Episode 42: Feel Better, Look Better, Die Slower with Jake Thomas

What if optimal health started with a simple dietary shift? In this episode of the Primal Foundations Podcast, Jake Thomas, a former US Marine turned lifestyle coach, shares his transformative journey from a vegan bodybuilding diet to embracing the carnivore lifestyle. He also opens up about his mother's battle with osteoporosis and how strength training and diet changes turned her health around, shaping his coaching philosophy.

We dive into different dietary approaches, challenge conventional nutritional wisdom, and explore why critical thinking is crucial when interpreting diet studies—especially those linking red meat to cancer. Jake's story highlights how small changes in diet can create big shifts in health, performance, and well-being. Tune in for actionable insights on aligning diet, exercise, and mindset for a healthier life.

Connect with Jake:

https://www.instagram.com/lifelikejake/

https://lifelikejake.com/

Chapters

• 0:28 Optimal Health With Lifestyle Coach
• 6:36 Transition to Carnivore Diet
• 17:53 Enhancing Health Through Training and Diet
• 28:46 The Perception of Health Improvement
• 33:19 Analyzing Nutrition Studies and Health Trends
• 40:14 The Impact of Nutrition Choices
• 49:42 The Power of Diet and Belief

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:29

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 Jake Thomas. For the listeners who don't know, jake is a former US Marine and now lifestyle coach through his marquee Life. Like Jake and the host of the very successful podcast Sick, scared and Stupid, you can check out Jake's background story on his first appearance of the Primal Foundations podcast in episode 12. Jake, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:13

Thanks, tony, it's good to be here, it's good to see you again Talking off screen. I said you're looking leaner, still smiling, so I don't want to say meaner, but you look leaner, noticeably leaner. You've been doing something right, for sure.

Speaker 1: 1:28

I always said I'm trying to be like you, boss. Just shred it like a Julian salad over there Last time, like we actually did um while I was on your podcast, but even before, like episode 12. So you're like this is over a year ago. You're an OG for the primal foundations.

Speaker 2: 1:45

Yeah, man, that was a good time. Uh, you know we were both still kind of cracking into certain spaces and spaces and trying to figure things out and poke the bear, so to speak. You know, being part of this resistance underground movement that's still kicking, and then getting to see you and meet you for the first time in Austin at Hack your Health, the event through KetoCon, and you know I remember laughing with you about that and how you went to the same barbecue place like three days in a row, not for barbecue but for steak. You know, for people that don't know like steak, whole steaks and like a ribeye in this case is not something you normally find at a barbecue shop or shack. You know it's usually cuts of beef, pound of this, quarter pound of that, whatever ribs and sausage and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 2:25

But that one place in particular downtown in Austin, cooper's, and you were like dude, you got to go to this place and get the ribeye and I was like of course the outer towner is telling me to go to the place downtown on Congress. I'm like in my mind, I'm like, you know, that's like a tourist trap right, like right there in the heart of downtown and it's talking about eat the words. Like Cooper's is good barbecue, but like that ribeye is is absolutely nailed out of this world. So once I had it, I understood why you went three days in the rain.

Speaker 1: 2:53

Yeah, I, we. I have to credit James Lieben the uh, the carnivorous cause he went there before and he's like you gotta have the ribeye here.

Speaker 2: 3:00

And I'm thinking the same thing.

Speaker 1: 3:02

I'm like this isn't the downtown area?

Speaker 2: 3:03

This is not like real Texas barbecue, but we get there.

Speaker 1: 3:07

And I was. I was shocked. I went back again with our boy, casey rough, and then he left for the airport and I was like kind of waiting around town. I'm like. I texted him like guess where I'm at. He's like you're not at Cooper's. Again I go, yes, I'm at Cooper's three times in a week.

Speaker 1: 3:23

A weekend, but it was definitely well worth it. It was super cool to meet. Like doing podcasts is great and you get to kind of have a little bit connection, but like we got to meet each other at Pack your Health, we had a lot. We got to eat, we got to hang out. You know, when I walked in there it was my first one. So I see I just interviewed Reynolds again. Yeah, I saw him. He's like the first person. I always joke. He's like the mayor of that whole thing, like everybody knows him and I like hugging him. I turn around, I see you and then I see casey, then I see james. I'm like thought this is great, like it's just super cool, um, to get like all those like-minded people in there and to just, you know, rub elbows with each other, talk to somebody new, talk to somebody that you know, you, you've been wanting to talk to. There's like people, there's heroes there for everybody.

Speaker 2: 4:12

So it was just a really great experience.

Speaker 2: 4:15

Yeah, I had a blast man and and, uh, I was fortunate to bring my mother, who you met, and it's a big deal for me because she is a big reason why I got into this whole thing in the first place. You know, my seven years ago my mother was given this really dismal osteoporosis. I don't know. I should say let me rephrase that she got a really bad bone density scan score, like she had very negative bone density scores and so her osteoporosis had really kind of taken over. And her doctor who administered the exam and kind of gave her the prognosis after the fact was like you know, you're, you're really not looking good. I'd give you about a year to live. Now I believe how that was interpreted, or how he meant it to be, was like if you took a fall or if you had a break of some kind, it would really be bad for you, given the state of your bone density right now. I mean, she was, I want to say she was like minus four or something around there, like really really. And she was, I want to say she was like minus four or something around there, like really really in a bad spot, definitely in the critically red area. And so when my mother, you know, when your mother tells you like hey, I was given a year to live, and I'm like what? Like, like, hey, I've got some bad news. I've got some some pretty heavy news. My doctors gave me a year to live. Based on that, you don't even hear the dot, dot, dot, dot dot, you don't even hear the dot, dot, dot, dot, dot part. All you hear is year to live. And I was like whoa, whoa, hold on mom, like it sends off a lot of alarms in your head and really makes you come to the moment of being afraid, you know, and I was like I can't lose my mother right now, like I need you mom, like I need you in life. And no, like denial, this can't be, does not compute, kind of thing. And then I started listening and understanding the why behind it and her in fact having this very serious case of osteoporosis, and so that just put me on a mission of like what can I do? What can we do? You know what's the remedy, what's the fix? Like the Marine you know, you kind of mentioned that earlier the Marine kicks into me and goes like enemy, where you know, search, find, kill, destroy. Like what do we need to do to fix this problem, which is not always the answer, but in this case I was definitely like locate, close with and destroy the enemy, you know for sure. And so I was already experimenting a lot with diets and nutrition.

Speaker 2: 6:38

I've been competitively and professionally bodybuilding for quite a while at this point, and was doing various types of bro dieting and if it fits your macros and standard American and typical bodybuilding style dieting, and even gotten into vegetarianism and veganism for a couple of years. And veganism for a couple of years and, preceding her diagnosis or prognosis, I'd started to get bips on carnivore eating. I'd done keto in the past. So I started researching the carnivore diet and I was through a friend of mine. He's like read this, watch this, listen to this. And I was like, yeah, dude, I've done keto before. And he's like no man, it's not keto. No vegetables, no fruits, no avocados, no chocolate, no nuts. Like just meat, just animals, fish, seafood, eggs. I was like, all right, whatever man, I'll read, I'll watch, I listen.

Speaker 2: 7:20

And I did and it made a lot of sense. You know I was not a vegan nor a vegetarian for the ethics of animals or for the environmental consciousness. I dated a girl that was a vegetarian. She and I in turn became vegan together. That was my reasoning for that. It was never about the two other reasons as mentioned. So for me it was actually pretty easy to abandon veganism and become a carnivore, so to speak. People hear that and they're like, oh my God, you went from vegan to carnivore. Even though a lot of people do do that, I was never having to disassociate from some type of moral reason. I did it, like I said, because this girl was dating, was a vegetarian and we together explored that plant-based world and then became vegans together. So the more I listened, the more I watched, the more I read, the more I was curious.

Speaker 2: 8:08

And when I finally took this first 30-day plunge into it, the results to me were undeniable how I felt, what I was able to do with so little, so to speak, as a vegan bodybuilder. I had, like, my pillbox. Tony was like I can't even make the dimensions of it, how big it was. I had five different doses for each day and I had all seven days. So I had the five, the five box by seven, so it's a 35 box, right, and I had X amount of pills per day. So you know five times a day, whether I was taking this supplement, this supplement, amino acid right Cause it doesn't exist A couple other micronutrients and minerals and vitamins throughout the course of the day five times, and some other like bacterial cleansers and little droppers that I'm doing things with.

Speaker 2: 8:56

On top of the other supplements, I'm taking protein powders, amino acids, things that do not exist in the plant kingdom, that you have to source outside of it in order to create and get, I should say, obtain, the macros and micros that you want, particularly as a bodybuilder or as a fitness model, where you're trying to account for those macros and the ratios that you want them, but the fact that you do. They don't exist in the natural world as a vegan. So you have to have processed foods, you have to have supplements, whether it's the vitamins, the droppers, the protein powders, whatever. Add on top of that. All the food is processed. I was not a raw vegan, so I'm eating tofu and tempeh and satay and everything else that I can get to create protein with, but at the same time, I'm using supplements and the vitamins to get things in the ratios that I wanted, all the while not concerned or really aware of the heavy metals or the types of mold or toxins that I'm being exposed to through the processing of all these things and I'm just like, oh, it's vegan, it's good for me, cool, whatever.

Speaker 2: 10:01

When I went carnivore, all that went away. No more pills no more. No more. You know five by seven vitamin box and I was like damn, like I was so proud of this thing. It's cool, it's color coded, it's like my, it's like a habitual thing. No more of that, like that was first. No more droppers no more. You know. Scoops of amino acids no more. Bcaas no more. I mean amino acids, bcaas no more. Protein powders no more. You know foods and wrappers powders no more. You know foods and wrappers and, like I said, tofu, tempeh, satay, whatever eggs, steak, ground beef, bacon Like that was what I ate pretty much for those first 30 days where it was a lot of steak, a lot of eggs and bacon and burgers, and I was shocked yeah, that's what you're saying is because we get this, a lot of people look to other people.

Speaker 1: 10:53

They're like, well, so-and-so is vegan and they're this or they're that or they've achieved this. It's really hard to do like you're saying, like not to say that people can't do those things, but there is a lot of supplementation. Uh, it's a lot of extra work and things. Again, if it's a moral thing or you really think you're doing it for your own health, whatever it may be, but there are athletes out there, like yourself at that moment in time, where you wanted to do it vegan or vegetarian. But it is a lot of food and it's a. You don't know where it's coming from. It's packaged, it's processed and there's so many supplements. It is daunting. I like just you talking about, like man, that's a lot of work.

Speaker 2: 11:33

Yeah, yeah, and it is, it really is. And you hit it well and said like it's not. You know I don't want to say right or wrong. You know I don't want to be that polarizing where I'm saying it's right or it's wrong. I'm just saying what I went through, what I experienced, and comparing the differences. And if someone finds value in that or they're able to relate to that, cool. But I'm explaining these things as they were, not how I perceive them or what my opinion is.

Speaker 2: 11:59

But I was a vegan. I was eating these things in order to achieve the results I wanted athletically. I had to supplement because, again, these things did not exist in the ratios that I needed them in in order to eat and adhere to my macros. Right, very specific. Same thing in the if it fits your macros world. Well, when you're not a vegan, you're wide open. You can drink, you know, isopure 50 gram protein drinks that have nothing else but this liquefied protein, and you can cheat and say, all right, I'm going to go eat a bunch of Skittles and Sour Patch Kids and watch a movie, and it'll still fit in my macros. Then I'll just down these egg whites and whatever and it'll work out. It will and it can, because I've done it plenty of times. I would eat Popeyes, oftentimes during bodybuilding preps, because people are like well, how do you do that? I'm like, dude, you get the not the fry, but the blackened chicken strips. Skip the sauces, get the dirty rice with the green beans, skip the mashed potatoes, skip the biscuit. There you go, there's your meal, there's your carbs, there's your protein, there's your vegetable for volume to fill you up, and it works like a charm. Now, you're not accounting for the micros in there, the vitamins that are going to be all out of whack because of the processing and the inclusion of those synthetic versions of some of those micronutrients. So how you're going to feel is not necessarily going to equate to how good you might look.

Speaker 2: 13:17

But in this carnivore sense, which is the ultimate elimination diet by way of absolute whole foods, whole, complete, real, single foods right, there's no ingredients to them. Eggs eggs are eggs, ground beef is ground beef ingredient. You know, you, if it were even in a package ground ingredients, ground beef, you know ingredients. Eggs, bacon, like okay, maybe bacon. You got to look forward to make sure there's no nitrates, no extra additives and sugars and whatnot, salts and different spices, but for the most part, it's like ingredients ribeye, steak ingredients, like you're eating single ingredient foods as opposed to foods made of ingredients, and that was huge to me, huge aha moment.

Speaker 2: 13:59

Second one was, as a vegan athlete, using the toilet a lot, a lot of bathroom time, a lot of evacuation by way of I'm thinking, well, it's because I'm an athlete, my metabolism is really high, I need to use the toilet. Thinking, well, it's because I'm an athlete, my metabolism is really high, I need to use the toilet three, four, five times a day sometimes because I'm an athlete. No, dude, that's all waste, that's all discard, that's all what cannot be utilized or ingested. Thus it has to be discarded. You know, just thinking about, like fiber and the types of, you know, soluble versus non-soluble fiber, and things that can be ingested and broken down as opposed to things that can only be discarded. So, consuming all those things my body is extracting, having to really particularize the foods it's ingesting in order to extract these little bits of nutrients. So all this stuff would come into it and the digestive system is having to go. Okay, just this and all this can go away. So, between, like my duodenum, my genuina, my ileum, like all these parts and phases of the digestive tract, but some of which are incorporating storage.

Speaker 2: 15:04

Some are discerning which micronutrients are for what and what macronutrients are for what. They're like whoa, whoa. They're like whoa like. We just need that and all this other stuff can go, whereas when I became a carnivore, bowel movement frequency changed a lot. By changed a lot, I mean really fell off. You know, sure, sometimes you can have the runs for a couple of days or have some, you know, uh, uncomfortable bowel movements in your transitional period, just because you're taking in a lot more fat and your colon is cleaning itself out a bit, because now you don't have a lot of substance there to kind of hold some things and you're going to just be kind of pretty fluid. You might have that.

Speaker 2: 15:43

But eventually, once your body becomes used to what it's ingesting and really understands the processing of that, you're not going to be discarding as much because you're going to be retaining essentially everything that you're consuming. The bioavailability of what you're consuming is basically 100. There's no more having to discern what is being ingested can actually be utilized. What do we need to discard? There is no discard. There's no casing, there's no husk, there's no cellulose, there's no fiber, there's none husk, there's no cellulose, there's no fiber, there's no, there's none of that. There's no roughage, it's all protein and fat and cellular volume, which is what we are. So our body's able to recognize that very easily. The familiarity is very simple Ingest, consume, utilize and then minimal discard, to the point now where I'm going the furthest. The longest I've gone is 11 days without a bowel movement, and people are like what? That's crazy, you've got to be sick.

Speaker 1: 16:37

You got to be constipated. Then that's exactly what they're going to go to.

Speaker 2: 16:41

And I'm not. It's weird at first when you're like man. I didn't get up this morning and do my manly first evacuation of the day and then again and then again the next day I'm like I'm like, am I losing?

Speaker 2: 16:54

Like, am I, am I getting soft? Is this making me soft, you know? Am I losing my manliness Cause I'm not getting up and doing my morning glory? No, and I was just like man. That was a real aha moment to me Again, similarly to the supplements and the vitamins and all that. The fact that I didn't need those things now and the fact that I wasn't evacuating so frequently. I was like man, these are cool things. That again, it was starting to dispel my opinion and my feelings and promote what was actually going on.

Speaker 1: 17:49

Yeah, I heard. I forgot who said it, but they're just. We were talking about. You know, again, bowel movements does come up in the carnivore space because it is a transition from going anywhere from two to three times a day to not going for two to three days, and everybody thinks it's a crazy thing and I forgot who said it, but they're like nobody's winning the award for the most amount of bowel movements, Like there's no award out there for that. So but we you are utilizing a lot of the nutrition and it's bioavailable for you versus, like you were saying, the excretion of everything else. And that's one thing is because if I wave off of carnivore at any point, like I will be going to the bathroom more often and then when I'm on carnivore I won't. So it's like obviously my body is going to be taking in these nutrients very efficiently and also I don't have to buy a ton of toilet paper, I swear to God.

Speaker 1: 18:46

I still have I don't have to Like a roll lasts months in my place but then going circling back to your mom, she's doing mostly carnivore or if not all carnivore, and then you're also doing some strength training with her, Like all of those things of this lifestyle coaching. And this was seven years ago when she got that diagnosis.

Speaker 2: 19:08

Yeah, so seven years ago was the diagnosis and for several years after that she was doing a lot of things on her own. So she was working with some other people trainers wise. Her nutrition, my mother's nutrition was never bad per se. She's born and raised in Mexico and grew up in an old world kind of pick it, pull it, kill it, eating foods that are ingredients, not ingredients that create foods, not foods made of ingredients. So she, you know, we didn't have sodas in the house growing up, didn't have Lunchables going to school. We had, like you know, whole foods for lunches.

Speaker 2: 19:42

I would say like the craziest processed things, though maybe they're not the healthiest now, but still I would take them over a lot of other things. You know, I was the kid that would show up to school with peanut butter, banana, celery and honey sandwich on, like whole grain or seven grain or sourdough and, like you know, when you're in second grade nobody wants to trade you for that. Like it's. It's the worst currency in the world as far as in school stuff. Right, because, like all my friends had lunchables pizza, kids cuisine like all these, you know all the cool snack packs, dude gushers.

Speaker 2: 20:18

I remember when gushers came out fruit rolls I was like, oh my god, these are amazing yeah anybody want to trade for this peanut butter, banana honey sandwich on sourdough with celery and people like yeah, no so my mother raised us well, she grew up well, but still something was missing, something was off.

Speaker 2: 20:34

Clearly you know that osteoporosis. It happened somehow. So I started auditing what she's doing, how she's living, how she's eating. I love the people she was working with, but the work that she was doing as far as in the physical training that she was undertaking was not in the interest of combating this osteoporosis.

Speaker 2: 20:55

Just like a metabolic panel, people that go get lipids done, people that go take blood tests, a blood test, metabolic panel, a drug screen, whatever a lipid testosterone even is a test, a test you can either study for and do well on, or a test you show up and take and get the grade you deserve. Most people show up and just take the test and they get the grade they deserve. And when they're upset about oh my God, my testosterone is so low, or like, oh my God, my cholesterol is so high, or like why is my A1C? You've got the grade you deserve based on the work you're putting in. The test isn't out to get you, but just the same you can study, prepare for that test and you will get a favorable score based on the work you put in.

Speaker 2: 21:45

So for my mother I said, okay, after a few years of this and not seeing too much improvement, her body composition was not as ideal as it should have been. She's in great health. We met my mother. She's got good genes. I was like we're not doing something right. Are you sure these people are working out this way? Are you sure you're eating this way, mom? And finally I just got frustrated enough with it to be honest. I said, okay, you're working with me now, mom, you're training with me, you're eating with me, I'm going to monitor you, I'm going to put you in my app with my coaching program, with my people, so I can monitor you and see what's going on. And sure enough, it was a lot of. It was not optimal dietary adherence.

Speaker 2: 22:25

So, in combination with strength training, two biggest things that you know are often misunderstood whether it's to lose weight or reduce body fat, or to gain weight and improve lean body muscle, you have to give in order to get. If you want to lose weight, if you want to go into a calorie deficit, if you want to reduce your amount of overall percentage body fat, to improve your body composition, you're going to have to give, by way of maybe having some hunger pains, maybe having some irritability. Maybe having some irritability, maybe having some brain fog, maybe having some days where you just don't feel great, having a lot of urges to want to eat temptations yeah, you're going to have to give. In order to get what you want For gaining weight, putting on size and mass, you're going to have to eat. That can be uncomfortable I've never eaten this much. I'm full. If you want to gain weight, mass, put on muscle, you're going to have to eat. In order to do that. You're going to have to eat the amount that's required in order to get there. On top of that, or combined with, you've got to train the right way. If it's to reduce that percentage of body fat or to lose weight or to improve your again kind of metabolic health and just body composition, or to increase that, you have to give in order to get. So.

Speaker 2: 23:41

My mother was doing a lot of activity but she wasn't eating in an optimal alignment with what kind of activity she was doing. The activity she was doing was not promoting the best sense of like recruitment for, let's say, things to combat osteoporosis, like stem cells, like some type of regeneration to her bone, you know, to improve that density. So I said, mom, we need to pump steel and we need to eat hearty and heavy. And so I was already a year into the diet and I was like mom I really think you should try this, let's give it a roll, let's cut out the tortillas and my tortillas. My mother is again very healthy and it's just part of the culture. Coming from Mexico. She ate corn tortillas, not flour, but still, you know, these are not necessarily promoting what we're after.

Speaker 2: 24:27

I was like mom we need to really get the protein in, we need to really get the fat in, but we just need these good, nutrient dense food sources, these wholesome places to where we can really get this red meat that's going to be loaded with creatine. That's going to really pump your ATP. Really get that adenosine triphosphate. The energy center, the body's optimal energy currency is ATP, and not having enough protein, not having enough good quality, bioavailable sources of creatine a la red meat the greatest we're not really pumping that ATP. So she's not getting the energy she needs, she's not being able to recruit the muscle growth, stimulation and recovery. She's in need of same thing with the bones, because the diet wasn't adequate and it was not complemented with the right type of training.

Speaker 2: 25:15

So we started to incorporate heavy and intense resistance training several days a week, along with monitoring strictly her amount of food, so much that I remember the first day when she was low on her fat she had hit her protein but it was in need of fat. She had to take down like six spoonfuls of butter and the next morning she was like I can't do that again with all that butter to hit the numbers. I was like, mom, you can, but you don't want to, so let's make sure we do. We prepare better so that we're not blindsided by that and then have to do that again. But in order to hit our numbers, we're going to do what it takes.

Speaker 2: 25:52

And sure enough, two years later, scores reversed by reverses, they drastically improved to where her minus fours and fives are now just teetering around minus ones. So she's still not in positive green but she's no longer in critically red and she's almost touching the surface to break even. And she even ran her first uh Murph um workout this past Memorial day. Yeah, and she she hikes in around the 20 pound vest pretty much every day. Uh, she's sprinting now doing like intervals and then lengthening her her. Her sprint distances, even from what she started with were just like five second intervals and now she's up to like 45 seconds sprint intervals. But lots of farmers, calories, lots of deadlifts, lots of squats, lots of bench press, lots of heavy, low rep range compound movements coupled with nutrient dense red meat, creatine, rich food sources, osteoporosis and see the, the combination, and I think this is, aesthetics aside, right, let's just let's ditch that out the way.

Speaker 1: 26:57

But getting people metabolically healthy and strong, like those are the two best things you can do, and in tandem. The one other piece is with that nutrition is with that nutrition, like the inflammation is, we don't realize how shitty we feel until we go to a diet like this and when the inflammation goes away, like, oh, that knee pain, that hip, whatever, not to say that you're never, ever going to have aches and pains. But for myself and for others, I feel like once you get that inflammation out and you're able to, like, feel better mentally and physically, you're able to train better, you just can wrap your head around doing this lifestyle a little bit more, and it's just so powerful. And how old is your mom now?

Speaker 2: 27:48

Uh, she'll be seven. She, she's 72 now, so yeah, she'll be 73.

Speaker 1: 27:52

She's lifting weights, eating steaks running sprints yeah. She is an absolute sweetheart. You tell her I said hi, by the way as well, but no, she was great and it's amazing what you guys can do. I mean again one year to live versus, you know, seven years later and she's crushing it. It's amazing.

Speaker 2: 28:13

Yeah, and great point about inflammation too. You know, um, we, we, we, we take for granted not feeling bad. There's a big difference between feeling good and not feeling bad. Not feeling bad means that you feel good FYI to everybody, because we all know when we feel bad, you know what I mean. Like like you know, when you don't feel good or we don't feel well, like man, I feel like shit, I'm sore, I don't have energy.

Speaker 2: 28:41

Like we, we, we are the first to complain when things go wrong. Like same thing, like you know. Take service, for example. Like on a on a flight. Hey, when the flight goes well, everything's smooth. We had a normal departure, there was no delay, great takeoff, great service during the flight, great landing. Like perfect experience. We don't say anything about it. We don't take the survey, we piss off like no, but by God, if that plane is delayed, we're all on Twitter. God damn you Delta. If there's luggage issues, if there's something in-flight experience that goes wrong, we're stuck on the runway. We're all just complaining. But when it's good, we don't say anything.

Speaker 2: 29:23

Our health is very similar. It's rare that we praise how good we feel. We do it, don't get me wrong. But it's rare because most people aren't going to do it every single day Like, oh my God, I feel amazing. But when we feel bad, boy, that's news. It's news to us, it's news to people around us. We can't wait to tell you about it. Like I feel like shit today, like, oh my God, I don't feel good. We love to share that negativity. So I say we take for granted not feeling bad, because when you feel bad you know it, but it's almost like you forget what not feeling bad is like and that's actually feeling good. Not feeling bad is feeling good. So, not having that inflammation, not having that issue, that chronic knee pain or the brain fog or some type of mental clarity or issues with sleep, when all those things start going away, it's not that you've gone past the point of status quo and now you're in the advanced phase of feeling good. No, this is normal. We are not becoming superhuman. My mother is not becoming a superhuman. That's normal human. My mother is not becoming a super human. That's normal.

Speaker 2: 30:35

She had regressed all the way down to where she was. She had fallen back. She was hindered. Her living experience was hindered by the degeneration of what she was dealing with. That's what most of us deal with now. How we feel the depression, the anxiety, the disorders or disruptions that we all go through is like drag that we've just gotten used to.

Speaker 2: 30:55

So when people heal around us and improve their lives around us, we see them as superior. It's like no dude, I'm not superior to you, you're just behind and below by your own choosing. For the most part it's like in a sprint 100-meter dash, for example and a track coach of mine in college told me this and I'll never forget it he's like you ever watch the 100-meter? He's like, and you see the winner pull away. I was like, yeah, totally, he's like. The guy's not pulling away. The other people have fallen off. In a race like that, it's about perfection. You mess up a start and you lose. You come up too soon, you lose. You don't stay low enough, you lose. I love the 100 meter.

Speaker 2: 31:42

Even though Noah Lyles in his past Olympics had not the best start, was still able to come from behind. Rarely this happens. Statistics do have fallibility and this one is just a hair of it, but for the most part, 99% of the time, the winner is the guy person that just holds it and everybody else falls off. So it's not that he's getting faster. It's just that he hits top end, holds that speed and doesn't fall off. We are not becoming superhuman. It's just that everybody else, man, is in such a deficit and has perceived that to be normal, that we've accepted it and that everything else around us is seemingly, or rather when something is better than that. We're like man. Tony, he's in great shape. This guy's a superhuman. It's like nah dog. I just took off the parachute.

Speaker 1: 32:31

And it's I always talk about this too the cards are stacked against us like it's a, it's a thing where, where the perception is oh, like your mother since her 70s, is she lifting weights? No way, that can't be possible. Oh, like, I eat this way. Right, this is the american diet. Like my grandfather lived to, whatever, so like I could eat, like he did, kind of thing. It's just like, all right, the kids growing up today I feel bad, like I feel bad for kids growing up today because they're the landscape of their food and their choices is very doctored up for them, and in schools, outside of schools, the home and people are perceived like this is healthy because it says, oh, whole grain. This is healthy because it's heart healthy cereal. Give me a freaking break, right? So I think again, you were mentioning earlier this grassroots thing that we are doing. It's catching on, it's starting to gain momentum, but there is a lot of work that needs to be done.

Speaker 2: 33:29

Yeah, and I can tell you from the front line right now I'm working on a second master's right now at university of Texas and Austin in nutritional science, to proceed my doctorate in nutritional science and I'm listening to it. You know from the horse's mouth having to evaluate the material objectively, doing a lot of case studies. You know epidemiological studies, a lot of case studies, epidemiological studies, a lot of reviews of RCTs and randomized controlled trials and just peer reviews over and over and over and read, analyze, summarize, read, analyze, summarize. So it's like some of which I definitely don't agree with, and it's like really putting me in a conflicting place. But then when I realized like hey, you're just reporting the data as it is, take your emotions out of it, it's okay, your opportunity will come. But places like the World Cancer Research Fund, the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, the American Health Association, american Heart Association, you, they rather have put forth so much information for such a long time decades, generations, even for them to change their positions on things.

Speaker 1: 34:36

I mean.

Speaker 2: 34:37

For you and I, Tony, it's like we're single people, we're individuals, so we represent families. We have spheres of influence, friends, clients, people that come to us, confide in us, look up to us, whatever are influenced by us. But for break it down, it's just us. Our decisions are going to affect us alone, Regardless of what's around us. It's going to affect us alone. We're not an organization like the AMA, the ACS or any of those others that I mentioned. We haven't written hundreds of thousands of journals or peer reviews or had hundreds of thousands of case studies with millions of people, to which we've then given synopses and promote it, or dispelled or disseminated information to be able to create a narrative or a position that we stand behind and then to which millions of people adhere, to caregivers that promote it, that forward it, and then patients that listen and adhere. For them to have to change that information, for you and I to say, hey, I'm a vegan today, I'm a carnivore tomorrow, fine, but for them to do that, what about all those millions of people who listen to that advice otherwise, All those hundreds of thousands of doctors and practitioners that have taken that, given it to patients, all of the people that have subscribed over the years, the decades, the generations, to the way they've said is right or this is the best way to fight cancer, to prevent cancer, to reduce risk, to be as healthy as possible, to combat diabetes, to try to stop metabolic syndrome. Like we're talking about a Goliath, of a consciousness. So, yeah, we are in this very little grassroots movement and it is a Herculean effort, but I'm very grateful to be where I am because I'm in the thick of it as far as in hearing the information and hearing the side that it's coming from, which is fine, and I see tremendous upside because it's not trying to necessarily totally demonize the other side but simply just offer a different perspective.

Speaker 2: 36:40

Example this morning I had my weekly live Q&A and one of my clients was asking me about a report that I had shared with them and I'm sharing all of my schoolwork and findings and everything I'm working on with my community so that they can actually see like look, this is literally right from the teaching pulpit. Here's my breakdown, here's what I had to do, here's what I think about it, here's the truth behind it. Evaluate for yourselves. And she was asking like well, what do you think about that study? Because it talks a lot about red meat as being a increaser of risk for cancer and, like the report, I had to or rather the subject I had to work on was how the inclusion of fruits, vegetables and whole grains helps reduce the risk of cancer. And when I got that originally I was like oh God, typical, like great I was like you feel targeted, You're like.

Speaker 1: 37:28

I think they're targeting me.

Speaker 2: 37:30

No. And so, you know, my professor, I was like, is there any way I could do this one on processed food removal instead? Just because I was like, oh God, not this one. But then I was like you know what, it's not about my opinion. Just find the report, find a report, a peer review, a journal, and report on that. It's inclusion or it's what it includes. It's like, fine, okay, I can do this.

Speaker 2: 37:53

So reading that, I'm like God, this is crazy, like what they're evaluating it on. They're saying you know to not consume it based on this and that. And she is asking me, my client well, how would you, you know, how do you respond to that? And I said, well, because you have no other information about these people, these patients, the participants. You know we've got 10,000 people ranging from 18 to 65. I have no idea what they look like, no idea what their activity levels are like, no idea what the rest of their diets are really like. And all you're just hearing is that you're talking about including red meat just out of nowhere on that. So these people could be sick internally, these people could be sick physically, these people could be completely sedentary, abled, disabled, who knows? And all of a sudden you're going to just drop red meat into that and blame the red meat as an issue for causing a greater or having a greater risk for cancer. Well, if it's to the standard American diet and adding more red meat to a diet that is almost sick, comprised of almost 60% of their carbohydrates coming from processed foods rather, 60% of the diet coming from processed foods 57, I believe it's 57% of calories of the standard American diet come by way of refined carbohydrates and otherwise processed foods 57%. So yes, if you add red meat to that, could it be problematic? Sure, I agree with that and that is what these studies and findings propose, because that's what they're based on. That's what they evaluate. They evaluate the people add Valorum, what are they consuming? They're consuming a standard American diet and if 57 to 60% of their calories are coming from refined sugar or carbohydrate sources and processed foods, then yeah, adding red meat to that is going to be probably problematic, because the cancer probability risk is not coming from the meat, it's coming from the other things, from the processed foods. And sure enough, my classmates who had processed food reduction as their findings report and as far as in efforts to reduce cancer risk, found crazy increases in probability and risk for people that consumed primarily by way of carcinogens, even though red meat is also classified as class 1, class two depending on what type. But to think about that is dumbfounding.

Speaker 2: 40:15

I give an example of the Brazilian steakhouse all the time. So right now we're breathing nitrogen. 78% of the air we breathe is nitrogen, not oxygen. People think like I need some O2. It's like no dude, you need nitrogen more than anything. Nitrogen is what we breathe. The majority of Nitrogen is an essential part of life. It is an essential molecule, the atoms that it is. Without them we cannot breathe right. Oxygen is critical as well, but without nitrogen there's no life in plants and air and ground and soil and animals and ourselves. Nitrogen alone is quite inert, but when you combine nitrogen two of them with one tall urine, you've got TNT. So by itself it's inert. But when you take two of these suckers and combine it with a tall urine, you've got this beautiful, combustible, flammable, explosive, volatile compound of trinitrotallurine.

Speaker 2: 41:18

Brazilian Steakhouse Tony, every time we go there the meat makes me so sick. No, Jake, the meat did not make you sick. Those five baskets of pao de queijo you had to start off the meal, the triple whipped polenta and mashed potatoes, and then all the spice and sugar plantains fried in vegetable oil you smashed. And then all the shit you got from the salad bar, the double dessert that you got, plus the two bottles of wine you drank. That plus the meat, you're right, that made you sick.

Speaker 2: 41:47

Meanwhile Tony ate just the conya beef ribs, some lamb chops, couple of sausages, and he's ready to run a marathon afterwards. I'm ready to roll over in a wheelbarrow and die and I don't know how I'm going to drive home. And you're like all right, dude, I'll see you later. I'm high on life. It's not the meat. So the same thing from those studies. It's not fair to blame meat as causing a higher probability of cancer risk when all those other things are on board. Back to that TNT thing. Nitrogen alone, meat is not going to be the harmful thing, but when you combine it two of them with toluene.

Speaker 1: 42:26

First and foremost, that was the most elegant way to say that rant was very elegantly put.

Speaker 1: 42:32

I love that it was way better than I've ever heard anybody talk about the topic. But you're right, I mean, some of these majority of the studies are just epidemiological and it's all like survey based. I think I had this, I think I had that and combination. We don't know the activity level, we don't know what's going on with the person, and then we're just going to cherry pick a lot of this, a lot of the data to just prove the points. But yeah, very, very well said, and I think I think that's amazing too.

Speaker 2: 43:03

I didn't know you were going back to school, so you're going to get an additional doctorate, or so I'm a glutton for education in the best way and I have a master's in business and currently doing my master's, my second master's, but in nutritional science. But I'm going to, I'm preceding the doctorate with this. This is kind of like my, my segue into the doctoral. So I'll be starting that hopefully, uh, the fall next year. I get accepted with all my radical idealisms and whatnot, but yeah, that's, uh, that's the truth. Man is, is, um, you can't blame things that are, like you said, kind of cherry picked, where you've got epidemiological studies showing correlation, not necessarily causation. And then you know things like FFQs or food frequency questionnaires. You know this, working with individuals, one-on-one, having people log their food, count calories, macros, what'd you eat, how much was it? Like we messed up all the time, even me, you like. You know, during competition, during performance I'm prepping for a race, prepping for a show miss a corner or cut a corner here and there miss a detail, like maybe. So you're telling me when we got like a hundred thousand person survey, like what type of? How good is the adherence? And that's even one of the flaws written in the abstract or in the in the synopsis of the uh, of the studies. A lot of them is. It's difficult to gauge the accuracy based on the input from the participants because they are susceptible to fallibility. Well duh. And then on the food frequency questionnaire how many of this, how much of that? The list is massive. There could be all kind of variables in there there, whereas you know there's very few in the carnivore world. On the low carb, zero carb, keto world, like, one of the assessments that I did was comparing three diet types in their relationship to cancer risk or increased, reduced risk or increased risk. And they were a Mediterranean diet, a ketogenic diet and a plant-based diet. And the study concluded that the Mediterranean diet was the best as far as an overall reduction for cancer risk. Like, okay, that's fair. This study, the reason they dispelled the ketogenic diet, though the findings did show substantial reduction in overall tumor size, ding, ding, ding and improved metabolic health to the body ding, ding, ding. Not enough information studying has been done in order for us to be able to promote this as a likely place for reduced cancer risk. Plant-based diet a healthy version of the plant-based diet was proved to promote reduction. By way of like, I want to say it was like 12%, I forget exactly Healthy. And then they went on to say and I love this part in contrast, unhealthy versions of the plant-based diet were shown to show substantial increased risk in cancer. And I was like, imagine that.

Speaker 2: 46:10

So back to veganism, vegetarianism and processed foods. I have mad respect for the raw vegan. Mad respect because that is a lion heart of a commitment, mad respect to the raw vegan. If you're not a raw vegan and you're a vegan, or you're a plant-based eater and you're not a raw plant-based eater, get off your high horse and not thinking that you're not consuming tons of processed foods because you are To create the foods you eat. They are processed literally.

Speaker 2: 46:42

Whether you think they're ethically, environmentally or morally sound or right to create them. They're made in a factory, in a lab, in a plant, processed to be packaged, boxed and wrapped, whatever for you to ingest, whereas your raw vegans who I like I said, respect the hell out of that's as is, pick it and pull it, pick it, pull it, eat it, that's it. God bless you. So this healthy versus unhealthy version of a plant-based diet for cancer risk, reduced or increased? I was like, okay, that makes sense. Like sure, less risk, that should. That's based on their healthy version, less processed version versus higher risk. Increased risk, yeah, cause they're probably eating a bunch of wrapped garbage that's full of heavy metals, mold toxins, its own version of carcinogens and God knows what else.

Speaker 2: 47:31

But yeah, my job right now is just to report the findings as they are until I'm given a research forum to kind of further delve into these things which, like I said, I'm not trying to prove law and create dogma and religion. The job of science, the job of a scientist is not to prove law but to constantly test to try and disprove your hypothesis. And that's what I'm trying to do is to test in efforts to disprove the hypothesis. But we have to compare it to the currently, you know, acknowledged rhetoric and information in order to test it, because I'm testing that hypothesis same time testing mine. So it'll be this you know ongoing, uh, tennis match of like. Does this work? Does that not work? Let's, we'll see what they say, what you guys think, and, yeah, we'll see how it goes.

Speaker 1: 48:25

You're hitting the nail on the head. I, I was. I was gonna say that the yet process, yes, but ultra processed, ultra palatable, easy to consume, um and over consume these products? Oh yeah, it's, it's. It's crazy, and I know because we've. We've too.

Speaker 1: 48:45

Like you know, I've had a stint of veganism for like two years and it got to a point where I couldn't eat enough. And then when I did eat those things, literally my gut was just like oh my God, like I just felt like crap, I didn't feel right and we talked about the inflammation and all those things. But I know we're kind of strapped for time. But the one thing I want to kind of end with we got to there's going to be a part three to this because we have so much to cover. You know, I wanted to kind of talk about your coaching, kind of plug that as well.

Speaker 1: 49:14

Clients or people, like just kind of the people that are coming to you, what are like the top three essential steps someone can take to become healthier or just kind of take their health into their own hands a little bit. So when you see people come in, whether it's metabolic, metabolically unhealthy or they just want to be more fit in the world. What are just three things right off the bat. You're like these are the three essential things we got to start with.

Speaker 2: 49:40

Oh for sure. Great, great question, great question. So my thesis for my research is the single most effective thing we can do as human beings in regard to our health is controlling what we put into our mouths. It's not a powder, it's not meditation, it's not grounding, it's not exercise. It's that Single, single, most exercise. It's that Single, single, most.

Speaker 2: 50:08

We can get all the sleep we want, but if we're not taking care of this, it's not going to matter. You can drink all the water you want, you can manifest, you can ground, you can conjure, you can create, you can zen your way to wherever you think you want to go. But this is the key right here. So, whether it's for business coaching, relationship repair, ptsd, substance abuse, trying to kick a habit like that, somebody just trying to look better, feel better, doesn't matter. I'm going to ask you how your diet is? No, jake, I'm here for business coaching Great, how's your diet? No, my wife and I are trying to work on our marriage Great, how's your diet? No, I'm here every time because this is the gateway. It's the gateway to belief, it's the gateway to understanding and it's the first place to where you will acknowledge an understanding of importance of that. Because as long as that's being manipulated.

Speaker 2: 51:03

You talked about how we're eating and how we feel based on what we're eating. I had a great conversation with Dr Stephanie Rimka the other day talking about pleasure beings. Unfortunately, we have free will working against us and this terrible thing called the tongue working against us, and she was she corrected me really well she's like whoa, whoa, whoa. The tongue is a fantastically pleasurable thing you know, and she's, and she's big, um big in sexual health also.

Speaker 2: 51:40

So she's like, she's like I need that tongue and and it was making me blush a lot, but she says it much more eloquently than I do, but nonetheless the tongue is a very important and pleasurable muscle that we need. And she kind of rephrased what I was trying to say in the sense that, yeah, our perception of taste and flavor has been so thwarted and manipulated that we are just pleasure seekers for food rather than out of need. Everything is hedonic as opposed to homeostatic. That's not saying that we have to eat only for utility and purpose. It shouldn't be enjoyable. I love eating steak, I know you love eating steak. We love eating the way we do because it tastes good, it feels good, it makes us feel great. We don't do it because it's miserable. But contrast is that so much of our understanding and familiarity now with eating is totally based on hedonism, on that hedonic, pleasurable sense of. Give me that easy dopamine, like the chemical engineering of these foods, how they are created in order to induce those reactions. Yeah, that's where we go wrong. That's where pleasure is now being misinterpreted and abused, and perverted was the word she used. It's very true.

Speaker 2: 52:57

So for me, that first thing is we got to figure out your diet. I got to know what's going on in there, because I need you to believe yourself, I need you to understand, to take off the mask, to remove the blockages that are existing, the dream killers of substance that you're putting in your body, that you won't be able to believe in your business, you won't be able to relate to or understand your partner, you won't be able to walk away from that habit or be able to think and be happy, getting rid of the PTSD, let alone like look, you touched on it before Help me get biceps, Tony. Help me get a butt, tony. Help me become healthier, get stronger, feel better, move better equates to looking better. You do those in reverse. It's not guaranteed. I've got a masterclass in looking great and feeling like shit, not being healthy, not being that mobile Masterclass. Did it as a fitness model, did it as a bodybuilder. But as opposed to feel better, truly, by becoming healthier, by getting stronger, by moving better, you're going to inevitably look better.

Speaker 2: 54:06

So, talking about the diet first impressing on people, working from the inside out in order to have the outside be a reflection of what's truly within there, and then that you got to trust the process, man. You got to trust the process. You have to show up and you have to be consistent. Those are kind of all three in one, but diet number one, inside out perspective number two, and trust in the process Number three.

Speaker 1: 54:31

You got me all jacked up right now. That was a great season.

Speaker 2: 54:36

It's football season, dude, you know like there's a lot of great coaches out there, there's a lot of great players out there, so there's plenty of buzzwords and you know like people talking about these things and you see these successful coaches. I was watching, uh, you know, yesterday, the, the women's softball coach from oklahoma shame on me for for not remembering her name, but patty uh, shame on me, but they're working on four national championships in a row right now. She's got, I think, a total of nine over there. 15 conference championships, like just 1,500 wins, I believe. Something just insanely like insane stats. And her talking to Pat McAfee yesterday, who was just previously talking to Nick Saban. It's like they all say the same thing Trust in the process, belief, belief in yourself, commitment to a higher purpose, you know, surrendering to that higher purpose, and just the consistency to stay with it.

Speaker 1: 55:31

Having, uh, having a standard right like that's. That's the standard there's no variation of it. That's the standard for every day. That's the standard. But I know you got to take off um real quick. Where can people find you and connect with you if they want to reach out to Life Like Jake?

Speaker 2: 55:48

You said it right there Every channel, all the socials, everything is Life Like Jake. So YouTube, tiktok, instagram, online, lifelikejakecom everywhere and anywhere to get in touch with me. Just look up Life Like Jake and you'll find me and you'll find me Awesome, Amazing.

Speaker 1: 56:04

Well, appreciate the time. It's great talking to you again. There's so much more to cover. We'll do another one upcoming, but thanks for everybody listening again to another episode of the Primal Foundations Podcast. 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.