy that I do. And so I’ve been, you know, over the years I cycled through, you know, I think I started out, uh, you know, kind of weightlifting and then I played high level rugby in New Zealand and throughout the United States and a bunch of select teams playing for the military. Uh, and then I kind of transitioned back into powerlifting for a while where I got to where I was, you know, reasonable. I got close to an 800 pound dead lift as a drug free athlete back in my early thirties. And then I, then I played with some of the strongman stuff for a while. And then we had the first ever first ever, uh, national strongman championships. I think I was fifth in the, in the heavyweight class, again, as a drug free athlete. And then I kind of realize that without me taking drugs, I didn’t think I could succeed in strongman, unfortunately.

Shawn (00:05:21):
And so after that, I think I transitioned into, uh, throwing stuff. So I got into the Highland games and that’s where you, you know, you put on a kilt and you throw these big cabers and you throw these 56 pound weights with one arm and hammers and stones shot putting and ended up winning the, the, uh, national and then the world championships again in the masters category and that sport. And then, you know, that required me to be 280, 290 pounds, uh, to be, to have the leverages to compete with people who are even bigger. Six foot nine, 350 pound guys. I’m just a little guy at 6’5 ” 280, right? Uh, and then I, you know, when I got to about Oh, early forties, all that being really big and focusing only on strength training really started to catch up on me and my diet wasn’t where we’re probably needed to be.

Shawn (00:06:10):
Uh, and so then I kind of cleaned up the diet and went through a whole progression of different diets ending up on this crazy meat diet. I took up rowing a little bit before that ended up on this concept too, uh, which people who do CrossFit or obviously rowers are very familiar with. There’s a, you know, sort of a competitive circuit where there’s tens and thousands of people that enter every year and other times. And there’s actually a world championship, which I won last year, which was here in Long Beach. And I’m actually going to Paris in a couple of weeks to compete, you know, to hopefully defend my title, uh, in the 500 meter category. And so I set S uh, I think, uh, over the, over in my late forties, early fifties, I set six American records in various distances. And then I set three world records and I’ve got one world championship. And then hopefully, knock on wood, I’ll have another one, you know, in a couple of weeks.

Brad (00:07:00):
So, so the concept two is the calibrated machine you see in all the health clubs. So anyone anywhere in the world can throw down a time, right. And I suppose video it and you know it’s complete proof that you are on the same machine doing the same thing.

Shawn (00:07:15):
Right? Yeah. There’s a lot of ways to verify it. There’s actually internal code that the machine will give you to show you that a, that time you do is valid. And that’s how they validate it and there’s, there’s, you know, there’s, there’s, you know, there’s a lot of ways to verify that but that’s, that’s how it is uniquely issue because you can do it in anywhere in the world and you know, the machine will give you the same result, you know,

Brad (00:07:34):
no excuses in Paris. Oh the machines.

Shawn (00:07:36):
Right, right. Then usually in these contests they’d give you brand new machines, which is really nice because you know, you can, you actually can get a little better time on a brand new machine typically cause the bungee cord in there kind of stretches out over time. Mine’s probably all stretched out cause I beat on that thing every single day pretty hard. But yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a pretty good test of a fitness for sure. And then in, in, in, in the, the faster distance strength becomes a role that has a big role in that.

Brad (00:08:02):
Well these are very short duration efforts. Right?

Shawn (00:08:06):
Well I mean the 500 meter, you know, my time, my best times a minute 14. So that would get you, that would be a relatively short distance. You know, the, the Olympic distance that most red rowers compete at is 2000 meters, which, you know, the top guys were, are, are doing that under six minutes and that’s a, you know, that’s a pretty challenging thing to do. That’s, that’s I, I probably will move onto that 2000 meter maybe next year when I, when I kind of get tired of focusing on the 500 meter and uh, hopefully I’ll be the first person under 50 to break six minutes. I think I can do that. So that would be a, I think a pretty good, you know, demonstration of fitness but also a Testament to diet.

Brad (00:08:45):
Okay. So you were, you were doing this, these power events for many years and cycling through different kinds of debt where you kind of a high experimental guy, where you went extreme into this extreme into that, or what was that dietary journey like that landed you on your current pattern?

Shawn (00:09:01):
Well, I mean for most of my athletic career it was just eat enough because in strength, sports being big requires you eat a heck of a lot. And I didn’t, you know, I ate a lot of what we would consider healthy food, but I certainly had a lot of calories and I ate a lot of food that, you know, I didn’t miss, I didn’t skip dessert all the time. I would have it from time to time. And so, but yeah, as I went on the dietary journey, it started with, uh, as a physician, you know, I said, well, I mean, you got to eat less and you’ve got to move more. And, and I did that and I did that. I did that to the extreme. I mean to the point where I was training three times a day, even as a busy surgeon, I would get up early in the morning and I would jump rope.

Shawn (00:09:37):
I do maybe a couple thousand jump rope skips and then over my lunch hour. Then the days I had had the capacity to do that, I train, you know, lifting weights very intensely. And then I go home in the evening, you know, put my kids to bed and then jump rope again on a couple thousand skips. And then I dramatically dropped my caloric intake. And not surprisingly, I lost a bunch of weight. I lost, I went from 280 to like 230 in three months. I mean I got really lean and uh, the nurses didn’t like me anymore cause I was a bit of an ass.

Brad (00:10:08):
cranky, cranky program. Right, right.

Shawn (00:10:11):
So I was doing that and then I just kind of realized I couldn’t sustain it. And then I kinda started shifting over to a paleo, primal type of approach. Did that for a while. Really enjoyed it, you know, you know, did all the cooking and the recipes and kind of read more and more and kind of fell in line with some of the low carb thought by reading a lot of the material and experiment with that. We did a ketogenic diet for about two and a half years or so. And then I kinda sorta stumbled on these kind of crazy people doing this all meat diet. And I was kinda of kind of, you know, spent about six months to a year kind of like this fall out. That’s interesting. And following these people and reading,

Brad (00:10:46):
just thinking about it, thinking about it.

Shawn (00:10:48):
And then I would do like a couple of days, you know, I do steak and eggs for three or four days and you know, I actually felt pretty good and I liked it. I enjoyed it. And then I kinda got the, I got enough bravery to do it for a week and then two weeks. And then finally in 2016 I did it for a 30 day stretch. And at that time I had a, you know, a reasonable social media following enough to where people were kind of interested. And, um,

Brad (00:11:09):
what were you doing before that?

Shawn (00:11:11):
I was in a [inaudible] not far off. Right? And so, uh, and so I did it and I, you know, we kind of joked around, I tie, I listen to Paul, what am I going to die of and he’s 30 days, am I going to get scurvy, you know, am I going to get heart disease in my colon? Gonna fall out from lack of fiber. And you know, obviously none of that happened. And you know, and I, you know, it was kind of, it would initially start out as just an experiment. As a joke. I really had a profound, you know, objective improvement in my health.

Shawn (00:11:40):
And so then when I, when the one 30 days were over, I went back to that kind of ketogenetic cell that with, you know, wider variety of food and things I thought I missed and I ate them. And I had, you know, a whole variety of things. And I was like, well, the next day I was like, man, I don’t feel this good. You know, I just, something doesn’t feel as console, whatever,

Brad (00:11:55):
adding salad or whatever it was.

Shawn (00:11:57):
I added a bunch of, I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was. And uh, and then I said, well, you know, all things being equal, I really am not so concerned about high fat. I’m not worried about having a heart attack. Cause I think there’s a lot of context that goes around cholesterol that we, we, we have to be more nuanced about it. And so I went back to the, to the Amit diet and continued to feel great. And then all of a sudden I’m breaking world records on the rowing machine, uh, doing well. All, all the aches and pains that I had accumulated over the 50 years of my life went away. And I’m just, you know, this is a good way for me to feel. And so now I’m three plus years later into this and still doing quite well.

Brad (00:12:35):
That’s quite early. Back in 2016. I mean, what was going on at that point? Was it, I know the bodybuilders have been playing with this since the 70s, where they’d cut up for the contest eating only steak and eggs, but it seems like the public suddenly become aware of the carnivore diet in the past 12 months or some number like that.

Shawn (00:12:56):
Yeah, I mean, well, I mean it even goes farther back. You know, you can go back even farther back with athletes using steak and eggs and stick as, as a, as a main part of their diets. This goes back quite a few years ago. Um, yeah, I mean, I, you know, I, I guess there had been people in the background and kind of a small group, maybe several thousand people that had collected on a social media platform that I kind of stumbled across. And so it was pretty quiet. Um, you know, obviously, I mean, we could say that argue that there’s societies have done pretty much meat based diet for, for forever basically. Uh, but as far as my mainstream, you know, Western culture, this is kind of a unique, uh, in, you know, partly a, you know, it was kind of interesting cause I, I ended up going Joe Rogan’s podcast cause he, for whatever reason, he found out about me thought it was crazy enough to put them on the show and unique and that I think probably, you know, brought it to a lot of people’s attention. And then I think Mikhaila Peterson sorta was inspired by that. Jordan and Jordan Peterson and then that kind of, and that, that brought it further into the public’s eye. And of course I’ve been a pretty vocal proponent of people trying it, you know, not that I think this is the only thing people should do and I’m not very dogmatic about it, but I think it does seem to be very effective. Uh,

Brad (00:14:12):
Big deal. It’s just the attribution for my world records at age 50 plus. Yeah. I mean I, I like your style because you are definitely um, you know, agreeable and not super, uh, negative or attacking the other points of view. But again, this thing is now turning into something that’s kind of ridiculous, where the, the propaganda that’s being thrown in our faces, I feel like it’s, maybe you’re going to have to get, um, we’re all gonna have to get a little more, um, resilient or something.

Shawn (00:14:44):
Well, I mean, I, I would say that I am certainly not going to say that everybody has to do this, needs to do this, this the best thing for all people. But I think for many people, particularly people struggling with health conditions, and even I’m an athlete and I, and I’m enjoying the fruits of the diet in my personal experience, um, I’m really concerned with these people that have all these chronic medical conditions as a physician. And that’s why I’m really excited about the utility of this. Now you are right. And, and I, and I wouldn’t say that I don’t criticize because I, I have been very critical of the plant based sort of, you know, thought that that is the ultimate thing that we all need to be doing. And I do see that this is probably being driven mostly by, uh, you know, financial interests, particularly people that want us to sort of transition over to this.

Shawn (00:15:34):
I like to call it human pet food, but it’s basically highly processed. You know, it’s highly processed plant based foods. Uh, these alternate protein sources, these quote, quote unquote foam meats. And I think that is what I think we really have to push back against because we’re, they’re trying to scapegoat, you know, cows is destroying the planet and using very sort of a lot of misinformation quite honestly. And, and you’re sort of distorting the, the impact, not that there’s no impact, but, uh, they’re, they’re sort of trying to, you know, the people that are really, I think behind us are the people that stand to make a lot of money in the alternative meats market with, you know, it’s projection to be $100 billion industry. So they’re there, they’re laying a lot of, you know, a lot of the information in there and it’s being pushed to the media and, you know, it’s, it’s being propped up, uh, very aggressively.

Brad (00:16:25):
You talk about having these aches and pains from lifelong athletic journey, especially contact sports. I can’t even imagine. We know that the, the NFL players are walking around virtually crippled. I’ve seen Jim Otto, he comes to the takeout and the town I used to live in and um, you know, he’s put together by, by string and gum right now, uh, these poor guys. Uh, but then, uh, miraculously you’re saying these, these major aches and pains, you’d noticed a significant alleviation?

Shawn (00:16:55):
Yeah, I mean from my personal, uh, uh, experience. Yeah. I mean any sort of tendonitis, you know, sore, achy joint, uh, basically went away from me and it’s pretty much been that way since that time with, with rare exception. And what I saw even on a ketogenic diet, you know, when I was, when I was, you know, doing orthopedics is I saw patients that I needed them to lose weight for surgery. And, you know, ketogenic diet was what I was asking them to do. Cause I found it to be more effective for most people. And, uh, what I was seeing, even in absence of weight loss for these people as their joint pain would go away and okay,

Brad (00:17:31):
While they were losing weight, then they come in and say, Hey, my name is Nerdy boy, I don’t need surgery.

Shawn (00:17:38):
Negative implications for revenue for the hospital unfortunately. But [inaudible]

Brad (00:17:43):
I’ll imagine that Dr. Baker told me to lose 50 pounds and now I don’t even want surgery anymore. Yeah. So that was.

Shawn (00:17:50):
That was a, I think that was a, you know, one of the early sort of, uh, sort of light switch for me, they turned on, I said, wait a minute, there’s something going on here besides wear and tear. Cause the orthopedic model, particularly for osteoarthritis is it’s just mechanical. It’s just wear and tear. And I think there’s a huge biologic component and inflammatory component that we are now starting to, uh, you know, see, see that. But I mean, even in know addition to what I was seeing on a ketogenic diet with a purely meat-based diet this was even amplified. This was, you know, people that had still had some aches and pains like I did when I was on a ketogenic diet. When I went on the meat-based out, even the last little vestiges of that went away, which I think was really cool. And I am seeing, you know, almost daily now as my social media has gotten quite honestly out of hand. I’ve got so many people that I, that I have following me. And uh, you know, it’s every day. I see literally people whose chronic back pain went away. [inaudible] pain went away. They cancel, cancel joint replacement surgeries. Uh, you know, that that’s occurring. Just, just, it’s very common now.

Brad (00:18:53):
So from your scientific medical background, what the heck’s going on when you’re, when you’re switching over to this, uh, it’s still perceived as a fringe radical diet? Even the dog, the original carnivores are, are always here. They’re supporting the message that’s being conveyed.

Shawn (00:19:13):
Excited. Do you want me to get them? You want me to get them real quick and you can edit.

Brad (00:19:17):
You know, you think they’re going to go forever.? They know be a little, I can kick them. I can lock them up somewhere. Hang on, let me, let me get the little ones real annoying. Sorry. Sorry. I just, uh, let me just stop.

Brad (00:19:35):
Oh, she can come, come into the shot. She’s welcome.

Shawn (00:20:06):
we are starting to understand, you know, I think there is, you know, with regard to what’s going on with a meat based diet, we’re seeing more and more, uh, more and more, uh, diseases. It seemed to have a origin in the gut. And you know, we know that, uh, there is significant evidence out there that, uh, going on meat-based based seems to help with gut permeability. That is to say, restores a normal permeability rather than the access permeability to so called leaky guts.

Brad (00:20:35):
Is it restoring it due to the agents in the meat or is it because you’re eating the plant foods?

Shawn (00:20:42):
I think it’s your, I think it’s mostly the removal of the irritating foods. I think that’s what’s occurring. And this is based on the work of Dr. Zsofia Clemens and Dr. Csaba Toth in Hungary where they’re doing a lot of intestinal permeability testing. They’re using something called peg 400, which is polyethylene glycol and they’re comparing, you know, foods in the diet and what happens with gastric or gastrointestinal permeability. And they’re seeing clearly that certain foods increase it, whereas when you remove those foods, it normalizes. So this is not the tight junctions tend to attend, tend to improve. We see at the same time that occurs, inflammatory markers decrease and then clinical symptoms fall short after that. So it’s probably, that’s one aspect of it. I think there’s, you know, I think more chronically things like advanced glycation end products which occur and when we have this sort of, you know, insulin dysregulation and up and down glucose, uh, probably there’s some, some problem with uh, oxidize, uh, you know, lipids as well as some of these seed oils.

Brad (00:21:46):
Oh, right. When you go to a carnivore diet, you’re cutting out a lot of processed carbs. Imagine that.

Shawn (00:21:52):
Yeah, you’re cutting a lot of it. Just cutting out all the junk. I mean, it’s hard to make a carnivore diet with junk food. I mean it’s just, it’s just pretty, does he get, um, I don’t know. Uh, I mean, you know, maybe some of the, some of the

Brad (00:22:03):
nitrate laid in.processed meat or some of that stuff.

Shawn (00:22:05):
It’s got a lot of garbage in there. You might. But I mean for the most part it’s a, it’s a really good way to get rid of that stuff. Cause even on, you know, as, as I’m sure you’re aware, even any new new diet and that comes around a paleo, vegan, you know, primal Keto, they get all the junk food and just, you know, we get all the junk food products, you know, it’s good to, they want to make the book on it and they’re really scratching their head how to do it on carnivores. You know, how the heck can we make carnivore junk food or processed food. You know, we’re seeing a few attempts, but I don’t think it’s going to be, you know, have much of a significant effect. So it’s a, it’s really a, a pretty pure diet for the most part.

Shawn (00:22:40):
You know, it’s hard to, it’s hard to, you know, you know, do that diet with, with anything that’s got that stuff in there. So I think that’s the main improvement. You know, if we look at, you know, even these longevity countries, I think more than anything, whether it’s plant based or meat-based, it’s absence of junk based. And I think that’s the biggest thing we’re seeing. You know, when you look, whether you look at blue zones or other than you know other long lived countries, you know, whether it’s Iceland or Japan or Hong Kong or uh, Monaco, you know, a lot of those countries have wealth also as a, as a, as a confounder there. But, you know, it tends to be get the crap out of your diet, eat whole foods, whether it’s meat or plants. That seems to be a pretty good strategy in my view. Obviously I’m biased toward the meat side of it.

Brad (00:23:28):
Well, you made an important point too because we’re getting bombarded with all the propaganda and, and forced to maybe take sides or you know, start to, uh, formulate some limiting beliefs about the direct association with, uh, this particular super or dietary strategy. He had a great quote on your Instagram. I think it was your welcome to 2020 message. You said, um, it’s impossible to study diet and conclude that it will make you live longer, I guess because of so many confounding factors.

Shawn (00:24:00):
Yeah, that’s absolutely right. I mean, if we look at nutrition science in general, I mean it’s, it’s, it’s just basically poor science. I mean, and it’s not because it’s any of the fault of the scientists, it’s just as too hard to realistically do. I mean, you can’t really do a study where you kill all the, you know, the people at the end of the study and cut them up and say what happened? So because we can’t do that and we’re constrained by ethics, you know, the studies that would have to be done are, you know, basically twin studies locked in metabolic wards for 50 years controlling every variable and you know, varying the diet.

New Speaker (00:24:30):
And I short of that shorter. We got flaws coming into the picture and.

Shawn (00:24:34):
there’s people that will argue, well that’s the best we can do and therefore we need to accept those outcomes. And I, I look at it a different way. I said, you know, if you’ve got really bad data, you just have to accept this really bad data. You can’t draw the conclusions. And I think that’s along the lines of people like professor Gordon, guy at who is, you know, the actual, the person who actually invented evidence based medicine. This is, you know, he’s from McMaster university in Canada. He’s in the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. He’s one of the most cited researchers of all time. His whole career has been evaluating evidence. And I interviewed him and he said, look, we don’t have evidence to make nutritional guidelines. There is nothing, you know, there’s nothing out there that we can, we can say that.

Brad (00:25:14):
What does he know?

Shawn (00:25:16):
I mean, he’s got,

Brad (00:25:17):
he’s only spent his whole career. Exactly. And people will, you know, discount that.

Shawn (00:25:21):
And again, this is one of the, he’s one of the guys that sit on the neutral Rex committee who basically came out recently and said, there’s no strong evidence to suggest that red meat causes colorectal cancer, heart disease or anything else. And they criticize him because he applied a more rigorous, uh, evaluation tool to look at the evidence and saying, well, we should just be able to let you use really weak, you know, wheat criteria to say what we do. And I think, well, maybe he hasn’t, right. Maybe, maybe we should use actual, you know, strong level of criteria before we make these big sweeping, uh, proclamations that are gonna affect, you know, billions of people’s lives. I mean, maybe we should really have a strong, strong evidence before we make those decisions.

Brad (00:26:00):
The industrial seed oil controversy of, I think that was in the 60s with the McGovern council and you know, making legislation for the United States for decades to come. And it was now being exposed as a, you know, complete, uh, manipulation and, uh, profit seeking and special interests. And you know, we were told to get rid of butter and eat margarine in the, whatever, late sixties, early seventies. And it’s, these things are still hanging on to conventional wisdom today.

Shawn (00:26:29):
Yeah, I think I was, I think it was 77 and McGovern had that idea. He basically says, I don’t have time for the science I got now. And I mean that’s, that, that, that obviously that decision is arguably hurt, you know, countless millions of people’s lives. But you know, if we look at just, you know, basic in your face type of things, when we look at red meat for instance, you know, back in 1976, uh, the U S peaked in meat consumption. We are as consuming around 96 pounds of meat or red meat, you know, beef per capita. And now in 2020 we consume about 56 pounds. So we’ve got him, I’ve got 35 40% reduction in red meat consumption in the last 50 years or so. And yet we’re fatter, we’re sicker, we have more diabetes, we have more, you know, cancers, we, you know, we have more autoimmune disease. And so it’s kinda like hard for me to buy into red meat is causing these things when we eat less of it and we’re sicker. I mean, let’s, this doesn’t make sense.

Brad (00:27:23):
What’s the corresponding curve for sugar there from 19

Shawn (00:27:26):
yeah, so sugar is pretty interesting. Sugar has gone up, it’s kind of going down in the last 10 or 15 years, you know. And so maybe there’s a threshold level, but probably the more telling curves probably in that seed oil curve. And so when we look at soybean oil consumption currently soybean oil is the amount of calories we get from soybean oil exceed is equal to oral to or exceeds the amount of calories that we get from beef currently, which is a shocking fact. That is something you think about that we’re getting more calories from soybean oil than we do from beef these days, which is, you know, in my view a little bit scary. And I think that’s something that uh, you know, another thing you’d like to pin, you know, you could potentially say, well this at least hypothetically makes sense. Whereas the other, you know, beef going down, disease going up, it’s, it’s becomes harder to make that argument.

Shawn (00:28:14):
The same thing you can be said about, you know, if we want to go into the environmental side, but you know, atmospheric methane has been on the rise for the last 20, 30 years. But guess what, world cattle population has declined by 100 million cattle in the last, you know, 30, 40 years. And so we were seeing a decrease in our cattle population. You had an increase in our methane and you know, and when they actually look at it, when they do a top down assessment and they go up in the atmosphere and they sample the methane concentration and they look at the special isotopic signatures, they can say, this methane come from here. It came from here. And the bottom line is, is not, it’s not coming from the cattle, it’s coming from, you know, perhaps natural gas leaks through things like fracking. It’s come from hydroelectric pirates coming from rice, rice fields. It’s coming from wetlands leaks, but it’s not coming from cattle. So this whole sort of argument is not grounded in any significant amount of, you know, real hard data. It’s more ideology is propaganda. It is designed to prop up this, like we talked about this a hundred billion dollar alternate protein industry.

Brad (00:29:16):
Okay. So if we’re, we’re making progress here with the acknowledgement that the science is imperfect and the headline story that you read, um, might be anywhere from complete bullshit and manipulative to just, just based, basically inaccurate. So where would we go to, uh, doing a personal blood profile before and after a 30 day, experiment especially if you’re suffering from any kind of health condition or even aches and pains?

Shawn (00:29:46):
Yeah, I mean, how do you find someone’s healthy? I think that’s also sort of a challenging topic because a lot of people will say, and a lot of physicians, in fact, uh, and one of the problems with the healthcare industry is we have, we’ve kind of dice and slice people up based on numbers and we stop looking and actually examining people. And, you know, physicians, they’ve got 10 to 15 minutes to see people if they’re lucky on some, in some cases, depending on, particularly if they’re working in an employed model. And, you know, much of that time is spent doing coding, doing billing, meeting your EMR, electronic medical records requirements, so you have very little time for the patient. So you do what’s most, uh, expeditious, which is, you know, we will do a lab and then if the lab is a certain value, we’ll try to fix that.

Shawn (00:30:25):
We’ll treat that lab value, uh, whether that’s actually making you better, not as debatable but, but the way we treat that lab value more often than honors a prescription medication. And that’s what we’re trained to do. So what I want to ask if somebody, if there’s, if we said, if we threw out all lab values and we wanted to tell people, are you healthy or not? Most people could tell you. I mean, they could say, I feel like garbage. I’m tired, I’m depressed. You know, I got a big beer belly, you know, my sex life is awful, you know, um, like my joints hurt and my digestion is awful. You take those people and you reverse all that stuff and all of a sudden they’re lean and they’re happy and they feel 20 years younger and everything works. I would argue that person has gotten healthier.

Brad (00:31:07):
Something’s working. regardless of what the lab at you say. Yeah, I mean,

Shawn (00:31:10):
I that I think that’s a common sensical argument that, that I think is hard to refute. Although are people that in the face of that, you know, and we have doctors that will see someone come in and every objective clinical thing you could look at is says they’re better. And yet perhaps maybe their cholesterol went up right. And all of a sudden you, Oh my gosh, you’re on a road for.

Brad (00:31:32):
Here are some statins.

Shawn (00:31:33):
Here’s some stats. You’re on the road for car types. Stop. Whatever you’re doing, stop. You go on this low fat, you know, flavored cardboard diet. Um, and you know, and live miserably, right? And this, this is what we have out there because we’ve been so brainwashed to think that cholesterol is the devil and the enemy. And I think there’s, you know, again, I think when we look at it, there’s, there’s nuance.

Shawn (00:31:54):
Most of Americans are obese. They are, they’re overweight, they’re metabolically unhealthy. In that situation, elevated cholesterol, it’s probably, you know, more of a problem. But when we, when we, when we start getting nuanced and we look at people like perhaps myself or yourself who is not metabolically inflamed, that is lean, that is active, that, that, you know, probably all the other numbers we would might want to look at are in good position, then that cholesterol might have not quite had the same impact. And I think that’s sort of the disconnect. And it takes a physician or a healthcare provider that’s willing to spend a little more time to look at the overall package. But again, we have a system that doesn’t really foster that. There’s no incentive to do that. It’s, well 90% you guys are sick anyway. Here’s the stat and you know, if 10% have to suffer from that, we’re not gonna worry about that.

Shawn (00:32:47):
Um, so, but you know, like I said, when I look at, you know, how would I assess someone’s healthy? I, first of all, I would ask them subject to, I think this is very important. I think that’s what people really want. I mean, how are you doing? Cause I get people sending their labs all the time. And you know, I lie and really care. I went, what are you, what’s going on with you? Are you happy? Are you happy? Are you doing better? Most of the time? Yeah, I feel great. I lost all this weight. I’m lean. Nothing hurts. You know, what about this lab in Atlanta? Well, first of all, these reference ranges were established on basically six standard American diet people. That’s one thing.

Brad (00:33:15):
All the reference. Pretty much.

Shawn (00:33:17):
Yeah, pretty much. And, and you know, we also have to realize that, um, these labs, you can take a lab today and take it tomorrow and very likely those numbers aren’t going to match. So there’s a lot of day to day variability between lab numbers. There’s also a lot of diurnal variation. So for instance, vitamin D, if you take it first thing in the morning, it’s going to be low. You take it after noon, it’s going to be higher. Most people don’t know that. And they get all hung up on, Oh my God, my vitamin D is low. I need to supplement, you know, and well, you could’ve said, well maybe she just taking your lab two hours later and you’ve been normal. So we’ve got all these sort of variables in there. So I like to look at when I, when I or what I suggest people look at are things that you know, that are kind of more long lasting things like a coronary artery calcium scan. If you’re over say 45 years of age, that hasn’t, that has some sort of meaning to me as far as what’s going on chronically, chronically with you, convert, you know, alternatively a carotid intramedial thickness tests, uh, kind of shows you the sort of any sort of atherosclerotic disease or potential for that or you know, inflammation in the vessels.

Shawn (00:34:19):
Um, that’s something helpful. You can look at this real fat, you know, we can get a liver ultrasound or that, that would be more or,

Brad (00:34:27):
or an Instagram photo. Either one. Well, I mean,

Shawn (00:34:29):
yeah, I mean there’s some correlation for that. A few people, if you’ve got a big beer belly, you probably got visceral fat. You know, if you’re, if you’re getting, if you’ve got a six pack, you’re probably going to look likely to have visceral fat. I know people don’t like to say, well just because there’s a fit guy that once died. Yeah. I mean that’s the exception. I mean, you know, most people that are lean are in better cardiometabolic health and people there that are obese. I mean that, that’s not controversial, but people always like to point out the exceptions. And then, you know, I think things like, you know, waist to height ratio, which we talked about a VO two max, you know, lean muscle mass, you know, your capacity to do things are important.

Shawn (00:35:03):
I think those things to me are better indicators of health than, than some of these labs we can get. You know, particularly the labs that are transit that can go up and down. Imaging is, can be helpful. Uh, you know, ultimately if you really want to look at something, you would biopsy it. Uh, you know, but that’s not practical and it’s painful. So we don’t typically want to do that. Blood is very easy to get, but it probably provides us a lot less information than other ways we could get.

Brad (00:35:30):
Than we think. Right? Yeah. You wrote a great article on your website about testosterone. I’m curious to talk more about that cause I’d, I’d love to have, you know, great markers that I’m delaying the aging processes as well as possible. Um, and I think your commentary was about how you were performing well in all areas of life, but your number was in the low, low range maybe because of your low insulin production and that’s throwing off the results or talk more about that.

Shawn (00:36:01):
Yeah, I mean, so we can look again, once again, this becomes the difference between a lab number and clinical function. I think we want to look for a male feeling work look at is my testosterone working. I’ve asked yourself, you’re waking up with an erection every day. That’s, that’s probably a pretty good clinical marker, right? We want to, we want to see that. You know, we also want to see the other clinical markers of testosterone function. You know, maintaining lean muscle mass, you know, mood and cognition. You know, um, sexual function would be to in general, those things are all those things all indicate healthy testosterone. So when we look at the lab numbers, I mean there’s, you know, there’s obviously there’s total testosterone free testosterone that which is now under sex hormone binding globulin. Uh, and then also importantly, most people are starting to come to learn a little about this is the androgen receptor itself.

Shawn (00:36:47):
And now we have drugs called selective management receptor modulators that people are manipulating all these bodybuilders we’re trying to manipulate so they can express or make more efficient those androgen receptors cause it’s a lock and chemo. You have a lot of testosterone floating around, which you have very low receptors. You’re going to be limited on what your clinical effect is. Conversely, if you have a lot of receptors and an equal amount of testosterone, you’re going to get the most sort of bang for your buck. It has to, it has to pair up. We know that the receptor can be increased by, uh, strength training. Uh, there’s some evidence that you, you know, uh, infrequent meals are fast and can help with that. There’s some evidence that carnotine, which is found pretty much exclusively in red in meat, particularly red meat also can upregulate that androgen receptor.

Shawn (00:37:34):
And so we also know that there’s again, diurnal variable in your, in your testosterone. What time of day did you take, did you take first thing in the morning at 5:00 AM when your testosterone is at its peak or did you take it at noon when it’s a lot lower? And so there, you know, did you have a hard workout? You know, in the days before that can drive down. We see athletes that are getting really lean and training really hard, their testosterone tanks. And so you know, all of those things play a factor in what your one minute testosterone. So I, you know, I had my testosterone drawn, it was low. Everybody’s like, well you’ve got the testosterone for grandmother, why would I listen to you? And yet here I am repping 500 pounds a deadlift as a drug free athlete. And I’m like, look, there’s more to it than just what a transit number.

Shawn (00:38:14):
In fact, I took it a week later and it was a hundred points higher. And I just, I just didn’t make a big deal of that cause I don’t, cause I know there’s day-to-day variation. There was an interesting study that Stu Phillips put out in 2018, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Professor Stu Phillips, but he’s one of the leading muscle protein synthesis researchers, protein researchers in the world. And they did a study looking at, you know, college age athletes that were doing resistance training and they, they assayed you know, how much free testosterone, how much you know, bound testosterone, total testosterone, uh, you know, a number of other hormone markers. And they looked at the androgen receptor as well. And the only thing that correlated to muscle growth was the androgen. It didn’t matter how much testosterone they had, how much, how little it was all about the androgen receptor.

Shawn (00:39:01):
And so in a natural athlete, it seems to be more the receptor than anything else. It dictates muffler muscle growth in an organ, the other clinical function. So I think it’s just more nuance to what we know. And in the exception of that is because we know testosterone can stimulate androgen receptor, but that usually isn’t in the, in the presence of, in his testosterone. So guys are, you know, hitting the, hitting the needle and pumping up with steroids. That’s why they turn into giants, right? They get this dirt, you know, we get a lot of the expression of androgen in our traps and shoulders and you know, you could see a bodybuilder that they just swell up in their traps like crazy and you see this kind of typical pattern that’s, that’s the effect of exoticness testosterone. But normal endogenously produced testosterone within the normal range really doesn’t have that much difference, you know, with, with Rhoda muscle, uh, synthesis, you know, relative with the androgen receptor can do, can you test for the androgen receptor levels? Yeah. With a biopsy. That’s the problem. Oh, just a biopsy. I don’t know if there might be like an antigen label test, but it’s probably more expensive. But I know the way, I think they did in that research, they biopsied everybody. So you know, it’s not convenient.

Brad (00:40:06):
So testing the free T, you have the serum T level and then you have the free T. is that gonna give a hint that your receptors are working well or is that sort of.

Shawn (00:40:17):
well, no, I think the best hint is clinical function. I mean that’s a, that’s where the rubber meets the road. I mean, yeah, like I said, you’re free tests there. There are people with very high free testosterone that have horrible clinical function converse you, there are people including very prominent, very strong athletes that have low testosterone levels that are doing very well. So, I mean, I think that’s the ultimate test. That’s what we care about at the end of the day. So again, I kind of get less excited about talking about lab numbers, you know, and I’m more excited about what’s actually happening to you. You know, did you, did you gain three pounds of muscle? Did you put, you know, 50 pounds on your dead lift? I mean, to me that’s what counts.

Brad (00:40:56):
Yeah, well I mean the Cooper Institute and University of Texas, the study of the one mile run at age 50, they said that was the number one longevity marker better than any blood value is how well you can perform at that age is highly predictive of your ability to survive till age 85 in good shape. And they have the time thresholds and there’s also a pushup test that strongly correlated with longevity. So

Shawn (00:41:21):
yeah, I mean I agree 100%. I think that, you know, the Honolulu longevity study where they looked at people and they said the ones that were the strongest in midlife were the ones where it had like a 250% likelihood of making it to a hundred years. And so we’d see this over and then I kind of make up this, you know, one, not the one mile, cause I don’t want to run a mile. I’m just kidding. But, uh, you know, the, uh,

Brad (00:41:42):
neither do I. It’s painful.

Shawn (00:41:44):
I mean, you know, an all out mile’s painful for sure. Uh, but you know, I look at the a hundred meter dash, you know, I, I, you know, I just kind of arbitrarily said, you know, if we lined up, you know, 50 people of various ages and said, you guys run a hundred meters and everybody that could run it under 15 seconds, I would say you guys are going to live longer than the guys that are going to run it over. And you know, what would happen is a lot of people that are in the 50 plus category, it would be old guys, right? The younger guys would do it. And I see all other things being right, all things being equal and the people that are more likely to die sooner are going to mean the latter half. You know, many of it because they’re aged, but also the people that can’t run a hundred meters in 15 seconds and either they’re too damn fat, you know, they have not enough strength or to propel their body. They don’t have the, even the cardiovascular capacity, they don’t have the flexibility. Uh, you know, or they don’t have the, the, the, the joint function. Maybe they’ve got these injuries and stuff like that. And so if you can get into that, and the reason I chose 15 seconds is because the world record for the 85 plus category is, you know, is, is 15 seconds. It is. Yeah. You sure? Yeah. Last time I looked it up,

Brad (00:42:51):
I thought it was, I remember I was trying to get my dad out there cause when he was 95 he was in good shape. He made it til 97. Uh, but I thought he might have a shot at the record. It was like 28 seconds.

Shawn (00:43:01):
for the 95 plus 85 so there’s 15.

Brad (00:43:03):
15 people have no idea.

Shawn (00:43:07):
That’s, that’s pretty fast.

Brad (00:43:08):
That’s moving. There’s an 85 year old..

Shawn (00:43:09):
So I said if there’s an 85 year old dude that can run 15 there you go. I sure as hell can. Yeah. I haven’t tested a few. Last time I checked I was 12 something, so.

Brad (00:43:18):
wow.

Shawn (00:43:19):
I’m still not bad for an old guy that’s explosive. Yeah. I mean, I mean I do a lot of explosive training, but yeah. So that’s my sort of criteria. So if I can, I like to know if there’s a 40 year old that runs it in 16 and I’m 50 and I can run it in 14 then I’m going to live that 40 year old. You know what I mean?

Brad (00:43:34):
This, this concept of biological age is now strongly validated. And I remember I’m Jack LaLane, the best example of all, when he was 43 he set the world record of doing a thousand pushups and a thousand pull-ups in an hour, 22 minutes off recently alternating back and forth. Uh, but you know, that’s off the charts for, for any human of any age. So his biological age, you can, you can pay it wherever you want, 21 and it’s, it’s literally true on so many levels.

Shawn (00:44:02):
Yeah. I mean, Jack LaLane was obviously ahead of his time by quite a bit. You know, he was, he was kind of a, an icon. And I, you know, honestly on my birthday I do something, you know, he always did something crazy and I was going thing. So I’ve sort of last decade or so every year when I turned a year old or I do something. So this year, I mean it was, it was kind of weird cause I was traveling, I was in a hotel and I was like, I turned 53 so I’m going to do 530 pushups. So that’s what I did for my birthday. And you know, so what kind of sets would that, you know, I was speaking, speaking at a talk and it’s kind of funny. I would go behind.

Brad (00:44:34):
the guy comes down to,

Shawn (00:44:35):
I would go behind a curtain and do 20 pushups in the,

Brad (00:44:37):
So you had to do them throughout the day. Oh my God.

Shawn (00:44:39):
So people were watching me, what the hell is that guy doing? He’s going behind this curtain every 10 15 minutes he’s going off doing pushups and you know, so that’s what I was, cause I was speaking that day. Yes. Is that one of these key events? And so, uh, yeah, but I mean, I think the worst one I did was when I turned 46 I did 4,600 jump ropes. And that was, that was took me about an hour to do that. And that was, that was said, I don’t want to do this one again.

Brad (00:45:03):
Okay. We’ll pick something else every year. Broaden, broaden the abilities. Yeah.

Shawn (00:45:08):
When I turned 44, I dead lifted 700 pounds. That was my, that was my sort of goal for 44 but it varies from year to year.

Brad (00:45:21):
So are there any concessions that you’re giving right now to your age? Do you train differently or have longer r.ecovery times?

Shawn (00:45:22):
Not really. The only concession is I’ve gotten busy, so busy that it’s harder to do what I want to do. But physically I feel like I continue to train just as far as I always could if I had that. I didn’t have the time limitation. So I’ve been very focused on maximizing my time in the gym. Everything is done. Uh, I don’t do a lot of screwing around. I mean, it’s, get it done. I go pretty hard. I, you know, I don’t tend to, I tend to train a lot of volume or a lot of time just because more than anything, it’s a time constraint type issue for me. But I, I, you know, if I have the time to train, I train just like I did when I was 20, you know.

Brad (00:45:59):
Uh, so let’s say you did have the time. Would you engage in these prolonged workouts or do you, do you kind of favor the more short, intense,

Shawn (00:46:09):
you know, it, again, it would depend on my short term goal. You know what I’m doing, like [inaudible] you know, like as I get ready for these rowing contest, everything is focused to that. And so it’s, it for me, it works better with the short, intense type stuff. But I think that, you know, if, if my goal and I, I kind of have an overarching goal of what I want to maintain as I get older, I want to maintain muscle mass, I wanna maintain strength, I wanna maintain my ability to be explosive, you know, to jump to sprint to throw. And I want to maintain some conditioning. And so I try to include some element of all of those throughout the week. You know, it’ll vary how much I do one versus the other depending on, you know, the time of the year and what my goals are. But those are the things I continue to do. You know, if I want to put on a lot of muscle mass, then I’m going to train a little bit longer, a little more volume. I’ve responded better to that. I know there’s people that like to do the hit style training, worse one set, you know, once a week. And I never responded rule that I, I, whether it’s psychologically or physically, I like a little more volume. I mean that’s, that’s what I’ve enjoyed. I’ve had success with that for an argument, I think pretty decent success for 40 40 plus years now of training.

Shawn (00:47:26):
And so, uh, yeah, if I, if I’ve got unlimited, I’ll go to the gym and do it. It’s not going to be three hours am I gonna spend three hours? But it might be for me, a long workout would be anything over an hour, hour and 15 minutes. And I’m like, that’s all I need to do.

Brad (00:47:39):
And what kind of stuff are you doing?

Shawn (00:47:41):
Uh, well, again, for the, uh, rowing stuff, obviously it’s rowing, uh, for the explosivity stuff I’ll do, uh, I’ll do a lot of like post activation potentiation stuff where I’ll do a heavy squat followed by jumping or heavy Stach fall by, by explosive med ball throws or you know, uh, you know, pressing and then medicine ball slams or you know, chest presses, you know, with a medicine ball.

Brad (00:48:09):
and you’re supposed to be better. Like the post activation potentiation is, you do that warm up workout, not, I wouldn’t call it a warm up work that you do something pretty tough and then you go do something similar and you actually get a performance boost is the idea.

Shawn (00:48:21):
That’s the idea behind that. And it happens. And you know, there’s a guy who, you guys met me, remember Ben Johnson. Uh, you know, the infamous sprinter from Canada popped for steroids. And I think I can remember what year was, was 84 88.

Brad (00:48:32):
88.

Shawn (00:48:33):
Okay. So Charlie Francis was as coach, but I remember hearing that, uh, that he was doing, I mean literally within minutes before him stepping onto the track, you’d be either doing very heavy cleans or heavy squats, you know, he would just kind of get primed to, and he’d walk right out the track and go, wow. And I’ve seen that, you know, like I’ll, I’ll sometimes do that in the rowing machine. Like yesterday, in fact, I was at the gym, I was doing dead lifts. It was like, you know, moderately heavy for me. It was four 15 for a triple that I went into [inaudible] And so I went jump, jump, jump, jump, jump. And I would do a bunch or of sets of that. And I liked that, that, that, that gives me that sort of activation. But uh, you know, then I do a little bit of the bodybuilding hypertrophy stuff where I’m doing curls and you know, the chest press and flies and that type of stuff. You just kinda, so I mix it up quite a bit so I can hit all those areas basically. And then the, you know, I like for, for for cardiovascular stuff, I don’t do a lot of long slow, steady state stuff. It’s just I don’t have time and I don’t enjoy it at a 240 pounds. I don’t want to be running for miles. I mean just, it’s just not fun for me. Uh, so I might get on like an Airdyne bike and just go as hard as I possibly can all out 15 or 20 seconds.

Shawn (00:49:42):
Cause that’s really all you can sprint for. You know, you run out, you know that CPK switch system shuts off and you, you can’t sprint faster. You can just kind of automatically slow down. And then I give myself enough recovery so that I can do it again at that same level of effort or very close to it. I don’t, I don’t like the where I go all out and then I rest insufficiently and then I can’t go on a lot again. I like to go all out. So that’s, that’s been my, my, my, I mean,

New Speaker (00:50:07):
I did a show with Dr. Craig Marker who was the leader in this scene and he wrote a beautiful article called Hit versus Hurt and hurt his high intensity repeat training. The indication that you rest enough, right. And your work effort is short enough that you can truly deliver an explosive effort. And I’m so used to, you know, being an endurance thin the triathlons are out there training all day and we’re doing, you know, six times, three minutes on the running trail with only a short rest in between each thing. And by the end, you’re, you’re toast. And you know, we don’t realize now, but I think, you know, my concession to aging is that you don’t want to be out there trashing your body with these crazy workouts that maybe you once did in your twenties because they aren’t really physically healthy for the body.

Shawn (00:50:48):
Yeah. I mean, I certainly prescribed, I haven’t heard that term hurt before, but that, that, that’s pretty much in a nutshell, describes what I do. And I like it. I mean, I, I think it’s, you know, I, I just like being able to, I call them like chainsaw sprints. I pretend like the Texas chainsaw massacre, the guys behind me and I’m spreading going in fast,

Brad (00:51:06):
well on the Aerodyne bike or they are just making that noise like deafening the whole room.

Shawn (00:51:11):
It’s kind of funny cause I had some of the regular home models and I broke two or three [inaudible] too hard. I finally got a functional model at the house and yeah. So I don’t break the machines.

Brad (00:51:20):
Yeah. We need to get you the right one man. Yeah, yeah. Oh well, I mean if you’re training for one minute 15 or maybe up to a six minute event, if you, if you broaden your scope and your, your records at the minute 15 mark. Um, I mean, what kind of workouts preparing for that is this a lot of short sprints?

Shawn (00:51:35):
So right now, as funny as it sounds, you know, there’s the, you know, the, I’m treated a con, you’re uh, uh, uh, familiar with this, the, the said principle specific adaptation to impose to man. So you do what you do, what you’re trained for. So right now I’ve only got, I think what does it to on February 9th I’m competing. So that’s about two and a half weeks from now. So I’m doing basically the event everyday.

Brad (00:52:00):
Oh really and.

Shawn (00:52:00):
I am working on getting faster and faster. And when I broke my world records this exact same thing I did. In fact, I sat there and broke the world record like 10 times in a row cause I had it. And then I went back tomorrow and took another three tenths of a second off. And I kept doing it, kept doing it until I finally hit my threshold. You know, I got, I got burned out at that point, but that worked for me pretty well. And it’s, I wouldn’t, you know, you can’t do that year round. But I think for this short period of time that works for me is I wouldn’t recommend it for everybody. But you know, particularly when I’m limited on time, I know exactly what I’m going to be doing. And what it does is builds confidence. Because I know like I just did this yesterday, you know, I might take a day off, you know, but I mean I just did this two days ago. I know, I know I have the capacity to do this. I’d say it’s a little bit of a mental relief and I, and I, like I said, there’s nothing like, you know, doing your event to pertain to train for the day. And I know it goes against some of the other training philosophies, but for my specific goal, you know, I set world records doing it that way, so it must work, you know, at least for me.

Brad (00:53:00):
Well it’s, it’s no impact. So it’s not like a, a quarter miler doing it over and over. I couldn’t imagine, you know, doing, running like that.

Shawn (00:53:09):
The other thing I would just to go back to the diet, I have noticed a tremendous recovery capacity with this. Not like anything I’ve ever seen before in my own personal life. So, for instance, there was a one minute world record which I had set, uh, it was like 400 at the time. It was like 400 and I want to say eight meters in one minute. And I went down, I was going, I knew I was going to do it that day. I got 410 meters and I was, I was happy, but I was kind of pissed cause I thought, I know I can do better than that. And so I was kinda really pissed at myself. So I literally, you know, went upstairs. I took a shower, I ate a steak, I waited about three or four hours and it went back down and later that day and did it again and went 414 meters. I broke the world record twice in one day. And you know, this is a, this isn’t, you know, your body, you feel it when you do these all out. My heart rate will be up for an hour or two or three afterwards. I mean, it’s extremely taxing on the body to do that. And I was like, I just recovered, you know, and it’s, I thought that was kind of an interesting thing.

Brad (00:54:15):
And in general you can recover from these, these all out maximum burst the next day you feel okay you can do it again.?

Shawn (00:54:21):
That’s the weird thing about this diet. I mean my recovery is phenomenal.

Brad (00:54:25):
You attribute a lot of that to the diet.

Shawn (00:54:27):
Absolutely.

Brad (00:54:27):
I mean you have reference points from in your thirties and forties essentially.

Shawn (00:54:30):
Like even like the norms that I would get, you know when I would train before I knew if I had to.

Brad (00:54:35):
delayed onset muscle soreness for those of you at home.

Shawn (00:54:37):
Right. So I know that before when I like haven’t trained, in fact I just, because I’ve been training in my little group, little horse stable, I’ve got out here, I’m living in equipment and I, I wanted to do some other stuff. So I went back to the gym. I hadn’t gone to in probably a year and did a whole bunch of exercise.

Brad (00:54:53):
Oh no. That guy we can’t talk cause the, the, the Aerodyne is going to be too loud. Okay.

Shawn (00:54:57):
So I get back in there and I do a bunch of stuff I hadn’t done in ages and I mean, I’m a little bit sore, but nothing like I would have had in the past in years past where I would be, you know, just limping around. And you know, I’ve had squat workouts where I literally had a hard time walking for three or four days.

Brad (00:55:13):
Sure. I happened to me all the time, man. Yeah. And so now I gotta tighten up my game, I guess. Well, eat more meat.

Shawn (00:55:19):
Yeah. But I mean, I’m just like, now I’m like, I’m a little bit sore, but I’m fine. Right. You know, and this is, this is after not doing a particular exercise and, you know, probably a year.

Brad (00:55:29):
Okay. There’s, there’s my next question then. I mean, how, how strict would you like to see a person try this out? Um, in terms of, you know, the exclusion of all, uh, plant related foods, or there’s a carnivore ish, uh, term getting kicked around. Now there’s the nose to tail, uh, argument where they’re saying, if you’re going to do this, you really gotta, you know, be broad and varied but I think you come across, um, a little more simple and straight forward.

Shawn (00:55:58):
Yeah. So I’ll, I’ll talk about a couple of things. So what I talk about a carnivore diet, uh, and you know, of course I wrote a book called The Carnivore Diet. So I’ve got some liberty to, to sort of,

Brad (00:56:07):
yeah, that’s out there and the reviews are awesome. I, I looked at that. How long has it been out?

Shawn (00:56:11):
Uh, it came out on November 19th. Okay.

Brad (00:56:13):
So just, just hitting the streets. Pretty good. How’s the response to you?

Shawn (00:56:17):
Very good. I mean there’s a lot of, everybody’s bought it, really enjoyed it. And you know, I, you know, I wrote it with accessibility to everyone in mind. I didn’t, I didn’t want it to be over technical. I want it to be, you know, cause it, cause this may be the first exposure many people have had to it. So it’s kind of like, it’s a lot of philosophic philosophy. I mean there’s a lot of science in there as well. I didn’t, I didn’t, there’s not like there’s no science, but I mean, let’s be fair. There’s, there’s not a lot of current overnight studies you can point to. I mean there’s, there’s the literature is scare, so you have to kind of extrapolate from other areas. Uh, but, uh, yeah, the response has been really good and I’ve been really, really pleased with that. And hopefully more people will, we’ll kind of start a conversation. No, I think that’s important. But what I, so what I sort of, when I gave a lectures on this, I say, you know, a carnivore died to me means a diet that focuses and gets his nutrition from animal sources.

Shawn (00:57:05):
Then what we do with the plants is we either completely eliminate or limit them to the, to the, you know, to the level needed to achieve the health goal. You know, and I think that’s as simple as that. And for many people it’s all plants out. It doesn’t mean that everybody has to do that. And I think it’s really exciting. We’ve got a study coming out of Harvard University with David Ludwig looking at this coming up and we’re going to have some people in there that are fully carnivore 100%. There’s going to be people that are 90 and 80% and we’ll be able to see is there, is there a significant difference between these people when you, when you stratify him out? And I think that’s important information. And so it depends on the condition. You know, some people that have these horrible, uh, you know, GI inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis probably are going to need to be pretty darn strict. Some people with autoimmune diseases is probably going to need to be pretty darn strict. Other people that are just eating, treating your kind of, your standard runner to run in the middle, cardiometabolic disease, diabetes, obesity, probably can get away with a little less strictness. Now again, there’s a, there’s a psychological component and food addictions and cravings that are kind of in the background. So we have to be able to deal with those things. And I talk about how, how I, how I see that in the book. But as far as, you know, the nose to tail thing, you know, I, I certainly appreciate guys like Paul Saladino and talking about that and looking at the nutrient profiles. Um, you know, but what I, what I’ve looked at the overall population of this, these folks that have done this, I’ve not served as, I did a survey where I got 10,000 people to respond to do the diet.

Shawn (00:58:30):
And I talked to how much organ meat are you guys eating? Cause that’s interesting. And about 15% of them are eating it with any frequency where you could say, we’re going to need meet your nutrient needs. And you know, but when you look at those groups, there doesn’t seem to be a clinical difference between, between them on a macroscopic scale. Now individually, certainly there are people that will say, I didn’t feel a hundred percent better until I included, you know, X, Y, or Z in my diet, this, this supplement or this organ. And I think there may be different people in different backgrounds. So a lot of these people coming from, you know, plant based diets particularly tend to be maybe a little more malnourished and maybe they need that additional boost in the beginning.

Brad (00:59:06):
No offense.

Shawn (00:59:07):
Well, you know, I mean it’s just, it is what it is. I mean, that’s just what we’re seeing. But I, you know, I, I just kinda disagree with the notion that everybody has to do it this way because clearly in my experience, and quite honestly, the people that have done the start the very longest people have done it 10 years, 20 years, they’re not including organ meats in their diet. They’re eating basically just steak, maybe steak and eggs. And that seems to be sufficient. And I wouldn’t say that they’re not optimized. I think it’s, I think when you, when we talk about optimization, you’re going to live longer. I think we’re really start to get into this, uh, sort of, uh, soothsaying you know, I don’t think we have the data that can support that. And so, uh, you, Paul and I are going to have a discussion on this. And you know, I think, I think we are, and I, you know, I, you know, it’s like, well, what about your [inaudible] status or what about your home?

Shawn (00:59:54):
And I’m like, Paul, we don’t really have longterm out term outcome data that show us exactly what that means in this population. So until we do that, and again, it’s the same thing, we never, we’re never going to know. And so I come back to my original point of how are we doing? How are we feeling? Are we, are we no longer taking our diabetes meds? Well then yes, you’re doing well. Um, so I, and again, my goal is to bring this to the masses to people that, you know, want to try it. And, you know, maybe they can’t afford the grass fed, you know, $20 a pound, you know, steaks. And, and maybe, maybe they, if they, they’re told that they have to eat liver and brains and raw kidneys to be successful, they’re probably not even going to try it. So you have to, you have to sort of look at who your target audience is and you know, and then actually look at the results, what’s happening in people.

Shawn (01:00:45):
And that’s what I’ve done. I’m, I’m, I’m looking at this from a, uh, less reverse engineer. These are the people that are having success, you know, what could have been happening. And you know, the, the sort of belief that we can make a nose to tail and nutritionally complete animal, uh, and match the RDAs, which I think the RDAs are not really reflective of what’s really going on. You can’t really do that. If you take a cow and you stick their pancreas and their thymus and your liver and grind it up with all the other meat and then you know, put that out and feed it to people, they’re going to be short on a number of nutrients still. So you can’t make that animal happen. You’d have to have a cow with like eight livers to get enough.

Brad (01:01:21):
What if I take like 20 different bottles of ancestral supplements?

Shawn (01:01:26):
I mean, you can do that, but I mean, if we’re saying that we’re, you know, we’re saying that we’re, we’re following this evolutionary and system pattern, your cow would have to have eight livers to, to, to reach your vitamin C requirements. So I saw, I think there has to be compensatory mechanisms and we already know some of those exists. We know there was a glucose, vitamin C cotransporter that doesn’t account for all of it. There are things like carnitine, which is found in meat, which vitamin C has a role in. There are, you know, vitamin C acts as an antioxidant. Well, guess what we up regulate or in accidents, anyone in a low carb diet. Um, so you know, the bottom line is I don’t have scurvy and I don’t eat much vitamin C and so there has to be something going. I can’t be setting world records in an in a nutrient depleted state.

Brad (01:02:08):
Better than you were before.

Shawn (01:02:10):
In fact, you know, when I turned 50 my records when I was a 40 year old, I broke them as a 50 year old. So I mean I.

Brad (01:02:17):
so this masters like everyone over. Is that. your?

Shawn (01:02:20):
well I mean it’s any age category. If you look at the American records right now for like the concert to 500 meter row, I am the fastest in every age category except for one with 30 to 40 I’m faster than the 20 year olds are faster than the 18 year olds that lets us.

Brad (01:02:34):
college kids.

Shawn (01:02:35):
faster than 40 year olds. And of course I’m faster than everybody older than me. You know, the only one that’s weren’t able to beat me or the 30 30 plus category. So, you know, it’s like, you know, that’s, that doesn’t point to nutrient deficiency in mine in my view at least.

Brad (01:02:51):
So a simple approach that’s maybe a little more user friendly to start and dabble in. And then your, your experience was that 30 day, that 30 day falling back in 2016. I mean, would that, that would be a pretty simple ask, especially to anyone who’s, who’s suffering from anything now and my curiosity listeners, I don’t know where you stand on the spectrum, but, um, I feel fine. I don’t think I’m reactive to plants. I don’t, I, I’ve eaten in my whole life. I love, you know, I, I’ve eaten this and that, but how do I know what’s my standard? I, I want to be better and stronger and faster and I don’t know what I have to judge myself by because, uh, you know, my, Mia Moore, my woman, she sleeps two hours less than I do every night and she’s got tons of energy. So it’s like maybe I am a drag ass and I need to change my diet. That’s a tough one for me.

Shawn (01:03:44):
I mean, you know, like I said, the only, first of all, I, I don’t think everybody needs to do this. I think that, uh, uh, you have people out there that, I mean, they’re doing great just like you might say, and there’s no reason to change.

Brad (01:03:57):
There might be,

Shawn (01:03:58):
I mean, well, I mean this is a point. I mean, there, there is, you know, like you’re, you’re, I know you’re a competitive athlete as well and you might say, I’m going to go carnivore for six weeks and measure something. You know, and maybe you, maybe, you know, you’re, I don’t know what you’d like to train with, but [inaudible] there’s some [inaudible] there’s some metric that you can do.

Brad (01:04:16):
Sure. I’m, I’m going for a 400 meter time is my event. Yeah.

Shawn (01:04:20):
Knock a second off your 400 meter time, which is pretty significant, you know, uh, if that occurs, then you say, well, wait a minute. Maybe there’s something here. Is it worth it to you? You may be like me who thought my digestion was completely normal. And then I go a carnivore diet and I was like, wait a minute, I wasn’t normal, I was not as good as I am now. So there, there can be that sort of revelation that occurs and you know, then you kind of reached this sort of state where you’re like, this is maybe my optimal state and you know, maybe I’ll put some stuff back in there and see if I stay there. And then if I find something that, you know, it’s, if, you know, if we have a, like particularly people that have health issues and we want to say that there’s a, there is a food contribution to that. In most cases there seems to be, particularly with all these chronic diseases, you know, and we want to solve that problem. And you know, you remember the game of Clue, you know, clue where you have Colonel mustard in the, you know, in the library, the candlestick, who done it right. And you’ve got eight other characters in eight other rooms and eight other weapons. And we’re trying to figure it out. It takes a while, you know, you gotta, you gotta go through all the motions.

Brad (01:05:25):
Confounding variable is very crappy scientific studies, right?

Shawn (01:05:29):
And so if you want to simplify that, you’d have one character or maybe two characters, right? And then it’s pretty damn quick. You saw that you saw that game real fast. Uh, and that’s what nutrient you can do nutritionally. So like I said, if you’re, you know, if you’ve got something you’re like, want to find out what the nutritional confounder is, go to all meat, you know, see how you do and then add something in. If you had the whatever the spinach back in, and maybe the oxalates from the spinach are causing you to have joint pain, they maybe, you don’t need to be even, it was a bunch of spinach you know, and I think that’s how that works. So 30 days is, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s short enough time that people will try it. Uh, it’s long enough that many people feel a benefit. In my personal view, I think 90 days is a better, better trial for most people. I think if you’re not going to get a benefit within 90 days and it’s probably not right for you. But I think for some people, the transition period for people, a lot of people would want it two months. So you know, you might, you might catch 70% of the people at the one month period, another 30% might need that two month.

Shawn (01:06:25):
And then if it doesn’t work by three months, you don’t get what you want out of it, you know, then why would you do it? I mean,

Brad (01:06:32):
you think that’s possible? I mean, uh, that someone’s going to try this and not get a benefit?

Shawn (01:06:38):
Um, yeah. I mean, potentially. I mean, some people, depending on what their goal is, I mean, what a lot of people will say is I’m doing it for this reason, you know, whether it’s weight loss or this particular medical reason. And what often happens is that may not change that much, but they have like 10 other benefits and they stick around. Like, I’ve seen a lot of women in particular that they don’t lose a single pound, but they’re like, I’m no longer depressed. My guts no longer hurt my menstrual cycles normal. Uh, my thyroid isn’t, you know, better. Uh, I feel happy even though I’m still haven’t lost a damn pound.

Shawn (01:07:10):
In some case I’ve count gained five pounds. So that’s occurring. Uh, you know, there’s people that, you know, there’s a lot of people that try it and like, Hey, I got bored, or yeah, I really missed the carbohydrates in there, but I’m not really seeing a lot of people where they got significantly worse. I mean, that seems to be a vast majority. And then some of that can be related to first time going into ketosis and some people get a rash or you know, there’s, there’s this concept of this oxalate moving around and calling rashes and joint pain. Oh, since it happened kind of infrequently. But those, those do occur occasionally.

Brad (01:07:42):
Okay. Before we go, I want to hear about your sort of daily eating pattern, your favorite foods. Are you into fasting or any of the, uh, overlays like the time restricted feeding and other popular things?

Shawn (01:07:57):
Um, so in maintenance phase, and I’m not in maintenance phase right now, I’m trying to eat my butt off because I lost weight cause what happens is I got so busy with work and I wasn’t able to train as much. And so I just got skinny. You know, I went, I, you know, I dropped down from 245 to 225 in about three weeks. Uh, and so right now I’m eating about five, six times a day to try to try, try to try and get that back up and do it. Wrapping up my training in advance of these world championships, I’ve gotten about half of that weight back. So, um, but normally day to day when I’m sort of hovering it 240 and feeling good and performing well, it’s usually about two meals a day, generally about two pounds of meat in the morning, two pounds of meat in the evening.

Shawn (01:08:37):
And that’s kind of my typical day. Um, sometimes I’ll throw some eggs in there. Sometimes I’ll throw a little bit of salmon in there. Sometimes I’ll throw a little bit of dairy in there, depending on what I, you know, how I’m feeling. I just kind of, I’m pretty intuitive about it. I don’t really stress about it. Um, I eat to satiety. I don’t, I don’t let myself get hungry. Um, and I kind of naturally just stay. My weight doesn’t move, you know, it’s just long as I’m kind of consistent in my training and my eating. I’m just, you know, on the money. And the nice thing about that for me is I’m just full all the time. I mean, I’d satiated all the time, so I’m not worried about that. And of course, meal planning is pretty brainless. It’s eating. It’s like my daughter’s like feeding my dogs.

Shawn (01:09:14):
They get the same fee food every day. We feed your dogs. Yeah, my dog, my dogs just, I’ll get raw meat and my dog literally, uh, when it’s time for them to eat, they’re jumping around and paintings and you know, salivating and drooling and excited and hopping around. And I’m the same way. I’m like, I’m excited. Eat this steak every, every single meal. And so it’s, it’s not like, uh, uh, I’m depriving myself. I truly enjoy the food and yeah, like I said, if I want some eggs and throw some eggs in there or something else like that. And you know, uh, when my son had his birthday, I had a piece of birthday cake. I mean, I didn’t, I didn’t, you know, I’m not like a religious,

Brad (01:09:47):
then he went into his rowing room and busted out a minute, 15 all out.

Shawn (01:09:51):
No, I mean, I actually felt a little sick to my stomach. Wow. You know, but I mean, I had it, you know, just, you know, I enjoyed it while I was eating it, but I didn’t, I didn’t feel like right afterwards. And I did it to kind of as a concession to Mike cause you can be someone who’s bad birthday with him, but,

Brad (01:10:04):
Do you think you’re more sensitive now that your diet is so clean and like against a slice of birthday cake?

Shawn (01:10:09):
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I think you know, your, your gut microbiome changes your digestive system. You know, what expresses the enzymes, the things that it’s going to produce. The cell composition is going to change a little bit. You know, it’s gonna, it’s gonna, it’s gonna respond to your demands. You know, that’s why people, it takes them a while to transition because the body has to, you know, upregulate and downregulate things. And that takes, takes some time for that, for that to occur.

Brad (01:10:35):
So right here from the plant based eater that they take a bite of hamburger and they get sick to their stomach, know whatever happens, and it’s possibly a legitimate complaint that they’re going to have to habituate. And again, to absolutely nutritious food.

Shawn (01:10:49):
I mean, it’s, you gotta, you gotta transition to one dot and transition out to another one. And they’re probably not, particularly if they’re falling in the low fat paradigm there, they probably don’t express as much light pays. You know, their gallbladder probably isn’t as efficient and a whole bunch of other things that are going on that often will come back online over time.

Brad (01:11:06):
Tell us about this. Meatrx.com. Is that your operation?

Shawn (01:11:10):
Yeah, so meatrx.com is a, is a, uh, uh, you know, a vision that myself and my co founder, a guy named Masa Rostami, she’s a, sees a entrepreneur on a, on a Silicon Valley. Uh, she’s my co founder and CTO. And my vision is really to, I think the healthcare system really is sick. And I think I’ve kind of likened to calling it the disease management industry. I mean, I think that’s what, while we’re doing, for the most part, you know, outside of acute disease, acute trauma and other things, but when it comes to chronic disease, and that’s what most, most of the health care addresses, it’s really just managing disease, putting band AIDS on, you know, just dealing with symptoms, placating people, more drugs, more prescriptions, you know, that type of thing. I think that model is not serving people well, both the physicians and the patients. And so I’m trying to get into what I’m calling the health creation business. And one of the things that, my thought is to get this to the masses, it has to be, uh, uh, accessible.

Shawn (01:12:11):
It has to be, it has some work and, but it has to be affordable. So we’ve really come up with this. So what we have is a bunch of, you know, people that have done this diet and they’re very passionate about, some would call them zealots even, right? They’re just, they’re just proselytizing. They’re talking, they’re on social media. They’re spending two, three hours a night talking to people, telling them about how wonderful it is, how they can transition them. Like, why don’t you guys, you know, we can set you up as coaches, we train you and your train you so you’re all standardized and have standardized knowledge. And then we pay you a little bit, you know, suck it. You’re not going to get rich. It’s like a part time job. It’s like an Uber driver, right? We have a lot of people that would do this for free anyway. Now we’re paying them a small amount, recharging our clients incredibly small amounts to get them the support they need, the coaching they need. Because we know with any sort of healthcare intervention support always improves the outcomes. So that’s kind of the vision behind this. We have a lot of other things on there. We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of success stories to inspire people. We’ve got all the research that’s out there and we’re adding to that all the time that supports this way of sort of dieting and things that are, that are relevant to that. We’ve got a huge section on environment, like if you want to read about why animal agriculture can be helpful and what some of the, where some of these misconceptions come from. Get some of the real data out there. We’ve got lots and lots of recipes and you know, even on carnivores, just me, but there’s lots of ways to prepare me. There’s lots of different things you can do, things that you know, make it more and more interesting for people. And then we have every day I have, I host a live video meeting and it’s on, you know,

Brad (01:13:42):
every day,

Shawn (01:13:42):
every day, every day at 9:00 AM I get in there Pacific time and we have, you know, 30, 40 people in there and we just talk and answer questions. And now we have evolving from that. We have additional meetings that are going on every day, all throughout the day. People from all over the world. And it’s becoming more focused. Like we have a women’s group, we have an over 65 group, we have people with chronic pain, we have people with addiction, emotional issues, you know, uh, mental health issues. We have, uh, you know, what are the other ones? Auto-immune we’ve got just and it just grow. Whoredom uh, yeah,

Brad (01:14:17):
we have the boredom group. We have the athletic group.

Shawn (01:14:20):
Well that’s where we’re, that’s where we’re going to involve too. So we haven’t a place for anyone to go that’s pursuing a meat-based or mostly meat based diet that wants support because you are kind of lonely a lot of times you’re out there, you know, maybe your family doesn’t support you. Maybe people in your community don’t support you, what you’ve got this huge online network and that’s been more popular. It really was my co founders idea and I said, well it’s okay, but it’s been really popular and it’s well attended. And you know, most of the stuff we do is for free, we call it the cause charge, a nominal fee for coaching, a nominal fee for membership. And we also provide discounts. We hook people up with ranchers and producers, secure discounts for these people. Kind of want a wholesale price. And so, you know, we want to bring the ranchers in and we want to, we wanna, you know, we wanna we want to develop this relationship between these people and eventually, you know, have some political cloud to where we can kind of, you know, impact what’s coming coming down in the room.

Brad (01:15:13):
Meat RX .com. Dr Shawn Baker. Thank you so much. Keep up the great work. Go get the book, The Carnivore Diet. Hard to forget that name.

Shawn (01:15:23):
Well Brad, thanks you. Not my pleasure. It’s been fun.

Brad (01:15:26):
Thanks a lot. Don on, on, no, no, no, no, no. All right, man. All right. Good stuff. Awesome. Uh.

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Get Over Yourself

Welcome To The Get Over Yourself Podcast

I clear my throat and set the tone for what to expect on the wild ride that is the Get ...
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Peter Attia

Peter Attia: Longevity, Diet, And Finding The Drive

I head to San Diego, via Mexico (relevant shortly) to catch up with one of the great health leaders of ...
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SUCCESS STORIES

The MOFO Mission (you should choose to accept it!) is off and running and lives are changing.

TJ Quillin
Success Stories

MOFO has been nothing short of an incredible addition to my daily life. After a few days of taking this stuff, I started noticing higher energy levels throughout the day (and focus), increased libido (no joke!!), and better sleep (didn’t expect this at all!), not to mention better performance in the gym. I was finally able to break through a deadlift plateau and pull a 605lb deadlift, more than triple my body weight of 198 pounds! I was astonished because other than the MOFO supplement (and it’s positive, accompanying side effects) nothing else had changed in my daily routine in order to merit this accomplishment. I’m a big believer in MOFO and personally, I like to double dose this stuff at 12 capsules per day. The more the merrier!”

TJ QUILLIN

28, Union Grove, AL. Marketing director and powerlifter.

Success Stories

“I’ve been taking MOFO for several months and I can really tell a
difference in my stamina, strength, and body composition. When I
started working out of my home in 2020, I devised a unique strategy
to stay fit and break up prolonged periods of stillness. On the hour
alarm, I do 35 pushups, 15 pullups, and 30 squats. I also walk around
my neighborhood in direct sunlight with my shirt off at midday. My
fitness has actually skyrockted since the closing of my gym!
However, this daily routine (in addition to many other regular
workouts as well as occasional extreme endurance feats, like a
Grand Canyon double crossing that takes all day) is no joke. I need
to optimize my sleep habits with evenings of minimal screen use
and dim light, and eat an exceptionally nutrient-dense diet, and
finally take the highest quality and most effective and appropriate
supplements I can find.”

DUDE SPELLINGS

50, Austin, TX. Peak performance expert, certified
health coach, and extreme endurance athlete.

Boosting Testosterone Naturally
Brad Kearns
Brad Kearns
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