OPTIMIZING SLEEP + BLOOD GLUCOSE + NUTRITION | ft. STAN EFFERDING & DR. DAMON MCCUNE

Alright guys, it's my pleasure today to have Stan putting in the work on the podcast. um Stan um is ifb pro, he is the strongest ifb pro bodybuilder and you guys have also had some powerlifting records in the past. They train many of the best athletes like Jon Jones. Thor, so you know, and you're someone that I and I over the years, you know, I've studied the vertical diet and a lot of the things that you know you're putting out there, a lot of research, a lot of education or the things that I've adopted, You know, the way I train my clients or the way I personally eat, so I was really excited when I reached out to you or asked Doojie to reach out to you to see if I could have you on the podcast and, just because I would love to educate people and I think you just offer so much education and knowledge so it's a pleasure for me to have you on the podcast today so, yeah, one of the big brother, I'm joined here uh hey, I was going to jump in and say that I'm joined here by my vertical diet co-author, dr.

damon

mckeon who is a phd in rdn uh ld and he is uh he was head of the dietetics department at unlv an instructor there in their exercise physics department and yeah you know you're right I spent over 30 years competing and learning a lot of things by trial and error and I thought to myself with all my anecdotes and all the testimonies, it was time to try to compare this with science, so I joined Damon a few years ago and we went through all this, we went through hundreds of hours together, going over every aspect of this diet and Damon compiled it. 500 published peer-reviewed journals and scientific studies to make sure the information we were providing was scientifically sound.

Wow, that's awesome because you know I come from a bodybuilding background. I know you do well with weightlifting too, but I know how a lot of things are, here he said she said oh, my friend did this at the gym, I worked with this guru and it was fish and broccoli, and You know what I mean, typical bodybuilding diets, tons of cardio, and they don't really pay attention to efficiency or performance in the gym, all of these things that I think are major contributing factors to when you're trying to be the best in the world. the best or getting the most out of your body, I think that's It's amazing that you guys can team up, you know, and you know, you actually find the right data and the right evidence to know what's most optimal, so you know I'm sure that there are some listeners who don't know much about the vertical diet.

So maybe you could, as you know, give us a brief overview of what the principles of the vertical diet are. Yeah, hell, would you mind starting with that. So, as you mentioned before, thanks for having us, by the way, it's great to spend it. time with you guys um Stan and I spent a lot of time looking at this and I have to say a lot of our directors come back and know that some of that bro science was correct and we found that over the years with science, some of the concepts that I've been through and been tested now you know there's some validity to some of those things that were just you know he said she said that doesn't mean they're all right, but now we've taken the time and we've been able to take it to a lab. and actually, you know, we really try those things and one of them is

sleep

, which I know we mentioned a little bit earlier and that's probably by far the number. one thing we talk about besides compliance, so compliance is science, that's our motto, uh, with diet, so being consistent with something and sticking to something, but then the next thing would be

sleep

.

There's actually a lot of data out there that there's only a slight difference in the quality of sleep that a person gets and we're talking about the actual time that someone sleeps, not just lying in bed, eight and a half hours versus five and a half hours, There is a tremendous change in the amount of fat that your body will burn and the amount of muscle that your body will burn and you start to burn less fat and more muscle in those five and a half hours compared to the eight and a half hours, so, Without getting too technical, there is a big change in your entire body. hormonal expression in the body and that's one of the things that really drives that, so a lot of people you know, who train very hard and are very busy, sometimes they try to sacrifice sleep to try to do more during the day and what we're learning is that it may not be as productive as we once thought and it may be counterproductive so david uh

damon

damon's master's thesis was on igf-1 and insulin resi

stan

ce in relation to sleep and obviously Now I under

stan

d it pretty well, but we've spent a couple of decades or more telling clients to get up at 4 am and do fasted cardio and it was because of loss of muscle tissue, metabolism and insulin sensitivity.

I've said it on a lot of podcasts if you wake up at 4am to do cardio after five hours of sleep you're going over 100 bills to pick up nickels it's crazy I feel like there are actually so many questions and with the vertical diet and the principles I feel like we're not going to be able to cover everything, so I think maybe we should cover the importance of sleep because I think it's important and like you said, insulin sensitivity is also something that I pay a lot of attention to. um, so let's expand on the dream a little bit more, um, that's something that I always push clients on because I'm big on efficiency, I'm big on performance and you know, one of the main problems that I see if We're going to Talking about bodybuilding specifically, obviously, it's going to be different when it comes to athletes, but when bodybuilders are preparing for a competition and they're on a calorie-restricted diet and they're trying to get to very low levels. body fat levels I don't see the benefit of consuming only calories and bringing your body to a point where it can't relax and then you can't sleep, you know a lot about my cl, a lot of friends of mine like that they are bodybuilders who work with others coaches, I hear you, they're like they didn't sleep all night, they just sit there, they're on their phone, they can't relax, and they're eating 2,000 calories right where I found myself.

Through trial and error, I actually like to eat a little bit of carbs. I train early in the morning, so I structure my last meal of the day to have a little bit of carbs because I feel like it relaxes my body and I can have more restful sleep, sleep better, my sleep quality is better when I measure it and feel that the body is going to be much more efficient that way and I feel like a lot of people don't understand the It's important to get good sleep and like you said, you know that just because the plan says I have to do my morning cardio at 5 a.m. m., they get up every morning and do their cardio at 5 a.m. m., where it would have been more efficient if they had actually done it.

I slept more and had a better training session that day, you know, yeah, so the data really supports your approach with carbs, the way it's discussed in the literature, they call it sleep onset latency and what that means. is how quickly you actually fall asleep when you go to bed and they found that if you eat simple carbohydrates within four hours of going to sleep, your sleep onset latency will be lower and therefore you will fall asleep faster , so there is actually data. and science shows that now yes, wow, that's amazing, yes, because I remember when I used to train with other trainers.

Go ahead, I was just going to say that we see it in

blood

work all the time. I guess the obvious question here is regarding If you eat carbs at night, a lot of keto people would say, well, you don't need carbs and that might be true biochemically, you don't need carbs, but you don't need an elevator to get to the top of the Empire. State. building, you can take the stairs, it's not the most efficient or effective way to train anaerobically in particular and support our goal, which is to maximize muscle tissue gain or retention, uh, for dieting and there's what I see in the analyzes of

blood

because I have had over a hundred blood tests throughout my career and I have reviewed hundreds and hundreds of them for my clients over the last 20 years.

What we see is that in people who restrict carbohydrates too much we start to see elevated fasting

glucose

levels. in the morning because the body will release cortisol to break down

glucose

from the liver and then we start to see elevated cortisol which can also be catabolic for these people so it also negatively affects sleep so there are a few other things you consider hormonally in terms of you know what you said, you eat a little bit of carbs before you go to bed, it makes you sleep better, it makes you train better, but there are a lot of physiological reasons for that, yeah, and I think that's another thing too, and you already know.

I would love for your guys to take this on because I actually had a podcast with lee norton and I mentioned it with him but I don't think I could really answer the question like you don't really know but I feel Also with diets I feel like there are more variables. that strictly, as you know, a lot of people will preach all of this as calories and calories burned and I've seen it before with some clients when you get their bodies to a certain state and they'll take few calories. I feel like the other variables like cortisol and stress and all these other hormonal responses in the body can prevent your body from burning body fat or getting lean, so that's something I've seen in talking to clients.

I've been to other trainers, they come to me and say I was doing two hours of cardio, I'm only eating 1400 calories and they're not losing weight and then you talk to some people like that's physically impossible. they're cheating, they're cheating on their diet, but then you find out they're not sleeping, they're not eating carbs, their cortisol is probably through the roof and I wonder if there's data to support that if someone's body is in that state of high stress that you're going to regress and not burn body fat and kind of be in this weird state of no progress, yes, yes and no, um, but let's discuss this is a great question because it seems to be a point of debate in the fitness world. calories and calories expended, which shouldn't be as important as calories and calories expended, the energy equation is absolutely the end all be all when it comes to gaining or losing weight.

Having said now that there are several things like you mentioned that will affect that energy balance, so it can be hormones, it can be activity, it can be sleep, they will adjust to both sides of that balance. There is some data to back up what you just said. I mentioned that you have someone that you know potentially, I don't want to use the word overtraining, but they are training substantially, they are very politically restricted, the data from um, it was actually Nettle Shiva, it's the 2010 study that looked at the sleep patterns of the eight and a half and five and a half, so they concluded that if they slept the five and a half hours, it decreased the fraction of fat loss by 55 percent and increased the loss of fat-free body mass by 60, so you had this complete shift where you know you're now losing less fat and losing more muscle, so you might have the instance at that point where you know the scale is probably going to move, but then you become like the skinny fat guy. look where you just look deflated and you know everyone knows what we're talking about and has been in the fitness world so there's some data to back that up but I would say the bigger picture that I think a lot of people forget.

It's all about context and the individual person and yes, those certain factors can influence the energy balance equation, but the energy balance equation is still what it's like to drive the truck, so you can get to a point where that you have consumed less. and you've had some metabolic adaptation and now your body is right at that point because our body is designed to survive and so if you take it to a point that is below survival levels, those 1400 calories would probably be for anyone, especially if you're training so much, yes, it's going to start to reduce what you're willing to let go, yes, and from a general physiological point of view, muscle is very expensive in terms of energy and to survive, the body is much more willing to give up that than I mean, your stored body fat because it doesn't know when you're going to feed it again and it just knows that you have to do this crazy amount of cardio and use a lot of energy, so yeah, it's going to need it. from the place where your body will essentially classify it correctly and that can affect weight loss and slow it down, but at the end of the day, I mean, if not, we would do this, but if you took a group of people and put them in 500 calories and just starving them for a while, everyone is going to lose weight, yeah, it's actually been done in history, and you know, that was before we had regulations and stuff like that, but, yeah, energy balance is still the main one. driver, yes, something that I, Dorian, yes, let me also tell thehearing that there are several different ways in that energy balance equation that your body burns calories.

Yes, your basal metabolic rate will slow down as a result of eating fewer calories and simply being in a deficit and that can be hormonal, you may know that you could have lower testosterone levels if you are a man, women quite often have hypothyroidism and have a thyroid slow, but the most important factor is what we call non-exercise activity thermogenesis, people who start out eat fewer calories and then crush themselves with exercise activities like the treadmill, then they tend to go home and sit more and it becomes kind of zero-sum game and one of the interventions I like to use when I have a competitor who is frantic 30 days out of a program feels like they are in this starvation mode that doesn't exist.

They already cut all the calories they could cut. They are already doing all the cardio they could do and I can't recommend it enough. I recommend that you cut more calories or do more cardio, so I recommend a couple of things: I recommend that you stay on your feet all day, which really helps in terms of non-exercise activity, and I recommend that you reduce the temperature of your sleeping environment and your living environment. make it colder and that can have, you know, we do step counters, as well as the 8,000 steps a day, to find that people, as they understand it, they go into this starvation mode, and I'm using that joking term, that's just what you referenced is that they end up moving less throughout the day and their hormones are affected, but if you apply an actual calorie count to hypothyroidism relative to basal metabolic rate, it's a very small amount, usually around 30, possibly in severe Hashimoto's. up to 150 calories a day, that doesn't seem extraordinary, but it applies to non-exercise activities because hypothyroidism will make you very tired and you will sit all day and your performance in the gym will suffer and you know, don't do it.

We haven't talked about that yet, but that becomes a really important component of retaining lean mass while dieting, is that you maintain a similar level of performance, uh, volume loading sets per reps per weight, yeah that is significantly affected and your performance, your strength and your volume. uh everything slows down significantly, you're going to start losing more and more muscle along with what Damon mentioned in terms of insulin resistance issues and muscle being sacrificed simply from lack of sleep, so all of those factors are taken into account in the total energy balance equation. daily energy intake minus total daily energy expenditure, the expenditure component represents hormones and represents both physical and non-physical activity and the thermic effect of food, which decreases because you eat less and your basal metabolic rate, yes, yes , it's very interesting and the other thing I wanted to ask you if there's any data on this is that obviously they recommend a solid duration, so eight and a half hours is the sweet spot for sleeping at night, we say between seven and nine, okay? between seven and nine um obviously for optimal sleep, things like blocking the room, using earplugs, anything to make sure your body is in the deepest sleep possible, staying away from your phone , make sure you don't look at anything, blue light, whether you want it. use a blue light block or glasses, I feel like all of that will be a contributing factor to your body sleeping more soundly and another thing I was wondering is if it is beneficial, is there any data for athletes with these types of goals? take naps during the day or that will disrupt the quality of their sleep at night, it depends on when they nap and how long the nap lasts, if it is earlier in the day and it is less than 30 one minute naps, for They're usually fine, if there's someone who goes to bed and falls down two hours later, wondering what day it is and where they are, that's probably going to disrupt their sleep later, so there's nothing wrong with naps.

I would just try to cut it down to more of the power nap approach, um, less than 30 minutes, yeah, the priority is in our book, in our book Damon, and I put a whole chapter on sleep and I include a sleep hygiene checklist. dream listed in turn. a hierarchy of most important, least important, one of the things that tops that list and you covered a cool room, a quiet room, a dark room, blue lights, those are very common problems with sleep, one of the things that tops that list is to wake up at the same time every morning and try to get some sunlight exposure or even you know on amazon you can get a 10,000 lux light if you're in kind of the northern hemisphere and you don't have light in the morning. tomorrow, have breakfast in front of one of those for 30 minutes is a good idea that adjusts your circadian clock and then you build up what they call sleep pressure throughout the day.

Naps relieve that pressure, so take shorter naps earlier in the day to give yourself enough sleep pressure so that when you have time to go to bed at night you can fall asleep more easily and stay asleep longer. . A couple of other well-studied components in terms of sleep are cooling down the core and usually a warm shower beforehand. The bed actually sounds counterintuitive, but it helps cool the core of the body and if you can get that core temperature down by about a degree, you'll sleep better and then a worry journal has some good science behind it, just write down sort of a checklist of things. . that's on your mind, whether it's doing things you hope you don't forget for tomorrow or anything that's stressing you out, just write it down on a piece of paper and put it on your nightstand and that can really help you sleep. and a lot of people ask you: the next question is about what kind of supplements or medications they can take to help them fall asleep.

I should mention that something like alcohol or marijuana can help you fall asleep dentally, but it interferes with deep sleep. and remote sleep, so sleep quality is compromised, so be careful with alcohol. People drink a glass of wine at night and think they are getting a health benefit for whatever reason has been suggested, but in fact. It interferes with deep, remote sleep, so it can prevent you from getting restful sleep for your brain or body. Beyond that, there is limited evidence that melatonin works for some people, primarily its best benefit is travel. things like jet lag, but consistently every night we just haven't seen enough evidence to suggest that the general population some people will do it and then maybe an anti-anxiety supplement like ashwagandha has a decent amount of research, but it doesn't.

It is a magic pill for most. of prescription medications or over-the-counter medications, uh, and over-the-counter medications, in general, will make you sleepy when you wake up in the morning, so you would like to solve it without medication, if possible, not really exists. anything, any great trick or magic trick in terms of supplements or sleeping medications, very, very interesting, yes, we actually have a lot of people who are using cpaps. Also yes, there are many people out there who know about obstructive sleep apnea. You may not even be aware of it and it may take some getting used to, but it can be hugely life-changing.

Yes, yes, I bought one myself. I went to the test about a year and a half ago and they were like, “Oh.” you're about to be able to use one, you don't need it, so I bought it and I tried to try to use it, but I kept waking up and I just couldn't, I couldn't. Get used to it, you know, but it's something I could try and we talk about it in the book, of course, we work with a lot of great athletes. You know, we mentioned hof thor and brian shaw and nfl linemen like uh lane johnson and others, uh, and in general, when you get north of 240 250 plus or even jordan fagenbaum from uh barbell medicine, he's only 198 pounds, he uses a cpap, has a thick neck, is a big squatter and has to do with a crowded airway. not necessarily just uh or body fat percentage, overall size and what we found is that if you snore and you wake up tired and we included a stop bang questionnaire that helps you self-diagnose, then there's a good chance that you might want to continue getting a cpap, before lack of time or money, many people internationally contact us from Australia, Canada or Europe and have socialized medicine, so it can take a year or more to simply make an appointment to have a sleep test. study because they are expensive and again if it's just moderate apnea they might recommend weight loss instead of prescribing a machine because those two are expensive so in a lot of cases I'll recommend people just go on Craigslist and get a cpap.

I mean, the disadvantages are, you know, the potential potential disadvantages are so minimal that, and the advantage is that it's so beneficial. One of the big things we recommend it for is that it dramatically lowers blood pressure and blood thickness. You see people with high red blood cells. Hemoglobin hematocrit, especially in performance enhancing drugs, that's why I was trying to take it because I've suffered from high hematocrit hemoglobin, so that was one of the things I'm going to give. This is a serious career and I'll see if it helps reduce that, so it's funny, you should say yes, and I happen to know, like you and I, many of the people who have passed away in the last few years.

We're friends of ours, we've trained with people we know, and it's usually in the off-season when they're 280 to 90,300 pounds or more. And in many cases, you know, I've talked to a lot of these people. over the years and they have not been using cpaps regularly and their blood pressure and blood viscosity have continued to create these health problems for them. That being said cpaps have gotten a lot better over the years when I first got one in the early 90's when my weight went over 250. uh it was a cpap it was continuous positive air it was like driving on the highway without a windshield, it was right in your face the whole time, there was no rhythm and now they call each other, actually, yeah. now there's no rhythm, they're actually called bipaps and when you exhale they relieve the pressure, there's a setting you can adjust to improve the pressure relief so it's a little bit easier to adapt over time yeah. we, you know, try to educate people on how to be comfortable better with that math and the type of mask you wear can matter in terms of comfort, so we work hard to try to get people to comply with that.

It's like the foundation of everything we do, yeah, I think I'm going to turn mine on tonight and I definitely have to book them and read all of those tips on how to sleep and I'll make sure to put the link here for your book because I know there's a Lots of valuable information there, you guys mentioned, you know, insulin resistance, blood glucose, something I've paid attention to with clients and I wanted to get your thoughts on this. You feel like if someone has really good glucose levels, you know, from meal to meal, that's a good indicator that their body is efficiently processing carbohydrates and using them for energy.

Do you feel like a blood glucose monitor is a good tool to measure that? Determine how many carbohydrates they can use from meal to meal if their levels are still high. You know, I know you suggest 10 minute walks to reduce them. Do you think it is a good indicator? Depends. I know there have been many. From the use of continuous glucose monitors or CGMs in the fitness world, we were actually doing some studies on our campus for a while with them, the technology has come a long way and I think they do a very good job of providing data.

I don't know if it provides enough on its own because you're basically looking at a biomarker in glucose, you're not tracking insulin and other things, and to do it really well you should use a glycemic u. lamp, which is not practical, but that is what we would use in the research and you know there are some models that have tried to build on this. I think people get scared of any kind of glucose spike throughout the day and it's not necessarily a The bad thing is that it's very normal depending on what they had to eat, yeah, to a certain extent, sure, I mean, you know If someone is very high all day and then eats and goes up even more, that's bad, right, but if you have someone who is fasting and their glucose level is between 70 and 80 and then they eat and go up in 150, which is still within the norm, you know, it's not just if it goes back down, that's what we're looking for is actually a good thing, it went up, how long did it take, yeah, and that's what I mean, that's What I would evaluate is as if with clients, I would evaluate if they are eating every day. two or three hours, I would like to know the data like, hey, what is your blood glucose level after that two hour mark or three hour mark?

You know what I mean? Yeahit's getting too low so I would say you know what we need to introduce a little bit more carbs if it's still high I don't want to combine food with food and, you know, keep going up so if it's getting too high I would use that as an indicator Hey, hey, we need to be a little more active between our meals or we need to reduce, you know, some calories or carbs or whatever, I'll do that, I'll do that too, although in my thesis research I used a carbohydrate mouthwash on people who were squatting and they were fasting and there is a hyperreaction of the body to release glucose into the bloodstream under severe stress and I experienced that in several of my participants and it was very unexpected and I couldn't tell who it was going to be, so the mouthwash only had six grams of carbs and they didn't even swallow them, but I got people over 90 degrees fasting. this activity with the snap and spit, I checked their blood glucose level and they were over 200.

Yeah, and within a couple of minutes I would say they were back to baseline, so I mean it was a very, very big release. and there's not a lot of data available, I mean, we know that it's a normal thing for the liver to regenerate these things into the bloodstream, but to that point there's still not a lot of data to support why that is. happening or if that's even a problem, I mean, if you had a type 1 diabetic, that would probably be a problem because their body doesn't have the mechanism to do it, but these people were not diabetics and you know, it's something that I believe. shed light on we may not have all the answers, yeah, all that stuff you know in general, I think your approach is probably, you know, pretty solid, yeah, I feel like it's a tool, you know what I mean, it's like you check your weight every other day. or whatever, it's a tool, yeah, you're collecting data and analyzing it and I think from that point of view it's a great approach, yeah, yeah, you know a lot of things came up, I just want to address them real quick.

In terms of weight loss, we have not seen in research that continuous glucose monitors benefit the general population, they are more advantageous than in the absence of one, so your obesity specialists will suggest that it is not an effective tool. but as you mentioned in terms of scale or in terms of glucose monitors for competitive athletes, it could be something like an aura ring or whatever, it could be something that we could adjust for a small percentage of people in terms of their glucose level. blood sugar, also in the book, in addition to our sleep hygiene, we have a chapter on health where we have a quick fix kit for high blood pressure and again we create a step-by-step hierarchy of action items. what you need to focus on to lower blood pressure and of course sleep apnea is at the top of that list along with hypothyroidism and, you know, weight loss and that kind of thing, but another important component It's high blood sugar levels, that's when you start.

If you have hyperinsulinemia, especially as it can start to affect the kidneys, you will have high blood sugar levels, which is why we have another high blood sugar quick fix kit, which specifically targets that, as it is considered to contribute greatly to a lot of metabolic problems, fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes, etc., one of the things we talk about, we also have a whole chapter on blood tests, you can see things like fasting glucose and um and hemoglobin ha1c a1c in a blood test and those. you can be in the normal range for many years, if not a couple of decades, while you still have some problem with insulin resistance and a continuous glucose monitor could show you that another thing that could show you that is what we call a leader. indicators like high triglycerides or high fasting insulin, those would be numbers that would tell us okay, we have some glucose regulation issues that we need to address and then your intervention could be some of those things that we put on our list for a level. high blood sugar. quick fix kit obviously sleep is a huge problem, we talked about how insulin resistance can occur in just one night of bad sleep, weight loss is another huge problem, obviously any type of diet as long as it's a calorie deficit, no matter where the carbs or fats are. can result in a similar reduction or improvement in blood sugar levels, another is to simply eat protein first at a meal, we are seeing more and more of this recently, it can help improve some of the glucose peak and the duration of The elevation. that right behind that, of course, insulin is chasing and we look at what we call the area under the curve in terms of how high insulin rises and how long it stays elevated and it's that area under the curve that sort of dictates , Hey you.

I know long-term health problems, another one, if I can remember, while I'm walking this, the 10-minute walk is a huge piece, it's actually twice as effective as metformin, which is the number one prescription for type diabetes. 2. medicine in the world to prevent or reverse type 2 diabetes metformin to a 10-minute walk after a meal somewhere within 30 minutes or so is twice as effective because it helps reduce the peak and duration of the elevation of glucose is that aspirin is after every meal or just a couple of meals, uh, it would depend, uh, you know, someone who does bodybuilding certainly wouldn't need that kind of intervention unless they had it, it would be pretty rare for a body, yes, but an extreme muscle is an extreme glucose sink.

For example, in the off-season, if you had someone who had blood sugar regulation issues, yes, you would do it after every meal and it's much better than a 30-minute voucher and a 40-minute fight at the end of the day. because a fight at the end of the day. The day does not address the spike, since, as Damon said, the acute rise in blood sugar levels after meals is called postprandial glycemia, so the 10-minute walk helps lower those sugar levels in Blood, I think 30 percent, is what comes from literature. suggests, and those are some of the components of the amazing high blood sugar quick fix kit that we implemented so you know that the fairly immediate impact is also important and we address this in the book that, um, the index glycemic of a food is really useless, to be honest, it was created in the absence of consuming carbohydrates alone in the absence of protein and fat, so it is invalid and what we are seeing with continuous glucose monitors is that people They respond differently to different carbohydrates that different people consume, one person can eat one potato and be fine, another person can consume up to 200.

So it's very individualistic and in those circumstances it might be beneficial to use one, you just might find out what your own triggers are, but there are other variables. like glycemic load, how many carbohydrates did you consume, yes, and so on, and again, how much protein was in the food, how much fat was in the food, yes, yes, as soon as you add, there are a lot of variables, yes, as soon as By adding protein, fat, and carbs together, you completely eliminate any kind of insulin-like response that you'd get from a higher glycemic index carbohydrate on its own, because who eats who eats just plain white rice, yeah, I mean, in as for an athlete saying, we all add that there's someone out there, yeah, but we all add well, yeah, it's funny, a question I had, I just asked myself and because it came up recently, someone asked me about it.

Someone sent me an Instagram Message because I manage a lot of trainers and maybe he sees this and I didn't have the answer for him and it made me think and he was like, you know, based on my blood type, you know? I can, I can only eat red meat because I'm, you know, blah, blah, blah, dude. Do you think there is any benefit for someone in liking to eat according to their blood type? Is it proven to be legit or is it just a hopeless approach and we are back. Okay, so yeah, you can continue.

David was talking about blood type. Yes Yes. Right now we don't have the data to support that approach and it's pretty much the same thing you hear a lot of things about the gut microbiome. I know we discussed that a lot in our book. What I will say about all of that is that the data, science, and technology have not reached a point where it is definitive for us to use them clinically. If you simply don't answer enough questions, you know there are too many variables not being taken into account. I know there are plenty of people out there who will either promote those types of diets you know or address them again.

It's about compliance if One of those approaches is an approach that someone can follow and can do very well and it doesn't create any type of nutrient deficiency. That's great, you know, if it works for them, yes, but there's no advantage to doing something based on your blood type in terms of a diet versus just you know being consistent with eating right this uh, yeah, we have Dorian, sorry, we have a whole section on myths, incredible myths in the fitness industry, just a shameless plug, but we have a whole section when Did you get when they came out with this book?

How long has it been available? It's been out for about four months, it's actually the number one, the number one new release in diet books on Amazon for the whole 30 days, so it's available on Amazon. Gotta get this today, it's available on Amazon at all major barnes nobles, oh wow, that's amazing, but it's interesting when you ask questions about blood type diets and even like, uh, you know, uh, uh, What is that ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph, do you know the body type? Diet, yes, there are all kinds and we go into great detail dispelling all those myths and attaching all the literature on it, but, yes, I miss you, you could spend an entire podcast just talking about the business, honestly, kids like it what you they're doing this it's amazing and I think it's priceless the knowledge information data that they're putting out because I just look like they knew me growing up and growing up and I hired all these different

nutrition

gurus and I just feel like people are privileged to have right now people like you doing the research, publishing it and then packaging it into this book so you can buy it and get all this amazing information and save you years and years and years of mistakes, so I really encourage everyone to pick up the book.

Damon really expanded on it. I mean, it's over 240 pages with over 500 references. Wow, and come on, we delve into the nitty-gritty. You talk about guru diets or

nutrition

ist diets or the bikini and bodybuilding industry. I've been a part of it since 1986 when I first competed, yeah, and I saw all these things happening and experienced them myself. I made the same mistakes several times. These overly restrictive diets, you know, the egg white, tilapia, and broccoli diets. I've done that and I've had clients that have done that and I saw nothing but problems for so many years it was isolated from that industry which was a small group of people, but this industry has exploded in the last 10 years.

It's incredible what has happened. Bodybuilding figure. bikini physique wellness and unfortunately now the general population has started seeing these women in the best shape of their lives on stage and started copying those same horrendous diets and yes we have said that the best diets are the ones you will follow and, you already know. All diets work when strictly followed and you can certainly lose weight on those diets, but what kind of problems occur? What kinds of health problems manifest as a result of deficiencies in things like biotin, iron b12, and zinc? I go back and look, you know, I didn't make this up.

Vince Garando was talking about this in the '60s, when he was reading in the late '80s about diets. Vince Garanda's information there were whole eggs, steak, he even he was talking about iodine. then for dieters who had hypothyroidism as a result of sweating out all their iodine and not consuming, you know, adequate electrolytes and I was just very explicit about the fact that I think these guru diets are hurting people. and we see it after the pageant, particularly when they end up in the doctor's office getting treatment for amenorrhea and low iron levels and for calcium deficiencies, yes, the female triad, and we see these women getting b12 injections and vitamin D. and iron and we also see them taking antidepressants, we also see them suffer massive amounts of edema and weight regain and it's tragic, so you know, Damon and I have worked hard to try to be very explicit about the fact that it's unnecessary. we can achieve the same level of conditioning that we believe is superior, much superior, maintain more lean body mass, sleep better, sleepless, uh, you know, obviously, the last 30 days are, uh, you know, it's like I said in one of my videos if you want to be healthy. don't compete and you know people will make some sacrifices, you know participate in any sport, whether you know a 13-year-old gymnast at the Olympics who has surgery for, you know, her wrists or her ankles, her tendon of Achilles. tendons, etc. or even a 10-year-old badminton player learning about lateral collateral ligament surgery because they burst from repetitive strain.

Any sport, it doesn't matter if you want to be healthy, don't compete, and what do Damon and I try. and we do a lot of it is mitigate the damage we do blood tests we make recommendations with things like you know blood pressure and cpaps and you know how to maintain a nutrient rich whole food diet that doesn't exclude the things that your guru will tell you to exclude and here there's a list that we're all familiar with stop eating red meat stop eating fruit uh stop eating dairy stop salting your food these are the first things we hear about these salt salt kills me I'm like yeah, I feel like 98 of the people are dehydrated and they don't know it and I'm like I'm talking to a very high level athlete last year who competes in the Olympics, won the Olympics, yeah, and he didn't have salt in his meals, no.

It had salt. one meal for years I'm like you live under a rock man I'm like you know I couldn't believe it I was blown away you know it's absolutely crazy Some people are successful in spite of themselves but yeah that was the first thing we did when we stepped in and said, look, there's absolutely no reason to eliminate red meat. I dieted with Nadia Wyatt, who came third in Miss Olympia, to get ready for the stage. and she was absolutely devastated and she ate red meat, she ate steak until the day of the show. I have pictures of every meal she ate, I ate fruit, I ate potatoes, I salted her food and here is the trick to her cardio.

The last three months before the program, quote unquote, cardio was three 10-minute walks a day, that was all she did for cardio. We had her lifting weights if we wanted to burn more calories and create a calorie deficit. I just did am pm split stephanie sanzo a popular fitness influencer from australia same thing yeah yeah when she came to see me she was doing two cardio a day 40 minutes twice a day now she does three long walks 10 minutes and he comes in and lifts weights and he loves focusing on performance and training around training, yeah, and as a result, he performed much better and we did it again.

Now he eats red meat every day, eats fruit every day, salts his food, eats dairy, you know, calcium. It's very important, so that's the diet in a nutshell, it's highly bioavailable, rich in micronutrients, easy to digest foods, it's another component that's that easy to digest, try to find foods that don't cause a lot of gastric upset. particularly for those people with ibs and yes, you know, they have severe digestion, they feel that way with calcium, although they have to be very conscious of their calcium intake, like they are eating a lot of dairy and consuming large amounts of calcium do you think It is important to make sure your blood is in line with your calcium to avoid any calcification in your arteries?

Damon, do you want to jump in there. One thing is that the vitamins you get from food are not the same. impact as supplements calcium supplements can cause a bigger problem too high a level of vitamin D can cause excess calcium to be stored in excess and there is a lot of k2 in whole eggs there is k2 in other sources, but damon, go ahead and take advantage of that because calcium is very important, yes, it really depends on the person and if they have any kind of predisposition to that type of thing, that's really what it comes down to.

Well, you know, most people, if they're very active, you know they would really have to go overboard. We also get this question about oxalates a lot and again it goes back to your personal medical history. What's wrong with them? Are they predisposed to forming stones or calcification deposits or things like that? He really knows it. be a little bit different and I mean it's just a matter of they will draw in themselves and see that you know what their body is capable of taking and they will continue to reevaluate that you know people can't go. get one that you have to moderate correctly year after year and look at things and make appropriate adjustments yeah so be consistent with the program and the overall evaluation you know yeah another question I had because I agree 100% with you. red meat, you know, red meat has a lot more micronutrients than, obviously, chicken breasts or egg whites, which are just empty, but my biggest problem with eating red meat is that because of my hematocrit, the hemoglobin is the iron content and I am worried. having too high a ferritin, which will then play a role in having a higher hemoglobin hematocrit.

Do you feel like that's a concern for someone who has those elevated levels again? It depends on the person, but they can consume some calcium with that meal and that will actually block some of the iron absorption, so you have to reduce, yes, so make something like yogurt with it or yes, okay and reduce consuming vitamin C with that meal, vitamin C and reduces non-heme sources, so if you have a source of heme and non-heme iron with vitamin C that will maximize iron absorption, so if you want to minimize iron absorption , it will minimize it with the particular food, this is specific to that food, it will minimize the vitamin. c minimize non-heme iron and add calcium and that would help.

You were smart to say that you look at ferritin because sometimes people assume that red blood cell hemoglobin and adequate hemoglobin immediately indicate a high iron level and they don't because there is a difference between polycythemia and erythrocytosis, one would require donation, not necessarily people at high altitudes like Denver will have elevated red blood cells, but not necessarily elevated iron levels, and you have to be careful in terms of over-donating and we've covered that in the book as well. Particularly for people who use performance-enhancing drugs and who have a high erythrocyte hemoglobin hematocrit, it is necessary to observe your platelets and your ferrets to determine whether you are going to donate or not, otherwise it will impair performance, your cardiovascular condition will be will be significantly affected.

I never have an athlete donate blood 30 days before a competition, especially one that requires any type of cardiovascular fitness, so that's in the book too, it's a deeper dive, but those are smart things: get your blood tested , look at your uh on your hemoglobin rvc hematocrit and then, you know, try to use the information that we gave to West about whether you would donate or not. Chris Masterjohn did something interesting. He has hemochromatosis, a genetic predisposition to high iron absorption and retention, and prefers to eat red. meat because of all the micronutrients it provides in a more viable form, iron, vitamin B12, zinc, creatine, creatinine and all those things that are superior, plus the superior composition of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3, you compare it to say chicken or pork, you prefer to eat red meat and then make a regular donation based on your blood test results every 90 days or so, you would just donate and that is certainly a reasonable method, again, no donate excessively only when justified. those people who it's justified for yeah wow guys I could honestly sit here and ask you a million questions and I know we have uh this is happening so I'm going to ask one more question because I really appreciate your time and I encourage you all to buy the book.

They have to learn about the vertical diet. There are many principles there that you know. I have followed them myself. I have learned a lot from following Stan and the last question. I wanted to ask you if there is any data and if meal consumption matters because I personally reviewed this myself and sometimes I try it and the volume of meals, you know, five meals, six meals, sometimes I personally feel like I do all six meals because that en What we've been told, you know what I mean all these years, bro, science, but sometimes I feel like eating bigger portions and allowing a little more time between meals, my stomach, my digestive system, things feel a little more efficient.

There is some benefit in distribution if you're eating 3500 calories spread over four, five or six meals, so yes, there is data, and you know again it's going to be a little bit individualized on this, you know it used to be for a while there at the People were told that they had to eat every two hours and you know that that was the most efficient way to get all the nutrients from your food and you know how to digest and absorb them all and what we are finding is that there is a refractory period in your stomach and what What that means is that when you're eating a meal, you're going to have stimulation in your stomach, you're going to release gastric juices to help break it down and digest it and then that.

It goes to the small intestine and that's where most nutrients are absorbed, so if you eat every two hours, that's probably too short a period of time for your stomach to reset and you're not going to get that full stomach response from the next meal, so it may not be completely broken down and digested, potentially reducing some absorption. So what we're finding in the data is that probably the ideal sweet spot is three to five meals a day spaced three to five hours apart and that's about the right balance for that refractory period now, if you're someone whose calories They are still the best, so if you are someone who is trying to gain weight or you are just a large person who needs to eat more than 5000 calories.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, you'll probably need more meals, right? So from that standpoint, get your calories in, but if it's doable, three to five meals, you know there's no reason to push yourself to eat every two hours. There is no additional advantage. I feel like it honestly irritates my digestive system, my gut, and I'm actually dealing with a lot more inflammation by the time the sixth meal comes around. I go to bed and wonder why. My stomach is inflamed and I have all this inflammation in my intestines and I feel like because it's just in overdrive it's basically in a state of digestion all day and then I start wondering like my stomach is just in a constant state of digestion.

What I know is that it interferes with other things in the body and healing, and you know other things that are required, so yeah, it was a question that's been on my mind for a long time, so it's nice to have that kind of clarity. and Another thing is like if you know protein intake, obviously, guys who use performance-enhancing drugs, they can absorb more protein in their protein synthesis, but is it a major concern if someone is trying to let them know, let's say, over 300 grams of protein and they're only going to eat four meals a day and they split it into four, is there like a point of no return with protein where their bodies just can't absorb it or will they split it between those three for those four or five? hours if they are spread out, so this is one of those types of myths that exist.

I think Layne actually covered this not too long ago in one of his videos and in terms of absorption, you're basically going to absorb it just fine. then everything will go into your bloodstream, it's what your cells will actually be able to use and that will be different depending on the food, the timing of what you just did, your activity level, if you just had an intense training session. you're probably going to absorb more into the cell, you're probably going to know more utilization of the actual protein, but you're going to absorb basically all of it, you know it's going to come back to the protein digestibility score because not all of them are 100 um and that's very deep, but in the end of the day, there's really no no, no problem with dividing it into four meals, as long as it doesn't cause indigestion from having a large amount. food, you know, because sometimes we see this, you know, with gastroesophageal reflux disease, if it's creating a problem where people eat a large meal later in the day lying down and all of a sudden they experience GERD, then you're probably We'll want to break that up into smaller meals throughout the day, so yes, we have an erection repair kit too.

We work hard to get all of our clients off antacid medications. OMG, there are people with proteins that break down stomach pain. I, bananas, are like I have an acid reflex. I'm using temps. I'm great. It's going to keep getting worse and worse. That's what they are designed for. It will give you temporary relief. Oh is. horrible, horrible, yes, that's a big myth that Damon talked about in terms of protein absorption: you will absorb 100% of what you eat now, whether or not you get any additional benefit in muscle protein synthesis. It's suspicious once you exceed, say, 40 grams. of protein perfood, you will maximize your muscle protein synthesis, but the extra protein will still be absorbed and used and will still be calories and there are other things than muscle, your protein is good for your skin, hair and nails, and of course. even your white and red blood cells, your immune system, yes, your bones, you know, people think calcium is for bones, but calcium and protein and some kind of lower level are optimal for bone growth, but we have one of the myths that we have.

Here, two meals a day or six meals a day, if you compare calories and protein, you will get similar weight loss and body composition. There has been some research done recently, when you cut back to one meal a day, you can experiment a little. more loss of lean muscle tissue with weight loss, yeah, um, but issn international scientific sports nutrition recommends for that small population that we're probably talking to who really want to maximize muscle growth or performance, that three meals probably are better than two four. It may not be much better than three, but why not?

The Issn accountant remembers that he recommends an evenly spaced protein intake, you know, 40 grams of protein throughout the day to be at that limit of optimal, five is probably no better than four and six. probably no better than another four in three or four meals because there is no mechanism in the body to store protein and therefore, in the absence of it, your body will have to wait for the amino acids to be available before doing the repair or perform hypertrophy and that's not Saying you're going to lose 10 pounds of muscle but we're in the business where you know we want to maximize the opportunity.

You know everything we do, yeah, and we should start with high quality protein. You're trying to get 30 grams of high quality protein, yeah, full of micronutrients and not just the egg whites, or you know things that are empty and then I want to, I want to add them, I know we've moved on, but I want to comment here because there is a significant body of research that shows that if you compare calories and protein and one group eats egg whites and the other group eats whole eggs, the Whole egg consumers have a significantly better hypertrophy and strength result in their Training now we thought it was possibly micronutrients, but it seems that cholesterol might actually be the reason why there is a superior performance benefit, and there have been numerous studies so far, so I wouldn't avoid whole eggs, not for that, that's so particular, wow.

There is so much great information that I think people are going to love and the first thing I do is order the book. I hope Amazon here in Canada has it so I can do it. Get it tomorrow, I really appreciate it at stanfording.com. It also has an ebook and, okay, but they and I worked hard to put this out, the hard copy, and they did a great job, it's beautiful, it's amazing, I really appreciate you guys. taking the time and having them I know everyone is going to love this. I'm sure there will be a million other questions you guys will ask, so guys, thanks for your time, thanks for the invite, bro, I appreciate it. thank you