In today's episode, we're joined by Anthony Diehl, who turned his life around by losing 90 pounds in under a year. He discovered his passion for fitness during his freshman year of college, and has since become a strong advocate for the power of physical discipline, sharing insights from his journey as he went from an overweight college freshman to a disciplined fitness aficionado.
Anthony is a fitness coach and Strongman competitor. He highlights the sense of camaraderie that the sport fosters. We also delve into the role of physical strength in defining masculinity and the importance of practical tactical skills, such as jujitsu, in developing masculine capabilities.
In the final part of our discussion, we unpack the secrets of setting realistic fitness goals. We emphasize sustainability when it comes to diet and exercise plans, and the importance of setting achievable goals. Anthony also shares his insights on nutrition, advocating for red meat, poultry, eggs, yogurt, and cottage cheese as essential protein sources, and the psychological benefits of intermittent fasting. Tune in to learn more about the role of physical discipline, camaraderie, and masculinity in fitness, and the importance of setting realistic expectations when it comes to health and nutrition.
Talk to Joe Garrisi about managing your wealth.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Start banking with Private Family Banking. You can reach Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey at chuck@privatefamiliybanking.com, call him directly at 830-339-9472, or download his e-book HERE.
In today's episode, we're joined by Anthony Diehl, who turned his life around by losing 90 pounds in under a year. He discovered his passion for fitness during his freshman year of college, and has since become a strong advocate for the power of physical discipline, sharing insights from his journey as he went from an overweight college freshman to a disciplined fitness aficionado.
Anthony is a fitness coach and Strongman competitor. He highlights the sense of camaraderie that the sport fosters. We also delve into the role of physical strength in defining masculinity and the importance of practical tactical skills, such as jujitsu, in developing masculine capabilities.
In the final part of our discussion, we unpack the secrets of setting realistic fitness goals. We emphasize sustainability when it comes to diet and exercise plans, and the importance of setting achievable goals. Anthony also shares his insights on nutrition, advocating for red meat, poultry, eggs, yogurt, and cottage cheese as essential protein sources, and the psychological benefits of intermittent fasting. Tune in to learn more about the role of physical discipline, camaraderie, and masculinity in fitness, and the importance of setting realistic expectations when it comes to health and nutrition.
Talk to Joe Garrisi about managing your wealth.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Start banking with Private Family Banking. You can reach Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey at chuck@privatefamiliybanking.com, call him directly at 830-339-9472, or download his e-book HERE.
This episode of the Hardman podcast is brought to you by Salt and Strings Butchery Order your custom beef bundle. Today, it's also brought to you by Private Family Banking helping Christians take dominion through privatized banking. Finally, today's episode is brought to you by Backwards Planning Financial building multi-generational wealth with Joe Garracy. Welcome to this episode of the Hardman podcast. I am your host, eric Kahn, and joined today by Mr Anthony Deal. Anthony, thanks for joining me for this episode.
Anthony Diehl:Yeah, thanks for having me, I'm excited.
Eric Conn:Anthony, I want to get a little bit about your background, your story. Obviously, you've got a jujitsu t-shirt on. I do yes, for those listening, there are some muscles behind the jujitsu t-shirt and I'm guessing you just have good genetics, is what it is. Your hormones just happen to be perfect. Yes, and none of this came about through discipline.
Anthony Diehl:No, through discipline. I was fact miracle-grown as a baby and, yeah, perfect genetics.
Eric Conn:That's right, one of the things I want to ask you. So I've seen the photo floating around, I think, on your Instagram, maybe Twitter as well, but you actually post it before and after. You weren't always this way like super yoked. I'm just curious in your life, like, how did fitness and physical strength, all those things, how did that become an important part of your life?
Anthony Diehl:Sure, so I was always an active kid, always a chunkier kid. So I had a grandma who liked to feed me. I was a growing boy and her idea of a good meal was a bologna sandwich with mayonnaise, a couple cookies and a toglass of milk. Right, and so that's what every growing boy needs a couple of times, yes. So I was always on the pudgier side, from about fifth grade up through my freshman year of college. At the same time I played sports, I played basketball, I played soccer and I just remember, you know, I grew up watching Strongman with my dad and we would watch it in the basement or wrapping presents, because World Star, ice man, would come on around Christmas time and he had always encouraged me to be fit. He was pretty fit in college himself and he always fostered that in me.
Anthony Diehl:But I did lack discipline and I remember my freshman year at I was at Bible College and I came back for a second semester and a bunch of the guys are all in the dorm room just hanging out and a couple of the guys in there were wrestlers and they were cutting for for a match and so they're all weighing themselves and so just out of curiosity, I stepped on the scale and turns out I had gained like the freshman 40. Like it was bad. And I remember, like man, I'm wearing size 38 pants but I really need to get size 40s. Nothing fits.
Anthony Diehl:And what's odd, man, is I don't know why to this day I've wracked my brain. I just remember something snapped in my head. I just said no, I'm not doing that. And I went to college in the North Woods of Wisconsin, so it's cold, yeah, like two hours north of Green Bay. So I remember I got up early next morning because we had to be at devotions by like 730. So I got up at like five, I went into the gym and I said I'm going to run as many laps as I possibly can and I made it six and I was like well, this is bad but I'm going to just add a lap every single day and at the time I was also traveling with the school and kind of a recruiting fashion that was on the music and drama team.
Anthony Diehl:We would basically go into local churches on the weekends and, you know, do music and youth rallies and whatnot, as a kind of recruiting function for the school. So naturally, being in Baptist churches is that's my background. What do they do with youth that come in? They feed them, you know, all manner of pizza, lasagna, pasta, ice cream, right. So so I just remember saying to myself OK, I'm going to make this work the six days a week I'm going to just meet in vegetables and, mind you, I have no nutrition training whatsoever At this point. I just intuitively knew protein and veggies is good and I'm not preaching that carbs are bad. That's just what I knew at the time.
Anthony Diehl:I said I'm going to eat only meat and vegetables, and then on Sunday I'll eat one plate of whatever is served, zero restriction. So lasagna, pizza, cake, ice cream, whatever we're in the local churches, I'm just going to eat what's provided.
Anthony Diehl:And so I did that and all I did was run. And I did that and I lost 90 pounds in about nine months. Now I did it kind of backwards. I mean it's a great result, right, but I just ran. I got really into running, lost a ton of weight, but coming from somebody who had not run before, ever outside the game of basketball, to running every day of the week, I got an injury in my hip and I went to the doctor and looked at it. He was like dude, there's like no cartilage in your pelvis. You just kind of wore that away because I went from this lazy guy to just running and so I didn't know how to scale. And he was like well, you have to stop on it. And naturally I was freaked out, like okay, well, I'm going to give him this weight back. And a buddy of mine was like hey, start lifting with me. And I had never lifted before at all.
Anthony Diehl:And so again this is this now will be coming into my sophomore year of college I started lifting and was weak when I started, but my strength exploded. So probably in about a year and a half I was benching 300 pounds for reps, and so I realized that you know I was always kind of the chunky kid.
Anthony Diehl:But the double edge, sort of that is like I always have to watch my diet because you know I can gain fat pretty easily. But the other side of that was, oh wow, I can get strong pretty fast too. I can put on muscle pretty quickly. You know more than most. So in some ways I do feel like, yeah, that's obviously just a genetic thing. My grandpa was a stocky dude, things like that. So that's kind of where the love for that came in. And it was funny because there was four guys who traveled with us on this music team and we were all joking, we're like we don't want to be like, you know, the feminine fine arts dudes. We got to lift together. So all of us lifted and literally by the time we were done all of us were benching over 300 pounds, so we were like the jacked choir boys, that's great.
Eric Conn:Yeah, it's awesome. One of the things that strikes me about it I had a similar story in college. You know they said you're going to gain the freshman 15. I gained like 50 pounds, all fat, just eating junk food, not really working out, really no exercise whatsoever, except for my thumbs on Matt on Xbox, which is, in case you don't know, not the same thing as a real workout. It's not in fact. It's not. It's not and.
Eric Conn:But what's interesting is I got into early on. I got into body for life again, had no training, understanding, knowledge. I was just kind of the first thing I saw on the shelf. But what it did for me was introduced me to the gym and weightlifting. So there was some like high intensity interval training, but mostly it was like lifting based. One of the things I noted was I lost weight and had more physical prowess, I guess.
Eric Conn:But what was interesting was the change in confidence and how it affected me spiritually. So the more that I was practicing that discipline, the more that it seemed like it bled into, like you know, bible reading and devotions with family and I was just a more disciplined person in general. So I just want to ask you like for men a lot of guys are like well, what difference does it make if I'm physically strong? One of the benefits and the positives I think you would agree is this confidence that comes from discipline. So I wonder if you would just speak to that and how that was just a change in your life, having that discipline Certainly.
Anthony Diehl:I completely agree with that. Now, to be fair, I have seen I went through a period of time, a long span of time, where weights and training became an idol for me. Sure, and it very easily can be that. But on the other hand, what you're saying is 100% correct in that when you can, what you eat, what you put in your mouth, if you have discipline there, that is such a base human thing that every single person does. If you can control that and if you can voluntarily put your body through suffering, it makes everything else seem so much easier.
Anthony Diehl:And so when I'll say this that you know being physically fit I say this all the time it doesn't make you a better man, but it makes you better at being a man. And then, when you run across these things in life where you're confronted with, well, I'm lacking discipline in that area, I think it does instill a confidence because you're like well, I know how to do hard things and so cool, I've done hard things before and now I just need to apply that same rigor in this area of life and I know it can happen. And so, yeah, I definitely don't think that necessarily being physically fit means you're going to be disciplined in all other areas of life, but I definitely think it builds in you a capability and a confidence to go attack other areas of life when you realize I am not disciplined.
Anthony Diehl:Yeah, exactly what?
Eric Conn:you were talking about strongman. I want to ask you kind of how you got into that world. I was. It made me think of a story. So I was working in the gun industry and I had watched it as a kid as well, just on TV. It was like before CrossFit, before any of that became big you could watch, like the strongman competitions. Well, we're at a shot show in Las Vegas one year and I had no clue that this guy worked for the company. But I go to the Aimpoint booth and there's this dude who's six foot seven and I was like who is this giant of a man? And it was Magnus Samuelson and I was like I've seen this dude on TV, a mountain of a man. But that was just something about as a young boy, watching these men move just intense weight and do all these crazy feats. That captured my imagination. So you mentioned watching it. How did you actually get to the point where you're partying In it? Yeah, it's a great question. So I was just working out the gym one day.
Anthony Diehl:So context background I'm going to Southern Seminary in Louisville and I'm managing a Starbucks at the time and so one of the guys who worked for me, he was one of my shift supervisors. We were always at the gym at the same time together, so we would just lift him and he was probably like 50 to 60 pounds lighter than me and I'm stronger than him at everything in the gym. And I'm stronger than him at everything in the gym. And he says to me hey, do you want to do farmers carry? His outback. And I said, what is a farmer's carry?
Anthony Diehl:And again, I had seen this stuff on TV but I'm not really connecting it yet. So I go out there and he and a bunch of other guys are out back of this gym and they've got huge logs and stones, they have these farmer's handles and he's got 200 pounds in each hand and he picks it up and runs with it and this kid has to weigh like 175, 180. So in my head I'm thinking, well, if he did that, I'm going to smoke it. And I remember it's trying to stand up with this wobbly weight in each hand and waddling like a drunk baby deer.
Eric Conn:And I think it was ego that got me into a strongman, because I was like well, I am terrible at that and I need to fix this.
Anthony Diehl:And he was like yeah, well, I'm going to train at this guy's house on Saturday. Turns out it was like a mile from my house. He's like, you know, we just do strongman stuff at his house on Saturdays at 11. I went there and within six weeks I was training with the guys. It was a very kind of a communal thing and the guy you know kind of headed up at the time. He's like guys, there's a competition coming up in six weeks. I signed all of you up and he was like our impromptu kind of coach. And so he's like yeah, I signed you up and you're going to do this, do the show. Okay, and went to the show.
Anthony Diehl:I think I got second place in the novice category and one thing I loved about the sport right away was the camaraderie. It's like all these guys are absolutely trying to beat you and they're also encouraging you to beat them along the way. It's like they're cheering for you as you deadlift that thing for reps, even though they want to win. And I just fell in love with it. I got addicted to the sport and, like I said, I kind of discovered like, oh man, I'm like decently strong. I didn't ever. I never knew that because I didn't grow up weight training and I kind of just came up and strongman pretty quickly and fell in love with the sport that way.
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Eric Conn:What you mentioned about I think it's actually something missing in our culture is the you know it's a sedentary culture now, but actually having the camaraderie around physically hard things, especially for men, and it seems like going to the gym, being in workout groups I'm sure jujitsu is the same thing there's a different level of male friendship that can be developed around physical challenges that you simply can't do, I mean, even if you're working in an office with guys, that's great. But I remember talking to a military guy years ago and I said hey, we need the guys in our church to do bonding, that we need them to be friends, and they're just not. And he goes oh, that's simple, you just got to make them go through hell together. It's just like you know you're not going to be able to do anything physically, so hard that's going to kind of knit the community together. So I wonder, like, across the years, as you look at that and then you compare it to the church, do you see a deficiency?
Anthony Diehl:in male friendship in the church around physically hard things, Absolutely 100% At your point. I'll come back to that. It's like when you reflect on the fun times in life. I mean I've been doing amusement riding. That sticks out to me. Do you remember when we went on that roller coaster and it was really fast? No, nobody really remembers that kind of stuff. You remember the times where it's like, hey, you remember that time we climbed that huge rocket, almost died. That was great. My cousin and I have so many stories of like, hey, over the time we made that homemade bomb and almost lost our hands. We were such idiots.
Anthony Diehl:And you look back on hard times. We did a youth group trip twice when I was in my youth group growing up. Our youth pastor took us to a Gankun provincial park in Canada and we would hike and portage all the rivers and it was hard, it was grueling and some of my greatest friendships were forged then. That was 20 years ago, and so I think suffering is huge in too many churches. Listen, I'm awful at men studying the word together, but men don't bond sitting around in a circle with their Bibles open. That's just not how men do it, and a lot of times. Men's Bible studies are like women's Bible studies.
Eric Conn:You just add bacon if you're Presbyterian at beer and then that's a men's Bible study and the reality is.
Anthony Diehl:That's just not how men. Men like to be side by side. I remember when I was at our church in Kentucky I developed a really good relationship with our pastor and it was never when I was sitting in his office. We used to get up at four o'clock in the morning and run together and we had some of the best conversations about three quarters of the way, and the last quarter of the way was an all out race, and we had some of the best conversations and mutual encouragement during those runs, more so than we did sitting across a desk from each other yeah, yeah, I know, I think that's so important.
Eric Conn:It's one of the things that we've talked a lot about on this podcast too, but I think it has resonated with a lot of people is sort of the downplaying of the physical within the church. I think. Certainly cultural things societally again, as I said, we're sedentary culture but a lot, I think, in the church too, like I started to see these problems with the feminacy. There's kind of two ditches, though, and I want to ask you about this. On the one hand, you could say, like, well, being a gym bro is not a one to one parallel with being biblically, a man. Okay, that's true. How do you see the strength in the physical body playing into your definition of masculinity, because it certainly is a fundamental part.
Anthony Diehl:Sure, absolutely, and I try to. I'm fully aware that when I speak about these things to other people, whether that's in person or on my social media platform, that when I speak about being strong as a man, they see me 260 pounds lifting a 400 pound log over his head. I don't mean that Like that's great, that's a hobby.
Anthony Diehl:That's good. That's totally fine If you want to push yourself there by all means, but I defined it as capability to do your role well, if that makes sense. I said it before, but being strong isn't going to make you a better man. There are a lot of strong men out there who are terrible men but it will make you better at being a man. How are you possibly going to serve anybody if you're physically incapable?
Anthony Diehl:If there needs to be a workday done at a lady's house and they're taking down some trees and chopping some firewood and you're out of breath putting your shoes on Like, come on, you got to fix that. You need to be fit and capable to serve. You don't need to be in a doness, you don't need to have 10% body fat and a six pack, but you need to be capable. You need to be able to go, do a hard day's work. You need to be able to defend yourself, defend your family. So I think there are extremes out there and I definitely want to avoid pushing this idea that in order to be a man, you have to be absolutely jacked. I think you need to be capable. That makes sense.
Eric Conn:And that's going to look different for everybody.
Anthony Diehl:I mean the reality is I'm six feet and 260 pounds. What about the guy who's five foot eight or five foot six? Does that mean he can't be masculine being a man? Absolutely not. He's just going to develop his capabilities in a way that's a little bit different. That's all.
Eric Conn:Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I think the other part of it too is we've sort of seen in a lot of the like gospel centered churches. I actually think it's an intentional effort by many, at least, especially those at the top, to weaken men. So you'll see the celebration of things. Like Paul said, when I'm weak, then I'm strong, and people are like oh, so it's good to be weak, and then they celebrate like, oh, I'm a loaf of a human, I'm physically weak, I'm frail, whatever, and that's actually better.
Eric Conn:I think it just goes back to the basics that a lot of ironically, a lot of evolutionary psychologists are picking up on. People like Jordan Peterson who are like a weak man is not a good man. A strong man who has it under control, that's a good man, or at least has the potential to be a good man. You've got a factor in morality and all those things too. But it makes me think of something you mentioned protection and self-defense. If I'm to protect my family at some level, I need strength, but I also need, like practical tactical skills. Either I need to know how to fight with my hands or I need to know how to use weapons something Correct. So I just want to talk to me about that. Obviously, jujitsu would be a part of it for you, but how do you think about the defense side of masculinity?
Anthony Diehl:Yeah, I mean, that's certainly there. I mean, you see, if you read the Old Testament, what happened when Lot was carried off? Abraham didn't call the cops, he didn't appeal to the feds, he got 300 of his own men, as has, who were trained. They're trained men, they're his guys. So they had been preparing for this. I think it's interesting too when you look back at historically. You look at old competitions, even the Olympics, all of these things were their games, but they were preparing men for war. Javelin throwing, running, rowing, they're all turning it into competition, but historically men competed and there were fun ways to make sure that you were fit and capable for war when that time came. So Abraham takes 300 men and goes and gets him.
Anthony Diehl:And so the lesson there in my mind is that I am responsible chiefly, first and foremost, for the protection of my family. And, yeah, I should cultivate some kind of martial virtue. Again, you don't have to chew your jiu-jitsu, but you could. You should probably if you live in the United States of America. I don't care what John Piper says. Much respect, but you should own a gun and then you should know how to use it so that if somebody breaks into your house, that you can dispatch that threat to the glory of God and then raise your hands in the glory of pottery the next morning. That's how that works.
Eric Conn:Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I've been reflecting on it too, even with the Westminster Confession, you know in regarding the command Thou shalt not murder. But it's interesting too, because all the reformers read into that, that you actually have a duty and obligation to protect, right. So like, if you have innocent people like your family and you don't protect them, that's actually a violation of the commandment Thou shalt not murder. So yeah, there's built-in obligations and then you just work a little bit downstream and you're like well, that means I have to know how to use again my hands, my body. There should be some competency and skill.
Anthony Diehl:Yeah, so I think of my language. Our pastor, our elders, right now are working through an exposition of the Decalogue, and what Casey has been saying is what is prohibited in this commandment, what is commanded in this commandment and what is annexed to this commandment, and it's interesting because a lot of the Puritans, when they're looking at Thou shalt not kill, not only does that apply the inverse of that, that you should protect life both physically, but then also Thomas Watson applies that to our diet. If you are living in such a way that is putting yourself into an early grave, you're violating that commandment, and so I think you're spot on.
Eric Conn:Yeah, he has this great line. He said some, some men dig their graves with their teeth by the way that they eat, and I think most of us can identify with like that's just a lifelong thing that you have to continue to exercise. Discipline Doesn't matter if you were like super disciplined 10 years ago on the way that you ate. It's going to drastically impact your quality of life Again. Discipline plays into all these sorts of areas as well.
Eric Conn:One of the other things I think that's interesting, anthony, is that when you look at what's going on in America with the church recently I've been reading Tim Keller's, you know, renewal of the church in America, his kind of dying manifesto and a lot of it is like about multiculturalism and welcoming, you know, same-sex attracted people and single women and all this.
Eric Conn:Not a whole lot is said about the working man. Fast forward to this moment in cultural, you know the meilu, if you will. But we've got Oliver Anthony and we've got this guy who writes this very like Appalachia song, very blue collar. I see a lot of people in the church being really grateful, like somebody is finally saying these things. So it could tie to physical strength, you know. It could tie to kind of how you see the world as a working man. But all that tied together, I want to ask you do you think a lot of this is, you know, male strength telling men to be weak? It seems like it has a lot to do with working men and what they're going through in our country, so I just wonder if you would speak to that.
Anthony Diehl:It's big, which his song is so raw. I think it speaks. What I get out of that song is there's just raw honesty and there's grit there. There's that grit fighting to kind of survive. It's interesting.
Anthony Diehl:Our culture is certainly threatened by capable men and so if the men can be subdued, if the men can be tamed, if you will, they can be controlled 100%. And I think the last three years have been interesting. I think with COVID kind of the masks have been pulled off, if you will, and people are beginning to have their eyes opened and they're beginning to see these problems. They're beginning to see what happens when, when you tamp down good masculinity, when you call masculinity toxic, when the reality is like 48% of children are raised by single moms and like 78% of teachers are women, the problem is not toxic masculinity, it's lack of it. It's lack of it. And I think this is a very interesting cultural moment and it's funny because and maybe this has to do with our shared eschatology, but I find a lot of hope in it. When I look at COVID being kind of stripping the mask off, when I look at everything that's going on with these UFOs and UAPs, I just look at this and I go. This is great. Materialism is crumbling Like this is. The field is ripe.
Anthony Diehl:This is a fun time to be a Christian and particularly I mean I am very vocal about my faith and I have. I'm in a weird world. I'm in a very non-Christian world in the strength and fitness community, dude, I'm telling you I probably have gospel conversations with people reaching out to me at least every other day, at least people just questioning things, guys coming to me, people that I had this one client reach out to me and I think I shared the story on Facebook. She recently became a Christian, was raised in a Muslim home. Her dad was like listen, if you get baptized, I'm gonna disown you. She chose to do it anyways and her eyes have been opened through this through the last three years. Several guys I have several guys I did strongman with who were friends but I mean they would tease me so much about my religious convictions and they're all you know they're atheists, you believe in sky, daddy, all this kind of stuff.
Anthony Diehl:Well, the last three years have changed some things and their eyes are being opened. They're asking hard questions. Next week I'm going to have cigars and beer with a buddy of mine who is a devout atheist was, and now he's got a lot of questions. And so I just I look around at what's happening in this cultural moment and I see, you know, the attacks that are coming on us from all sides. So I'm like I don't know, I'm kind of excited. This is a fun time to be Christian. Opportunities are everywhere.
Eric Conn:Oh yeah, yeah, I think that is a huge encouragement. One of the things I want to ask you about in this show as well, we were kind of talking offline this concept, in any kind of training that you do, of cutting, of losing weight. I just want to start with some of the basics here, but there's kind of a I don't know like a lot of misconceptions tied to weight loss. A lot of people market in the fitness community toward weight loss. I've seen a lot of stuff that's like well, if you want to lose weight, you need to do a ton of cardio and you know weight training is not going to help you, blah, blah, blah. So maybe if you just start giving me some of the main principles when you're thinking about as a trainer, as a coach, like what do I start thinking about when I want to think about cutting, losing weight?
Anthony Diehl:Well, the first thing I tell people is we need to set some realistic expectations, because a lot of people market things and if you see people marketing stuff like lose X number of pounds in 30, 60, 90 days, you need to run. You need to run because, listen, if it took you, if you walked five miles into the woods, you need to turn around and walk five miles back out, and there's not shortcuts. So the first thing I want to do with people is set realistic expectations. Understand that you should think in terms of months, maybe even years, depending where you're at. You should think in terms of months and need to get okay with the concept of delayed gratification. I think this is one of the reasons why people quit, because when it comes to diet and nutrition, it's one of the only things in life where you it's like you could put in a lot of really hard work for two, three weeks and you might not see any change, especially if you're judging on the scale, whereas if you said I want to save a million dollars, it seems insurmountable, but if you save a dollar a day at least, at the end of a week you have $7. Well, you could diet really hard for two weeks and you're like I don't see any change, and it's really hard, and so I think people have to get their mind right. First Get their mind right, then number two this does not have to be overly complicated, you just need to be consistent. So for me, it's about what is sustainable.
Anthony Diehl:People ask me all the time what do you think about intermittent fasting? What do you think about keto? What do you think about this? And I just say is whatever you're doing, is it going to meet your needs? Are you going to be a healthy person doing that? Can you sustain it? All of those things are just tools. I have clients that do intermittent fasting and love it, and that would be a very terrible strategy for another person. And so there's not a one size fits all approach to this. At the end of the day, it is energy balance and you need to get some adequate protein and then lace up your shoes and go for a walk, like those are the bedrock foundation, right, and then we can start getting into the quality of the food that you eat and all that stuff does matter.
Anthony Diehl:I think a lot of times, what ends up happening is people fall into a couple of ditches They'll get so amped up They've made and it's usually after their bellies are nice and full and they feel kind of guilty for eating that pint of ice cream They'll make this emotional decision to change. They'll buy the workout gear, they'll buy the gym membership. They create the plan. It's super rigid and hardcore and they stick to it for like three weeks and then they just fall off because it's not sustainable and they can't stick to it. And so there's that first ditch of just going 95 miles out of the gate. The other ditch is to get into the minutia way too quickly.
Anthony Diehl:So you know, when I hear guys that are 90 pounds overweight talking about artificial sweeteners and seed oils, I'm like, bro, you need to go walk Like we don't need to be, we don't need to worry about this right now. You need to get your protein in. You know, burn some calories, lift some weights when we can get there. But we have to get the big rocks first. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you getting enough water? Are you getting enough protein? What's your energy balance?
Anthony Diehl:And then I approach everybody individually, because some people have zero experience with this, and so, especially I know how the female mind works If I tell a woman to eat 2000 calories and she eats 1900, she's gonna feel like a failure. If I tell her to eat 2100, she's gonna think she's gonna get fat. That's not how the body works, and so what I'll oftentimes do is I'll give people ranges. I'll say, hey, I want you to eat between 1700 and 2000 calories, and then I want you to eat between 120 and 150 grams of protein. So if you could just live in that range, that's what success looks like and that gives them a little life buffer, and all they're tracking is total calories and protein. Once they get that down and can sustainably do that for several weeks.
Anthony Diehl:Now I actually have real data and a trend to work with and we can just adjust that scale up or down based on their needs. There's a time and place to dig into tracking the carbs and the fats. I work with MMA athletes and I'm cutting them for competitions, and so we're gonna get really into the minutia there and, just depending on your athletic goals, it can get complicated, but for the average person it doesn't need to be complicated. You need to do something that you can stick with forever and then be consistent and let the process work itself out and don't get discouraged. I don't like the term diet, simply because if you say you're going on a diet, that assumes you're coming off, and so when you come off, what do you think is gonna?
Anthony Diehl:happen if you just go back to your habits, and so the only time I like to use the word diet is if there's a medical need, and then we can go on a diet, or if you're a weight class athlete. Apart from that, for the average Joe, I don't want to overly complicate it.
Eric Conn:Yeah, I know that makes total sense. I'm curious. I want to ask you more about sort of the, you know, seed oils. But there's a lot of things in that category where you know it could be ice baths, it could be a number of things where it's like particularly in, like the mannisfier, you know, rye, nationalist type spaces, bap. There's a lot of good stuff there. I've definitely benefited from a lot of it. But it is interesting. I wonder what you think the fixation and fascination with some of those things are, where guys are like you know they're obsessing over seed oils.
Eric Conn:So I've kind of done two things. I've been on them and off them. I went off them for a long time. It was like six months, no seed oils. You know we were doing carnivore or doing a bunch of different stuff, and blood work before and after was actually less drastic difference than I thought. Some of those things have been added back in and you know small measure and haven't really seen a negative. I think one of the big things I noticed, especially with carnivore, was like I think humans are made for sort of like a variety of diet and so it gets really hard when you're gonna limit yourself to one food group and then you get your blood work done and you're like, yeah, a lot of my stuff's like really out of whack and the doctor's like you need to, like, eat some fruit.
Eric Conn:Okay, you know stuff like that. So overall, the question is like why do you think people get so fixated with these certain issues seed oils, et cetera.
Anthony Diehl:Nutrition is just as tribal as religion. 100%. Everybody gets into their camps. I try not to live in a camp. I think there's the right application for all of these things. I mean, the carnivore diet started out as a tool of helping people deal with epilepsy. There's actually a time and place for it.
Eric Conn:Or immuno-compromise people with really benefit. Yeah, Correct.
Anthony Diehl:I mean, I did it for six months one time and I did a modified. I did have some fruit in there and some local honey and what I discovered was this is when I was launching my business my mental acuity was amazing. I didn't have any afternoon crashes. I felt like my brain power was on another level, but my lifts in the gym were trash, like I needed carbohydrates and, as a guy who's competing as a pro level and strongman, I was like I can't do this anymore and so I layered the carbs back into my diet. Plus, my wife makes the best homemade sourdough bread, so I'm gonna not give that up.
Anthony Diehl:Okay, yeah, and I'm gonna give it to the clients who love it. They love that kind of modified keto. It works well for them and it's interesting cause there's a couple of the guys that do it. They're CEOs, they work a lot of hours of the week and their workouts are like 30 minute hard kettlebell type stuff in the morning and they can kind of just hit that black coffee, hit the ground running and kind of fast until the afternoon, get their protein in and it serves them well and they're healthy. Great. It's a terrible strategy for a bodybuilder, but it works for that guy.
Eric Conn:And so like, yeah, why at a hard time with it too, with like powerlifting? Yeah, cause you have like these intense workouts and you're like I have to have some carbohydrates here. Yeah, absolutely.
Anthony Diehl:Absolutely you do. That's the main fuel source for when you're lifting. So all these things are tools. Man, ice baths I try to. You know it's a tool, it's a big fad right now.
Anthony Diehl:Like, ice baths are not good for hypertrophy. We know that after you lift weights that inflammatory response is needed to signal growth and so. But ice baths are awesome for decreasing acute inflammation. So if you're a performance athlete so when I was competing in strongman and I had two days of competition back to back, I would do an ice bath after the first day. Drop all that inflammation so I wasn't stiff and sore the next day Well, that's perfectly fine, that's a wonderful application.
Anthony Diehl:So, for example, I do ice baths twice a week. Tomorrow I'm not lifting, I'm gonna do jujitsu in the morning with the guy from church, a good friend of mine. We worship together and we try to choke each other out and then, once we're done doing that, once we're done beating each other up, I'll probably be stiff and sore and I'll go sit in the ice bath and the hot tub for a little bit and recover. So again, it's just a tool and it's knowing when to use it. I think guys just get excited when they discover a new tool and they just wanna use it on everything, and then this is the only way to do it, and so, yeah, it's very tribal.
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Eric Conn:The hog box is $239 and features premium Durrock pork, including eight thick pork chops one of my all-time favorites Pork steaks, cured and sliced bacon, ground pork, bratwurst and breakfast sausage links. You can place your order today at saltonstringscom or use the link in the show notes, and also be sure to follow Salt and Strings on Instagram. We'll also include the link in the show notes. Yeah, it makes sense. I think it's helpful to understand that. I wanna ask you so in say you're taking like intermediate guy, not super overweight, but just wanting to get more lean right, more definition, that sort of thing. Walk me through some of the basic foods that you would say okay, calorie range, got it. What about the specific foods that you'd be recommending eating?
Anthony Diehl:Sure, well, I'll go one step behind you and answer that question. A lot of guys don't know if they're kind of in that intermediate sorta should I bulk or should I cut, kind of thing and I would say get a super cheap body fat caliber from Amazon and see where you're at. If you're over 15% body fat you should cut first. Get rid of some of the adipose tissue that is estrogenic. Get lean. Men are the most anabolic between 10 and 15% body fat. So if you're sitting at 17 to 18% body fat, it's not that you can't gain muscle, it's just gonna be a little slower and you'd be better served by leaning out first. You can actually potentially growth down the line.
Eric Conn:Well, you defined for me, for people who don't know, anabolic. Why would that matter?
Anthony Diehl:Yeah, so anabolic, that's a state where your body is growing and able to grow muscle tissue. Okay. So again you can grow muscle tissue if you're 17, 18% body fat. But again your body is in a better state to grow faster and better quality if you're a little bit leaner. The adipose tissue adipose tissue is estrogenic for a man. So if you wanna raise your T levels and you're at 25% body fat, the best thing you can do is lose the fat. Now here's the cool part. Guys will ask me the time hey, bro, can you make gains in a deficit? And I will say let me define gains. Can you get bigger biceps in the deficit? No, no, if you're not taking in enough calories, that muscle is not gonna grow. Can you get stronger? 100% you can, because strength training is largely neurological. It's kind of like programming a computer. And almost nobody has reached the place in their strength capabilities where the only thing they can possibly do to get their bench press bigger is grow bigger pecs or triceps. I mean, at the elite levels, sure, but for most guys no.
Anthony Diehl:And I was a weight classed athlete my entire strongman career. I was a pro 105K athlete and so I walked around about 260, but I had to compete at 231. And so about eight to 10 weeks out from the competition, I would start dieting. I would start dieting and I would try to get down to about 250 or so 10 days before the competition and then I would water cut the rest and I'd have 24 hours to gain weight before I competed. And so, realistically, I was peaking to express my top end strength while dieting. And that's the cool part you absolutely can get stronger while dieting. You are not going to get bigger in terms of bicep size, chest size, leg size I'm not going to have it but you can get stronger. So with that bit of clarity out of the way, a lot of times guys try to attack two goals at the same time. Like guys, you just can't do that. Pick a goal. If you're 17 to 18% body fat, shed the fat first and lift heavy weight.
Anthony Diehl:Here's another myth I want to dispel. Is, guys, the same weights that make you strong are the same weights that you should do when you're leaning out. The idea that you should, if you're trying to lean out, that you should, lift light weight for a lot of reps, is backwards. Keep lifting heavy weight If you're in a calorie deficit. Your body doesn't care about your six pack and it doesn't care about your deadlift or your bench. It cares about survival, and so it would actually preferentially like to take nutrients from your muscle. That's where all the nutrients is.
Anthony Diehl:So how do we get it to burn fat? We do that two ways. We eat a lot of protein and we lift really heavy weight so that we're in a calorie deficit and you're still squatting really heavy. Send the signal to your brain hey, we're not getting enough nutrients in here, but he's still putting us through the pain and so we need to hang on to this muscle. We got to dip into these fat stores. So lift heavy weight and get an calorie deficit. That's the best way to get lean. And then, once you get down to that, 12, between 10% is pretty lean. You can get that to like 12, 13% body fat range. Then you can start saying, okay, cool, now I'd like to slowly go back into a calorie surplus and add some lean tissue, and do that slow. A lot of guys use bulk as just an excuse to hit McDonald's three times a day and it's like chill, bro I'm bulking.
Anthony Diehl:I'm bulking Okay.
Eric Conn:Yeah.
Anthony Diehl:So I know I just said a lot. So if you want to have any terrifying questions, yeah, it's super helpful.
Eric Conn:The 10 to 15%. That's really helpful to know. The other question I have is for people determining. I've seen lots of different ways to find a measurement for this for what calorie amount you should be eating. So one of the problems I've had is, especially after I started powerlifting for six plus months, anything that you use on the BMI matrix is like you're obese and you're not. They're not accounting for the typical scrawny fat somewhere in their type person with no muscle. So what are you recommending? How would a person even begin to say like well, how do I know?
Anthony Diehl:This is a great question, and I love getting this question because this causes so much angst, and it really shouldn't. So if you just type in macro calculator out there, all of them are going to be accurate. None of them are going to be precise, and so the way I define the differences accuracy says hey, I'm going to take this dart and I'm going to hit the dartboard. Precise says I'm going to hit a bullseye. Zero of them are hitting a bullseye. They're all going to get you in the ballpark. So plug in your numbers, whatever it is.
Anthony Diehl:When I get a new client in, I have my formula in my head, but at the end of the day, it's an educated best guess. I'm looking at their life, their activity level, the training I'm about to put them through, and I say cool, you're probably right around here. So then we create a target, and the best thing you can possibly do is take two weeks and just really nail it, eat according to that and track your weight. Did it go up, did it go down? Cool. And the key here is, though, you have to be accurate. Right, like 70% doesn't count, it's like no, no, you set these targets, nail these targets for a couple of weeks and get some real data. So yeah, that's the most accurate way to figure out what your maintenance calories are is just pick that goal, stick to it and hey, oh, you get to that.
Eric Conn:Oh man, I gained three pounds.
Anthony Diehl:Cool, I should have that down by like 200 calories, 300 calories. You don't need any wide swings. Oh, I lost two or three pounds. Cool, if you want to be in a deficit, keep going, and so that's the most accurate way to do it. There's really no other accurate way than that. And same thing with measuring body fat percent. This is why I tell people use the $4 cheapest thing you can find on Amazon.
Anthony Diehl:There's in body scanners and Dexa scanners and BOD pods and all of these things. And again, all of them are accurate and none are precise. There's way too many variables, and so I just say this if you have your favorite tool, just always stick with that. You don't want to go from a caliper to a Dexa scan, to an in body, because you're now using different tools and then you always want to duplicate the scenario in which you did it. So you don't want to. For example, I just had a girl do this every day. She was totally in her head. She did a in body scan, like two months ago, like first thing in the morning, six o'clock in the morning, didn't eat any food, did the in body scan at the gym. And then she does her in body scan and it says that she gained three pounds and all this other stuff, but she's in the calorie deficit and I was like, when did you do this? And she was like after my?
Anthony Diehl:after my workout Friday night, I was like after your workout, when you had like six meals in you that day and like a gallon of water, right. And so keep the, keep the circumstances the same when you do it, you know. Same thing for tracking via progress pictures in the morning fasted same time, same lighting. Just you want to create a unique, or rather a unified standard.
Eric Conn:Are you typically having people wave food?
Anthony Diehl:Yes, it won't do it again. It depends on their goals. If you're one of my bodybuilders, you're weighing everything to the gram, and then it also depends on personality, right? So I'll give people options. If I, if I have a client who they just want me to write them a meal plan and they don't want to think they're like, did you just tell me what to eat and I'll eat it, I'll put on their 150 grams of chicken with you know, 250 grams of Jasmine rice, 100 grams of green veggies, if your choice like up and so I'll just kind of lie now and they'll have to weigh that.
Anthony Diehl:Other folks that they don't like that because it's too restrictive, like they're eating the same stuff all the time. They want a little bit more freedom, so that I'll give them macros, but with parameters right. I'll say, okay, you just need to hit these macros, but 80 to 95%. 80 to 90% needs to be whole food sources, so if it has roots or a mother things you can catch, killer, grow right. And then I'll kind of give them some tips as far as nutrient timing around their workouts and all that.
Eric Conn:But again, that's for a different type of person. I'm not doing that for beginner.
Anthony Diehl:I don't care about nutrient timing, that's, we're getting the weeds at that point. So all of my nutrition plans are really it's based on the individual, their experience and their goals, what they're trying to do, and so the plans very wisely.
Eric Conn:Yeah, no, that's helpful. So one of the things I think we had talked about before is you know, as you're in a deficit, you're cutting. One of the things you want to do is get the carbohydrates before and after workouts. Is that right?
Anthony Diehl:So you want to time your nutrients and, let's say, you're aiming to be as strong as possible while you're losing weight. What you want to do, the best thing that you could possibly do, is put the bulk of your carbohydrates pre and post workout, because that's when your body is going to utilize it the best.
Eric Conn:Yeah, no, that makes sense. And then walk me through a water intake for people. What are you typically recommending?
Anthony Diehl:A minimum of two liters, but it also depends on where you live and your occupation. I mean, I have some guys who are bodybuilders, who are roofers, and they're drinking like three or four gallons a day because they're sweating and blistering heat.
Anthony Diehl:A guy like me who realistically lives a sedentary life outside of my training. I'm on a computer all day. I try to drink a gallon and a half a day. A guy my size, but I would say the average person. If you could just get in like two liters to a gallon a day, you're doing good. Water and protein are two things that require intentionality. You certainly can do that, but nobody is ever going to wake up. Few people are going to wake up and wing it and hit those targets.
Eric Conn:Yeah Well, for most people, the water thing. They probably think like, why do I need to drink that much? It doesn't make a big difference. What's the? Especially if you're training? Why is it so important?
Anthony Diehl:Well, hydration is just critical for overall health. I mean, your body is a massive percentage of water, so if you're dehydrated, even by up to like 2%, your strength levels plummet dramatically. But also there's help with digestion as well. So a lot of times when people are having digestive issues, I'll look at their water and take it. It's way too low. So, having a decent amount of fiber and drinking a lot of water especially like right now, my coach is pushing me. We're in a growth phase. I'm eating a lot of food. I'm eating uncomfortable amounts of food right now that I don't enjoy and in order to try and stay lean, it's all clean food. So when I get to the end of the night, I'm just staring at this bowl of plain oatmeal, this giant plate of egg whites super bland and I'm just kind of shoving it down. The water helps with digestion, so I'm not just sitting there polluting. So super important.
Eric Conn:Yeah, that makes total sense. So, while we threw, like your phase, right now, what types of foods, you mentioned a few of them.
Anthony Diehl:Yeah, I never answered your question. I feel badly.
Eric Conn:I took a step back and you were asking about foods. Yeah, so let's talk about food types.
Anthony Diehl:I mentioned it with a giant overarch. I just said things that you can catch killer. Grow more if it has roots or a mother, and I really do feel like that covers most grounds. Eat your red meat. Eat your so steak and chicken and venison, turkey bison eggs. Do not worry about dietary cholesterol from eggs. That is not going to have any negative impact on your lipid profile. Eat as many eggs as you want. They are nature's multivitamin. Now, do be aware there's six grams of fat per egg, so it is pretty calorie dense, so just be cognizant of that.
Anthony Diehl:So those are all great protein sources. Yogurt, cottage cheese also great protein sources. Carbohydrate sources I tend to use a ton of fruit because it's fibrous. So and also a lot of potatoes, white potatoes, sweet potato rice Don't get hung up on the debates between sweet potato better than white potato, brown rice better than white rice. The differences are so negligible, they're just different. So a white potato is fantastic for you and has more potassium in it than a banana. It's just different than a sweet potato. There's nothing wrong with that.
Eric Conn:Yeah, it's interesting because when I was doing carnivore, if you follow like Sean Baker or Paul Saladino, these guys are like it's interesting because I'd never heard it before. But they're like you know, fruits are anti-nutrients, like you should. And there's a few, like Paul has changed over the years, where he said like okay, yeah, no, there are some, you know, seedless fruits that you can eat and we actually need them, but then they he'll do like an animal based, where it's like never eat wild rice, you only want to eat white rice. Brown rice is horrible for you, Inflammatory, you're going to die of a heart attack tomorrow or feed it. It's kind of like you said, though it's like it becomes like a food religion really quickly. I've kind of found what you're saying like haven't really noticed the difference between brown rice and white rice, sourdough bread, that sort of thing. That's been fine, you know, as long as you're tracking macros and calories and you have good protein intake.
Anthony Diehl:Yeah, and when I look at all this stuff about seed oils, I've read a lot about seed oils and there is certainly some very concerning things, to the point where I'd go yeah, you know, I'm going to try and back away from over consumption, but I'm also not going to live in fear either of these things and I think a lot of people are absolutely paralyzed in fear over certain things and that's not a place that we need to live either.
Anthony Diehl:And then there's a whole argument of like you know well, I do think personally that vegetables are better for you cooked, then raw. Yeah, we can get into the weeds with this kind of stuff all day long. And the question is, well you know, is it good for you? From there's like the hormetic effect. It's kind of like being in a sauna for too long. You're going to die at the same time. If you're in a sauna for 20 minutes at 200 degrees, the heat shock proteins. There's a lot of really good things in there. We can't fast indefinitely you would die. But when you fast there is autophagy that occurs. However, I think a lot of the guys that hype up fasting for autophagy I think it's largely bunk, because you know Peter Atia's book Outlive. He highlights the fact that in mass studies and human studies are very different in humans we don't actually know how long it takes to reach autophagy, but it's probably closer, like five days. So your 24 hour fast isn't really doing a lot for you from an autophagy perspective.
Anthony Diehl:So for me to intermittent fasting. I use that more of a tool to say, you know what, if I'm going to calorie deficit and I'm only eating 2000 calories as opposed to 3000, but my feeding window is 12 to 8, psychologically it feels like I get to eat a lot more in that window. So it's a good tool. It's kind of like fasted cardio. People ask me hey, is fasted cardio better than fed cardio? And the science we have says absolutely not just do your cardio. But I've learned over the years of coaching there's a psychological benefit in that if you get up and you start your day with something difficult, you're less likely to make poor choices throughout the rest of your day food choices because you just did something really hard. You don't want to undo that effort. Two, you're less likely to push it off if the day gets busy.
Anthony Diehl:So you've already kind of got it done and so I do feel like there's that psychological edge of just getting up and getting something hard on the way, and so again, it's all perspective and context for all of these things In the nutrition world, the most frustrating, but I think the most honest answer to a lot of question is well, it depends.
Eric Conn:It's so frustrating, but it's honest yeah yeah, no, that's really helpful.
Eric Conn:One of the things I want to ask you is we can sort of wrap things up is you mentioned Peter Atea? I followed him. I think his podcast is the Drive, if I remember correctly. That's been really helpful. Obviously, andrew Huberman is both. I don't know. He's probably the guy who brings most of these crazy fads into the mainstream. Where it's like I need to buy this device so I can chew on it so that my jaw bones increase and strain. There's all sorts of crazy stuff. Joe Rogan gets into it. So I'm curious like who are you looking to podcast? Where do you go for sound, reliable information on health, fitness? Sure?
Anthony Diehl:I do like Huberman a lot. Naturally he's got the neurology aspect of things. He can get nutrition stuff a little wrong sometimes. I think he gets really excited about implications of things and other things. If this, then this, and so he's just trying to use some inference and logical application, which is fine. I love Huberman a ton. I like Peter Atia because I feel like he's the most intellectually honest.
Anthony Diehl:When I listen to guys like Paul Saladino and some of these guys sometimes it gets a little gimmicky and then I'll watch Lane Norton and he just loves to crush descent, but sometimes he can come off like he's never wrong and he ignores corollary data, which again I understand. Correlation is not causation, and so that's his big thing when he's looking at seed oils is there are not a lot of studies that show direct causation, but we have a ton of corollary studies and I do think I was always raised on that. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.
Anthony Diehl:It's probably a duck, and so I would like a little bit more. You know, respect paid to why people are concerned about seed oils.
Eric Conn:Yeah, like I can get it.
Anthony Diehl:I, you know you read some West of A price things. You're okay cool, I can understand. So there might be something there and maybe in the future we'll see some more studies that do determine causation. So I think probably one of my favorite guys to listen to is a guy named Sam Miller. His podcast is just Sam Miller science. I did a little biased but I did his mentorship program several years ago and he just specializes in hormones and metabolism. I find that he always has a very incredible, incredibly balanced approach. He's a lot of podcasts on the seed oils coming at it from both sides and he'll just share the raw data and say you know, maybe I think this is a cause for concern, maybe not. Here you decide, and so I like that a lot. So he's probably my number one right now.
Eric Conn:Okay, so that's Sam Miller. Yeah, sam Miller. Science.
Anthony Diehl:He's a good one Okay.
Eric Conn:Perfect. Well, Anthony, I appreciate you coming on the podcast for people who want to follow along. Maybe I don't know if you have training stuff. I know you've got your Twitter. What's the best place to keep up with what you're doing?
Anthony Diehl:Probably Facebook or Instagram. I have a Twitter for now, but I've been suspended like so many times. I think Will Spencer has like a betting pool out there right now. For how long? Until I'm just kicked off indefinitely. So I am coach and coach underscore Anthony Diel on Instagram. I'm coach Anthony Diel on Twitter. I'm just gonna say Anthony Diel on Facebook. But yeah, I would say probably Facebook or Instagram are the easiest ways to chat.
Eric Conn:Awesome, awesome. Well, I appreciate it, brother. Thanks again for joining me for this episode.
Anthony Diehl:Absolutely.
Eric Conn:Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Hardman podcast and special shout out to our Patreon supporters. If you're not yet a Patreon supporter, you can join today for as little as $5 a month, and that definitely helps keep this work going. We are glad to partner with you for content that builds a new Christendom and reclaims biblical masculinity. At the same time, you can check the show notes for the link to become a Patreon supporter of the Hardman podcast today. Stay frosty. Fight the good fight. Fight like men.