Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Quadrobics Comeback, Dietary Revelations, and the Carbohydrate Redemption
Step into the world of quadrobics and find out why this ancient form of movement is making a modern-day comeback as your new fitness best friend. As I take you through the paces of these dynamic crawling patterns, you'll learn about the staggering benefits they bring to joint mobility and body stabilization. But let's keep it real: these exercises come with expectations that need tempering—after all, not everyone can attain the advertised body types. And that's just the tip of the iceberg; we also unravel the complex ties between diet choices, our health, and the environment. Ever wondered if carbs are truly the villains they're made out to be? Prepare to have those myths dismantled as we discuss their critical role in muscle recovery and growth.
From climbing trees to rolling in the grass, who knew child's play could be the workout you didn't know you needed? Recollecting playful moments at the park, we explore how these energetic activities can seamlessly integrate into a robust fitness regime. Transitioning from physical to nutritional well-being, I open up about my personal evolution from a plant-based diet back to embracing meat, and the surprising performance outcomes that followed. With meat consumption under the microscope, we'll navigate through the environmental and health impacts, finding that sometimes, moderation truly is key. But it's not a one-diet-fits-all world out there; as a trainer, I've noticed the starkly different needs of each client, and some of them share their stories of dietary adjustments that have led to significant health improvements.
Finally, we champion the misunderstood carbohydrate, shining a light on how these nutrients are not only beneficial but essential for anyone looking to build muscle or enhance their performance. I'll recount how my own physique underwent a transformation by welcoming more carbs onto my plate, alongside the success story of Taylor, a client whose bodybuilding triumph is a testament to this approach. And for those who like to push the envelope, we take a look at the extreme potato diet, which may not be for everyone but certainly offers food for thought. As we wrap up, I hope you're feeling inspired to reexamine your own nutritional balance and make informed choices that support both your body and your goals.
Producer: Thor Benander
Editor: Luke Morey
Intro Theme: Ajax Benander
Intro: Timothy Durant
For more, visit Simon at The Antagonist
Welcome to the Mind Muscle Podcast. Here's your host, simon DeVere, and welcome back to Mind Muscle, the place we study the history, science and philosophy behind everything in health and fitness. Today, I am Simon DeVere, and there's nothing new except all that has been forgotten. All right, we're going to run through a few stories that I saw out there within the last week. Today, I want to examine and evaluate the new quadrobics trend and term. I want to explore what the right approach to eating meat is in an area where we obviously have carnivores, and vegans was the right approach for those of us that fall somewhere in between. Vegans was the right approach for those of us that fall somewhere in between. And I actually want to tell a story about adding carbohydrates might actually improve your physique. And I want to finish up with one of the most extreme diets that I've ever done. It's actually going to tie into the last one, but yeah, anyway, don't need a big, heavy preamble, as is kind of a standard of the genre these days. I got nothing to sell, so let's jump right in. So I saw an article popping about a new fitness trend quadrobics. Admittedly, I had a hard time getting past the name, but yeah, once I saw what they were kind of talking about with quadrobics. It was hard to again not be annoyed, because this is what we've called here in the past crawling patterns. So, yeah, apparently now this has been turned into a trend called quadrobics, and since this is maybe going to be circulating, I went and looked at the term on Google Trends. So we're looking at like a 700% increased in search interest for the term and yeah, so though this is going to look like a new fitness fad, it is in some ways, with the explosion of a search term like that. I did want to evaluate it, just because it actually looks like something that I've already seen under a different name there's nothing new, except all of it has been forgotten. I think we usually say here. There's nothing new except all of it has been forgotten. I think we usually say here but yeah, without showing my hand, I kind of feel like that's what we're seeing here in this new quadrobics trend.
Speaker 1:When I was trying to find who was the first person to use the term, I found a YouTube video going back as far as 2015. And it's kind of explained as a form of expressive bodyweight exercise designed to promote physical activity by incorporating movement on both the hands and feet simultaneously to 2015. People have been doing this forever. There actually has been a little bit of science looking into these type of movements and the relatively recent studies. 2022 randomized controlled trial that was in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. They were investigating novel quadrupedal movement. In their study, novel quadrupedal movement in their study noted improve active joint ranges of motion and said that it was a viable alternative form of training to whole body stabilization and flexibility.
Speaker 1:Another study, also in 2022, was measuring the caloric expenditure of quadrupedal movement, was measuring the caloric expenditure of quadrupedal movement. In this study they characterized it as animal flow, but they compared it against a treadmill walking and were evaluating caloric expenditure. Treadmill walking was actually beating out the animal flow in terms of caloric expenditure. So, like I always tell you here, don't sleep on the power of walking. But no, it obviously still had good benefits in terms of caloric expenditure, but that might not be the best reason to include this in your program. And then we had a 2015 clinical trial comparing treadmill walking versus calisthenics like squats and lunges. So, but uh, not surprising that calisthenics would be a little bit more intense than than walking. I think for most people squats, pushups, lunges, stuff like that. Um, obviously would be. Um. So, that being said, that that's kind of the the scientific literature that we have on the topic. Um, simple fact that it doesn't burn as many calories as walking.
Speaker 1:Necessarily, I wouldn't really worry too much about the main reason to do this I think it's back to the first one is that really can improve your active range of motion. So, yeah, just to sort of even give you a verdict, quadrobics does actually have real value. There's nothing I love doing more than shooting down a new trend. So it's a little bit cringy the term and it's always annoying when people claim to invent things people have been doing for a long time. Um, it's probably a pretty decent idea actually.
Speaker 1:Um, you know little little cliche that we use often, but motion is lotion. That's at least how I think of the crawling patterns. I like to use them in warmups, cool downs or recovery days. Those are great times, for, again, I've more used crawling. I got into this through Animal Flow, tim Anderson's original strength. But motion is lotion, movement is movement. You can't really go wrong. I would worry less about doing programs and progressing in the same way that you would in the weight room, which, well, and actually I had that actually listed even in my um. So, yeah, even though verdict good, I like it in warmups, cool downs, recovery days, as mentioned um, there are some drawbacks.
Speaker 1:Namely, it would be that it's not actually suitable for all body types. Um, like almost all fitness products, they're they're marketed with a specific body type that this workout alone would not produce. So when I see the quadrobics and the animal flow mobility things advertised online, I tend to see lean and muscular yoga bodies, if you will, to use a term. I think that's going to at least evoke the image that we're going for. Typically, those are the people marketing and promoting these products, and so if you're doing one of these things, thinking it's going to give you a body like that person, that's about as likely as if you were to pick up basketball and then suddenly get as tall as LeBron James. I will say that there's a lot of self-selection going on whenever you look at any sport and the type of athletic bodies that are successful in that sport. The sport doesn't produce that body, it selects for that body. So, again, I do see some lean, aspirational physiques marketing these products.
Speaker 1:I'm totally fine to co-sign it for a lot of reasons, but physique wouldn't be one of them. You know again, you know I like the warmups, cool downs, recovery days, morning routine is a great time to do it that this is, you know, one of the reliable places. I do it while I'm waiting for my coffee to brew. But yeah, then probably actually, if we're talking me, all of those, all of the above, I do it in the warms, I do it in my cool downs, I do it when I'm waiting for my coffee and I do it on recovery days. I also have my clients do them throughout their sessions.
Speaker 1:So some of my favorite movements and so obviously I see people invent new terms all the time these are probably not going to be stable, but one of the just essential ones you got to have in your mobility work or your quadrobics Sorry, I still call it mobility and crawling, but yeah. So six point rock, that's just getting down into a quadruped position. When you're in that position, though, if you're wondering where the six, we got hands, knees, and then we're also considering the points of your toes touching the ground. So that's what makes up our six points. Six point rock, get into quadruped position and then just essentially move up and down if you were standing. Your spine is actually moving parallel to the ground as such, but this is what is so valuable about this particular pattern is that's what we're doing. We are squatting, at least doing the same movements for your ankles, knees and hips, while keeping your spine roughly aligned with the floor. It's a good sort of thing that you can guide to keep your spine in proper alignment and this is a great way to warm up very friendly thing for a lot of your joints but also can cue a nice squat pattern. You can build off of that six point rock and then actually throw that right into movement that I like to call the rocking pushup.
Speaker 1:If you do know your yoga, what you're going to essentially do with this is transition from a child's pose into, you know, instead of going into up dog. On the other end, let's just take what they used to call the girl pushup, where you'll just hit one from your knees. Slide back into child's pose. The point of this is not muscular development. The point of this is, again, motion is lotion. Get your shoulders mobilized, get your hips mobilized. The science on mobilizations, I'm going to admit, is a little bit shaky.
Speaker 1:Um, this is one of those that, in a way, though, I there's even a trainer that I like who's very evidence and science based, but he happens to be a little bit younger than myself. He works with clients that are mostly athletes and also younger, doesn't really believe in the stuff I'm telling you right now the uh corrective exercise and mobility. I've spent a lot of time working with people who are not athletes over the age of 40, and that's where this comes from. We might not have studies on that population, but I've seen it, so I'm going to keep recommending these types of things. So, yeah, rocking push-up, I really like You're going to go from child's pose into a little push-up from your knees. Again, the goal here is actually reflexive strength moving through your range of motion where we're not really going to be feeling the burn in our chest. That's not the point of these push-ups.
Speaker 1:And then probably the single most valuable is probably going to be the bear crawl. To be honest, this is probably the most valuable pattern that you can do working on the ground. It's obviously going to be consistent with anything they're doing in quadrobics, just their definition of having your hands and feet moving simultaneously. That's exactly what the bear crawl is, one of the things that really hammered home the importance of crawling was, again, having a kid and watching a child develop every single requisite movement that a human being can do through crawling and moving around on the floor. They actually transitioned from these little blobs that just lay around all day to little humans that can do everything big humans do. So the proof of concept concept, anyway, what was definitely hammered home watching a toddler develop through nothing but crawling Um, you know some of the other aspects, though, that are going on with crawling patterns.
Speaker 1:That, again, that this is going to have value outside of physique development or muscle gaining, um, getting down and using all of your limbs is going to actually help with neural connections and pathways, um, that are established in the brain that are going to help you become more efficient at moving and also get communication between the left and right hemispheres going on Anytime your right arm touches your left leg or vice versa. That's going to be an awesome feature that you're going to be able to get from that. So, the better the brain that communicate and process information, the better the body moves. This is one of the easiest ways that you can just improve your balance, proprioception and movement. Crawling is also, you know it's uniting your sensory system. So it's going to help you integrate the vestibular system responsible for balance you can think of all the fluids that are rolling around in your inner ear, um proprosceptive system, your sense of space and your visual system, um and even actually help improve hand-eye coordination.
Speaker 1:Um, I know I've just rattled off a bunch of benefits, but possibly one of the biggest ones of crawling is going to be that it's going to build your foundation of reflexive strength. Talked about that briefly on the rocking pushup. But to define that a little better, reflexive strength is going to be your body's ability to anticipate movement before it happens, or reflexively reacting to a movement after it happens. So this is again less thinking about like your muscles. We're thinking more about tendons, ligaments, joints. These are going to be the constituent things that you're going to need to have good reflexive strength. Crawling is going to be and was the pattern that you use to develop all that stuff originally. So it works for children and it also works for adults just as well. So, yeah, crawling similarly you know back to the child is also the foundation of your gait pattern. So you're doing the contralateral movement when we are using opposite limbs, coordinating that movement and basically your gait pattern is going to be built upon crawling first. Again, that is why we see in human beings, crawling before walking.
Speaker 1:Crawling can be a great reset for the central nervous system lower stress levels. This is why I do think that this is a good thing to do Recovery days and after workouts. When I'm doing it after a workout, that's how I'm doing it is to try to get myself out of that fight or flight, sympathetic, and I'm trying to calm things down, get into that parasympathetic and start to get the recovery going. Today actually is my recovery day, it just so happens. So that was kind of the series of movements that I did just before going for a real easy bike ride. But I went out, looked like rocking, push-up, hanging from a pull-up bar. I did a little bit of crawling and then, like I said, easy ride. That was what my recovery day looked like earlier and, admittedly, I actually want to point you guys to somebody who I think has the best information on this.
Speaker 1:Tim Anderson mentioned him up top, but original strength he's probably the person that I learned the most from on this particular topic. That's the stuff that I am using in my sessions and on myself. So if you're interested in any quadrobics, I would recommend checking out some of Tim Anderson's stuff, and I honestly think this is the type of thing. If you're looking for a class to get into, that's great, go do it. There's nothing wrong with fellowship and fun, but this is honestly the type of thing that you can probably learn and implement on your own. I don't think that's a big stretch on this one, because there's really no wrong movements. Just get into practice doing it. Just before I learned Tim Anderson, I had actually gotten exposed to some animal flow. That was a popular class that was going around.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, I have to admit, particularly having a kid, I see a lot of these movements a lot more regularly now. Um, one other way you can get the same benefit is, quite frankly, just playing. Um, this is kind of what I'm doing at the park with my daughter often hanging monkey bars, climbing, jumping, crawling, rolling, jumping around like a monkey Shockingly good workout. If you do it at the park, you're going to remember all the park implements being a lot easier last time you did it. But no, it's also restorative, can fill the gaps in whatever program or goal you're working on. And, yeah, even if you don't have a kid. You should make some time to just go and move around like you did when you were one. I think there's a lot of benefits to doing that.
Speaker 1:And yeah, with that one in the bag, though, I want to actually take on one of the thorniest topics that we could even touch on today. I don't even know why I feel qualified to answer this, but we're going to attempt to answer what is the right approach to eating meat. So, obviously, we've got vegans, we got carnivores. I think it's fair to assume that most of us are somewhere in between, but obviously, with so many people putting out information, it can make it difficult for people to determine what is the right. Call on me, so I will obviously answer this definitively for every single person on earth right now. No, I actually want to say at the top of this that I am not going to be able to answer this for everybody.
Speaker 1:I can explain my priors, my experience and the way I think about it, um, and that, I think, can at least contribute to how, how others might be thinking about making the choice for themselves. Um, but yeah, in that spirit. First, my priors I grew up eating a lot of meat when we lived in Montana, we would buy our meat by the cow, keep it in a large freezer. So eating meat is deeply ingrained culturally in me. Put it another way if I were cooking something and you ate meat, that's what you would want me to cook, though I ate a lot of meat growing up, you know. Admittedly, it was all technically grass-fed organic. We didn't have that moniker to delineate it back then, but we would literally get it from a rancher and take it to a butcher and so, yeah, I actually never got in the habit of eating low-quality beef. Didn't really have the option when I was growing up. Fortunately for me and yeah. So I admit even now that when I got into my adult life and now I had to buy all my own groceries. Quality always has been important to me and, given the choice if I had to, I would actually eat less higher quality meat if I was on a limited budget than buying more cheap meat.
Speaker 1:I have experimented at times with going completely plant-based. I've done it for different reasons at different times. One time I was doing it to watch Game Changers wanted to unlock some performance. That didn't work out for me. So I'm not very convinced of that whole line of thinking I'm more convinced for my own health and for the health of the environment, and though I still eat meat. Those are the arguments that for me are the most salient. But yeah, when you actually this is kind of worth my experience with going plant based. We did, I went and I got to see the game changers and I was hopped up on going plant based. At that point I was doing it for performance gains. I've already been a conscious consumer as it pertained to the environment. So I know I'm not perfect, um, but uh no, the you know certainly was just seeming as an added bonus that that going plant-based would reduce my uh, uh, the earth's reliance on producing things for me to consume. So that was just an added Bennett. But I'm not, I'm not gonna lie. I was doing it to try to increase my performance and honestly, that's not how it worked out for me. It was not a game-changing protocol.
Speaker 1:I actually relied more on my protein powders than when meat was in my diet. Protein powder is technically a processed food. I don't want to like fearmonger around that. It's still a high-quality food, but I still do just generally believe that if I could be getting that protein from a whole food source instead of a processed food, that that would be net positive for me long run. And then last issue that I had maintaining it for the long haul was that meat is actually just very satisfying and it's easier psychologically for me to be on fewer calories while there is meat in my diet, particularly meats that have fat. So, yeah, the fact that a lot of the proteins that I was getting while plant based didn't have the same amount of fats that I was typically getting. I just found it psychologically harder to stick to caloric total. So that's obviously not my goal at all times, but that's just my honest feedback on when Simon goes plant-based, simon tends to eat a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Performance-wise, I didn't notice any huge edge actually meat eating or plant-based. It's not like my workout numbers actually change, as we've talked about here. I think it's way more important. What your total calories, what your carbs, what your protein, what those look like, are a lot more important than the other aspects, even though the other aspects may get more attention. If you're controlling for those variables in your diet, I don't think you're going to notice much of a difference when you switch back and forth between plant-based or meat eating. Just being honest Now, just in my experience as a trainer, I've seen a number of meat eaters who needed to eat less meat or higher quality meat.
Speaker 1:Also, on the other end, I've also seen people who were plant-based, who actually needed to reincorporate some meat, and the latter it was almost always like anemia or some nutrient imbalance that could just be most efficaciously solved through just incorporating a little bit of meat. Sometimes it wasn't like they were trying to, you know, throw out the baby with the bathwater. So now, all that just brings me to. You know what's the right way? Well, there isn't one, and it depends Just to reach for a philosophical angle.
Speaker 1:Peter Singer, I think, is probably the most well-known philosopher who is arguing against meat consumption. His book Animal Liberation argues that the ability to suffer is the vital characteristic that gives any being the right for equal consideration. So thus, um, well, animals are capable of suffering and thus should be considered in our decision-making. Eating them is unethical. Um, michael Pollan not really a philosopher, but um, he's got a booknivore's Dilemma that, I think, at least, contributes to the conversation. Pollan suggests that humans are naturally omnivorous and that eating meat is part of the natural cycle of life and death. That being said, he does advocate for reform in the way meat is produced and consumed, emphasizing sustainability and ethical treatment of animals.
Speaker 1:Probably included him, because I like that view a lot, one of my favorite philosophers. But actually he's pretty funny on the topic of nutrition. But Friedrich Nietzsche in Eke Homo famously had a section all about nutrition, he said. I'm much more interested in another question, a question upon which the salvation of humanity depends to a far greater degree than it does upon any piece of theological curiosity. I refer to nutrition. But anyway, I find Nietzsche's attempts at nutrition funny, because he kind of just tried the fad diets of his day. There was one moment where he was either vegan or vegetarian, and then Wagner got them all into meat. So even though I am a fan of Nietzsche's work, when it came to nutrition Nietzsche was the perfect example of the confused postmodern eater that I've at least tried to help out in some ways. But yeah, so I don't know, maybe if I'd been around in the 1890s I could have helped him arrive at a diet more consistent with his own individual values. But sorry, man, you missed me by a while.
Speaker 1:You know, and admittedly one of my priors in this discussion too is that I I've actually trained and worked with people? Um with different beliefs and preferences, and I've always gone into that Um just believing that the methods that we use should already be consistent with people's values, that I shouldn't need to change their values um to be consistent with the methods that I'm using. So, in I actually don't think that I've ever advocated somebody who ate um meat to not eat meat, or vice versa. I usually work um back from their existing beliefs towards their goals. There's a few cases I already mentioned, and those were typically not coming from me. Those are typically coming from their medical, their doctors, whoever they speak to on that. That's not a lane that I try to run for them. So, yeah, any of those cases that I mentioned, those changes were actually being made in conjunction with others, not at my sole discretion.
Speaker 1:I do think, though, that, first off, that this entire discussion, everybody in it it's a valid and valuable discussion that people are having. I just don't think there's a silver bullet. I don't think there's a one size fits all or a cookie cutter answer here. If I'm speaking broadly, to this abstraction, that is, 300 million Americans on average, I would say you guys could probably eat less meat most of you, but it's not as strong as a statement as it may first sound when you consider that that cohort I mentioned just broadly eats too much of everything. So I would also tell them to drink fewer soft drinks. And you know it's not as tough a statement as it sounds up top, but no, I'm pretty comfortable with that. I think for most people, less and better would be the best strategy with meat, since presumably most people are already eating meat. If you're not currently eating meat and you're not anemic or something, don't worry, I'm not talking about you.
Speaker 1:For most people, I think, less and meaningful is that there really is a difference between processed and unprocessed foods, and in meats it's no different. Processed meats are not healthy. The animals that they come from are usually raised in industrial farms, and most of the practices as it pertains to sustainability and environment, with processed meats in general on average worse than your unprocessed, these tend to be the biggest polluters. There's obviously still going to be a significant carbon footprint associated with any meat consumption relative to plant sources, so let's not lie or misrepresent that. But there are certainly better choices within the subset of meat. They are not all created equal, even the difference, frankly, between red meat and poultry. If you're concerned with carbon footprint carries a significant difference. So there's a lot of ways, if you're concerned with carbon footprint carries a significant difference. So there's a lot of ways, if you're concerned about the environment, that you can go about decreasing your carbon footprint.
Speaker 1:Admittedly, I'm actually not the expert on that. I've obviously, like many people, made attempts to reduce my own consumption of energy. I just don't like waste. Quick one on food. I actually just hate food waste. My opah was in a concentration camp in World War II. His daily rations were corn cobs someone else had already eaten from, so anyway, I wasn't great about it when I was a kid, but we had a rule that if you put it on your plate you had to eat it. I spent many nights at the table after everybody else had already left. So even though I wasn't good at this as a kid, I grew into really hating waste as an adult in general. So I just don't think there's a good argument for wasting food. That being said, I'm not an expert on that, so I do kind of want to keep my comments more focused on the health and performance component of this and to that end I would say that actually the scientific evidence does overwhelmingly suggest that humans are opportunistic omnivores. If you're trying to find proof for your favorite diet, you'll probably find it, because humans have eaten just about every diet you can think of. Downstream from availability of food sources, at some point in history, humans have actually had the least amount of time with abundant food, and I think that's the issue that really comes up in our food discussions more so than anything else, and at least for those presumably listening to a podcast I'm sure there's other people out there, but in our world, abundance is the bigger issue. But anyway, guys, I actually want to now dive into. This is so.
Speaker 1:I came across this anecdote from Business Insider this week, but it's also an irrelevant example that came up for one of my clients, and I might just file this one under In Defense of Carbs, part 2007. How many of these have I done now? Business Insider article bodybuilder ditched low carb and started eating potatoes six times a day. He got in the best shape of his life. So the story was about a guy, mark Taylor, competitive bodybuilder, who had eaten a strict low carb diet for decades but consistently missed the top prize in his native Scotland until he made one change eating carbs.
Speaker 1:So before I get into Taylor's story, this is an anecdote that's also relevant for a client of mine who is in his early 30s, soon to be father. His training has focused from that kind of beach body shredding focus to some different goals. He's also been eating more and just kind of commenting on his physique today that he actually feels that he has been getting more muscle he knows he's getting stronger because we're seeing that in our sessions and he was just saying that he actually hasn't gotten as big in fat as he expected with all these crazy carbs he's been eating. And so I reminded him, or I pointed him to this article and I'm going to remind you guys of this today as well. But this happens a lot actually, particularly if you've ever been this type of person that has pursued physique goals for a really long time. There's going to be a lot of people out there that if you're a fitness hobbyist, if you're an enthusiast, you've been chasing fat loss a long time. It's going to sound like the craziest thing in the world, but adding some carbs back might actually help your physique. So anyway, taylor's story and the other reason why I find it relevant is he makes this change at 42, when a lot of people have already said that your metabolism has shifted and father time is just thoroughly whooping your ass by now, and you, just, you just can't add muscle or do these things. Um, so, at 42, he makes one change Uh, he was a bodybuilder, uh, so, so we don't have to worry about his work ethic, his programming, his discipline presumably those were all the same. Uh, the change was adding the carbs.
Speaker 1:Um, many, particularly in the fitness enthusiast camp, still believe that carbs are the enemy of leanness and make people fat. I'm going to say it again Carbs are not inherently fattening. They play a key role in muscle building and recovery. Most people, particularly my fitness enthusiasts, already know the role of protein in muscle building, but it literally requires carbohydrates to take that protein that you're supplementing, or rather to get the amino acids break that down and then reconstitute it into muscle fiber. That process literally requires carbohydrates, and actually on a ratio of four to one, meaning four grams of carbohydrates every one gram of protein. If you care about muscle growing. Um, that's the goals for some people when they're lifting weights.
Speaker 1:So if you want to see muscle gain, you might need to fuel carbs a little more than you've been told by the fitness space. I'm sorry, I'm a part of it but, yes, me and my brethren have not done a good job. All carbs are not created equal. This is not a green light to go eat junk food, but Taylor used potatoes. In general, you want to focus on carbs that are going to release energy slowly. You might call these low glycemic carbs. You do have one little cheat or way out of that that we talked about last week. If you want to sneak some higher glycemic carbs in there, do that right after your workout when your insulin sensitivity is a little bit better. But no, the reason I keep spending so much time on this release I feel I do is that the anti-carb movement has had over a decade head start on me here and Taylor had an experience that was very, very similar to mine.
Speaker 1:He got interested in bodybuilding relatively young. He started actually younger than me, 19. I was still playing sports then, but he would do oats with breakfast rice a little bit later on and that was about it, which to me sounds like the standard basic bodybuilding diet chicken, broccoli, brown rice, maybe have some oats in there. That's kind of what everybody gets brought up on and it works. It'll get you to a certain place, but you're going to have limits. Yeah, taylor finally brought a nutritionist in 2014. She threw his diet out, added carbs to every single meal. Then his physique took off and he actually won his first bodybuilding show over the age of 40.
Speaker 1:Prior to adding carbs, he was looking at like a 2000 calorie per day diet. I've done those where you got 2000 calories per day and then, like you know, I actually walk around close to 200 pounds, so that needs to be like 200 grams of protein, not a lot of calories for much else left. Super fun, love those days when he started adding carbs in. It actually went up to 4,000 and then eventually got as high as 6,000 a day. Those numbers sound crazy to people. I actually been out to dinner with some friends recently, and there again, there's some friends recently. And there, there again, there's always this perception of me the trainer eats super clean and all of that. Sometimes it can blow people away to see the volume of food that I eat. And there again, the good choices. I'm not lying to you guys when I come up here, but sometimes the amount can blow people away, and so I was just explaining that over dinner last week that you know, believe it or not, I actually around 4,000 calories a day, and a lot of that again has to do with a lot of the principles that we talk about here. I wouldn't recommend just start there, but if you follow those rules that we talked about, carry the big rocks. It really is not uncommon that you might have a maintenance calories that could be about that high while you're training, of course, and I've just found it a lot easier to maintain my physique eating 4000 calories than 2000. Call me crazy, way, way easier for me psychologically. Takes a little work to set it up and get there, but, yeah, one.
Speaker 1:This story was obviously very, very similar to mine. This was one that was touching, you know, a client and friend of mine. Um, in years of striving to find the one and true perfect diet, it also led me down this exact same hole. I used to be, you know, deathly afraid of carbs for the exact same reasons. Um, I, I, I. I almost feel like like my imposter syndrome as a trainer comes from the fact of how many carbs I eat and just the fact that the public perception of of what I do and what I actually do is just so far off. It almost makes me feel like a fraud, um, but yeah, anyway. Uh, I don't recommend that you again start with 4,000 calories, but if you've been in that kind of stuck in fat loss for a long time, you really can build your metabolism into a very different place where it can handle a lot more calories. Experiment just by adding some carbs in, and particularly if you ever get to a phase where you're focused on either adding some muscle or a performance goal in your program, just see what happens. Let it go for 30 days. Don't be so strict on yourself with the carbs, and if everything turns around and your physique blows up, then write me a mean comment, but I really think it's going to be all right, so you know.
Speaker 1:What's funny, though, about Mark Taylor with his potatoes is I have to admit that for me, this was actually one of the craziest extreme diets that I've ever done, and I don't know if many people know this one exists, but the potato diet is actually a thing, so when I came across it, it was marketed as like a detox or a reset. Admittedly, I didn't really believe in those things at that point. I just found it interesting, and immediately. At this point, I still just liked experimenting and trying things out just to see how my body would respond, basically treating myself as a test subject, if you will. Um, but yeah, so. So if you're listening to all those benefits, uh, of adding some carbs and thinking, you know, like the typical American thing, well, I'm just going to take that to its extreme and eat nothing but carbs. Well, like we always say, there's nothing new except all that's been forgotten, that's already been done.
Speaker 1:Uh, the potato diet goes back actually to. It's got its roots, ironically, in the Irish potato famine, which I say ironically because you wouldn't think that people would base like a fad diet on that. Yes, some individuals did subsist on little besides potatoes, but obviously very different circumstances. It's hard to imagine somebody choosing that as a diet. The variation that I did was a week-long thing. Again, it was basically sold as like a detox diet. My physique, you know, didn't blow up, so it helped me kind of unlearn the low-car carb dogma that I had.
Speaker 1:But again, as it pertains to all of the claims that were made about the benefits of the potato diet, none of those manifested at all, and whether it's the potato diet or the grapefruit diet or one of these diets that are excluding an entire macronutrient or an entire type of food. To me, all of these extreme approaches should just inherently raise red flags. One of the biggest issues with any one of these approaches is they are pointlessly exclusive. There is no single food that provides all of the nutrients one needs, and I see this exact same style of thinking manifesting in a lot of different diets. People that are very into keto will point to the fact that we can produce ketones as the fact that you don't need carbohydrates ever, and that's technically true, but that doesn't mean that you are thriving or living the best possible existence. It's technically true that you could subsist off potatoes for some time. It's technically true that you can do a lot of different things. Whether it's a good idea or it's improving other markers of your health is incredibly questionable. So yeah, in general, anything I would consider extreme is excluding either an entire macronutrient or restricting yourself to one food or type of food. I can almost guarantee no matter what variation of this you're thinking about, if you actually do it for a long time, it's almost certainly going to create nutrient deficiencies. You may get some short-term success in air quotes, because it's going to be a success that's defined after some nebulous thing. But I'm pretty sure that this is actually going to be a time period where you're going to actually start forming a lot of long-term issues that you won't actually even blame this amendment on, because you're going to think of this time as a successful one, not one when problems were starting to compound Again. I did this one for a week. Wouldn't recommend it.
Speaker 1:I think the biggest benefit I got was what I was just talking about. Through trial and error, with a lot of fitness things, I've actually come to believe in a lot less of them. There really was a time when I had a big zest for experimentation. If there was a new product, I almost felt like it was my duty to test it out, and I did. I kind of used myself as a test subject, you know. Admittedly, it's that time period that's kind of got me to where I'm at today, where I seriously doubt most of the amendments. If more of them had worked, I think I would be more excited and more prone to experimentation today.
Speaker 1:I still remain open to the idea that we might discover, um, some new game breaking things. Um, but sadly, most of the game breakers and there really are game breakers, but they're. They're called drugs and so you can either choose to do that or not. But yeah, most of the stuff that we know is game breaking is banned by most competitive agencies and yeah, your choice to do that is a little different algorithm, if you will. But anyway, guys, that's all I got for you this week.
Speaker 1:So just to quickly summarize quadrobics, if you guys see those articles popping in your feed, I actually like this. I don't like the term, I don't like them reinventing something, but the series of movements that people are focusing on, I say looks good. I also think that this is probably one of the easiest things for you to do on your own. Check out Tim Anderson Original Strength or just go to a park and run around like you used to when you were a kid. I think you can figure this one out the right way to eat meat.
Speaker 1:I hesitate to try to answer this. For everybody Vast majority of people the best answer is obviously going to be less and better. Obviously going to be less and better. Not a one size fits all. There are no magic bullets, but that's going to be the approach, that for the most people that are somewhere between carnivore and vegan. That's what's going to work for you Carbohydrates. I keep saying this and I'm going to keep saying it until the paradigm shifts. Carbs can actually improve a physique. So, again, if the paradigm flips, we'll change this all around.
Speaker 1:But yeah, for now I think we still need to defend carbohydrates. Let people know that they're not the end-all be-all. You didn't cheat, you're not dirty or befouled. And then, yeah, just because I know I'm out here spouting all my opinions, I did want to share my experience with potato diet. I fall for extreme things all the time Less frequency these days, I admit, but again, it's only because so many of my experiments didn't work out well when I did it, didn't work out well when I did it. Anyway, guys, I always appreciate you guys stopping in, checking in on what I'm working on here. Thank you for the time, the attention. Make sure to share these, get it out there. And, yeah, keep lifting, keep learning. I'll do the same.
