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Primal Foundations Podcast
Welcome to the Primal Foundations Podcast! We will dive into what I believe are the 4 essential foundations you need to live a healthy lifestyle.
Strength , Nutrition , Movement , and Recovery.
Get ready to dive into discussions that will guide you on your transformative journey to unlocking your path to optimal health.
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Primal Foundations Podcast
Episode 39: Keto Bodybuilding with Robert Sikes
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Robert Sikes, aka "Keto Savage," a natural ketogenic bodybuilder who shares his journey overcoming eating disorders and embracing the ketogenic lifestyle, offering fresh insights on performance and healthy eating.
We explore his seven-phase approach to sustainable body transformation, focusing on muscle growth, fat loss, and well-being. Learn how a high-fat, low-carb diet redefines bodybuilding success, from hormone balance to practical nutrition tips. This episode is packed with guidance for athletes and fitness enthusiasts aiming to optimize their performance.
Connect with Keto Savage:
https://www.instagram.com/ketosavage/
https://ketosavage.com/
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Welcome to the Primal Foundations podcast. I'm your host, tony Pascola. We will dive into what I believe are the four central foundations you need for a healthy lifestyle Strength, nutrition, movement and recovery. Get ready to unlock your path to optimal health and enjoy the episode. Our guest today is Robert Sykes, a natural ketogenic bodybuilder. Author, podcast host and entrepreneur. As the CEO and founder of Keto Savage, robert has dedicated his career to helping athletes and bodybuilders optimize their performance through specialized coaching, training and nutrition. He also is the mastermind behind Keto Bricks, a company that produces top tier ketogenic meal replacement bars designed for efficient, high quality nutrition. Robert Sykes, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Hey man, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be chatting with you today.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I'm super excited to have some conversation with you. It was really cool to meet you at Hack your Health. I got to kind of chop it up with you a little bit. I got to eat some keto bricks, which were really good. I really enjoyed your. I was in the back of the panel session of the food addiction and I really enjoyed that whole. Just basically, it was like a smorgasbord of different people with different backgrounds and different perspectives of food addiction. I thought we were tackling some really good topics. The place was packed. It was a jam-packed room. It was very unfortunate. They're like five minutes and everybody was like, oh man, we could have been there at least another hour easily.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. That was an interesting one. That was the first time I've been on a food addiction panel per se, but um, the other panelists and I we had there was definitely a difference in our approaches to how we treated, uh, disordered eating tendencies. So he has an interesting dialogue for sure.
Speaker 1:Took a lot of good nuggets walking out of that room. And today I want to start with your, your backstory, to give kind of listeners a little bit more information about you. You know you're a bodybuilder, entrepreneur, all these things but I want to kind of focus on what inspired your journey into bodybuilding and what motivated you to adopt a ketogenic diet for your approach.
Speaker 2:Man, I was 115 pounds when I was in high school. I was, I was scrawny, I was, I was super self-conscious, probably, started getting into lifting to I don't know make amends with the ladies or something, as one does right meaner. So I tried to emulate that. He showed me how to do a bicep curl and the rest was history. Man, I just fell in love with doing something where I could legitimately see the fruits of my labor paying off. Like that was very fulfilling for me. So I started lifting, um, just with pieces of equipment I had laying around the house I was using. Like my first bench was a, a green igloo ice chest, uh, and some you know crappy weights that I got from Walmart or something Very, very basic stuff. But I fell in love with it, man. I fell in love with the active training and then seeing my body and physique develop from it. And I did that. I bulked up to like 230 pounds. So I was pretty hefty and I'm only like 5'7", 5'8", so not a good 230. But I thought I was going to compete at 200.
Speaker 2:Dieted down for my first show, lost 80 pounds in 12 weeks and won the show. But it was like not healthy at all. I developed a bunch of eating disorders in the process and I knew that there had to be a better way, a more sustainable way with nutrition. So I played around with a bunch of different diets and started doing carbohydrate backloading, which was kind of keto during the day, and then really high glycemic index carbs at night, and I felt better without the carbs. So I just phased those out entirely.
Speaker 2:And this was all before keto was popular, so I didn't even know what keto was Like. This was not something people were talking about. But I started dabbling around with carb backloading minus the carbs and recognized that I felt really good with that. My relationship with food improved, my performance improved, I got really lean and my inflammation was significantly reduced. So for me, that was a pretty good win-win. So I decided to do a prep with that approach in 2017, got my pro card in a different federation there and didn't have to struggle with this disordered eating tendencies. So I pretty much hadn't looked back since then. Man, I've been doing keto now for close to 10 years and I've been coaching people and went pro in a different federation this past year and it's just brought me my most sustainable physique and the most healthiest man at possible, so I'm a big advocate for it.
Speaker 1:And, if you wouldn't mind, kind of take us through. You know those eating issues that you had and or disorders, Because when we talk about bodybuilding, right, some people would say bodybuilding is unhealthy. You know what are your thoughts on the sport Like, does it have a negative health benefit?
Speaker 2:to it. It certainly can. Man, like a lot of people, like being sub 5% body fat, is not healthy. Like you, wouldn't want to sustain that for any length of time at all. I think the mental benefit that I get, the psychological benefit that I get, from pushing my body to that extreme provides more, a net benefit overall, but simply from a physical standpoint, getting that lean is not healthy. From a physical standpoint, getting that lean is not healthy. However, having the tools at your disposal to know how to change your body composition, how to build more muscle, how to lose body fat, how to eat and manipulate your nutrition accordingly, is incredibly healthy and for that reason I think anybody would benefit from the principles of bodybuilding, whether they plan on stepping on stage and competing or not is irrelevant. Like anybody, we're all the same species. So, like what works for us is all relevant. Again, whether you plan on competing or not is irrelevant. Like anybody, we're all the same species. So, like, what works for us is all relevant Again, whether you plan on competing or not. So taking those skill sets and kind of implementing into a healthy, sustainable life is key For me with the disordered eating tendencies man like I'm after my first show when I lost those 80 pounds in 12 weeks.
Speaker 2:I like sacrificed so much food, starved myself this was way before keto, doing everything the wrong way, and I recognized that I pretty much just threw away my identity in an instant.
Speaker 2:Like I went after the show was over. I went and we all went to Red Lobster and I ate everything and like I literally gained 20 pounds back in 24 hours. Like it was not a good thing. I was super sick afterwards and that pretty much was just the norm. I did that for probably three years. Afterwards I've got pictures of me going to IHOP and literally ordering one of everything that you could get on the menu, eating it all and then walking out in the parking lot and puking. That was just my norm and that's not atypical in the bodybuilding space. A lot of people do that and that's just not healthy, obviously, so had to had to find a a more sustainable approach that was, you know, still allowing me the benefit of the sport, but was healthy overall that seems like you're taking, you know, those tools of mindset and discipline and all those and carrying that over into real life.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, and every sport, too, has its own sacrifices, right, like football players that you know sacrificing when they step on the field. Soccer players, you know if you're going to be stepping cause. Bodybuilding is a sport, right, going and putting yourself in these really hard situations, but you seem to kind of find your way or groove and to do it, you know, a little bit healthier. Could you kind of take us through? You know, in today's day, like you know you've kind of learned these lessons. You're on keto, you're feeling really great. Like, can you take us through this? The building, you know in peaking phases and what you do to get ready for competition.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's, first of all, you have to kind of define it as a building or cutting phase. Like they want to work with me as a client and I say, okay, what's your, what's your main goal? And they say, okay, I want to build muscle and lose body fat. That's what everybody says. You know, the thing is those kind of compete for another.
Speaker 2:In order to optimize building muscle, you need to be in a caloric surplus. You need to optimize losing fat, you ideally need to be in a caloric deficit. You can do both simultaneously, but you're going to be kind of stuck in purgatory limbo land if you try. So having a defined building and cutting phase is key. And then spending more time in a building phase than in a cutting phase is also key. And the idea of maintenance is kind of a myth. Like there's no such thing as maintenance. You're either getting better or you're getting worse. So knowing that and recognizing that at the onset is very important. And then, when it comes to kind of stringing that into a sustainable format or framework, what I've done basically is develop this seven-phase protocol. So phase one for me is just establishing what my actual baseline is. So what is my baseline? Caloric intake? You know I'll track, that. I'll figure out what my consumption is that allows my body to stay at the same composition and weight relatively, you know seamlessly and then decide if that's a healthy point to start a cut or a fat loss phase. To begin with, a lot of people are chronically under eating, which means you know they're not eating enough food at the onset. They don't have the caloric runway to taper more calories and drop body fat for a sustained period of time anyway. So they need to kind of upregulate their metabolic and hormonal pathways to have a healthy starting position. So phase one, pretty much establishing that baseline make sure it's a good baseline and I'll typically start my clients at higher fat ratio at the onset to basically just optimize their fat metabolism from a ketogenic standpoint. And then from there we move into phase two, which is increasing protein and dropping dietary fat to figure out what their unique protein threshold is. There's been a lot of debate on protein right now how much is ideal, what's too much, what's too little. But you can't really guess on that. You need to test. You got to figure out what your body responds well to and what it doesn't. So if you start low with that high fat ratio and then titrate the protein up and the fat down week after week, you'll be able to definitively know what your actual protein threshold is and you can get that dialed in.
Speaker 2:Phase three is dropping both fat and protein simultaneously, so overall calories are dropping, and that kind of goes for several months typically when I'm in a cutting fat loss phase. So overall calories are dropping, both fats and proteins are dropping and I'm just getting leaner at that point. And phase four is kind of where I start introducing these ketogenic caloric refeeds. So when your calories are dropping, having a bolus of calories from both fat and protein to kind of help with the metabolism, help with the hormones, help with the psychological component of being in a deficit, is really important. So I'll bring in these refeeds to kind of make that, you know, more sustainable there towards the tail end. And then I also, from a competitive standpoint, I use those refeeds to kind of test out my peak weeks for what I would do, you know, prior to stepping on stage.
Speaker 2:Phase five is the actual peak week itself and if you're not a competitor, that would be like, say, people wanting to lean out for a wedding.
Speaker 2:You know that would be the week of the wedding, you want to try and peak for that event or a photo shoot, or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2:Um, but you need to have like a like a climax to the cutting phase, or else it just goes on indefinitely and you wind up chronically under reading, which is no bueno. Having that period there, that apex to the cut, that's when I'll manipulate electrolytes a little bit, I'll manipulate those refeeds to peak for that specific event. And then, phase six, I start transitioning into a reverse stat, so from that depth of my calories I start bringing my food intake up and actually increasing my intake over weeks time, several weeks time, and but I'm still including those refeeds that have brought into the equation from phase four. And then phase seven is basically figuring out what that new baseline is, once you've kind of reached your, you know, caloric maintenance or slight surplus, ideally in a slight surplus that you can focus then on building muscle and then basically staying at that slight surplus for significantly more time than you were in a deficit, so that you're able to build more muscle.
Speaker 1:Uh, focused then on building muscle and then basically staying at that slight surplus for significantly more time than you were in a deficit, so that you're able to build more muscle over that length of time yeah, that's uh, I mean it's a smart way to approach it because for the most of the people who I've known or have spoken with that you know, have done bodybuilder, it's more or less huge swings like these low fat diets, chicken broccoli, you know, white rice, typical stuff, uh, and then it's just like a very, very drastic progression downward of cutting out calories. How psycho. How is it psychologically Do you feel for the, your clients, for refeeds? Uh, you know. And and how does that affect their? Um, you know competition? Well, I don't do carbohydrate refeeds, you know, and how does that affect their? You know competition.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't do carbohydrate refeeds.
Speaker 2:That's an appreciating factor with me. Like, a lot of people will do a carb refeed and if they're following a standard American diet or like a bro diet, they might do, you know, the normal meals and have this massive bolus of you know, I was talking to one guy that's going to be having a thousand thousand grams of carbohydrates on his refeed. Like to me, that's just not necessary. It's a huge variable to the equation because, like from a bodybuilding standpoint, if you overdo your carbohydrates, you run the risk of spilling over and washing out the definition that you do have, especially if you don't time your electrolytes properly, don't have the right amount of sodium or the right amount of fluid in your system. It's just a really unnecessary risk without as much reward to it, whereas with my approach with the fats and proteins like if you're fat adapted, you're ketogenic and you have a bolus of fat and protein your body is able to assimilate that you don't really run those issues from a carbohydrate variable standpoint.
Speaker 2:From a psychological standpoint, it's also much easier on you too, because if I'm having a bolus of fat and protein it's still real quality food. It's not like I'm eating a bolus of ice cream or something that's going to kind of play more from a negative hedonic factor. So just always eating real food, whether I'm in a prep or not, is one of the main things. I'll definitely allow myself more flexibility if I'm not in a prep to have foods that foods a little bit hard to track accurately, or more pleasure foods, but they're all quality foods, like never deviating from the quality component I think is key.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned that hedonic effect and for some listeners that might not know, this is the way that I it's been described to me as if you're having high carbohydrates. You know that craving factor of wanting carbohydrates could last anywhere from 24 to 36 hours. Is that kind of the gist of it?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean you crave things and then, like, you also fixate on things like so the more you think about food, the more fixated you become and the more that plays into the emotional component as well. Whereas, like, if you remove that decision fatigue and you just know, okay, I'm going to be eating this, it's going to come from these sources, it's going to be this amount, I mean at this time, and you can just plan on it, it removes that you know psychological component to some degree. So, like, when I'm in a you know a prep, I'm having something that I enjoy for those refeed meals. I'm having a fat head keto pizza usually. So it's something that's super tasty and I look forward to it. But so it's something that's super tasty and I look forward to it, but it's not going to spike my blood sugar, blood insulin. It's not going to cause me this emotional roller coaster where it just sends me into a downward tailspin.
Speaker 2:I'm still eating everything planned for the right reasons, and then I'm looking for a very specific response that I want to be elicited from that. You know, bolus of calories, but it's always good quality stuff that I don't have to feel guilty about eating. I think guilt with what you're consuming is why people have such an issue with food, like when you're eating something that you feel guilty for. That kind of creates this negative feedback loop in which you're trying to then make up for it or redeem yourself, and that is never really an issue if you're never having guilt around the food you're eating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I brought up that psychology. You know how are you feeling on these refeed. Uh, you know plan days, um, in the pro in your programming, cause I was a high school wrestler. Uh, you know, I struggled with the food addiction prior to wrestling when I got into wrestling. Love the sport, like you know we're talking about like every athlete's going to sacrifice something a little bit.
Speaker 1:But you know, there would be weeks where I'm like struggling to make weight, I'm watching how much water I could have I'd be really guilty if I had something that I shouldn't have had and then the next morning I have to get up and run it off. But I just remember when we were allowed, you know, if we're wrestling a team, that wasn't as good and we really not not everybody needed to make weight. You can wrestle one way class up, you know, and the coaches are like everybody could wrestle one way class up. We're like, oh, yes, like that whole week, you know, and we all we had to do was really maintain, eat just regularly. We didn't have to cut our you know food. We didn't want to do it anymore With adapting a ketogenic diet and performing on stage and you've had some success in this bodybuilding sphere. How are other competitors like taking this in where they're like this guy's crazy?
Speaker 2:yeah, especially in the beginning, man, like when I was first doing this like they're like you can't, you can't fill out without carbs, you can't be shredded without carbs, you're not gonna have energy to train without carbs. Like you hear all the negative naysay stuff, but I mean, once I started doing it and just beating them all like they couldn't really talk at that point, you know like, uh, if you're winning, you know pro caliber shows like what, what are they going to say?
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, I mean let let the scoreboard, you know, look at the scoreboard. Let the let the results speak for itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there not to take anything from them. Like if you're competing on stage, like you're putting in the work and I've got respect for you, but like I'm working with a client right now that has competed multiple times, coming from that traditional background of the high carbs, high protein, low fat, and now he's doing a ketogenic approach, he's like man, I feel way better. I'm excited about the food that I'm eating. I'm not letting it rule my life. I not letting it rule my life. I've got more time with my kids, more time with my wife, more time to excel in my career, like like that's, that's what it's about for me, like just making it work within the other components of their life as opposed to be their only fixation, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this other piece too. I think a big part of that is incorporating a lot more fat in a ketogenic diet, especially around bodybuilding or any sports, or I think it just in general. There is this big push that we we've just been around it for so long and this is the narrative that too much fat is bad for you. You have to lower it. And then this traditional the quote unquote bro diet of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, very low fat. Um, you know, I'm going to have my vegetables and have this. I'm going to have that when people bring that down so low, like what are some of the things that you're seeing, either with clients, that you work with other people as a result of just this consistent low fat diet?
Speaker 2:Well, it definitely wrecks their hormones. I mean, like there's a lot of things that impact hormone health. You know, body fat levels are certainly one. So once you dip below a certain body fat, like my testosterone tanked. But I was also 3.9% body fat, like when you're that lean, everything tanks realistic, sustainable body fat levels.
Speaker 2:If you're at a healthy body fat and you're consuming hardly any dietary fat, you're going to have issues with your hormones, whereas if you're able to keep that dietary fat relatively high, your hormones stay much more stable. I mean, cholesterol is a precursor to testosterone. So if you're not consuming any cholesterol through the lipids in your diet, then you're not going to be able to have optimal hormonal health. So that's one thing there for sure. But then also, just from a satiety standpoint, I mean, like satiety from fat is hard to deny and when you're not consuming any fat you're consuming just massive amounts of proteins and carbohydrates. Satiety factor is certainly low and a lot of times these competitors will do a lot of volume foods. So they'll have, like these massive salads and, you know, breast or something. So very minimal carbohydrate, sometimes very minimal, uh, dietary fat, and they may have a lot of food volume which kind of has this allure of being full, but it's not like a deep, true satiety. That deep satiety comes from having that ample dietary effect coming in yeah, and when you?
Speaker 1:because because you basically eat the same way, you know, and you just change your diet kind of, you know just the digits around a little bit right Can you take us kind of through, like, when you're getting up into that cutting phase and getting ready for that competition, how do you play? Do you bring both the fat and the protein down, one or the other, vice versa, and then getting out of that? What does that look like post-competition?
Speaker 2:Well, I kind of go through, I mean those seven phases, like when I'm increasing my protein to find my protein threshold. At that point my fat's dropping, my protein's increasing. Once I hit that threshold, then I drop both fats and protein, usually by about five or 10 gram increments, so very gradual changes. I mean I may be cutting 25 calories a week, so very, very minimal Um.
Speaker 2:And then, once I hit that, you know, phase um four and five, during the peak week section. You know, at that point I'm dropping overall calories but I'll have, like this bolus of fat and protein on those refeed days and that's typically about 30 to 40% above baseline um, baseline coming from both fat and protein. And then, as I'm increasing calories with the reverse diet, then I'm again just ramping that up by sometimes, but more aggressively with the reverse diet. So I might be increasing by 10 or 20 grams per week instead of dropping by 5 or 10. So there's that, but I'm basically just finessing the macro distribution to figure out what my body responds well to. It's going to be a little bit different for the individual, but also you know what sex you are.
Speaker 2:Generally speaking, females tend to do a little bit better, or males tend to tolerate more protein, have a higher protein threshold than females. All else equals. So there's factors at play there, but it's all just very gradual manipulations of five or 10 gram increments. I'm never increasing by 100 grams at a time or dropping by 100 grams at a time, because that's what gets people in trouble and they don't really know at what point their body would start changing and that leaves a lot of margin for error on the table. So I kind of like to treat things as like a minimum viable dose. What's the minimum change I can make to elicit the response I'm looking for.
Speaker 1:That's what makes it more sustainable change I can make to elicit the response I'm looking for. That's what makes it more sustainable. I mean, it seems like you're very dialed in with how much you're consuming and what macros. You are. Going on to this other aspect of intuitive eating, right, I've had this conversation with a lot of people and there's a bunch of there's always information out there, right, you don't really know what to follow. That fat can't make you fat. You can eat as much fat as you want. You're just going to. You know it's going to come out the other end and you won't gain any weight.
Speaker 1:I've found and you maybe can kind of contest this a little bit that yeah, there is kind of a limit of how much fat you can have before you are starting to gain weight. And, um, there is kind of a limit of how much fat you can have before you are starting to gain weight. And over time and again I was more of an intuitive eater. I've slowly started to gain weight, not really changing anything, just eating, and again eating a carnivore diet 90, 95% carnivore fat and protein, but not really looking at it, just waiting until I feel full, and I just I gained weight like crazy, like I just started slowly going up and up and up. And then when I kind of locked that in a little bit, you know a little bit leaner cuts, which is a little bit cheaper, to be honest, a little bit leaner cuts that are cheaper uh, in 85 or 90% ground beef, the weight just boom. It looks like a pull the weight loss lever. Do you feel that's the same, or is there? Are there people that can't eat as much fat?
Speaker 2:I mean you can definitely get fat eating a keto, carnivore diet, like there's people that say otherwise, but those people are wrong. I mean you can most definitely gain fat eating just fats and proteins. Now I will say, if you're trying to attack it from an intuitive eating standpoint, it is much easier to eat intuitively on a keto or carnivore diet and that be relatively close to within the realms of what your body actually needs, because it's not going to be getting a lot of this noise in the equation from excessive blood sugar and insulin spikes brought on by increased sugar and processed carbohydrate consumption or these hyper palatable foods. So there is that going for it. But yeah, you can definitely gain body fat by eating too much dietary fat. You can gain body fat by eating too much dietary protein.
Speaker 2:I mean I've done that before too, so all of that can come into play for sure. So you got to figure out you know what the goal is, how to make that sustainable and what, what levers you want to pull to really get that dialed in. I mean you can lose weight, you can lose fat, eat nothing but Twinkies as well, but that's certainly far from optimal from a hormonal standpoint, from a metabolic standpoint, from a lean muscle muscle mass retention standpoint. So really kind of getting all that dialed in to figure out what's best is.
Speaker 1:Is the key really kind of getting all that dialed in to figure out what's best is the key? Yeah, that's a great point. You know you got people out there. I mean I know to prove points, but I don't know if you've seen the whole Oreo statin issue thing. Have you seen any of that? Yeah, I mean I have Oreos for X amount of time and it's going to lower my cholesterol as much as a statin would.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Nick, he's a smart guy man, I've got him. You know, I've corresponded a few times. He's actually coming on my podcast next week. Probably dive into that as a little bit as well.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's awesome. And this aspect of reverse dieting too, and I feel like people have been using this and I'm trying to wrap my head around it too. I kind of understand it, as you're going to start to drive your intake up slowly and then bring it down quickly, so that your metabolism is like full rev and then you're going to burn fat faster, or is that the basic concept of it?
Speaker 2:kind of. I mean, I don't typically drop calories quickly once I'm reached the end of my reverse diet. I'm pretty gradual, increasing and decreasing, but I spend quite a bit of time at that higher intake. That that's the main thing, that's the key. And, like, reverse dieting at its simplest level is basically just the reverse of dieting down. So when people think of dieting they're typically thinking of reducing caloric intake and consumption. The reverse of that would be the increased caloric intake. And the whole reason you want to do that is your.
Speaker 2:Your body's metabolism is very adaptable. So, like, when you start eating less, it down regulates to follow suit. When you start eating more, it up regulates the fall suit. Now there is definitely a point of diminishing return. You can't just eat, you know, 10 000 calories every single day and expect your metabolism to just, you know, allow proper metabolic function to happen. So you don't gain weight at that intake. Most people likely wouldn't. I would certainly gain weight at 10,000 calories every single day. But it does allow you to kind of adapt your metabolism where it needs to be and where it should go, and give you more freedom to, you know, build more lean tissue as well, like when you're eating at a caloric surplus. Yes, your metabolism is going to be upregulated, but you're also going to be able to partition that increased fuel intake to hopefully build more lean tissue. If you're demanding more lean tissue be built so like if you increase your food but then you're not doing anything but sit on the couch, watch Netflix that's probably going to mostly go to body fat.
Speaker 1:I like to use the athletic couch potato too, because there's a lot of people that hit the gym. They do like a 45-minute session. I crushed my workout today. It was great. You hit the couch, you hit the Netflix and then you, literally, you really didn't make a dent, buddy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no for sure, man. I mean, like it's kind of crazy, like I'm doing a 50 mile march this week and I'm not an endurance athlete by any means but like preparation for that, I've been walking an extra like two and a half hours every single day on top of my weight training and it's like, man, this is not my norm, it's kicking my butt, but it's like you got to do these things. You got to move your body. I mean, we're not designed to be sitting all day long. And when you do sit all day long, it becomes very apparent that your body was not meant to be doing that.
Speaker 1:I just had a conversation with Linda Salant, the Carnitarian, and I was talking about I just went to Japan and I even ate off my diet a little bit. I had pizza in Tokyo best pizza I've ever had in my life. I had sushi. I don, I had pizza in Tokyo best pizza I've ever had in my life. I had sushi. I don't even like really eat like fish. I had a bunch of different things, local cuisines, and I came back and I was I think I was like eight pounds lighter than when I left. I just like still worked out, still ran a little bit, but just the amount of walking that I did every single day, I mean on top of still being active, I was like damn. I was like this is great. I come back from vacation. Usually people are like bloated and heavy. I'm like dude, I'm looking pretty good.
Speaker 2:That's the key to man. You shouldn't have to deviate so far from your norm that when you return to your norm, like you have to catch up, far from your norm that when you return to your norm, like you have to catch up, like. I don't understand the concept of people that go off, that they diet down for a vacation or a cruise or whatever and they just totally blow it and they feel like crap when they're in this vacation cruise. You know mode. They sacrifice their workouts, their movement, their nutrition, they gain a bunch of weight back and they're miserable the whole time they're there Like it's just, it's not good.
Speaker 1:They gain a bunch of weight back and they're miserable the whole time they're there. It's just not good. I felt it in Japan too. But this is kind of a telltale sign for me when I know the diet works. If I go off of the diet, if I eat pizza, if I eat anything, if I have some beers with friends, I immediately the next morning do not feel good at all. I don't know if you have the same effect if you kind of sway off a little bit.
Speaker 2:It's been about nine years since I've swayed off, so I don't. It's been a while. It's foggy in my mind, but if I ever like, just go. But it's interesting, man like I can have a freaking rotisserie chicken and I'll recognize what's optimal and not for my body. If I eat too much lean protein in a sitting then I don't feel as good the next day when I wake up. So I've got it finessed in that sense. If I go off in that regard, I can tell a difference. But I don't even want to know what I would feel like if I had a big pizza or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, you are freaking dialed in man, yeah, yeah. And speaking about having good nutritious food, let's talk about some keto bricks here First of all, like if anybody told you you're going to have your own, you know supplement bar, would you have believed them?
Speaker 2:I've always been entrepreneurial in spirit, so I wouldn't have put it past me to do something like that. But I made the bricks for my own personal consumption back in 2017, so I never planned on them being a product. It just kind of happened to work out that way and I love it. I love that I have these. I produce them in-house, I mean I love where it's become or what's come of it. But yeah, I would not have guessed that what was happening at the time would turn into what it is now and what was the?
Speaker 1:you know what was this gap that you're trying to fill in the ketogenic space, where you're like I need to. I need to push this out to the masses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean when I was doing my first prep with keto back in 2017, I mean, there were no keto products at that time. There was nothing that I was aware of. There was certainly nothing that was with the quality of ingredients that I was looking for for a competition prep and I just wanted to streamline all of my prep endeavors. I wanted to streamline my meal prep. I wanted to streamline my nutrition needs. I wanted to find a quality fat source and there wasn't really any of that out there, so I just set out to make my own and once I did, I was documenting my whole prep on YouTube and people kept asking about you know the bricks? Hey, what are those? What can I get them? What's the recipe? And I just kind of wrote it off and said, oh, it's nothing, I'm just using this to hit my macros. But then we decided to roll our sleeves up and turn it into a business and, lo and behold, it just took off.
Speaker 1:That's so cool, that's awesome. I had what was the new flavor you guys brought to Hack your Health so we had our first tallow-based flavor there. So peanut butter tallow time was what we got. Okay, that was. I mean, they're all good. That was different. I remember I think it was a banana one too. I really enjoyed. So all the stuff, they're awesome, they're really good, convenient and you're right, I would say, even in the space of keto there are these.
Speaker 1:Everything has keto on the label nowadays and that's where it gets it. As a consumer, it gets really kind of. It gets hard to kind of figure out what is actually good and what's not. Vinny Tortorich I don't know if you're familiar with he just came out with that documentary Dirty Keto where he kind of dives into some of the supplements and things like that. But it's just really good to you know. Know that. You know there's people out there that are going to really go for the high quality stuff. You know, because I can go down the street and get 15 things that say Atkinson it, keto, whatever, but if you turn the label around, I want, I can't pronounce half the stuff and then two, it's literally a laundry list. It goes all the way down halfway of the package.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm all for simplifying ingredients. I want it to be the highest quality, minimal, clean ingredients, and that's why we've kept production in-house from day one. I want to be able to oversee all that directly. And you're absolutely right, man, there's so many packaged goods out there that I would not eat. I wouldn't feed it to my dog much less. You know, I don't want that in my house. I got a two-year-old kid now and like a lot of kids I mean you look at what they're serving kids and like the child aisle in the grocery stores, like for baby food and stuff, like it's horrendous man, like there's no nutrition in there and like, especially during that chapter their lives where their brain's developing, their body's developing like you want to give them everything that they need and you're not going to find it in a carrot celery puree that's got a whole bunch of sugar in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you're seeing that there's different formulas now that are including high fructose corn syrup inside of the formula.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. I mean everything's got high fructose corn syrup. Man, it's ridiculous, it's laughable how bad our food system is it really is.
Speaker 1:You know you go to different countries. Uh, if you have see, you know different american products on the shelf. There's some of them have warning labels. There's a legit warning label saying like this is dangerous and it's a freaking box of cereal yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cereal's not even food, man, it's not no bueno it is no bueno, uh, and and how is that now? Because you're a newer dad, right? Or I could be wrong there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, he just turned two about a month ago now.
Speaker 1:Okay, how's that? In preparation, are you feeding him a little bit differently as he's starting to get older? Like what are the kinds of things Cause this is topic actually has come up a lot of people who follow this diet and are either in relationships with somebody who isn't, or maybe getting on board or expecting a family. I'm trying to figure out. Okay, like what are we going to be feeding them when they're this age, when they're young, and then also when they go off to school? If they do go off to school, like what you know, how are you going to navigate that?
Speaker 2:and we've been pretty much dialed in with him from the get-go. So, like my wife's also keto, she was keto all throughout her pregnancy, um, all throughout the you know, postpartum breastfeeding, all that stuff, uh, so he was getting the highest quality upregulated nutrition and breast milk from her and what she was consuming. And now that he is eating food, I I mean he's like his first meal like real food. Meal was, I think, like a big old beef bone knuckle with collagen and I mean something that we had braised. Like he's eating the real deal. Like he eats a lot of eggs, a lot of meat, avocado, you know, good quality whole fat dairy. Like he eats the same things that we eat basically like no deviation from it.
Speaker 1:That's, that's awesome. Yeah, I I don't I have no kids, but I I just know like that's something that's, you know, when we have to teach our kids how to navigate through the world, because once they go out and they're gonna be on their own, like it's our job as parents to educate them, but they're gonna have to be making these decisions out on their own. There's so many things that are stacked up against them. You know they're starting. The starting line is here. They're starting all the way, you know, a hundred yards back in the world, because everything you turn on the TV, any advertisement, the normalcy of high sugary foods, it's like, oh, it's a treat, treat, they should have it. I I think that's we really have to look into that and kind of get away from that. But it, that is a, that is an absolute uphill battle.
Speaker 2:No, no, any way you look at that's an absolute uphill battle and it's got a compounding effect too, because like there's this epigenetic uh you know concept that takes place, that basically what we consume impacts not only our kids, but like three generations, four generations deep. So like we can't just eat for our own health anymore. We have to take responsibility for us and our lineage, and that does not mean eating Hot Pockets and, you know, cereal by any means.
Speaker 1:I've heard you talk about this and I was wondering if you can kind of speak about it, about that you think balance in life is bullshit. Yeah, Can you kind of elaborate?
Speaker 2:I'm going to put that on a t-shirt at some point for sure. But yeah, the notion of work-life balance has never really sat well with me because by definition, if something is balanced it's an equilibrium, which means it's zeroed out, and I don't want anything in my life to be at zero. And then if you look at like a balance beam, like a teeter-totter, you know if something's going up, something else is going down. I don't ever want that to be the case either, but I've tried to adopt this mentality of tensegrity, which is basically an architectural you know word that means tensional integrity. You know word that means tensional integrity.
Speaker 2:So you have these things that you know have tension placed on them, from the other components of your life, for instance, but that tension creates more rigidity, more overall structure and resilience and everything that's in my life I can pretty much separate into five primary pillars.
Speaker 2:So you got health, wealth, relationships, spirituality and self-development, and as long as everything I'm doing can be put into one of those buckets and be symbiotic in nature to everything else, then in theory everything grows and develops. And there's certainly times in my life, certain chapters, where one thing may be getting a lot more focused than the other. But at the end of the day, everything is still improving. Like when I was going through my five competition preps last year, that was definitely prioritizing the health component of my life, but it was putting a our kid with us you know she's meal prepping for me Like like a lot, a lot of relationships would would would find that very difficult, but we became stronger because of it. So everything that I'm working on builds the overall resilience of everything in my life, which is is the key.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man that's a good. That's a good way to put it, you know, and time under tension is going to make you stronger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100% man.
Speaker 1:And speaking of strength, let's talk about when you're outside of competition. What does your strength training routine kind of look like? I'm sure it's different in competition, but when you're not really training for anything but just for life and to kind of stay strong, what does that look like on the week?
Speaker 2:Man, I've been doing like a full body split for the past two years now and I've really been digging that. I enjoy it. It works well for my schedule being kind of all over the board right now. So the main difference between in-season and out-of-season training is just the intensity of the progressive overloads. When I'm eating at a surplus in a building phase, I'm able to push the envelope with the weight training a little bit more, be a little bit more intense, increase the volume, go a little bit heavier. When I'm in a cut, I'm more so, trying to just preserve the strength markers that I've reached up to that point so that I can preserve as much lean tissue as possible. But when I'm in a building phase, I'm just, you know, going in and trying to hit new PRs as frequently as I can.
Speaker 1:And I was wondering about this question too that I have is, you know, for I'm looking at like power lifters, right, they have this progressive over. There are a few ways they can train. Right, they're going to have a progressive overload. They're going to say, okay, my weight that I want to lift at competition is X, and I'm going to backtrack the weeks and then figure out where's my starting date, and this is kind of figuring how much I'm going to progress and when I'm going to progress. Or they can step or they can wave their programming, however it is. But for you know, you guys, it's the aesthetic that you're getting to. So how do you kind of pinpoint, you know, the weights that you need to be getting at, if the outcome isn't the weight, it's the look?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's not like like I'm never judged on show day based off of how much I can deadlift, like the judges don't care, but they're looking for really defined and built and proportional, symmetrical, you know, back density. So if I'm lacking in that department then I need to be doing more deadlifts to build that up. So it's kind of more like an art form. So like, if you look at powerlifting, it's like mathematics. Okay, so what do I need to do to be getting the top total, you know, weight that I can across my three primary lifts squats, deadlift and bench press and it's just math, it's numbers.
Speaker 2:When you look at bodybuilding, it's more like an art form than a mathematical form. So like if I'm lagging in my rear delts, then I need to incorporate some reverse flies and some rear delt work and basically act as a sculptor and add more clay to that masterpiece, so to speak. And I just increase the volume, the training intensity, the types of exercise I'm doing to target that lagging body part, um, but that typically equates to getting stronger with those movements, those exercises. But I'm never judged, like you said, off of those, those weights.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, true, you guys are like artists Like I go out there fricking like chiseled it's, it's, it's, it's a it's a big feat, man, I think, and it's. It's takes a lot for somebody to step into that realm and it's a lot of discipline, a lot of time, a lot of commitment and you also have a new course and I was kind of talking offline how I was seeing it on Instagram a little bit. You know, for somebody that's looking to get in some. You know ketogenic or bodybuilding, you know who is this course for and you know what can somebody expect when they register for it.
Speaker 2:So this course is basically those seven phases that I outlined earlier. It's that on a much more comprehensive level. As far as who it would be designed for, I would say it'd be designed for current bodybuilders that are following traditional conventional bro diet or anything other than keto but want to adopt a ketogenic life towards their prep endeavors. Or for people that are well-versed in keto or low carb or carnivore but have hit a plateau and want to take things to the next level. Maybe they've been doing intuitive eating with a carnivore approach or keto approach, but they're stuck in a way to composition. They need to learn how to manipulate their macros, track their intake and get that dialed in.
Speaker 2:Either of those avatars would find this course beneficial. It's got 150 plus video modules. It's super comprehensive, but it's also got a whole bunch of discounts and partnership brands in there. We've got our own tribe private community in there with I do weekly live calls. We do challenges in there. I've got my own custom built AI software in there that people can use as a dashboard to track their metrics over time. I got my own workout app in there. Like it's, it's becoming my life's work worth of content in one comprehensive place that I'm just going to keep adding content to over time, so I'm super proud of it.
Speaker 1:That's all. How do you keep up with? Author podcasting? You know keto bricks and this.
Speaker 2:Man, I don't even know. I feel like I don't know that I can say that I'm keeping up with it all. I feel like sometimes I'm just scrambling, but everything I'm working on I'm passionate about doing, which makes things easier, for sure.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, man, they're labors of love, right yeah, 100%. And you know, as you're probably already thinking ahead, once you probably finish one project, you're probably on to the next. You know, just kind of seeing your trend here, what's some things that might be coming up that you're excited about, whether it be new products or events coming up.
Speaker 2:I guess we got some really cool new flavors for Keto Brick in the pipeline that are tallow-based. I'm really focused on just getting this course continually polished and dialed in. Like I am making this, I've got a bad habit of just adding more things to my plate, and I really just want to refine and polish all the things that I currently have on my plate before I add more. So really just sinking my teeth into this course and getting it like optimized and dialed in and just better with every single week that passes. That's the main things, but I'm also hosting another bodybuilding competition next year, so I'm going to be a promoter. So I'll be hosting my own competition, which is pretty exciting. So always something new coming, though, for sure. Yeah, where's that going to be taking place? It's going to be in Northwest Arkansas, so it's going to be called the Natural State Savages because Arkansas is the natural state. So it's going to be a WNBF INBF competition, and anybody is welcome to come compete. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, that's great, and if people are interested in kind of connecting with you, where can they find you? Via Instagram or website?
Speaker 2:So I'm Keto Savage on all socials. This course is Keto Bodybuilding, so ketobodybuildingcom for that and then ketobrickcom for the bricks Awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, man, this was great. I got to learn a lot about you know bodybuilding, which I didn't know, a ton of everything, and I'm excited to put this out and I'm sure the listeners will be too.
Speaker 2:Hey, man, always a pleasure. I love talking about this stuff. I appreciate you bringing me on.
Speaker 1:Thank you all for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, like and share. See you all next time on the Primal Foundations podcast.